Tory boob..

[jucyberry]

We all know the yanks like to believe they are the saviours of the world, every hollywood war film shows them single handedly winning everything from the Alamo to WW2.. It would seem our not so esteemed leader also thinks this way... Unless he is gong to be an even more toadying little maggot than Blair ever was of course.......

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1296551/Cameron-describes-Britain-junior-partner-Americans-1940--year-Pearl-Harbour.html

[Hounslowrover]

Just wonder what kind of headline a Labour leader would have got from the Mail, Sun, Express etc, Cameron will probably get off lightly in comparison!

[BobG]

Hmmm..... Just why, do you think, it was an American General who was C in C Europe? Just why was it an American General who was C in C, Pacific? Just why was it an American judge who was the President at Nuremburg? Of course we were the junior partners. Stalin and Roosevelt even shut Churchill out of the debate at Yalta!THey simply ignored him.

Britain was a busted flush. It didn't have the resources in people, money, equipment or ships to fight its own war never mind help anyone else. Why did the Yanks build Liberty ships do you think? Why did Britain have to 'borrow' 50 destroyers from them? Britain would have entirely lost the war by 1941 if the Yanks hadn't helped out both covertly and overtly. We were ther major partners in the FIrst World War, but we spent our entire economic, human and psychological capital in doing so. By the time the second war came around, we were about as much use as the French - who had also spent their all in 1914-18.

BobG

Jesus....!

BobG

[BillyStubbsTears]

BobG wrote:

Hmmm..... Just why, do you think, it was an American General who was C in C Europe? Just why was it an American General who was C in C, Pacific? Just why was it an American judge who was the President at Nuremburg? Of course we were the junior partners. Stalin and Roosevelt even shut Churchill out of the debate at Yalta!THey simply ignored him.

Britain was a busted flush. It didn't have the resources in people, money, equipment or ships to fight its own war never mind help anyone else. Why did the Yanks build Liberty ships do you think? Why did Britain have to 'borrow' 50 destroyers from them? Britain would have entirely lost the war by 1941 if the Yanks hadn't helped out both covertly and overtly. We were ther major partners in the FIrst World War, but we spent our entire economic, human and psychological capital in doing so. By the time the second war came around, we were about as much use as the French - who had also spent their all in 1914-18.

BobG

Jesus....!

BobG

Roosevelt explicitly said \"We are NOT going to war to save the British Empire.\" And they f**king well rammed that message home at the Bretton Woods conference, when they pulled the rug out from any hope of a British economic revival after the war.

Special relationship? Oh aye, it was special alright. It was a tag team. We went 14 rounds aginst Giant Haystacks, then tagged Uncle Sam to come in and finish him off. Then Sam turned round, looked at us mashed up in the corner and said \"b*llocks to you for any future gigs.\"

And the self-righteous Kitsons would argue that they were always on the side of the righteous. They were on no side but their own. Ever.

[BobG]

Of course he did Billy. He had to. The mood of the nation and all that. But I notice that good old Corelli Barnett, in that link, fails to mention that the US Navy spent most of 1940 sending wireless messages to the Royal Navy saying 'Hey guys. We found a U Boat. It's here!'. Indeed, they even shot, quite violently, at some of those U Boats. It was Hitler who stopped that leading to early war. He absolutely forbade any retaliation by his U Boat captains. He didn't want the Yanks in. (And God knows why he then foolishly declared war on them a couple of years later when the Japs kicked off in the irrelevant Pacific) And whoever said that the Yanks have ever been on any side but their own? That's one of their most consistent traits over the last 100 years.

But still, all this pious crap in that article about the 'sacrifice' and the 'Battle of Britain'... So fcuking what? Neither of those things made us a senior partner did they? Churchill ended up begging thr US to get involved. There was a meeting between him and Roosevelts' special envoy at some house in the country, who's name I forget right now, in late 1940 (I think - might have been early ish 1941) where he did exactly that. Churchill knew we were screwed. Until Hitler lost his marbles and set off Operation Barbarossa, we hadn't a hope in hell without the Yanks.

Bob

PS After the end of the war in Europe, the Royal Navy was despatched to the Far East to both represent the flag and take part in the fight. And guess what? Not only was it under the command of a US Admiral, but it, the entire available resources of the Royal Navy, was known simply as Task Force Z (or was it Task Force H? Can't remember but it doesn't matter). It wasn't even seen as an independent entity. It was simply a Task Force within the USN. Britain was a a very junior partner indeed. For once, Cameron is right.

[BobG]

PPS I'll give you another examaple of just how poor we were at fighting the war in WW2. The Bismarck. It took ALL of the Home Fleet, very nearly all of the Mediterranean Fleet and a very lucky torpedo indeed to sink one poxy German battleship. And even whenh we did, it took 2 hours pounding at point blank range with 16 inch guns from the Rodney, 14 inch guns from King George V, dozens of smaller guns and about 20 torpedoes to sink it. Of course, it took the Bismarck about 8 minutes to sink the biggest ship in the Royal Navy and to so seriously damage the newest battle ship in the Navy that it turned tail and ran away.

[vaya]

Britian and the rest of Western Europe were a sideshow - the war was won/lost in the East.
The Red Army saw the brunt of the fighting, the Soviets had bigger casulaties than the rest of the Allies put together, and it was a constant miscalculation by the Germans into how much men and material Stalin was quite willing to throw at the problem until it went away that cost them in the end.

[BillyStubbsTears]

BobG wrote:

Of course he did Billy. He had to. The mood of the nation and all that. But I notice that good old Corelli Barnett, in that link, fails to mention that the US Navy spent most of 1940 sending wireless messages to the Royal Navy saying 'Hey guys. We found a U Boat. It's here!'. Indeed, they even shot, quite violently, at some of those U Boats. It was Hitler who stopped that leading to early war. He absolutely forbade any retaliation by his U Boat captains. He didn't want the Yanks in. (And God knows why he then foolishly declared war on them a couple of years later when the Japs kicked off in the irrelevant Pacific) And whoever said that the Yanks have ever been on any side but their own? That's one of their most consistent traits over the last 100 years.

But still, all this pious crap in that article about the 'sacrifice' and the 'Battle of Britain'... So fcuking what? Neither of those things made us a senior partner did they? Churchill ended up begging thr US to get involved. There was a meeting between him and Roosevelts' special envoy at some house in the country, who's name I forget right now, in late 1940 (I think - might have been early ish 1941) where he did exactly that. Churchill knew we were screwed. Until Hitler lost his marbles and set off Operation Barbarossa, we hadn't a hope in hell without the Yanks.

Bob

PS After the end of the war in Europe, the Royal Navy was despatched to the Far East to both represent the flag and take part in the fight. And guess what? Not only was it under the command of a US Admiral, but it, the entire available resources of the Royal Navy, was known simply as Task Force Z (or was it Task Force H? Can't remember but it doesn't matter). It wasn't even seen as an independent entity. It was simply a Task Force within the USN. Britain was a a very junior partner indeed. For once, Cameron is right.

All bang on Bob.

Having said that, the Battle of Britain was crucial strategically and we WERE the only side actively and openly taking on Germany at the time. Had Hitler knocked us out of the war in late 1940, which he surely would have done had the Luftwaffe won the Battle of Britain, then the whole strategic balance would have changed. We wouldn't have fought them on the beaches and in the hills. We'd have made a sensible, pragmatic peace or we'd have had millions of dead. Churchill would have been quietly disposed of and we would have become, at best, an equivalent of Vichy France, with one of the long-term appeasers (Halifax?) installed as puppet PM and Edward VIII brought back as King. The North Africa campaign would have been over, Germany would have had access to the Middle East oilfields, and the whole balance of the (inevitable) battle with the Soviet Union would have changed.

Fatherland by Robert Harris is a fascinating \"what if\" on this theme, with Hitler triumphant, Europe pacified and subservient, the Soviet Union defeated and the only battles still going on being guerilla wars in the Urals and Caucasus. The American President in 1960 in this story was Kennedy - Joseph, JFK's dad an anti-Semite and virluent Commie-hater who much preferred Hitler to Stalin.

The Battle of Britain was a rearguard holding operation, but no less crucial for that. We were never going to be in a position to defeat Germany on our own, but by stopping them from defeating us, we did just enough to buy time. Hitler knew that a battle between Nazism and Communism was inevitable and he had to take on the Soviet Union before Stalin's greater resourcesd and re-armament made the outcome a forgone conclusion. What the success in the Battle of Britain did was to prevent Hitler from going into Barbarossa from a position as strong as he would have liked, and in that sense, the Battle of Britain was vital in tipping the balance.

[BobG]

Oh, absolutely agree with pretty much all of that Billy. Of course we were the only folk fighting Hitler for a while. Of course the strategic implications of September 1940 were just about the biggest in a century.  Imagine: if we'd lost that not only would the Middle East have gone but the iron curtain, as we know it, could easily neber have been made either. Communism would never have taken over Eastern Europe and the domino theory would never have been invented - so, no Vietnam either. (Mind you, at some point the Yanks would have had to fight a mega powerful Axis alliance pretty much on its own though ) But none of that detracts from the point under discussion: was Britain a junior partner in WW2? We were - unequivocally.

And Vaya - agree with you too. Once Barbarossa started, Western Europe was always a side show. About the only strategic impact we in the west could even claim was the strategic bombing of the Ruhr. But even that turned out to be no more than a small, damp squib when the Allies went to look at the records after the war. In 1944 German armaments production was something like (I can't be arsed to check) 4 times what it had been in 1942. Mind you, the Germans did have Albert Speer. A genius if ever I saw one. One of the greatest regrets of my life is that I walked past his house in Heidelburg in the very early 1980's without then knowing that it was he who lived there. I'd have given my eye teeth, both arms, a leg and an eye for an hours' conversation with him. Ever read Gitta Sereny's biography? A simply wondrous book and wondrous analysis of a flawed genius.

Cheers

BobG

[CusworthRovers]

and back to the thread title..........Ladies and gentlemen I give you David Davies