Comments

I have really enjoyed reading the various comments on Dunkirk and the prosecution of the war. One would not normally think that a library of spanking stories would have such a conversation taking place. It goes to show that we are a group of many interests, of which spanking just happens to be one.


This comment brought to mind a scene in the movie [i]The Battle of Britain.[i] In it, a German official is talking with a person I think was the British ambassador to Switzerland. The German official was trying to convince the British official of the futility of continuing the war. The British official tells off the German, saying the last corporal who tried to invade England ended up a pauper. He said don't threaten or warn us, "even if you are marching up Whitehall. And even then, we won't listen." You have to admire the British spirit in the face of adversity.

I fully agree on that one. One has to admit it really was their finest hour(s) during those dark days and they did very well. I know the Allies won the war, but if not for Britian standing as it did, pretty much alone over in Europe, the war would have been much more difficult and lasted for years longer.

I think Dunkirk was a diaster however the Allies learned a lot about a landing from Dunkirk and certainly used that knowledge later on in June 1944. The only good thing about a defeat is that it forces one to learn things so the defeat will not happen again.

On a lighter side of this discussion, how could the Germans ever think they could defeat a people who had been subject to spankings/canings etc in their classrooms? Such people learn discipline and how to get along in a rough time. Now if the Germans had been able to cane them all the results might have been different...LOL

Connie Willis' Hugo winning book/s Blackout/All Clear has a pretty good section where one of the main characters finds himself an unwilling participant in Dunkirk. It's copped some criticism for perceived innaccuracies, but I don't think anyone has hammered that particular bit of it.

Wow. So many points.

Churchill himself said, in a broadcast just after Dunkirk, that it was not a victory. This suggests first, a realistic appraisal and honest communication on his part; and second, that he was aware some people were trying to make it sound like a victory. It was, nonetheless, a hugely succesful evacuation, something which is actually much harder to achieve than a victory! Credit is due not only to the British, but (something most Brits are unaware of and Americans who still link the French with surrender whenever they disagree with American policy would do well to know) to a French army which fought desperately to hold back the German advance.

Hitler did order the panzers to stop. His reasons for this have been much debated: it is quite possible that he still harboured hopes of Britain joining in an anti-Communist crusade, but equally likely that he was responding to Goering's request for the Luftwaffe to have the honour of finishing the British off.

I agree with the assessment of Montgomery - brilliant but flawed. Generals who are brilliant but not flawed are few indeed. As far as I can see the main problem with Market Garden was not in the original planning so much as in ignoring intelligence that German armour was massing in the drop area, out of unwillingness to abandon the operation from which so much was hoped.

As British, I should not be joining in the praise of Britishness (so British that I am!), but there is one story from the period I remember. The Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov was visiting the Germans in Berlin, the two countries at this point being uneasy semi-allies. Ribbentrop, his counterpart, is full of confidence and talk of complete victory. Molotov asks, "What about the British?" "Oh," says Ribbentrop airily, "the British are finished." Shortly after, air raid sirens sound. The meeting participants are ushered down into a bunker or cellar where they can still hear explosions and feel the building shaking. Ribbentrop is shaking, Molotov calm. He says casually to Ribbentrop, "You were saying...the British are finished..."

I can't disagree with you. Although you sound rather like my better half when you say that!! I can never settle down to watch one of those agreeably excellent B&W war films without her comments on the subject!! However you should not forget the contribution the British made to stopping the Germans. At one time before the invasion of Russia and before Pearl Harbour we did, literally stand alone!! Thank goodness we had Churchill on our side and of course a certain amount of typically British resilience!

Blimp makes a very valid point about England being alone in the early part of WW2. Hitler tried his Blitzkrieg methods to bomb us into submission and failed to do so and then he took on the RAF and failed miserably thanks to the "few" who prevailed against the odds.

We could not prosecute the war against Germany on our own and needed help and got it wholesale from our American friends and thank goodness we did but in those dark days of 1940 we were on our own and very much up against it but we did not buckle under the onslaught because it is not in our nature to do so.

CS may have been a bit tongue-in-cheek with his reference to how we English are conditioned to act in the face of adversity and wearing my spanko hat his comments made me smile a bit but there`s a grain of truth there. They say the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton and this refers to the English character and a firmly held belief in the value of discipline, fortitude and obedience, things which all help to make a good soldier. It may be fanciful and I hold my hand up in recognition of it but I like to think that victory in the Battle of Britain was helped in some some small way in the formative years of the "few" in classrooms up and down in this country of my birth.

It was a battle that had to be won and those brave young men took on the might of the Luftwaffe and saw them off these shores and forced Hitler to cancel "Operation Sealion", the code name for the invasion of England. It was a battle in the skies that was witnessed by ordinary men, women and children on the ground who were greatly uplifted to see brave young RAF pilots take on and see off those who dared threaten our land and our way of life and be sent packing to think again.

CK quite rightly mentioned the Russians and their impact on the war and yes, it made one hell of a difference. By launching "Operation Barbarossa" , the code name for the invasion of Russia, Hitler opened up another " Front" and one which required a huge commitment of manpower and machinery to fight a very determined and ruthless adversary who suffered incomprehensible losses in order to overcome Hitler and his ambitions in the east. I think it`s called biting off more than one can chew and proved too much to swallow for Germany in the final analysis.

If I sound jingoistic I apologise because I am aware of the multi-national aspect of this site but history cannot be changed and I, for one, am proud of what the UK achieved in WW2. War is an ugly obscenity and not something to be glorified at all but it has a certain fascination for me and and has done so for more years than I care to remember.

Well, what happened at Dunkirk was an evacuation, which would've been the reverse of a landing. It was at Dieppe (August 1942) that the Allied forces (IIRC mostly Canadian troops) made a brief 'experimental' landing in northern France that was effectively repulsed by the German defenders.

Of course, there's always been considerable controversy RE whether an Anglo-American cross-channel invasion should've been launched in the spring of '43 rather than a year later... --C.K.

Now the United States were isolationist and did not want any part of Europe. Roosevelt knew better. England was very much alone. The United States didn't care and the Russians were still "in bed" with Germany and were even supplying Germany with military support. I have an old newspaper (Journal American) that had as a headline on the British "Royal Oak" battle ship sunk by a German u-boat. There were 830 lives lost. This occurred on October 14, 1939. The Russians praised this report and were ready to give full military support to Germany. Sorry, Stalin deserved what he got. Two tyrants going after each other. What could be better.

I have often wondered who was the worst? Stalin had not attacked other countries YET but I think he would have if given a few more years. Stalin was no better with the ethnic peoples then Germany if better at all.

Under Joseph Stalin, the Soviet Union invaded and occupied the eastern half of Poland (concurrent with the German attack from the west) in 1939, invaded and occupied the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in '40 and also attacked Finland in '40, eventually annexing significant Finnish terrirory via a one-sided peace agreement.

All of these Soviet territorial acquistions obtained by military aggression were recognized as legitimate by the British and American governments at the Yalta Conference (February 1945).

Stalin and Hitler were different sides (communist vs. fascist) of the same coin, IMHO they were equally evil individuals--although Stalin was often misjudged by his peers, Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt... --C.K.