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Yes, Spielberg acknowledges that at least some of the American lives lost during the war were thrown away for cynical and arbitrary reasons, and that this is unspeakably tragic.
What he is unwilling to acknowledge is that the deaths of those German boys were also equally tragic and unnecessary.
I’m not willing to call the film “corny patriotic schlock”. It is an incredibly masterful film, and I agree with you that the battle scenes are thrillingly intense. However, you’re also correct that the film influenced battle scenes that came after it, and I don’t think this influence is wholly positive. Throughout the film, the Germans are almost universally treated as faceless foes, who die bloodlessly and instantaneously when shot. In contrast, American casualties writhe in pain, spurt blood everywhere, and cry for their mothers. It’s very affecting and humanizing, but it’s never applied to the Germans. There’s a YouTuber who does great analysis of this aspect of the film. The Germans can be mowed down without inspiring sympathy, because they are just villainous mooks.
This is not an anti-war film, and certainly not an anti-WWII film. It’s just an acknowledgement of how utterly horrible the sacrifices were that American soldiers needed to make in order to save the world from an unambiguously evil force of insane, feral monsters vaguely resembling human beings. It doesn’t ask you to stop and wonder whether the German soldiers felt the same way, let alone whether they would be correct in thinking so.
I just don't think the film is anywhere near as one-sided or morally black-and-white as you're making out. The German sniper in the clock tower has the opportunity to shoot Caparzo, but refrains from doing so until Caparzo returns the little French girl to her parents, presumably for fear of her getting hit in the crossfire. After killing Mellish in a vicious hand-to-hand mêlée, the unnamed German soldier can't bring himself to kill the cowering, snivelling Upham who clearly poses no threat. Perhaps we aren't strictly invited to sympathise with Steamboat Willie when he's pathetically sobbing and begging for his life, but I think we are at least invited to understand Upham's reluctance to kill a POW in cold blood. If Miller's squad had executed him, it would have been just one of several war crimes the Rangers are depicted committing: I don't think the audience is expected to cheer at their decision to shoot surrendering Czech conscripts at Omaha, or needlessly prolonging the deaths of several German soldiers by allowing them to burn to death rather than quickly finishing them off.
Of course the American soldiers are our viewpoint characters and we are intended to sympathise with them (because, duh, the Allies just were more sympathetic than the Germans), but I don't think the film can honestly be said to depict the German soldiers as a formless mass of interchangeable faceless monsters, nor the American soldiers as stalwart, wholly morally upstanding heroes who never put a foot wrong.
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