This a record of history from the white, privileged and wealthy. And much of it recorded to suit the agenda of the landed gentry, regardless of the actual facts. Without wanting to diminish the achievements from black and ethnic fight for equal rights, for me race is second to class and wealth in this battle. It doesn't matter if you're white, black, asian etc. If you're not part of the wealthy establishment, then your version of history is not deemed as 'noteworthy' as those who shape the narrative.
How dare any of you have any opinions that differ even remotely from the one sissu has obtained from some dank dark area of the tinterweb. Remember as the opinions not actually his he can’t provide his working out. Bobble headed, tinfoil hatted muppets feelings matter too
You said "Let's not pretend that the [Nazis] were stopped by much other than us [US]capital and Russian blood", and that's the only thing I took issue with - it's not entirely correct, but I intend to go no further with that particular argument. Moving on, I don't know where everyone else has been, but there has always been an ambivalence towards Churchill in my lifetime - and in his own. My education, my reading of history and serious political journalism all revealed him to be a complex figure with feet of clay. In my experience, the only people who stand him up as an uncomplicated hero are the same people who want us to retreat into a xenophobic isolationist state. Everybody else considered him to be an extremist and divisive character - who, as it turned out, seemed to have the required qualities for a war leader. As for empire building, it's been a part of human nature since recorded time. Only in the last half century or so has it acquired a moral opprobrium, and even then not for everyone, sadly. Context is everything. It's pointless to try the past on the ethics of today, we can only take the warnings of history and keep trying to evolve a better society.
If I was the father of a soldier, sitting at home, knowing that my son was being primed for a bloody invasion of the Japanese mainland, after him surviving against all the odds, through the previous few years of island hopping, and then being told that they could drop a massive bomb instead to end the war. I know what I would have voted for. Selfish, but during total war, understandable.
They should use that level of thinking in every war. Imagine all the soldiers lives they'd save. Only if it's 'total war' though, not the part-time wars of course.
oh ffs yes civilians were a target but the idea they could target the rail heads alone is fanciful since the only way to , probably , hit anything was to area bomb . I'm not sure what your point is tbh as all i said was Dresden was no different to Cologne , Hamburg , Frankfurt etc and that all air forces did the same thing in the 2nd world war .
My understanding is the Japanese military target was not in Nagasaki, only 150 soldiers were killed, the rest were civilians. Whereas in Hiroshima, 20,000 soldiers were killed. The intended target was Kokura due to it's military arsenal, but during the flight and cloud cover, the decision was made to dump the payload before returning, as they flew over Nagasaki. In my eyes, that's a war crime, because it made civilians the object of attack, which is against humantarian laws.
iirc Nagasaki was a listed secondary target but as i pointed out previously all city bombing in that period was bound to cause large scale civilian casualties ( see fire bombing of Tokyo and the pictures of the aftermath and that of Hiroshima and there isn't much difference ) imo a bigger argument for that being a pure war crime is the desire to test the other type of nuke they had available .
my point is if you look areas actually hit they had little to nothing to do with real industrial or transport infrastructure. I never said anything about only targeting rail heads, you are merely interpreting what I said there. the point being that they hit the very centre of the city in February 1945 when it was completely an utterly unnecessary to do so. they didn't need to flatten the entire city with 2 massive air armadas on successive days. If they'd at least tried to hit the proper target and missed due to the inaccuracies we all know existed then ok but even this at that stage of the war is was a pure and utter disregard for life. "all air forces did the same" is not an excuse imo. By this type of logic we would not have had war crimes tribunals in later times. Imagine if we said to Yugoslavian generals, well you are ok cos people in world war 2 were at this stuff too.
Funny that this thread has actually ended up being a discussion about WWII as opposed to the sAvE oUr sTaTUeS type shizzle that the OP was obvs hoping for. ****ing lol.
No mate. Sisu is a Liverpool supporter. Think he use to have another username called Climate something or other.
Yeah I'm ok mate, be glad when we can start travelling again or not have to worry about going to the boozer. Although how many airlines and pubs are going to survive all this I don't know. Just feels like a whole culture/life change at the moment. I'm glad in someways Boris isn't rushing this, think I was just hoping normality would have resumed by now, when I think back to last year, guess it's just going to fook up another year, but it is what it is.
Yeah I can totally agree . Groundhog day has turned into groundhog Month after month . The 1st lockdown was greeted with nice weather so it was palatable. This one feels eternal . What was previously normal is about to Fade into the distance . I think it will be lamented by many but accepted by a lot as normal .