Was World War II Worth It?

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john8pies
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Was World War II Worth It?

Post by john8pies »

This reminds me of one of those tongue-in -cheek articles in magazines like Private Eye, where after putting "liberated" (those 11 countries), the editor will then put in brackets, `er, ENSLAVED, surely?`!
pbobryk
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Was World War II Worth It?

Post by pbobryk »

There is no question that Russians fought the war of life and death. They did win and yes the drove Nazis from those 11 countries as a citizon of one of them i can assure you that Ruskies didnt liberate they eslaved them.
pbobryk
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Was World War II Worth It?

Post by pbobryk »

Lets debate. i dont know where are u going with this, but i think there is more to regret than be thankful for.
pbobryk
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Was World War II Worth It?

Post by pbobryk »

i didnt post any articles. and yes warsaw Pact had only been created to conter Nato. But would that be necessery if Western Powers kept their word and didnt puss out at the beginning of the WW2.? Lets back track for a minute. On the eve of invasion of Poland Germany had 16 divisions defanding their western frontier . At that time Frace had over a 100 division ether on the borders or not that far from them. They could go thru Germany like hot knife thru butter. yet they didnt and within the year they were deafited within 6 mere weeks. so my friend only indecision of the allies cosed the creation of the Warsaw Pact and Cold War.
gmc
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Was World War II Worth It?

Post by gmc »

The question rather assumes that war was what all parties wanted and had clear goals and objectives in mind. The reality was very different and a lot more complicated than shall we have a war or shall we not bother.

posted by pbobryk

But would that be necessery if Western Powers kept their word and didnt puss out at the beginning of the WW2.?


Easy to say an judge in hindsight but bear in mind the western powers had almost lost a generation in ww1, no one in their right mind wanted another war, there was no way a blind appeal to patriotism was going to get people to fight, it was a last resort when all else had failed. Many were concerned about bolshevism and Germany was seen by some as a bulwark against communism. Hitlet got a lot of support in surprising places to begin with.

Germany and Russia would have come to blows at some point in the future. When roosevelt, churchill and Stalin were having their meeting the assumption was that the russians would conqueor more of germany than they actually did. It was only at wars end that "Uncle Joe" as the americans called him became the baddie.

I always reckon that the second atomic bomb was dropped as much for the sake of the Russians, to make them think the americans had plenty more, as anything else. To have continued on and to fight the russians who were so shortly before our allies just wasn't on, by the time it became clear what was happening most of the allies had demobbed their armies. There just was not the public support for further conflict.
pbobryk
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Was World War II Worth It?

Post by pbobryk »

i think your a missing the point here .its true that wwi was still fresh memory but westen powers such as Britain or France had noillusions especially after anexation of Czechslovakia by Hitler.
gmc
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Was World War II Worth It?

Post by gmc »

pbobryk wrote: i think your a missing the point here .its true that wwi was still fresh memory but westen powers such as Britain or France had noillusions especially after anexation of Czechslovakia by Hitler.


I don't miss your point I happen to think it's a bit simplistic. Most europeans did not want another war and there would have been little support for invading Germany and another war. You might as well say if the league had stood up to Mussolini when he invaded Ethiopia, or taken sides in the Spanish Civil war. If America hadn't had an oil embargo on japan mabe they wouldn't have attacked at pearl harbour. Or if the western powers had stopped Japan invading China.

You can go on and on but you are not talking about a chess game that could have been won with different moves, it's not that simple. Bolshevism was viewed as being a major threat, more so than Nazism. Germany seemed likely to go the same way with Hitler coming along as a saviour to save germany from the bolsheviks.

Why did the Czechs not put up a fight when Hitler annexed them or refuse to comply with the sudetenland was handed over? One of the reasons they got Sudetenland was to give them a strong frontier but they stood back and let them walk in unopposed. Yes they were sold down the river but they didn't have to take it they could have fought but didn't. They had a strong enopugh army in moutainous terrain to make it difficult forr the germans.
pbobryk
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Was World War II Worth It?

Post by pbobryk »

The member countries were not communist by choice citizens of those countries did oppsed the regimes installed by soviets. as every one know the communist idology controled all aspects of life. so people who lived under communism were in fact eslaved against their own will
Jives
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Post by Jives »

pbobryk wrote: Lets debate. i dont know where are u going with this, but i think there is more to regret than be thankful for.


Hitler was only a couple of months behind the U.S. in the production of nuclear weapons. If a group of commandos had not sunk his supply of heavy water into a fjord, he would have completed them before the U.S. in fact.

With his V2 rockets and nuclear weapons, he would have quickly subdued the world.

Next would have come his extermination of everyone non-aryan.

It was worth it....oh yes....completely, unequivocably worth it. And if your hair is not blonde, and your eyes are not blue, then you should thank the Lord that World War Two was fought and won because otherwise, you and your entire family....

would not exist.:cool:
All the world's a stage and the men and women merely players...Shakespeare
gmc
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Was World War II Worth It?

Post by gmc »

Jives wrote: Hitler was only a couple of months behind the U.S. in the production of nuclear weapons. If a group of commandos had not sunk his supply of heavy water into a fjord, he would have completed them before the U.S. in fact.

With his V2 rockets and nuclear weapons, he would have quickly subdued the world.

Next would have come his extermination of everyone non-aryan.

It was worth it....oh yes....completely, unequivocably worth it. And if your hair is not blonde, and your eyes are not blue, then you should thank the Lord that World War Two was fought and won because otherwise, you and your entire family....

would not exist.:cool:


Very well put. You tend to forget that aspect and how desperate things really were for a time.
gmc
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Post by gmc »

posted by scrat

Talk about exaggeration. The Nazis did not intend to destroy everyone in the world, merely make a upperclass out of the Aryan peoples to rule the world and all of its people.


On the way to achieve that wipe out anyone not racially pure and enslave what was left of the lesser races. Perhaps you think the lesser races should have accepted their fate because the nazia weren't that bad after all.

Believing that your particular race or culture is somehow morally superior and should therefore rule is not exactly a rational belief. Unless of course you think muslim fundamentalists, and perhaps also the more extreme of their christian equivalent, are rational and just want to rule the world and make an upperclass to rule over their infidel brethern for their own good making the best of all possible worlds.

posted by scrat

As a teacher Jives you should think more critically instead of repeating what is essentially hype and propaganda. If the Aryans destroyed all of the other races who would they have to rule over?


The germans sent between 8,000 to 9,000 V1 rockets in to southern England and about 1,000 V2 weapons were dropped as well-yes the UK has the dubious distinction of being the first victim of ballistic missile attack in history, luckily they only contained conventional explosives. If you seriously believe that Hitler wouldn't have used nuclear weapons if he had them then I would suggest you are kidding yourself.

They recently found the wreck of the ferry sunk by those Norwegian commandos-despite what you may think the hollywood film was actually based on a true story there just weren't any americans involved in the actual event. The containers DID contain heavy water. Hitler was close to having nuclear weapons. You seem to assume he was still rational and would have just dropped a couple to persuade people to give in.

Of course compared to Stalin, Hitler was not so good at killing his own people although I do now wonder if you are suggesting that dear old uncle Joe is just the victim of a bad press. I suppose the hungarian upprising in 1957 and in Czechoslovakia in 1968 were the ungrateful people of the soviet bloc just being a nuisance and the existence of the Gulags were a myth made up by malcontents and were really just rest homes for disenchanted.

posted by scrat

The objective (with exceptions) was to lead, not to exterminate everyone non-Aryan. Much like what America is doing now, "leading the world" or so it is said.


What is fascinating about the nazis is how a small group with extreme views can take control of a political system and use it for their own ends and in the pocess convince everyone that opposing or criticising is somepow unpatriotic and almost treasonous. But while there is a great deal of American foregn policy I heartily disapprove of-the EEC and WTO as well come to that-but it is a heck of a stretch to compare GW with Hitler.
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randall
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Was World War II Worth It?

Post by randall »

:-6

randall here,

As someone who was both bombed and machine gunned. albeit randomly, as a child, and as a surviver, I have no other choice than say that WWII was well worth it

It is said that the great empires of pre 1914 sleep walked into a needless war - which also started in the Balkans (A coincidence?) . Most of our politicians had been on the front lines of the western, middle eastern fronts themselves during WWII and they and the public were very reluctant to get involved in another bloodbath.

Many of the young men who flew the Hurricanes and Spitfires in the Battle of Britain had actually, a few years previous, voted that they would not support the government in another war and would all refuse to fight.

Britain practically lost a generation in each war and it said that, statistically, we have never made it up yet.

My mother used to tell us of the long lists of causalities pinned up on the jute mill gates in Dundee, where she worked, and the hundreds of young women turning away heartbroken because they had found out that their husband, sons or boy friends had been killed - many of these women refused EVER to get married after that.

My mother refused to allow me to join the Boy Scouts, the Air Scouts, Sea Cadets, etc. twenty years later and would not allow my father to join the Royal Naval Reserve. In her mind they were ALL related to the military!

Both my father and my sister served in the Royal Navy during WWII and survived.

Even the GREAT Eisenhower just could not understand that every man woman and child in Britain was engaged in war work of some sort and simply could not comprehend that we had no more fighting men to produce when he asked for them.

He was blinkered by the practically unlimited supply of young innocent boys from the USA.

When one of our torpedo experts went to San Diego to examine torpedoes that had been captured intact by the US Forces.

The commander told him he could not understand his fascination with them.

"They sank two of our biggest fighting ship, the "Prince of Wales" and the "Repulse" off Singapore from a range of over sixteen miles. That cost us two valuable ships and thousands of seamen. We have never sen torpedoes with such a range. They were dropped by Japanese torpedo bombers outside the range of even these ships big guns.""

"So what," Came the reply. "You can always build new ships and call up more men,"

"We have neither the capacity to built two ships such as those quickly and there are no more men left to call up."

The US naval officer literally called him a liar.

That gap in understanding has never been closed between our two nations and I doubt if it ever will going on my own experience of many visits to the US in the past ten years.

Only today the British authorities are threatening to pull out of the Joint Stealth Fighter venture with the USA because they refuse to share secret information with Britain.

Even during the war the US demanded to know every secret we had because they had so much resources that they were engaged in almost every area of known and possible research but on the other hand they only told us what we "NEEDED TO KNOW" depending upon what research we were doing.

This "Need to Know" has bee a very big thorn in the flesh in our inter national relations.

And it is still being twisted with that film about the German coding machine being captured off a German submarine which was sinking at very grave risk of losing his life by a British naval officer - the US has made a film showing that IT WAS THE US NAVY THAT CAPTURED THE MACHINE.

Questions in the house, I say!

All in all, as the Duke of Wellington said, WWII was a close run thing.

God bless.

:rolleyes:
Jives
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Post by Jives »

Scrat wrote: I think it would be foolish and naieve to think that America would have treated the people any better if the roles were reversed.


Considering how we treated Japan, a country with which we had infinitely more reason to be brutal to, I doubt your logic. We rebuilt their economy and infrastructure. We redesigned theri government and now they are powerful allies and an economic power.

I think the best thing that could happen to any country is to be defeated by America in war. It's a free ticket to a better economy.:cool:
All the world's a stage and the men and women merely players...Shakespeare
gmc
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Post by gmc »

posted by scrat

First off what does the term "Gulags" mean? Since you don't know what it means or how to use it in a sentence it simply tells me that all you have to go on is what you have had fed to you in the western media.


You surprise me. As someone who purports to know about Russia you must surely have heard the term. You can't really pass it off as nasty biased western propoganda and pretending it is a made up word and that they didn't exist is not worthy of you. Probably the most famous use of the term in literature is the Gulag Archipeligo by Alexander Solzenhenitsyn, interesting read if you like such stuff.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSgulags.htm

In the 19th century the Russian government deported around 1.2 million prisoners to Siberia. Most of the revolutionary leaders in Russia spent time in Siberia. This included Lenin , Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin.

After the Russian Revolution the labour camps in Siberia were closed down. These were later reopened by Joseph Stalin and opponents of his regime were sent to what became known as Glavnoye Upravleniye Lagere (Gulag).

Probably the worst of the labour camps was at Kolyma. Located in north-eastern Siberia, temperatures drop to -90 degrees during the winter. About 30 per cent of the prisoners in Kolyma died each year.

People sent to the Gulags included peasants who were accused of "individualistic tendencies" and opposed the establishment of collective farms. Large numbers of Ukrainians, Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Kirghiz, Mordovians and Caucasians fell into this category.


You may not like it but stalin was a dictator to whom the description totalitarian was most apt. Assuming that all I have to go on is what has been fed to me in the western media would be a big mistake. Living in a free country, as I do, if I want to I can obtain the writings of both Lenin and Stalin- Hitler Mao Tse Tung and any other political philosophy I care to look in to-and see what they had to say for themselves and also look at the history of post ww1 russia and see how stalin got control and the way he shaped the nation. On the face of it it would appear you need to do some objective research yourself as what actually happened. The kulaks-as I am sure you are aware are the landowning peasant class owing their origins to land reforms earlier on in Russias history. Stalin wiped out 5 million of them no doubt all richly deserved their fate as all class enemies do-even the women and children just as all the returning former POW's after ww2 interned by their countrymen should really not have surrenderd and got themselves killed instead. After all if you end up in a concentraion camp as an enemy of the state you must be mustn't you.

Arguably Roosevelt was a bit of an innocent in believing Stalin would pull back and leave what would become the soviet bloc countries to their freedom-whether it would have been practical to stop him is rather a moot point. The war in the east was still going on and without the use of nuclear weapons would have probably lasted for some years longer than it did.

Many people of the pseudo intellectual left tend to assume that those who disagree with their point of view do so out of ignorance and fall in to the arrogant trap of would be revolutionary socialists everywhere of assuming people need to be led by none other than their enlightened selves. Inconvenient facts are ignored or given a gloss to make them more palatable so they fit in with their beliefs-bit like religious fundamentalists in a way. People are either misguided by evil forces/class enemies or simply non humans whose fate doesn't matter so long as the end is achieved and the glorious state/religon rule comes out on top. Give me habeous corpus and liberal democracy every time

If you want to pick me up on factual errors by all means do so, I would be the first to concede the point if wrong or if I am unsure of the facts. Interpretation of why things happen is a different thing altogether.

Occasionally I might misspell a word and even more frequently the keyboard keys relocate while I am typing but I am not in the habit of using words I don't know the meaning of or how to use it in a sentence.

posted by jives

I think the best thing that could happen to any country is to be defeated by America in war. It's a free ticket to a better economy.


All wars have their roots in the past and there is never any single cause or reason whatever politicians would try and have us believe. The best thing that could happen to any country is not get involved in warfare at all.
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Post by stewartcumming »

Jives wrote: Considering how we treated Japan, a country with which we had infinitely more reason to be brutal to, I doubt your logic. We rebuilt their economy and infrastructure. We redesigned theri government and now they are powerful allies and an economic power.



I think the best thing that could happen to any country is to be defeated by America in war. It's a free ticket to a better economy.:cool:




I think the Iraqis might disagree with you there, Jives?
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Galbally
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Post by Galbally »

Put simply, as the question was, without the revisionism and tautology, "was WWII worth it?"

Unequivocally, Yes.
"We are never so happy, never so unhappy, as we imagine"



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"A smack in the face settles all arguments, then you can move on kid."



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randall
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Post by randall »

:-6

randalls two bits,

I believe that I read fairly recently that the Japanese who have never admitted doing anything wrong between 1937 and 1945 jailed one of their history professors in one of their universities because he dared to say that all of the Japanese history taught to their school children was santitised?

Is this true?

I personally am very ashamed that the British prisoners of war of the Japanese were given a £57-00p settlement per man for all that they had been through - and some of them in my home town are still suffering from it in their old age.

The same Allied governments had no quams about using the research of the infamous "UNIT 731" under Shiro Ishii - all of whom received carte blanch immunity for all the experiements they did on all prisoners of war including British and American somewhere in Manchuria - as long as they handed over all the research notes they had and did not destroy them.

It was so secret that its name was not found out until after the war ended and prisoners began to tell their stories.

Yet the British and American governments had no qualms about using the information and especially in the the British Porton Down reasearch facilities which developed most of the horrible bacterial and chemical warfare weapons which the American Military further developed and was used to spray in undergound stations and over towns in Britain and America "to see their effect.?"

It is too long for me to go into the subject further but it is well worth researching for those interested in the subject.

It also makes a mockery of claims that the moral future of the world lies in western hands.

God bless.

randall.

:o
gmc
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Post by gmc »

posted by scrat

Alot of what happened to the Kulaks they brought on themselves. Aside from their land grabs from their fellow peasants by just about every means imaginable (even terrorism) including the "legal" sales of land from women whos husbands had died in the war by all forms of coersion you have to throw into the mix the people who carried out the orders of Stalin.

They were mostly young people. Communist youth who grew up in the cities of Russia. Did you ever read about the Moscow famine in 1920? Many of these children watched their parents starve and starved themselves because of the Kulak farmers who refused to plant crops. They went about their business with zeal (too much) because they felt they could do away with the injustices they had seen and had suffered.


Yes, but I also read how lenin ordered that the troops got first call on any food and what was left went to the cities, I also read about the new economic policy adopted by the communists in 1921 in an attempt to encourage food production by allowing peasants to grow and sell their produce and keep the profit giving them an incentive to improve production. Don't forget he also found it expedient to promise land to peasants in order to get their support against those of the white russians that wanted to turn the clock back. It was a successful policy at first and it wasn't till later in the decade that resentment against the more affluent farmers spilled out and stalin brought in the five year plans and collectivised the farms. Cynically you could also suggest that by that point any hope the white russians might have had was dead along with the tsar and the western powers had their own problems to distract them and had lost interest, he was in a position to tighten his grip and go after class enemies and consolidate his power. It was by no means certain that the communists would succeed, it was always on a knife edge. It is one of the ironies of communism that the only two successful communist revolutions should took place in illiterate uneducated peasant based economies.

Stalin was a flawed character which lenin seemed to come to appreciate later on after he made the mistake of appointing him his deputy.

As to how many he killed there is no accurate information but then he did not have the German sense of efficiency that kept the records up to date. So I don't really find it surprising that there are no accurate records.

Post ww2 the british handed over thousands of ukrainians that had fought with hitler against the russians as part of one of the treaty agrements-I forget which one-knowingly sending them back to their deaths, that's something that was kept secret until very recently and we have a supposedly more open society. I would be curious if you have come across any reference to what happened to them. We have a new freedom of information act and also many of the time barred records are now available to historians and all sorts of interesting things are coming out.

Looks like Putin is tightening his grip on Russia. I'm curious-since you are in Russia, how do ordinary russians view what is going on in Iraq and elsewhere?
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Post by deckard »

I have read the `heated` debate that has ensued in this thread, but I seem to be missing the point. The original question ` Was World War 2 worth it? has only one answer. NO. Is any war worth it, worth what I ask? All the millions of people being killed, the destruction of towns and cities it is pure madness. The 2nd World War should have been the end of wars. It may have went on for a lot longer and many of us wouldn't have even been born as a result but in a sense we still have a World War it just takes place in many diffrent countries all at the same time. The End of all Wars is something I thought our world would be free of by now. It's a bloody shame that it isn't and most probally it never will be.

Perhaps Wars are a business lead thing as it keeps the nations that build the weapons in the first place very wealthy.
gmc
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Post by gmc »

Scrat wrote: I wonder why we sent them back. :thinking:


I think it was part of the Yalta agreement when stalin was still Uncle Joe (don't have time to dig much at present) -nobody expected the invasion in 1944 to be as succesful for the allies as it was and the russians were expected to capture more than they did and the kind of regime that would be imposed by the russians on what would be the soviet bloc couldn't be conceived by most in the west. also this was wartime and total war at that there would have been little sympathy for those who fought with the germans amongst the victors. The hand over was 1947 I think by which point it was clearer what was going to happen. It's only from the perspective of fifty years later that it seems terrible.

posted by scrat

As for Putin it seems most Russians like him. His popularity is over 70%. I think that the Russians are like Danes Brits ect in many ways when it comes to nostalgia. They don't like "democracy" American style when it comes to leaders. They seem to want a king or someone close to a king, someone who can take charge. Before you start slinging the drivel about Putin being an autocratic dictator read about the Nordic "Allthing" and learn about Russian people and exactly what the Russian government has done in relation to what Britain has and South Africa has done in the last decade.


I wish you would stop making assumptions about what I am or am not going to write. If I write drivel by all means point out where the drivel is creeping in but at least extend the courtesy of waiting to see how much drivel is coming.

As to Britain and South Africa not to mention all the other bits we had at one time what is it you think I am unaware of? No offence but Americans always seem to assume we don't know about the British Empire and feel compelled to mention it at every opportunity. When you point out that conquering primitive tribes an Africa with cannon and machine guns is no different from doing so in the american west the comparison seems to cause offence.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/WWmanifest.htm

As it happens I am quite familiar with the Nordic Althing and would contend it had a powerful effect on the way society and democracy developed in the UK-or at least the basic egalitarian attitude behind it. Although I would be hard pushed to put a logical case. You see the phenomenon in both the magna carta and the putney debates. It's easy to forget that universal suffrage and democracy is less than a hundred years old we take it so much for granted. I think you forget or are unaware what a mongrel nation Britain actually is and how many influences and peoples make up our history. But that's why we are communicating in a language deriving from a germanic dialect from the north of england with words pinched from every language it has ever come in to contact with.

posted by scrat

Once again, nobody really knows. I have only a little vague material FROM THE RUSSIAN point of view. The rest is mainly "toe the line" drivel from the west.


I suggest you cross reference your sources and look at original material as much as possible. Certainly in the UK many documents are now being released that throw light on much of what went on, similarly there now seems to be a lot of material coming our of Russia. American sources i don't know about.

Toe what line? Do you suspect you have been brainwashed in some way?

posted by deckard

I have read the `heated` debate that has ensued in this thread, but I seem to be missing the point. The original question ` Was World War 2 worth it? has only one answer. NO. Is any war worth it, worth what I ask? All the millions of people being killed, the destruction of towns and cities it is pure madness. The 2nd World War should have been the end of wars. It may have went on for a lot longer and many of us wouldn't have even been born as a result but in a sense we still have a World War it just takes place in many diffrent countries all at the same time. The End of all Wars is something I thought our world would be free of by now. It's a bloody shame that it isn't and most probally it never will be.

Perhaps Wars are a business lead thing as it keeps the nations that build the weapons in the first place very wealthy.


Talk about going off topic! Actually ww1 was supposed to be the end of all wars instead the technology of killing just gets better and better. Mankind is a territorial animal-just try parking in your next door neighbours drive and see how they react, you either fall out or settle things peaceably.

On one level wars are always about controlling resources. But its never that simple. If we have another world war the consequences this time will be so much greater it is hard to imagine. Maybe ww2 was worth it if it brought home the realityof what we are all capable off. In the "west" there has been the longest period of peace in history, maybe the shock is now wearing off and we are now back to the idea of having a "good" war for a "noble" cause. Being cynical would the US and UK have invaded Iraq if it was capable of defending itself?

No war is worth it but how about necessary?
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randall
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Post by randall »

:-6

GMC has cheered randall's heart,

A lot has still to be said and even more learned. Throuhgout my lifetime of voyages and journeys starting March 1953 - before that I had never been out of the north of Scotland.

I carried, however, a great deal of knowledge from books and could draw most countires maps from memory and their whereabouts on the GLOBE.

It was in 1953 that I was shocked by the ignorance of people boasting university degrees in the USA - we were always brought up to believe that those things were beyond us. Head to big for your shoulders. Getting ahead of your position in life, AND all that jazz our parents forced down us.

They, the folk I met in the USA, with all their first class education, all seemed to have one overwhelming obsession - "REDS UNDER THE BEDS."

TRY BEING SERVED IN ANY SHOP IN THE STATES WHEN THE McCARTHY TRIALS WERE ON WHEN CUSTOMERS AND STAFF ALIKE WERE HUDDLED AROUND SMALL BAKELITE WIRELESS SETS ON THE SHOP COUNTERS!.

Churchill fell out violently wioth the USA and especially Eisenhower by trying - and failed - to convince tham that the USSR was not what they thought it was.

Never mind liberating western Europe, was more or less his words, get as far east and as fast as you can or these people will never see daylight in their lives again.

But of course there are always secret agendas - USA wanted rid of the British Empire at all costs. ie Refusing to allow the Royal Navy to enter Hong Kong AFTER HOSTILITIES HAD ENDED to feed and give medical attention to both the Japanese and their erstwhile prisoners - all of whom were starving and most were very sick.

The USA wanted Chang Kai Shek (he put it about that he was a Christian and fighting the that Anti-Christ Comunists) to "LIBERATEliberate Hong Kong although they could hardrly protect themselves against the communits forces of Mao.

His wife said that Britain had stuck a dager in China's back when Britain recognised Mao as the true leader and opened an embassy in Peking. (Peping/Beijing - they've all come and gone in my lifetime.)

IF THAT HAD HAPPENED - where would the US forces have taken their R & R from Vietnam during that very long conflict?

US Generals were more media minded than those from other countries - take General Mark Clark for an example.

"I thought I had put a raging bull ashore but now I find it is only a beached whale." WSC about Anzio.)

What was read in the small township newpapers back home counted more than the thousands of American's boys lifves they threw away.

Which American today can quote Americas Beloved War Correspondence?

ERNIE PILE - sadly killed in the last days of the war on Okinawa. There is sadly far too few of his ilk.

Some American were convinced that the broadcasts from the rooftops in London during the blitz were set up - much like Orson Welles "War of the Worlds."

Every side made mistakes in the hundreds of thousands and all have paid dearly for them over and over again.

What I just cannot understand that the mightiest nation on earth is so morally bankrupt as to fall back on Fundamentalist Christianity as their one true strength and be so blind as apparently learn nothing whatsoever from its own recent history - in our newspapers today there are rumours of plans to use tactical nuclear weapons against Iran next - sad, sad, sad?

Where have all the young men gone?

God bless.

randall

:-5
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