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D-Day, as told by paratroopers

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Re: D-Day, as told by paratroopers

#121

Post by faeriechangling »

xkcd-sucks wrote: post #17

Now 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…

Hmm, I don't know, I feel like America in perticular came away from WWII with pretty clean hands, bombing Japan aside, the pacific war devolved into something a bit grotesque. The American soldiers marched towards Japan carrying around the skulls of the Japanese as trophies. A representative gave Roosevelt a letter opener made out of a Japanese soldier's arm. The Americans were WAY more chill in the European theatre and generally fought "A good war".

The rest of the Allies always struck me more as cynical imperialists, and the whole narrative of the British desperately trying to stop that madman Hitler but Chamberlain loving peace too much to stop him as being a bit naive. Stalin saw things differently and saw the allies as trying to intentionally make Hitler stronger to keep the USSR in check. From that perspective, it's not shocking the allies went to war against the Nazis almost immediately after Molotov-Ribbentrop was signed. Plus you know, there were all the colonial shenanigans.

Also, with all that being stressed, it is actually unbelievable how comically supervillaniously evil the Nazis actually were. These were a group of people who made Josef Stalin seem ethical. It's hard to fight the Nazis and NOT be the good guys.

Re: D-Day, as told by paratroopers

#122

Post by llamaimperative »

rufus_foreman wrote: post #105
chipdart wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Not if you’re worse off for it.

Re: D-Day, as told by paratroopers

#123

Post by chipdart »

rufus_foreman wrote: post #105
chipdart wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I'm not going to engage with you because you are clearly being disingenuous. The "deal" that NATO represents is not spending, and GDP targets are at best a line in the sand of a proxy variable regarding readiness.

It's unbelievably stupid to claim that members of an alliance are protecting their interests by rejecting mutual defense agreements due to flutuations in the order of fractions of a percent in a metric that is by its very nature completely arbitrary.

Re: D-Day, as told by paratroopers

#124

Post by nyolfen »

llamaimperative wrote: post #118
rufus_foreman wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Giving a country military aid, but not as much military aid as that country might have liked, is not isolationism. It just isn't. That's not what "isolationism" means.

Good god. No one is saying “the US is isolationist.”

no one is saying “There is no isolationist strain” either, just that it's inconsequential and meaningless

> ‘counterbalanced’ (whatever that means)

ah, you are engaging in bad faith. adios!

Re: D-Day, as told by paratroopers

#125

Post by llamaimperative »

nyolfen wrote: post #124
llamaimperative wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good god. No one is saying “the US is isolationist.”

no one is saying “There is no isolationist strain” either, just that it's inconsequential and meaningless > ‘counterbalanced’ (whatever that means) ah, you are engaging in bad faith. adios!

> I don't see much of an isolationist strain in the US today at all

Huh

And I've just explained exactly how it's consequential and not meaningless. It succeeded in delaying aid to Ukraine. There you go: a consequence!

Re: D-Day, as told by paratroopers

#126

Post by southernplaces7 »

faeriechangling wrote: post #121
xkcd-sucks wrote: post #17

Now 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…

Hmm, I don't know, I feel like America in perticular came away from WWII with pretty clean hands, bombing Japan aside, the pacific war devolved into something a bit grotesque. The American soldiers marched towards Japan carrying around the skulls of the Japanese as trophies. A representative gave Roosevelt a letter opener made out of a Japanese soldier's arm. The Americans were WAY more chill in the European theatre…

>bombing Japan aside, the pacific war devolved into something a bit grotesque. The American soldiers marched towards Japan carrying around the skulls of the Japanese as trophies.

If you think that was grotesquely terrible, I really recommend a thorough reading of what the Japanese themselves did during their imperial conquests, WWII and their increasingly bloody, desperate retreats in the face of American power! You'll be breathtakingly surprised by what barbarity can look like outside what the Nazis did.

There was of course a major element of racism in the hatred American soldiers had for Japanese soldiers, but it was only part of it. The Japanese did themselves zero favors in their conduct toward.... pretty much everyone, and were barbaric even in their handling of captured or wounded enemies (not to even mention how they behaved towards conquered civilian populations, which in their own form of nearly nazi-like racial disdain, they often looked upon as little better than animals). All the racism aside, the Americans also had an enormous multitude of good reasons for hating them so much.. The Empire even treated its own soldiers viciously and inhumanely in just about every way, which certainly didn't help those soldiers' attitudes towards all others..

Re: D-Day, as told by paratroopers

#127

Post by [deleted] »

faeriechangling wrote: post #121
xkcd-sucks wrote: post #17

Now 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…

Hmm, I don't know, I feel like America in perticular came away from WWII with pretty clean hands, bombing Japan aside, the pacific war devolved into something a bit grotesque. The American soldiers marched towards Japan carrying around the skulls of the Japanese as trophies. A representative gave Roosevelt a letter opener made out of a Japanese soldier's arm. The Americans were WAY more chill in the European theatre…

[deleted]

Re: D-Day, as told by paratroopers

#128

Post by southernplaces7 »

southernplaces7 wrote: post #126
faeriechangling wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, I don't know, I feel like America in perticular came away from WWII with pretty clean hands, bombing Japan aside, the pacific war devolved into something a bit grotesque. The American soldiers marched towards Japan carrying around the skulls of the Japanese as trophies. A representative gave Roosevelt a letter opener made out of a Japanese soldier's arm. The Americans were WAY more chill in the European theatre…

>bombing Japan aside, the pacific war devolved into something a bit grotesque. The American soldiers marched towards Japan carrying around the skulls of the Japanese as trophies. If you think that was grotesquely terrible, I really recommend a thorough reading of what the Japanese themselves did during their imperial conquests, WWII and their increasingly bloody, desperate retreats in the face of American power! You'…

Further note, fully agreed on the nearly cartoonish evil of the Nazis. I can't really think of another political system that took things to such deliberate extremes in the rest of known, relatively modern history. The closest anyone comes might be Stalin, or maybe the Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot, but even these examples don't quite match the sheer open viciousness of Nazi policies and practice.

Re: D-Day, as told by paratroopers

#129

Post by southernplaces7 »

thombat wrote: post #40
TheAlchemist wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What help could they realistically send? Poland was between the two nations that were invading it and the UK was only just introducing a bomber (Wellington) with the range for a direct return flight to Warsaw (and such a flight was impossible since it passes over Germany). Marine access means a long Baltic voyage past the main German navy bases. An assault on Germany would have been via the neighbouring countries and…

When Germany invaded Poland, the vast majority of its (believe it or not limited) fighting power was fully tied up in that conflict. During that same time, The larger, stronger, better equipped French army could have (with the aid of the BEF) invaded Germany from its border with it (and possibly even through Belgium) and caused absolute chaos in the German's plans for expansion. ven if the French/British had failed to make that invasion decisive, it would almost certainly have broken the back of the entire chain of lightning victories and support for Hitler that came later. At the very least, that preemptive invasion attempt would have been able to mobilize the French Army enough to completely forestall the terrible consequences of low morale and rapid military collapse that eventually befell France when it actually was invaded so spectacularly.

The above is in my view a near certainty if it had happened that way. More speculatively, had Churchill been Prime Minister instead of Chamberlain at the time of the Poland invasion (instead of becoming PM right at the time of the invasion of France), the British response would have been much stronger and that would have prompted an also stronger French response that could have dramatically curtailed the scope of the European war.

Hitler's army in 1939 simply wasn't good or well provisioned enough to sustain anything serious against any major enemy. It pulled off what it pulled off in the following months more through a mix of luck and sheer blunder by its enemies.

Re: D-Day, as told by paratroopers

#130

Post by southernplaces7 »

inglor_cz wrote: post #7

If you read German, there are some interesting collections of memories of the other side. Pretty much everyone mentions how terrified they were of Allied white phosphorus.

I strongly recommend a series of books called "D-Day Through German Eyes" that narrates the experience of the seaborne invasion through the translated narratives of German soldiers. One theme that comes up again and again is their sheer demoralizing shock at seeing just how colossal the armada confronting "their" beaches was.

Despite this, because of the harsh sense of discipline inherent to the German Army during the war, they fought remarkably hard against the still largely inexperienced allied western soldiers and made the first weeks after the D-Day landings much harder then they should have been for the Anglo/British/Canadian and sundry forces.

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