VDH analyzes three pivotal events in the 20th century. I am glad to see that he recognizes the German failure to win the war against the U.S.S.R. in 1941 was largely due to the fact that they lacked motorized transport – something that so many people ignore or are ignorant of. Also Hitler never factored in the notion that the RedA rmy would fight a lot harder on its own territory then it would in Finland. As for Korea he points out that we were fortunate to have had Matthew B. Ridgway replace the shell shocked Douglas MacArthur (Ridgway, not David Petraeus) was our greatest commander since World War II.
by Victor Davis Hanson
From time to time, I take a break from opinion writing here at Works and Days[1] and turn to history — on this occasion, I am prompted by the 71st anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Here are a few of the most common questions that I have encountered while teaching the wars of the 20th century over the last twenty years.
I. Pearl Harbor — December 7, 1941
Q. Why did the Japanese so foolishly attack Pearl Harbor?
A. The Japanese did not see it as foolish at all. What in retrospect seems suicidal did not necessarily seem so at the time. In hindsight, the wiser Japanese course would have been to absorb the orphaned colonial Far Eastern possessions of France, the Netherlands, and Great Britain that were largely defenseless after June 1941. By carefully avoiding the Philippines and Pearl Harbor, the Japanese might have inherited the European colonial empire in the Pacific without starting a war with the United States. And had the Japanese and Germans coordinated strategy, the two might have attacked Russia simultaneously in June 1941 without prompting a wider war with the United States, or in the case of Japan, an immediate conflict necessarily with Great Britain.
But in the Japanese view, the Soviets had proved stubborn opponents in a series of border wars, and it was felt wiser to achieve a secure rear in Manchuria to divert attention to the west (the Russians, in fact, honored their non-aggression pact with the Japanese until late 1945) — especially given the fact that the Wehrmacht in December 1941 seemed likely to knock the Soviet Union out of the war in a few weeks or by early 1942.
In the Japanese mind, the moment was everything: it was high time to get in on the easy pickings in the Pacific before Germany ended the war altogether.
While the United States had belatedly begun rearming in the late 1930s, the Japanese were still convinced that in a naval war, their ships, planes, and personnel were at least as modern and plentiful, if not more numerous and qualitatively better than what was available to the United States. [......]
Japanese intelligence about American productive potential was about as limited as German knowledge of the Soviet Union. In Tokyo’s view, if Japanese naval forces took out the American Pacific carriers at Pearl Harbor, there was simply no way for America, at least in the immediate future, to contradict any of their Pacific agendas. Nor on December 7 could the Japanese even imagine that Germany might lose the war on the eastern front; more likely, Hitler seemed about to take Moscow, ending the continental ground conflict in Eurasia, and allowing him at last to finish off Great Britain. Britain’s fall, then, would mean that everything from India to Burma would soon be orphaned in the Pacific, and Japan would only have to deal with a vastly crippled and solitary United States. In short, for the Japanese, December 1941 seemed a good time to attack the United States — a provocation that would either likely be negotiated or end in a military defeat for the U.S.
II. The Russian Front — June 22, 1941
Q. Why did the Germans attack the Soviet Union so recklessly at a time when they had all but won the war?
A. Once more, what seems foolhardy to us may not have seemed so to Nazi Germany[3]. True, the Germans each month were receiving generously priced Soviet products, many on credit; but Hitler (wrongly) felt that he could nevertheless steal food, fuel, and raw materials from the east more cheaply than buying them. And while the Germans were paranoid about opening a two-front war — like the one that had plagued them between late 1914 and 1917 — Hitler argued that the western front was all but somnolent. British strategic bombing in 1941, remember, was still mostly erratic and ineffective.
In any case, Hitler was more paranoid about a British embargo and blockade that might cut off fuel and food in the manner of 1918; with the acquisition of the great natural reserves of the Soviet Union, especially its Caucasian oil, the Nazis believed that they would become immune from the effects of a maritime blockade.
In addition, the war was never intended to be entirely rational in the purely strategic sense; instead, it was seen also as a National Socialist ideological crusade in which the complete destruction or enslavement of Europe’s supposed Untermenschen was impossible without access to the huge populations of Jews and Slavs in Russia. To Hitler, Marxism was a Jewish perversity and Operation Barbarossa meant that he could kill two birds with one stone. The perverse notion that a Germany with 30% more territory and a population of 80 million — similar to its population today — still could not live without “Lebensraum” apparently appealed to many German elites who had visions of eastern estates and baronies, worked by serfs, with vacation trips on super-autobahns to the Crimean beaches — at least if all that cost only a month of war.
[........]There was no reason to believe that the United States would enter the war; if America had not declared war to aid Britain, it most certainly would not do so to save the communist Soviet Union.
Moreover, the German army had proved almost superhuman in its invasion of Poland and Western Europe; even the messy conflicts in the Balkans, Crete, and the recent deployments to North Africa had not slowed the Wehrmacht’s progress. Hitler, just to be sure, took no chances and assembled the largest invasion force the world had yet seen, over three million Germans and 500,000 allies. Operation Barbarossa was truly a multilateral effort, with contingents from most of Eastern Europe, Spain, and Italy joining the German effort. [......]Such technological superiority blinded Hitler to the reality that there were few modern roads in Russia, and most of the invasion would still be powered by horses, with inadequate air, train, and truck transport.
Still, in contrast to Germany’s string of successes, the Soviet Union’s recent military record was dismal. Stalin had liquidated many of the officer class (although not as large a percentage as was once thought). The Red Army had not performed well in carving up Poland in September 1939 and appeared almost incompetent in the early stages of the Soviet invasion of Finland in late 1939 (Hitler foolishly did not distinguish between the Red Army when fighting on home soil and when it was deployed abroad). [......] Given poor German intelligence about the quality and production of Russian artillery, tank (cf. the new T-34[4] that was about to go into full production), and aircraft, the Germans assumed that Russia would fall rather easily — relying on a comparative World War I calculus. France had held out for four years, while Russia had fallen in about three; thus, the next time around in 1940, France’s fall in about seven weeks suggested a Russian collapse in about four.
Japan, at war in the east with Russia during 1938-1939, had felt betrayed when its Axis partner had signed without warning the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, effectively ensuring the Soviets could focus on one front against the Japanese. A defeated Japan repaid the treachery in kind, by signing a similar neutrality pact with Russia in April 1941. That bargain assured Stalin, in turn, that the Soviets would have only a one-front war should Hitler break his agreements — a fact that might have saved Moscow as reinforcements from the east poured in.
In short, had Hitler maintained his pact with Stalin and focused instead on North Africa and the Persian Gulf oil fields, perhaps in conjunction with the Japanese advancing toward India and Suez, Great Britain would have probably lost the war. But by invading Russia, and declaring war on the United States on December 11 (when Army Group Center seemed on the verge of taking Moscow, when Japan seemingly had destroyed the Pacific fleet and had ensured both Britain and America a two-front war, and when U-boat commanders assured the Nazi high command that with free rein to attack the East Coast of the United States they could destroy the shipping lanes of the convoy system between North America and Great Britain), Hitler chose about the only two courses of action that could have lost him the war.
III. A Divided Korea?
Q. Why did the United States stop after spring 1951 at the 38th Parallel, thereby ensuring a subsequent sixty-year Cold War and resulting in chronic worries about a North Korea armed with nuclear weapons and poised to invade its neighbor to the south?
A. Americans were haunted by the nightmare of November 1950 to February 1951. After the brilliant Inchon invasion, and MacArthur’s inspired rapid advance to the Yalu River and the Chinese border, the sudden entrance of an initial quarter-million Chinese Red Army troops, with hundreds of thousands to follow, had sent the Americans reeling hundreds of miles to the south (in the longest retreat in American military history), back across the 38th Parallel, with Seoul soon being lost to the communists yet again. Matthew Ridgway had arrived in December 1950 to try to save the war, and had done just that by April 1951, when he was replaced as senior ground commander by Gen. Van Fleet and in turn took over the theater command from the relieved MacArthur. But the Americans had been permanently traumatized by the Chinese entry and the North Korean recovery after the all-but-declared American victory of October 1950.
Ridgway, after the UN forces’ amazing recovery in early 1951, was in no mood to go much farther across the 38th Parallel. From his study of MacArthur’s debacle in Fall 1950, he knew well that the peninsula in the north became more rugged and expansive and would swallow thousands of troops as they neared the Chinese and Russian borders, and had to be supplied from hundreds of miles to the rear. [.......]
Moreover, the UN coalition had been created under quasi-coercive premises in Fall 1950. The war was seen as about over, and allied deployment might well amount to only garrison duty. European participation in Korea was also predicated on ensuring an American commitment to keeping the Soviets out of Western Europe. But by the time UN troops arrived in Korea, the Chinese were invading and slaughtering the coalition in the retreat to the south. Most European participants simply wanted a truce at any cost and an end to the war.
Further, the U.S. had been drawn into a depressing propaganda war. We were responsible for rebirthing Japan, Italy, and Germany as pro-Western democracies, while Russian and Chinese communists posed as the true allies of the war’s victims that were continuing their war against fascism, against a capitalist American Empire that had joined the old Axis. In the case of Korea, Americans took over constabulary duties from Japanese militarists and supported South Korean authoritarians, while Soviet and Chinese-backed hardened communists in the North posed as agrarian reformers — or so the global leftist narrative went. [.......]
Was that stalemate wise, given the later trajectory of North Korea to the present insanity? Perhaps not — but the American effort nonetheless jumpstarted the South, which eventually evolved into a nation with consensual government and the world free-market powerhouse of today.
Lessons?
As historians we must remember not to evaluate what happened solely on the basis of what we now know in hindsight, but rather weigh the information available to the warring parties of the time — albeit with ample attention paid to their own shortcomings and prejudices.
Moreover, most blunders in war follow from the fruits of perceived success (e.g., Germany after victories in the West, Japan after sensing the colonial powers were all through in the Pacific, MacArthur after Inchon, the Chinese after successfully crossing into Korea, and perhaps even the United States in Iraq after the quick victory over the Taliban and the three-week disposal of Saddam Hussein’s regime), when the winning side rarely evaluates its ongoing success in terms of tactical means and strategic ends, the changing tides of war, and the advantages that will soon begin to accrue to the defenders. Few dared challenge the purported genius Hitler in 1941, or the supposedly all-knowing Isoroku Yamamoto in late 1941, or the brilliant MacArthur after Inchon.
Finally, no one can quite predict what will happen when the shooting starts, as even the past can be a deceptive guide. Hitler believed that the Czar’s Russians, who did not fight as stubbornly as the French in World War I, would collapse like the French did in June 1940. When the Chinese crossed the 38th Parallel, they did not anticipate that their communist supermen were subject to the same facts — long, vulnerable supply lines, bad weather, and an enemy with easier logistics — that had plagued the Americans on the way to the Yalu. And while Hitler may have had grounds to doubt the initial effectiveness of the U.S. Army, its sudden mobilization, and its inadequate equipment, he had no appreciation of lethal American fighter-bombers or a growing strategic bombing arm, no appreciation of the brilliance of American generals at the corps and division level, and no appreciation of what Henry Kaiser and Charles Sorensen were up to back in the United States.
Read the rest – War’s Paradoxes: From Pearl Harbor to the Russian Front to the 38th Parallel
Tags: Victor Davis Hanson
Geez an hour and a half before the first comment?
The only way the USSR could have been defeated in WWII was if it had imploded just as Imperial Russia did in 1917.
The only way the USSR could have imploded would have been had someone put a bullet in Stalin’s head.
Speranza wrote:
or if the Germans got the bomb. Game changer.
as a graduate of this place, I must agree!
(second discipline in my MS econ is international security)
coldwarrior wrote:
Matthew B. Ridgway is the greatest American general, right behind George Henry Thomas that few (outside of military history buffs) have ever heard of.
@ coldwarrior:
Wow he almost made it to 100.
I’m convinced that MacArthur had a breakdown after the Yalu rout.
@ Speranza:
i have to re-aquatint myself with slow trot thomas
@ Speranza:
Odd traffic patterns lately. I hope this one runs for a long time or is re-posted later. Always read your work.
/galt
@ CynicalConservative:
i’m wrapping the mountain of presents for the kids, so i will be in and out until finished…now where is that tape?
CynicalConservative wrote:
Hey thanks. I appreciate that.
coldwarrior wrote:
What the North lost in Robert E. Lee,they gained by having George H. Thomas of Virginia stay with the Union.
Saw the Hobbit today. Enjoyed it a lot. They did a pretty good job with the story. Lack of x rated elves , other than that A+
NRA Backlash? Or overhyped media trying to drive a new opinion. I agree with him. An armed person in every school. People will shoot up malls instead then.
darkwords wrote:
Liberals really are clueless idiots.
darkwords wrote:
X-rated elves?
@ darkwords:
Alyssa Milano is still around?
@ darkwords:
Good grief when you lose Alyssa Milano you’ve lost the country. /
The only reason we were able to get a UN force for Korea was because the Soviets boycotted the session.
Hubris meets nemesis.
This thread has been a real killer.
Japanese intelligence about American productive potential was about as limited as German knowledge of the Soviet Union. In Tokyo’s view, if Japanese naval forces took out the American Pacific carriers at Pearl Harbor, there was simply no way for America
Um, wasn’t it Yamamoto that said “We have awakened a sleeping giant”? He, at least, seems to have had a clue. Also, way back when, when I was first learning, I was stunned to find out the Japanese had no radar. !!!!!
@ eaglesoars:
Yamamoto also said…
“relax, nobody can find us out here”
heysoos wrote:
I thought we do not approve of “targeted assassinations”, or do they have to be “proportional”? /
eaglesoars wrote:
The rest of the militaristic clique in Tokyo did not believe him.
Although VDH doesn’t emphasize it, it’s interesting to note that in the annals of warfare, starvation has been used as THE most devastating weapon. A WEAPON, not a consequence of military action. Hitler’s attempt to repopulate the east with German farmers failed for many reasons -- not least because many of them didn’t know how to farm in that region. Fertilizers production went to explosives, not agriculture, farm machinery production was replaced by armaments production, etc. Competing interests.
In the case of Japan, their ideology was such that their ‘will’ was all that was necessary. They never had they ability to feed far flung troops (feeding their population was why they invaded China in the first place. I’ve seen one figure that stated 60% of Japanese military loses were due to starvation.
I recall Mark Shields complaining that Hamas casualties were far more then Israeli casualties, I guess on Okinawa he would have preferred American casualties to be around 100,000 to match Japanese losses,
@ eaglesoars:
Hitler had this crazy idea of German farmers colonizing the Crimea (whether they wanted to relocate there or not) and having these massive autobahns link them to Germany. He persisted in this fantasy even in 1942 long after their failure in front of Moscow and the obvious conclusion that Germany would never be able to impose its will upon the U.S.S.R.
@ eaglesoars:
Starvation via sea blockade helped bring down the Germany of World War I.
eaglesoars wrote:
I think that is way, way too high a figure.
not to dispute any previous points, and I don’t know much about Japan in China, but up the gut from Guadalcanal to Okinawa, Japanese troops were not starving
heysoos wrote:
They sure weren’t.
heysoos wrote:
Also they (The Imperial Japanese Army) were not starving in China or Burma either.
Speranza wrote:
It may be. There are 2 sources -- the World War II Databook and something in Japanese by someone named Fujiwara.
HOWEVER. If you think about how civilians were starving in Japan at the end of the war, I find it plausible that this percentage could be attained toward the end of the war
@ eaglesoars:
Most of the Japanese Army was not in Japan and they certainly were not starving. The Japanese Army in the homeland probably were hungry as was the rest of the civilian population after the American leap frog across the Pacific. Yet they were still full of fight.
the JA was starving for decent small arms tho, and their hokey pokey Shinto shit did not last long against the Marines and the M1…every single bonzai attack failed miserably except at Saipan where they cut up the Army pretty good…in the end the Japanese grunt was pretty good but not as good as us…they died from excessive bravado, not hunger
The largest Japanese Army was the Kwantung Army in Manchuria (the same Army that the Soviets beat the piss out of in August 1945) followed by the Japanese Army in the Phillipines.
man, you guys whip out the acts fast
heysoos wrote:
The Japanese Army basically was an infantry army that was built to fight in the jungle. Their tanks were a joke and they did not have much heavy artillery. In 1939 Georgi Zhukov beat the hell out of them on the Manchurian border at Khalkin Gol. Such a thorough defeat that Japan was wary of taking on the USSR in 1941 despite the German attack.
Speranza wrote:
I did not say they were in Japan- but toward the end of the war they were going hungry.
heysoos wrote:
“Fact check your ass” as we used to say on LGF.
eaglesoars wrote:
They were a resilient army that still wanted to go on fighting even after Hiroshima/Nagasaki.
heysoos wrote:
Speranza and I LOVE this stuff. I’m doing research for someone who is preparing to write a book on food and global security. So I have some recent background.
eaglesoars wrote:
An army that almost starved to death was the Army of Northern Virginia.
Speranza wrote:
Correct me if my memory is faulty -- but wasn’t there basically a palace coup in Japan between the hardliners who didn’t want to surrender and those who realized it was over?
Speranza wrote:
the worst sort of enemy…no possibility of winning yet reluctant to give up…in fact some claim the worse it got for Japan the harder they fought…the steady grind up the central Pacific doomed them…their resilience reminds me of the Taliban…with obvious differences of course
@ heysoos:
every single bonzai attack failed miserably except at Saipan where they cut up the Army pretty good…
Fuck you. My grandfather was at Saipan… Army.. attached to the marines. USMC sucks up the credit, the Army pays the debt.
Battles of Khalkin Gol
Zhukov was soon after called to Moscow and he actually thought that he was going to be purged as were so many other Soviet officers. He had a suit case packed for such an occasion and told his wife that she should be prepared for such an eventuality. However Stalin was impressed by his beating the crap out of the Kwantung Army and shortly thereafter made him Soviet Chief of Staff.
Speranza wrote:
Oh, lord, you should read Mary Chestnut’s diary. The entire South was going hungry.
heysoos wrote:
Their stubborn tenacity guaranteed that the Atomic bomb would be used.
Buckeye Abroad wrote:
I don’t know enough to take sides here, but wasn’t it Saipan where the women and children killed themselves jumping off cliffs into the sea?
Buckeye Abroad wrote:
just passing along the lore…I’m not judging anybody
Via wikipedia
@ Speranza:
Some of that is probably attributable to the Asian mindset. Look at what the North Vietnamese did to supply their troops in the South, who mainly lived off of cold rice. At the same time, we were flying planeloads of steaks and beer to our troops.
eaglesoars wrote:
Correct.
again via wikipedia
Speranza wrote:
my dad was issued cold weather gear in preparation for the invasion…2d Marines…you know the code names for the operations eh?
lobo91 wrote:
Troops coming from poorer nations (and that included the Red Army in WWII) are used to doing without.
heysoos wrote:
“Operation Downfall”.
I never bought into the post WWII official story of Hirohito being uninvolved in supporting the War Party.
@ Speranza:
yeah, bad news…units of the 6th Marines went up to help relieve those guys, but by then it was over
heysoos wrote:
Took too many casualties but they inflicted enormous casualties on the Japanese garrison. There was no cheap victories in the Pacific. One of the most unnecessary battles was for Peleilu.
Speranza wrote:
That makes 2 of us. But he liked western clothes -- and mattresses!!
meh. Bite me.
Geez Seattle is having their way with San Francisco 21-0. There is something about Pete Carroll I just do not care for.
eaglesoars wrote:
Truman and MacArthur though made the right decision. We needed Hirohito’s cooperation and prestige to help us remake Japan.
Did Russia Really Go It Alone? How Lend-Lease Helped the Soviets Defeat the Germans
Speranza wrote:
yup, and then there is the controversy of the Philippines…there was a lot to be said for bypassing unsustainable islands…too few people understood the horror of fighting desperate JA troops
Don’t forget there was over a million Japanese troops still scattered throughout the Pacific, Indochina, and China and they just about all obeyed Hirohito’s order to lay down their arms.
heysoos wrote:
Quite concur. The Phillipines was purely MacArthur’s ego. It was unnecessary (at least most historians feel it was unnecessary).
Speranza wrote:
an epic moment in American history…unconditional surrender and we forced it…say goodbye to that notion
Prebanned wrote:
Lendlease (particularly the trucks we sent), the strategic bombing of Germany, and the Mediterranean campaign -- all were major helps to the USSR. An allied invasion of France in late 1942 or early 1943 would have been disastrous.
heysoos wrote:
No worries. Nothing personal. He joined the Army in 40′ and spent almost 4 years with fleet Marines. Came home in 46′.
Prebanned wrote:
Who ever said the soviets did it alone? But they sure did a hell of a lot. W/o them, I seriously wonder if the Allies would have won the war.
heysoos wrote:
Actually the Japanese surrender was less then unconditional but so what? Imperial Japan was dismembered and Hirohito became a constitutional monarch and not a “divine being”.
@ darkwords:
We went to The Hobbit last night in IMax. A bit overwhelming- some of the scenes were a little dizzying with the IMax effect. Very enjoyable.
I’m looking forward to seeing Smaug!
eaglesoars wrote:
And with out the allies the Eastern Front might have become a draw.
Buckeye Abroad wrote:
That’s a helluva long service.
Regarding Peleliu
Speranza wrote:
AAARGH!! I’ve been meaning to talk to you about this. Why is it so many histories say the Allied bombing of Germany was ‘ineffectual’? The most recent I’ve read (still reading) is Antony Beevor’s The Second World War. To read him, you’d think it was a useless waste of lives (but Germany’s bombing of the UK is always ‘devestating’)
Speranza wrote:
Peleliu could easily have been pinned down by the Navy…a disasterous kill ratio
eaglesoars wrote:
you have to make up your own mind…no amount of written work will ever define the success of carpet bombing…one thing for sure, it breaks alot of stuff
eaglesoars wrote:
Same with my Dad. Drafted in ’40 and didn’t get out until ’46.
eaglesoars wrote:
I am not a fan of strategic bobming becasue in my opinion it was not worth the enormous aircrew casualties. It helped the USSR because it caused a lot of German fighter squadrons being redeployed from the Eastern Front to defend the Reich. I think the British Arthur “Bomber” Harris of the RAF Bomber Command to be a bit of a psychopath.
Speranza wrote:
I am not a fan of strategic bombing because in my opinion it was not worth the enormous aircrew casualties and destroyed a lot of towns killing a lot of civilians unnecessarily and did not break German morale at all. . It helped the USSR because it caused a lot of German fighter squadrons being redeployed from the Eastern Front to defend the Reich. I think the R.A.F. Chief of Bomber Command, Arthur “Bomber” Harris to be a bit of a psychopath.
I read Beevor’s book earlier this year. I like his takes on Rommel and Montgomery.
Speranza wrote:
So did my dad. He thought the fire bombing of Dresden was a war crime. (Dad was a B-26 pilot stationed outside London)
eaglesoars wrote:
The firebombing of Dresden served no purpose whatsoever. Harris had a taste for blood and he actually despite all evidence believed that strategic bombing alone could win the war.
Speranza wrote:
yes, there is an element of psychology in there…as with island hopping there is maybe the other most important controversy…Bomber losses were unacceptable yet the 8th AF forged ahead in daylight til technology caught up with the P51
Speranza wrote:
EXACTLY. Plus, if you look at what was left of the Luftwaffe by D-Day -- they could never replace their crews -- they just kept them flying until they didn’t come home.
eaglesoars wrote:
Only three German fighter planes appeared over Omaha Beach on June6.
heysoos wrote:
Dad said the Luftwaffe would let them in to bomb their targets -- then fight them coming out when they were low on fuel. The P51s couldn’t help with that.
MN Social Studies focuses on America’s raaaaacism
Antony Beevor lists many beautiful German small cities with priceless architecture destroyed for no military reason whatsoever. Strategic bombing is never as effective on a totalitarian dictatorship as it is on a democracy because people in Nazi Germany have no chance of influencing their government. Christopher Hitchens pointed out that despite the myths about the blitz on London that Londoners looted bombed out homes,blamed Jews for jumping the food queues, and trampled each other to death running into the bomb shelters in the London Underground (i.e. at Bethnal Green Underground Station in East London).
Speranza wrote:
I believe Hap Arnold agreed with him. But then, there’s always been this rivalry between the Army and the Air Force……….
mfhorn wrote:
Good grief!
eaglesoars wrote:
it’s the timeline…until the Mustang could fly to Germany and back the Luftwaffe ruled…after that it was over…Mustangs were just too much, too fast, too powerful in a climb…the P51 could do it all and it saved the controversial tactic of daylight bombing
eaglesoars wrote:
I don’t know about Arnold but if he did then they both were fools.
The Bethnal Green disaster which killed 173 people through being crushed and suffocated
Speranza wrote:
I’ve forgotten where I read it but it was fairly recently- and it may have been a comment on a blog. Take a guided tour of Cologne and the guide will tell you about the cathedral having been miraculously spared the bombing. Um, no. It was used as a guide/marker for allied attacks.
Speranza wrote:
Well, welcome to human nature. And if you read any of the Mass Observation Society reporting from back then you know it wasn’t all stiff upper lip and powdered eggs.
eaglesoars wrote:
It was British propaganda bullshit “London can take it!” and all that. Just like at the Imperial War Museum in Lambeth (South London) the permanent exhibit about Field Marshal Montgomery called “Master of the Battlefield” -- master of self promotion is more like it.
No enemy being carpet bombed has ever admitted its effectiveness.
Prebanned wrote:
It did not make the North Vietnamese give up did it?
@ Speranza:
I thought they did give up
Speranza wrote:
we never carpet bombed Hanoi…depends on the target
I’m going to call it a night -- been a long day.
Thanks for the thread Speranza -- LOVED it!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/january/15/newsid_2530000/2530549.stm
We withdrew and a while later the North invaded the south with a conventional army.
they knew they could get away with it because Congress publicly stated that they refused to fund any more help for south vietnam.
Prebanned wrote:
right, he fucking donks threw it away, just when it was over
Prebanned wrote:
Really? They took over the South in 1975.
eaglesoars wrote:
Awww that makes it worthwhile.
Speranza wrote:
Glad to see this thread resurrected. Great reading, more than you’ll ever see in public school.
/galt
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/vietnam/timeline.htm
We left and they waited a while to make sure we wouldn’t fight anymore, they they went back to killing.
Speranza wrote:
The majority of what could be considered “carpet bombing” took place in South Vietnam.
eaglesoars wrote:
AFAIK the US and the UK developed it some time after the war started. My uncle was in the Signal Corps and worked with it and of course was forbidden to reveal anything about it.
liberal democrats dragged us into VN, escalated the fight way beyond any need, got 59k American kids killed, then pulled the plug on the ARVN after Nixon got us out…despicable assholes don’t seem to care about the consequence
CynicalConservative wrote:
It deserved a second chance.
@ Speranza:
threads have feelings too…
Nixon took it to North Vietnam with a three dimensional war, He fought like He wanted to win.
Granted, we should have carpet bombed Hanoi from one end to the other but we did finally bomb military targets in Hanoi and Haiphong and that helped North Vietnam decide to call it quits.
After the cease fire, we left as fast as we could and then the North changed thier minds
@ Prebanned:
right, then history turns it around to say we ‘lost’ the war, with all that implicates
heysoos wrote:
Okaaay
Wow The Sound of Music is on!
heysoos wrote:
We were never militarily defeated in Vietnam.
@ Speranza:
Recycling is very green…
I’m 61, and I will never, ever forgive democrats for what they did with Viet Nam…58k lives for political pursuits…It’s shameful how ignorant people are
Geez whenever Christopher Plummer sings “Edelweiss” I just get a lump in my throat.
heysoos wrote:
Hey one of them will now be our Secretary of State.
Prebanned wrote:
That is the way I remembered it as.
heysoos wrote:
And three million Vietnamese died after we left.
Speranza wrote:
Rolf the rat is about to show his true colors.
huckfunn wrote:
Captain von Trapp is an anti-Nazi but he ran his household like a real stormtrooper!
Too many Austrians welcomed the Anschluss with Nazi Germany in 1938.
@ Speranza:
Yeah, we got that problem around here!
2012 is about over, may 2013 be our year.
Speranza wrote:
And very few of them were made to pay for their crimes. There was that one U.N. Secretary General who was forced out when his Nazi past came to light about 15 or 20 years ago.
@ huckfunn:
It was Kurt Waldheim and it was 30 years ago. Gee, time flies.
huckfunn wrote:
Shaddup. I was already feeling old tonight.
huckfunn wrote:
The Russians and Yugoslavs had blackmail information on him.