Just saw 'DARKEST HOUR". Go see it!

[DIRTYSECRET]

Unlike "Dunkirk" it was ALL acting. Coming off the Trump victory the timing of it's release is interesting. Too many not-so-subtile similarities. He's gruff, his own party abandons him, his family keeps him going and he has to deal with a bunch of wusses who are too cowardly to see what's going on. He's alone and he get's his inspiration from the common people he meets on the subway. Theater was pretty much filled-matinee. Upon leaving I observed that most everyone was older.

BTW FDR was useless. Chamberlain still thought they could negotiate for peace.

[Don W]

“Bodyguard of Lies” is an excellent book, as well.

[uncbob]

Churchill saved his nation and probably the world from the Axis and was rejected after that by the very nation he saved. Never did understand that. Never.

Soon as they saw the war was won it was back to the socialists

Die was cast for the Brits when they allowed themselves to be disarmed

[dfwgator]

The thing is, Churchill’s own Conservative Party hated his guts before the war. Outside of Churchill, they really didn’t have much going for them.

[jerod]

Duly noted... The three of them did it and Thatcher was instrumental... They all came to power at just the right time in history.

Unfortunately for the Donald, he has Elizabeth May and the worst Pope since the Rodrigo Lanzol Borgia, Pope Alexander IV.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Agreed.

But that doesn’t change the fact that, at the time, there didn’t appear to be any certain way of defeating Hitler without the Soviets. And the huge butcher bill the war on “der Ostfront” entailed.

If you knew that the A-bomb would work as it did and when it did, to end the war, you could have taken a passive, defensive approach to the Third Reich, and to Japan as well. That would have saved a lot of lives, at the cost of a relative few others. But it would have been quite a leap of faith . . .

[zerosix]

My hubby & I like to watch British detective & mystery shows and he often complains he’s unable to understand what is said.

I remind him we do speak the same language but we are “separated by a pond!”

[TTFlyer]

FIrst, the Soviet Union fought the war far differently than we would have. We in the USA would never have fought it as they did, because we view the value of life differently than they do, and would not have made our troops fight it at the points our own guns, as they did. Their sacrifice of so many men was often done brutally and callously.

If the US Army had met the Wehrmacht on the plains of say, Iowa, in 1942-43 the US Army would have suffered losses as bad if not worse than did the Red Army.

The Krauts simply had better equipment and better trained soldiers than the Americans.

It took a tremendous effort by the Red Army to stop the Germans at Stalingrad and Kursk.

[zerosix]

You are totally correct on your last observation, IMHO!

Not only that, but the once great mostly conservative leaders of such allies as Canada, Australia and certainly Merkle and now the wuss Macron!

[dfwgator]

LOL, reminds me of the SNL classic

Don’ You Go Rounin’ ROUN to RERO

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcWiJjuWl0w

[dfwgator]

The Russians won because of the T-34 Tank, without it, they would have lost the war.

A German General who came across the T-34 for the first time, remarked, that if the Russians could build them on an assembly line, Germany would lose the war.

[zerosix]

Thanks for the huge guffaws!

[montag813]

You are overlooking the Britain Firsters. They are fighting for their country.

Twitter just mass-banned them on Wednesday.

[RitchieAprile]

Just got back from seeing this here in Lynnwood WA. The theatre was only half full, but the audience seemed to appreciate all the witty British-isms worked into the script.

I enjoyed the interplay between WSC and his Conservative Party rivals, as well as the honest portrayal of an old guy
who drinks too much smokes too much and is too stubborn, outmaneuvering everyone, at ease with both straphangers and the King, and persuading the House to fight on against the Nazis. Finally it appears that they did a good job equipping the War Rooms (must have filmed this in the actual site).

[Oatka]

I wonder about the claims of how flat footed we were entering the war since I read that many had begun thinking about it and doing as much as they could to prepare way back in ‘38.

There's a great book titled Freedom's Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in World War II .

It details how American industry giants were putting our manufacturing plans in place and were ready to go when Pearl Harbor was attacked. In many places you read how quickly shipyards and plants were built and compare that to today's bureaucratic maze - it's really amazing what these guys did.

[dfwgator]

Anybody who listened to FDR’s “Arsenal of Democracy” speech knew war was inevitable.

[grimalkin]

Agreed! Darkest Hour was great and Gary Oldman was outstanding. Now I want to know everything abt Winston Churchill. I highly reccommend it - worth the money absolutely.

If you want some great reading, get The Second World War written by him. It's a series of 6 books and I had a really hard time putting them down.

[rlmorel]

I doubt that could ever have happened, ever. Germany did not have the industrial base to appear in Iowa. They could never, ever have done it.

[rlmorel]

You are correct, we did have crap to start out, but keep it in context...there was an excellent book that outlined it very well; “Freedom’s Forge”.

It wasn’t Marshall that started our country down the road of engaging our industry for war, it was a guy named Bill Knudsen whose greatest service to this country was convincing Roosevelt that he had to allow US industry to make money, and lots of it in order to engage it fully.

I have stated, I didn’t have much love for Roosevelt, but I give him credit in this, because it required him to go against all his New Deal “principles” (If those heinous ideas can be called that) and also against the wails and screams of his New Deal acolytes.

In the end, he was right to do so, because the power of a capitalist free enterprise engaged the industrial might fully.

It is ironic that his decision to deviate from his socialist principles stands to this day as one of the greatest and most solid examples of the superiority of a capitalist system over a socialist system.

But you ARE correct. We did start out the war with crap for equipment, but...remember, I only said we got the foundation laid and the cogs turning, there is a huge time lag between conception/design and a piece of equipment getting into the hands of the people fighting with it.

Bill Knudsen ended up making a lot of enemies and got canned from his position as the head of war production very early on, and he went on to the Army where he was given a General’s commission, which was nearly unheard of. That he was one of the very, very few (if not the only) civilian to do so says a lot.

[rlmorel]

The T-34 was an excellent tank. That was the Soviet’s strong suit, no doubt there.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

The Russians won because of the T-34 Tank, without it, they would have lost the war.

There was also the little matter of a huge number of Studebaker trucks which were built on an America-created assembly line in Iran from parts manufactured in the US and shipped to Iran. They were initially shipped assembled, but that required far more scarce ship transport than the parts, which could be shipped so much more compactly.

Each truck was loaded with materiel needed by the USSR, and the keys were turned over to Soviet Army drivers who would travel in convoys through Iran to their destinations. After unloading, the trucks provided the Red Army infantry with vitally needed mobility.