General June 6 Normandy Invasion, 75 years ago
- Thread starter Splinty
- Start date
If you are a student of history you would understand why and how Hitler came to be. Start with the French and Woodrow Wilson. I have no doubt the German's were every bit as patriotic. That is war after all.
I wasn't sure if his post was serious or not. If he's being sarcastic its very clever, lol
But should days like this not be valuable not just to mourn and respect, but to reflect on war itself? They say 'Lest We Forget', but is forgetting not sometimes a recipe for making the same mistakes again? Are soldiers not still sent out today to kill and die for reasons not entirely disclosed to them? Are they not painted a naive caricature of their 'enemy', and programmed into fighting machines against their natures? If any of those soldiers that died in that war may have felt anything beyond the Uncle Sam nostalgia on the day they died, we owe it to them imo to question if the sacrifice was worth it or not, what it was really all about.
Otherwise we just perpetuate the propaganda, and let it happen again and again.
If we honor those men ONLY as heroes, and thank them for their service so we can be free etc etc we aren't learning anything
Treaty of Versailles
This thread is about Dday and Dday only. Maybe start another thread on propaganda?
In your mind is there ever a good reason for war? Are you a pacifist by chance?
fair enough. No desire to start a riot here. I just think that wartime sentimental rhetoric is harmful to society, it bothers me a lot, I think it actually creates more climate for continued wars than it does to end them
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Now these are good questions.
I think a lot about this lately. I used to be very pacifistic. I still am for the most parts but I'm lately realizing that sometimes shit does come to war and maybe there is a time to fight. I think drawing that line is very hard, and must be made for ourselves. Don't know how.
Maybe those men in D-Day understood more than I give them credit for... maybe they all drew that line.
I fear and mourn for those who were not well enough informed, nor old or wise enough or even have time to think about these things on both sides.
No riot but a saying goes from people much older and more polite people than we are. "A time and place"
On another day (today) just start another thread. Some of us enjoy the fairy tale as you put it.
Well, I wouldn't walk into a Legions hall or Remembrance Day ceremony and start Alex Jonesing with a bullhorn, lol
But this is an open MMA forum ffs, a place to exchange ideas.
If we're gonna remember and think about those fallen soldiers, I think its relevant to ask ourselves in what context are we choosing to remember them in? And does that context make sense?
War rhetoric twists us up man, its one of those social topics that instantly shuts our brains off, we go to sleep and fall into herd mentality, pavlovian emotional reactions that hardly anyone has really thought about, dare not to step out of the line. They do that shit to kids (my kids) who don't have a fuckin clue about any of it.
I think its important to consider and reflect on what we know of wars today.
But if folks find that disrespectful I will leave it at that.
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Not a D-Day song but the same story just as well
And I can't help but wonder oh Willy McBride
Do all those who lie here know why they died
Did you really believe them when they told you the cause
Did you really believe that this war would end wars
Well the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame
The killing and dying it was all done in vain
Oh Willy McBride it all happened again
And again, and again, and again, and again
And I can't help but wonder oh Willy McBride
Do all those who lie here know why they died
Did you really believe them when they told you the cause
Did you really believe that this war would end wars
Well the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame
The killing and dying it was all done in vain
Oh Willy McBride it all happened again
And again, and again, and again, and again
Also not about D-Day, but this one was written in response to Pearl Harbor.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uV9s1a6AZT0
Patton >> Eisenhower. His speech to the 3rd Army before D-DayEisenhower letter.
.
Be seated.
Men, all this stuff you hear about America not wanting to fight, wanting to stay out of the war, is a lot of bullshit. Americans love to fight. All real Americans love the sting and clash of battle. When you were kids, you all admired the champion marble shooter, the fastest runner, the big-league ball players and the toughest boxers. Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans play to win all the time. That's why Americans have never lost and will never lose a war. The very thought of losing is hateful to Americans. Battle is the most significant competition in which a man can indulge. It brings out all that is best and it removes all that is base.
You are not all going to die. Only two percent of you right here today would be killed in a major battle. Every man is scared in his first action. If he says he's not, he's a goddamn liar. But the real hero is the man who fights even though he's scared. Some men will get over their fright in a minute under fire, some take an hour, and for some it takes days. But the real man never lets his fear of death overpower his honor, his sense of duty to his country, and his innate manhood.
All through your army career you men have bitched about what you call 'this chicken-shit drilling.' That is all for a purpose—to ensure instant obedience to orders and to create constant alertness. This must be bred into every soldier. I don't give a fuck for a man who is not always on his toes. But the drilling has made veterans of all you men. You are ready! A man has to be alert all the time if he expects to keep on breathing. If not, some German son-of-a-bitch will sneak up behind him and beat him to death with a sock full of shit. There are four hundred neatly marked graves in Sicily, all because one man went to sleep on the job—but they are German graves, because we caught the bastard asleep before his officer did.
An army is a team. It lives, eats, sleeps, and fights as a team. This individual hero stuff is bullshit. The bilious bastards who write that stuff for the Saturday Evening Post don't know any more about real battle than they do about fucking. And we have the best team—we have the finest food and equipment, the best spirit and the best men in the world. Why, by God, I actually pity these poor bastards we're going up against.
All the real heroes are not storybook combat fighters. Every single man in the army plays a vital role. So don't ever let up. Don't ever think that your job is unimportant. What if every truck driver decided that he didn't like the whine of the shells and turned yellow and jumped headlong into a ditch? That cowardly bastard could say to himself, 'Hell, they won't miss me, just one man in thousands.' What if every man said that? Where in the hell would we be then? No, thank God, Americans don't say that. Every man does his job. Every man is important. The ordnance men are needed to supply the guns, the quartermaster is needed to bring up the food and clothes for us because where we are going there isn't a hell of a lot to steal. Every last damn man in the mess hall, even the one who boils the water to keep us from getting the GI shits, has a job to do.
Each man must think not only of himself, but think of his buddy fighting alongside him. We don't want yellow cowards in the army. They should be killed off like flies. If not, they will go back home after the war, goddamn cowards, and breed more cowards. The brave men will breed more brave men. Kill off the goddamn cowards and we'll have a nation of brave men.
One of the bravest men I saw in the African campaign was on a telegraph pole in the midst of furious fire while we were moving toward Tunis. I stopped and asked him what the hell he was doing up there. He answered, 'Fixing the wire, sir.' 'Isn't it a little unhealthy up there right now?' I asked. 'Yes sir, but this goddamn wire has got to be fixed.' I asked, 'Don't those planes strafing the road bother you?' And he answered, 'No sir, but you sure as hell do.' Now, there was a real soldier. A real man. A man who devoted all he had to his duty, no matter how great the odds, no matter how seemingly insignificant his duty appeared at the time.
And you should have seen the trucks on the road to Gabès. Those drivers were magnificent. All day and all night they crawled along those son-of-a-bitch roads, never stopping, never deviating from their course with shells bursting all around them. Many of the men drove over 40 consecutive hours. We got through on good old American guts. These were not combat men. But they were soldiers with a job to do. They were part of a team. Without them the fight would have been lost.
Sure, we all want to go home. We want to get this war over with. But you can't win a war lying down. The quickest way to get it over with is to get the bastards who started it. We want to get the hell over there and clean the goddamn thing up, and then get at those purple-pissing Japs. The quicker they are whipped, the quicker we go home. The shortest way home is through Berlin and Tokyo. So keep moving. And when we get to Berlin, I am personally going to shoot that paper-hanging son-of-a-bitch Hitler.
When a man is lying in a shell hole, if he just stays there all day, a Boche will get him eventually. The hell with that. My men don't dig foxholes. Foxholes only slow up an offensive. Keep moving. We'll win this war, but we'll win it only by fighting and showing the Germans that we've got more guts than they have or ever will have. We're not just going to shoot the bastards, we're going to rip out their living goddamned guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks. We're going to murder those lousy Hun cocksuckers by the bushel-fucking-basket.
Some of you men are wondering whether or not you'll chicken out under fire. Don't worry about it. I can assure you that you'll all do your duty. War is a bloody business, a killing business. The Nazis are the enemy. Wade into them, spill their blood or they will spill yours. Shoot them in the guts. Rip open their belly. When shells are hitting all around you and you wipe the dirt from your face and you realize that it's not dirt, it's the blood and gut of what was once your best friend, you'll know what to do.
I don't want any messages saying 'I'm holding my position.' We're not holding a goddamned thing. We're advancing constantly and we're not interested in holding anything except the enemy's balls. We're going to hold him by his balls and we're going to kick him in the ass; twist his balls and kick the living shit out of him all the time. Our plan of operation is to advance and keep on advancing. We're going to go through the enemy like shit through a tinhorn.
There will be some complaints that we're pushing our people too hard. I don't give a damn about such complaints. I believe that an ounce of sweat will save a gallon of blood. The harder we push, the more Germans we kill. The more Germans we kill, the fewer of our men will be killed. Pushing harder means fewer casualties. I want you all to remember that. My men don't surrender. I don't want to hear of any soldier under my command being captured unless he is hit. Even if you are hit, you can still fight. That's not just bullshit either. I want men like the lieutenant in Libya who, with a Luger against his chest, swept aside the gun with his hand, jerked his helmet off with the other and busted the hell out of the Boche with the helmet. Then he picked up the gun and he killed another German. All this time the man had a bullet through his lung. That's a man for you!
Don't forget, you don't know I'm here at all. No word of that fact is to be mentioned in any letters. The world is not supposed to know what the hell they did with me. I'm not supposed to be commanding this army. I'm not even supposed to be in England. Let the first bastards to find out be the goddamned Germans. Some day, I want them to rise up on their piss-soaked hind legs and howl 'Ach! It's the goddamned Third Army and that son-of-a-bitch Patton again!'
Then there's one thing you men will be able to say when this war is over and you get back home. Thirty years from now when you're sitting by your fireside with your grandson on your knee and he asks, 'What did you do in the great World War Two?' You won't have to cough and say, 'Well, your granddaddy shoveled shit in Louisiana.' No sir, you can look him straight in the eye and say 'Son, your granddaddy rode with the great Third Army and a son-of-a-goddamned-bitch named George Patton!'
All right, you sons of bitches. You know how I feel. I'll be proud to lead you wonderful guys in battle anytime, anywhere. That's all.
Lining up women and children for torture, slavery, and mass execution (Japanese and Germans) is not what the Allies did.
There are levels to 'Bad'.
Look into the Communist/Bolshevik Gulags and death Camps. Look into the Holodomor. Eisenhower's Death Camps. Bombing of Dresden. Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Levels to 'Bad' indeed.
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Patton changed his mind about a lot of things at the end of the war, there are many famous quotes and a diary where he made clear that at the end he preferred the Germans over the Russians, and felt they had defeated the wrong enemy and that Communism was a much nastier threat that wasn't properly addressed, feared a silent Communist takeover of Europe and even USA (all things that Hitler feared). Lots to read through. After that he was greatly gagged and slandered in the press etc. Its really interesting
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Wartime sentimental rhetoric is harmful to society. It's romance.
But if ever there was a time for romance, it was to be found in annihilating the fascist menace. There were a number of political economic reasons for the war and a number of hypocrisies in the way it was prosecuted. But still, it's one of the closest things we have in history to a battle between liberal democracy and authoritarian rule. The Axis powers would not have stopped until they had achieved total global conquest. There is little ambiguity to the sacrifices many made to prevent that.
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To be fair, he explicitly stated their bravery is to be commended: "Truly amazing courage and honor, considering what these men BELIEVED they were doing. In the context of what they were told, what they were sold, what they THOUGHT they were fighting for... these men are heroes and as brave as it gets. Respect forever."
My wife’s grandfather was a portly 44 year old country doctor from Ohio at the start of the war. He was drafted into the Army, and on D-Day +1, he, and 3 or 4 other surgeons were the first doctors to land on the beach. I can only imagine the horror that he saw when he got there.
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Another example of the forums going to shit.
Have some respect cunts. Take it to another thread you argumentative bored bastards.
Xxx
Have some respect cunts. Take it to another thread you argumentative bored bastards.
Xxx
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No one is under the obligation to write anything you agree with or otherwise approve of.
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this is a well debunked myth
Other Losses - Wikipedia
Also, while there are some consideration to any bombing campaign, in this case you might consider your company and fact that you're essentially calling a Nazi equivalency...
It's not accurate to the context or scale in any regard