The tank duel at the Cologne cathedral in the trailer for "Spearhead"

ValorArtStudios/YouTube ^ | Jan 15, 2019 | Adam Makos

[rlmorel]

I just purchased “Blazing Saddles” because I think it could fall prey to the cultural Nazis, and I watched it again last night.

I find it laughable that so many people are offended by that movie and consider it racist and sexist.

It IS racist and sexist, and that is the whole POINT of the movie. And in watching the interviews of the surviving cast (when they made the videos) they all understood that what they were doing in that movie was pointing a finger at racists and sexists of all stripes and RIDICULING them!

It occurs to me that openly ridiculing REAL RACISM in that fashion is far, Far, FAR more effective than this totalitarian assault on speech and thought as they attempt to prohibit even the mention of those racist or sexist words.

[bravo whiskey]

I thought the legendary tank duel was between a Pershing and a King Tiger, not a Panther.

[dvwjr]

No, it was a Panther : https://youtu.be/NBI9d0-IfEM .

dvwjr

[Thunder 6]

Whatever else we might think is wrong with the French, they do keep up war memorials very well.

What was most compelling:the engagement was captured on Signal Corps film from several angles. Those film clips captured the pain, fear and confusion of small unit actions. It was easy to visualize what that fight must have looked like and where the respective tanks were located, but I’m sure I looked pretty goofy standing on street corners looking for firing angles as the tourists wandered about.

[mass55th]

Thanks for sharing your personal experience. I found the YouTube video so interesting, that I ordered the book. I'm looking forward to reading it.

[lapsus calami]

 

 

as a nation stood united behind

 

Mostly - but not completely. Check out the editorial sections of the newspapers of the time, where the op-eds and letters to the editor are, particularly in the urban metro areas. All sorts of grousing about sending our boys off to die, what are we doing in Europe and all that. Hardly a nickel's worth of difference between those and our present-day leftists. There's always been a "red" and "blue" America, just without the nasty balkanization we have now.

 

 

[bravo whiskey]

Right you are. There was a duel between a super Pershing and a King Tiger at Dessau (3AD).

[Red6]

Good point!

We romanticize the past sometimes, we think that maybe in the past there once was a time where things were different and somehow...

[lapsus calami]

 

 

You should find and dig around in WW2-era newspaper archives. It's eye opening. If online resources are scarce, then there's microfiche and physical copies themselves. What I found, in "flyover country" it was "get those dirty Japs and Nazis!", while on the west and east coasts, particularly the cities, there was carping about bringing our boys home and "Roosevelt's war". Kinda funny how much things change, they stay the same don't they.

 

 

[dfwgator]

If we only had something like FR in 1939/40, the flame wars would have been legendary. Pretty much every post would be somebody being accused of being a “Hitler lover” or a “Stalin lover”, or worst of all, “An FDR Lover”.

[Tijeras_Slim]

You’ll enjoy it. All of Adam Makos books are good.

[lapsus calami]

 

 

the flame wars would have been legendary.

 

LoL!! You know it! The editorial sections of the papers had to make do. Kinda on the slow side though.

 

 

[Red6]

I wonder, is it because on the West and East coast you have a greater number of first gen immigrants with values similar to where they came from, or loyalties to where they came from?

Or is it the greater degree of urbanization and influence this has?

Cities make people weird: crowding, public/community property, anonymity, the loss of an identity and feeling of being unique, social/natural disconnects (folks don’t even know where their food comes from), noise/light pollution (cities don’t sleep). It is in cities where people run metal through their nose and dye their hair blue in order to feel unique - or where “science” tells us XX and XY isn’t a girl or a boy. I tend to think it’s the urbanization because you see this everywhere, even in Europe, Asia, etc.

[lapsus calami]

 

 

You're on the right track in your last paragraph. Cities are like they always have been through history, magnets and gathering spots for all sorts of criminal minded, mentally ill and perpetual malcontent types to socialize in. People believe that anarchist, discontented, long-haired dope smoking anti American radicals are a recent product of the 1960's when in fact they've been with us way longer than that, at least since the 1890's. When communism and fascism became the in-thing in the early 20th century they glommed right onto those like they were going out of style, particularly the communism. They were a minority, had no platform or standing in government or the media like they do now, so they would have their gatherings at bistros, coffee shops and the like, do street theatre, pass out handbills, put up a soapbox, make speeches on street corners and public parks. Stuff like that. Kinda like the Antifa or SDS of their time but dare didn't go out of line into organized violence.

 

New York City for example, that place has always been a hotbed of anti-Americanism all the way back to the revolutionary war. That was a Tory town and they were pretty grumped out about Britain losing the war to a bunch of ragtag colonists who couldn't promise the wealth and prestige that being aligned with Britain could deliver. In mid 20th century the place was crawling with radicals and the local police, federal and military authorities kept themselves busy trying to keep an eye on them all. Security was very tight at the Brooklyn Naval yard since someone was always trying to sabotage the ship building all through the 1930's in the runup to WW2. Men in the military weren't respected and were seen as targets during the Depression since they had steady paychecks, they would have money, so it was dangerous since all sorts of means were employed by the NYC citizenry to relieve them of it, from simple scams up to armed robbery and murder. So it wasn't really a great idea to be wandering around there in uniform and alone. Best to be with others who could watch your back. The most common ploy was to zero in on a soldier/sailor and get him very drunk so they could take him out back and strip him of all money and possessions. There were a whole lot of bars to do that at and some bars actively participated in the those robberies and took their cut of the loot.

 

 

[Red6]

Bullets/ideas for your list.

My dad was USAF 1965 - 1988 and he actually remembers when they had to take their uniforms off before leaving the base and guys getting spat upon when returning from Vietnam. He actually has friends to whom that happened, and today you have college professors (in cities) teaching kids in college that this wasn’t really true or is all over hyped.

I served 1995 - 2005 and did two combat tours. It wasn’t as bad as for my dad in the 60s, but there it happened again. After 9-11 you had folks giving you their first class seats on an airplane when in uniform, but by the time the first elections came in 2004, Iraq was politicized and you had websites with body counts, non stop anti-Iraq war propaganda being spewed by a media highly biased because they always are on the Democrat side and their party chose to go anti-war in 2004 (opposition politics). You had movies like Fahrenheit 9-11 (total distortion of reality) come out coincidentally 5 months before the elections...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_9/11 Did you know when it’s a documentary different rules apply in so far as requirements to consent to be filmed but also for compensation? Michael Moore, the patriot social warrior exploited service members to make millions. $6 million budget, >$206 million revenue, because you don’t need to pay the folks actually fighting a war in your movie for real, not one penny if it’s a documentary.

But here is what is consistent. When you left the cities or you were in the so-called fly-over country, things never changed. They still supported the troops in Vietnam, or when Iraq kicked off, and BTW, contrary to the self victimized BS everyone wants to believe, that is where recruiting continued.

https://www.census.gov/history/pdf/wwi-casualties112018.pdf While the cities protest and talk about this or that, even claiming minorities do all the fighting, corn fed boys from the country do the bleeding, and statistically contrary to anything Hollywood or some social “scientist” talking about racism wants to make you believe, they are disproportionally white (76%: and that is counting Asians, blacks, Latino, and native Indian) and men (>85% in modern times, but if you count KIA from enemy action, it’s >95% since many of the casualties amount to accidents or environmental issues: example vehicle roll over or heat stroke).

I led various combat units and the MAJORITY of the guys are non-urban. Even if they are from California, or New York, they may tend to be from that state, but rural in that state and not from the urban areas that account for 71.2% of the US population.

There is a huge difference between rural and urban America.