US what do they teach you about WW2

One of the problems with teaching WWII is that we are now two generations away from it. There's no one left teaching who had actual first (or even second) hand experience with it. And since it's so (historically) recent, it get's relegated to the end of the course and given short shrift.
 
I know my teachers failed to mention the large number of Russian soldiers who died fighting the Nazis. In fact, there was a curious gap concerning the involvement of many of the countries involved, I blame politicians for this.
 
andy1033 said:
American military was just as horrible as any military can be. They carpet bombed much of germany, but for some reason left out the roads and train tracks to the concentration camps.
Click to expand...
To be fair, the Americans at least tried to do precision bombing of specific industrial targets by daylight. It was the British (and Canadians) who did the indiscriminate night bombing (when you're lucky to find Berlin, much less a specific target).
 
Asguard said:
umm the question is at the bottom

What do they teach you in school if people don't even know who Churchill is and think that the war was the US vs Japan, Germany and Russia
Click to expand...
to my knowledge churchill doesn't figure prominently in regards to WW2.
he was some british dude, prime minister i think.
 
leopold said:
to my knowledge churchill doesn't figure prominently in regards to WW2.
he was some british dude, prime minister i think.
Click to expand...

I really hope you mean he didn't feature in your classes, not that he didn't figure prominently in WW2 because if thats what you meant[video=youtube;XZxzJGgox_E]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZxzJGgox_E[/video]
 
sideshowbob said:
To be fair, the Americans at least tried to do precision bombing of specific industrial targets by daylight. It was the British (and Canadians) who did the indiscriminate night bombing (when you're lucky to find Berlin, much less a specific target).
Click to expand...

True and it was the US that developed and deployed the Norden Bombsight in WWII to deliver bombs more accurately, thus minimizing collateral damages and bombing innocent civilians. And this may come as a surprise to Andy, but the Nazi’s shipped prisoners to concentration camps via railroads, not roadways. And railroads were certainly targeted by Allied forces including The United States.

And the Soviets would not have been able to fight the Nazi’s were it not for the American supplies of weapons and food. I guess the Soviets could have thrown stones and eaten their boots. Additionally Americans fought wars on three continents versus one for the Soviet Union.

Perhaps Andy is not familiar with the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and the joint Nazi and Soviet invasion of Poland and the Soviet invasion of independent Finland.
 
Last edited:
I would highly recommend the world at war documentary series of 1973....its very well narrated,factually very sound and highly entartaining and informative with regards to WW2
 
joepistole said:
True and it was the US that developed and deployed the Norden Bombsight in WWII to deliver bombs more accurately, thus minimizing collateral damages and bombing innocent civilians. And this may come as a surprise to Andy, but the Nazi’s shipped prisoners to concentration camps via rail roads, not roadways. And railroads were certainly targeted by Allied forces including The United States.
Click to expand...
That was the expectation of precision bombing held by the US going into the war, but in practice the effort fell far short of that goal.
The Norden bombsight was a tachometric bombsight used by the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) and the United States Navy during World War II, and the United States Air Force in the Korean and the Vietnam Wars to aid the crew of bomber aircraft in dropping bombs accurately. Key to the operation of the Norden were two features; a mechanical computer that calculated the bomb's trajectory based on current flight conditions, and a linkage to the bomber's autopilot that let it react quickly and accurately to changes in the wind or other effects.

Together, these features allowed for unprecedented accuracy in day bombing from high altitudes; in testing the Norden demonstrated a circular error probable (CEP) of 75 feet (23 m), an astonishing performance for the era. This accuracy allowed direct attacks on ships, factories, and other point targets. Both the Navy and the AAF saw this as a means to achieve war aims through high-altitude bombing, without resorting to area bombing, as proposed by European forces. To achieve these aims, the Norden was granted the utmost secrecy well into the war, and was part of a then-unprecedented production effort on the same scale as the Manhattan Project. Carl L. Norden, Inc. ranked 46th among United States corporations in the value of World War II military production contracts.[1]

In practice it was not possible to achieve this level of accuracy in combat conditions, with the average CEP in 1943 being 1,200 feet (366 m). Both the Navy and Air Forces had to give up on the idea of pinpoint attacks during the war. The Navy turned to dive bombing and skip bombing to attack ships, while the Air Forces developed the lead bomber concept to improve accuracy. Nevertheless, the Norden's reputation as a pin-point device lived on, due in no small part to Norden's own advertising of the device after secrecy was reduced during the war.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norden_bombsight
Click to expand...
 
leopold said:
to my knowledge churchill doesn't figure prominently in regards to WW2.
Click to expand...
Yeah. Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin didn't have time to deal with World War Two because they were always off at some conference or other.
 
Capracus said:
That was the expectation of precision bombing held by the US going into the war, but in practice the effort fell far short of that goal.
Click to expand...

The point was, while not state of the art by today’s standards, it was certainly light years ahead of anything anyone else had at the time. And the US made the effort to perfect bombing accuracy, which runs counter to Andy's claims of indiscriminate bombing by US forces.
 
Asguard said:
umm the question is at the bottom

What do they teach you in school if people don't even know who Churchill is and think that the war was the US vs Japan, Germany and Russia
Click to expand...

It does seem rather odd that people are unaware of the roles of the major players in such an important global conflict that took place, still in living memory for some folks. Possibly the confusion about the Russian involvement stems from the later animosity between the Western Powers and Soviet Union. It didn't take that long after the Second World War before indeed we were in conflict with Russians when you think that Russian pilots were dressed up as North Korean and Chinese to attack the Allied Forces during the Korean War. Also you had the whole era of propaganda against communism driven by so called "Mccarthy witch hunt" for Communists and their sympathisers.

I guess also from a political stance we don't dwell on the importance of the Russian role in winning the war, because then we'd have to accept that we needed them and could not have won without them, possibly a concept that doesn't sit well alongside our pride. Every citizen of every nation wants to have pride in their country, in that it is capable of defending and protecting them without the need to rely on others, so when we hear or are told that WW2 took most of the rest of the world having to come together to beat the Nazi's is doesn't always go down to well. Also people can get side tracked with the other Axis Powers such as the Italiens, not really much of a threat as pretty much kept surrendering at every battle before switching sides to the Allies before the war's end, or the Japanese, they of course at least were the official reason for America entering the war, but were never a serious threat and would never have won a war against America nevermind a combined Allied force of America and The British Empire.

But as I said these are just issues that sidetrack people from learning and accepting the truth that the Americans, British and the Russians all had to come together to stop the Nazi war machine. What's also rarely taught judging from most people's lack of knowledge, is that it's only the fact that America had the Atom Bomb that stopped the Russians from continuing their push across the rest Western Europe as well The East, as Starlin was angry that Churchill had delayed the second front for over 2 years.

But no, I would imagine there are people in America who thought that the war was all just about Americans fighting Japanese, just as there will be people in England that think the War was all about the Empire fighting Germans, it's just the times we live in and facts tend to get lost along the way, possibly even some recoginition should be awarded that this guy at least knew Russia was in the war, a start perhaps. Now for the contibutions of the Australians, Canadians, French, Dutch, Polish, etc...., the list goes on and on, I think would require a lot of education, because there were just so many nations and groups of people that came together to fight for the allies, it would probarbly take a whole year, maybe longer, to really teach about all of their exploits.

On a side note though he might be right about Stalin, on a purely numbers game Stalin killed more people so I guess some might argue that makes him the bigger monster and threat.
 
sideshowbob said:
Yeah. Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin didn't have time to deal with World War Two because they were always off at some conference or other.
Click to expand...
my mistake.
i assumed the OP was about the actual fighting, not some diplomatic mission.

gee, what was that japanese guys name again?
you know, the dude that stalled the whitehouse so japans forces could get closer to hawaii?
 
leopold said:
my mistake.
i assumed the OP was about the actual fighting, not some diplomatic mission.
Click to expand...
The actual fighting? As in the supreme leader of the armed forces kind of fighting? Seriously?

Winston Churchill was Prime Minister of England during WWII -- thus he was the "in charge" guy when it came to making war decisions.​
Wiki Answers

Winston Churchill by David White and Daniel P. Murphy, Ph.D.
Few leaders had as much influence over the course of World War II as British prime minister Winston Churchill. With unflagging strength and vitality, he rallied his beleaguered people when things looked their bleakest, never wavering from his belief that the Allies would eventually emerge victorious. As a result of his tenacity and dedication, most historians consider him the greatest British leader of the twentieth century.

...

Churchill quickly proved to be a skillful prime minister. As commander in chief, he had direct control over the formulation of policy and the conduct of military operations. He and his staff supervised virtually every aspect of the war effort, working closely with the war cabinet secretariat.​

Does this sound like "some diplomatic mission" to you? Did you sleep through all your history classes? Maybe you should give it a rest leopold. You're just digging yourself deeper...
 
Randwolf said:
Wow. I didn't realize the OP "zoomed by" you that quick. Maybe Asguard could break it down to words of four letters or less for you.

:rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Make it even simpler

[video=youtube;XZxzJGgox_E]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZxzJGgox_E[/video]

Wow guess this issue is wider spread than I thought.
 
Asguard said:
Wow guess this issue is wider spread than I thought.
Click to expand...
one of our presidents was also a member of SHAEF, i believe he was the head of the entire affair.
this place (SHAEF) essentially told their respective countries "WIN THE WAR !" and gave some pep talk to get it done.
the actual winning was done by the soldiers and field commanders.

edit:
james forrestal probably did more for the war effort than the entire council of SHAEF.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top