World War 2

alcohol induced rant

but i stand by the content

mike

hhmmmm .... it is a dificult topic. try telling a russian veteran they should return certain things looted from germany, for example, if you wish to lose a couple of fingers. in any case, i have to admit to a certain fascination w/ goering, et al., but i have never seen them as "sympathetic." my uncle, who served in the convoys to england, says the wrong side won, but he's an unpleasant and contrarian nut job.

i have a history degree and took holocaust studies courses. this is not the time or place to begin a diatribe cataloging the level of sheer evil demonstrated by germany in ww2, but what gives me chills today is "the banality of evil" concept, i think a quote from primo levi or one fo the other holocaust survivor / authors. in other words, why should anybody worry about gitmo, for example, we're happy in our suburbs and it's far away and we do't want to know, and plus what if homeland security read this email i might seem "unpatriotic"??? and of course the communists burned the reichstag, and there is a tooth fairy, and we don't torture people ...

quote:

Originally posted by Cheese:
Oxgangs, if only you improved your choice of words, layout and writing style a little.

Pathetic.

An heart felt comment about an horrendous issue and you pick up spelling and grammer.

How would you feel if Oxgangs has learning difficulties?

I think an apology is due.

Mike, Agreed. In any case Oxgangs' message was clear as to meaning, and in my view completely correct. ATB from George

quote:

How would you feel if Oxgangs has learning difficulties?

Mike,

I'm sure you mean well, but I'm not sure that this isn't more offensive than criticising his prose.



David

Thank you for you're concern but I do not have learning difficulties.

I was as I stated slightly drunk and very angry
the comments I was adressing were I felt inane insensitive and stupid:

1 gb was not central to ww 2
2 I always root for the Nazis.

I have a history degree and find these comments worthy of a response perhaps with hindsight I should have explained and not had a vitriolic outburst but, this summer I spent some time in Normandy and visited the acres of war graves,Previously visiting Ooestebeek in Holland where there are war graves following the battle for Arnhem.I found that experience very moving and also it made me realize the scale of the tragedy.
Now the war was started by Hitler and all those deaths and so many more were as a consequence of this and my response was to attack what I felt was trivialising these events.

Like many families my family was touched by the war and family members were killed and those closest to them still are effected by this loss on a daily basis.

And we havent even been talking about the holocaust.(and only briefly mentioning the Great Patriotic War)

BAD AROLSEN, Germany one of the largest archives of nazi atrocities

'The death books of the concentration camps note with punctilious attention to detail the date and time of death, as well as the cause'.

If my language was ungentlemanly and caused offence I apologise but I stand by what I said.

mike

Len Deighton wrote couple of books about WW2 in the 1990's that where quite a good sum of things.

Someone has said that Britain won WW2 with time, USA with dollars and USSR with blood.

I myself comes from a country that quite cowardly hid behind the sofa while the rest of Europe bleed to death to save everyone and should probably keep quiet in these matters.

JohanR (Sweden)

Please don't forget the Commonwealth forces who brought us time and paid with their blood.

Still every time I read or see a piece about the Nazis I feel such, anger, horror, revulsion and sheer sorrow for those caught up in it and all so not very long ago too.

Witness the recent Natasha Kaplinsky episode of "Who do you think you are?". A normally peaceful, undemanding way to spend an hour and sometimes quite entertaining. However this episode included just a small, round the back, not in your face piece, documenting one small part of the Nazis actions.

Natasha's family includes a direct line from Belarus. On her travels she was trying to discover the hows and whys of her Great Uncle Abraham's death. A Jew. Turns out that in his town of Slonim, the Nazis went on one of their regular purges of the Jewish populations, to the ghettoe, which in turn was subject to their policy 'clearance actions'. His wife and young children were murdered in that action. The followiong is more or less the conversation Natasha had with a local historian on her trip to Slonim.

"What happened?" asked Natasha.
"Oh you know" said the historian matter of factly, "they just killed them. Killed a lot of people here".
"Even the young children?"
"Oh yes, even the children"
"Well how, how could they? I mean the children...Were they shot?"
"No, they wouldn't use bullets, they just used their hands you know? That was the way"

On discovering this, over burdened by grief and horror, not able to face life, Abraham killed himself.

The look of complete bewilderment, disbelief, shock and tears on Natasha's face (and countless others in a similar position over the past decades) told you all you need to know.

How dare you "...root for the Nazis".

The Nazi obsession with racial purification diverted a large amount of German resources away from the war effort. The Jews were accidental or inadvertent allies of the allies and occupied the Germans in an addition war front of the Nazis' own making.

The logistical organisation of moving people to the east occupied a large amount of the German rail system and accompanying military.

The allies owe the Jewish people a huge debt for their "war effort" as well as great sympathy and anger for the way the Jews were treated.

Nuts

I started this thread and now i think it's either the best thread i've read on here - real people - real feelings, or i've started WW3. Please when inputting into this thread be sensitive if the war itself and all people affected. I was only after some history books..... i knew it wouldn't be easy reading but please gents lets keep this civil....

ATB

Paul

quote:

Originally posted by Derek Wright:

The allies owe the Jewish people a huge debt for their "war effort" as well as great sympathy and anger for the way the Jews were treated.

I don’t think the British troop who had to deal with the Jewish terrorists in Palestine during 1944 would agree with that.

Different war

Old Labour.

quote:

Originally posted by Derek Wright:
Different war

Derek

It may have evolved into a different war, but in 1944 the Jewish terrorists where tying up the British armed forces whilst they where fighting WW2.

There were more Jews in central Europe being killed and providing a diversion for German resources than wre causing issues in Palestine.

Netting out the two areas of activity the Allies benefited more from the activities on the Jewish population in Europe.

quote:

Originally posted by David Scott?:

I'm sure you mean well, but I'm not sure that this isn't more offensive than criticising his prose.

David

Of course its not.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Derek Wright:
The Nazi obsession with racial purification diverted a large amount of German resources away from the war effort. The logistical organisation of moving people to the east occupied a large amount of the German rail system and accompanying military.

QUOTE]

Not sure how true this is. The German soldiers used for this purpose were the lowest of the low - not crack troops - also The Jews were policed by their own very often!

The transportation took up space and time on the rail network as well as occupying/distracting people from the task of fighting the Allies

As a non US or UK citizen I can hopefully offer an unbiassed view this topic, and that is that the UK had a great impact on the (possitive) outcome of the war.

Whether this have something to do with the ridiculous agressive plastic patriotisim british press share today for every topics remains a mistery ( ie: Fernando Alonso is a wanker, McCan family is a victim of Portuguese police...)

Dear Julius,

I think that the plastic patriotism - what a wonderful description - found in the boulevard press in the UK is a relatively new phenomenon [post 1945], and is part of a horrible collapse in the discrimination between the good and the bad or evil, found in modern British culture. Whether this erosion of traditional and unfashionable values is such that Britain has once and for all lost the ability to do the right thing in a crisis again is impossible to tell.

In War often Allies are thrown together by common interest, and this common interest can evaporate the instant that hostilities cease. In the case of the Second World War the preparations for the Cold War between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union were being made as early as 1943 with the planned division of Europe into the free West and the Eastern part which became a collection of Soviet satellite states. Hardly the outcome hoped for.

In an odd way the common interest between the Europeans in the Alliance and the USA are evaporating as the Cold War has ended with the collapse of communism in the old USSR and the rise of the new, but less terrifying Russia.

This has been shown by the real independence of the general European position on Iraq except for the UK, and in that case it was government led and not popular with the majority of the electorate here. There is quite of re-adjustment to be made yet in this area. It is strange that an allegedly left leaning UK government has been the slowest in Europe to see the new situation. I could have understood it more if we had had a Conservative Government supporting Mr Bush in this situation.

Now that the War reparations have at last been repaid to the US, perhaps we may see a new direction in the UK, for all that. We still have common interests with the US, but probably many more with a strong European block...

A strong Europe with very strong links economically and politically will never fight within itself again.

ATB from George

my belief is that one day russia will be a u.s. ally ...

Friends

The Second World War. Churchill's 5 Volume set is superb. One man's perspective of course, but what a mind and what a mastery of the English language. An absolute pleasure to read. You don't want it to end.

The Second World War. John Keegan. Keegan is a master on the subject of war. First rate.

Army at Dawn. Rick Atkinson. A new masterpiece. First of a trilogy. Second Volume The Day of Battle just published in the U.S. From an American perspective. You do not leave these books romantizing war. You will have a new appreciation for what war does to human beings.

The War...American PBS DVD. Just broadcast in the U.S. Find your American friends real pains in the ass in today's world? Fair enough. This will provide a little insight and perhaps a bit of balance and an appreciation.

Enjoy
Clay

One other book I think he should maybe read is Willam Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Good background info.