Posted on 06/05/2014 8:18:56 AM PDT by Kaslin
Agreed. The sad thing is that even though today it is so easy to obtain the essential information, few have the inclination to take the time. It is hard for me to imagine hearing about something of apparent significance and not wanting to know the details.
Agreed. Does this mean that if they haven’t made a movie about it, it did not happen?
I taught junior high history for many years. It was hard to find a textbook that did not emphasize the internment of the Japanese. And if you just looked at the illustrations you would be led to believe that very few white males were involved in our war effort at all.
As a very early baby boomer, I grew up surrounded by fresh memories of the war. Everyone very much older than me remembered it. The books I read as a kid—Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, Baa Baa Black Sheep, half the movies on TV were all about it. But, time passes and people and events that can never be forgotten are forgotten as they fade from living memory. The battle of Guadalcanal is a good example of this. I doubt that D Day will ever be forgotten as it is a turning point in the war. But much of the rest will fade from popular memory.
I don’t know that is necessarily a failure of the schools as much as it is the inexorable passage of time.
Just finished reading “Normandiefront: D-Day to St Lo Through German Eyes”. A fascinating account from German soldiers fighting from the other side of the beach and hedgerows. The Germans really never had a chance, despite their tenacity and combat experience. Allied combat mass, logistics, air power and Hitler’s obsession over keeping his panzer divisions oriented on the Pas de Calais made sure of that.
I'm currently reading William Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, but I'm not at D-Day yet. Hitler just got his dumb ass bogged down in Russia and he's begging Japan to pull his chestnuts out of the fire, but Japan's got dumb plans of their own!
What's the name of Ambrose's D-Day book and how is it?
Excellent website for the day’s radio broadcast as it happened.
https://archive.org/details/Complete_Broadcast_Day_D-Day
They teach nothing of any military actions, at least not directly. The teaching is always a back-handed indictment of some American dominance. The authors of historical "facts" will pull some little Japanese student, and discuss her feelings and about how her family had to find clean drinking water after the "great explosion from the sky."
Or, they might explore how some little French youth living in Normandy, but having an uncle who lived in Germany, felt about the Allies coming ashore and killing their only milk cow.
That's the only significance to many liberals in academia.
When they do mention military action, they proclaim that it was the Soviet Union that did all the heavy lifting.
that is a badly photoshopped image of Pearl Harbor where somebody inserted a couple of Ju-87 Stukas...
June 6 is also the anniversary of the Battle of Belleau Wood in 1918, in which the US Marines brought Germany’s springtime offensive to a halt and—arguably—turned the tide of World War I. How many young people today know that?
The "Ken Burns" Effect.
BTT. One German pilot was quoted by Liddell Hart as stating that he knew the war was lost when he sighted the invasion fleet. I can believe it.
I wonder how they teach World War 2 in schools today?
They most likely start with... America: The Aggressor Nation
Interesting tidbit, the real Werner Pluskat, was a military consultant for “The Longest Day.” He died in 2002.
Mien Gott...!
Great scene. Nothing.......then the first few notes of Beethoven’s Fifth, then there it is.
D-Day: June 6, 1944: The Battle for the Normandy Beaches. A superb work, IMHO, but it's not a quick read (several hundred pages).
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