Posted on 12/17/2014 8:41:48 AM PST by C19fan
An incredible letter from trenches of the First World War by a soldier describing how he organised the famous 'Christmas Day Truce' has been unearthed and is expected to fetch £20,000 at auction. The eight-page pencilled note was sent by Lance Corporal Willie Loasby of the 2nd Northamptonshire Regiment to his mother on December 27, 1914. The 25-year-old tells how he started shouting to German soldiers who were just 40 yards away in the trenches a few days before Christmas. He explains how he persuaded the enemy not to shoot before bravely walking out into No Man's Land to meet with a German officer.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
PFL
What if the British didn’t intervene and let the Germans defeat France.
In hindsight, I think there’s a very good case that the world would have been much better off as a result.
There has been lots of alternative history about that scenario. Tory historian Niall Ferguson has argued if the Brits stayed out the British would still be a world power comparable to the US. Quick history might of meant no Hitler or Russian Revolution.
Such an event could never happen in a war against Muslims.
Their hatred for non-Muslims goes bone-deep.
And the Ottoman Turks would still be the caretaker of the Muslim world, instead of the Arabs.
What titles?
PING to my sweet...I didn’t want you to miss this one!
Hussein wouldn't have had his blueprint for Fascism.
“The Guns of August” seems to suggest that even with the British intervention, if the Russians had not mobilized as fast as they did (causing the Germans to divert Western-front resources to the Eastern front) the Germans would still have taken Paris and ended the war before September.
save
The soldier in the middle was later promoted, and is seen below in his dress uniform.
Diary of Ann Frank, Schindlers List, etc., just in hindsight.
No, more likely we would have had to have fought a an expansionist Imperial Germany at some point, except the Germans would have had a much larger economy, a bigger navy and a bucketload of battle-hardened troops and we’d have no friends or allies to fight alongside us. We where right to take them on whilst the circumstances were still favourable.
Are you suggesting that Germany had designs on the entire British Empire?
Of course. The word “Christmas” itself is offensive to them. Isa, to them, is a mere prophet, not the Son of God. In fact, inside the Dome of the Rock is written “Far be it for allah to have a son.”
The Kaiser was building ac enormous navy to rival the size of the Royal Navy despite having no Empire to speak of and concentrated almost entirely in the North Sea. Germany was Hell bent on making itself a dangerous rival, and he was being get belligerent about it.
I think che Cristmas Day Truce is quite astounding.
Ach dumkopf! What about:
Africa:
Togo,
Cameroun,
Namibia,
Tanganyika
Ruanda-Burundi
Pacific:
German New Guinea
Marshall Islands,
Caroline Islands,
The Marianas
China:
The Tsingtao Concession
So of course the Kaiserreich needed a navy to protect and serve this far flung empire and their merchant marine. They did it with beautiful, fast light cruisers. The bigger German surface units were reserved for their Home Fleet, in an attempt to match the British in the Atlantic and North Atlantic. Didn't work. They went to submarine warfare, sinking four British Cruisers in one day .... but eventually that didn't work out for them either.
I must confess I subscribe to the latest Buchanan Theory: that we fought WWI to preserve the British Empire, which wasn't any more democratic than the German Empire. It's just that the British thought no one else should have one! After the war, the Brits took over all the German Colonies in Africa, the Japs, all their Pacific colonies, except their part of New Guinea, which went to the Aussies.
The Kaiser? Maybe not such a bad guy after all? Lot nicer than Adolf, the true legacy of WWI!
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