Ukraine is about as black and white as it gets.
D-Day, as told by paratroopers
11–20 of 130 posts
Re: D-Day, as told by paratroopers
#12I got unexpectedly shook up and a bit weepy reading about some of the goings on yesterday. I'm not much of a 'rah rah' guy, but those people stood up in the face of tyranny and many didn't come home. I thought what it'd be like for my own boy to go off to war. Democracy and freedom are worth defending.
A lot of people, including myself, feel similar when looking back at WWII. The roles of good and evil were very clearly defined and that has forged the US foreign policy up to today. Of course, there's a lot of things we know now which show the conflict was a lot more complex, but at its core, the Axis needed to be defeated for our western style of freedom to exist. I don't think we'll ever have something as clear cu…
I have spent most of my life with the US involved in a variety of ... "not very clear cut things" and we'll leave it at that.
It also feels like some things have shifted and there actually is a lot more clarity lately.
Re: D-Day, as told by paratroopers
#13Ukraine is about as black and white as it gets.
Amen. I used to be a pacifist before the Ukraine war. Now I feel like a completely different person.
Re: D-Day, as told by paratroopers
#14“The longest day” is a great book on the subject were they interviewed thousands of people who were personally involved in D-Day and wove their stories together as well
Not from D-Day or the European theater, but “With the Old Breed” is a really well done personal account of combat in the Pacific. It was part of the source material for Ken Burns’ “The War” and for the “The Pacific” miniseries on HBO.
Re: D-Day, as told by paratroopers
#15I got unexpectedly shook up and a bit weepy reading about some of the goings on yesterday. I'm not much of a 'rah rah' guy, but those people stood up in the face of tyranny and many didn't come home. I thought what it'd be like for my own boy to go off to war. Democracy and freedom are worth defending.
A lot of people, including myself, feel similar when looking back at WWII. The roles of good and evil were very clearly defined and that has forged the US foreign policy up to today. Of course, there's a lot of things we know now which show the conflict was a lot more complex, but at its core, the Axis needed to be defeated for our western style of freedom to exist. I don't think we'll ever have something as clear cu…
You should read up a bit more on how people perceived it contemporaneously. It’s too easy to absolve oneself of having to think hard about the current goings on when we can look at WWII and act like the right answer was obvious to everyone.
Re: D-Day, as told by paratroopers
#16What a shit job, I'm amazed we (well they) were unified enough to do it, even with Pearl Harbor.
https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/american-nazi...
Re: D-Day, as told by paratroopers
#17Now the popular portrayal of WWII seems kind of idealistic, but there's plenty of historical evidence to suggest many Allied troops really did not want to be there, and the scale of desertion [1] was quite high - In addition to corruption, mismanagement, and racketeering [2].
I only really considered this after encountering "Deserter: The Last Untold Story of the Second World War" by Charles Glass in a used bookstore, which is appropriately referenced etc.
[1] But what is desertion, really? A legal matter the facts of which are decided through process...
[1] like, Catch-22 was actually toned down from reality so to speak, yes it's technically written by a Korean war vet but
Re: D-Day, as told by paratroopers
#18The tank commander, (edit2) David Render, in this podcast has a pretty amazing description of joining at age 18, landing on the beaches and not long afterwards finding himself commanding a squadron of tanks in Normandy. Absolute humility and incredibly sanguine about what happened to him. No bullshit about glory and bravery. Just a straightforward but very engaging description.
https://www.historyhit.com/what-it-was-like-to-be-a-young-ta...
Edit: think I found a link to the podcast that doesn’t require you to login https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/warfare/id1526490428?i...
Re: D-Day, as told by paratroopers
#19Ukraine is about as black and white as it gets.
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Re: D-Day, as told by paratroopers
#20Ukraine is about as black and white as it gets.
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Bandera
Ooh, scary.
Here's the deal, though -- the guy is glorified by some people in Ukraine, but not in any official capacity at the national level. When an attempt was made to grant him official "Hero" status at the national level, it was rejected. The monument in particular is a local endeavor.
Doesn't make Putin's war anymore justified
Right, but the idea here seems to be to throw cold water on idea that Ukraine is unambiguously the victim of aggression here, or to at least sow some general confusion around it.
It's all very straightforward as to why Putin invaded -- and (despite what he says) none of the Nazi stuff had anything to do with it. It's just noise that he puts out there to push people's buttons; to sow doubts about Ukraine's legitimacy as independent state or its right to defend itself; and internally, to get people to sign up for his lemming march.