European military and Popular Mechanics

Like WWI amd WWII and The Cold War? And that stuff in the Balkans?

John

Certainly that stuff in the Balkans. As for the rest, the feeling is somewhat mixed in Europe.

Go take a look at the American cemeteries of two world wars in Europe.

Then, go look at the Australian and Canadian ones.

Then weep and give thanks.

I will give thanks to those who died for a cause they believed to be right. That includes all sides. Whether we should have fought at all is a moot point.

What was the alternative? Nazi hegemony in Europe? Japanese hegemony in Asia and perhaps Australia?

The British went to war in 1914 as the result of a treaty to protect the sovereignty of Belgium, the USA later as a result of our legitimate merchant shipping being attacked on the high seas.

The British went to war in 1939 as the result of the Nazi attack on Poland, not that it did Poland much good.

The USA went to war in 1941 as the result of being attacked by Japan, who had already overrun part of China, and were planning to overrun Southeast Asia, the Pacific, and maybe Australia.

I think that made us the good guys.

Thats a matter of perspective. He who wins is the hero (and the one who writes the history books), the loser is the villan.

Yabbut, if it had gone the other way around, we'd all be speaking German. ;-) Or Japanese. Or Jagermapanesan. ;-)

Cheers! Rich

You could be living in a High Castle

Fred Abse:

Why Japan attacked Pearl Harbour? They were planning to invade the US or they wanted to break free of the ABCD blockade? What the US had to deal with that blockade? Just for defending Hawaii?

Think about this: when did the Great Depression end?

No, what made you the good guys is what happended after the war. No empire in history has been that benign upon the defeated.

Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in an attempt to neutralize the US Pacific Fleet, which stood in the way of their obtaining the raw materials necessary to pursue their aggression. Fortunately, the vital aircraft carriers were elsewhere at the time. When this was discovered, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, a Harvard alumnus, realized that the only way to achieving the Japanese militarists' ultimate aims would be to "march into Washington and dictate terms in front of the White House". He narrowly escaped assassination at the hands of hardliners as a result of his expressed views.

Given the choice between losing millions of Allied personnel, and a continuing depression, I think mos people would have chosen the latter.

Apart from the word "empire", I wouldn't gainsay that.

Fred Abse:

Fortunately???

Have you read anything recent about the day before the Pearl Harbour attack or are you still believing what was on your History book at school?

Your Government, luckily, was of a different advice.

So the German gas chambers, or the rape of Nanking, are just the revisionist history of the victors?

John

That's OK. Our P38s got him later.

John

There is no "maybe" about Australia - the Japanese Army had already printed the new currency for occupied Australia

Totally insane.

John

Just to remind you that the good guys killed more of the japs than the jews killed by the bad guys. Also about Hiroshima and Dresden.

There could be only one question: who started this. BTW, in the modern books on human relations they like to emphasise that every conflict is the result of fault of the both sides.

VLV

Nasty prolonged wars do tend to radicalize everyone. The US came into WWI for a number of reasons, but the two biggest were (1) the Germans' declaration of unrestricted submarine warfare, in contravention of the then-agreed Laws of the Sea, and (2) the Zimmerman telegram, where the German foreign minister offered Mexico a military alliance against the USA, and held out the prospect of their recovering Texas, California, and New Mexico.

Twenty years later, the US unleasued unrestricted submarine warfare against Japan with hardly a murmur, and then we spent 50 years or so in a Mexican standoff with the Soviets, with thousands of nuclear weapons aimed at each other. There were good reasons in both cases, but when we let the bad guys determine how we ourselves are going to behave, we've lost something very important.

The 20th Century really was a catastrophic time, for a lot of reasons--I don't think we often realize just how far we've descended towards barabarism since 1914.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

"Was" ? Really nothing changed since the ages of Roman Empire until today.

VLV

They? Whose fault was it that Germany invaded Poland? That Japan murdered multitudes in China and Korea and attacked multiple peaceful Pacific islands?

Moral relativism sucks, because it can be used to justify almost any horror.

John