Sorry, bit behind on the news, but it appears a member of Labour's front bench has

[Ganpati's Goonerz--AFC's Aboriginal Fertility Cult]

The point was we didn't have to go to war either time. We could have cut a deal and carried on in prosperity and peace - at least in the short term. Instead we took the principled decisions - and they cost us dear.

Sorry, B, doing an MA in WW1 studies atm. *******s saying that about WW1.

You know about the September Prog, yes? You know that Brest-Litovsk proves they were serious, yes? And you know that the Peace Offer to Fr and Rus said 'The War at Sea continues', yes?

Everyone, every single ****ing historian for the last 50 years since Fritz Fischer, will tell you that had GB not fought, we'd ave been 100% ****ed either way.

10% - Fr/Rus win, we have no allies. 500 years of GB ForPol finished and India and the Med threatened.
90% - Hun win, then use the resources of the Europe to start War 2 vs us, which they talk about all the time in officlal docs.

Thought you'd read Forgotten Victory by Gary Sheffield. He deals with all this in chap.1

[Burney]

The greatest generation argument is made at the personal level, not the national/political/economical level.

You are quite right that American industry did fantastically well, very often cynically, out of the war. That doesn't change the fact that millions of young, American men volunteered to serve in order to resolve issues in Europe and the Pacific that had little effect on their every day lives or the future security of their country.

The Americans, quite rightly, revere the contribution of that generation of Americans and you as a Brit should be equally grateful. Whether you wish to accept it or not, you never would have won the war without them.

I have nothing against American veterans (most of whom were drafted, btw) at all and am equally grateful to all those who fought the Axis powers. I'm talking about Americans specifically talking as though their government acted out of anything other than self-interest in WWII. They stayed out of the war as long as they could and were happy for us to act as their proxies while hoovering up our financial reserves, taking our overseas possessions and dismantling our empire in payment for war materiel. Never forget that while Germany's war debts were cancelled, the Americans made us pay every single fücking nickel back. Grateful my àrse.

So for the record, I'm no more grateful to the USA than they ought to be to us for keeping the war alive for two long years while they sat on their hands.

[Ganpati's Goonerz--AFC's Aboriginal Fertility Cult]

In fact, during the battle for Normandy, casualty rates exceeded those on the Eastern Front.

Still weren't a patch on Italy, though. At least according to my tutor. [I know jack **** about ww2 personally.]

[Ganpati's Goonerz--AFC's Aboriginal Fertility Cult]

The greatest generation argument is made at the personal level, not the national/political/economical level.

You are quite right that American industry did fantastically well, very often cynically, out of the war. That doesn't change the fact that millions of young, American men volunteered to serve in order to resolve issues in Europe and the Pacific that had little effect on their every day lives or the future security of their country.

The Americans, quite rightly, revere the contribution of that generation of Americans and you as a Brit should be equally grateful. Whether you wish to accept it or not, you never would have won the war without them.

Utter bøllocks. They sat back while the entire of western democracy was almost wiped out in 1940, and would have been a lot less secure with a Jap Asia, sorry RCPS. They only had to do something cos the Japs, moronically, thought they'd help us from Peral Harbour once they got on the march and they only fought in Europe cos Hitler declared war on them.

Yer average Gurkha, Sikh or Baluchi/Pathan has far more to be proud of than yer average Septic. Fact.

[Burney]

Sorry, B, doing an MA in WW1 studies atm. *******s saying that about WW1.

You know about the September Prog, yes? You know that Brest-Litovsk proves they were serious, yes? And you know that the Peace Offer to Fr and Rus said 'The War at Sea continues', yes?

Everyone, every single ****ing historian for the last 50 years since Fritz Fischer, will tell you that had GB not fought, we'd ave been 100% ****ed either way.

10% - Fr/Rus win, we have no allies. 500 years of GB ForPol finished and India and the Med threatened.
90% - Hun win, then use the resources of the Europe to start War 2 vs us, which they talk about all the time in officlal docs.

Thought you'd read Forgotten Victory by Gary Sheffield. He deals with all this in chap.1

Hence 'at least in the short term,'. Of course we'd have had to fight eventually. However, we needn't have done so when we did. Indeed, Germany didn't expect us to do so. Alternatively, we could quite easily have committed on a purely naval basis, blockaded Germany and - as was shown in the course of War itself - there was nothing they could have done about it. However, we didn't. We fought on the basis of principle. Germany had violated Belgian neutrality and on that principle, we went to war.

By the way, not every historian agrees. Niall Ferguson called our decision to intervene 'the biggest error in modern history'. He also points out that the argument that we had to intervene to secure the Channel ports is rather undermined by the fact that we had lived with a similar situation during the Napoleonic Wars whereby Europe was under his sway, the Channel Ports were all in his hands, but we didn't send land forces until we were properly prepared (which we blatantly weren't in 1914). Our navy was immensely powerful and dominant in 1914 - vastly more so, in fact than it was in 1800. We could easily have sat safely behind our navy and let Europe get on with slaughtering one another. We didn't, however, because of principle.

[Burney]

Still weren't a patch on Italy, though. At least according to my tutor. [I know jack **** about ww2 personally.]

Italy had its moments, but it didn't compare to the mincing machine of Normandy from June 6 until the closing of the Falaise Gap in August.

[World's End Stella]

Utter bøllocks. They sat back while the entire of western democracy was almost wiped out in 1940, and would have been a lot less secure with a Jap Asia, sorry RCPS. They only had to do something cos the Japs, moronically, thought they'd help us from Peral Harbour once they got on the march and they only fought in Europe cos Hitler declared war on them.

Yer average Gurkha, Sikh or Baluchi/Pathan has far more to be proud of than yer average Septic. Fact.

Which part of 'personal level' did you not understand? You think someone from Des Moines, Iowa who volunteered on Dec 8, 1941 and ended up fighting in Bastogne was party to or gave a toss about the politics or economics associated with when and how the Americans entered the war?

The 'greatest generation' refers to the sacrifice of the average American soldier, which was exceptional and without which the war would never have been won.

[Burney]

Which part of 'personal level' did you not understand? You think someone from Des Moines, Iowa who volunteered on Dec 8, 1941 and ended up fighting in Bastogne was party to or gave a toss about the politics or economics associated with when and how the Americans entered the war?

The 'greatest generation' refers to the sacrifice of the average American soldier, which was exceptional and without which the war would never have been won.

The sacrifice of the average American soldier may have been many things, WES, but exceptional it was not. Indeed, it's exactly that sort of self-aggrandising and frankly ignorant horseshît that Americans talk about WWII that gets everyone else's backs up.

In a war that killed around 25 million soldiers and more than 85 million people worldwide to describe America's sacrifice of fewer than half a million men as 'exceptional' displays a breathtaking degree of crassness.

[Sir C]

Which part of 'personal level' did you not understand? You think someone from Des Moines, Iowa who volunteered on Dec 8, 1941 and ended up fighting in Bastogne was party to or gave a toss about the politics or economics associated with when and how the Americans entered the war?

The 'greatest generation' refers to the sacrifice of the average American soldier, which was exceptional and without which the war would never have been won.

Wait, a dead American was 'exceptional' and therefore more of a sacrifice than a dead Brit, Frenchman or Russian?

Wow. Americans must be really great!

[Burney]

Wait, a dead American was 'exceptional' and therefore more of a sacrifice than a dead Brit, Frenchman or Russian?

Wow. Americans must be really great!

This must be what they call 'American exceptionalism'

As you can see, I have taken him to task on this.