Read this: Chivers, this is the story of Taylor Morris (22 Photos) : theCHIVE

and come back and tell me he isn't a hero.

 

Or the "Angel of Mercy", a factual story of how a Luftwaffe ace guided a heavily damaged B-17 bomber out of Germany instead of shooting him down.

Yeah that happened.

 

He and so many others.

 

i thought we were talking about world war 2.

 

Don't really want to get political, but those hippies sicken me.

 

Don't worry kid, one day you'll get it. It might not be soon, and it may take years. But I can assure you, one day you'll realize how significant those men and women are who fought in WWII.

Their importance cannot even be argued, so don't bother with what you "believe". Your beliefs will change multiple times before you're even 30.

 

Actually the Allies did do it for the benefit of others. Lets do a little recap to catch you up to speed.
Germany decided they wanted some of their territory back and a bunch of other territory and started to take it. First they grabbed Austria and then Czechoslovakia. Every one thought by giving up those two little countries they would spare the world another war. But it was not to be. At one point in time a part of Poland was part of Germany. The allies thought it would be hilarious to make Poland a country again and to make a small part of Germany be surrounded by Poland. They called the part breaking up Germany the Polish or Danzig Corridor.
The Germans told the Polish government that they could return that little stretch of land to Germany or Germany was gonna declare war. The Polish government thought about it for about a minute before telling the Germans they could not do that because it would turn Poland into a land locked country. Not good! The German government was hoping they would of just handed it over. So on Sept 1st 1939 the Germans invaded. But whats that? Britain and France declared war on Germany, sacrificing some of their own men and women for other people.
Lets fast forward a bit. The bombing we did against Axis industries was not done just because. It was done to help liberate Europe faster. By bombing the oil fields at Ploesti and interupting their oil producation we forced the Germans into using their armor more conservatively. They didn't have the fuel to drive their tanks and that allowed us to win the war faster.
By bombing their ammunition factories we forced the Germans to under stock their...I think the point has been made.
It sucks but it wasn't done out of blind hatred for the Germans. Civilians lost their lives in an effort to hurry the end of the conflict.

Some say freedom is free but I tend to disagree. Our freedom has a cost, and that cost is you and me.

Chuck

 

This.

 

Well, it's a little more complicated than that, Cav. Add in the fact that Germany was essentially bankrupt after the damage caused during WWI and the massive war repayments that came about. And on top of that, an armistice was signed due to a collapse of the social infrastructure leading to what was essentially a small revolution, rather than a true total military defeat. So you had a situation of hyperinflation (for those who never learned about this, think wheelbarrows full of money to buy one loaf of bread. Recent example: Zimbabwe), of unemployment and massive social upheaval, combined with a lack of social infrastructure, and with a military that, while significantly reduced, scuttled, given away, and forcibly disbanded, was not truly disassembled or humbled.

You could argue the terms of the Treaty of Versailles were unfair, but they were not too terrible compared to how treaties worked at that time, or even compared to the treaty Germany signed with Russia (due to the October Rebellion) before WW1 ended. Still, the treaty was PERCEIVED as unfair by the German people, and resentment of it definitely ties into the causes of WW2, if only because the treaty failed to really address any of the issues that started WW1 or arose out of it in relation to Germany vs. western Europe.

The geographical divisions that arose from the Treaty of Versailles were pretty ridiculous, you're right, they weren't thought out and they tried to please certain groups, massively pissing off other groups in the process (We still see the impact of this in the Balkans and Middle East today). So these new divisions caused even further chaos, which festered in the region for the next 20 years.

So you had a situation in Germany where people were poor and hungry, the government was unstable, there was foreign intervention, and a bunch of pretty unwholesome attitudes start taking root. The idea that Germany never truly lost the war, that it was "stabbed in the back" by its own people and defeated from within, and that as a result all this rightful german territory, all this rightful German wealth was being taken from the fatherland for the europeans. And then that "stabbed in the back" theory began being attributed more and more to the socialist movement and the jewish population (always a popular scapegoat). So things got worse and worse, and popular sentiment began adopting a more and more "us vs. them" attitude, which was fed by ideas of nationalism, militarism, and german cultural superiority that had been around since before WW1 (and were a major cause of it, for both the British AND the Germans).

And at this same time, you started seeing the rise of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party (who were socialist in name only for the purpose of tying into political naming trends, and rallied against socialism, communism, and Bolshevism as major threats to Germany and reasons for its woes). Nationalist movements, such as the Nazi Party, became more and more prominent, especially in 1929 when a referendum was held regarding rejecting the Versailles treaty. The Nazi Party continued a massive use of propaganda and intimidation, coming to a head in the 1930 elections when the Nazi Party essentially had its own militia, and was effectively banned as a terrorist group in certain cities. But the Nazis and Hitler became the second largest party in Germany, and within a month were taking violent action against Jewish businesses. The violence escalated, as did the rhetoric regarding german militarism and anti-seminitism and anti-Bolshevism, and within 2 years they were the largest political party, and Hitler became Chancellor. He murdered his political rivals and consolidated total power over the next two years, essentially turning Germany into a dictatorship, and then turned his attention outward. Germany became more and more militarized, and dissent became more and more harshly punished.

Germany began openly defying the treaty in terms of arms buildups, annexing Austria and Czechoslovakia, under the premise that as they had significant german populations, those two countries would be better off as part of a greater German empire. The nations that would become the allies were still rebuilding their militaries after WWI, were dealing with economic impacts of the great depression, and wanted to avoid another war if they could. So they adopted a policy of appeasement, hoping these two nations would be enough for Germany. They weren't, and when Germany invaded Poland as Cavshock explained, WW2 effectively began.

 

You guys are sure making me feel insignificant. My age is really that obvious, huh?

 

you don't seem to understand. If those brave men and women in WWII didn't risk their lives back then, we wouldn't be sitting here talking about transformers.

You can say all you want how we shouldn't be in this war or that war these days, but I do not tolerate ANY disrespect for the great generation. Those brave men and woman gave their lives so us future generations can live a life of freedom and peace. We could never thank them enough

War is sometimes a neccesary evil, and during WWII, it was, civilians died, on both sides, but in order to stop a tyrant bent on ruling the world, it had to be done.

This generation just has no respect for the past, though I do, I may be 20 years old, but i'll forever honor those amazing people

 

I have the utmost respect for the men and women who fought for freedom in WW2. They are and always will be heroes to me.

 

Same here.

@KayeMinor: Look, dude. Just because civilians were bombed doesn't mean that it was a bad thing. It's like some of these other guys (and girls) said. It was a necessary part of the war, and you know what? People on the Allied side tried to minimize the casualties!

You just can't remove the casualties from war. It's just not possible. People suffered, yes, and I agree that maybe there could've been other ways, but at the time it was perceived as the only way to win the war. And it all began because some madman wanted to rule the world and turn it into a perfect little German paradise.

Over the course human history, people fought for different things such as power, religion, or even money. But after the American Revolution, things began to change. There became something new to fight for, and it was unnoticed at first. But people, both men and women (secretly) began to fight to ensure their independence and to defend it. Thus the United States was born.

A few decades later. The War of 1812 breaks out. Why? Britain wants us back. The US beats them back and proves to the world that they have what it takes to survive out there. Again, something new is defended: freedom.

Jump ahead fifty years. The Civil War is raging. Why? To eradicate slavery. Think about that. Why fight to eliminate something as vile as that? Because it was the first instance in which people began to see slaves as real human beings, not just animals to do whatever they please with. Human rights are fought for unknowingly. Tidbit of info: this foreshadowed the Second World War in a way. Total war then, total war in WWII.

Spanish-American War. Why fight that one? To try and liberate others. At first it was for imperial purposes, but the US arrived too late in the game for that. Also, it would've been a drain on the economy back then. So we granted our new "colonies" their independence.

WWI. The war that led to the beginnings of the depression. Central Powers attack rival alliance. US fights alongside the Allies to defeat Germany once. No real cause, except for an assassination. (Confusing war if you ask me!^v^')

World War II. "The Necessary War."

1930's - The Germans are under inflation, government is unstable, people are poor and hungry. Hitler comes into power and gives the nation hope, but at a cost. He convinces them of Germanic racial superiority, that they are the genetically pure "master race" and that all others are either inferior or nothing more than mere animals.

Germany goes after former territories, and gets them back over time.

1939 - Germany sets sights on Poland. Gives ultimatum: either hand over corridor and city of Danzig or suffer our wrath. Poland says no. German attacks. France and Britain declare war on September 3.

Poland overrun in three weeks, Soviets get involved and split country with Germany in accordance w/ secret pact. (Stalin knew his people weren't ready for war, so he needed to buy time in order to get things ready for that eventuality.)

1939-40 - Phoney War atmosphere. France and Britain get edgy.

Germany attacks Low Countries and France. Allies caught off guard and attempt to fight. Low Countries fall, followed by France. Britain evacuates troops via Dunkirk. Hitler tries to bomb British into surrendering, threatens invasion. Plan fails as Britain holds out. America is impressed.

1941 - Britain launches offensives rather than stick to defensive. Succeeds in desert ops within Africa. Morale at home surges, gets more support across the ocean.

June 22 - Germany goes after Soviets. At first gain sweeping victories, but as time goes on, Soviets hold off German troops.

December 7 - Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor. America is angry, and unites to defeat the Axis with the Allies.

1942 - Battles continue. Germans near Moscow and Stalingrad on Eastern Front. On Western Front in Africa, Torch landings occur. Axis troops defeated.

On Pacific Front, Japanese gain sweeping victories, then are checked at Midway and Coral Sea.

1943 - Tide turns in Allies' favor. US industrial might comes online at full power, churning out more goods than all nations on both sides combined.

1944 - Allies stage D-Day. (D-Day was a few days ago, by the way.) The time has come to liberate Europe and bring the fight to Hitler! Plan Fortitude starts and fools Germans, even after D-Day invasion. (Arrogance can do that.) Allies liberate France, Denmark, Norway.

Landings in Italy. Italians surrender and fight begins on a Third Front.

1944-45 - Allied troops on all three fronts make headyway towards Germany. Soviets retake cities captured by Germans and take on Poland, capturing said country afterwards. On Western Front, Allies break past German defenses and move in towards Berlin. Concentration camps uncovered. (More about that below.)

1945 - Allies halt far from Berlin and let Soviets take city. Soviets and Allies meet at division mark and celebrate victory.

America drops atomic bombs on Japan and WWII comes to a close.

This is an abbreviated timeline of events in the war and prior to it. As you can see, the Allies and Soviets teamed up to bring down a menace to everyone! This was never more clearly shown than at the concentration camps when the Allies and Soviets both liberated them. In fact, they were just appalled at the conditions carried out there. People didn't even really know what was going on until they saw for themselves. The prisoners were like walking skeletons, mostly flesh and bone, lacking any real muscle. Sometimes they wore loincloths and nothing else. Sometimes their mental state was even worse. Rather than remain as normal people, they lost all other emotions and instincts save for the basics, just like animals to an extent. Most managed to hold on, only because of the hope for a better future. It all came down to D-Day and the coinciding Soviet operation.

My mother's father saw this and was appalled. He was one of those who liberated such a camp, and he helped those poor souls get reintegrated into human society, and regain their former selves. I saw some of the images taken during that time, and believe me, it's something that I can't imagine happening today. That's why people fought in the war. Had they not committed what I term "necessary evils", then the fate of all those poor people might have expanded to the entire world. Is that something you want, KayeMinor?

Think about that.

 

Im not sure what you are telling me is more complicated, the cause for WW2 or my stripped down childrens story of how WW2 started? If you meant the cause for WW2, I would say the Versaille Treaty would be the number one cause. That treaty may not of been as harsh as the treaty of Brest-Litovsk but it was still harsh. The War Guilt clause was a huge slap in the face for most Germans. We can sit back and look at documents saying the Germans would of imposed harsh conditions on the French had they won but that also lets us look at the treaty that France had with Russia. France was going to declare war on Germany. The Germans beat them to the punch but the French were going to join the war anyways.
And then we could go into the Laws of War the Allies violated during the war (major ones, not minor ones by individuals) that they swept under the rug as allowed. I could go into the goofy crap they added to the treaty like the whole Champagne beverage business but I won't.

I don't follow you around to closely but I think I may have found your first incorrect statement. The Nazis were socialist in more than just name. Hitler did not go full socialist because he needed the support of big business but they did pass a lot of socialist laws.
{Edit} I will go more into this later, at work now.

Chuck

 

The NSDAP (what became what we commonly consider the Nazi Party) changed its name from the "German Worker's Party" due to the political climate at the time, where socialism was quite popular, and socialism itself had something of a different meaning in that region at the time. While the party preached "socialism", it was a unique form of socialism that could be argued was simply lip service, or even a complete co-opting of the term for something far from it's original intention. While the Nazi Party colluded with more traditional socialist organizations out of political necessity, and indeed, there were socialist elements in the party at its outset (such as Rohm, who ran the SA), but these elements were purged (often violently) as the party acheived power. So yes, socialist laws were passed during the lifetime of the Nazi party (especially during the period when it was still consolodating it's power), but these were not really indicative of the core tennets of the party's idology.

One only needs to look at how the use of the term "socialism" developed over the course of the party's ascendance, how it turned into "national socialism" and was treated as a completely different term, and vehemently distanced from what was described as "Marxist socialism". Or that the national socialist platform was pretty much counter to the core aims of the socialist movement of that time, such as it's highly nationalistic, ethnocentric bent (and it's highly exclusatory ideas regarding representation and human rights), it's far right-wing ideology (and denouncement of the left-wing elements of society) with regard to foreign policy and social stratification, and the removal of that stratification from the concept of economic class equality. True, the 25 points of the NSDAP bear some commonality with socialist causes (such as the guaranteeing of old age pensions and the nationalisation of various industries), and the Nazi Party spoke out against capitalism as well as Bolshevism, but the aims of the party ran in opposition to those of the socialist movement in europe at the time. Nazism was geared more towards a consolodation of power to a "strong" state run by a central group (them) in a facist manner, as opposed to a more socialist concept based on equal ownership governmentally and economically.


In terms of more complicated (I suppose I should have been more clear), I was referring to the causes of the war. Your outline of the actual conflict, was pretty good, and your examples of strategic bombing were great. While I agree that the Versailles Treaty is important to the beginnings of WW2, and may be the best single symbol of what led to it, I do not feel the treaty itself was the single greatest contributor to the war beginning. I think the conflict, or something similar to it, would have occurred even if the terms had been more generous. If anything, I feel that WW2 began as an extention of WW1, as the attitudes that led to it were not addressed and continued to influence the german population and policy (possibly moreso, given things LIKE the treaty), and led to a restart of the conflict. Hell, some of the same people were still in power in one way or another, like Hindenburg. The failure to address these attitudes, and the nature of the end of the war, combined with the foreign policies of the Allied Powers (the Maginot Line probably did not inspire feelings of cooperation) and the impact of the Great Depression, created a situation where schools of thought like the Nazi Party could thrive.

I completely agree that the treaty relationships pre-world war 1 highlight the perceived inevitability of the conflict, and yeah, the entirety of WW1 was an almost unfathomable catastrophe in almost every aspect (to the degree that it led to WW2, as I stated above).

No, bombing civilians is always a bad thing. It's a terrible thing. One of a long list of many terrible things nations do during war, either for a strategic purpose or because they are determined to be an acceptable consequence of another strategic action. It doesn't make it okay, and only further highlights the horrible nature of war, especially during that era.

I'm not going to go much into strategic bombing, because its a very complicated issue that could go on for pages itself, but even on the side of the allies, there were very different attitudes about how bombing should be done. Some British commanders pushed for night raids using saturation bombing (especially after the Germans realized how much impact their own bombing outside of "acceptable" areas had), which kept their pilots safer at the expense of bombing precision. At the same time, some American commanders pushed for more dangerous bombing missions during the day, which though more risky, could more precisely target strategic facilities and deal maximum impact to the axis war machine without un-necessarily hurting civilians. This isn't to say civilians still weren't hurt, however, and while these tactics arguably proved more effective over time, it was due to their ability to damage military structures more effectively, not their avoidance of civilian ones. So yes, you could say that in general Allied bombing practices were more geared towards strategic precision (especially compared to the use of V1 and V2 rocket bombs by Germany), but at the same time actions like the firebombing of Dresden and Japan show that the Allies were not above area-attack bombing.

Also, your timeline is highly slanted, and I'm sorry, incorrect in regards to the conflicts not being about money or power (at least from how I see them). I don't want to derail the thread further, but if you'd like me to go into detail send me a PM.



Kayeminor, it's allright to feel anathema towards warfare and the loss of human life. It's okay to voice that opinion (though how one words it is highly important). I'm sure many of the people who fought and died during the D-day landings did so because they thought your right to do so was worth standing up for, and because they wanted to ensure peace for their children and for the world. And to me, the most important way we can honor that sacrifice is to uphold those same ideals, to guard against the things that led to that conflict and the necessity of that invasion, and to dedicate ourselves to learning how do to so, by educating ourselves on history and maintaining the memory of these men and the millions of others who perished due to that war.

 

And what would you say about the current war (wars?) in the middle east?

 

Does it matter what war it is? Yes there is bad apples that do bad things while wearing the uniform. But just like those Soldiers and Marines that put on that uniform in the 40s the majority of us do the right thing when we are down range.
While there I had to be concerned about the safety of the soldiers with me and the civilians in the area. I went out of my way to make sure the civilians were as safe as they could be, no matter the situation. We don't go in and just shoot random people and act like nothing has happened. I never had it happen but I have talked with people who accidentaly killed innocents and it really messed with there heads. People running into the line of fire with disregard to their own safety. Does that make those people that had that happen to them bad evil people? No.
We do get the occasional bad person who does bad things. A badd person that influences other people to do bad things. But for the whole we go out of our way to make life better for civilians.

Chuck

 

I would say that they're difficult to discuss, due to our historical proximity to them, and because politics will inevitably factor into the discussion. You'll also have to be more specific which current wars in the middle east you're referring to, though I assume you're discussing the ones in Iraq and Afghanistan. Suffice to say, it's difficult to make a comparison between those conflicts and WW2, given the differences in technology, tactics, geography, and most importantly, historical and cultural context. For example, the fact that most of those two modern wars have been spent in asymmetric warfare as opposed to against another nation state and their traditional military force may bear more parallels between other wars than to WW2.

In terms of the context of this thread, I think the most important difference is that in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, the north american participants have had no form of active draft or conscription (though some of their allies have), unlike in WW2. This means that every participant in the armed forces of those north american nations has chosen to join, to serve their country and risk their life (for whatever personal reasons), and I think that's something worth applauding, at least. You don't have to believe soldiers are inherently heroic to commemorate their actions and their sacrifices. You don't have to condone their actions to sympathize with them and their loss. You can memorialize the pain and death in a conflict while condemning the circumstances and conditions that led to it.

If anything, these middle eastern conflicts should be extremely important to us, as people who lived through (and as with some users in this thread, IN) them. As it was the responsibility of our parents and grandparents to educate us about WW2 so that we could avoid the same mistakes, it will be our responsibility to pass on what we've learned regarding the wars of our time.