# Hmmm, What If? Very Scary!



## Kane (Sep 10, 2004)

Here is the most worst case scenario the world could of gotten into.

Most WWII Historians agree that if Japan did not attack the US at Pearl Harbor, and instead helped the Germans with the war against the Soviet Empire (attacking the through the East), we would be living in a very different world! The Japanese forces combined with German forces would have eventually overpowered the Soviet Empire and would to taken it over. My guess is that Japan and Germany would have divided Russia in two, East Russia for Japan and West Russia for Germany.

Now there would only the US and Britain left. Most agree Germany would easily destroy Britain after the war against Russia and take Britain over. Finally, although the US has atomic bombs most would still think the combined forces of Germany and Japan would have overpowered the US.

And if this happened, again we would be living in a very different world today. A world ruled by Germany and Japan. VERY SCARY THOUGHT! If Japan attacked Russia instead of the US, this would have happened!

How would you predict the world would have been if under this rule? How do you think long do you think it would have taken for Germany and Japan to fight for whatever (obviously there will always be a rival war in years to come over control of land)? There are a lot of negatives if the axis won, but can you think of any positives? Do you think the world would have modernized faster or slower if under Germany and Japan?


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## michaeledward (Sep 10, 2004)

I'm not sure this would qualify as a 'worst case'. Perhaps you heard of a little thing called the Cuban Missle Crisis? The way the United States was acting toward the Japan / China conflict, pretty much guaranteed we were going to get involved in the conflict. And it might be important to note that the United States quite probably would not have developed nuclear weapons if it was not involved in the conflict; certainly, we did not have the weapon prior to Pearl Harbor.


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## rmcrobertson (Sep 10, 2004)

Much as I took like alternate history fantasies, this is nuts.

For one thing, it didn't happen. For another thing, THERE ARE NO FREAKIN POSITIVES TO THE AXIS POWERS. Would we have modernized faster? Sure, more death camps, faster service. Oooh, more "comfort women," stuffed into soldiers' whorehouses. More and better Nankings. Lovely.

Looks to me like you don't find this a frightening scenario at all; rather the opposite. This is common in science fictions of apocalypse; I dare say you feel the "positives," would include getting rid of liberals and tree-huggers who stand in the way of "progress," putting women where they belong, dumping all this "democracy," crap--together, to be sure, with a really cool space program. And Guns! Did I forget all the guns we'd get to carry?

Sorry, man, but this is gross.


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## Bob Hubbard (Sep 10, 2004)

Alternative WWII ideas:

- Germany finishes off England before turning on Russia. Europe dominated by Nazis, no place to land attack force.
- Japan attacks Russia, not US
- Normandy Landings a failure, allies driven into sea
- Italy succeeds in conquering northern Africa.
- US Isolation keeps it neutral until too late (Germany gets the bomb first)
- Czar was never toppled, Russian Empire plays crucial role.

and, my favorite:
Aliens invade in 1943 causing a 3 way dance as invaders fight both axis and allies, who fight each other.   (Book series by Harry Turtledove)


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## RandomPhantom700 (Sep 10, 2004)

rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> Looks to me like you don't find this a frightening scenario at all; rather the opposite. This is common in science fictions of apocalypse; I dare say you feel the "positives," would include getting rid of liberals and tree-huggers who stand in the way of "progress," putting women where they belong, dumping all this "democracy," crap


Where the hell did you get this from? Kane was reflecting on what could have happened, and while I agree that such reflections are oftentimes futile, he certainly didn't sound to me like he was wishing it would have happened! Nor did he mention anything about killin liberals or putting women in their place. 

You are way too eager to impose words or views on others so that you can nicely fit them into your categories. Kane didn't say anything about ending liberals or controlling women, and especially not anything about that being a good thing; maybe some of the alternate history buffs you've read in the past have said this (although I'm inclined to think that you projected those words onto them as well), but that wasn't what I read from Kane. Try getting off of your soap-box long enough to actually listen to and discuss with other people on here, rather than finding the quickest way to criticize them.


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## RandomPhantom700 (Sep 10, 2004)

Kaith Rustaz said:
			
		

> Alternative WWII ideas:
> 
> - Germany finishes off England before turning on Russia. Europe dominated by Nazis, no place to land attack force.
> - Japan attacks Russia, not US
> ...


Ha, those are great.  You'd get a kick out of the Command & Conquer series, assuming for the moment that you're into video games.  The entire plot to Red Alert was Einsteing going back in time to kill Hitler, thereby leaving Stalinist Russia to invade Europe instead.  And, of course, somehow Russia developed the atomic bomb before the Allies.  Fun game, but the reality of it is kinda questionable.


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## rmcrobertson (Sep 10, 2004)

My apologies for being intolerant of fascisms, and pretty much opposed to notions of how much they'd help us out.

As for where I'm getting this from, the first source is precisely the sort of popular fiction upon which such questions are based. read them: apocalyptic fantasies, filled with fantasies of male dominance, paranoia, and weapons.

The second is the poster's own words:

"There are a lot of negatives if the axis won, but can you think of any positives? Do you think the world would have modernized faster or slower if under Germany and Japan?" "A lot of negatives?" A lot of, "NEGATIVES?" Yeah, that Hitler--misguided, sure, but you have to grant that he did some good stuff too. 

And as for this idea of, "modernizing--" well, what slides under such words, in this context, is that in Nazi Germany, "modernizing," meant gassing people more efficiently; it meant getting rid of civil rights; it meant the horror of an industrial State devoted to what Paul Virilio calls, "pure war." (Curiously enough, it also meant destroying modern art and modern artists, in favor of propaganda and kitsch.) In Japan, modernizing meant militarizing their society, wiping out moderates, and doing things like adapting religions and martial arts to pure war. Lovely. But revealing of the extent to which all notions of, "modernizing," are always corporatist and fascist.

Just incidentally--call me old fashioned, by we still woulda kicked the bastards' collective asses. The myth of the superior German soldier is just that, as is the myth of their generalship--Eisenhower, Bradley, Patton, and the rest, don't ya know. The only thing that woulda been different, in the end, was even more carnage.

I recommend reading Norman Spinrad, "The Iron Dream," and Philip K. Dick, "The Man In the High Castle."

Oh yes--you probably have a point about manners. But I get really sick of this nonsense, and personally--I find this whole, "positives," line of discussion deeply offensive.


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## AaronLucia (Sep 10, 2004)

Why must everything get into arguments and heated debates?


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## deadhand31 (Sep 10, 2004)

I can tell you exactly what would have happened if Japan attacked Russia instead of the US: they would have been screwed. Their attack on us was due to how we were cutting them off supply wise. This was due to their invasion and occupation of China. How it stood with us, they would have run out of oil staying their current course within a few months. If they actually had to focus on an offensive with the prospect of a shrinking oil supply, they probably would have had a week before their tanks and planes where empty, maybe a month at best. Their war machine would have been shut down, and they wouldn't have been able to help at all. Now, another thing to note, a reason why Russia was caught off guard was because of the non-agression pact with Germany. I'm not exactly sure what their view was on Japan, but we can't really be sure how well Japan would have fared in their month of an offensive against Russia.


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## rmcrobertson (Sep 10, 2004)

Because they're fun, and because posters post questions about all the good things Hitler and Tojo and Mussolini did and might have done?


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## Bob Hubbard (Sep 10, 2004)

I had a response to this...but, I'm rather weary after being called a racist, a bigot, a chauvenist, an anti-semite, etc over the last 30 days...

Simply put, good things -did- come from those evil regimes, but it doesn't excuse the evil that they did.


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## Bob Hubbard (Sep 10, 2004)

1 thing Robert.... we won WW2 because we had more resources than the enemy.
It would take 10 Shermans to knock out 1 Tiger...with 9 Shermans lost.  We just had more Shermans than Hitler had Tigers. If they had had the manpower, and the ability to keep them stocked, the war would have at the least, lasted longer.  If that had happened, since the Germans had the rocket experts, and were the first to field jet fighters, IF they had completed their heavy water experiments before we did, London would still be glowing I think.


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## Bob Hubbard (Sep 10, 2004)

Ok....this got me curious....I shoulda been working, but....anyway...
I found this:

====
German War Secrets by the Thousands
Harper's Magazine 
October, 1946 
Page 329 

SECRETS BY THE THOUSANDS
C. Lester Walker 

Harper's readers are familiar with Mr. Walker's articles and the skillful mechanics of the Allied war. He now gives us a look at some of the disconcertingly effective tricks that were hidden up the enemy sleeve. 

Someone wrote to Wright Field recently, saying he understood this country had got together quite a collection of enemy war secrets, that many were now on public sale, and could he, please, be sent everything on German jet engines. The Air Documents Division of the Army Air Forces answered: 

"Sorry -- but that would be fifty tons." 

Moreover, that fifty tons was just a small portion of what is today undoubtedly the biggest collection of captured enemy war secrets ever assembled. If you always thought of war secrets -- as who hasn't? -- as coming in sixes and sevens, as a few items of information readily handed on to the properly interested authorities, it may interest you to learn that the war secrets in this collection run into the thousands, that the mass of documents is mountainous, and that there was never before been anything quite comparable to it. 

The collection is today chiefly in three places: Wright Field (Ohio), the Library of Congress, and the Department of Commerce. Wright Field is working from a documents "mother lode" of fifteen hundred tons. In Washington, the Office of Technical Services (which has absorbed the Office of the Publication Board, the government agency originally set up to handle the collection) reports that tens of thousands of tons of material are involved. It is estimated that over a million separate items must be handled, and that they are, very likely, practically all the scientific, industrial and military secrets of Nazi Germany. 

One Washington official has called it "the greatest single source of this type of material in the world, the first orderly exploitation of an entire country's brain-power." 

How the collection came to be goes back, for beginnings, to one day in 1944 when the Allied Combined Chief' of Staff set in motion a colossal search for war secrets in occupied German territory. They created a group of military-civilian teams, termed the Joint Intelligence Objectives Committee, which was to follow the invading armies into Germany and uncover all her military, scientific, and industrial secrets for early use against Japan. These teams worked against tine to get the most vital information be: ore it was. destroyed, and in getting it performed prodigies of ingenuity and tenacity. 

At an optical company at Wetzlav, near Frankfurt, for example, the American colonel investigating felt positive that the high executives were holding out on him. But nothing would shake their story: they had given him everything. He returned next day with a legal document which he asked them all to sign. It declared they had turned over "all scientific and trade data; and if not, would accept the consequences." Two days later they glumly signed the document, then led he colonel to a cache in a warehouse will. From a safe tumbled out the secret file on optical instruments, microscopy, aiming devices. 

One two-man search team found itself completely stymied. Records that they had to find had completely disappeared. A rumor indicated they might have been hidden in a mountain. The two scoured the region in a jeep. Nothing. But keeping at it, they stumbled one day onto a small woods road whose entrance was posted: 

Achtung! Minen! 

Gingerly, slowly, they inched their jeep in. Nothing happened. But a concrete dugout sunk in the hill revealed another sign: "Opening Will Cause Explosion." 

"We tossed a coin," one member of this search team said later, "and the loser hitched the jeep tow rope to the dugout door, held his breath! and stepped on the gas." 

There was no explosion. The door-ripped from its hinges. The sought-for secret files were inside. 

The German Patent Office put some of its most secret patents down a sixteen-hundred-foot mine shaft at Heringen, then piled liquid oxygen, in cylinders, on top of them. When the American Joint Intelligence Objectives team found them, & was doubtful that they could be saved. They were legible, but in such bad shape that a trip to the surface would make them disintegrate. Photo equipment and a crew were therefore lowered into the shaft and a complete microfilm record made of the patents there. 

PERHAPS one of the most exciting searches was also the grimmest. This was the hunt for hidden documents which might reveal that Nazi scientists had frozen human beings to death and then tried to bring them back to life again. Interviewing four Nazi doctors one day in June 1945, at a laboratory of the Institut für Luftfahrtmedizin, at Gut Hirschau, Bavaria, an American medical corps major, Leo Alexander, was struck with the dreadful conviction, despite repeated denials, that this had occurred. 

His suspicion were aroused by three things. All the small animal laboratory equipment was carefully preached; all large-animal equipment destroyed. One of the doctors wanted to dissolve his research institute and dismiss his staff. And none of the scientists could find any data on human beings at all, not even on those rescued from North Sea waters and saved by the new revival techniques. Did this mean that everything of the sort was hidden away with other data which, the doctors didn't want to show? 

Wishing to leave the four Germans in a frame of mind not to destroy their records, the American concealed his suspicions, and, for the time being, transferred his search elsewhere. 

Chance suddenly played into his hands. The Allied radio one night broadcast a grim tale of the Dachau concentration camp. Researches on death, and treatment of shock, from exposure to cold had been performed on prisoners. The broadcast named the leading experimenter, one Dr. Rascher, and called him a member of the medical staff of the SS. 

For Alexander this was a lead. He happened just to have learned that the American Seventh Army had recently captured a vast mass of especially secret SS records. He therefore headed for the Seventh Army Documents Center to see what was there. 

There was more than he anticipated. Even to the complete and final report -- Himmler's personal copy, with his green-penciled annotations, all over it -- with the names of Rascher and all others involved, and containing all the damning details of the almost unbelievable experiments. 

Victims had been immersed naked in ice water until they lost consciousness. All the time elaborate testings were constantly made: rectal, skin, and interior-of-the-stomach temperatures; pulse, blood sugar, blood chlorides, blood count and sedimentation; urine tests; spinal fluid. Appendix 7, Figure 5, showed that seven subjects were chilled to death beyond revival in from fifty-three to one hundred and six minutes. 

"This table," Alexander commented in his own report, "is certainly the most laconic confession of seven murders in existence." 

It had been with the rest of the documents -- in Himmler's private cave in mountain at Hallein. Even though the aide of the mountain had been dynamited down over the cave mouth, the American searchers had found it. 

The earliest Joint Intelligence Objectives search teams were followed by others, which were to dig out industrial and scientific secrets in particular. The Technical Industrial Intelligence Committee was one group of these, composed of three hundred and eighty civilians representing seventeen American industries. Later came the teams of the Office of the Publication Board itself and many mow groups direct from private industry. Of the latter -- called, in Germany, Field Intelligence Agencies, Technical (FIAT) -- there have been over five hundred; of one to ten members each, operating by invitation and under the aegis of the OPB. 

Today the search still goes on. The Office of Technical Services has a European staff of four to five hundred J At Hoechst, it has one hundred abstractors who struggle feverishly to keep ahead of the forty OTS document-recording cameras which route to them each month over one hundred thousand feet of microfilm. 

II 

What did we find? You'd like some outstanding examples from the war secrets collection? 

The head of the communications unit of Technical Industrial Intelligence Branch opened his desk drawer and took out the tiniest vacuum tube I had ever seen. It was about half thumb-size. 

"Notice it is heavy porcelain -- not glass -- and thus virtually indestructible. It is a thousand watt -- one-tenth the size of similar American tube. Today our manufacturers know the secret of making it.... And here's something...." 

He pulled some brown, papery-looking ribbon off a spool. It was a quarter-inch wide, with a dull and a shiny side. 

"That's Magnetophone tape," he said. "It's plastic, metallized on one side with iron oxide. In Germany that supplanted phonograph recordings. A day's Radio program can be magnetized on one reel. You can demagnetize it, wipe it off and put a new program on at any time. No needle; so absolutely no noise or record wear. An hour-long reel costs fifty cents." He showed me then what had been two of the most closely-guarded technical secrets of the war: the infra-red device which the Germans invented for seeing at night, and the remarkable diminutive generator which operated it. German cars could drive at any speed in a total blackout, seeing objects clear as day two hundred meters ahead. Tanks with this device could spot targets two miles away. As a sniper scope it enabled German riflemen to pick off a man in total blackness. 

There was a sighting tube, and a selenium screen out front. The screen caught the incoming infra-red light, which drove electrons .from the selenium along the tube to another screen which was electrically charged and fluorescent. A visible image appeared on this screen. Its clearness and its accuracy for aiming purposes were phenomenal. Inside the tube, distortion of the stream of electrons by the earth's magnetism was even allowed for! 

The diminutive generator -- five inches across -- stepped up current from an ordinary flashlight battery to 15,000 volts. It had. 'a walnut-sized motor which spun a rotor at 10,000 rpm -- so fast that originally it had destroyed all lubricants with the great amount of ozone it produced. The Germans had developed a new grease: chlorinated paraffin oil. The generator then ran 3,000 hours! 

A canvas bag on the sniper's back housed the device. His rifle had two triggers. He pressed one for a few seconds to operate the generator and the scope.. Then the other to kill his man in the dark. "That captured secret," my guide de-dared, "we first used at Okinawa -- to-the bewilderment of the Japs." 

We got, in addition, among these prize secrets, the technique and the machine for making the world's most remarkable electric condenser. Millions of condensers are essential to the radio and radar industry. Our condensers were always made of metal foil. This one is made of .paper, coated with 1/250,000 of an inch of vaporized zinc. Forty per cent smaller, twenty per cent cheaper than our condensers, it is also self-healing. That is, if a breakdown occurs (like a fuse blowing out), the zinc film evaporates, the paper immediately insulates, and the condenser is right again. It: keeps on working through multiple breakdown -- at fifty per cent higher voltage than our condensers! To most American radio experts this is magic, double-distilled. 

Mica was another thing. None is mined in Germany, so during the war our Signal Corps was mystified. Where was Germany getting it? 

One, day certain piece of mica was handed to one of our experts in the U.S. Bureau of Mines for analysis and opinion. "Natural mica," he reported, "and no impurities." 

But the mica was synthetic. the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Silicate Research had discovered how to make it and -- something which had always eluded scientists -- in large sheets. 

We know now, thanks to FIAT teams, that ingredients of natural mica were melted in crucibles of carbon capable of taking 2,350 degrees of heat, and then -- this was the real secret -- cooled in a special way. Complete absence of vibration was the first essential. Then two forces directly perpendicular to each other were applied. One, vertically, was a controlled gradient of temperature in the cooling. At right angles to this, horizontally, was introduced a magnetic field. This forced the formation of the crystals in large laminated sheets on that plane. 

"You see this . . .the head of Communications Unit, TIIB, said to me. It was metal, and looked like a complicated doll's house with the roof off. "It is the chassis or frame, for a radio. To make the same thing, Americans would machine cut, hollow, shape, fit -- a dozen different processes. This is done on a press in one operation. It is called the 'cold extrusion' process. We do it with some soft, splattery metals. But by this process the Germans do it with cold steel! Thousands of parts now made as castings or drop forgings or from malleable iron can now be made this way. The production speed increase is a little matter of one thousand per cent." 

This one war secret alone, many American steel men believe, will revolutionize dozens of our metal fabrication industries. 

In textiles the war secrets collection has produced so many revelations, that American textile men are a little dizzy. There is a German rayon-weaving machine, discovered a year ago by the American 'Knitting Machine' Team, which increases production in relation to floor space by one hundred and fifty percent. Their "Links-Links" loom produces a ladderless, run-proof hosiery. New German needle-making machinery, it is thought will revolutionize that business in both the United Kingdom and the United States. There is a German method for pulling the wool from sheepskins without injury to hide or fiber, by use of an enzyme. Formerly the "puller" -- a trade secret -- was made from animal pancreas from American packing houses. During the war the Nazis made it from a mold called aspergil paraciticus, which they seeded in bran. It results not only in better wool, but in ten per cent greater yield. 

Another discovery was a way to put a crimp in viscose rayon fibers which gives them the appearance, warmth, wear resistance, and reaction-to-dyes of wool. The secret here, our investigators found, was the addition to the cellulose of twenty-five per cent fish protein. 

But of all the industrial secrets, perhaps, the biggest windfall came from the laboratories and plants of the great German cartel, I. G. Farbenindustrie. Never before, it is claimed, was there such a store-house of secret information. It covers liquid and solid fuels, metallurgy, synthetic rubber, textiles, chemicals, plastics. drugs, dyes. One American dye authority declares: 

"It. includes the production know-how and the secret formulas for over fifty thousand dyes. Many of them are faster and better than ours. Many are colors we were never able to make. The American dye industry will be advanced at least ten years." 

III 

IN MATTERS of food, medicine, and branches of the military art the finds of the search teams were no less impressive. And in aeronautics and guided missiles they proved to be downright alarming. One of the food secrets the Nazis had discovered was a way to sterilize fruitjuices without heat. The" juice was filtered, then cooled, then carbonated and stored under eight atmospheres of carbon-dioxide pressure. Later the carbon-dioxide was removed; the-juice passed through another filter -- which, this time, germ-proofed it -- and then was bottled. Some thing, perhaps, for American canners to think about. 

Milk pasteurization by ultra-violet light has always failed .in other countries, but the Germans had found how to do it by using light tubes of great length, and simultaneously how to enrich the milk with vitamin D. 

At a plant in Kiel, British searchers of the Joint Intelligence Objectives Committee found that cheese was being made -- "good quality Hollander and Tilitser" -- by a new method at unheard-of speed. "Eighty minutes from the renneting to the hooping of the curd," report the investigators. The cheese industry around the world had never been able to equal that. 

Butter (in a creamery near Hamburg) was being produced by something long wished for by American butter makers: a continuous butter making machine. An invention of dairy equipment manufacturers in Stuttgart, it took up less space than American churns and turned out fifteen hundred pounds an hour. The machine was promptly shipped to this country to be tested by the American Butter Institute. 

Among other food innovations was a German way of making yeast in almost limitless quantities. The waste sulfite liquor from the beechwood used to manufacture cellulose was treated with an organism known to bacteriologists as candida arborea at temperatures higher than ever used in yeast manufacture before. The finished product served as both animal and human food. Its caloric value is four times that of lean meat, and it contains twice as much protein. 

The Germans also had developed new methods of preserving food by plastics and new, advanced refrigeration techniques. Refrigeration and air-conditioning on German U-boats had become so efficient that the submarines could travel from Germany to the Pacific, operate there for two months, and then return to Germany without having to take on fresh water for the crew. A secret plastics mixture (among its ingredients were polyvinyl acetate, chalk, and talc) was used to coat bread and cheese A loaf fresh from the oven was dipped, dried, redipped, then heated half an hour at 285 degrees. It would be unspoiled and good to eat eight months later. 

As for medical secrets in this collection," one Army-surgeon has remarked, "some of them will save American medicine years of research; some of them are revolutionary -- like, for instance, the German technique for treatment after prolonged and usually fatal exposure to cold." This discovery -- revealed to us by Major Alexander's search already mentioned -- reversed everything medical science .thought about the subject. In every one of the dread experiments the subjects were most successfully revived, both temporarily and permanently, by immediate immersion in hot water. In two cases of complete standstill of heart and cessation of respiration, a hot bath at 122 degrees brought both subjects back to life. Before our war with Japan ended, this method was adopted as the treatment for use by all American Air-Sea Rescue Services, and it is generally accepted by medicine. today. 

German medical researchers had discovered a way to produce synthetic blood plasma. Called capain, it was made on a commercial scale and equaled natural plasma, in results. Another discovery was periston, a substitute for the blood liquid. An oxidation production of adrenalin (adrenichrome) was produced in quantity successfully only by the Nazis and was used with good results in combating high blood pressure (of which 750,000 persons die annually in the United States). Today we have the secret of manufacture and considerable of the supply. 

Likewise of great importance medically were certain researches by Dr. Boris Rojewsky of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Biophysics at Frankfurt. These were on the ionization of air as related to health. Positively ionized air was discovered to have deleterious effects upon human well-being, and to account for the discomfort and depression felt at times when the barometer is falling. In many persons, it was found, its presence brought on asthma, hay fever, and nervous tension. It raised high blood pressure, sometimes to the danger point. It would bring on the symptoms common in mountain sickness-labored and rapid breathing, dizziness, fatigue, sleepiness. 

Negatively ionized air, however, did all the opposite. It was exhilarating, creating a feeling of high spirits and well-being. Mental depression was wiped out by it. In pathological cases it steadied breathing, reduced high blood pressure, was a check on allergies and asthma. The importance of its presence wherever human beings live, work, or recuperate from illness may some day make its production one of the major functions of air conditioning. 

IV 

But of highest significance for the future were the Nazi secrets in aviation and in various types of missiles. 

"The V.2 rocket, which bombed London," an Army Air Force publication reports, "was just a toy compared to what the Germans had up their sleeve." 

When the war ended, we now know, they had 138 types of guided missiles in various stages of production or development, using every known kind of remote control and fuse: radio, radar, wire, continuous wave, acoustics, infra-red, light beams, and magnetics, to name some; and for power, all methods of jet propulsion for either subsonic or supersonic speeds. Jet propulsion had even been applied to helicopter flight. The fuel was piped to combustion chambers at the rotor blade tips, where it exploded, whirling: the blades around like a lawn sprinkler or pinwheel. As for rocket propulsion, their A-4 rocket, which was just getting into large scale production when the war ended, was forty-six feet long, weighed over 24,000 pounds, and traveled 230 miles. It rose sixty miles above the earth and had a maximum speed of 3,735 miles an hour -- three times that of the earth's rotation at the equator. The secret of its supersonic speed, we know today, lay in its rocket motor which used liquid oxygen and alcohol for fuel. It was either radio controlled or self-guided to its target by gyroscopic means. Since its speed was supersonic, it could not be heard before it struck. 

Another German rocket which was coming along was the A-9. This was bigger still -- 29,000 pounds -- and had wings which gave it a flying range of 3,000 miles. It was manufactured at the famous Peenemünde army experiment station and achieved the unbelievable speed of 5,870 miles an hour. 

A long range rocket-motored bomber which, the war documents indicate, was never completed merely because of the war's quick ending, would have been capable of flight from Germany to New York in forty minutes. Pilot-guided from a pressurized cabin, it would have flown at an altitude of 154 miles. Launching was to be by catapult at 500 miles an hour, and the ship would rise to its maximum altitude in as short a time as four minutes. There, fuel exhausted, it would glide through the outer atmosphere, bearing down on its target. With one hundred bombers of this type the Germans hoped to destroy any city on earth in a few days' operations. 

Little wonder, then, that today Army Air Force experts declare publicly that in rocket power and guided missiles the Nazis were ahead of us by at least ten years. 

The Germans even had devices ready which would take care of pilots forced to leave supersonic planes in flight. Normally a pilot who stuck his head out at such speeds would have it shorn off. His parachute on opening would burst in space. To prevent these calamitous happenings an ejector seat had been invented which flung the pilot clear instantaneously. His chute was already burst, that is, made of latticed ribbons which checked his fall only alter the down-drag of his weight began to close its holes. 

A Nazi variation of the guided air missile was a torpedo for underwater work which went unerringly to its mark, drawn by the propeller sound of the victim ship from as far away as ten miles. This missile swam thirty feet below the water, at forty miles an hour, and left no wake. When directly under its target, it exploded. 

All such revelations naturally raise the question: was Germany so far advanced in air, rocket, and missile research that, given a little more time, she might have won the war? Her war secrets, as now disclosed, would seem to indicate that possibility. And the Deputy Commanding General of Army Air Forces Intelligence, Air Technical Service Command, has told the Society of Aeronautical Engineers within the past few months: 

"The Germans were preparing rocket surprises for the whole world in general and England in particular which would have, it is believed, changed the course of the war if the invasion had been postponed for so short a time as half a year." 

V 

For the release and dissemination of all these 'one-time secrets the Office of the Publication Board was established by an order of President Truman within ten days after Japan surrendered. 'The order directed that not only enemy war secrets should be published, but also (with some exceptions) all American secrets, scientific and technical, of all government war boards. (The Office of Scientific Research and Development, the National Research Council, and other such.) And thereby was created what is being termed now the biggest publishing problem a government agency ever had to handle. 

For the war secrets, which conventionally used to be counted in scores, will run to three-quarters of a million separate documentary items (two-thirds of them on aeronautics) and will require several years and several hundreds of people to screen and prepare them for wide public use. 

Today translators and abstracters of the Office of Technical Services, successor to the OPB, arc processing them at the rate of about a thousand a week. Indexing and cataloguing the part of the collection which will be permanently kept may require more than two millions cards; and at Wright Field the task is so complicated that electric punch-card machine; are to be installed. A whole new glossary of German-English terms has had to be compiled -- something like forty thousand words on new technical and scientific items. 

With so many documents, it has, of course, been impossible because of time and money limitations to reprint or reproduce more than a very few. To tell the public what is available, therefore, the OTS issues a bibliography weekly. This contains the newest war secrets information as released -- with titles, prices of copies currently available or to be made up, and an abstract of contents. 

The original document, or the microfilm copy, is then generally sent to the Library of Congress, which is now the greatest depository. To make them more easily accessible to the public, the Library sends copies, when enough are available, to about 125 so-called "depository" libraries throughout the United States. 

And is the public doing anything with these one-time war secrets? It is -- it is eating them up. As many as twenty thousand orders have been filled in a month, and the order rate is now a thousand items a day. Scientists and engineers declare that the information is "cutting years from the time we would devote to problems already scientifically investigated." And American business men ...! A run through the Publication Board's letters file shows the following; 

The Bendix Company in South Bend, Indiana, writes for a German patent on the record player changer "with records stacked above the turntable." Pillsbury Mills wants to have what is available on German flour and bread production methods. Kendall Manufacturing Company ("Soapine") wants insect repellent compounds. Pioneer Hi-Bred Corn Company, Iowa, asks about "interrogation of research workers at the agricultural high school at Hohenheim." Pacific Mills requests I. G. Farbenindustrie's water-repellent, crease-resistant finish for spun rayon. The Polaroid Company would like something on "the status of exploitation of photography and optics in Germany." (There are, incidentally, ten to twenty thousand German patents yet to be screened.) 

The most insatiable customer is Amtorg, the Soviet Union's foreign trade organization. One of its representatives walked into the Publication Board office with the bibliography-in hand and said, "I want copies of everything." The Russians sent one order in May for $5,594.00 worth -- two thousand separate war secrets reports. In general, they buy every report issued. Americans, too, think there is extraordinarily good prospecting in the war secrets lode. Company executives practically park on the OTS's front doorstep, wanting to be first to get hold of a particular report on publication. Some information is so valuable that to get it a single day ahead of a competitor, may be worth thousands of dollars. But the OTS takes elaborate precautions to be sure that no report is ever available to anyone before general public release. 

After a certain American aircraft company had ordered a particular captured war document, it was queried as to whether the information therein had made it or saved it any money. The cost of the report had been a few dollars. The company answered: "Yea -- at least a hundred thousand dollars." 

A research head of another business firm took notes for three hours in the OTS offices one day. "Thanks very much," he said, as he stood to go, "the notes from these documents are worth at least half a million dollars to my company." 

And after seeing the complete report the German synthetic fiber industry, one American manufacturer remarked: 

"This report would be worth twenty million dollars to my company if it could have it exclusively." 

Of course you, and anybody else, can now have it, and lots of other once secret information, for a few dollars. All the war secrets, as released, are completely in the public domain.


----------



## Rich Parsons (Sep 10, 2004)

Kaith Rustaz said:
			
		

> 1 thing Robert.... we won WW2 because we had more resources than the enemy.
> It would take 10 Shermans to knock out 1 Tiger...with 9 Shermans lost.  We just had more Shermans than Hitler had Tigers. If they had had the manpower, and the ability to keep them stocked, the war would have at the least, lasted longer.  If that had happened, since the Germans had the rocket experts, and were the first to field jet fighters, IF they had completed their heavy water experiments before we did, London would still be glowing I think.



The German Tiger, was the best Tank on any field for the age. The US built more as Bob stated. 

The Germans were running low of fuel and supplies.

The germans did have rockets, and even Jet theory, just did not get it working in time.

The Atomic Bomb was mainly designed by Germans. Germans that could have done it for Germany or some country than the USA.  The science was at teh right time, someone would have done it sooner or later.



As to gaining something from evil empires, yes there were things gained. Was the price worth it? To some yes. To others it was too costly.

Here are some for you:

What if Japan Attacked Dan Deigo and San Franciso instead of Hawai'i?

What is Truman did not drop the bomb?

What if Roosevelt did not die?

Thoughts?


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## rmcrobertson (Sep 10, 2004)

Quite right, too--this kinda stuff (and things like Operation Paperclip) is exactly why German companies like VW have been forced to pay at least some war reparations.

Looks to me as though our economic system has a lot to apologize for--and to pay for.

But then, "modernization," always did involve the immiseration of tens of millions of human beings.


----------



## Rich Parsons (Sep 10, 2004)

rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> Quite right, too--this kinda stuff (and things like Operation Paperclip) is exactly why German companies like VW have been forced to pay at least some war reparations.
> 
> Looks to me as though our economic system has a lot to apologize for--and to pay for.
> 
> But then, "modernization," always did involve the immiseration of tens of millions of human beings.



Robert et al, 

Yes, many have paid with the health and or lives. Yet, things are better because people have faught for the changes.

Just remember that the US went in and rebuilt West Germany and also Japan, for manufacturuing.

:asian:


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## Bob Hubbard (Sep 10, 2004)

As a further bit on the contributions..

Why have our military helmets evolved to resemble those used by the Germans in WW2?  Why does the A1 Abrams have a more than casual resemblence to the Tiger? 

We can look at this and realize that, yes, there were many positive things that came out of there....and be -VERY- thankful that they did not have the resources or time  or manpower to last.


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## kenpo tiger (Sep 10, 2004)

Robertson said:  (Curiously enough, it also meant destroying modern art and modern artists, in favor of propaganda and kitsch.) 
Interesting how the quality of life is the first thing to be taken away.  Bread and circuses.

Just out of curiousity, were the frozen bodies ever recovered?


----------



## rmcrobertson (Sep 10, 2004)

I see nothing, "good," about developments in arms and armor. Necessary, sure. 

As for the notions of German technical superiority--

1. The King Tiger was a dog: slow, awkward, hard to maintain. The Russian tanks, by the end of the war, were probably better.

2. The Brits had jets about the same time as Jerry had jets. The Brits had radar first.

3. The chief architects of the atomic bomb were American (Robert Oppenheimer) and from places like Yugoslavia (Leo Szilard, etc.). Einstein only sent a letter, and had laid a general theoretical groundwork. Back in Germany, heisenberg and the others were years behind. read Richard Rhodes' books on the topic. 

We kicked their ***. And while manufacturing certainly helped, it wasn't the only edge: ask the Rangers on Omaha Beach; ask the 101st at Bastogne; ask Patton's 2nd Army--all of whom beat the best Germany had, and against odds.

For that matter, scope out the biggest tank battle of the war--Kursk, where the Commies outgeneraled and outfought the Nazis.

I'm sick of these you-got-to-give-them-credit arguments. Hate to be old-fashioned American, but to me the evidence suggests that democratic societies and their armies--well, and capitalist production--will ALWAYS beat the bastards.

What woulda happened? We woulda kicked their ***.


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## Tgace (Sep 10, 2004)

Part of our "advantage" was in soldier level leadership. US troops have historically been able to "drive on" and make command decisions, from private on up, in combat situations as key leaders were killed/injured. In many armies, when the leader was killed the show was over because the rest of the troops had no idea what the mission was. US troops, all know what the "mission" was and could carry on to the last man if needed.


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## AnimEdge (Sep 10, 2004)

RandomPhantom700 said:
			
		

> Ha, those are great. You'd get a kick out of the Command & Conquer series, assuming for the moment that you're into video games. The entire plot to Red Alert was Einsteing going back in time to kill Hitler, thereby leaving Stalinist Russia to invade Europe instead. And, of course, somehow Russia developed the atomic bomb before the Allies. Fun game, but the reality of it is kinda questionable.


That was Einstein? i allways wondered who that was


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## rmcrobertson (Sep 10, 2004)

Or to quote Joanna Russ', "The Female Man," a kick-*** book if ever there was one:

"How good of you to be an expert on things that never happened."


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## Kane (Sep 11, 2004)

rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> My apologies for being intolerant of fascisms, and pretty much opposed to notions of how much they'd help us out.
> 
> As for where I'm getting this from, the first source is precisely the sort of popular fiction upon which such questions are based. read them: apocalyptic fantasies, filled with fantasies of male dominance, paranoia, and weapons.
> 
> ...


Dude, where did I say that fascism would modernize the world faster? I asked whether the axis rule would have modernize world FASTER OR SLOWER. Meaning I was nuetral on that for you guys to make a choice. Also, what is wrong with discussing "what if" scenarios? It's just like wondering who would win between a knight or samurai. There is nothing wrong with it.


----------



## rmcrobertson (Sep 11, 2004)

Except, DUDE, for the glorification of horror.

How ya doin' with the Spinrad and the Dick books? There's also a pretty good L. Sprague de Camp story yawl should read...unless you're just plain into that one old "Star Trek," episode.


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## Kane (Sep 11, 2004)

You also act like only when extreme conservative fascists to modernize disasters happen. What about the extreme liberal communist of Stalin's Soviet Union? Under Stalin there was over 40-60 million deaths so that Russia can "modernize". That is more is between 6-10 times more than even Hitler. There was both to eat.


----------



## PeachMonkey (Sep 11, 2004)

I apologize in advance for a long post.

 This thread has brought up a number of interesting issues.  Germany has always had, since nearly the beginning of the industrial revolution, a remarkable talent for innovation and production.  However, for the sake of the original topic, I'll try and limit my comments to issues revolved around warfighting in the ETO during World War II -- in particular, technical, strategic, operational, and tactical issues.

 Strategy:
 ---------
 Strategically, Germany did not live up to her potential.  The German General Staff tradition influenced every major combatant.  In addition to training the bulk of German leadership, most of the finest leaders in the Soviet Army had access to German General Staff training.   In fact, the key figure behind the reconstruction of the US Army after the attack at Pearl Harbor had studied in Germany, and used his professional staff training there as a model.

 The professional tradition of this General Staff system served German units well at all levels during the conflict, but, with the exception of a number of innovative leaders, most of the Wehrmacht supreme command was bound by limited strategic creativity, whether due to the interference of Hitler's inane directives or their own hidebound traditions.  Germany's victory in Poland came at a surprising level of difficulty; the Germans very nearly elected to repeat the disaster of the Schlieffen Plan rather than their attack through the Ardennes during the invasion of France; the choice to engage in Operation Barbarossa was disastrous, and the choice to divert resources away from its successes proved fatal; Rommel's brilliance in the field in North Africa was counterbalanced by tremendous blunders (failure to take Crete when it was possible, continous over-extension of gains) -- the list goes on and on.  Oh, and there's the little matter of complete incompetence in the mobilization of industry... Germany's economy didn't even go to a formal wartime footing until 1943.

 The Allies, on the other hand, have a better record in this area.  The Soviets quickly realized their limitations, knew where to trade land for time and where to stand and fight, and were cynically able to trade massive numbers of men to achieve long-term strategic goals.  The British responded to initial disasters in the field with superb focus, maintained air superiority over the Isles to prevent an invasion, and maintained complete sea supremacy, allowing them to continue the fight around the world.  The United States recognized the importance of the Europe First strategy, demonstrated a complete mastery of economic mobilization, and worked inexorably to whittle away the gains of the Axis powers.

 Tactics:
 --------
 Despite what some have suggested, the German army set the standard for tactical superiority.  German units were trained, even until the end of the war, to maintain cohesion even under stress, and to apply the essentials of fire and movement at all levels. Time and time again, when faced with disaster on a strategic and operational level, German units were able to pull together and stop a total collapse -- accounts are profligate of HQ staffs, engineering units, clerks and typists, and even cooks grabbing weapons and forming firing lines to end overruns by superior forces.  And, in nearly every case, German forces were unmatched in mobile warfare.  Only elite units among the Allies (Airborne units, Rangers, Marines) matched or exceeded the standard level of tactical excellence amongst the Wehrmacht.  Someone asserted that US units had a similar ability to "stick to the mission"... this simply wasn't true in either WWII or Korea, except among exceptional units such as Marines or the Airborne.  This deficiency was seen time and time again, from the Kasserine Pass through the Second Battle of the Ardennes Forest (Bulge).  Only after these conflicts, when the US military focused heavily on the lessons learned and invested heavily in doctrine and training, was this deficiency addressed.

 Operational:
 ------------
 The Germans were the inventors of the term _operativ_, a word that doesn't translate well into English -- the concept lies somewhere between grand strategy and small-unit tactics, and encompasses the ability of leaders to respond to the unknowable changes and flows in the battlefield.  

 Ironically, their application of this ability was mixed; some leaders were masters, others less so.  The insistence of Hitler and the OKW to interfere on unit-by-unit levels during critical moments of the war overrode any operational abilities held by many leaders -- other masters of the operational art were dismissed by Hitler at various points in the conflict simply for disagreeing with his insanity.  

 In addition, some crucial Allied forces brought their own levels of expertise here, among them Patton, Bradley, to a lesser extent Montgomery, and many, many of the Soviet leaders from later in the war.  Eisenhower showed no great gifts in this arena, as his leadership during Torch shows, but he made up for this in his role as SAC and in his selection of subordinates.

 Just as an aside, Robert, most of the examples you quote about beating the best Germany had against odds were not totally accurate.  The Rangers were facing horrible odds at Omaha Beach, but they were the finest of the elite of the US military, and the problems were of terrain and firepower -- the German forces on the beaches were primarily second and third-rate units, selected to hold the fortifications due to their lack of mobility, stamina, and-or training.  The 101st at Bastogne were, again, an elite unit -- not much more to say about that act of heroism.  Patton never commanded Second Army, but rather II Corps, whose successes in North Africa were against high-quality Afrikakorps units that were suffering from extreme deficiencies in supply and total Allied air supremacy.  Patton went on to command Third Army, which, again, leveraged his excellent leadership and well-supplied US units with total air supremacy against savavely depleted German units in Operation Cobra.


 Technical:
 ----------
 The German army had a mixture of technical innovation and fetishism.  

 German infantry units used some of the best small-arms of the war, and innovated in ways that still apply today, such as the development of the assault rifle.

 German tanks were a mixed bag.  Germany's early successes in armored warfare actually came against superior tanks, whether those of the Poles, the French, or British.  Leadership, organization, tactics, and communication were the keys to German armored prowess.

 The inferiority of German tank design, especially to the Soviet T34, led to the highly vaunted Panther and Tiger series, as well as some truly insane experiments such as the Maus.  While Panthers and Tigers outgunned and outarmored the vast majority of their opponents, they faced a serious number of deficiencies.  They were insanely complex to develop, build, and maintain.  Delays in the development of the Panther delayed Operation Citadel and contributed massively to its subsequent failure at Kursk.  These tanks were notoriously unreliable, so nonstandard from tank-to-tank as to make maintenance a nightmare, and desperately vulnerable to combined-arms tactics with infantry (especially in the case of the Tigers).  They also lacked mobility, dramatically limiting their utility, and leaving them vulnerable in open battle to more nimble Allied weaponry.

 The greatest successes of the Tigers and Panthers were psychological (due to their size, powerful guns, and thick armor), or of limited applicability -- the hedgerows of Normandy balanced the mobility scales and made them kings of the battlefield, but in the open fields and steppes they were quite vulnerable.  The Sherman-to-Tiger ratio was primarily skewed by the early static battles in Normandy.  In more mobile battles, particularly with upgunned Shermans, they gave a far better accounting of themselves.

 (By the way, similarities between the M1 and the Tiger are mainly superficial.  Yes, both have dominant guns and incredibly protective front armor.  However, the M1 also learned from all the failures of the Tiger... it is extremely mobile, has a reduced profile, is capable against infantry, and is designed for extreme ease of maintenance.)

 Shermans were more weakly armored, couldn't penetrate many more advanced tanks with their gun, and caught fire easily, but they were mobile, reliable, maintainable -- a well-balanced infantry tank.  The finest tank of the war, from this same perspective of balance, was the above-mentioned T34.

 Another quick example: German U-Boats were garbage, especially compared to the submarines of the US.  Their threat mainly came from leadership and innovative tactics, but even their strategic threat has been shown post-war to have been exaggerated -- I refer you to the excellent, and definitive, two-part volume "Hitler's U-Boat War" by Clay Blair.

 I won't even get into aircraft, mainly because I'm tired.  Again, while the Germans showed flashes of brilliance throughout the war, and their pilots were often superb, their aircraft were usually outclassed by Allied planes and their strategic air planning was pathetic.

 Conclusion:
 -----------
 The German military was highly influential both before and after WWII due to innovations in command, leadership, and technology.  Many of these areas had extreme deficiencies as well, and in many cases, common beliefs about supposed German or Allied advantages don't hold up to scrutiny.  

 The war was always unwinnable for Germany, due to a mixture of economic and strategic issues that haven't really even been addressed; it's not fair to say the Allies won simply because of economics, nor is it accurate to say that many standard beliefs about German quality were mythical.


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## PeachMonkey (Sep 11, 2004)

Kane said:
			
		

> What about the extreme liberal communist of Stalin's Soviet Union?


 By what facts or standards do you place the autarchical dictatorship of the Soviet Union as having been "liberal"?  Thanks.


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## Kane (Sep 11, 2004)

PeachMonkey said:
			
		

> By what facts or standards do you place the autarchical dictatorship of the Soviet Union as having been "liberal"? Thanks.


I'm not trying to label anyone. It just seems rmcrobertson thinks that only super extreme conservatives (fascists for example) are the only extreme evil. If both sides get to their extreme it is bad. There always has to be a balance. Super Extreme liberalism is bad too. Stalin is and example of Super Extreme Liberal and Hitler is and example of Super Extreme Conservative. Both are bad if they get to their extreme point.



Why was Stalin Extreme Liberal? He believed all humans around him were at the same level as animals making it okay to kill anyone. He killed many for no reason. Also, Communist Dictatorship is also defined at the very edge of extreme linearism.



Why was Hitler Extreme Conservative? Simple, he was ultra-nationalist and ultra-racist. He killed any who wasn't in the same race. Also, Autocracy Dictatorship can be defined to be at the very edge of extreme conservatism.


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## michaeledward (Sep 11, 2004)

rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> Except, DUDE, for the glorification of horror.
> 
> How ya doin' with the Spinrad and the Dick books? There's also a pretty good L. Sprague de Camp story yawl should read...unless you're just plain into that one old "Star Trek," episode.


I always liked that Star Trek episode ... it was one actually written by the Great Bird, himself. 

"Wheat Pleb Neesta" ---- at least that's the way I always heard it.

:lasma:

we really need some Star Trek smileys


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## PeachMonkey (Sep 11, 2004)

Kane said:
			
		

> I'm not trying to label anyone.


 
 I didn't say you were; I just dispute placing Stalin as an "extreme liberal".

 I invite you to look at the definition of the word "liberal":

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=liberal

 ...and compare this to Stalin's regime.

  Even if you associate the formation of a Marxist/Leninist state as the "ideal result for liberals" (which is also inaccurate), you have to remember that Stalin's regime was a *betrayal* of the ideals of Lenin, Trotsky, et al.




			
				Kane said:
			
		

> Why was Stalin Extreme Liberal? He believed all humans around him were at the same level as animals making it okay to kill anyone. He killed many for no reason. Also, Communist Dictatorship is also defined at the very edge of extreme linearism.


 
 What does "extreme linearism" mean?  I really have not heard that term before in this context.

 Also, is it your implication that liberalism, taken to an extreme, makes it okay to kill anyone?  On what basis do you make that statement?



			
				Kane said:
			
		

> Also, Autocracy Dictatorship can be defined to be at the very edge of extreme conservatism.


 I didn't use the word "autocracy", I used the work "autarky".

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=autarky


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## Bob Hubbard (Sep 11, 2004)

PM - Thank you for that excellet analysis.  

ME - I'll hunt for some


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## Tgace (Sep 11, 2004)

Nice WWII history site @

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/war/wwtwo/index.shtml



> The long-range fighter, introduced from late 1943, made bombing more secure, and provided the instrument to destroy the German fighter force over the Reich.
> 
> 
> The debilitating effects on German air power then reduced the contribution German aircraft could make on the Eastern Front, where Soviet air forces vastly outnumbered German. The success of air power in Europe persuaded the American military leaders to try to end the war with Japan the same way.
> ...


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## Kane (Sep 11, 2004)

PeachMonkey said:
			
		

> I didn't say you were; I just dispute placing Stalin as an "extreme liberal".
> 
> I invite you to look at the definition of the word "liberal":
> 
> ...


My bad, I meant extreme liberism (even though I you knew what I mean :wink1: .


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## Rich Parsons (Sep 11, 2004)

rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> I see nothing, "good," about developments in arms and armor. Necessary, sure.



Robert, unfortunatley, many new medical and other science came out of this war as well on the Axis and the Allieds side.  Yes there were horrors that were committed and that should not be forgotten, yet people in the Renaisance period carved up dead bodies from sactified graves, yes crimes against the dead are not the same as those against the living, yet, there was progress made. 

It also forced others to move faster in their development.



			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> As for the notions of German technical superiority--
> 
> 1. The King Tiger was a dog: slow, awkward, hard to maintain. The Russian tanks, by the end of the war, were probably better.



Yes, by the end of the War, the German Tanks were not the best. Yet if they had taken out one country at a time and then used minimal tropps to maintain control those tanks could have be used before the others developed better technologies.

Note: The USA also had better airplanes by the end of the war. Yet, we did not start out that way.



			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> 2. The Brits had jets about the same time as Jerry had jets. The Brits had radar first.




First off, I do not like terms such as Jerry, or Charlie, or Jap, or Nip, or Sand N, or N, or Towel Head, or, ..., .  They are signs of a weak mind that insists upon racism and nationalism. I would have expected better of you Robert.

Yes, the British had them about the same time? In the big picture of history the whole war was about the same time. Was it a year, or monthes or days?

This also goes back to the tank isue, and resources, (* Note The Japanese also had resource issues in Asia, and actually was there reason for going into China *) where the Germans could not maintain a good supply chain of resources. The  fact that they could not control the Med and have the resources from Africa did hurt them. They moved to fast. 



			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> 3. The chief architects of the atomic bomb were American (Robert Oppenheimer) and from places like Yugoslavia (Leo Szilard, etc.). Einstein only sent a letter, and had laid a general theoretical groundwork. Back in Germany, heisenberg and the others were years behind. read Richard Rhodes' books on the topic.



Yes, American, with the German influence in research. The Germans and the US were the two big deveolper of this type of science. Today, you Russians, Germans and the US are the main forces of development in Chemistry and Physics. Yes, the Asians have it also, yet they are not developing new technologies or research, only looking to cach up to the three I mentioned.



			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> We kicked their ***. And while manufacturing certainly helped, it wasn't the only edge: ask the Rangers on Omaha Beach; ask the 101st at Bastogne; ask Patton's 2nd Army--all of whom beat the best Germany had, and against odds.



Yes, we kicked there ***. It was the last great war where every felt great about going and killing a bunch of people. All the wars since then, have not had that feeling or the support of the US people. 

I also agree that the Men and Women in the Military made a big difference. Patton being able to go places others had problems to go. Using Pattan as a decoy in Turkey for the Normandy Landing, was brilliant tactical planning. Yes he was also being punished for slapping a man. But, the Axis could not believe that would be enough to stop the man and his leadership. As Tom G mentioned the capability of teams to move forward based upon immediate information was also important.



			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> For that matter, scope out the biggest tank battle of the war--Kursk, where the Commies outgeneraled and outfought the Nazis.



Yes, The Russians out smarted the Germans here. And this was one were Fuel was not the major deciding factor. Kursk was good fighting by the Russians, if you can say fighting is good fighting.



			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> I'm sick of these you-got-to-give-them-credit arguments. Hate to be old-fashioned American, but to me the evidence suggests that democratic societies and their armies--well, and capitalist production--will ALWAYS beat the bastards.



As to being old fashioned, not a problem.

As to being sick of being PC and giving credit, I can understand it. Yet, in my mind if I understand them better maybe I can avoid it in the future, or understand what drove them to that place in the first place. You are intitled to your opinion. 

As to the Democratic armies, The Republic of Rome, which the US is also a Republic, lost to the invading Huns, the barbarians of the north, the, ..., .


And I find it hard to swallow you saying that Capitalism is good for anything. Just not what I expected. I learned a little bit more today.



			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> What woulda happened? We woulda kicked their ***.



I don't know if we would have. If they had the bomb first. If the isolation kept us out until only the American continents were free, then could we have faught them back? I do not know.


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## Tgace (Sep 11, 2004)

I remember reading a WWII history book (Ambriose??) that mentioned an advantage the US had was good ole farmboy fix em' up attitude. The tankers developing and welding plows "on the fly" onto their machines to go through the Norman hedgerows, fixing up broken vehicles on the road instead of leaving them for follow up mechanics and being able to drive almost anything (American love of vehicles). Small skills and abilities that magnified their military capacity.


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## rmcrobertson (Sep 11, 2004)

Dear, DEAR "Kane," (hey, how's that Abel doin'?) how good of you to read my mind. What was in there? I'm never sure. Listen up, genius: I know more about the ills of the Left and its occasional autarchs than you do. That's why I quote things such as the Situationists', "The world won't be happy 'till the last capitalist is hung with the guts of the last bureaucrat." Wanna guess who they had in mind by "bureaucrats?" 

I realize that you're trapped in some weird ultra-right ideology that can only survive on the fantasy that nobody else but Rush knows nothin' bout no Gulag, but Sparky, I was--quite literally, I'll bet--reading Solzhenitsyn before you were born. That's "Aleksander." "Solzenitsyn." Author of, "Gulag Archipelago?" "Cancer Ward?" No, eh?

Hey, wanna flip out your buddies? read about the career of Louis Althusser, find out where Pol Pot studied, and then you'll have some real ammo, rather than the intellectual popguns. But you didn't hear it from me; I was busy advancing the righteous struggle of the Second Comintern. 

Oh and hey DUDE, re-read the part of "Starship Troopers," where Mr. Dubois goes after the notion that body count matters, in ways that interact interestingly with Dylan Thomas' "After the first death, there is no other," and old Joe's own, "One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic." Get a load of the body count of Native Americans that occurred as a direct result of capitalism in its early colonialist period. Three smacks with a copy of "Slaughterhouse-Five; or, the Children's Crusade." Or, hell, since we're in on WWII, go read Hersey's, "Hiroshima," and then come back and lecture on Stalin. Or hell, contemplate the year-and-a-half old baby girl, killed by F-111s sent to assassinate Quaddafi...and then go back to Heinlein: "The Regiment was disgraced and we FELT disgraced...we were supposed to protect baby girls, not murder them...."

Incidentally, Stephen Ambrose--well known for his moral lectures--got caight plagiarizing his books a couple years back. Just like Doris Kearns Goodwin, reagan's biographer, got caught.

Oh, I forgot..."Nazis," is far worse than "Jerry," especially for the many members of the German-American Bund in this country during the War. And their allies, like Lindbergh. Might as well complain about calling KKK members sheet-heads...


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## Tgace (Sep 11, 2004)

> Incidentally, Stephen Ambrose--well known for his moral lectures--got caight plagiarizing his books a couple years back. Just like Doris Kearns Goodwin, reagan's biographer, got caught.



Now i aint all that smart by gum, but aint that called an Ad Hominem attack????? vis a vis "attacking the man" quid pro quo an all that?


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## rmcrobertson (Sep 11, 2004)

If'n yer gonna cite Amborse as a moral authority, then his ability to act as a moral authority becomes an issue. Further, ad hominem attacks usually involve somebody's private life, not the nature of their public, professional conduct. I referred to his published work, and his getting caught cheating in public.

After all, this IS precisely the excuse Bush et al are using to attack John Kerry's war record, since they cannot compare his record to the President's.


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## Tgace (Sep 11, 2004)

Ad Hominem (Argument To The Man): 

attacking the person instead of attacking his argument. For example, "Von Daniken's books about ancient astronauts are worthless because he is a convicted forger and embezzler." (Which is true, but that's not why they're worthless.) 
Another example is this syllogism, which alludes to Alan Turing's homosexuality: 

Turing thinks machines think. 
Turing lies with men. 
Therefore, machines don't think. 
(Note the equivocation in the use of the word "lies".) 

A common form is an attack on sincerity. For example, "How can you argue for vegetarianism when you wear leather shoes?" The two wrongs make a right fallacy is related. 

A variation (related to Argument By Generalization) is to attack a whole class of people. For example, "Evolutionary biology is a sinister tool of the materialistic, atheistic religion of Secular Humanism." Similarly, one notorious net.kook waved away a whole category of evidence by announcing "All the scientists were drunk." 

Another variation is attack by innuendo: "Why don't scientists tell us what they really know; are they afraid of public panic?" 

There may be a pretense that the attack isn't happening: "In order to maintain a civil debate, I will not mention my opponent's drinking problem." 

Sometimes the attack is on intelligence. For example, "If you weren't so stupid you would have no problem seeing my point of view." Or, dismissing a comment with "Well, you're just smarter than the rest of us." (In Britain, that might be put as "too clever by half".) This is related to Not Invented Here, but perhaps it is more connected to Dismissal By Differentness and Changing The Subject. 

Ad Hominem is not fallacious if the attack goes to the credibility of the argument. For instance, the argument may depend on its presenter's claim that he's an expert. (That is, there is an Argument From Authority.) Trial judges allow this category of attacks.


----------



## rmcrobertson (Sep 11, 2004)

"Ad Hominem is not fallacious if the attack goes to the credibility of the argument."

I see that we agree. Excellent, Simpson.


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## Tgace (Sep 11, 2004)

> If'n yer gonna cite Amborse as a moral authority




 I dont believe I was arguing his "moral authority" only what he said about US troops and their skills....unless I missed something. So by that I drew the Ad Hominem conlusion.


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## Kane (Sep 12, 2004)

Rmcrobertson, Where did you get the idea I am Ultra-Right? You also act as if it is bad to be on the Right. You also act as if I wished Hitler took over world.

Also, the Abel you are referring to is brother of Cain not Kane.


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## SMP (Sep 12, 2004)

wow - this thread looks like it got a little side tracked....  Maybe we should start a thread on  falacies of arguments . . hmm onto something else


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## PeachMonkey (Sep 12, 2004)

Tgace said:
			
		

> I remember reading a WWII history book (Ambriose??) that mentioned an advantage the US had was good ole farmboy fix em' up attitude. The tankers developing and welding plows "on the fly" onto their machines to go through the Norman hedgerows, fixing up broken vehicles on the road instead of leaving them for follow up mechanics and being able to drive almost anything (American love of vehicles). Small skills and abilities that magnified their military capacity.


 Keep in mind that Ambrose, while good at interviewing soldiers, was a lousy historian.

 This so-called US advantage was also possessed by German, Soviet, and English soldiers.


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## PeachMonkey (Sep 12, 2004)

Kane said:
			
		

> My bad, I meant extreme liberism (even though I you knew what I mean :wink1: .


 Kane,

 I honestly wasn't sure if that was what you meant.  And, regardless, liberals and Stalinists would both be insulted by your comparison


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## Tgace (Sep 12, 2004)

PeachMonkey said:
			
		

> Keep in mind that Ambrose, while good at interviewing soldiers, was a lousy historian.
> 
> This so-called US advantage was also possessed by German, Soviet, and English soldiers.


Yeah, probably. I just recall a point about vehicle breakdowns and how the German SOP was to ditch and leave it for follow-on mechanics, while US troops were more prone to fix it themselves. Thats all. I wasnt debating the truth of it or Ambrose's validity.


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## Rich Parsons (Sep 12, 2004)

rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> . . .
> Oh, I forgot..."Nazis," is far worse than "Jerry," especially for the many members of the German-American Bund in this country during the War. And their allies, like Lindbergh. Might as well complain about calling KKK members sheet-heads...



Robert,

The Nazi's  were the political party of the day. By making this reference you can say that most of the Germans of the day did support the party in one fashion or not and are thereby guilty as charged. To say Jerrys; or Yanks' or Nips' in the way you did, it was derogatory towards all today and in history. So by your example, if I do not call an African American/Negro/Black Man, the N word, yet instead call him "Blackie" or some other term, is it acceptable? (* NO! IT is not, in my point of view. *) I still think it is a poor arguement, and the sign of a weak mind.

As to Robert Heinlein, you have attacked those who have used quotes from him in the past. You are not being consistent in your approach. This is also the sind of a weak mind or, someone who is strong minded and capable of growing, yet I have not seen you admit that, which is the first step. So, which is it? can we quote Sci-Fi authors, only when it fits your point of view or are we able to quote anyone and discuss it at the time the point and topic at hand? Even though I might agree with your point of "Mr. Dubois" and the Ethics class, yet I find it hard to swallow anything you say now. It is almost like you are a troll, and just looking for an arguement to keep your life busy, and you seem to be educated enough not to fall into the immediate troll traps.

One might ask why these posts of mine? Robert has taken others to task for the issues I am rasing. Yet, he seems to find it ok to do so at his pleasure.

I am curious as to what is up? Has something changed? Do you wish to talk, or PM me? I'll Listen. 

Still confused
:asian:


----------



## rmcrobertson (Sep 12, 2004)

Dear Rich:

In the first place, you cannot show me a post in which I've attacked people using Heinlein quotes. I've objected to the political implications of those quotes, to some of Heinlein's ignorance of reality, to distortions of meanings. I do not attack people personally, because I do not know them personally. I cannot help it if they--and you--are attributing motives that I do not have. 

I might note, however, that these pretenses of being polite and you're just MEAN are a major reason that I've about run out the string of posting on this forum or most others. It's a boring discussion, for one thing--and it hides the remarkable offensiveness of many of the "polite," posts, which often involve saying that everybody but me is going to hell, or nobody but me is a patriot, or please let me grossly distort reality but if anybody objects they're just being MEAN.

As for your own last post:

1. The Nazis were A political party of the day, not THE only one. Germany had a democratically elected, liberal/left government before Herr Schickelgruber came to power. You want an alternate history? One that doesn't repeat 47 bad science fiction novels, and encourage an unhealthy fascination with war toys? How 'bout the Weimar government gets intelligent help from people like Lindbergh, who in that alternate  universe is a socialist rather than a fascist? How 'bout there's a failed coup in Japan, and their democratic government stays in power, and rejects the hell-bent capitalism that drove them into fascism?

2. The notion that calling Nazis, "Jerry," is even vaguely comparable to racist slurs on the groups that they gassed, and which we enslaved, is absurd. An alternate history? Fine. Try one in which white Protestants were systematically oppressed and persecuted. Or one in which Amazons rule the world, like I saw on a "Buck Rogers," episode. Then, such a comment would make sense. Until then, it must I am afraid remain classed with the Klan guys who go off about how, "Us'n white folks is picked upon," and the types who sit in bars and lament the way that, "them women run EVERYTHING! it's reverse discrimination, that's what it is!!" Language depends on history and society, dude. it does not work in a vaccuum.

3. Ambrose, it would seem, is unreliable as a historian. Try John Keegan, who knows a helluva sight more, and generally avoids the kind of moral pontification that gets you into trouble when you get caught stealing your ideas and words, as Ambrose did. 

4. Some of the responses to the silly stuff I write come because it is far easier to  try and convince me that I've been mean, or am a bad guy, than it is to examine the ideas, and rethink one's own. Or even consider reality, for that matter. Some arrive because, after years of being beat down intellectually by screaming, wealthy ignoramuses like Hannity, Rush and Savage, folks have lost both the remnants of American cynicism about the wealthy and their own sense of solidarity with others in the same boat. Others come, because from time to time I screw up, and write as offensively and unthinkingly as those who cheerfully assert that Jews will burn in hellfire for their beliefs, or John Kerry's a coward and traitor, or everything is just ginger-peachy except for those whining liberals.

5. This thread isn't about histories. It's about boys with toys. Enjoy it without me; I shall be trying to remember that I have nothing further to say.


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## Brother John (Sep 12, 2004)

rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> Oh and hey DUDE, re-read the part of "Starship Troopers," where Mr. Dubois goes after the notion that body count matters, in ways that interact interestingly with Dylan Thomas' "After the first death, there is no other," and old Joe's own, "One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic." Get a load of the body count of Native Americans that occurred as a direct result of capitalism in its early colonialist period. Three smacks with a copy of "Slaughterhouse-Five; or, the Children's Crusade." Or, hell, since we're in on WWII, go read Hersey's, "Hiroshima," and then come back and lecture on Stalin.


Mr. Robertson

I'm NO history expert or social anthropologist, but don't you think that pretty much any time one particular segment of humanity rises to dominance that they've usually built their empire over mass graves?? I know that many might disagree with this and sight that America won her independence through 'righteous struggle' and that it flourished due to it's ideals of liberty and equality... but this doesn't take into account what happened to the native Americans and the Negro slaves...right???

Your Brother
John


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## Rich Parsons (Sep 12, 2004)

Dear Robert,

You said;


			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> Dear Rich:
> 
> In the first place, you cannot show me a post in which I've attacked people using Heinlein quotes. I've objected to the political implications of those quotes, to some of Heinlein's ignorance of reality, to distortions of meanings. I do not attack people personally, because I do not know them personally. I cannot help it if they--and you--are attributing motives that I do not have.



I will search the 2099 post you have made for the one in which you told me specifically that I was ignorant to make such a comment, as quoting or posting about Heinlein. It make take me some time, as I am busy and have other things to do, yet, I remember how people treat me, in person or on the net. :asian:



			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> I might note, however, that these pretenses of being polite and you're just MEAN are a major reason that I've about run out the string of posting on this forum or most others. It's a boring discussion, for one thing--and it hides the remarkable offensiveness of many of the "polite," posts, which often involve saying that everybody but me is going to hell, or nobody but me is a patriot, or please let me grossly distort reality but if anybody objects they're just being MEAN.



It might be boring, I will grant that. The polite is part of our rules. The just you are mean, is not me. I have said you are inconsistent. Or That I was surprised by such a comment.



			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> As for your own last post:
> 
> 1. The Nazis were A political party of the day, not THE only one. Germany had a democratically elected, liberal/left government before Herr Schickelgruber came to power. You want an alternate history? One that doesn't repeat 47 bad science fiction novels, and encourage an unhealthy fascination with war toys? How 'bout the Weimar government gets intelligent help from people like Lindbergh, who in that alternate  universe is a socialist rather than a fascist? How 'bout there's a failed coup in Japan, and their democratic government stays in power, and rejects the hell-bent capitalism that drove them into fascism?



Yes, you are correct the Nazi's won the election. So the Hundered Million people who did not vote for Bush the last time, are still Americans' and still responsible to do what is allowed within in their society to stop atrocities, if they see them or beleive they are being committed.  People coming forward about abuse and orture during interrogation, and others while being held prisoner. I also said "you" could say that they were guitly. I never said I would say that they were all guilty.



			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> 2. The notion that calling Nazis, "Jerry," is even vaguely comparable to racist slurs on the groups that they gassed, and which we enslaved, is absurd. An alternate history? Fine. Try one in which white Protestants were systematically oppressed and persecuted. Or one in which Amazons rule the world, like I saw on a "Buck Rogers," episode. Then, such a comment would make sense. Until then, it must I am afraid remain classed with the Klan guys who go off about how, "Us'n white folks is picked upon," and the types who sit in bars and lament the way that, "them women run EVERYTHING! it's reverse discrimination, that's what it is!!" Language depends on history and society, dude. it does not work in a vaccuum.



Robert, Jerry is a derogatory term. All the rest you bring up, is just teh red herring to get people to look elsewhere. 

To chase the Red Herring: Yes alternate realities are nice, and I have red and seen a movie where the White Man the oppresses the world and keeps it down, and under its' thumb, is turned around.  As to White folks and women, on the large scale economy and jobs the White folks have it much better, and women are second. And Yes I have said in my corporation and job experience that they cater to women, and minorities, for hiring and offering more money to them to keep them at their company. Now as this is the educated, this is not the whole scale. So, I never said that all white man are being discriminated against. I do not think I made the statement that white men are being discriminated against. I pointed out to women and minorities a place to look for. A goal to search for their education, to pay off, in the terms of Capitalism and being paid money. Does this adderss your Red Herring?



			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> 3. Ambrose, it would seem, is unreliable as a historian. Try John Keegan, who knows a helluva sight more, and generally avoids the kind of moral pontification that gets you into trouble when you get caught stealing your ideas and words, as Ambrose did.



Your resources, have not been  what I have been questioning. You are adding me into the discussions with others. And Yes I know Ambrose is nto your resource.



			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> 4. Some of the responses to the silly stuff I write come because it is far easier to  try and convince me that I've been mean, or am a bad guy, than it is to examine the ideas, and rethink one's own. Or even consider reality, for that matter. Some arrive because, after years of being beat down intellectually by screaming, wealthy ignoramuses like Hannity, Rush and Savage, folks have lost both the remnants of American cynicism about the wealthy and their own sense of solidarity with others in the same boat. Others come, because from time to time I screw up, and write as offensively and unthinkingly as those who cheerfully assert that Jews will burn in hellfire for their beliefs, or John Kerry's a coward and traitor, or everything is just ginger-peachy except for those whining liberals.



Robert, I never said you were mean. I siad your were inconsistent. I was cunfused and surprised by these responses. I evene offered to talk to you if there was a problem. 

I do not like those you names above (* Hannity, Rush and Savage *), nor do I listen to them at all. Not my game. As to you being offensive, you stated, you do not post as such, hence, my confusion. 

I never once attacked the Jews. I never once said anything about them. Yes tehy were persecuted by the Nazi party, and the German regime of WWII and prior. I do not support such actions.  I never said they would burn in hell. I siad you were bing inconistent and you still are in my point of view. You are throwing thigns out there to distract and confuse the issue even more.

I never said Kerry was a coward or traitor. Yet, with your words, you are implying to thsoe who read here, that I have. It is smoke and mirrors, You are making your politcal points, at my expense and trying to make me look bad. When I have explicitly staid out of the whole Bush and Kerry discussions. I do not like either as they are politicians.  I still have research to do before I make up my mind. Believe me I do not make knee jerk reactions, and vote. I will take a page from your post and make the comment that I do not like the knee jerk reaction of the leaders of the Republican party of if you are not with us you are against us. Since God says Abortion is bad, it should be a law for it to be illegal. These comments, maybe nice in themselves, yet do nothing for the post or the arguement other than to show you some insight into my point of view.

As to whining Liberals, it is the squeaky wheel that gets oiled.



			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> 5. This thread isn't about histories. It's about boys with toys. Enjoy it without me; I shall be trying to remember that I have nothing further to say.



You may have nothing further to say, and the original thread may be about boys and toys. Yet, I was taking this thread off topic, to discuss your replies as tehy were inconsistent, and showing signs of a weak mind. Yes that could be an attack. I did not mean it as such. Like, I said this confused me. Hence my questions,  and comments.  I still state that any form of derogatory comment towards nationality or religion or political parties is the sign of a weak mind, that has fallen into the simplest  of traps, and believing what they have heard oh so often.  Like, I said I was and am confused by your red herring approach, your denial of your attack on me, or at least how I perceived it then. 

Enjoy your time away. You may or may not reply, and that is fine. Yet, I have replied to those who will read this thread as well.


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## Tgace (Sep 12, 2004)

I seem to remember it too Rich...was it this post??

http://www.martialtalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=6906&page=5&pp=15&highlight=Heinlein


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## Tgace (Sep 12, 2004)

*http://www.ddaymuseum.com/HomefrontSpeech.htm*

*The Real World War II:
Fear on the Home Front, 
Terror on the Front Lines*

*Kenneth W. Rendell made the following remarks
to the American Enterprise Institute in May 2002.*

During the past several months, we as a nation have faced fears and unknowns not experienced since World War II.  We have also experienced a sense of community, brotherhood and patriotism not seen in 60 years.

With our current atmosphere of patriotism, fear and war, I think it relevant, and perhaps somewhat interactive, to consider the issues and challenges the American people faced in 1941, throughout the war years and in the aftermath of war as well.

While the media have pointed out similarities, there are also significant differences.  The Pearl Harbor attack was on a military target 3,000 miles from the mainland.  War was already raging in Europe, and Japan had been at war in Asia for ten years.  Virtually everyone accepted that we would be in the war sooner or later.  A Gallup Poll in 1940 found that 85% of America wanted to stay out of war; by 1941, the majority of Americans realized war was unavoidable.

There are tragic similarities.  While the United States knew that an attack in the Pacific was imminent by Japan, the U.S. never imagined that the Japanese were capable of attacking Pearl Harbor.  It was too daring a move; the Japanese couldn't do it.  We disastrously underestimated our enemy.

We also underestimated evil.  Prior to the outbreak of World War II in Europe, England, France and the United States could not believe Adolf Hitler really intended to do what he said in _Mein Kampf_. After the losses by England and France of an entire generation in the First World War, it was inconceivable to all but Churchill--then not in power--and Franklin Roosevelt, who was promising to keep America out of the war, that anyone could be mad enough to start another world war twenty years after the, until then, unimagined horror, and lack of so-called honor, of trench warfare.  On the other hand, the terrorists, like the Japanese, underestimated the American people.  Hitler didn't learn from Napoleon.

Charles Lindbergh, in the summer of 1941, gave speeches in support of the "America First" Party to a country that had partly convinced itself that it didn't matter to America's interest what happened in Europe, and certainly not to China or Korea.

In the summer of 2001, our country was preoccupied with Gary Condit's sexual adventures.  Few people in America knew or were interested in the status of Israeli/Palestinian negotiations-- probably far fewer than knew of foreign events in the summer of 1941.  Gary Condit, like Charles Lindbergh, disappeared from the news in one day.

In addition to the situation on the home front, I want to discuss my concern that the reality of World War II is too infrequently considered in real, rather than heroic, terms.  The reality of war in general, and World War II specifically, can fade with passing time, as human psychology causes people to forget the bad and remember the good; that the soldiers in that war were so traumatized that they have only reluctantly, if at all, talked about its horrors; and that most of the soldiers who want to talk about it were not in combat--for many, it was the highlight of their life.

There were very few conflicting attitudes about World War II: Everyone was in it in one way or another.  There wasn't the confusion that there was over Korea--people didn't know where it was, and fewer understood why we were fighting there.  It wasn't an optional war like Vietnam, which could be avoided in all sorts of ways, not the least of which was graduate schools.

In World War II, very few wanted to be 'out of the action', and stories of people pulling strings to avoid service were almost unheard of.  Harry Hopkins, Franklin Roosevelt's closest advisor; the leading Republican Senator Leverett Saltonstall:  and George C. Marshall, chief of staff of the U.S. Army during World War II, all lost their sons in the war. Eisenhower's only son and all four of Roosevelt's sons served in the military.

The death tolls in WWII were unimaginable:

United States             407,000, and 670,000 wounded

Soviet Union               20M

China                          13.5M

Germany                      7.3M

Poland                         5.4M  

Japan                           2.1M

England                       512,000

France                         610,000

Yugoslavia                    1.6M



WWII was a 'good' war--good against clearly-defined evil.  Everyone did his or her part.  Combat fatigue was defined by George Patton as cowardice, a view likely shared by many.  How could anyone complain, how could anyone share the horror of their own personal experience, when London was relentlessly bombed, Jews were deported to who know what fate at the time, Korea had suffered decades of enslavement, and China, invaded in 1931 by Japan, had suffered 200,000 civilian casualties in Nanking alone?  If you were alive and not physically maimed, you were lucky--so contemporary wisdom went.

Yet the reality was different.  No amount of military glory, honors, medals, parades or the benefits of the GI Bill could prevent the years of survivor guilt, the nightmares, what the historian William Manchester, a combat Marine in the South Pacific, called "the Darkness".

It is very important to understand what it was really like, as much as we can ever comprehend it when we are not being shot at, when, until September 11th, we have all had confidence in a secure future in this country.  Even in the frightened state of America today, it cannot compare to an America when there was a serious possibility--discussed by Roosevelt with his staff--of having to let the Japanese invade as far as Chicago, and a time when German U-Boats raided shipping within sight of the East Coast--burning freighters were a common nighttime scene--and shipping crates floated up onto beaches.  Gold domes of statehouses were painted gray because they were obvious targets, and Americans in 1942 lived in daily fear of expected air raids.  Everyone had instructions on what to do when the bombs fell; blackouts were a nightly routine in American cities.

Stephen Ambrose and other historians, but especially Ambrose, have in recent years done an excellent job of telling the soldiers' stories.  Ambrose's _Citizen Soldier_ addresses the lives of average men in the European theater.  His next book will be _Citizen Soldiers of the Pacific._  His recent bestseller--there have not been less than two World War II books on the New York Times' hardcover bestseller list in recent years--tells the extraordinary story of Senator George McGovern's B24 bomber crew during the war.  The New York Times concluded its review: "_If I had done at 22 what McGovern did at 22, I might have tried to live on those merits ever after.  I don't know if McGovern's generation was the greatest, but I certainly admire his ratio of sense of obligation to sense of entitlement."_

Recent movies have done a superb job of beginning to deal with the reality of World War II events previously portrayed as simply heroic.  Contrast Daryl Zanuck's _The Longest Day_ and Steven Spielberg's _Saving Private Ryan_.  It is not just an idle thought to wonder if Spielberg had made _Private Ryan_ or Terrence Malick, _The Thin Red Line_, in the 1950's, would Vietnam have been as easy to sell to the American people?  With the justifiable myths of World War II deeply ingrained, wasn't it easy for America to believe that John Wayne would lead us to victory over another bunch of little yellow people?

_Band of Brothers_, another Ambrose/Spielberg creation, I found to be so real as to be unwatchable.  I've seen enough documentaries I feel I have to watch; I've spent time with Dick Winters and I've heard him tell these stories, and I've been moved at the tears streaming down his face as he tells them.  I can't watch it on TV.

The areas specifically that I want to address today are: The mood in America at the outbreak of the war; the attitudes and beliefs both those on the combat and home fronts needed to have to survive; and the difficulty they have had in surviving having survived  the war.

A major difference between December 7th and September 11th was that on December 7th America knew where the enemy was and the way in which a war would be fought.

But they didn't know the Japanese as well as they thought they did.  The Japanese had been characterized as somewhat comical little yellow people with thick glasses and buckteeth.  Their intelligence, cleverness and tenacity were greatly underestimated.  They continued to be portrayed this way on the American home front throughout the war.  Their conquests of Korea and China had gone virtually unnoticed by almost all Americans.  Very few Americans were of Oriental descent, and few had any idea of Asian geography.  They were shocked and disbelieving that within six months of Pearl Harbor, Douglas MacArthur's entire Army of the Pacifiic was dead or captured.  There were no American troops in Asia except Prisoners of War.

The German soldiers, on the other hand, had been portrayed in America as supermen, creating myths about their superiority, especially the legend of Erwin Rommel.  Most Americans were of European descent and had been following the European war.  They knew the geography and the march of German conquests seemed unstoppable.  This attitude that the Germans were supermen would haunt American soldiers until Allied success in North Africa showed that they could be defeated.

In 1941 America was barely more than twenty years from the First World War.  People were toughened by the struggle for survival in the 1930's Depression.  In 1940, 40% of draftees were rejected, most of them because of malnutrition, bad teeth and eyesight--all results of the Depression.  Many new soldiers came from farms in rural America where a familiarity with guns was necessitated by subsistence hunting.  Audie Murphy, America's most decorated World War II soldier, was a sharecropper's son.

The historian William Manchester wrote in what most consider to be the best personal narrative of the war, _Goodbye Darkness_, about America in 1941: "_...You...needed the absolute conviction that the United States was the envy of all other nations, a country which had never done anything infamous, in which nothing was insuperable, whose ingenuity could solve anything by inventing something.  You felt sure that all lands, given our democracy and our know-how, could shine as radiantly as we did.  Esteem was personal, too; you assumed that if you came through this ordeal, you would age with dignity, respected as well as adored by your children.  Wickedness was attributed to flaws in individual characters, not to society's shortcomings.  To accept unemployment compensation, had it existed, would have been considered humiliating.  So would committing a senile aunt to a state mental hospital.  Instead, she was kept in the back bedroom, still a member of the family.  Debt was ignoble. Courage was a virtue.  Mothers were beloved, fathers obeyed.  Marriage was a sacrament.  Divorce was disgraceful.  Pregnancy meant expulsion from school or dismissal from a job.  Couples did not keep house before they were married and there could be not wedding until the girl's father had approved.  Your assumed that gentlemen always removed their hats when a woman entered the room.  The suggestion that some of them might resent being called 'ladies' would have confounded you.  You needed  a precise relationship between the sexes, so that no one questioned the duty of boys to cross the seas and fight while girls wrote them cheerful letters from home, girls you knew were still pure because they were saving themselves for marriage.  All these and 'God Bless America' and Christmas or Hanukkah and the certitude that victory in the war would assure their continuance into perpetuity--all this led you into battle, and sustained you as you fought, and comforted you if you fell, and, if it came to that, justified your death to all who loved you as you had loved them...."_

The initial home front reaction to Pearl Harbor couldn't be controlled or even significantly influenced by the government.  The country was outraged.  Jack Lucas was only 13 years old on December 7th, and the future Medal of Honor recipient's reaction typified the nation: _"I was devastated and outraged that a foreign country attacked us and killed our people.  I just wanted to fight--to avenge Pearl Harbor and defend my country."_ He told his mother he was going to join the Marines, and he did--at 14, by forging her signature to a letter saying he was 16 and had her permission to join.

The country was also scared.  US currency circulating in Hawaii was overprinted with the word _Hawaii_ so that if Hawaii was invaded by the Japanese, the United States could void all of the overprinted currency.  The possibility of Hawaii being invaded was that realistic, and fears of an invasion of the West Coast were nearly as great.

Fear of the Japanese swept the West Coast, and Japanese-Americans, in one of our country's worst domestic acts, were put into internment camps.  Americans of German or Italian birth or descent were not rounded up, because they were such a part of mainstream American life that it was impossible.  Also, they weren't physically concentrated like the Japanese-Americans; they weren't physically distinct; and neither Germany nor Italy had directly attacked our country--but the main reason was that the Germans and Italians were so integrated into American society.

American home front propaganda stressed on one side that the Japs were the enemy and on the other that Hitler was the enemy.  The emphasis was on "kill the Japs" with little emphasis on Tojo and none on Hirohito.  In sharp contrast, anti-Nazi propaganda was anti-Hitler, with less emphasis on Goering, Himmler and Goebbels.  There was little direct anti-German propaganda. Caricatures were of the bucktoothed, comical Japanese wearing thick glasses, and Hitler in various situations, frequently involving toilets.

Fear of spies, however, concentrated more on Germans--perhaps because so many Japanese were interned.  Posters warned of sabotage and careless talk, especially about ship sailings.  These fears were very real--German U-boats waited in the mid-Atlantic and information on convoy sailings was crucial to their success.

Rationing, while never as severe as in England, was very real and necessary. Price controls to control inflation were a shock to the American principle that people could measure their progress in material goods.  Having finally come out of the Depression, people had money to spend and new products, such as home appliances, had just been developed.

Rubber was the first shortage.  Until synthetic rubber was invented, there was a severe shortage as Japan cut off rubber sources in southeast Asia.  Initially, gas rationing was intended to save tires, but as U-boats sank shipping off the East Coast, gasoline rationing became important.  An average American could get enough gas to drive 60 miles a week; a new Victory Speed Limit of 35 mph was introduced to save gas.

Posters urged Americans to stay home.  In sharp contrast to today, travelers were criticized--"I_s Your Trip Really_ _Necessary?_" was emblazoned on posters.  Others showed the happy family sitting at home around the fire.  Railroads, people were reminded, were "war roads" and were needed to transport soldiers.

Following a natural progression, automobiles became scarce, as none were manufactured for private use after February 1942.  Numerous other manufactured products were not made during the war years.  Factories were converted to wartime needs, and previous domestic products now went directly to the military, or military products were being produced by the factories.  An obvious example was Chris Craft, which made landing and assault boats rather than pleasure boats.  Less obvious was the Remington Typewriter Company and the IBM Corporation, both of which became major manufacturers of machine guns.

By February 1943, shoes were rationed and metal taps--common after the war and into the late 1940's and early 1950's--became a common way to lengthen the life of footwear.  Half-soles also appeared, again to save scarce leather.

Food was rationed; this was to some degree psychological, to keep everyone invested in playing their part in the war, and also because many staples were needed for the military.  Candy and cigarettes were abundantly available to troops, but not on the home front.  Whiskey, to a lesser extent, was made available to the military while it was harder to find in domestic markets.

The American food situation was never as precarious as England's.  England had to import food to feed its population, and the U-boat successes in sinking convoys from America very seriously threatened England with starvation.  Major efforts to have the English people plant and raise Victory Gardens were made and helped greatly.  Every area that could be planted for food was.

Hand in hand with rationing were government campaigns to save and salvage everything.  Posters showed, for example, how fats from cooking were used in making explosives.  It seemed that nothing should be discarded; everything was recycled.

Production was another area of major home front propaganda.  Posters related the home front worker to the soldier in combat: produce more and better for the men whose lives are literally on the line.  Ingenious posters thanked workers for being late and taking longer breaks--signed by Adolf Hitler.

Campaigns urged better nutrition so people could work more efficiently and longer.  Taking care of one's health was patriotic, and unnecessary illnesses drained valuable medical personnel and supplies.  Even campaigns against forest fires and accidents were based on not hurting production.

It was crucially important to keep home front morale high.  America could, after all, conceivably tire of the war and get out of it by recognizing Japanese conquests in Asia and German conquests on the continent.

The American media and propaganda seemed to be representative of the mood of Americans, unlike the situation in England during the period from the declaration of war in September 1939 to the invasion of France in May 1940.  This was a period when both the British media and propaganda were reflecting the views of upper-class England.  The elite of British society were overwhelmingly ready to make a deal with Hitler or to emigrate to America.  Their lack of any resolve in the face of Nazi tyranny was evident in both their defeatist attitude and their appalling condescension.

The reality was that the average Briton did not want to see pictures of battleships or so-called morale-boosting slogans; they wanted to know what to do. Churchill appreciated this and, immediately upon become Prime Minister in May 1940, dramatically changed propaganda to provide information on how to defend England.  This is what people wanted.

I am reminded of this attitude of Britain's elite in many New York Times' front pages this fall containing stories about whether America has the resolve to maintain our war on terrorism. It seems clear that the people in doubt are the journalists who need to create these stories to fill newspapers and the air waves.  The basis has changed from the 1940 genuine defeatist attitude to today's attitude of treating the news as entertainment.

Until late 1943 the war went very badly for the Allies.  American home front morale was protected by censorship of the news as well as propaganda posters and films.  During the first two years the news was heavily censored, and there was, in retrospect, such a transparently positive attitude--too strong to be called a slant--to make one wonder why people didn't see through it--until one reflects on much of the news coverage we have seen since September 11th and our desire to believe what we want and need to believe.

The wartime guide of the National Association of Broadcasters very appropriately forbid the use of the phrase "Now for some good news" until the war news finally did become "good news."

Magazines portrayed soldiers always as handsome officers, unfailingly being adored by equally perfect and beautiful women.  News glossed over the fact that Americans would actually be killed or maimed--that would only happen to our enemies.

Propaganda posters in 1942 showed meticulously groomed GI's in clean, pressed uniforms with statements that we will win because "we're on God's side". It's interesting to note that God is always on everyone's side--the enlisted man's belt buckle in the German army bore the inscription "_God is with us"._

Weekly newsreels showed naval ships hitting their targets every time--an impossible feat.  Allied ships "foundered" while enemy ships were always spectacularly blown apart.

A very common misperception early in the war was the myth of precision bombing.  The war would be won by bombing alone--anti-aircraft fire, or flak, is not mentioned--and the terrible toll of air crews would later attest to the fallacy of the safety of high-altitude bombing--a fallacy in itself.  Until the Norden bombsight, which calculated the effects of wind speeds at various altitudes, was invented, it was an accident if an area, let alone a specific target, was hit by bombs.  My favorite comment was a report from an analyst of reconnaissance photos of bombing raids who accompanied a reconnaissance photo of a farmer's field crated by bombs that had missed a German city with the notation, "_We made a major assault on German agriculture."_

By late 1943, Allied fortunes began to dramatically change.  Rommel's _Afrika Corps_ was defeated.  Sicily was invaded and the Italians had surrendered (that was the easy part--the Germans took over the defense of Italy and a very violent campaign began). The Germans were surprisingly and soundly defeated at Stalingrad--a city thought to be of so little defensive importance that the German invasion plans did not include street maps of Stalingrad as they did for other cities. In the Pacific, the Battle of Midway dealt the Japanese naval fleet a decisive blow and enabled the successful landings on Guadalcanal.

As the real events dramatically improved, the news reported to the home front became more realistic in describing the violence and the price soldiers were paying for the victories.  In November 1943, America was shocked at the first pictures of combat dead--Marines in the surf at Tarawa.  The figures of 1,000 dead and 2,000 wounded at Tarawa were, relative to the war, fairly normal, but the pictures for the first time showed a reality America had not faced.  The country was stunned.

Propaganda posters also began to change in 1943.  One showed a drowned soldier on a beach with the theme, _"A careless word...A needless loss", _ pictured with a sinking ship in the background.  By the following year, the same message was accompanied by an illustration of a dead paratrooper hanging under his parachute.  Uniforms were no longer cleaned and pressed; they were torn and bloody.  By 1945 posters had changed even more dramatically.  The violence was very graphic, and the theme consistent--"Get it over". 

The fundamental fact of war was being realized: Death in war is random, and success is only partly related to one's actions.

Wartime movies followed a standard formula that further illustrates that people in crises are always susceptible to what they want and need to believe.  A suspension of disbelief is necessary to survive.  Two 1943 popular films established the paradigm of the "normal" infantry unit: They were always melting pots made up of the following lines: _ One leader who dies; one inexperienced youth; one comic; one cynic who is transformed before the end of the film into a true believer; one black or Hispanic; one person each from Brooklyn, Texas and the Midwest._

It is noteworthy that the government was sufficiently concerned about home front morale that a series of documentaries entitled "Why We Fight" was produced.

Some degree of the reality of the war was finally being realized on the home front, but soldiers still generally believed the home front had no idea of the reality of their lives and their deaths.  Paul Fussell, a World War II combat veteran, wrote _Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War_ and included a chapter entitled _The Real War Will Never Get In The Books. _ _"What was it about the war that moved the troops to constant verbal subversion and contempt? It was not just the danger and fear, the boredom and uncertainty and loneliness and depravation, it was rather the conviction that optimistic publicity and euphemism had rendered their experiences so falsely that it would never be readily communicable.  They knew that in its representation to the laity what was happening to them was systemically sanitized and Norman Rockwellized, not to mention Disneyfied."_

Fussell was severely wounded in the spring of 1945, and he expresses far more negative and critical views of every aspect than anyone I have talked to or read who had combat experience. Some of his chapter say it all: _Drinking Far Too Much, Copulating Far Too Little _ needs little amplification. A very amusing chapter is entitled _Chicken ****, An Anatomy. _ He writes: _"What does that rude term signify? It does not imply complaint about the inevitable inconveniences of military life: overcrowding and lack of privacy, tedious institutional cookery, depravation of personality, general boredom.  Nothing much can be done about those things.  Chicken **** refers rather to behavior that makes military life worse than it needs to be: petty harassment of the weak by the strong; open scrimmage for power and authority and prestige; sadism thinly disguised as necessary discipline; a constant 'paying off of old scores'; an insistence on the letter rather than the spirit of ordinances.  Chicken **** is so-called, instead of horse or bull or elephant ****, because it is small-minded and ignoble, and takes the trivial seriously.  Chicken **** can be recognized instantly because it never has anything to do with winning the war."_

Rumors were a major part of life for the average soldier, and no matter how improbable or how ridiculous, they took on a life of their own, propelled by the youth and immaturity of the soldiers.  The stamina of youth and their belief that they are invincible are the foundation of armies.  Nearly all were teenagers, and their officers were in their early twenties.  _Saving Private Ryan _accurately showed many wounded soldiers crying out for their mothers.

It has always been logical to me that the petty rules and nonsense that soldiers talked about would be commonplace when you have an army of teenagers being led by young officers, with few, if any, of these people having had any work or life experiences, and certainly not in such life and death situations.  The WWII term _snafu _was not a surprising result of ordinary military life: Situation Normal, All ****ed Up.

What has surprised me was that really stupid things happened because of rivalries between commanders who treated war like a game. Outrageous errors were commonplace.  The US naval gunners during the invasion of Sicily in 1943, shot down 23 of our own planes full of paratroopers, airplanes on a flight path and on a schedule all of these ships had been told of.  Undoubtedly terrified teenagers were manning the antiaircraft guns.  But where were the officers?

US and British bombers leaving England for missions over Europe had to fly around London because the London antiaircraft batteries would shoot at any planes that flew near the city.

The landings in Normandy on D-Day are frequently cited as the great example of planning and perseverance that they were, but the number of things that went wrong that should not have was dumbfounding.  American commanders scoffed at the ingenious devices the British invented to deal with landmines--rotating drums extended from the fronts of tanks whipping chains around that would set off the mines a few feet in front of the tanks. The Americans thought the whole thing was silly, but on D-Day the American tanks were disabled when the landmines blew their treads off.

One of the most outrageous examples of what the English call 'bloody mindness' was the launching into heavy seas, by the Americans, of tanks equipped with flotation collars. The tanks were launched many miles further from shore than planned, and as they were put into the water, each one of them, one right after the other, was swamped and promptly sank with the loss of the crew.  Twenty-seven tanks in a row were launched, with no one countermanding an order that obviously was idiotic in heavy seas.

Large numbers of landing boats arrived at the wrong locations on the coast because no one had realized that smoke from the naval and air bombardment of the Normandy coast would so obscure the coastal landmarks that the navy helmsmen relied upon for navigation that they could not accurately steer their boats.

Completely inexplicable was the aerial bombardment of the cliffs defending the Normandy beaches.  These were heavily fortified with bunkers, and a major air bombardment preceded the landings.  Thirteen thousand bombs were dropped, not one of which hit the cliffs or plateaus behind them.  They all landed far inland in farmers' fields.

The troops were told the beaches would be cratered by bombs, and this would give them cover in crossing the long distance from the water to the cliffs, Instead, those bombs intended to crater the beaches all fell far short, so as the soldiers jumped out of their landing craft, they fell into underwater craters and many drowned.

These are not the stories I read about in the popular books, or saw in the movies about the D-Day landings in the 1950's.

It is a rare combat veteran who can talk about their experiences without tears.  It truly was hell.  For many dangerous missions troops with no combat experience had to be used, because the commanders knew that veteran troops would know the carnage that lay ahead, and they had to have the enthusiasm of unknowing, inexperienced troops who had no real idea of what they were facing.

Infantry troops soon realized that there, quite literally, was no way out--no way off the combat line unless you were killed, seriously wounded, or taken prisoner.  A wound that would get you out of combat was called the 'million-dollar wound', and in every battle soldiers were heard cheering that they had been wounded badly enough to be taken out of hell.  Eugene Sledge was a teenager who had joined the Marines.  After the war he became a professor of biology, and wrote his memoir _With The Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa_ because his own experiences in the front lines of battle were so different from the books being published about these battles.  He writes that he is proud to be a Marine.  He isn't critical or cynical, but takes great exception to these battles being described as sane activities, for what he experienced was nearly completely insane. "_We lived in an environment totally incomprehensible--not just to civilians at a great distance but to men behind the lines....We were expendable.  It was difficult to accept.  We come from a nation and a culture that values life and the individual.  To find oneself in a situation where life seems of little value is the ultimate in loneliness.  It is a humbling experience."_

The journalist Robert Sherrod, with the Marines at Tarawa, wrote, _"The Marines didn't know what to believe in, except the Marine Corps."_

I have never thought that I had any understanding of how people mentally survived, but I must say that I have been astounded that virtually all combat veterans talk about their relationship with their buddies.  If only a few mentioned this in telling their stories, it probably wold never have made a great impression on me, but the sense of camaraderie is so universal and so sincere that it is overwhelming.  In the final paragraphs of _Goodbye Darkness_, Manchester eloquently addresses the subject: "_In one of those great thundering jolts in which a man's real motives are revealed to him in an electrifying vision, I understand at last why I jumped hospital that Sunday thirty-five years ago, and in violation of orders returned to the front lines and almost certain death.  It was an act of love, those men on the line were my family, my home.  They were closer to me than I can say, closer than any friend who had been or ever would be.  They had never let me down, and I couldn't do it to them.  I had to be with them rather than let them die and me live with the knowledge that I might have saved them.  Men, I now knew, do not fight for flag or country, for the Marine Corps or glory or any other abstraction, they fight for one another.  Any man in combat who lacks comrades who will die for him, or for whom he is willing to die, is not a man at all, he is truly damned."_

I spoke earlier about the great challenge of surviving having survived. Survivor guilt has been a well-recognized problem for victims of the Holocaust, but I think it has largely gone unrecognized as a very significant problem for combat veterans.  This was considered the good war; the good guys won and evil was defeated. Millions died, and those who came back had to suffer individually and alone with their nightmares from combat.  I have heard literally hundreds of combat veterans get upset when they are called heroes, vehemently stating that they are not heroes, the heroes are in the cemeteries.  The heroes are the ones who didn't come back.

It took Manchester 35 years of nightmares before he could face his experiences and write about them.  Kurt Vonnegut said that immediately after the war he wanted to tell everyone about his experiences as a POW during the firebombing and destruction of Dresden, but it took him 23 years before he could deal with his experiences and write _Slaughterhouse Five_. Many other writers who experienced combat firsthand, such as Karl Shapiro and John Ciardi, just couldn't write about their experiences.

This past spring I was on Iwo Jima with half a dozen veterans of the most horrible and bloody battle in World War II.  On this island, 4 1/2 miles long and about 1/4 of a mile to 2 miles wide, 6,000 Marines were killed, 24,000 were wounded, and 22,000 Japanese killed.  Fifty-six years after that battle, these Marines broke down and talked about the friends they had lost there.

The documentary produced by the Shapiros that aired this last June on Iwo Jima is a moving portrayal of what happened on Iwo Jima.  While principally about the flag raising--half the flag raisers were dead before the photo was developed--the Shapiros captured on film much of what I am talking about.

There are many comparisons to September 11th.  I was very struck by an interview I saw with a New York firefighter who had barely managed to escape the collapse of the World Trade Center.  He was being called a hero for going in to rescue people, but with the words and emotion that precisely echo WWII veterans, he said he was not a hero at all, that the heroes were the firefighters who didn't make it out of the collapsing buildings.

I thought we were moving further and further away from the experience of WWII, but September 11th is a reminder that human nature does not change and the terrible events of last fall have united us with the WWII generation in ways I never thought possible.


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## rmcrobertson (Sep 12, 2004)

Regrettably, yes, it addresses what you are pleased to consider my red herring, or Communist bonito, or whatever. It basically confirms the analysis: easier to attack the fantasized person, than to tackle the argument.

The Heinlein quote is precisely on point: if you'll read the thread, you will note that I'm getting screamed at for being a Commie, and who knows what else; Heinlein is quoted as a response.

Hey, if you think that there is horrifying, try this: I quite liked the Rendell speech.

I tell ya what: I'll rethink my apporach, if'n yawl will consider the way that your reiterated personal attacks precisely duplicate the strategies of Hannity, Savage et al, regardless of wheteher you're a fan or not.

And if you'll consider this: to me, Rendell's pretty much right--and one of the things that pisses me off most is that my country has pissed away its extraordinary moral and historical advantage.

Oh, and Mr. Parsons? That "alternate," universe where white guys and their corporations rule the planet? That's the one we're living in.


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## Tgace (Sep 12, 2004)

Lest people think that the current generation is lacking in courage or commitment, Ill refer to this thread...

http://www.martialtalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=17125


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## Rich Parsons (Sep 13, 2004)

rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> Regrettably, yes, it addresses what you are pleased to consider my red herring, or Communist bonito, or whatever. It basically confirms the analysis: easier to attack the fantasized person, than to tackle the argument.
> 
> The Heinlein quote is precisely on point: if you'll read the thread, you will note that I'm getting screamed at for being a Commie, and who knows what else; Heinlein is quoted as a response.
> 
> ...




Robert, you said, I said that you were mean. This is incorrect. 

You state I attacked you? I did not.

You state that there is a quote about Heinlein, that ia relavent. So Selcetive quoting is what your purpose is?

As to the alternate reality, I would like to live in yours for a few days to better understand.

As to the other authors, I do not know them, or do not remember reading them which is the same in the long run, therefor I do not comment.

As to this thread, I will leave that to others to discuss. I was just curous about the inconsistencies, is all :asian:


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