Was US participation in WWII superfluous?

Non-naval discussions about the Second World War. Military leaders, campaigns, weapons, etc.
alecsandros
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Re: Was US participation in WWII superfluous?

Post by alecsandros »

lwd wrote: When the problem is the logic (and this includes interpretation of facts) then there is no point in reposting the facts.
A side story, which Karl already knows:

Most penguins are black and white
Old TV shows are black and white

Therefore, most penguins are old TV shows. :lol:

Is my logic flawed ?

(I'm posting this as a joke, not as a pun. However, if we are to be correct, we must say that, sometimes, logic can not explain the development of various pheomenons. Language has even more barriers than logic has...)
dunmunro
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Re: Was US participation in WWII superfluous?

Post by dunmunro »

Karl Heidenreich wrote:
In many historical accounts whole eastern populations withdraw with the Germans in order to avoid Soviet occupation. And as I said, many countries like Romania that were not occupied by the nazis ended up occupied by the soviets with a "go ahead" from FDR and the seriously morally flawed western allies (Winston Churchill never liked the idea but it was Democrat FDR and Eleanor those that had the money and the weapons). So, there it is: the USA ended up building the empire of it's own enemy and helping ensalve tens of millions under Stalin's grip.
Romania was occupied by the USSR because it participated in the invasion of the USSR and was recognized by all the Allied powers to be a key ally of Nazi Germany. If Romania had remained neutral, they would have been spared the horrors of the war and its aftermath.
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Karl Heidenreich
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Re: Was US participation in WWII superfluous?

Post by Karl Heidenreich »

lwd:
I wasn't supporting him I was pointing out that your counter argments were flawed.
Of course you are supporting him. That's also historical fact and a lot of people here notice it already.

So basically you said that if my counter arguments are flawed then the Germans were an incredible inferior military force that only fought a serious battle in their warlife, Stalingrad, and they lost it. Because that's the incredible argument Bgile made, explicit and plain. But I bring forth evidence, with link support on that, and I'm flawed.

I cannot, in civilized words, express the degree of that ultimate falacy because Jose will kick me out of the forum. But at least it can be said, as with the rest of the forum as witness that it's plain ridicule and abslute historical falacy. Please read Dupuy, please read Glants, please read Willbeck (which by the way are all americans). And if you have some decency, answer straight and forget your piecemeal smoke screens, not even tweedle dee believe in them anymore.
An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.
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dunmunro
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Re: Was US participation in WWII superfluous?

Post by dunmunro »

alecsandros wrote:And another thing, Duncan: by the very type of judgment you made above, you are very close to justifying Communism, which is very offensive and illegal in several countries, including my own. Communism was officialy condemned here in 2006 and its torturers and executioners (the ones that are still alive at least) are slowly but surely put on trial.

This being said, I hope we can resume discussing about the main idea of the thrread...
Nazi Germany and its Allies were trying to exterminate and enslave hundreds of millions of people. Neither Germany nor Romania entered the USSR with the intent of liberating it from communism, but were, in fact, participating in a ruthless war of simple conquest and genocide.

Romania became communist because it attacked the USSR and ended up on the wrong side of the war, despite pleadings from the West to remain neutral, and when the Red Army came calling, the West which also had to fight Romanian fascism, was in no mood to rescue Romania from Stalin. Romania should have remained neutral.

Events in Romania after 1945 cannot be used to justify Romania's decision to attack the USSR in support of Nazi Germany.

Yes, lets return, but please do not try and justify the genocidal Nazi attack on the USSR.
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Re: Was US participation in WWII superfluous?

Post by dunmunro »

alecsandros wrote:
dunmunro wrote: I think you are getting very close to trying to justify Nazism...
I'm sorry you think that way; this is not what I meant. Just that opinions about the historical super-powers are very relative... For instance, the Ukrainians received the Germans as liberators in 1941...
Really? What about the Ukrainians killed in places like Babi Yar? 100,000+ murdered by mass executions in 1941 and millions of Ukrainians joined the Red Army or fought as partisans, and again the fact that some mistakenly believed that Hitler would liberate them does not justify the Nazi attack, nor does the fact that divisions existed within the Ukraine that were exploited by Hitler.
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Karl Heidenreich
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Re: Was US participation in WWII superfluous?

Post by Karl Heidenreich »

dunmuro:
Romania became communist because it attacked the USSR and ended up on the wrong side of the war, despite pleadings from the West to remain neutral, and when the Red Army came calling, the West which also had to fight Romanian fascism, was in no mood to rescue Romania from Stalin. Romania should have remained neutral.
Italy. Italy supported Hitler's adventures including the early stages of Checoslovakia. Do that justify that the Americans and Britons occupied it after the war... for forty six years?

Romania helped Hitler invade USSR, but that the product of previous russian offenses against Romania. However the russians, the "allied soviets", could have set free Romania (or for that matter Estonia, Lituania, Latvia, Poland, Hungary, Bulgary, etc. etc. etc.) and then, as the western allied did with Italy, let them decide the goverment they wanted.

You may be correct: the Russians NEED to invade Romania as a military necesity in their fight against Germany. But you are incorrect in the outcome. Romania as those other countries didn't deseve to be ensalved by the soviets (really enslaved, not a "try" as with the Germans).

No one, and Alex less than anybody, is making a point in favor of Nazism, which needs to be very clear. But to that point to be blind to facts is another story. And from what I have read your country, England, was positive that the "free hand" policy that FDR and Eleanor gave Stalin was a serious mistake. That is why Churchill supported so much Tito and the Mediterranean ops: he didn't want the soviets to get out of the bag, which they did at the end.
An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.
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dunmunro
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Re: Was US participation in WWII superfluous?

Post by dunmunro »

Byron Angel wrote:
dunmunro wrote:
alecsandros wrote:... And that's quite understandable in the given circumstances.
However, had your father been a Ukrainian , he would have said thank God for the Germans...
I think you are getting very close to trying to justify Nazism, and I want you to know that many people find that kind of talk to be extremely offensive and in some countries it is potentially illegal. The Nazis murdered millions of Ukrainians and considered all Ukrainians to be subhuman slavs, fit only to be slaves in the Nazi new order.

http://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/pa ... kraine.htm

..... With all due respect, I disagree with your reaction to Alecsandros. The gratitude of an individual who unintentionally benefits from some action by another party of odious nature does not equate to an endorsement of the odious agent. Stalin did not direct the Red Army to fight the Germans in order to make your father's burden lighter, yet it produced that effect indirectly; your father's gratitude for that did not constitute an endorsement of Communism and the gulags. The gratitude of the Ukrainians, no matter how short-lived, that the invading German army had thrown off the Communist yoke under which the Ukraine had cruelly suffered likewise did not equate to an endorsement of Nazism and death camps. In both cases, gratitude was directed toward the beneficial consequences of the acts; in neither case can the expressed gratitude be interpreted in any way as an embrace of the agents thereof.

B
The blanket statement "However, had your father been a Ukrainian , he would have said thank God for the Germans.." is an implicit endorsement of Nazi racial ideology. What if my father or mother was a Ukrainian of Jewish ancestry? Or a Ukrainian of Polish, Russian or Belorussian descent or any other Ukrainian who didn't agree with the Nazi invasion? The Nazi reply would be that these are not real Ukrainians and thus have no voice or place or right to exist in the Nazi new order. The fact is that I have close friends whose father was a Belorussian, living in Ukraine and who did not view the German invasion as anything other than what it truly was and I know that many others of Ukrainian descent living in Ukraine were not fooled either, so it's extremely offensive to smear all Ukrainians with the same allegation that they welcomed Hitler.
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Re: Was US participation in WWII superfluous?

Post by lwd »

neil hilton wrote:... The quote from the US infantry training manual I made was from a TV documentary about infantry weapons and tactics from ww2, can't remember what it was called but it was part of a series. I remember the program showing pages of the manual, it was a junior officer training manual from 1944 (for the invasion of France and including lessons learned in North Africa and Sicily and Italy). It described how German infantry and armour were organized into 'battlegroups' and how they attacked and defended positions etc. And how the US infantry should act or react according to the situation. The manual stated that US infantry should never attack German infantry unless they had clear numerical superiority and tactically advantageous terrain.....
Interesting. Probably not lying but probably not a field manual. http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/ref/FM/index.html has a list of most of the WWII field manuals and has some of them as either PDF's or hyper-linked documents. They all seem to be a bit more generic than that. I think the US did have some sort of "lessons learned" publication that was circulated on a frequent basis. It's also worth noteing that as a rule the attacker wants to have better than 2:1 odds in any case. 3:1 is often listed as the "magic number" so it would stand to reason that you wouldn't want to attack well regarded opponents at 1:1 in most circumstances.
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Re: Was US participation in WWII superfluous?

Post by lwd »

alecsandros wrote:I think the matter of |superflous involvement of the US| is rather silly. Without the US, the USSR would have lost quickly and definitively the war.
They were supported by huge amounts of raw materials, equipment and even caned food by the US...
I'm not so sure of that. US LL didn't have much impact in 41 and the Soviets stopped the German advance then. The British would have continued with LL even if the US wasn't in the war. Indeed a lot depends on what you mean by the US not being in the war. I'm pretty sure LL started before the US was officially in it so if that's allowed the war may not end with Soviet troops in Berlin but I suspect it ends with Germany back to her prewar borders or close anyway.
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Re: Was US participation in WWII superfluous?

Post by lwd »

Karl Heidenreich wrote:Let's remember that it has been Stalin (and Mao) and not Hitler the greatest war criminals and genocides of the XX Century and Humankind. ....
Actually I'm not sure this is correct. What Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot (sp?) did probably doesn't fit as genocide nor as war crimes. They did however murder their own citizens at a rate that certainly puts them right up there with Hitler. Considering the size of Cambodia Pol Pot may be the worst of the lot. However this is wandering far afield so I'll stop posting on this line here.
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Re: Was US participation in WWII superfluous?

Post by lwd »

Karl Heidenreich wrote:lwd:
I wasn't supporting him I was pointing out that your counter arguments were flawed.
Of course you are supporting him. That's also historical fact and a lot of people here notice it already.
I guess in some senses of the word but I think I also mentioned a flaw or two in his line of reasoning.
So basically you said that if my counter arguments are flawed then the Germans were an incredible inferior military force that only fought a serious battle in their warlife, Stalingrad, and they lost it. Because that's the incredible argument Bgile made, explicit and plain. But I bring forth evidence, with link support on that, and I'm flawed.
There you go making straw men again. I will note that just because your counter argument is flawed it doesn't mean that your conclusions are necessarily wrong or that his statements were correct. It just means your argument was flawed. I also didn't see anywhere that he said any thing like "the Germans were an icredible inferior military force". So no it's not the argument he made at all. See the argument above that penguins are TVs.
I cannot, in civilized words, express the degree of that ultimate falacy because Jose will kick me out of the forum.
Perhaps it would help if you read a little closer what people actually write. If I saw someone make the statement above that you attributed to bgile I'd take them to task as well, but I certainly didn't read it that way and still don't.
But at least it can be said, as with the rest of the forum as witness that it's plain ridicule and abslute historical falacy. Please read Dupuy, please read Glants, please read Willbeck (which by the way are all americans). And if you have some decency, answer straight and forget your piecemeal smoke screens, not even tweedle dee believe in them anymore.
I've read Dupuy and while there are some problems with his studies they are certainly worth reading. The problem is that some people tend to over generalize them. This is especially frequent on boards such as this. I'm sorry that you don't like it when I point out that the huge leaps of faith you take are not well founded logically but I will indeed continue to point them out.
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Karl Heidenreich
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Re: Was US participation in WWII superfluous?

Post by Karl Heidenreich »

When is it that lwd will stop doing his so called answers in a piece meal descontextualized way instead of putting his own arguments and sources at play? No need to answer.
An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.
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Re: Was US participation in WWII superfluous?

Post by lwd »

Karl Heidenreich wrote:When is it that lwd will stop doing his so called answers in a piece meal descontextualized way instead of putting his own arguments and sources at play? No need to answer.
Well since I've never done it how can I stop. I specifically quote in a way to keep the context and my arguments are pretty obviously mine. As for sources I provide them when I think they are needed.

You shouldn't ask questions if you don't want to here the answer by the way.
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Karl Heidenreich
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Re: Was US participation in WWII superfluous?

Post by Karl Heidenreich »

lwd:

Basically I found your piecemeal "answering" of the latest posts completely un-necesary to being answered or contested by me, despite that is what you want: put some fuel to the fire. All of it is just argumentative and if we were in a trial the judge would have have found you out of order quite a long time ago, mainly because you are NOT making any point, just trying to bring confusion to someone else's points. So I would NOT answer you anymore. If some othjer forum member (and not tweedle dee by the way) finds that you have a good point and expresses it that I need to clarify or justify then I will address it, but not you.

Your arrogance is terrible and has been an obstacle to advance in a lot of topics before.

Regards,
An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.
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alecsandros
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Re: Was US participation in WWII superfluous?

Post by alecsandros »

dunmunro wrote:
Yes, lets return, but please do not try and justify the genocidal Nazi attack on the USSR.
This is a public forum, but we do not know each other. So you can not know what I realy think about "X" or "Y". Consequently, I can not know what you realy think about "Y" or "X". A conduct of minimum decency would be to refrain from pointing fingers against "persons" you do NOT know and whose opinions and history you do NOT know.

Unfortunately, when someone is telling you to be decent, that means you've already passed beyond decency. And it gets a little worse, as you are also a hypocrite, by not judging the Communist massacres by the same standards you judge the nazist ones.

I said it once, now I say it again: Communist occupation is a serious matter in many countries, and Communism has been condemned here in RO in 2006. Trying to justify torture and mass murder is just as bad, no matter if it was perpetrated by Italians, Japanese, Germans or russians.

If you would be interested in history, and not your own tabloidical approach to historical phenomenons, you would learn why Romania attacked the USSR in 1941. But since you do NOT know, and by all appearences, you don't have the capacity of learning, you're trying to justify communist opression, mass torture and mass killings by some anachronistic interpretation of hsitory as "punishment" or "reward" for fighting "for" or "against" various enemies, in this case occupation being punishment for attacking USSR.

This being your level of knowledge, I don't see any reason why I should discuss anything with you
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