60 year anniversary of V-E day.

[Winston]

Sure Agathon. The Soviets and Britain could've easily nailed this one alone, had the United States just kept to themselves.

Re-writing history so it fits one's own underlying agenda is such a beautiful thing.

[Agathon]

Sure Agathon. The Soviets and Britain could've easily nailed this one alone, had the United States just kept to themselves.

Sure they could have. The Germans were beaten as soon as they invaded the Soviet Union. Even Mussolini said that as soon as he heard about it. In retrospect it was inevitable.

Eisenhower faced about 50 German divisions; the Soviets about 180 IIRC.

The casualty figures tell the real story. We lost comparatively few people: the Russians at least 20 million and probably over 30 million. That's the population of today's Canada dead in 4 years.

The war on Japan is a different story – the Americans are almost solely responsible for that.

[Dr Strangelove]

Maybe Indians and Africans should start beating up British children to give the Brits a taste of what they've been dishing out to German kids.

Maybe we should elect a president who, going over to Europe to celebrate V-E day would also celebrate the day as marking the beginning of the end of colonialism.

[Winston]

The Soviets had the most casualties, I'm not disputing that. But those numbers you (and others) keep throwing about are not verifiable in any way, no matter how big a bulge they may create in your pants.

Besides, the total war effort in Europe by the respective Allies is not determined solely on how many casualties they suffer, not even by the amount of actual, direct battle their troops are engaged in.

Strategic deployment, leadership, industrial supply efforts to allies, intelligence acquisition, air bombardment, rallying of enemy populations to your side, code breaking abilities, cutting off of vital enemy supplies, infiltration, communication channels, etc, etc. are all things you conveniently leave out of your "analysis" if you're able to conclude the United States did, to paraphrase "nothing much in the grand scheme of things".

Not that I'm surprised by this.

[MarkG]

Originally posted by Lancer
Question though Markos...wouldn't this be seen as a case of the US messing around in the sphere of the EU? Isn't this something Greece should make contigent on the Turks joining the EU?

Shouldn't Greece rely on the French and Germans for help on this one?

greece, america, france, germany... we're all on the same side anyway, arent we?

plus, americans didnt mind messing around in order to get turkey in the eu, they should mind now either

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by Agathon

Sure Agathon. The Soviets and Britain could've easily nailed this one alone, had the United States just kept to themselves.

The casualty figures tell the real story. We lost comparatively few people: the Russians at least 20 million and probably over 30 million. That's the population of today's Canada dead in 4 years.

You really think casualty figures is the way to measure the quality of an acheivement in war?

[BeBMan]

Since it was fought as a war of extermination from the German side in the east the high numbers don't reflect only the military situation.

[Dauphin]

I was thinking more that Stalin wasn't exactly backward in throwing men to their deaths.

[BeBMan]

Yeah, that too....

[Agathon]

You really think casualty figures is the way to measure the quality of an acheivement in war?

They show where the bulk of the fighting and suffering was. The sheer scale of the fight on the Eastern Front dwarfed anything the Western Allies faced.

As I said before: Eisenhower faced about 50 German divisions – the Russians about 180. Do the math. It isn't hard. The Germans expended most of their effort keeping the Russians at bay, and they were overrun in the end at terrible cost to both sides. Whatever we might feel about Stalin or the Soviet Union, the fact remains that they took the most casualties, did the most fighting, and endured the most hardship of any of the Allies.

The Russians did the heavy lifting. End of story. To ignore that is simply silly.

Similarly, the United States was primarily responsible for the defeat of Japan. Sure British and colonial forces did a lot of fighting and dying, but the US was by far the decisive factor in that theatre. Again – end of story.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Dauphin
I was thinking more that Stalin wasn't exactly backward in throwing men to their deaths.

No, but neither were we.

[Lancer]

"americans didnt mind messing around in order to get turkey in the eu, they should mind now either"

Interesting. However there was that mess with Turkey that kept the 4th ID out of the fight for Iraq for so long. Maybe the relationship is on the rocks a bit now.

I wonder why we would do try to get Turkey in the EU considering the situation on Cyprus? Doesn't make sense.

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by Lancer
"americans didnt mind messing around in order to get turkey in the eu, they should mind now either"

Interesting. However there was that mess with Turkey that kept the 4th ID out of the fight for Iraq for so long. Maybe the relationship is on the rocks a bit now.

I wonder why we would do try to get Turkey in the EU considering the situation on Cyprus? Doesn't make sense.

But it is one of the few functioning democracies in the Islamic world.

[Lancer]

Very true Zkrib. Likely that makes this a bad time to push them on Cyprus.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Lancer
I wonder why we would do try to get Turkey in the EU considering the situation on Cyprus? Doesn't make sense.

Because Turkey is a more important ally to the U.S. than Greece and has been. Despite the issue with the 4th ID, Turkey is still an important U.S. base for containing Russia.