Documentary Review: Hitler's Death: The Final Report: Operation Myth

This documentary is based on interviews conducted by the Russians of those closest to Hitler.  This included his valet and his chauffeur.  The interviews included torture, and every means to make sure the story being told was true.  It included stories before the actual suicide, and instructions to burn his body so it could not be abused by the Russians or put on display.
In the end the Russians made a propaganda film showing that Hitler murdered Eva Braun and then couldn't shoot himself so also took a cyanide capsule.  The driver was accused of shooting him in the head to give a more heroic interpretation to his death.
The conclusion however was that Hitler died in the bunker with his new wife.  Their bodies were then burned.  Hitler's skull was collected in a couple of pieces.

Documentary Review: Revealed: Hitler in Argentina

Here is testimony from several persons that Hitler was seen in Argentina after WWII.  It also gives a connection with a couple who ran a hotel in Argentina.  I loved listening to the Argentine Spanish in this short piece.  It again makes a compelling case that Hitler survived the war.

Documentary Review: American Experience: Death and the Civil War (2012)

After the initial fuss was over, the North and the South settled into real war, and the casualty figures were such that neither side was prepared to death with the slaughter, with the dead.  There was no way in tact for getting bodies home, nor was there proper burial details to inter the bodies where they were.  Bodies lying battlefield, and subsequent photographic essays of these bodies brought the carnage home to the citizenry. 
Even though the paper would publish military records of the deceased, often these were incomplete, or mistakes were made.  If it listed someone as wounded, they often later died.  There were demands for change.  This started with volunteer societies, including Clara Barton's, which brought some relief.  Still many bodies were interred in mass graves, and many were left unburied.  There were some improvements, and a Union organization helped with some reclamation of bodies, but even at the end of the war there was much to do.  On the Union side, Clara Barton published stories in papers.  Sometimes this lead to closure.  Money was expended for the recovery of bodies and a commission set up, after convincing the government that they were responsible to see the bodies were returned home.  These efforts lead to the ability to locate many bodies, and the establishment of National Cemeteries on battlefields throughout the country.  Those of Southern extraction, noted that Confederate troops were left out, and eventually provision was made for the search of these bodies as well.  on the Union side 55 percent of the deceased were identified.  The statistics were worse for the Southern soldiers.  Many were left in unmarked graves.
You may also want to review this essay by Walt Whitman
http://bwardlehistory.blogspot.com/2014/02/walt-whitman-prose-of-dead-of-civil-war.html
or this previous post on death and the Civil War.
http://bwardlehistory.blogspot.com/2013/11/us-civil-war-people-became-acquainted.html
The American attitude toward death, and military death in particular changed as a result of the war.  Since there has been greater effort to get the remains home.  Also Memorial Day was established as a time to remember our fallen soldiers. 
This movie can be graphic, but it does make you stop and think.

Walt Whitman: Prose of the Dead of the Civil War

I hear this prose quoted in a documentary on the Civil War and Death.  It touched me, and so I am sharing it hear.  Whitman had a special view of the war, to which he lent his prose and poetry.
http://www.bartleby.com/229/1100.html
I previously wrote on this topic. 
http://bwardlehistory.blogspot.com/2013/11/us-civil-war-people-became-acquainted.html

Walt Whitman (1819–1892).  Prose Works. 1892.

I. Specimen Days

100. The Million Dead, Too, Summ’d Up

THE DEAD in this war—there they lie, strewing the fields and woods and valleys and battle-fields of the south—Virginia, the Peninsula—Malvern hill and Fair Oaks—the banks of the Chickahominy—the terraces of Fredericksburgh—Antietam bridge—the grisly ravines of Manassas—the bloody promenade of the Wilderness—the varieties of the strayed dead, (the estimate of the War department is 25,000 national soldiers kill’d in battle and never buried at all, 5,000 drown’d—15,000 inhumed by strangers, or on the march in haste, in hitherto unfound localities—2,000 graves cover’d by sand and mud by Mississippi freshets, 3,000 carried away by caving-in of banks, &c.,)—Gettysburgh, the West, Southwest—Vicksburgh—Chattanooga—the trenches of Petersburgh—the numberless battles, camps, hospitals everywhere—the crop reap’d by the mighty reapers, typhoid, dysentery, inflammations—and blackest and loathesomest of all, the dead and living burial-pits, the prison-pens of Andersonville, Salisbury, Belle-Isle, &c., (not Dante’s pictured hell and all its woes, its degradations, filthy torments, excell’d those prisons)—the dead, the dead, the dead—our dead—or South or North, ours all, (all, all, all, finally dear to me)—or East or West—Atlantic coast or Mississippi valley—somewhere they crawl’d to die, alone, in bushes, low gullies, or on the sides of hills—(there, in secluded spots, their skeletons, bleach’d bones, tufts of hair, buttons, fragments of clothing, are occasionally found yet)—our young men once so handsome and so joyous, taken from us—the son from the mother, the husband from the wife, the dear friend from the dear friend—the clusters of camp graves, in Georgia, the Carolinas, and in Tennessee—the single graves left in the woods or by the road-side, (hundreds, thousands, obliterated)—the corpses floated down the rivers, and caught and lodged, (dozens, scores, floated down the upper Potomac, after the cavalry engagements, the pursuit of Lee, following Gettysburgh)—some lie at the bottom of the sea—the general million, and the special cemeteries in almost all the States—the infinite dead—(the land entire saturated, perfumed with their impalpable ashes’ exhalation in Nature’s chemistry distill’d, and shall be so forever, in every future grain of wheat and ear of corn, and every flower that grows, and every breath we draw)—not only Northern dead leavening Southern soil—thousands, aye tens of thousands, of Southerners, crumble to-day in Northern earth.	1
And everywhere among these countless graves—everywhere in the many soldier Cemeteries of the Nation, (there are now, I believe, over seventy of them)—as at the time in the vast trenches, the depositories of slain, Northern and Southern, after the great battles—not only where the scathing trail passed those years, but radiating since in all the peaceful quarters of the land—we see, and ages yet may see, on monuments and gravestones, singly or in masses, to thousands or tens of thousands, the significant word Unknown.	2
(In some of the cemeteries nearly all the dead are unknown. At Salisbury, N. C., for instance, the known are only 85, while the unknown are 12,027, and 11,700 of these are buried in trenches. A national monument has been put up here, by order of Congress, to mark the spot—but what visible, material monument can ever fittingly commemorate that spot?)	3

U.S. Civil War: People Became Acquainted with Death

Death is the most common denominator from the U.S. Civil War.  People on all sides of this war became acquainted with death, much more than they would have liked.  According to an article in “U.S. and World Report Secrets of the Civil War,” written by Drew Gilpin Faust 620,000 soldiers died.  The confederacy was hardest hit in percentage of the population as the deaths represent 20 percent of the fighting age men.  In other words, nobody escaped death in the South, while in the North, because of the greater numbers of soldiers the percentage was lower.  More Americans died in this war than in the other U.S. wars combined.  Two percent of the U.S. population passed away.  If two percent of the population were to die today this would be six million people.  

Soldiers did not have a monopoly on death.  The civilian population was also hard hit, with likely over 50,000 civilian deaths.  Some of these were the result of violence directed towards them, New York riots, vigilante gangs in the Midwest etc.   Some was the result of being in the battles way.  Death was also present during this time as a result of disease.  Having soldiers in close quarters spread disease, which then spread to civilian populations. 

National Memorial cemeteries sprung up as a result of the war.  One of these was Arlington Cemetery she is on the old Lee property in Arlington.  This is where Robert E. Lee lived before the war.

Another reason death became closer was the use of photography for the first time to document was.  People could see pictures of war dead for the first time.