To show you how ignorant the general population of America is.

War is disgusting, stupid and wasteful. - It was the war that made the holocaust possible. This is deplorable.
But it was MEN who fought their way to those camps and ended the slaughter...
Things quite often return to the way they were before a war...just less people...Systems that allow an individual or small group of individuals to go to war is wrong.
Human condition? - Hmmm...in this case its about helping those weaker...but also about rival tribes competing for dominance...deep.

 

True the big death camps came after the war was going, but Hitler had already started the killing before that (not everyone in Dachau survived, enough died to intimidate the population). The war, unintentionally, put an end to it.
On an other level: I see a neighbor being murdered and I can try to save him (at some risk to myself), am I to say, "fighting is wrong" and let him be killed? That would make me an accomplice to the murder?
In any case this is "above my pay grade" (US President quoted).

 

Advocating that there are alternatives to solving a problem other than war and a lack of historical knowledge are not connected in any way.

 

if you wish to cultivate lies in the minds of our young children , then bullsh*t is far more effective than miracle-grow

 

Sheep muck works just as well...I have hair again...

 

Pure hipocrisy, 2/3 of the Russians also belive they won the war alone. The Cold War striked in both sides, and even more in Russia, with all the brainwash and lack of freedom from the Communism. In the West, there was the ideological interest, yes, but the lack of access for Westerns in the Soviet archives was an important factor as well.

And actually, this is all BS, including the so talked casualities the Soviets inflicted on the Germans. It was everything an interconnected effort between East and West.

 

Hitler always let clear he had pretentions in the East.

"But Jenisch, the Western Allies would have been in a complicated situation without the Russians". Before someone say this, with Hitler's pretensions in mind, I will ask: how the Russians would stay without the Western Allies? Someone here can guarantee that Hitler, without the naval blockade, no need to built U-boats, no bombing , no other fronts and no Lend-Lease to the Soviets, would still be defeated by them? This is not a quiet similar scenario to the Western Allies without Russia? (and I didn't even put the Japanese and the Italians in consideration)

People from the wartime tend to see the conflict more with his nomenclature: a global conflict. Today, there's an increasing obcession among historians to put the Eastern Front above all other fronts, what is really a shame, since now without Cold War, that we can finally have an impartial view of such global conflict were each of the major Allied powers played a decisive role.

 

Ho hum....I thought Easy coy 101 won the war? It seemed like it anyway for a few years back there.....Thank the Lord we all know it was Monty that won it for us.

 

Monty Python - Meaning Of Life (Fighting Each Other) - YouTube

But back on topic...Americans are generally no more ignorant than any others. Brits included....We have a prime minister who in his first international talk told the world 1940 had America as our bestest mate and ally and we in UK did not a lot....He even wrote me an apology for saying it....God love us help us and save us all...

 

urqh,

There were four Easy Companies in the 101st Airborne, which one was that won the war? Inquiring minds want to know.

 

Blimey, How many easy coy's from the divs battalions made up the infamous Band Of Brothers then? I'd have thought it would have been simple to work that one out...

 

Oh, the "infamous" Band of Brothers...

Would that be the AC/DC, Van Halen, or the Allman Brothers Band? But, I don't think any of them were around during WW2...

Yes, I'm a very "ignorant" American

 

Your thinking is corrupt.....You need to delve into the history of the secretive Blues Brothers...Their links with the Ardenne are well known too...But funny enough your books on your side of the pond are ignorant of this important link.

 

I apologize if my title offended. There are ignorant people everywhere and the truth is always somewhere in between.

 

No, its a fair subject to raise. Been raised before. I put radio on this morning...Radio 4 in UK....reportage by a guy called Leigh....who told us that a recent poll of UK 6th formers thats the 16 to 18 age group, thought that Margaret Thatcher was prime minister in ww2.....Gobsmacked I turned it off....I cannot vouch for the poll or its results but was mentioned on the 9am radio 4 show over here...America is far from alone it seems.

 

I the world of “what if’s” - there was a possibility (in 1939-40 that Britain and France would have gone to war with the USSR over Finland (the USSR and Germany were allied at the time) - what if that had happened?

 

Ah yes - the "butterfly effect" - I agree with you.

 

You mean she wasn't!

 

Yeah. ; )

The problem with most of the Western historiography, is that it only looks the events and the way they happened, leaving no space for a fluid interpretation. I used to think the Western historians belived the Soviet Union played a supossed decisive role together with the Western Allies, and this was only a way to emphasize the Soviet sacrifices. But no, their goal is really show that Germany lost the war in the East, and would likely lose it regardless of the Western Allies, which played a helpful but secondary role.

I also have a conflict with such historians about the Japanese in the Nomonhan Incident. Since the first time I read about it, I knew the Japanese were poorly equipped and didn't take the fight much seriously there, while Zhukov's forces were in a opposite state. They were also victms of a surprise attack. A Japanese guy from another forum, told me that most Nomonhan veterans agree with my view. He also told me that Masanobu Tsuji told in an interview that he could have won if IGHQ had supported him. Unfornately, when we heard about Nomonhan in the West, is only with those cliches: "Zhukov wiped out the Japanese and their paper tanks, and they didn't come back because it!". Even this thesis of Nomonhan changing history is not based in any solid evidence, only interpretation, and a conclusion like this only can be possible by the lack of flexibility in analyzing events the Western (together with the Russian, at least here and the the Eastern Front), historigraphy has.