The problem with watching this movie today is that it depicts WWII in a way they wanted the (mostly American) audience to see it. All Americans are heroes, all speeches are grand, all French are resistance and, of course, all Germans are morons.
In truth it is so full of inacuracies, bad dialogue and acting, cliched and dull characters that it does a disservice to the actual soldiers. But the same can be said of almost any WWII movie that came out of Hollywood in that era. Now, I know what to expect from those type of movies and normally I am fine with that because I usually see them in the context of it's timeframe but I could not bring myself to finish this one (I have seen it in the past before, though). While many US war movies are somewhat fictional this is about true events. I quit after the landings which where shown as, litarally, a walk on the beach.
Now, I don't want to be unfair and rip this movie apart with a bad rating. As I said , different times. Just don't take this as a history lesson.