A reminder, this is the anniversary of the D-Day invasion, which struck the first chords of Goetterdamerung for the Nazi empire. I did a lot of World War II stories when I worked for the daily newspaper, talking to veterans, etc. There was one man I wanted to talk to more than anybody else, but he would never talk to me on record, for obvious reasons. He was a German-born local chocolate maker, named Fritz Holl. He was a young man living in Switzerland, hadn't visited his family since he was a small boy and, unfortunately, picked the autumn of 1939 to make the trip. He got stopped at the border when he tried to rush back after the war started - and was pressed into the Navy. He was at D-Day... in a German E-boat. He, like all the front-line soldiers that day, was doing his job. This is a short video I made telling the Medal of Honor story of Theodore Roosevelt Jr.. He was the oldest man and only general in the first wave at D-Day - a president's son who literally saved the world on June 6, 1944:
Thanks Dave: Great post. Thanks to WWII and all Vets ! June 6th D-Day has a 2nd meaning for me. June 6th is Done Drinkin Day. 2 years sober today. Thank God!! ( At least that's what my friends say ). ---------- And I Thank You !! KCz Backwoodz Bluz
Thanks,Dave. I'm sort of a WWII history buff. So many sacrifices,so many stories. Shakespeare couldn't have written anything better and it all actually happened.
Very good video Dave along with some good music. The WWII vets are getting scarce now. I'm old enough to have known many WWI and WWII vets and heard their stories. One, in particular, is an act of self sacrifice that an old friend of mine told me. He landed on Omaha beach on D Day. He said they were in a bad situation, pinned by heavy fire coming from a row of hedges. A cargo plane (he didn't know what type of aircraft} flew low over the row of hedges dumping fuel then turned and purposely crashed into the hedges setting the whole area ablaze. He said if it wasn't for that air crew, he and all those with him would have been killed. I'm sure are are other tales of such sacrifice in those days that we will never hear of unless it's from an individual that was there. ---------- Wisdom does not always come with old age. Sometimes old age arrives alone.
I used to work with a young Russian woman. As she explained to me, the Russian perspective on D-day was quite different than ours in the west. In her view, Russia had already virtually beaten the Nazi by 1944 and the D-day was, rather than the crushing blow, simply a maneuver to keep the Soviets out of western Europe.
The view you get always depends on the hill you stand on.
I can think of one American movie about Russians in World War II "Enemy at the Gates," but I can't think of many.
Now, somebody name a Russian movie about the American involvement in World War II. You get bonus points if you can name a Soviet-era movie. You get EXTREME, BODACIOUS bonus points if it's a Soviet movie about the U.S. war against Japan. ---------- David Elk River Harmonicas
everybody is pretty much right. Couple quick things, the British high command waged WWI like complete morons, but their WWII waging was a thing of near perfection. It's this remarkable story of a little island that stood up and said "No. This is some bull...t." On Russia, the war in Europe was always about Russia, even before the invasion of it - Mein Kampf (which I did read btw) was pretty clear on that. America got in because it stood up and told Japan "this is bull...t" provoking the Pearl Harbor attack we should have expected. World wars are very complicated - I think there's been nine if them (we didn't start calling them that until the 20th century... The American Revolution was one). We all did our damnedest to pull this thing off. The Americans capturing the Enigma was a big deal, only because I think, the British didn't share the actual machine with us. The Poles were the first to crack the enigma. Poland had a first class intelligence service - having Soviet Russia on one side and Nazi Germany on the other will make that kind of thing important. They were the first ones to break the code - although the germans later made it more complex and they handed off their work to Britain. When Germany invaded, some of those Polish ciper guys got out. Some got grilled over by the gestapo... Even with their balls in a vice or whatever the Gestapo did to those poor men, they did not. There's another story of people who saved the world. ---------- David Elk River Harmonicas
The Italians whipped the Albanians! Of course,they were already pretty much under Italian rule,so it wasn't much of a fight. In Italy's defense,they were known for some fierce fighting in North Africa.
It just so happens I'm reading a book by Len Deighton. It's mainly about England's role in the war. Non Fiction. He makes some pretty strong criticisms of British leaders. A lot of them thought what worked in WWI would work in WWII. He also had high praise,when it was due. Like Dave said,a complex subject. Absolutely nothing just black and white.
Last Edited by on Jun 06, 2012 7:36 PM
Groyster, I edited your last post because you used a racial slur (and misspelled it at that, it doesn't have an H). I know there is a standard out there that says it's okay to use a racial slur if you are a member of that group, and maybe you are a member of that group, but there is no way to know without context. Please try to remember the forum creed and be a little more careful.
Let's not forget all the Canadian pilots in the Battle of Britain and then hitting Juno beach on D-day. ---------- If it ain't got harp - it ain't really blues!!!!
Let's not forget all the Canadian pilots in the Battle of Britain and then hitting Juno beach on D-day. ---------- If it ain't got harp - it ain't really blues!!!!
The British and the French certainly blew the opening moves of the war. On paper they should have been able to hold their own against the Germans. 'Peace in our time' was just one of several political blunders before the big show got going. The Germans did funny things with troop limits under their treaty obligations, rotating troops through to train them, then dismissing them to train the next batch. The Allies also didn't stop them from rearming, which proved to be critical for two reasons- first, well, they let them rearm, but second, since they were rearming pretty much from scratch all their weapons were modern compared to the British and French. The Allies repeatedly underestimated the Axis, whether it was the French Maginot Line, the Russian's getting caught off guard when Hitler double-crossed them, the British letting Singapore fall because the Japanese simply outflanked them or the US nearly getting knocked out of the war at Pearl (if the carriers had been at Pearl we would have been sunk, no pun intended.)
It's an off-topic thread, so it should be OK and I'll go one farther, Martin, and note that it was the democracies that really invented mass-media propaganda in World War I - although a case could be made I think for America against the Spanish in 1898. The Hollywood movies have rarely been historically accurate, IMO the Soviet movies were even worse, but point taken about world distribution. When they finally did try to make a historically accurate Alamo movie, it was one of the biggest flops of all time and that's a shame - anything that doesn't have Davy Crockett going down in a blaze of glory, rifle smoking and middle fingers thrust at Santa Anna himself, is considered heresy - and that's a shame because I think Davy Crockett is a much more interesting man than as he is remembered.
I watch a lot of foreign movies, some of the German movies about World War II have been the best and I think Der Untergang and the original black and white Die Brucke were among the best ever. At the same time, Der Rote Baron was just the opposite - even though that movie is chocked full of harmonicas, I've never been able to sit through more than 1/3 of it because of all the fantasy. As for the Russian movies, the Ninth Company was one of the best war movies ever made.
Theodore Geisel wrote two Oscar winning propaganda films during WWII, and later for the cartoon Gerald McBoing Boing. I remember where I was (the cafeteria at college) when word came around that he'd passed away. The whole college was depressed. Of course they called him Dr. Seuss.
@LSC cant believe john wayne ever implied that...actually the war in europe could not have possibly been won without the russians....it was a war of attrition and very cold russian winters...there was a tremendous loss of lives for the russians but they killed more germans than the other allies combined...
LSC, I didn't mean to give the impression that the outcome was certain, or that it was anything but close. What I am saying is the Axis hierarchy made mistake after mistake after mistake and it cost them the war. Their resources were scant and they wasted them. That's what I'm saying. They wasted human life. Besides the things I mentioned earlier, Germany had brilliant generals and Hitler executed 84 of them. They wasted money. They wasted time. One of many examples would be the jet aircraft - they devoted so much in resources to that, meanwhile they had very few conventional planes and the RAF and USAF were running over them -- and they just basically pissed away their Air Force in the skies over Britain. Of course, besides decimating the Luftwaffe - which the RAF was able to do because of a huge German mistake, attacking the cities instead of the RAF itself as it did in the beginning of the Battle of Britain - the British contribution to the war with MI5 was incredible (and they were still on the front lines of the cold war against the Soviets) and other secret stuff, from picking up where the Poles left off in cracking Enigma to totally fooling Hitler at every turn, intelligencewise. In the war against Japan, which I pointed out the Soviets had nothing to do with, it wasn't the U.S., U.K. and the British Commonwealth alone, either... As far as losses, go China lost almost as many people as the Soviets did. I don't want anyone to get the impression that it was only the Soviet Union in this thing, everything else was sideshow - the rest of the allies were fighting Japan too and the Soviets were not. I think if you break it down by combatants, the Soviet Union and U.S. are very close. I think the Soviets had 11 million combatants and the Americans 12 million. You'd think it'd be easy to verify that online, but I couldn't find it.
I did not say that John Wayne personally ever said anything in regard to assigning credit for winning the war, though I imagine privately he probably did sometime. It would gave been natural. My reference was to Hollywood's portrayal of the war using the type of characters that became synonymous with the Duke. Granted these were propaganda films designed to help moral at home and were fine, I like them, but they have perpetuated the idea among many in the States that if was all down to us.
Your comment that Germany could not have possibly been defeated without the Russians is debatable given the vagaries of war and the nature of such an enormous conflict but in all events is somewhat mis-leading. If fails to address that the Soviet Union and Germany were allied in 1939 by treaty. The Soviets were against Germany before they were for Germany before they were against Germany.
The Soviets were still pissed they had lost territory to Germany during revolving door treaties in the era of WW 1. The Soviets thought they had a deal to carve up Eastern and parts of Northern Europe with the Germans. They were partners in the invasion of Poland. What the Soviets hadn't counted on was Hitler's intention to set them up for the double cross. Which begs the question, had the Soviets not prosecuted expansionist policies in the 30s would there have been a World War II in the first place? Since, Hitler and his followers were pretty much nut cases, probably yes, but an interesting conjecture.
But on one thing we can all agree. The Germans have always made the best harmonicas. ---------- LSC
That comment about the Soviet expansion being a factor in the start of the war... Fascinating. I'll think about that. Second question: The Soviet Union signed a non-agression pact with Finland, then once the war started and everybody's attention was on Germany, they invaded Finland. Had Germany not invaded Russia, I wonder who Stalin would have invaded next?
@Elk the russians invaded finland BUT they failed.....they wanted poland stalin said they were not suited for communism......well who was????stalin was downright evil but we needed him as an allie.....the war was started over poland....the brits and the french were right about declaring war on germany but neville chamberlain was not churchill.....who was walking with destiny....he would be rated even with moses in leading his peopleIMHO
I think the Russians duplicity at the start of the war also overshadows a big part of their fight against Hitler. Everyone else sort of sat on their hands while Hitler annexed the smaller countries around him but Russia actually helped him. No country walked away from the war without ethical questions. Colonial empires, nuclear bombs, complicity, duplicity... there was an incident where American naval boats opened fire on Japanese ship wrecked sailors in the water. Still, if you are giving out grades for how countries managed to persevere in sticking to a reasonable moral code the Russians don't do very well against the rest of the allies. They certainly paid for victory in their own blood though. The casualty numbers are staggering. The Soviet Union lost close to 14% of it's population. The US? About .32%. The Soviets lost more than 2x as many people as anyone else.
