Comments by "" (@walterkronkitesleftshoe6684) on "The Armchair Historian"
channel.
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
Maybe look at any empire from history.... Mongol, Persian, Roman, Macedonian, Chinese, Aztec, Incan, Khmer, Soviet, Malian, Spanish to name but a few. All of which had deeply unsavoury aspects in their dealings when viewed in a modern light. No need to just concentrate on the British empire and pretend everyone else is "clean". Unless you're a clueless lefty dupe that is.
1
-
1
-
How come we're constantly exhorted to differentiate between "nazis" and "Germans" especially when addressing matters of a "war against humanity" nature, but meanwhile when it comes to similar aspects of British history, the term "British" is freely bandied about without any further differentiation? My family is for generations British born, and yet never willingly took part in any actions against colonials, or benefitted from the largesse raked in by the British aristocracy who orchestrated the siphoning off of the treasures of the empire for themselves. Indeed the "benefits" gained by 2 of my own English G Grandparents was to have died of typhus in the slums of Liverpool at the turn of the 20th century, while 3 of my 4 grandparents were dead in their 40s through ailments of poverty and exploitation. Are they and the millions others of the "lower classes" of British society to be lumped in with the British "elites" and held responsible of the crimes orchestrated by those at the top of British society?
"Nazis" in the context of WW2 were the "ruling class" of the German national socialist regime (together with their fervent, avowed followers) . Seeing as how we are all meant to be rightly concerned with correct terms of address in media productions, then how about refining "British" in these videos to the "British ruling class", "British aristocracy", "rich thieves and vagabonds of the British elites" or whatever other name you choose to specifcally identify them, so as to seperate them from the millions of ordinary British who had neither the power to decide on, nor benefitted from the rewards of, the actions (and sometimes crimes) directed by those at the top of British society.
Or will revisionist historians quietly acquiesce that we can all justifiably interchange "nazi" & "German" from now on uncontested, as in "the Germans carried out the holocaust and were responsible for the deaths of countless millions"? You can't have it both ways.....
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
The simple fact is that the world at the end of WW2 was a complete & impossibly complex mess. NO-ONE (apart from the USSR & moreso the US) was a winner. The UK also had to "take it up the ass" just as Poland and eastern Europe did, having completely bankrupted itself in the service of opposing German domination of Europe. We can argue all day about the injustices and problems of each and every nation.
The facts are that Britain, who went to war to stop German domination of Europe, by 1942 was broken, and had became the "third wheel" in international matters. Eastern Europe's fate was secretly decided between Stalin and Roosevelt/Truman.
Churchill had already by Spring 1945 directed the British Imperial General staff to draw up plans to push back the soviet steamroller back to its pre-1939 borders, plans named as "Operation unthinkable". When completed they were presented to the senior allied western partner the US govt, who immediately sidelined them.
Unbeknown to Churchill and the British at that time, Roosevelt and then Truman had already carried out secret negotiations with Stalin and the soviets to which the British had not been party.
These negotiations were basically that the US & USSR (now the two world "superpowers") would form their own "spheres of influence" in Europe, and the US agreed to allow the USSR to control eastern and central Europe on TWO conditions.
1. The USSR would Immediately declare war on Japan. This was of the UTMOST importance to the US govt, as the uncertain "Manhattan project" had not yet come to fruition at that point, and the US govt was TERRIFIED that it may have had to carry out "Operation Downfall", that is the US invasion of the Japanese home islands, with resultant hugely unpopular terrible losses to US troops in the run up to a postwar US election.
2. The USSR would agree to sign up to the then embryonic "United Nations".
Both of which happened.
When British intelligence informed the Churchill govt that these negotiations had taken place, Churchill was horrified, but realised Britain's hopeless position, and so sought to salvage what he could from the fait accompli of the US/USSR betrayal by then negotiating with Stalin to keep the Soviets out of Greece (thereby containing communist access to the Mediterranean) by way of Churchill's "dirty secret" known as the "percentages document".
No-one argues that Eastern Europe did well out of WW2.... but they WERE saved from 1000 years of nazi tyranny, only to then suffer a much lesser communist one. The British for their part lost the human history's largest empire due to the ruinous costs of saving Europe from the "1000 year third Reich".
1
-
1
-
1
-
The UK continues to honour the Poles who served in the west during WW2 to this day at each and every Remembrance day parade across the UK.... BUT the ignorance of SOME modern day Poles (and lefty agitators) as witnessed in so many of the comments in this thread is quite shameless. Their ignorance of the fact that if it hadn't been for the British & French declaration of war in 1939, regardless of their inability to give meaningful support to Poland in its "hour of need", or if the UK had surrendered in june 1940 after the collapse of France (as the ENTIRE world expected us to) then Poland would have remained under nazi domination for DECADES. Remember that apart from Britain and France (who between them collectively squandered 1.1 million of their own citizen's lives, as well as both bankrupting themselves as nations) absolutely NO ONE in the so called "international community" raised a finger or cared whether Poland existed or not in 1939.
Without the continued opposition of the British empire to nazism from June 1940 onwards, there would have been:
NO D-Day and war in the Meditteranean to draw sizeable wehrmacht resources from the war on the Eastern Front.
NO strategic bombing of German cities and war industries.
NO interdiction of German global sea trade by the Royal Navy.
NO massive supply of weapons and war materiel from the west to the USSR, once their former allies nazi Germany had turned on them.
NO utterly crucial strategic intelligence courtesy of Britain's (not Poland's before you say it) "ULTRA" program.
With the result that the USSR would have collapsed somewhere in 1942/43, leaving the nazis in control of the whole of Europe, and their extermination camps still operating on Polish soil into the 1950s, 60s, or even 70s.
For those Ignorant modern day Poles, on your way out, please remember to kneel at the altar dedicated to the combined 1.1 million lives sacrificed by the UK and France in order to topple the nazism that was murdering and torturing YOUR country when NOBODY else cared whether you lived or died.
And for all current honourable, and deeper thinking Poles, please accept our best wishes from the UK.
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
The nazis had planned for a short war, and had built up a large prewar bank of excellent pilots, but made insufficient planning for long term maintenance of those numbers, so as the initial cadre of excellent pilots inevitably got "whittled down" through 1939-42, due to the Germans lack of strategic planning those losses were replaced with a flow of ever lower quality pilots, with the result that those remaining experienced pilots were forced to fly till either a nervous breakdown or death removed them from duty, though a tiny percentage of their very best pilots racked up hundreds of kills (mostly against the early poorly trained and equipped soviet VVT pilots) but as an organisation the luftwaffe was bled dry and ended up from 1944 onwards sending barely trained Hitler Youth lads up to face the ever increasing onslaught of the well prepared allied air forces.
The Allied air forces for their part routinely rotated their pilots out of combat and into training posts here in the UK & the Americas, with the result that while individual pilots racked up far lower scores, the allied airforces as a whole quickly overtook the luftwaffe numbers of excellently trained pilots, so much so that by mid 1944 the allies were massively scaling back their fighter pilot training programs due to the large surplus of very capable allied pilots.
The result was the luftwaffe had a MUCH smaller number of "aces" (+5 kills) but with a tiny number of much higher kill tallies, the allies had many MANY times more "aces" (with 5 kills or more) than the luftwaffe, but with no outlandish kill tallies.
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1