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Warsaw, August 1947

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Re: Warsaw, August 1947

#41

Post by arethuza »

Kociub wrote: post #37
vacri wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth noting that the UK was drawn into the war through the alliance it made with Poland in an attempt to contain German acquisitions - the UK was a friend to Poland with no real quarrel. 'Protecting Poland' was their call to war. It's not the greatest stretch of the imagination to consider the UK as doing right by Poland. The Soviets, on the other hand, had a desire for Polish territory.

This is unfortunately not true. Great Britian declared war on Germany, but provided none support to Poland. This was also the case during the Warsaw Uprising. After the war has ended Poland has been sold by under the Russian occupacion. The polish fighter squadrons that took part in the battle of britain were not even allowed to join the wining parade. They were sent home to what was now considered an enemy state. Th…

I'm not sure the UK was in much position to directly help Poland at the start of WW2, especially when Poland ended up being split between Nazi Germany and the Soviets.

At the end of the war Churchill did ask the military to come up with a plan to free Poland from Soviet control by force - but that was never going to be a realistic option, even with US assistance:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Unthinkable

Re: Warsaw, August 1947

#42

Post by anovikov »

guard-of-terra wrote: post #27
Mchl wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't the HN poster who uploaded these pictures. Here you go, mostly same content from another source: http://pokazywarka.pl/hi4dlh/

Warsaw is happy to have any walls - Minsk was reduced to runis completely (you could say, bombed to be like moon ground).

Not true, a lot more in Minsk remained after a war with some 10% of the housing stock intact, with more damaged but inhabitable. Much like in every European city. I don't even say that almost all of the damage was done by the Soviets (there are pics of Minsk from spring-early summer 1944 where city is largely intact).

Re: Warsaw, August 1947

#43

Post by anovikov »

vacri wrote: post #30
ternaryoperator wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it doesn't compare to Russian deaths, 388,000 UK deaths is a staggering number in its own right.

Compare it to US deaths in Vietnam (60,000) and in Iraq/Afghanistan (~7,000). The irony is that for all the warmongering politics of the US, the population are highly sensitive to actually losing soldiers in battle. There were single days in WWI (and the US Civil War) that saw single countries having more combat deaths than the US has seen this century in total. The US public wants wars it can win effortlessly (consc…

Huge deaths in WWII were made possible by totalitarian ideologies which made societies insensitive to losses. It only shows how much totalitarianism sucks (and it sucked most in case of Soviets vz Nazi which were BOTH totalitarian).

Re: Warsaw, August 1947

#44

Post by Sharlin »

ekianjo wrote: post #23
wuschel wrote: post #8

Very interesting pictures. Most photographs I have seen have been taken in black and white, and show the destroyed city in 1944/'45. My family had many tragic memories of the ruins of Warsaw, for they were bound with the jewish ghetto uprising and the following uprising by the AK (armia krajowa, underround army). On another note, many cities still show signs of the destructive effect on war on the jewels of our civil…

> the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Let's not forget that MOST of the Japanese cities were actually destroyed, not just Hiroshima and Nagasaki. US army used incendiary bombs on Japanese cities, causing massive fires (and according death tolls in civilian populations, largely exceeding the people who died from atomic bombs) across the country in all large cities. The whole country was effectively destroyed.

Yeah, in the grand scheme of things I think the A-bombs did relatively little damage, both in terms of human losses and material damage, compared to all the conventional bombing going on. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not destroyed in the sense many fire-bombed cities in Japan and Germany were.

Re: Warsaw, August 1947

#45

Post by simonh »

lostlogin wrote: post #34
vacri wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meh, it's not particularly insightful: "make someone fight for their survival and they'll fight for their survival" is what that quote boils down to. A sci-fi race that doesn't fight for survival when pressed is usually depicted as an uber-pacifistic race.

The fascinating thing about the Second World War is that several countries weren't fighting for survival, but for victory and power. Surely the big winner was the US. However Britain was in it to win from early on, as survival wasn't really the issue. The richer you were, the better you fared, unsurprisingly.

Survival wasn't really the issue? At the height of the U-Boat campaign we had a only few weeks worth of food supplies left in the country. We were loosing well over half a million tons of ships a month. If Japan had never attacked Pearl Harbour, the US would have just sat on it's hands and watched Britain collapse.

Yes we broke the U-Boat codes, but without US ships and aircraft covering the western Atlantic, we wouldn't have been able to use that information to mount an effective anti U-Boat campaign.

Re: Warsaw, August 1947

#46

Post by vacri »

lostlogin wrote: post #34
vacri wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meh, it's not particularly insightful: "make someone fight for their survival and they'll fight for their survival" is what that quote boils down to. A sci-fi race that doesn't fight for survival when pressed is usually depicted as an uber-pacifistic race.

The fascinating thing about the Second World War is that several countries weren't fighting for survival, but for victory and power. Surely the big winner was the US. However Britain was in it to win from early on, as survival wasn't really the issue. The richer you were, the better you fared, unsurprisingly.

The British Empire was rapidly weakening. It didn't have the resources to maintain it's massive navy, and the head-start it had in the Industrial Revolution had waned. Germany was an ascendent power and the UK was no match for it. The UK was very much fighting for survival - the counterbalancing alliances of European powers had been in considerable tension since at least Germany unified.

Look what it took to bring Germany and its allies down down - the immense manpower and resources of the Soviets, the industrial might of the US, and the naval power and combined might of the UK and the Commonwealth. And good old General Winter working for the Soviets. And this was only 20 years after WWI's peace treaty where the factories of Germany were stripped of heavy machinery. The UK was certainly fighting for survival. When you get bankers training to use catapults seriously intending to use them (however comical the Home Guard was at times), you really are in the grip of total war, fighting for your survival.

Re: Warsaw, August 1947

#47

Post by vacri »

Kociub wrote: post #37
vacri wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth noting that the UK was drawn into the war through the alliance it made with Poland in an attempt to contain German acquisitions - the UK was a friend to Poland with no real quarrel. 'Protecting Poland' was their call to war. It's not the greatest stretch of the imagination to consider the UK as doing right by Poland. The Soviets, on the other hand, had a desire for Polish territory.

This is unfortunately not true. Great Britian declared war on Germany, but provided none support to Poland. This was also the case during the Warsaw Uprising. After the war has ended Poland has been sold by under the Russian occupacion. The polish fighter squadrons that took part in the battle of britain were not even allowed to join the wining parade. They were sent home to what was now considered an enemy state. Th…

Keep in mind that no-one but the Germans were aware that blitzkreig would be as fast as it was. Up until that point, war was a somewhat leisurely affair - this is the exact reason why France fell so ignomiously. War was declared, now we can start shifting things into place while the Poles hold the Germans and... holy shit, the Poles have collapsed in only five weeks.

Same thing happened to the French - the German army moved so fast through the low countries that the French couldn't move fast enough to block them. The last time everyone fought, months would go by with only a few miles of land exchanged. This time round, a few miles of land only took an hour to obtain.

In any case, the UK deserves some credit for hastily allying with the Polish in an attempt to dissuade Germany from invading in the first place. And after the war, the Soviets were ascendent in Europe, with the rest of the Allies afraid that they would continue their march through the rest of the continent. They had a plan to take on the Soviets, but they didn't have the power to realistically defeat them.

Re: Warsaw, August 1947

#48

Post by vacri »

carlob wrote: post #35
vacri wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compare it to US deaths in Vietnam (60,000) and in Iraq/Afghanistan (~7,000). The irony is that for all the warmongering politics of the US, the population are highly sensitive to actually losing soldiers in battle. There were single days in WWI (and the US Civil War) that saw single countries having more combat deaths than the US has seen this century in total. The US public wants wars it can win effortlessly (consc…

This just goes to show how asymmetrical Afghanistan and Iraq are in terms of war. We just don't know what is like to be on the receiving end of war. Think about it: an Australian soldier in Afghanistan has made a choice (maybe forced by her economic condition, sure) to risk her life in Afghanistan. Afghan civilians didn't really have that choice. The estimates for civilian deaths in Iraq are above 100k, around 20k fo…

so I really don't know what you mean by not a particularly difficult war.

To me it's blindingly obvious that I'm talking about the experience of the Western nations in these wars. You seem to be more choosing to be obtuse rather than not actually understanding what I'm saying: that we as citizens of western make effectively zero sacrifices in pursuing these wars.

Re: Warsaw, August 1947

#49

Post by lgieron »

anovikov wrote: post #43
vacri wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compare it to US deaths in Vietnam (60,000) and in Iraq/Afghanistan (~7,000). The irony is that for all the warmongering politics of the US, the population are highly sensitive to actually losing soldiers in battle. There were single days in WWI (and the US Civil War) that saw single countries having more combat deaths than the US has seen this century in total. The US public wants wars it can win effortlessly (consc…

Huge deaths in WWII were made possible by totalitarian ideologies which made societies insensitive to losses. It only shows how much totalitarianism sucks (and it sucked most in case of Soviets vz Nazi which were BOTH totalitarian).

I wouldn't say the societes were "insensitive to losses". It's just that anyone who expressed their views would be killed/imprisoned.

Re: Warsaw, August 1947

#50

Post by lgieron »

simonh wrote: post #45
lostlogin wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fascinating thing about the Second World War is that several countries weren't fighting for survival, but for victory and power. Surely the big winner was the US. However Britain was in it to win from early on, as survival wasn't really the issue. The richer you were, the better you fared, unsurprisingly.

Survival wasn't really the issue? At the height of the U-Boat campaign we had a only few weeks worth of food supplies left in the country. We were loosing well over half a million tons of ships a month. If Japan had never attacked Pearl Harbour, the US would have just sat on it's hands and watched Britain collapse. Yes we broke the U-Boat codes, but without US ships and aircraft covering the western Atlantic, we woul…

> Yes we broke the U-Boat codes

The Enigma encoding was actually cracked by Polish mathematicians and handed to the UK during the summer of 1939. In exchange, Poles expected the UK to join them, were they to be attacked by Germans. Unfortunately, that part of the bargain never materialised.

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