Another wonderful obit

But some bugger's nicked the paper so I don't have the reference.
Telegraph, a couple of days ago, and some old Royal Naval pilot who
attacked the French Fleet in 1940 at Oran. Lined up his Swordfish for
its torpedo run, and the fish hung up and wouldn't drop. Later
involved with fighting the Vichy French. Worth a google.

 

The DT website isn't very helpful....

Meanwhile I found this the other day which made me chuckle. The 2nd
page of this pdf has a nice wartime illustration of the flags of the
united nations that were fighting for freedom.

Guess which western European country wasn't thought to be united with
the others in fighting for freedom?

http://www.lumbermensunderwriting.com/chap5.pdf

 

Germany?

 

And the United Nations wasn't set up until late 1945.

 

Which would be why I put 'united nations' in lower case, YTC.

 

"platypus" wrote:

Heh. Nope! It was a somewhat rhetorical question.

 

Of course, France was also a member of the League of Nations.

 

"platypus"  wrote:

Heh. No-one loves a Smartarse!

 

Well, there's the somewhat worrying omission of Denmark, of the occupied
countries. The Vichy Govt of France had made it quite clear on which
side their bread was buttered at that time, so would hardly have been on
an Allied poster. [1]

This was, of course, an American publication, so it's to be expected the
author's grasp of European affairs was a bit sketchy.

[1]I'm heartily sick of this endless jibing about the French - thousands
of Frenchies died defending their country and died supporting the Allies
with information before during and after the invasion. Millions more
bitterly resented the presence of an occupying force and commmitted acts
of passive resistance and sabotage every day of the occupation. It's
hardly their fault they had incompetent leaders and one or two who
seemed to be actively assisting the enemy forces.

--
Dave
GS850x2 XS650 SE6a

"A scone and tea at half past three
Makes the day a little brighter
Keep your cakes and fancy tarts
And stick them up your shiter."

 

thank you, Len Deighton.

 

<cough> Channel Islands </cough>

 

I feel certain that all the little tinpot gods we find today in H&S,
Traffic Enforcement, Race Relations, Community Policing and the rest
would indeed have lapped it up. Back then: dunno. I'm glad we never
had the chance to find out.

 

<ding>

Especially since those who make the jibes tend to come from countries
who hardly covered themselves in glory during the run up to and first
couple of years of WWII.

UK - Had an empire that spanned the world, was, apparently, the leader
of the alliance and had been re-arming for four years by 1940, but
couldn't scrape up more than a dozen divisions (some of which didn't
really count for much) to defend their closest ally.

Some people claim the French blame us for running away, I say we
didn't really get there in the first place.


USA - Largest economy on earth and the "Arsenal of democracy" but,
until Poland got stomped on, wouldn't even sell arms to their WWI
Allies, let alone do anything more concrete to help.


Cheers,

John

 

Agreeing. The Channel Islanders collaborated with great enthusiasm.

 

Try reading If Britain Had Fallen by Norman Longmate. I think it's out
of print now.

<Amazons>

Oh, no, it isn't. That surprised me.

 

Britain has never had a large standing army. Also, practically *all*
of Britain's army materiel (tanks, artillery, etc) went to France in
1939-40. Or haven't you wondered why the country was effectively
defenceless after Dunkirk? All the kit was abandoned in France.

And that's not counting the RAF support either.

That phrase wasn't used until the end of 1940 when Roosevelt made his
famous speech (well, Fireside Chat, actually). The US had a very
embryonic arms industry before 1940 (the US Navy excepted). Hardly any
fighters, hardly any bombers, a small standing army.....

but,

Utter bollocks. The US permitted arms sales to France and the UK in
1938. See http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005679

OK, now you've proved yourself to be as much of a historian as Stevie
Wonder is a plane-spotter, what are you going to do for an encore?
Fuckwit.

 

No, but it *did* have a large army (~100 divisions) during WWI and
it's therefore not unreasonable to expect that, when gearing up for
WWI part 2, an army bigger than 12 divisions might be a good idea.

Just because practically all went to France doesn't mean the BEF was
big enough for the task at hand or as big as it should have been given
the situation (WWI part 2).

It wasn't, precisely because the limited re-armament spending went
mostly to the RAF and RN, which were quite capable of defending the
country.

Which would have grown dramatically had they been allowed to export
arms.

Which was pretty dumb given the rise of nationalism in the 30s

Nope. Nice link but wrong. The 1935/6/7 neutrality acts were amended
in 1939 (Nov 4th) to allow belligerents to buy arms, *not* 1938.

Same to you

Suggest you calm down a bit and resist the knee-jerk reaction,
perhaps ?

Cheers,

John

 

On Thu, 14 Feb 2008 13:43:05 +0000, Grimly Curmudgeon

snip>

I find it slightly amusing that a certain French politician has
recently been given a suspended sentence for calling the nazi
occupation of France "not particularly inhuman". I wonder if he
considers himself to be representative of French voters?

 

Not at the start of WW1 it didn't. And if you knew anything about WW2
history you'd know that none of the participants in WW1 were supposed
to be building armies. And Britain at the time didn't have the
resources to maintain a large field army.

They didn't 'gear up for WW2' because it wasn't supposed to happen!

Blame the militray planning. The French had planned *all* their
strategy around WW1 tactics (make a strong defensive line and hold it
until help comes). The fact that the Germans had developed Blitzkreig
had passed them by - largely because Germany didn't use it until the
invasion of Poland and by then it was too late. Their mobile fast
forces simply went round the French defences or through them in spots
where no attack 'could have been sent through' (like Ardennes) - again
a view based on WW1 military planning and technology.

If you blame the British in this you also have to blame people like
Poland - they knew that they were going to be targets for attack from
the early 1930's yet still retained utter anachronistic elements in
their army like cavalry!

Had the Channel not been there the Germans would have been in London
shortly after they arrived in Paris. And the Navy was still large
because the British military establishment were addicted to the idea of
Britain as a sea-power.

They didn't need arms. And Britain (pre-war) wouldn't have wanted to
buy them either. And nor would the French.
So why would the US develop an arms industry when they had no
customers?

Oh for goodness sake. Learn some history eh? Look at the various
treaties of non-aggression that existed at the time. For a lot of
countries to re-arm to a significant degree would have violated those
treaties.

Phil.