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The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

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Re: The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

#71

Post by WalterBright »

agumonkey wrote: post #62
WalterBright wrote: post #59

> And they knew that the single greatest weapon of the war, the atomic bomb excepted, was the German 88-mm flat-trajectory gun, which brought down thousands of bombers and tens of thousands of soldiers. I beg to differ. It was radar-guided anti-aircraft guns, and proximity fuzes for artillery shells. This had the effect of doubling the firepower. Another was high-octane gasoline, which enabled much more powerful airc…

> proximity fuzes interesting, it's rarely mentioned indeed. Also I wonder if that was the reason for developping those flares scattered by planes ? or maybe that was only after the invention of guided missiles.

The Germans did use radar to detect, track, and guide forces to the targets. German night fighters had onboard radar for this, too.

What the Germans didn't have, however, was connecting the radar directly to the weapon.

Re: The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

#72

Post by jacobolus »

standardUser wrote: post #69
ARandomerDude wrote: post #5

I didn't fight in WW2 obviously, but I did fight in a war. For me, the reticence to describe every detail to people who weren't there boils down to this: I don't want my wife, my children, or my neighbors to be burdened with thinking of something so horrible. I want them to be happy and safe, that's why I went. No need to bring it to their doorstep if I don't have to. I suspect many during and after WW2 felt this way…

The difference being that there was a legitimate and urgent fear of a foreign power invading our shores, as there were actively doing to other democracies at the time. I'm straining to think of one American adversary of the last 70 years that we fought half a world away that had any conceivable possibility of showing up at our doorstep. I can think of many, many wars we have fought, just not a single one that has mad…

The US was not in any significant danger of being directly invaded during WWII. It would have been an incredibly costly logistical nightmare for the would-be invaders, very unlikely to succeed.

US worries were legitimate (atrocities perpetrated against civilians, future control of Europe/Asia, the international economic order and security of global trade networks, etc.) but “urgent” invasion wasn’t one of them.

Re: The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

#73

Post by pschw »

rossdavidh wrote: post #8

"They knew that in its representation to the laity, what was happening to them was systematically sanitized and Norman Rockwellized, not to mention Disneyfied." The author seems to have little understanding of how much this was true of World War 1, or probably every large scale war ever. The home audiences for news reports in World War 1 (in pretty much every country) were not allowed to know how FUBB'd things were,…

> The author seems to have little understanding of how much this was true of World War 1...

Fussell wrote _The Great War and Modern Memory_, so I'd say he was pretty well-versed on how WW1 was portrayed.

Re: The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

#74

Post by Nomentatus »

jacobolus wrote: post #72
standardUser wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference being that there was a legitimate and urgent fear of a foreign power invading our shores, as there were actively doing to other democracies at the time. I'm straining to think of one American adversary of the last 70 years that we fought half a world away that had any conceivable possibility of showing up at our doorstep. I can think of many, many wars we have fought, just not a single one that has mad…

The US was not in any significant danger of being directly invaded during WWII. It would have been an incredibly costly logistical nightmare for the would-be invaders, very unlikely to succeed. US worries were legitimate (atrocities perpetrated against civilians, future control of Europe/Asia, the international economic order and security of global trade networks, etc.) but “urgent” invasion wasn’t one of them.

The mainland you mean, not the U.S. as a whole - since part of Alaska was invaded and seized. One of the reasons that's not well-known is that I believe it was kept secret during the war as it was a tad embarrassing.

Re: The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

#75

Post by coryrc »

jacobolus wrote: post #72
standardUser wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference being that there was a legitimate and urgent fear of a foreign power invading our shores, as there were actively doing to other democracies at the time. I'm straining to think of one American adversary of the last 70 years that we fought half a world away that had any conceivable possibility of showing up at our doorstep. I can think of many, many wars we have fought, just not a single one that has mad…

The US was not in any significant danger of being directly invaded during WWII. It would have been an incredibly costly logistical nightmare for the would-be invaders, very unlikely to succeed. US worries were legitimate (atrocities perpetrated against civilians, future control of Europe/Asia, the international economic order and security of global trade networks, etc.) but “urgent” invasion wasn’t one of them.

Pearl Harbor was US.

The Philippines was US.

We were literally invaded.

They also bombed the West Coast.

Re: The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

#76

Post by Nomentatus »

gerikson wrote: post #33
hef19898 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After skimming the article, I can't shake the feeling that the author fell for Wehrmacht propaganda when it comes to equipment. The Wehrmacht lacked auto and semi automatic infantry weapons, the main rifle was bolt action . SMGs were not half as widespread as propaganda reel made it look and having the first true general purpose MG is not a war winner in itself. The only German tank from 42/43 onwards, when the US st…

Fussell references the belief among GIs that the Germans had better kit. It's one thing to objectively assess this after the fact, it's quite another to get hit by an 88mm in Normandy and not see the Hurricane obliterate it. The Wehrmacht fought tenaciously in Western Europe using second-rate troops compared to the Eastern front where the real struggle was. Defending is easier than attacking, and the defenders were i…

Right. The big panzers were terrible to encounter if they ever managed to get to the front line, but they rarely did, and there they broke down quickly and were often abandoned. They were also more vulnerable than they looked. On the Russian front the tankers learned to pop the turrets off by radio-controlling their fire and hitting the turret at roughly the same time with 3 or four smaller tanks or guns. The sheer vibration would pop the turret off since the Germans had never designed for that much vibration. The Russians never did tell the Americans or Brits about this technique, however; interestingly.

Re: The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

#77

Post by yibberish »

jimbokun wrote: post #60
yibberish wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not telling him to go scare his kids. I'm pointing out some possible self-deceit. "I did it for them!".. sure, why not? but my point is that first and foremost he's making those choices for himself; which is pefrectly fine. what's not fine (IMO) is to pretend such choices aren't selfish.

Who gives you the authority to judge the morality and motivations behind this person's actions?

I have de-subscribed from authority.

I speak from my own experience, if it helps it helps, if it doesn't just leave it. maybe it wasn't meant for you

Re: The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

#78

Post by teddyh »

I suspect that even well-meaning articles like this does society a disservice when it characterizes war as horrifying. People are not afraid of horror; people believe they can handle it. People watch horror movies. Calling war horrifying is still, in a way, glamorizing war. But even though war, the reality of war, does contain horror, war is not, I believe, on the whole, horrifying. It is instead (I suspect) boring. An oppressive and grinding kind of boring, and only punctuated with brief interludes of horror, which only contributes to its oppressiveness. I suspect that it is this aspect which destroys most people who wage war. I suspect that while some/many people do experience the horror of war (which indeed is quite horrible), most people in war do not experience much horror directly. It is instead the boredom; the oppressive, grinding, fearful boredom, which destroys most of them.

Of course, I’m only speculating; I’m not a sociologist or a psychologist.

Re: The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

#79

Post by Schiendelman »

hutzlibu wrote: post #49
gumby wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't want my wife, my children, or my neighbors to be burdened with thinking of something so horrible. Interesting. Until very recently, as far as I could know, my mother's life began at 16. She refused to talk about anything from her childhood. I don't know if, like you, she didn't want to traumatize us or simply didn't want to think about it at all. But now, in her late 80s, she'll sometimes absent-mindedly re…

"I think they should be preparing a for a huge postwar assistance, not just money for rebuilding, but psychological / therapy based on their experience to try to reduce the effects of wartime trauma on Ukraine. " We take lots of refugees. I would argue this is already a very effective way of preventing further traumatizing. But as far as I am aware, those who come do not easily get offered psychatric help, even if th…

The psychiatric sector should be quadrupled. More so in some countries. It’s flabbergasting to me that people don’t see it as - not just a moral imperative - but also an obvious economic one.

Re: The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

#80

Post by eyelidlessness »

pram wrote: post #15
ARandomerDude wrote: post #5

I didn't fight in WW2 obviously, but I did fight in a war. For me, the reticence to describe every detail to people who weren't there boils down to this: I don't want my wife, my children, or my neighbors to be burdened with thinking of something so horrible. I want them to be happy and safe, that's why I went. No need to bring it to their doorstep if I don't have to. I suspect many during and after WW2 felt this way…

Alternate perspective: I was in Iraq and Afghanistan, I don't talk about it because theres not much to say. I was either standing or sitting some place on guard duty, wired up on an insane amount of caffeine and nicotine, trying not to go insane for the 12 hour shifts. The only thing that punctuated the boredom was the daily mortar attack alarms lol

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