OPINION OF UNITED STATES OF AMERICA! (White Giant)

"BTW, I got written up at work! The paper says "for being disrespectful to my superior." I refused to sign it. I told them, first off, the head manager is NOT my "superior" in any way. (I hate that word!) Second of all, I was not disrespectful. I merely stated my right as an American. I have the right to assembly, says it right in the constitution. Nobody, and nothing is going to take my rights away without a fight."

I realize this is old but everybody should know that your rights working for a private company are not exactly the same as the ones you have from the constitution. The Bill of Rights were written to limit the GOVERNMENT not private firms. People that work for the government have different rights then those who work in the private sector except in infractions of labor law, collective bargaining agreements, or other legally binding contracts.

BC

I fully back Michael Morrison. So long as I had comepleted my work, asked for more and supported other areas, I would work how and when I liked. I also decided if I wanted a pay rise.

If I didn't like somthing I would say so and stand by it. I believe it's right they have the right to fire you but I also believe it's my right to stand by my promised freedoms and my beliefs and perhaps just get another job. I did this mainly by contracting and being self-employed as I'm not a good employee and never want to be.

We are all equals. We should work together and not against each other.

Nix,

A forward: Your post really offended me, so I hope this does the same to you. I'm not sure if it was misinformation controlling you post or not, but I would advise you to dredge up some knowledge about history.

What the hell are you talking about with the WWII stuff. Sure we used Britian as a base, but we invaded into North Africa as our first real offensive in the war. Our air raids based out of Britian AND North Africa allowed us to severely damage the Axis infrastructure.

Mount a counter attack? Which major entirely BRITISH counter attack established a beachhead in the European mainland? I never heard about that one. Mabeye you didn't either? Britian would have been hosed in WWII had the US not gotten involved. Hell, a few more years without US intervention and Britian would have been nuked off the face of the planet. God wouldn't have saved the king and queen that day.

Face it, the US was the larg

The counter attack, I'm sure it was after the Battle of Britain (I'll dig it out) was on the German cities through the means of bombers. The order as given knowing that the Germans would respond with everything they had. '1 million tonnes of bombs dropped on one UK city in one night.'
This was before the USA got involved. So much for our special friendship.

I'll take the rest of it personally. We backed you, again knowing that it will bring death to the home land, and this is what you have to say about it.

To be fair Master, the Big One in Europe was largely decided on the plains of Russia. The Western Front was a sideshow and coup d'grace, little more.

Pissing contests between Brit and Yank are an insult to the brave men and women who paid the price for both our society's survival.

Nix, do you take night classes on how to piss people off with stupid comments?

Your right of course FarmerBob. And I apologize. It's just the fact that his post really hit a nerve of mine. I don't think he could have said much else that would have pissed me off more.

But a question for you FarmerBob; What makes you think the results of WWII were decided on the fields of Russia alone? I mean, obviously Hitler suffered massive losses on the eastern front, but I wouldn't go so far as to say D-Day and all other offencives in the east were merely a "slideshow".

Ben

Hitler was an incompetent Commander in Chief.

Invading Russia is a fools errand as history should have demonstrated.

The war was lost on June 22 1941...The rest of the conflict was a foregone conclusion.

Sam nailed it. When crazy Adolf decided to execute Barbarosa, invading the USSR on a wide front aimed at occupation of the population centers, it was all over but the shouting. By June '44, allied planners were already starting to think "Post War".

The only chance The Third Reich ever had was a Southern attack towards Turkey, the ME, and the southern Sov oil fields. They would likely have still been overwhelmed from the combined economic and industrial capacities of the Allies, but with adequate POL supplies(a luxury they rarely enjoyed), the Wehrmacht would have been able to fight even more effectively, possibly to a strategic stalemate.

It was the combination of manpower, petroleum, and industrial limitations that doomed the Thousand Year Reich from the beginning.

Had Adolf tried to "liberate" and arm the Ukrainians, organize the Muslim world against their colonial occupiers, and coordinate w

Thank you for the excellent summary FB. I think you may have misunderstood me a bit. I wasn't really saying the Axis had a chance in hell of winning the war, I was merely saying the use of the word "sideshow" seemed to downplay the sacrifices and combat that occured in the western front.

I personally don't think Hitler could have ever taken over the entire world. He simply didn't have enough manpower. Hell, the resistance forces based in conquered countries could have defeated his occupation forces once he was stretched that thin. Germany dosen't even have enough people.

Speaking very bluntly (meaning I wouldn't have approved of this), his best bet would have been to negotiate a settlement with the Allies that would have allowed him control of all of Europe (except for Britian). Assuming he got the Allies to agree with that, he would have had to slowly exterminate all of the native populations

That's it exactly, Ben.

It's been estimated that the Ukraine alone could have supplied the Werhrmacht with 100 divsions who would gladly have joined the Germans and allies in marching on Moscow. Thank God Hitler was Hitler. It could be a very different world if he hadn't been an insane meglomaniac.

But again, lebensraum meant for Aryan subjegation of the Untermenschen and ruling them as fuedal masters. Kinda tough sell. Especially when the SS fanatics roll in and start mass executions in the "liberated" territories.

Indeed.

If Hitler had increased funding for Werner Von Braun he could have finished the A9/A10 ICBM.

The original plan for WWII called for hostilities in 1945. A much different world if the Nazis had the bomb and a means to deliver it. Along with a proper navy and top flight air force and army.

A very interesting what if? to ponder is if Germany and Italy and refrained from declaring war on the US, following Dec. 11.

This could be biased because I'm an american, but, I think that one of the Axis's greatest mistakes was the decision to declare war on and attack the US. They should have let us sit in our isolationist ignorance and consolidated their gains. Hitlers mistake was the he essentially tried to blitzkrieg all of Europe and much of Africa. He overextended his forces and was just too brutal to garner much foreign support.

I have to disagree. The failure wasn't in Operation Barbarossa, but the timing. Stopping to pull the Italian chestnuts out of the fire in Greece delayed the start for over a month. German forces were in sight of Moscow when the Russian winter started adversely affecting operations. Given that extra month of time, Moscow may have well fallen, cutting off much of Russia with the concurrent loss of Russia's major transportation hub, as well as it's governmental locus.

If Operation Barbarossa hadn't gone forward, it wouldn't have been much longer before Stalin invaded German occupied Poland, putting a different spin on the war, but leaving it substantively the same.

The blitzkrieg was the only way to wage war that Germany had. It was born of economic necessity. Throughout the war, German forces never enjoyed a stockpile of more than 30 days of war supplies. With a friendly government in Spain, the only country left

Here's the actual quote from Major General Smedley Butler (USMC)

I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else. If a nation comes over here to fight, then we'll fight. The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag.

Richard you posted as follows, "The deliberate bombing of civilians was started by the allies."
I suppose those Stuka dive bombers over Warsaw in September of 1939 were just stray aircraft that somehow managed to level the city. Oh, and the bombimg of Rotterdam in May of 1940 was mistaken for a dam. I guess the Nazis were just bad at flight navigation. Give me a break. The British didn't need an excuse to bomb German cities. The fact that the Germans had already bombed civilian targets in the countries of British allies was all the justification the British needed.

Neidy,

Point conceded. The air attacks on Polish troops stationed in the city could be construed that way. Or the attacks on the so-called "Black Monday" on GERMAN troops by the Luftwaffe in the Northwest suburbs. Entrenching troops in an urban population should absolutely prevent the enemy from attacking it.(That has worked so well in world history.) There is a huge difference between Operation Wasserkante, and the allied attacks on civilian populations in world war 2 which had as it's purpose only the death of civilians - with the military objective being ostensibly the destruction of the governments' will to resist. I'll include the terror bombings that Germany resorted to after the initial bombing of Berlin in that category. I never stated that only the Allies were guilty of war atrocities.

Rotterdam was indeed bombed - after troops there under Colonel Scharroo refused to surrender the city without a f

Lol! It's funny how you "concede" my point and then try and justify the actions of the Nazis. I'm sorry to say, you sound like a post war apologist for them. You conveniently overlook the fact that Warsaw was surrounded, and Polish Troops squeezed from the east by Russians and the West by the Nazis, had nowhere else to go. The Nazis had more humanitarian options aside from laying waste to the city. They could have laid siege to the city and waited in out few more months. They chose the more brutal option.

As for Rotterdam, you again try to be an apologist. 'Oh poor Rotterdam! It only got leveled because of poor communication'! Hey, Richard. Did it ever occur to you that the Nazis had no right to invade the neutral countries of Belgium, Holland, and Luxembourg in the first place? Why, the nerve of those little countries trying to defend there cities against naked aggression.

The fact is that Germany prior to Septem

Neidy,

It was not my intention to apologize for any of the actions on either side in that war. Only to point out that both sides are worthy of condemnation. You conveniently overlook the fact that those troops squeezed into those cities indeed had other options - one could look to both Paris and Rome for an example on either side. Each was in line with the 1907 Hague Convention.

Britain and France were not to blame for the Holocaust - they pulled no triggers. Neither did America when it refused emmigration. Nor was the Catholic Church who aided and abetted the fascists. Nor were the Syrians, Jordanians, and Palestians who rioted in their streets when it was proposed to send the Jews there. Germany and Germany alone had the responsibility. Along with all the enthusiastic collaborators in France and Poland, and in other occupied countries who shared their anti-Semitic views.

The fact that the "civilized" nations of t

Richard, my problem with your argument is you mix too many apples with oranges. Every nation can look back at some sordid time in their past. As I already noted in my prior post, there was insufficient moral outcry against the persecutuion of Jews in Germany as we both have correctly pointed out in the immigration policies of the western countries.

We are talking about World War II and the specific manner of war making between the nations. Were there collaborators? Of course. We all know that. But that symapthy with the Nazi theology didn't represent the overall view of the nations and people of Europe and America. Yes, they had their religious and racial prejudices, but there were lines that they didn't cross. Such as the instigated state policy of eliminating an entire race of people. You again say you do not mean to be an apologist for the Nazis, yet at the same time point out that the Nazis weren't so bad since they at least offere

Neidy,

Kind of hard to spare you in anyway, when you keep using the same pretext to justify your own opinions that I use in mine. Until 1948 the Jews didn't have a country. If Germany was indeed their country, you have just undermined your argument about the Sudetenland - where ethnic Germans tried to form their own country under Woodrow Wilson's 14 point plan. A process that was tried repeatedly by democratic and peaceful means. It's got to be either one way or the other, not one way for you and another for myself. Anything else is simply intellectual dishonesty.

Belgium, Luxembourg and Holland was the topic you broached. Moving those countries into the Sudetenland is bad geography. I believe the area you are looking for in Czechoslovakia that was German is Upper Silesia, particularly the Hultschin area. The Sudetenland was ethnic Germans seeking to form their own country - an entirely separate issue.

Your arg

Shelton, you argue so many points, ranging over such a wide range of importance. What's your main point--that the Axis weren't entirely evil automatons but real people, and that the Allies weren't purely good automatons but real people? Of course that's true and it is good to remind us all of that. But it's less than useful to carry it to the point of arguing the moral equivalencies of all parties.

Neidy's summary is right on the mark.

Richard. Where one is born, there lies his or her country. Don't tell me that German Jews didn't consider themselves German. Again you act as an apologist for the Nazi thuggery. Sudetenland was not part of Germany prior to the Versaille treaty. It was part of the Austia Hunagarian Empire.
Hitler's interest in the Sudetenlnd was motivated only out of purely military need. Czechoslovakia was allied with France in the event of war with Germany. The area in question was heavily fortified and was a linchpin of the Czechoslovakian defense. Hitler knew that in the event of war in the East he would not only have to possibly face France in the west, but also the entire Bavarian region of Germany would be at risk. He knew that if he could get the Sudetenland wrenched from the Czechs, any future invasion of Czechoslovakia would be a cake walk. This was evidenced by the fact the Czechs didn't even bother to put up a fight in March 1939 when Hitler

ww1 was a stalemate til US stepped in
ww2 The Germans were winning till the African Invasion
desert storm yes there were others nut US and its advanced weapons did most of the work
B52
b2B
a10
apache
f117
f22 raptor
Nimitz Carrier 5 acres of sovereign real-state
m2 browning been around 90 years and still kills well. its killed germans, japs, koreans, VC, and arabs
Iowa battleship the go away comeback refit ship my favorite warship
M1 Abrams most advanced tank in world
its problem lack of competition
also your probably running on a Dell, HP, or gateway using windows XP or higher

Neidy,

Sorry, it's been a busy couple of days on the other side of the orb.

Hitler's interest in the Sudetenland may have been purely military. The Sudetenland's interest in a Germanic Austria predated Hitler's rise to power. No other world leader was prepared to get involved into breaking up a country - like Bosnia and environs.

The middle kingdom quip was in response to your statement about the average Chinese. An intrinsic part of Chinese cultural is their belief in their superiority over all other cultures.

And, now, having beat this subject into the ground, how about a new topic?