Posted on 07/19/2017 6:53:21 AM PDT by naturalman1975
I just got back from seeing Dunkirk and I was impressed. Speaking as a military historian it seemed accurate enough for a film that is quite clearly stated to be a fictional account with fictional characters not a docudrama. I was worried that a modern treatment might head towards the politically correct or the overly mawkish, but, it delivered what I was hoping to see.
Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.
- Winston Churchill, June 4th 1940
What General Weygand has called the Battle of France is over... the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilisation. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be freed and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands.
But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new dark age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, This was their finest hour.
- Winston Churchill, June 18th 1940.
Today's challenge is to be worthy of what those people did. I'm not sure we are always succeeding in that. If we're not, we need to try harder. Or we will ultimately see the end of that Christian civilisation and we will fall into an abyss of a dark age, even now. A film isn't enough to fix what is broken, but this film may at least get some people thinking in the right direction if they've lost the path.
What Hitler didn’t count on was the Italians screwing up in North Africa and having to do there to try to bail them out. In many ways, Mussolini was the best “Ally” the Allies could have had.
Didn’t say we shouldn’t have aligned with them. FDR gave away the store like the leftist he was. This gave us 45 years of Cold War. We should have gone into Berlin....not the commies.
Churchill was the right man at the right time, just like Trump saved us from Hillary.
I think deep down Hitler always kept the hope of Germany and Britain eventually becoming allies, because they shared certain racial lines. In his mind it was inconceivable that Britain would choose Soviet Russia over Germany.
I am not a serious student of WWII but do fine it interesting.
My guess is the German Army was too exhausted to continue and took a few days to rest, reorganize etc. They thought they had the British trapped and had the time.
Similarly, I have read criticism of General Meade for not following up after Gettysburg. The truth is he couldn’t. Lee retreated to a strong position and according to Encyclopedia Britannica, the North lost even more than the South.
That totally surprises most people. The casualties were relatively even but the South could not afford that.
I read a book recently called “Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich” that makes the case that many of Hitler’s and the Nazi leadership’s dumbest decisions had to do with the fact that Hitler and others were hopped up on some kind of mind-altering drug all the time.
Have you ever noticed that most of the leaders of the so-called “Master Race” were physically ugly, degenerate losers? According to their standards and beliefs, they would be the real untermenschen. They should have exterminated themselves first.
“Ten million of those Russians were starved by their own government, and Stalin used the war as an excuse for many atrocities against his own.”
Ok, let’s go with your number. That leaves 10M fed into the German meat grinder. Hell of a lot more casualties than we would have been willing to take.
Going to see this Friday. Can’t wait. Christopher Nolan is the best director of his generation. His “Dark Knight” series was an absolute masterpiece—and I don’t like “Batman” as a character.
From the trailer, it looks like he got the messages right.
The real heroes of Dunkirk never get the credit. It was the French 1st Army, France’s best unit, that fought it out inland with the German 6th Army so that the British would be able to get off the beaches at Dunkirk.
“My guess is the German Army was too exhausted to continue and took a few days to rest, reorganize etc. They thought they had the British trapped and had the time.
Similarly, I have read criticism of General Meade for not following up after Gettysburg. The truth is he couldnt. Lee retreated to a strong position and according to Encyclopedia Britannica, the North lost even more than the South.”
You’ve nailed it. From the Civil War on, the U.S. has excelled at the ability to project power and provide the logistics support to make it happen. While there have been other great armies as well trained as ours or even better, none have been able to even come close in this. Example; Hitler came up lacking at least three times; Dunkirk, invasion of England, invasion of the Soviet Union. Taking a leap forward to the present and now; the EU (primarily Germany) for all its bluster about going it’s own way, couldn’t project power to its own border much less beyond. The U.S. is the only nation with the wherewithal to do it.
Absolutely, without them there wouldn’t be a story.
“———bronze plaque designating that this craft had participated in the evacuation of Dunkirk. “
Fascinating. How long ago was this?
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Our military was in pathetic shape.
An islamohole. Sad.
July 2001 ... 16 years ago.
Thanks-——so it was a very old boat.
I hope you got pics. :-)
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I just saw an interview that was done back in the ‘70s with Karl Doenitz. He said that he had asked for more Uboats during late 39 and 40. He told Hitler at that time that with more Uboats that he could force Britain to capitulate by cutting off the supplies they were receiving from the U.S. by convoy. He said that Hitler’s obsession with building a grandiose surface navy with large imposing battleships kept them from being able to finish off Great Britain when it was most vulnerable because Hitler was unwilling to build a large number of the relatively more inexpensive Uboats to finish the job on GB.
WW2 would likely have turned out a lot differently if Hitler had not been such a stubborn loon.
He didn't reckon on Churchill becoming PM.
Until Okinawa, Iwo Jima land bunker-to-bunker slaughters of American and Japanese troops (and the suicides of thousands of Japanese civilians in Okinawa); and the loss of hundreds of ships in the kamikaze suicide attacks, we really had no idea how many hundreds of thousands of Americans - how many millions more of Japanese! - would have been lost fighting in Japan itself.
Hitler was Austrian and he spoke Austrian. Therefore when he gave orders to Germans, who only spoke German, they couldn't understand him. Plus, Hitler had asthma but nobody could find a breathalyzer. That's why the war was lost.
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