Ukraine is about as black and white as it gets.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40613127.
D-Day, as told by paratroopers
61–70 of 130 posts
Re: D-Day, as told by paratroopers
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
The post I was responding to: "and in general russians are seen as enemies. Not just russian soldiers, but people with a russian cultural background. Nationalism in all its glory." is complete BS. My reference regarding attitudes towards Mexicans was a response to that comment, not to the law you just mentioned. But what a weird argument you make. Canada has numerous laws like these in order to protect French speaker…
"in general russians are seen as enemies" My wording was indeed bad, what I meant was there is a general trend towards doing that, not that the majority already does it. But the ukrainian Ultra Nationalist do. They are the black spot I am seeing. There are hardcore Nazis in my (german) home town - and they went to support their nationalistic comrades in Azow and co. They do not fight for democracy.
And at that start of US participation in WW2 all units were racially segregated. I guess we shouldn't have supplied to US armed forces with weapons since they had entrenched policy enforced racism.
Re: D-Day, as told by paratroopers
#63My 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…
I wonder what WW2 reality is/was/means and how can you compress that in a movie? The Pianist? Dunkirk?
Re: D-Day, as told by paratroopers
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
How are you defining “officially glorified”?
Like I said, the official former embassador of Ukraine in germany is a big fan of him. (and there was a scandal about some of his statements, so he was pulled back, but rewarded). A ambassador is not a private person, but pretty official. And no, I did not say all of Ukraine glorifies him.
> A ambassador is not a private person, but pretty official.
“The opinion that the Ambassador of Ukraine to Germany Andrii Melnyk expressed in an interview with a German journalist is of his own and does not reflect the position of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine.”
https://mfa.gov.ua/en/news/komentar-rechnika-mzs-ukrayini-ol...
Come on, this is silly. A private opinion was publicly disowned by the government. Of all the things to use as a “well, actually”, this is really scraping the bottom of the barrel. To say he was “officially glorified” is absolutely false.
Re: D-Day, as told by paratroopers
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
> A true to history version would be soldiers getting shrapnel wounds from indirect fire and being shot at by soldiers they can't see. Then they redo it somewhere else becouse someone said so. No offense intended, but did you really watch Saving Private Ryan? Both of those things you mention occurred within the first 60 seconds of the start of the beach scene.
Ye, but it was a long time ago. The point I am trying to make is that the opening is the 'low point' and then it becomes an action movie with the heroes in control.
It's a movie. There has to be a narrative on some level.
Re: D-Day, as told by paratroopers
#66Earlier 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.
This is an important point. There was a US isolationist strain as strong as it is today. The Man in the High Castle alt history, or The Plot Against America, both involve FDR not being involved for WW2, and that's where the US stands today: at a similar decision point about how it decides to act. The right path is never clear when you're in the valley of the moment.
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.
Re: D-Day, as told by paratroopers
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> The post I was responding to: "and in general russians are seen as enemies. Not just russian soldiers, but people with a russian cultural background. Nationalism in all its glory." OK, now I am laughing. The post you were responding to: >> Also the russian language get supressed and in general russians are seen as enemies. Not just russian soldiers, but people with a russian cultural background. Nationalism in all…
Yes, because 'and' here indicates an additional point being made, which was the point I was responding to (notice I talked about Mexicans and not about spanish). Now please respond to my Canadian laws that protect and/or elevate the french language challenge to your assertion that there would be violence if Canada had laws that favored a specific language. Because Canada has just those very laws to protect French.
>> Now please respond to my Canadian laws that protect and/or elevate the french language challenge
I'm honestly not sure what your point is here. Are you comparing laws like the ones in Canada that guarantee an ethnic minority the right to be educated in their own language to laws like the ones in Ukraine that deny an ethnic minority the right to be educated in their own language?
To me, those seem to be very different things.
Re: D-Day, as told by paratroopers
#68I 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.
The podcast "We Have Ways of Making You Talk" has a really good multi-part program about the 80th anniversary of D-Day. I highly recommend the podcast (I'm just about to catch up, after about 770 1-hour episodes).
Re: D-Day, as told by paratroopers
#69Now 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…
New Zealand had the [Furlough Mutiny](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Fraser#Furlough_Mutiny), where several thousand troops refused to go back to the fighting in Europe.
Canada had the [Terrace Mutiny](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrace_mutiny) where conscripts were told they were going to be sent overseas after being assured that only volunteers would go. A train travelling from BC to Halifax with thousands of soldiers headed overseas arrived at its destination several thousand men lighter, due to desertions.
The Italian campaign was infamous for the number of desertions in all the Allied armies. General Alexander wanted to bring back the death penalty to curb the losses.
Re: D-Day, as told by paratroopers
#70The BBC has a series called "D-Day: The Unheard Tapes". It has actual interviews with D-Day survivors (both Allied and Axis). They use the real audio, lip-synced by actors. It's mesmerizing.
You may need a VPN to use the BBC's iPlayer.