D-Day, as told by paratroopers • Hacker News Board

Re: D-Day, as told by paratroopers

#101

Post by chiph » Sat, Jun 08, 2024, 2:14 PM UTC

rightbyte wrote: post #33

punk-coder wrote: post #28

My grandfather was a medic and was part of the storm of Normandy beach on D-Day. He never really spoke of it and had a stroke and passed away before Saving Private Ryan came out. We wondered what he would have thought of the beginning of that movie, as someone who was there and was running around helping people the whole time.

My take is that Saving Private Ryan is "pro-war" movie like most Hollywood productions on the topic and not about 2WW really. The give away is how the save Ryan squad seem to have agency and do like cool self-govern manouvers, like the storming of the 80mm AA gun hill, etc. More like a teenage boy fantasy. Band of Brothers is another good example of cool agency. The opening assualt on the beach is some sort of low po…

Dad did not land at Normandy, but he was wounded during the Battle of the Bulge. He was hit by a ricochet in the neck. A relatively minor wound that if the bullet had hit him a little further to the left, would have killed him. He never saw his attacker. But as a radio operator he was specifically targeted by enemy soldiers.

> Then they redo it somewhere else becouse someone said so.

Yes. You follow orders when in the military. Freedom of movement is one of the things you give up when you join. Or are drafted.

> The give away is how the save Ryan squad seem to have agency

They had orders direct from General Marshall (Army Chief of Staff at the time) to go get Ryan. That gave them a ton of agency.

Re: D-Day, as told by paratroopers

#102

Post by oooyay » Sat, Jun 08, 2024, 2:48 PM UTC

SkipperCat wrote: post #9

davidw wrote: post #5

I 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…

The post-hoc rationalizations are clearly defined, which makes people more comfortable paying homage to WWII despite it being incredibly dicey. I say post-hoc because the US actually had a rather large Nazi party forming. Most people joining the war were pretty aloof as to why. It was only when those troops encountered the the Nazi death camps that the state of things became clear. The US primarily joined the war effort not because we heard what was happening to Jews, not because there was a massive land grab occurring, and not because two countries had gone an absolutely psychotic blitzkrieg - but because the Japanese Empire dared to bomb our strategic island fleet. It was a major blow, but just enough to wake up a sleeping beast.

I say WWII was dicey because we literally burned cities, we dropped nuclear bombs, we leveled entire cities with bombing runs as show of force. You can argue these things were necessary - and I agree! But it's important to realize much of this occurred before we knew about the atrocities.

If you read enough Sun Tzu, nobody really knows (from a warriors perspective) why they go to war until you're there. The populace almost never knows the truth, even through time, because most of what they're told is a story that changes with time. It's true of most wars.

Re: D-Day, as told by paratroopers

#103

Post by llamaimperative » Sat, Jun 08, 2024, 3:53 PM UTC

bell-cot wrote: post #75

cafard wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would remark that the isolationist strain developed after WW I, and included a fair bit of the liberal intelligentsia, e.g. Charles Beard. The Library of America Reporting WW II cheats on this, and implies that isolationism was a fetish of Republican congressmen from ethnic districts. Not so.

I was under the impression that the US was rather isolationist back in President Washington's day. And he argued rather strongly that it should remain so after he left office - in 1797 .

Obviously the US has gone through various phases. The one relevant to our decision making in WW2 was largely driven by what happened in WW1.

Re: D-Day, as told by paratroopers

#104

Post by nyolfen » Sat, Jun 08, 2024, 5:12 PM UTC

llamaimperative wrote: post #98

nyolfen wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you are confusing some words a former president said with actual events and material course of history. the US has been continuously directly or indirectly participating in wars for over 20 years at this point, while it directs the largest international military alliance in history and orchestrates the exclusion of its opponents from global financial markets. none of this is exclusive to any party; this is the logic…

None of this discredits the argument that there exists an isolationist strain in US politics today.

yes, a strain that has manifested in...withdrawing from one (1) conflict after 20 years. even the example he gives, of threatening to withdraw from nato, is counterbalanced by the fact that nato has in fact expanded since! this is a 'strain in american politics' in the same way that being a billionaire is a strain in my worldview or speaking russian is a strain in mexican culture

Re: D-Day, as told by paratroopers

#105

Post by rufus_foreman » Sat, Jun 08, 2024, 6:50 PM UTC

chipdart wrote: post #94

rufus_foreman wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leaving NATO is not "isolationism". And cutting ties with countries in NATO that repeatedly refuse to make the financial contributions towards defense that they pledged to make is also not "isolationism". NATO countries made a deal, part of that deal was 2% of GDP to defense, there are NATO countries that over and over have refused to keep their part of the deal, they promised to do something and year after year afte…

> And cutting ties with countries in NATO that repeatedly refuse to make the financial contributions towards defense that they pledged to make is also not "isolationism". I agree, it's more than isolationism: it's sheer stupidity and the Hallmark of a compromised government official.

I disagree that it is stupid to require entities you make a deal with to uphold their side of the deal. It is stupid not to do that.

Re: D-Day, as told by paratroopers

#106

Post by SkipperCat » Sat, Jun 08, 2024, 6:55 PM UTC

llamaimperative wrote: post #15

SkipperCat wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I mention that in my 3rd sentence, but as an American of Jewish decent, the sides of WWII could not have been any clearer. My family did not have the option to weigh the facts and choose a side, it was chosen for us. I am just thankful that we happened to leave Europe before it all fell apart.

Re: D-Day, as told by paratroopers

#107

Post by SkipperCat » Sat, Jun 08, 2024, 7:01 PM UTC

TheAlchemist wrote: post #26

SkipperCat wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's true towards the end of the war, but in the beginning ? The US didn't join the war until they were attacked. Same goes for UK and France - they technically did declare the war when Poland was invaded - as there was a defensive agreement between the 3 countries - but in reality they didn't send any help.

We did not send troops until '42, but from about 1941 FDR was sending massive amounts of aid to the UK and USSR thru the lend lease and other programs.

Re: D-Day, as told by paratroopers

#108

Post by lukan » Sat, Jun 08, 2024, 7:35 PM UTC

racional wrote: post #97

lukan wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you conclude, I just use the Nazis as a point of reference? It is just a pretty strong indicator. And what people are saying does not matter so much to me, as what people are doing.

Because you offered them as your primary point of reference. These people aren't a "pretty strong indicator" of anything. They definitely do not have an interesting or useful perspective as to what mainstream Ukrainian society thinks or is actually like.

Let's put it like this, in germany we try to keep those people away from weapons and police actually (partly) prevented them from going to Ukraine. In Ukraine they would officially armed.

So yeah, germany is not directly in war and if a war comes here, we probably would also arm our Nazis again and hope they shoot in the direction we want - but I would be against that and I would consider this "black".

Re: D-Day, as told by paratroopers

#109

Post by ffsm8 » Sat, Jun 08, 2024, 7:45 PM UTC

jlpom wrote: post #84

bell-cot wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about these, instead? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Quiet_on_the_Western_Front...

The Netflix adaptation is terrible

I thought the 2022 remake war great and very close to the original.

At least I got the same feeling of senselessness and morbid callousness from the leadership while watching it.

Watching the remake made it clear that soldiers were literally seen as fodder on all sides and nobody in charge cared how many died.

Re: D-Day, as told by paratroopers

#110

Post by llamaimperative » Sat, Jun 08, 2024, 7:52 PM UTC

SkipperCat wrote: post #106

llamaimperative wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I mention that in my 3rd sentence, but as an American of Jewish decent, the sides of WWII could not have been any clearer. My family did not have the option to weigh the facts and choose a side, it was chosen for us. I am just thankful that we happened to leave Europe before it all fell apart.

You said that now we see it as more complex. You should read about the actual arguments that were being made for and against intervention at that time. There absolutely was not an obvious consensus in the US until Pearl Harbor.