WWII thread

[DoTheFandango]

DEAR GOD MAN WATCH YOUR LANGUAGE There are CHILDRen!

[PaulOakenfold]

Cool ass link about the German V2s. I love how they spent funding on railroad propelled V2s to send them further and further. They were truly trying to develop the doomsday device.

http://www.zamandayolculuk.com/cetinbal/V2RROCKET.htm

[PaulOakenfold]

Just looking online real quick, of course there are more in depth articles, but this is a brief outline of the African front starting in French occupied Tangiers: http://africanhistory.about.com/od/w.../WWIIJun40.htm

edit: make sure you check the African Timeline links if you're interested.

[PaulOakenfold]

In my armchair army officer eyes, the capture of Italy was the final blow to Germany's defense efforts. Germany was falling back from losses on Russia and was now fighting a war on two fronts. D-Day was inevitable, Hitler just underestimated the true force of it because the soft underbelly of the European Axis force had been compromised.

[Ara]

There's a minimum amount of war history taught in elementary schools or high
schools in Finland. Might be because it's even still such a delicate issue and for
Finns honour is almost as important as for the Japanese so we don't even talk
about it elsewhere than in the army. The veterans decided to stay as silent
about the war as possible, it's a shame really, and now only a few are still alive.
But the picture given is clear, both nazis and russians were evil and we first
fought against evil russia, then kicked the nazis out. Only recently there's been
open discussion on our short alliance with the nazis, that burned down whole
North Finland after we broke the alliance and forced them out of Finland.

It's a typical history for a country that was fighting for it's independence and
freedom, there's minimum amount of boasting and mostly hurtful thing that are
kept in silence.

To me it's amazing how nazis organized their armies and nation, they worked
as a whole and nothing can beat the German logic sometimes. Also Mussolini
amused me with his dreams of becoming the next leader of great Italy just like
Caesar or Rome.

[Mantra-Slider]

Sweden:

I dont remember exactly when we learned about ww2 but I think it was in "Högstadiet" (class 7-9) Sweden chickend out in ww2 so we learn pretty much nothing about our own involvement (probably cos we feel ashamed that we had so many hidden nazi sympathizers and that we were so scared of Hitler) therefor, iirc everything we learned was based on Germany. Because Sweden is a very socialistic country (maybe not so much anymore, at least not compared to how it used to be) we were taught alot about the social structure of Germany with Hitler rising to power and nazism as a goverment both during war-time and the period between the wars. We also focused on the genocides and learned about the italian fascism with Mussolini.

I cant say we talked much about the war in itself with the great battles and the war-leaders etc but more of the things that caused the war and stuff like that? We didnt learn anyhthing about what was going on in southeast europe or asia (japan-china), the stuff in north africa we touched briefly and nothing at all about the war in in the oceans between asia and america. I remember that when we reached the atombombs we spent alot of time debating if it was right to kill so many people to end the war and about human progress (!!) and inventions and stuff instead of talking about the american involvement in the war up to this time.
I think if you ask any swede about the war they would say it was won thanks to russia and the allies (americans especially) but the americans still come out somewhat bad due to the atombombs and stuff. The real heroes of the war however are the "finlands sak är vår" fins(!!!!!!!!) and the brits (wohooo churchill).

I think Ive never seen as many documentaries in school as I did when we talked about ww2!!

edit: yes we were taught about the bombings of London and Dresden and shit.

[PaulOakenfold]

There's a minimum amount of war history taught in elementary schools or high
schools in Finland. Might be because it's even still such a delicate issue and for
Finns honour is almost as important as for the Japanese so we don't even talk
about it elsewhere than in the army. The veterans decided to stay as silent
about the war as possible, it's a shame really, and now only a few are still alive.
But the picture given is clear, both nazis and russians were evil and we first
fought against evil russia, then kicked the nazis out. Only recently there's been
open discussion on our short alliance with the nazis, that burned down whole
North Finland after we broke the alliance and forced them out of Finland.

It's a typical history for a country that was fighting for it's independence and
freedom, there's minimum amount of boasting and mostly hurtful thing that are
kept in silence.

That's real interesting. Your teachers could really focus on the Finnish resistance during the war instead of dwelling on the falling of Finland due to two superpowers struggling over your country. Holy crap do you guys have so much history during WWII! I hope you look some stuff up, the politics alone between Germany and Russia over you are very important.

[PaulOakenfold]

I think it is very interesting about the lack of talk about the Pacific war within much of European teachings. It was very unconventional, yet incredibly large and expensive. I understand pretty much only two super two superpowers were entrenched in this, but you have to realize that the only reason two bombs were dropped on large cities in Japan was because the US had finally been able to pigeon-hole them onto their island. Ground warfare on the other islands had been seen as killing too many soldiers/civilians on each side.

The Emperor of Japan sought to fight ground warfare in its last island of Japan if the Americans continued to attack (unless they declared a cease fire) so we decided to bomb two of their large cities. Our President found at the time that it was the cleanest declaration of victory.

I'm not going to argue the legitimacy of the (what I feel) atrocities of these bombings, but that was the 1940 American thinking of the time. It was a different era, and a lot was at stake, and that is the thinking we learned of (but was not interpreted the same by my generation) in my growing up.

Thanks for the response in Scandinavian (fuck you Finland, I'm putting you in with those nations for WWII, I respect you in the EU now) talk. I'm still interested in teachings in more Nazi influenced nations even though Scandinavia was a large political and economical point of debate.

[PaulOakenfold]

Japan at the point of the bombings had enlisted all of their civilians into ground warfare. That's the only excuse I'll give my country for the years of abuse that radiation ravished their island.

[Xog]

edit bro, damn. it confuses me when you add something in a completely diff post

[D1st0rt]

The Japanese committed horrible atrocities when they invaded China and Korea, it's not like they were model citizens before we bombed them.

[Galleleo]

As far as I can remember I have been taught pretty much everything. From Hitler's rise to power (his history, how and what, what made it possible for him to get there, etc.) to the start of the war (invading Poland) our involvement (like WWI we were a neutral country, but then Hitler decided to invade us anyway, we lasted 5 days with our 1 tank and small ass army), throughout the rest of the war, the varies big battles, such as in Dunkerk, Africa, etc. We learned about Pearl Harbor and stuff about the Asia side (cause Indonesia was still a Dutch colony so we had soldiers held captive there too), towards the end of the war and the aftermath (division of Germany and Berlin, Soviet in Europe, the forming of what eventually grew into the European Union, rebuilding the country, etc. etc. etc.). Pretty much everything.

And unlike Nycle, I do care, I think it is important to know your history and that of others and to learn from it, more than to just simply discard it because it was longer ago than that you are old.

[Leaf]

Sweden:

I dont remember exactly when we learned about ww2 but I think it was in "Högstadiet" (class 7-9) Sweden chickend out in ww2 so we learn pretty much nothing about our own involvement (probably cos we feel ashamed that we had so many hidden nazi sympathizers and that we were so scared of Hitler) therefor, iirc everything we learned was based on Germany. Because Sweden is a very socialistic country (maybe not so much anymore, at least not compared to how it used to be) we were taught alot about the social structure of Germany with Hitler rising to power and nazism as a goverment both during war-time and the period between the wars. We also focused on the genocides and learned about the italian fascism with Mussolini.

I cant say we talked much about the war in itself with the great battles and the war-leaders etc but more of the things that caused the war and stuff like that? We didnt learn anyhthing about what was going on in southeast europe or asia (japan-china), the stuff in north africa we touched briefly and nothing at all about the war in in the oceans between asia and america. I remember that when we reached the atombombs we spent alot of time debating if it was right to kill so many people to end the war and about human progress (!!) and inventions and stuff instead of talking about the american involvement in the war up to this time.
I think if you ask any swede about the war they would say it was won thanks to russia and the allies (americans especially) but the americans still come out somewhat bad due to the atombombs and stuff. The real heroes of the war however are the "finlands sak är vår" fins(!!!!!!!!) and the brits (wohooo churchill).

I think Ive never seen as many documentaries in school as I did when we talked about ww2!!

edit: yes we were taught about the bombings of London and Dresden and shit.

I know you're a couple of years older than me but that's very accurate!
What surprised me and what aggravated me in school was that it was so god damn focused on Germany and England. Soviet was almost completely left out. I didn't learn about communism until like I don't know, 17-18(?) reading about it myself. Same with the nukes. Japan and USA from cinematics etc.
Nothing about Swedens involvement and everything about Germany.

[PaulOakenfold]

I just watched Into the Storm last night. It was a HBO documentary in the same form of the John Adams one they did last year. It was about Winston Churchill from 1940-1945, very interesting. I knew he was a brilliant man, but he was such a strong willed individual much like his people of that time before the labor party came into control.