History Series / BandOfBrothers

''Note: This is about the {{miniseries}}. For the trope, see [[BandOfBrothers]].

''Note: This is about the {{miniseries}}. For the trope, see [[Main.BandOfBrothers]].

* TheMedic -Ralph Spina and Eugene "Doc" Roe of course. Doc Roe is nearly broken by the constant exposure to death and suffering, before finding meaning in his role. Episode 6 is for the most part completely dedicated to him and in This Troper's opinion, was quite a TearJerker. He was also noted by Bill Guarnere as "the best medic we ever had. He was born to be a medic. He took care of us physically, mentally, every way. He was compassionate." Gene was even nominated for a Silver Star for bravery under fire (and received it after the war was over).

* {{Plunder}}: What else do you do when you come across the holiday retreats of Hitler, Goering, and other Nazi leaders?

* ShownTheirWork: The only really glaring error (which you would only know about if you went looking for further information), was that Lt. Blithe actually lived much longer than the postscript to his DayInTheLimelight episode states. The series was based upon a book by renowned historian Stephen Ambrose who presumably Did The Research.

** [[{{InglouriousBasterds}} Archie Hilcox]] should know better than to drink from his canteen.

** And apparenly one of the [[{{Hook}} lost boys]] made his way to America from Neverland, grew up, and joined the airborne.

** There are elements of the trope WarIsGlorious: That we're watching the Depression-era / World War II men on the battlefield at their {{Badass}} best as soldiers and men of honor, especially the likes of Winters, Randleman, Lipton, Roe and Speirs. And consider, this is ''just one company'' in an army full of guys just like Winters, Randleman, Lipton, Roe and Speirs.

* {{Bowdlerise}} - Mostly averted, with an exception of the F-word and the two short scenes of nudity. It's language, violent combat scenes, [[spoiler: and scenes featuring a extremely accurate and horrifying concentration camp and its victims]] are left completely unedited when it's aired on basic cable in the US, in respect to WWII veterans and those that lived through it.

* CrowningMomentOfAwesome - This is definitely evoked several times in the series. My favorite HAS to be during "The Breaking Point" when Easy Company is pinned down during an assault, and Speirs -- in all his badassery -- takes command, runs THROUGH the town, hooks up with I Company then runs BACK through town, all while being shot at. He instantly became my favorite person in that series. Heck, the ENTIRE SERIES is one big crowning moment of awesome.
* CrowningMusicOfAwesome - The opening credits, the choral scene in episode 7, the Beethoven piece that was extended into a leitmotif throughout episode 9, and the denouement in episode 10.

--->Shifty: Now my Pa, he's such a good shot, he could shoot the wings offa fly, I declare.

* HighOctaneNightmareFuel - Frequent in this brutally realistic depiction of war, but the absolute worst has to be [[spoiler:the concentration camp]].

* HoYay - Winters and Nixon are practically the canon ship in the fandom. Also, many a fan has speculated that the writers of the show made the relationship between Webster and Liebgott be more than just friends, IfYouKnowWhatIMean.
** Speirs/Lipton is also popular, based mostly around the conversation they have at the end of "The Breaking Point" and how Speirs treats Lipton when the latter is ill.
** Roe/Babe needs to be mentioned, just because a rather large part of fandom seems to ship it. Mainly because Bastogne and that Babe is the one to bust Doc Roe out of his shell.

** ''Probably?'' You insult the man.

* ShoutOutToShakespeare - The title comes from the Saint Crispin's Day speech in ''HenryV'': "we few, we happy few, we band of brothers; for he to-day that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother". [[RealLife The real]] Carwood Lipton quotes this in one of the episodes.

*** This troper is nearly convinced that the general is a ShoutOut himself - he's played by [[http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0434759/ Wolf Kahler]], who played Colonel Dietrich in RaidersoftheLostArk

* TearJerker - Episode 6, "Bastogne," for obvious reasons. Also, the aptly-titled seventh episode, "The Breaking Point," sees characters the viewers have become emotionally invested in [[spoiler: horrifically injured, killed, or suffer nervous breakdowns]], made all the worse because ''it all really happened.'' Episode nine, "Why We Fight," borders on [[NightmareFuel nightmare fuel]] with [[spoiler: the discovery of a (brutally accurate) concentration camp]].
* TheWoobie: YMMV, of course, but most fans can agree on Malarky, particularly during and after episode 7, when [[spoiler:two of his best friends lose limbs during an artillery barrage, two more are killed in another barrage, and a fifth suffers a nervous breakdown as a result.]] Doc Roe is also a common woobie for the fans after seeing Episode 6, which brutally depicts what a combat medic would have gone through in the war.

* ADayInTheLimelight - Each of the 10 episodes focuses on a specific character to some degree. If the episode has narration, it's by the character in the limelight from their {{Point of View}}.
* AFatherToHisMen - Richard Winters. Due to his leadership and exceptional concern for them, the men of Easy Company universally consider him the best commanding officer they ever had. Averted in the case of [[TheNeidermeyer Herbert Sobel]]. While the men of Easy Company attribute his harsh training methods to their survival during the war, he had no redeeming qualities and was therefore universally hated.

* WhereAreTheyNowEpilogue - Each episode had been topped and tailed by interviews with the survivors. After the final episode, the interviewees returned -- this time with captions telling you who they were. Within the last episode there was also a ''{{Sandlot}}''-like epilogue where the characters' later lives are narrated while they play baseball.

''Band of Brothers'', initially aired on {{HBO}} in ten, one-hour episodes, follows the men of Easy Company, 506th regiment of the American 101st Airborne Division. Starting with their training in 1942 to the end of WorldWarII, it follows the same unit through D-Day, the battle of Carentan, Operation Market Garden, The Battle of the Bulge, the discovery of the Concentration Camps, and finally the end of the war. ''Band of Brothers'' is almost universally acclaimed for its (often painfully) accurate recreation of war, and for examining the relationships between soldiers in an elite, all-volunteer unit. Just about every part of the series is spot on, and the actors look very much like the men they portray.

''Note: This is about the {{miniseries}}. For the trope, click [[Main.BandOfBrothers here]]

*** It's also believed that Spiers did actually shoot the German POW's, though no one knows exactly how many he did kill. The men were all told by their superior officers not to bother taking any prisoners on D-Day, an order Spiers probably would follow.

* {{Bilingual Bonus}} Almost all the German in the series is spoken by real German actors, and it's pronounced correctly. Also, in episode 8, Webster tells some German prisoners of war (in German, of course) "be good, and you will get a cookie!"

* MachiavelliWasWrong - "Whether it be better to be loved than feared or feared than loved?" is presented by two different leaders. Winters clearly [[FatherToHisMen loves his Easy Company]], treats his men well, and as such the soldiers respect him and would do anything for him. Spiers develops a reputation for being such a {{Badass}} that the soldiers in Easy fear him, but respect him because he gets the job done. Played with in that Spiers [[GenreSavvy knows all about]] the chatter going on behind his back:
--> '''Spiers''': You want to know if they're true or not... the stories about me. Did you ever notice with stories like that, everyone says they heard it from someone who was there. But then when you ask *that* person, they say *they* heard it from someone who was there. It's nothing new, really. I bet if you went back two thousand years, you'd hear a couple of centurions standing around, yakking about how Tertius lopped off the heads of some Carthaginian prisoners.

--> '''Spiers''': Well, maybe that's because Tertius knew there was some value to the men thinking he was the meanest, toughest son of a bitch in the whole Roman Legion.

* {{Plunder}}:(What else do you do when you come across a Nazi leader's mansion?)
** Not just any Nazi leader. [[spoiler: ''Hitler's'' holiday house.]]
* OohMeAccent'sSlipping - As many of the actors in ''Band of Brothers'' were British, there was a chance for accents to slip. In episode 3, "Carentan", one can hear Rick Warden's (who plays Harry Welsh) natural English accent slip through quite noticeably on several occasions.

** There are elements of the trope WarIsGlorious: That we're watching the Depression-era / World War II men on the battlefield at their {{Badass}} best as soldiers and men of honor, especially the likes of Winters, Randleman, Lipton, Roe and Spiers. And consider, this is ''just one company'' in an army full of guys just like Winters, Randleman, Lipton, Roe and Spiers.

-->''--'Sergeant Mike Ranney'''

--> Sergeant Mike Ranney

** [[Friends Ross]] and [[OfficeSpace Peter Gibbons]] are more or less the only two that you would have recognized when the series first aired.