Sorry for the late notice, but I thought this would interest many on here, I also thought it was a one-off, but amazingly it's a 3 part series, and each episode lasts nearly 3 hours, minus the adverts obviously.

tiger76 wrote: ↑

Wed Nov 11, 2020 7:41 pm

Sorry for the late notice, but I thought this would interest many on here, I also thought it was a one-off, but amazingly it's a 3 part series, and each episode lasts nearly 3 hours, minus the adverts obviously.

No spoilers please

I thought the Yanks won it, that's what they tell us.

Nobody won the war. That’s a ridiculous statement.

kritichris wrote: ↑

Wed Nov 11, 2020 8:14 pm

I thought the Yanks won it, that's what they tell us.

The great historian AJP Taylor started his excellent benchmarking book The History of the Second World War by stating America won the war in the Pacific and the Soviets won the war in Europe.
He was effusive in his praise of Britain's campaign in Africa and our support in the campaign in Italy, but states we would have had to negotiate a face saving deal but for Hitler's monumental error in attacking Russia and attempting to fight on two fronts.

It will be interesting to watch the series to see the conclusions arrived at.

Thank God we have never had to endure what our lads went through.

It was won by extremely brave men who put their lives on the line in order to serve their country. My dad was a royal marine commando during the war and took shrapnel fire all over his body whist on the landing craft in what was one of the most stupid raids ever,the Dieppe raid and ended up in hospital for nine months,he was one of the lucky ones that survived out of his division I'm proud of everything he did on behalf if our people.

People need to stop saying won in regards to wars. You don’t win wars. You win football matches, card games, Snooker matches, not wars. The Nazis were stopped. You don’t win things when millions, upon millions of people lost their lives. It was put to an end, not won.

We teach history so we do not repeat the mistakes of the past. WW2 is the single worst event in modern history so it’s imperative the events that lead to it aren’t forgotten. The glorification of war is abhorrent, we should remember those who laid down their lives so that future generations don’t have to.

"Those who have unlearned to cry ..will learn it Afresh" with the Destruction of Dresden. 150.000+ men women and children perished over 3days.

tim_noone wrote: ↑

Wed Nov 11, 2020 11:10 pm

"Those who have unlearned to cry ..will learn it Afresh" with the Destruction of Dresden. 150.000+ men women and children perished over 3days.

I think you're taking the official German propaganda figures a bit too much on trust. It's generally reckoned the death toll was about 25,000.

Dyched wrote: ↑

Wed Nov 11, 2020 10:07 pm

People need to stop saying won in regards to wars. You don’t win wars. You win football matches, card games, Snooker matches, not wars. The Nazis were stopped. You don’t win things when millions, upon millions of people lost their lives. It was put to an end, not won.

I suppose the word "won" gives the implication by it being put to an end by the defeat (or whatever other term we might use) of Germany as opposed to being put to an end by simply surrendering. Either act would have put the war to an end, but the results would have been very different.

Worth remembering that Russia did not 'win' the war in the East by being a bulwark against Germany but were defending themselves against an aggressor who mad a monumental mistake in attacking them. Let us not forget too that Russia was armed by Britain at a terrible cost to our merchant marine and Royal Navy and the thousands of brave men sent to a watery grave in the Artic Convoys. Evidently the first thing the Russians did when the arms arrived was to remove all markings that identified the tanks etc' as being from the Allies and replacing them with Russian makings as though they had originally built them. It is calculated that it was the allies supply that enabled Russia to hold on and then turn to the offensive.

claret59 wrote: ↑

Thu Nov 12, 2020 2:42 am

Let us not forget too that Russia was armed by Britain at a terrible cost to our merchant marine and Royal Navy and the thousands of brave men sent to a watery grave in the Artic Convoys.

"The Cruel Sea" by Nicholas Montsarrat is a good fictionalised account of what is was like in those convoys.

dsr wrote: ↑

Thu Nov 12, 2020 1:32 am

I think you're taking the official German propaganda figures a bit too much on trust. It's generally reckoned the death toll was about 25,000.

That's ok then....

I don't think Germany's attack on Russia was entirely a 'mistake'. It was a mistake in the sense that it was a failure, but Hitler's whole intention in starting a war in Europe was to defeat the Soviet Union and seize vast amounts of land in the East. The attack on France was just a means of ensuring that his aim of destroying the Soviet Union wouldn't be hindered by an attack from Britain and France in the West and his having to fight a war on two fronts. If he was not intent on waging war in the East, he would never have attacked in the West.

missed this...but watched Lost films of WW2 in BBC 4 over the last two nights. Well worth a watch

tim_noone wrote: ↑

Thu Nov 12, 2020 9:23 am

That's ok then....

Britain had no way to avoid people dying. Fight a war, people die; surrender, people die. There was no option that meant people don't die.

tim_noone wrote: ↑

Wed Nov 11, 2020 11:10 pm

"Those who have unlearned to cry ..will learn it Afresh" with the Destruction of Dresden. 150.000+ men women and children perished over 3days.

Lets not forget what happened either in 1940 during the Blitz (Blitzkrieg = Lightning war in German)


~40,000[1]–43,000 civilians killed[2]
~46,000 – 139,000 injured[2]
Two million houses destroyed (60 percent of those in London)

dsr wrote: ↑

Thu Nov 12, 2020 9:42 am

Britain had no way to avoid people dying. Fight a war, people die; surrender, people die. There was no option that meant people don't die.

You quoted me on numbers....civilians were purposely targeted over a 3 day period...to quote Benitez Fact!!

Dyched wrote: ↑

Wed Nov 11, 2020 10:07 pm

People need to stop saying won in regards to wars. You don’t win wars. You win football matches, card games, Snooker matches, not wars. The Nazis were stopped. You don’t win things when millions, upon millions of people lost their lives. It was put to an end, not won.

Pure semantics. I see nothing wrong in saying we won the war, or the Germans lost it etc.. Sure if you want to go deeper that's OK but as a general statement it's accurate.

Where of course Hitler failed was in not getting air superiority over Britain - the Battle of Britain. As a result he couldn't invade Britain and finish off the war in the West. So what Britain did which the world and especially Europe, should be for ever grateful for, is not lose the war to the Nazis.

It's an interesting question as to what would have happened if the Nazis had not attacked Russia, or more interesting still, had attacked them immediately. I agree it was always there intention to do so and the Ribbentrop - Molotov agreement which divided up Poland between the two and effectively started WW2 was always a temporary measure.

As for the Americans, they were already assisting us with Lend-Lease and convoy escorts before Pearl Harbour in December 1941 brought them fully into the war.

Could we have won the war without the direct participation of the US and Russia? I don't know the answer of course! What nearly brought us to our knees was the U-boat war. We didn't really get to grips with that until 1943 and were supported in this by US ship production as well as their convoy escorts and long range aircraft. Perhaps we would have lost that battle and had to sue for peace. Or we would have become financially bankrupt because of a really long drawn out war.

tim_noone wrote: ↑

Thu Nov 12, 2020 10:23 am

You quoted me on numbers....civilians were purposely targeted over a 3 day period...to quote Benitez Fact!!

These things happen.

In WW1, civilians were not targeted and the population of Germany believed (correctly) that they had been shafted by the Allies, and perhaps that they shouldn't have surrendered; this led to the combined circumstance of a collapsed economy and the breeding ground for popular support of Hitler.

In WW2, civilians were targeted and the population of Germany knew that they had been utterly crushed by the Allies and what they had left was determined by what the Allies chose to give them. This led to the combined circumstances of a booming economy and a population with a distaste for war and knowledge of their own collective guilt.

If civilians hadn't been targeted, how would it have been different?

And if it was a mistake, or was unnecessary, then like I said - these things happen. When you are forced to make big decisions, the mistakes will be big as well. The Dieppe raid was mentioned - a big mistake.

dsr wrote: ↑

Thu Nov 12, 2020 10:47 am

In WW1, civilians were not targeted and the population of Germany believed (correctly) that they had been shafted by the Allies, and perhaps that they shouldn't have surrendered; this led to the combined circumstance of a collapsed economy and the breeding ground for popular support of Hitler.

The Germans were inevitably going to lose WW1. There was a naval blockade which was starving them, and the US had entered the war with its industrial might. The German people may not have felt they had lost the war but that is what was going to happen.

Of course they were punished severely by the Versaille Treaty and that was principally France's doing, but who can blame them. The major amount of WW1 damage had been done in France and Belgium - Germany was virtually untouched. When the Germans left France at the end of the war they stole factories, railway wagons etc. as well as flooding mines. France's economy was devastated and it wouldn't be fair that a new era would start with them so handicapped compared to the Germans.

Hipper wrote: ↑

Thu Nov 12, 2020 10:44 am

Pure semantics. I see nothing wrong in saying we won the war, or the Germans lost it etc.. Sure if you want to go deeper that's OK but as a general statement it's accurate.

Where of course Hitler failed was in not getting air superiority over Britain - the Battle of Britain. As a result he couldn't invade Britain and finish off the war in the West. So what Britain did which the world and especially Europe, should be for ever grateful for, is not lose the war to the Nazis.

It's an interesting question as to what would have happened if the Nazis had not attacked Russia, or more interesting still, had attacked them immediately. I agree it was always there intention to do so and the Ribbentrop - Molotov agreement which divided up Poland between the two and effectively started WW2 was always a temporary measure.

As for the Americans, they were already assisting us with Lend-Lease and convoy escorts before Pearl Harbour in December 1941 brought them fully into the war.

Could we have won the war without the direct participation of the US and Russia? I don't know the answer of course! What nearly brought us to our knees was the U-boat war. We didn't really get to grips with that until 1943 and were supported in this by US ship production as well as their convoy escorts and long range aircraft. Perhaps we would have lost that battle and had to sue for peace. Or we would have become financially bankrupt because of a really long drawn out war.

The germans had a different agenda to what the allies had. For Germany they would have “won” so to speak. From my point of view at least, when fighting for peace you don’t win. You stop the enemy. We did that at great cost to civilian lives. Like I said, you don’t win wars when those amounts of people died. All those innocent families ripped apart. Not only by the germans but the allied forces. Ask those families who won the war. Nobody. Generations of people whipped out. Nobody won. The germans campaign was ended. No more, no less.

dsr wrote: ↑

Thu Nov 12, 2020 10:47 am

These things happen.

In WW1, civilians were not targeted and the population of Germany believed (correctly) that they had been shafted by the Allies, and perhaps that they shouldn't have surrendered; this led to the combined circumstance of a collapsed economy and the breeding ground for popular support of Hitler.

In WW2, civilians were targeted and the population of Germany knew that they had been utterly crushed by the Allies and what they had left was determined by what the Allies chose to give them. This led to the combined circumstances of a booming economy and a population with a distaste for war and knowledge of their own collective guilt.

If civilians hadn't been targeted, how would it have been different?

And if it was a mistake, or was unnecessary, then like I said - these things happen. When you are forced to make big decisions, the mistakes will be big as well. The Dieppe raid was mentioned - a big mistake.

In WW1 civilians were targeted, by both the Central Powers and Entente. There’s no other way to describe Germany’s unrestricted U-boat warfare (and bombing), and the Allied blockade.

And the German Army was militarily defeated at the end. The Hindenburg Line had been breached and the Germans were in retreat. The idea they had been stabbed in the back was an invention.

Dyched wrote: ↑

Thu Nov 12, 2020 1:42 pm

The germans had a different agenda to what the allies had. For Germany they would have “won” so to speak. From my point of view at least, when fighting for peace you don’t win. You stop the enemy. We did that at great cost to civilian lives. Like I said, you don’t win wars when those amounts of people died. All those innocent families ripped apart. Not only by the germans but the allied forces. Ask those families who won the war. Nobody. Generations of people whipped out. Nobody won. The germans campaign was ended. No more, no less.

I can see your point, but I would describe it as the price of victory. It is semantics on my part, but it’s important for the bereaved to understand their loss as something worthwhile. And I think In a war like WW2, we can honestly describe it as good versus evil. It’s not jingoistic to be happy good triumphed over evil, so to downplay the victory is to both suggest the alternative wouldn’t have been calamitous, and deny people grieving some comfort in their loss.

Marney&Mee wrote: ↑

Thu Nov 12, 2020 9:39 am

missed this...but watched Lost films of WW2 in BBC 4 over the last two nights. Well worth a watch

Been watching the footy, so I'll have to catch that over the weekend, I guess it's similar in content to the C5 programme, thanks for the info, always good to learn new aspects of this conflict, and differing viewpoints to the normal ones expressed.

Erasmus wrote: ↑

Thu Nov 12, 2020 9:31 am

I don't think Germany's attack on Russia was entirely a 'mistake'. It was a mistake in the sense that it was a failure, but Hitler's whole intention in starting a war in Europe was to defeat the Soviet Union and seize vast amounts of land in the East. The attack on France was just a means of ensuring that his aim of destroying the Soviet Union wouldn't be hindered by an attack from Britain and France in the West and his having to fight a war on two fronts. If he was not intent on waging war in the East, he would never have attacked in the West.

The initial success's led to complacency & the feeling of being invincible, such was the desire for lebensraum central to nazi ideology justifying territorial expansion into central & eastern europe & acheiving that through whatever methods was the ultimate prize, western europe was a distraction not really necessary initially.

AndrewJB wrote: ↑

Thu Nov 12, 2020 6:45 pm

In WW1 civilians were targeted, by both the Central Powers and Entente. There’s no other way to describe Germany’s unrestricted U-boat warfare (and bombing), and the Allied blockade.

And the German Army was militarily defeated at the end. The Hindenburg Line had been breached and the Germans were in retreat. The idea they had been stabbed in the back was an invention.

It doesn't really matter whether it was an invention or not. If the population of Germany believed they'd been shafted to the extent that they allowed Hitler to take charge, then it was a Bad Thing.

kritichris wrote: ↑

Wed Nov 11, 2020 8:14 pm

I thought the Yanks won it, that's what they tell us.

Never ever heard someone from the USA ever insinuate that.. if they do they haven't studied the war.

Gotta admit though, we'd have been buggered and a lot more people would have lost their lives if the US weren't involved. It was a collective effort, with many nations involved. No shame in that.

Why not celebrate that instead of trying to turn it into a some kind of competition?

superdimitri wrote: ↑

Fri Nov 13, 2020 12:26 am

Never ever heard someone from the USA ever insinuate that.. if they do they haven't studied the war.


Why not celebrate that instead of trying to turn it into a some kind of competition?

I did post tongue in cheek. I accept it was a joint effort though the Russians believe they defeated Germany. However my statement stands as per the link below.

US credited

In contrast, Americans, Germans and the French believe the U.S. war effort ultimately was the most significant contribution in achieving victory in Europe, according to a survey conducted by British pollster YouGov. Recent polls conducted in Russia, however, show Russians are convinced they’re the ones deserving the main credit for Hitler’s defeat — a reflection, possibly, of the huge death toll the country suffered in the war.

https://www.voanews.com/europe/which-co ... rld-war-ii

The russian's won the war, end of story. All the propaganda swallowed up and believed since. Do your homework

Just finished watching the Netflix series 'Hitler's Circle of Evil'

It's a bit grim obviously but well worth a watch if, like me, you're unclear how someone like Hitler and the abhorrent Nazi party could rise to power from the beer-halls of Munich, to a quest for world domination and genocide.

It also focuses on the in-fighting, back-stabbing and jostling for power that went on among his henchmen as they orchestrated the most horrific events in human history.

Vintage Claret wrote: ↑

Fri Nov 13, 2020 5:26 pm

Just finished watching the Netflix series 'Hitler's Circle of Evil'

It's a bit grim obviously but well worth a watch if, like me, you're unclear how someone like Hitler and the abhorrent Nazi party could rise to power from the beer-halls of Munich, to a quest for world domination and genocide.

It also focuses on the in-fighting, back-stabbing and jostling for power that went on among his henchmen as they orchestrated the most horrific events in human history.

There was this recent drama/documentary - The Rise of the Nazis:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00084tc

And the excellent documentary from 1997, 'The Nazis - A Warning from History':

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Nazis-Warning- ... B0001MIQ94

Dyched wrote: ↑

Wed Nov 11, 2020 10:07 pm

People need to stop saying won in regards to wars. You don’t win wars. You win football matches, card games, Snooker matches, not wars. The Nazis were stopped. You don’t win things when millions, upon millions of people lost their lives. It was put to an end, not won.

I get your sentiment, but its rubbish.
You'd have known about the difference between winning and losing if Hitler had prevailed. Nobody is claiming war is a good thing, but there is a massive difference between winning and losing one, especially this one.

Victory

1.The overcoming of an enemy or antagonist. 2 : achievement of mastery or success in a struggle or endeavor against odds or difficulties.

VIctory in Europe/Japan day.

Is victory the same as winning? We were victorious over the axis powers doesn’t have the same ring to it as We won the war I suppose.

For me the war wasn’t won but the peace was.

Germany had 13.1 million soldiers serve in ww2 and Britain only 3m by the end.

Of course we needed help.

As for mistakes in WW2 where would you rank Japan attacking Pearl harbour? Waking the sleeping giant as the commander said in Tora tora tora!

A huge contribution played by other countries such as free poles, free french, Canadians, Indians and many others not just the yanks. There were many pivotal points in the war. The Battle of Britain when we had no yank input and the Germans decision to attack Russia were pivotal.