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During the War…


Sugar Ape
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7 hours ago, Section_31 said:

It's funny how the people who bleat on about the war the most are the Daily Mail - who were big fans of Hitler and fascism itself - and the Tories, who resisted Churchill being made PM and agitated behind his back for a separate peace with Hitler. 

 

Pre-war was marked by British industry actively selling components to the Luftwaffe, knowing full well they were going to be heading this way anytime soon, while the early stages of the war were marked by a series of disasters due largely to the fact we had people in charge purely because they went to private school, and it was only when they were quietly moved to the side and replaced with people who actually knew what they were doing that tactical operations stopped being shit. 

 

It's no coincidence perhaps that Britain's greatest wartime achievement was getting its entire army stuck on a beach due to the planning of blue-blooded buffoons, then them being rescued by pensioners on narrowboats. 

 

I'd say the greatest thing about Britain when it comes to wars, be it pandemics or armed conflicts, is that it survives IN SPITE of its ruling class, not because of it, whether it's nurses and shop staff hurtling into the front lines, or fellas running around Burma in their bare feet while General Cuntflaps snorts snuff and sips Bombay Sapphire three thousand miles away.  

 

They also dont seem to keen on pointing out it was leftist types who went over to fight franco whilst the right cosied up to the likes of mosely.

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1 hour ago, Captain Willard said:

Lenin said all societies are only 3 missed meals away from revolution. People’s willingness to face adversity is much more finite than you would expect. 

People here would be living in ditches eating their kids through lack of food and they still would be saying...yeah but just imagine how bad it would be under labour.

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25 minutes ago, VladimirIlyich said:

If they'd have fought and beat the fascists in Spain there was a fair chance WW2 might never have happened.

Somehow that bit has been written out of history and instead we brave old blighty standing upto those evil foreign facist fellows.

Very little is written that facism was widely viewed as the lesser evil,when compared to communism

 

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5 minutes ago, Arniepie said:

Somehow that bit has been written out of history and instead we brave old blighty standing upto those evil foreign facist fellows.

Very little is written that facism was widely viewed as the lesser evil,when compared to communism

 

 

Churchill was the right man at the right time in the sense that it was his sence of Empire and imperialism that meant he couldn't accept the Germans supplanting Britain as the foremost power in Europe, rather than any great concern for the daily freedoms of the French, Poles and the likes.

 

Absolutely no doubt in my mind your average Conservative MP would have done a deal with them if they could guarantee their own status and money/business found its way into the right hands. 

 

The Nazis had plans for post invasion of the UK and near the top was taking over the public school system which they considered essential to maintaing control of the country. Always makes me laugh that in Fatherland, the main SS training school is based in Oxford.

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3 minutes ago, Section_31 said:

 

Churchill was the right man at the right time in the sense that it was his sence of Empire and imperialism that meant he couldn't accept the Germans supplanting Britain as the foremost power in Europe, rather than any great concern for the daily freedoms of the French, Poles and the likes.

 

Absolutely no doubt in my mind your average Conservative MP would have done a deal with them if they could guarantee their own status and money/business found its way into the right hands. 

 

The Nazis had plans for post invasion of the UK and near the top was taking over the public school system which they considered essential to maintaing control of the country. Always makes me laugh that in Fatherland, the main SS training school is based in Oxford.

Thats how it's now painted though isnt it?

Plucky old england fighting for freedom and democracy.People died for your freedoms etc.

Wonder how they thought about that in the likes of India?

Churchill was also a huge fan of the likes of Mussolini. 

I think if Germany hadn't have threatened our imperial hegemony we would have let them get on with it.

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36 minutes ago, littletedwest said:

You just know that if nazis invaded Ian Duncan Smith would be a collaborator, the shit house

When he was Secretary for the DWP, he was known as Iain Duncan Himmler in the Disability helpline where I was a volunteer.

He caused unbelievable hardship and misery in that post.

Absolute cunt of a man.

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10 minutes ago, Harry's Lad said:

When he was Secretary for the DWP, he was known as Iain Duncan Himmler in the Disability helpline where I was a volunteer.

He caused unbelievable hardship and misery in that post.

Absolute cunt of a man.

I used to cut him some slack as he was clearly being given the shitty end of the stick by the tories by being forced to clash benefits. What I now realise is the willingness to acquiesce, and the relish with which he did it marks him out as an utter cunt, as you say. The frightening thing is he doesn't even realise what a massive cunt he is. The cunt..

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19 hours ago, Sugar Ape said:

Why do all these right wing cunts fetishise the war? It’s fucking relentless, the absolute worst are people around the age of IDS who seem to think they actually fought in the war rather than being born after it ended. 
 

We had that article about home working yesterday but this one today takes the piss. People secretly enjoy scrambling around trying to get fuel and food? 

 

 

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They worked in their offices due to the shitty wifi at home at the time.

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17 hours ago, Section_31 said:

It's funny how the people who bleat on about the war the most are the Daily Mail - who were big fans of Hitler and fascism itself - and the Tories, who resisted Churchill being made PM and agitated behind his back for a separate peace with Hitler. 

 

Pre-war was marked by British industry actively selling components to the Luftwaffe, knowing full well they were going to be heading this way anytime soon, while the early stages of the war were marked by a series of disasters due largely to the fact we had people in charge purely because they went to private school, and it was only when they were quietly moved to the side and replaced with people who actually knew what they were doing that tactical operations stopped being shit. 

 

It's no coincidence perhaps that Britain's greatest wartime achievement was getting its entire army stuck on a beach due to the planning of blue-blooded buffoons, then them being rescued by pensioners on narrowboats. 

 

I'd say the greatest thing about Britain when it comes to wars, be it pandemics or armed conflicts, is that it survives IN SPITE of its ruling class, not because of it, whether it's nurses and shop staff hurtling into the front lines, or fellas running around Burma in their bare feet while General Cuntflaps snorts snuff and sips Bombay Sapphire three thousand miles away.  

 

I love this man.

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The British people generally did stand up well to enemy bombing in the war, as did the Germans, under a far heavier weight of attack than was visited on this country, and as did the Soviet people who endured unimaginable privations in the sieges of Leningrad and Stalingrad. So it's not just a British thing, it's a human thing to close ranks in the face of the enemy.

My Mum lived through the Blitz; she worked at British American Tobacco, down near the docks, and I can't imagine how terrifying it must have been. Perhaps she got through it because it wasn't as bad as it might have been. An earlier post mentioned 70,000 civilian casualties during the war (from all causes, not just enemy action) but the pre-war estimates (I suppose we'd say modelling today) were for 600,000 deaths in 6 months of German bombing. It's why the government ordered a million coffins to be prepared for the outbreak of war, but had no real plans to rebuild damaged housing because they thought the people dehoused would be dead. So, surviving when you didn't expect to may have enabled people to cope. But that generation were pretty stoical; they knew life could be nasty brutish and short. My Mum as a young girl had lost her Mum and her teenage sister to TB, then a killer disase, for which the only treatment was really kill or cure. I can't imagine her experience was unique.

Someone earlier mentioned mistrust of the ruling class. I've always thought this began with the unmitigated diaster of the Ist Day of the Somme back in 1916. It still didn't stop the British people putting their trust in 1945 in a public schoolboy and former army officer, and they were right to do so.

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1 hour ago, Frank Dacey said:

The British people generally did stand up well to enemy bombing in the war, as did the Germans, under a far heavier weight of attack than was visited on this country, and as did the Soviet people who endured unimaginable privations in the sieges of Leningrad and Stalingrad. So it's not just a British thing, it's a human thing to close ranks in the face of the enemy.

My Mum lived through the Blitz; she worked at British American Tobacco, down near the docks, and I can't imagine how terrifying it must have been. Perhaps she got through it because it wasn't as bad as it might have been. An earlier post mentioned 70,000 civilian casualties during the war (from all causes, not just enemy action) but the pre-war estimates (I suppose we'd say modelling today) were for 600,000 deaths in 6 months of German bombing. It's why the government ordered a million coffins to be prepared for the outbreak of war, but had no real plans to rebuild damaged housing because they thought the people dehoused would be dead. So, surviving when you didn't expect to may have enabled people to cope. But that generation were pretty stoical; they knew life could be nasty brutish and short. My Mum as a young girl had lost her Mum and her teenage sister to TB, then a killer disase, for which the only treatment was really kill or cure. I can't imagine her experience was unique.

Someone earlier mentioned mistrust of the ruling class. I've always thought this began with the unmitigated diaster of the Ist Day of the Somme back in 1916. It still didn't stop the British people putting their trust in 1945 in a public schoolboy and former army officer, and they were right to do so.

Don't forget Frank, your mum was spoking 260 cigarettes a day for her nerves at the time

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Frank makes some excellent points, but I disagree that 1st July 1916  can be pinpointed as the start of the mistrust of the ruling class. That was indeed a terrible day, but the impact of the casualties was localised, most poignantly in the areas where the “Pals Battalions” were raised. In the days before radio and National newspapers, not to mention heavy censorship of military information, most of the population were simply unaware of the disaster at the time. The War didn’t discriminate and the ruling classes (or at least their offspring) also suffered badly.  To name just one - the Prime Minister’s son, Raymond Asquith, was killed later in the Somme battle.

I think disillusionment started after the Great War was over.  Returned servicemen were poorly treated, and the whole “Homes Fit for Heroes” plan from the then Liberal Government proved to be an empty promise.  There was mass unemployment in the 1920s, followed by even worse times in the Depression.  Any person who participated as an adult in the Second World War had experience of the 1920s and 1930s, so went into WW2 with few illusions. My parents were part of the war generation, and they told me that the reason for the landslide Labour election victory in 1945 was that most of the population blamed the Conservative party (primarily Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain) for getting the country into another World War by not standing up to Hitler earlier.

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I've no real evidence for the 1st July thing, just a feeling that the optimism before the attack; the orders to walk across no man's land, the timing of the attack at 07.30 must have led to a major sense of let down and a questioning of the officer class and possibly within the officer class itself. I've already mentioned Attlee who served in Gallipoli and France but Harold MacMilllan was a notably radical Tory in the inter-war years and Oswald Mosley was a left-wing Labour Minister before veering off to Fascism. As Waitak points out very correctly the sons of the ruling classes were directly in the firing line. I've never seen them but I believe the war memorials in the great public schools are very moving.

Of course the 20s and 30s were desperate times and people in 45 were determined not to go back there, yet it's an odd thing that in the 20s and 30s themselves elections overwhelmingly returned Conservative, or Conservative dominated governments.

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I've seen old newsreels from the late 1930s, and my impression is that the 'man in the street' wanted to avoid another war at almost any cost.  I think memories of 1914-18 and its aftermath were still too fresh for people in Britain and France. The German people suffered terribly in WW1 too, but in the 1930s they were on a mission (whipped up by the Nazis) to get revenge for a perceived betrayal.  Despite the misgivings of the wider population, it was the job of the leaders in Britain and France to identify this threat to national security and deal with it.  Instead of doing so, they followed the path of appeasement, allowing the Germans the time they needed to fully re-arm. Any move to nip this problem in the bud during the early to mid 1930s may have been unpopular, but ultimately would have been far better than what actually happened.   Ironically in our own time we have the opposite scenario of the Bush/Blair coalition declaring war on Iraq on the pretence of a threat which never existed.  

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1 hour ago, Waitak said:

I've seen old newsreels from the late 1930s, and my impression is that the 'man in the street' wanted to avoid another war at almost any cost.  I think memories of 1914-18 and its aftermath were still too fresh for people in Britain and France. The German people suffered terribly in WW1 too, but in the 1930s they were on a mission (whipped up by the Nazis) to get revenge for a perceived betrayal.  Despite the misgivings of the wider population, it was the job of the leaders in Britain and France to identify this threat to national security and deal with it.  Instead of doing so, they followed the path of appeasement, allowing the Germans the time they needed to fully re-arm. Any move to nip this problem in the bud during the early to mid 1930s may have been unpopular, but ultimately would have been far better than what actually happened.   Ironically in our own time we have the opposite scenario of the Bush/Blair coalition declaring war on Iraq on the pretence of a threat which never existed.  

Very few people remember John Dujean who was mysteriously assassinated while gathering widespread support from the workers of France and Germany to rise up against the war in 1914. He very nearly prevented it.

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