Posted on 04/27/2024 10:38:51 PM PDT by RandFan
Check out the YouTube circa 1956.
I want to know if life was like that: Congested dance halls, Rock n' roll, a post-War boom?
Seems like another world... One you kind of hanker for.
Can any Freepers recall the era depicted?
(Excerpt) Read more at youtube.com ...
Amazing that we both had paper mill experiences on both coasts of this great country (I’m on the east coast). How I hope God has not given up on the USA.
Sleeping. In the. Backyard
House calls
“Be Home by dark”
So would I.
Yup.
[RandFan #6] The man who actually WON World War 2 became president.[nickcarraway #9] Who do you think won WWII? I thought you’d be the last person to say the United States won.
[RandFan #11] The Allied forces. Ike was their general wasn’t he? His title was “Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Berlin
Battle of BerlinResult: Soviet victory
• Death of Adolf Hitler and other high-ranking Nazi officials
• Unconditional surrender of German garrison in Berlin on 2 May
• Capitulation of Germany on 8 May
• End of World War II in Europe
V-E day is celebrated on May 8th, when Germany capitulated to the Soviets.
Eisenhower became the Commander of the Alied Expeditionary Force in 1944. The Soviet Union was not part of the AEF.
https://www.liberationroute.com/pois/249/u-s-troops-occupying-berlin
At the end of April 1945 the Soviet forces occupied Berlin, the capital of the German Reich. American and British troops did not enter the city until two months later on 4 July, the French forces participating initially with only a small unit. During those first two months, the Soviet Union was the sole occupying force, reorganizing life in the city in line with its own ideas and objectives.
The credit for defeating the Germans should go to the Soviet/Russians. The Allied Expeditionary Force was formed in 1944 as a British-American expeditionary force. When US./British forces arrived in Berlin. the Soviet forces were there waiting. The vast majority of German casualties were inflicted by the Russians, not the Americans/British.
Eisenhower bacame the Commander of the Alied Expeditionary Force in 1944. The Soviet Union was not part of the British/American AEF.
The war did not end with German surrender, The War in the Pacific carried on.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_over_Japan_Day
Events before V-J Day (Victory in the Pacific, V-P Day, Australia)On August 6 and 9, 1945, the Allies dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively. On August 9, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan. The Japanese government on August 10 communicated its intention to surrender under the terms of the Potsdam Declaration.
I was born in ‘49. My G.I. dad had just graduated from UCLA. In ‘54 the Bruins won their only national championship in football, so he bought our first TV so he could watch their games. I was five, saw those little players running around, and looked around at the back of the set in order to see them. Later I graduated from USC, so every year we would watch the big game together.
I still have my 1959 Little League Directory, listing every boy with his address and parents. Between the majors and minors there were 16 teams of 15 players each, or 240 kids. There were plenty of brother-sets, but that still left nearly 200 families. Yet in that entire directory there is only one single-parent family.
Those were good times... First time watching TV was ‘51 - we had one of the first TV’s in our neighborhood.
When I was at the US Army base in Bad Kreuznach, Germany, there was both a major and a minor little league. One of the major teams had a pitcher who fanned just about every hitter he faced. I wish I had made a note of his name, because with his talent, he might have made it to the major leagues.
At the start of the 1960s the WWII vets were running the country. I have often thought that our cultural decline began when the WWII generation began to lose their grip on the country as their offspring replaced them.
When I was growing up, all the dads in the neighborhood were WW 2 and Korea vets. Mostly Army. We had fun as kids, but there were rules and they were enforced harshly.
Eisenhower could have taken Berlin, but he chose not to. Big mistake.
We had one who was dominant like that and eventually had 1100 MLB at-bats.
There were many films in the 1950’s like Robocop, Alice in Wonderland, Transformers, Alien, The Hobbit, Star Wars, The Terminator, Harry Potter etc. 😁
https://www.youtube.com/@abandonedfilms/videos
Yesterday, my wife bereated me on the way to church because I had a small - 1/4” - hole in my blue jean knee (Clean, and fresh from the dryer).
She would NEVER say a word about (or to) the grown women there who have shredded legs in THEIR jeans!
I liked to collect a few beans that missed the grinder and chew them up.
The fun part was when Mom hollered “Don’t DO that!” and then I’d stick out my tongue with bits of coffee bean all over it!
Sadly, from all appearances, it's the other way around.
Massive military aid no doubt helped, but had zero boots on the ground on the eastern front. Germany was, without doubt, defeated by the Soviet Union. Germany tendered its surrender to the Soviets in May and the American army did not get to Berlin until July, more than a month and a half later.
Eisenhower could have taken Berlin, but he chose not to. Big mistake.
Eisenhower couldn't take Berlin before the Soviets had already done so. At any rate, it is historical fact that the Americans did not do so.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Front_(World_War_II)
The Eastern Front was a theatre of World War II fought between the European Axis powers and Allies, including the Soviet Union (USSR) and Poland. It encompassed Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Northeast Europe (Baltics), and Southeast Europe (Balkans), and lasted from 22 June 1941 to 9 May 1945. Of the estimated 70–85 million deaths attributed to World War II, around 30 million occurred on the Eastern Front, including 9 million children. The Eastern Front was decisive in determining the outcome in the European theatre of operations in World War II, eventually serving as the main reason for the defeat of Nazi Germany and the Axis nations. It is noted by historian Geoffrey Roberts that "More than 80 percent of all combat during the Second World War took place on the Eastern Front".
The Russians were fighting with Germany in June 1941. D-Day did not happen for the American army until 1944. The U.S. was fighting the war in the Pacific.
In a November 1941 letter to Roosevelt, Soviet Premier Josef Stalin wrote:
“Your decision, Mr. President, to give the Soviet Union an interest-free credit of $1 billion in the form of materiel supplies and raw materials has been accepted by the Soviet government with heartfelt gratitude as urgent aid to the Soviet Union in its enormous and difficult fight against the common enemy — bloodthirsty Hitlerism.”
At a dinner toast with Allied leaders during the Tehran Conference in December 1943, Stalin added: “The United States … is a country of machines. Without the use of those machines through Lend-Lease, we would lose this war.”
Nikita Khrushchev, who led the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, agreed with Stalin’s assessment. In his memoirs, Khrushchev described how Stalin stressed the value of Lend-Lease aid: “He stated bluntly that if the United States had not helped us, we would not have won the war.”
Giving someone money or machines to fight with does not make the giver the winner of the fight.
If the Nazis and Commies killed each other off, while we stayed out, we would have been the winners.
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