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We were discussing this in another thread. I'm not making light of the russian losses but you have to take in account the supplies the allies sent to the them. Think of the russians managing their logistics with horse carts.
https://teakdoor.com/middle-east-issu...tml#post277562
I think America has done the world immense favours...
Without coke from Columbia, mestizas from Brazil, Canadian level-headedness, Mexican food, Inka culture, Argentinian beef and Cuban music, the world would be a much poorer place.
Yes I can see you are miles ahead of me.Quote:
Originally Posted by blackgang
However I don't aspire to be the world's number one idiot
Thank God for the Monroe Doctrine otherwise none of this would have been possible.Quote:
Originally Posted by Frankenstein
It is a very personal account, not giving figures nor sources, just as there is no source for this piece of writing. I don't know that much about what actually happened, but the Pearl Harbour event, for wxample, is misrepresented.Quote:
Originally Posted by blackgang
This is correct, however. :bunny3:Quote:
Britain had already been holding out for two years in the face of staggering losses and the near decimation of its Royal Air Force in the Battle of Britain, and was saved from being overrun by Germany only because Hitler knew the Brits were a relatively minor threat that could be dealt with later.
Anyway, since most of this topic is banter about "Seppos", I move it into the Cap's Lounge.
A new topic on historical event, with sources, is welcome in Issues.
For sure the Russians were hard to stop, but then that knew that they might live and if they took one step back that Uncle Joe would kill em anyway.
I think he killed more Russians than the Germans did.
And it was the manufacturing abilities of the Americans that fueled the supply convoys to Europe and England.'
Look at the number of ships built for that use, granted they were not much of a ship, but they did carry a lot of cargo and they were quick to build, Kaiser Shipyards launched one in 24 hrs build time, and launched em faster than the wolf packs could sink them.
I am not saying, nor never have said that the USA won the war, but I do not think that it could have been won without them, nor could Russia have ever won much by themselves.
Who's sources, is it that you only believe someone other than those that have studied or remember what was going on at that time??Quote:
A new topic on historical event, with sources, is welcome in Issues.
I remember it, my father was in Europe and I was very interested in what was going on.
And you say this is wrong??Quote:
Then along came Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and in outrage Congress unanimously declared war on Japan, and the following day on Germany, who had not yet attacked us. It was a dicey thing. We had few allies.
BG, to many terminal haters it is anathema to accept that the US played a major role in WWII, or that their involvement significantly shortened the war and in doing so spared many lives, since we know as a given that everything the US does must by implication be wrong since it should've been sunk at birth.
^You're talking out of your ass again,Keda.
As I pointed out to you several times already, when using someone else's words it is a common courtesy to include a source or at least name the author. Personal accounts are fine, but if you want to assess historic events, you will need to look at verified facts and figures at some stage.Quote:
Originally Posted by BG
Your text says more about Pearl Harbour than you quote now, see attaboy's link for some discussion already.
Yea, you got that right,, some brits just can't get it thru their heads that the Americans, who were Brits at that time, kicked their ass and ran em off , done it again in 1812, bailed em outo a couple of times and always seem to help who ever they can, They just can't seem to get over not being the worlds leading country anymore since they lost all their colonys, now they have even had to settle with the micks, who they tried but couldn't ever subdue.
Some people think the russians deserve the win because they lost millions of people. That's not how it works. Stalin was a lousy strategist and he was almost flippant when it came to his peoples' lives. The soviets could have kept retreating east and moving their factories with them. I really don't know if the germans had enough troops to occupy all of russian and europe. I guess they could have recruited more ukranians and more people from the balkans.
The Russians could not even feed themselves and could not have lasted as a force much longer.
But then Hitler Made the same mistake as Napoleon, and winter got him some too, but he might have been able to pull it off if the US would have stayed out of it.
As far as I know that's what they did. Taking everything movable with them and destroying the rest, leaving the advancing Germans without resources. - according to the personal accounts of my father, one of the 4 survivors of his batallion.Quote:
Originally Posted by attaboy
No way the Germans could have "pulled it of", they were starving and freezing to death.
OK, I have no link, but it is an Email I got awhile agoQuote:
Originally Posted by stroller
but you want it, you got it but a lot of it is not what we were talking about here
Date: March 8, 2007 4:49:00 PM PST
Subject: Re: A VERY IMPORTANT HISTORY LESSON..... PLEASE READ.... SOME OF YOU ARE NOT OLD ENOUGH TO REMEMBER THAT NEARLY EVERY FAMILY IN AMERICA WAS GROSSLY AFFECTED BY WW II . MOST OF YOU DON'T REMEMBER THE RATIONING OF MEAT, SHOES, GASOLINE, AND SUGAR. NO TIRES FOR OUR AUTOMOBILES, AND A SPEED LIMIT OF 35 MILES AN HOUR ON THE ROAD, NOT TO MENTION, NO NEW AUTOMOBILES. READ THIS AND THINK ABOUT HOW WE WOULD REACT TO BEING TAKEN OVER BY FOREIGNERS IN 2007.
This is an EXCELLENT essay . Well thought out and presented. Historical Significance
Sixty-three years ago, Nazi Germany had overrun almost all of Europe and hammered England to the verge of bankruptcy and defeat . The Nazis had sunk more than 400 British ships in their convoys between England and America taking food and war materials.
At that time the US was in an isolationist, pacifist mood, and most Americans wanted nothing to do with the European or the Asian war.
Then along came Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and in outrage Congress unanimously declared war on Japan, and the following day on Germany, who had not yet attacked us. It was a dicey thing. We had few allies.
France was not an ally, as the Vichy government of France quickly aligned itself with its German occupiers. Germany was certainly not an ally, as Hitler was intent on setting up a Thousand Year Reich in Europe. Japan was not an ally, as it was well on its way to owning and controlling all of Asia. Together, Japan and Germany had long-range plans of invading Canada and Mexico, as launching pads to get into the United States over our northern and southern borders, after they finished gaining control of Asia and Europe.
America 's only allies then were England, Ireland, Scotland, Canada, Australia, and Russia. That was about it. All of Europe, from Norway to Italy (except Russia in the East) was already under the Nazi heel.
The US was certainly not prepared for war. The US had drastically downgraded most of its military forces after WW I because of the depression, so that at the outbreak of WW II, Army units were training with broomsticks because they didn't have guns, and cars with "tank" painted on the doors because they didn' t have real tanks. A huge chunk of our Navy had just been sunk or damaged at Pearl Harbor.
Britain had already gone bankrupt, saved only by the donation of $600 million in gold bullion in the Bank of England (that was actually the property of Belgium) given by Belgium to England to carry on the war when Belgium was overrun by Hitler (a little known fact).
Actually, Belgium surrendered on one day, because it was unable to oppose the German invasion, and the Germans bombed Brussels into rubble the next day just to prove they could .
Britain had already been holding out for two years in the face of staggering losses and the near decimation of its Royal Air Force in the Battle of Britain, and was saved from being overrun by Germany only because Hitler made the mistake of thinking the Brits were a relatively minor threat that could be dealt with later. Hitler, first turned his attention to Russia, in the late summer of 1940 at a time when England was on the verge of collapse.
Ironically, Russia saved America 's butt by putting up a desperate fight for two years, until the US got geared up to begin hammering away at Germany.
Russia lost something like 24,000,000 people in the sieges of Stalingrad and Moscow alone . . 90% of them from cold and starvation, mostly civilians, but also more than a 1,000,000 soldiers.
Had Russia surrendered, Hitler would have been able to focus his entire war effort against the Brits, then America. If that had happened, the Nazis could possibly have won the war.
All of this has been brought out to illustrate that turning points in history are often dicey things. Now, we find ourselves at another one of those key moments in history.
There is a very dangerous minority in Islam that either has, or wants, and may soon have, the ability to deliver small nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons, almost anywhere in the world.
The Jihadis, the militant Muslims, are basically Nazis in Kaffiyahs -- they believe that Islam, a radically conservative form of Wahhabi Islam, should own and control the Middle East first, then Europe, then the world. To them, all who do not bow to their will of thinking should be killed, enslaved, or subjugated. They want to finish the Holocaust, destroy Israel, and purge the world of Jews. This is their mantra. (goal)
There is also a civil war raging in the Middle East -- for the most part not a hot war, but a war of ideas. Islam is having its Inquisition and its Reformation, but it is not yet known which side will win -- the Inquisitors, or the Reformationists.
If the Inquisition wins, then the Wahhabis, the Jihadis, will control the Middle East, the OPEC oil, and the US, European, and Asian economies.
The techno-industrial economies will be at the mercy of OPEC -- not an OPEC dominated by the educated, rational Saudis of today, but an OPEC dominated by the Jihadis. Do you want gas in your car? Do you want heating oil next winter? Do you want the dollar to be worth anything? You had better hope the Jihad, the Muslim Inquisition, loses, and the Islamic Reformation wins.
If the Reformation movement wins, that is, the moderate Muslims who believe that Islam can respect and tolerate other religions, live in peace with the rest of the world, and move out of the 10th century into the 21st, then the troubles in the Middle East will eventually fade away. A moderate and prosperous Middle East will emerge.
We have to help the Reformation win, and to do that we have to fight the Inquisition, i.e., the Wahhabi movement, the Jihad, Al Qaeda and the Islamic terrorist movements. We have to do it somewhere. We can't do it everywhere at once. We have created a focal point for the battle at a time and place of our choosing . . . . . . . . in Iraq. Not in New York, not in London, or Paris or Berlin, but in Iraq, where we are doing two important things.
(1) We deposed Saddam Hussein. Whether Saddam Hussein was directly involved in the 9/11 terrorist attack or not, it is undisputed that Saddam has been actively supporting the terrorist movement for decades. Saddam is a terrorist! Saddam is, or was, a weapon of mass destruction, responsible for the deaths of probably more than a 1,000,000 Iraqis and
2,000,000 Iranians.
(2) We created a battle, a confrontation, a flash point, with Islamic terrorism in Iraq. We have focused the battle. We are killing bad people, and the ones we get there we won't have to get here. We also have a good shot at creating a democratic, peaceful Iraq, which will be a catalyst for democratic change in the rest of the Middle East, and an outpost for a stabilizing American military presence in the Middle East for as long as it is needed .
WW II, the war with the Japanese and German Nazis, really began with a "whimper" in 1928. It did not begin with Pearl Harbor. It began with the Japanese invasion of China. It was a war for fourteen years before the US joined it. It officially ended in 1945 -- a 17 year war -- and was followed by another decade of US occupation in Germany and Japan to get those countries reconstructed and running on their own, again . . a 27 year war.
WW II cost the United States an amount equal to approximately a full year's GDP -- adjusted for inflation, equal to about $12 trillion dollars. WW II cost America more than 400,000 soldiers killed in action, and nearly 100,000 still missing in action.
The Iraq war has, so far, cost the United States about $160,000,000,000, which is roughly what the 9/11 terrorist attack cost New York. It has also cost about 3,000 American lives, which is roughly equivilant to lives that the Jihad killed (within the United States) in the 9/11 terrorist attack.
The cost of not fighting and winning WW II would have been unimaginably greater -- a world dominated by Japanese Imperialism and German Nazism.
This is not a 60-Minutes TV show, or a 2-hour movie in which everything comes out okay. The real world is not like that. It is messy, uncertain, and sometimes bloody and ugly. It always has been, and probably always will be .
The bottom line is that we will have to deal with Islamic terrorism until we defeat it, whenever that is. It will not go away if we ignore it .
If the US can create a reasonably democratic and stable Iraq , then we have an ally, like England, in the Middle East, a platform, from which we can work to help modernize and moderate the Middle East. The history of the world is the clash between the forces of relative civility and civilization, and the barbarians clamoring at the gates to conquer the world.
The Iraq War is merely another battle in this ancient and never ending war. Now, for the first time ever, the barbarians are about to get nuclear weapons. Unless somebody prevents them from getting them.
We have four options:
1. We can defeat the Jihad now, before it gets nuclear weapons.
2. We can fight the Jihad later, after it gets nuclear weapons (which may be as early as next year, if Iran's progress on nuclear weapons is what Iran claims it is).
3. We can surrender to the Jihad and accept its dominance in the Middle East now; in Europe in the next few years or decades, and ultimately in America.
OR
4. We can stand down now, and pick up the fight later when the Jihad is more widespread and better armed, perhaps after the Jihad has dominated France and Germany and possibly most of the rest of Europe. It will, of course, be more dangerous, more expensive, and much bloodier.
If you oppose this war, I hope you like the idea that your children, or grandchildren, may live in an Islamic America under the Mullahs and the Sharia, an America that resembles Iran today.
The history of the world is the history of civilization clashes, cultural clashes. All wars are about ideas, ideas about what society and civilization should be like, and the most determined always win.
Those who are willing to be the most ruthless always win. The pacifists always lose, because the anti-pacifists kill them.
Remember, perspective is every thing, and America 's schools teach too little history for perspective to be clear, especially in the young American mind.
The Cold War lasted from about 1947 at least until the Berlin Wall came down in 1989; forty-two years!
Europe spent the first half of the 19th century fighting Napoleon, and from 1870 to 1945 fighting Germany!
World War II began in 1928, lasted 17 years, plus a ten year occupation, and the US still has troops in Germany and Japan. World War II resulted in the death of more than 50,000,000 people, maybe more than
100,000,000 people, depending on which estimates you accept.
The US has taken more than 3,000 killed in action in Iraq. The US took more than 4,000 killed in action on the morning of June 6, 1944 , the first day of the Normandy Invasion to rid Europe of Nazi Imperialism.
In WW II the US averaged 2,000 KIA a week -- for four years. Most of the individual battles of WW II lost more Americans than the entire Iraq war has done so far.
The stakes are at least as high . . A world dominated by representative governments with civil rights, human rights, and personal freedoms . . or a world dominated by a radical Islamic Wahhabi movement, by the Jihad, under the Mullahs and the Sharia (Islamic law).
It's difficult to understand why the average American does not grasp this. They favor human rights, civil rights, liberty and freedom, but evidently not for Iraqis.
"Peace Activists" always seem to demonstrate here in America , where it's safe.
Why don't we see Peace Activist demonstrating in Iran, Syria, Iraq, Sudan, North Korea, in the places that really need peace activism the most? I'll tell you why! They would be killed!
The liberal mentality is supposed to favor human rights, civil rights, democracy, multiculturalism, diversity, etc . , but if the Jihad wins, wherever the Jihad wins, it is the end of civil rights, human rights, democracy, multiculturalism, diversity, etc.
Americans who oppose the liberation of Iraq are coming down on the side of their own worst enemy!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~
Raymond S . Kraft is a writer living in Northern California that has studied the Middle Eastern culture and religion
I'm with BG on this one, i can understand that "Sherman tankers" is better than "Seppo" anyday:rolleyes:
The burnt earth strategy.Quote:
Originally Posted by stroller
No, that is hotly disputed.Quote:
Originally Posted by blackgang
Is this written by a comedian?Quote:
Originally Posted by blackgang
Are there still reds under the beds?
All of this is the same thing that your country was saying about communism in the 50s and 60s.
Haha!:pQuote:
Originally Posted by Helicopter
Indeed, the 'reliable source' turns out to be a propaganda chain e-mail. :D :D :DQuote:
Originally Posted by Lily
You'all want to come over for some BBQ?:)
Meat is a cooking and the beer is cold!
I must admit to a slight bias here, I have been down on Seppos ever since I contracted Genital herpes from my neighbor’s North American wife some 15 years ago, serves me right I guess for screwing a white women.
Despite that, some how I have got on the email list of the Thailand Order of the Seppo Soldiers of the Extreme Right known as TOSSERS.
They send these emails around to each other to bolster their slanted view of history.
Most of it is the usual right wing, the end is near, if we don’t stop the, Liberals, Rag heads Moslems, Civil rights Loonies (or any one that we don’t agree with).
They seem to forget we heard something very similar before, then dressed up as the domino theory which was the rationale for the Indo China war.
They also forget that they hold a large share of the blame for the energy dependence situation they now face.
But I really did not post anything about after 1945 until you wanted links and then i gave you the whole thing, which is not what I was talking about at all, I was posting stuff about the WW2 in Europe that I do know and remember from my own experience, now what you read and talk about is your own business. ,but proof has been posted by me and others as to what went on and our own thought as to events up to 1945.
I care nothing about the raghjead stuff because it is all bullshit and smoke and mirrors as far as I can see and has no bearing on Europe 1936 to 1945.
As far as a Peterpan goes, those are the things that a nurse has to dump and wash out in hospitals. most times they are full of shit.
I'll be there like a ferret on wheels... while these codgers argue about what their dads and grandpapas did. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by hillbilly
Do you honestly think that anyone cares??Quote:
Originally Posted by blackgang
We dislike Americans in general because their average IQ is waaaay low, yet they Lawwwd it over everyone.
They are an odd noisy people.
Lots of them believe in God and stuff and they woop and get over excited and they praise the lawwwd for stuff like winning American football games that they are world champions at and are the only people that do it.
Thank you, I really just wanted to know the source or the author.Quote:
Originally Posted by blackgang
Mr. Kraft's "Death of Liberalism", renamed "Why are we in Iraq" has been extensively passed around right-wing sites and via e-mail.
It's aim is not an accurate portrayal of WW2 history, and as such I'd take his commentary with a pinch of salt, as should anyone else reading it.
What. The. Fuck is this shit doing where I can see it? I blocked issues weeks ago. Who gives a fuck what we are called.
My country has done some fucked up things, done good too. Engerland has done some fucked up things, Germany too, France has rolled over and peed on several occasions. I'm sure they've all done something decent as well, but really can't remember.
That old saying;
"when we do wrong,
no one forgets;
when we do right,
No one remembers"
True for just about every nation on the planet.
(well, except the Eye-talians, I can't remember anything the did)
'Mericans get fucked with a lot. We don't fuck sheep or walk upside down all our lives; but we got a lot of clout and what we do actually can (usually does) affect the lives of people around the world. I'm not Right, or Left, wing. support some of the things done under the flag and disagreed with a fair share as well.
Call me seppo, water off a ducks back. People that truly dislike Americans make me smile, simply as guilty of bigotry, closed mindedness, forming an un-informed opinion as they accuse us of. They choose to believe all "Americans" are whatever it is they choose to think. Who gives a fuck? Can't take 'em too seriously, you know?
We call each other names, here in this forum it's 60% piss-take, 30% baiting and 10% ignorance. For me it's all good fun.