Posted on 12/06/2015 5:02:49 PM PST by PotatoHeadMick
This was no ordinary Saturday night punch-up outside a pub.
At the height of World War Two, with the country gripped in a life or death fight for freedom against fascism and dictatorship, dozens of local drinkers fought alongside black soldiers against white Military Police officers harassing them outside a Lancashire pub.
It was just one extraordinary example of the active support shown by ordinary Britons for the thousands of black American troops stationed amongst them during the war - in stark contrast to the vicious racist abuse they received from their fellow countrymen.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
But that would go against the very reason for the American Revolution. The Boston Tea Party was only one year after the English court delivered Somerset v Stewart - the colonials could see the way the wind was blowing
Unfair.
In 1940 there weren’t too many Americans fighting. Proportionately the British played a much bigger fighting role and for longer.
By 1945 Britain was bankrupt and had lost an empire, all thrown away to fight the Nazis. The US emerged as the greatest power on earth and richer than God.
To imply that Britain shirked in the Second World War while the US did all the work is quite simply nonsense and it is unworthy of an American to say so.
By the way the people who said that about the British were people like Joe Kennedy and other Nazi-sympathizing isolationsists.
As for "soldier will be soldiers," yeah, that's broadly true, but the aftermath(s) became a big enough problem in this case to cause heartburn.
Mr.niteowl77
“the need for effective transportation was taken pretty seriously.”
Certainly by Patton, and he knew what he was talking about. Didn’t he famously say he would should the SOB who sent food instead of fuel? He said his men could eat their belts but they couldn’t fight without fuel.
As for the heartburn, I get your drift.
So were some of mine, but I doubt it was deliberate. Never attribute malicious motives to what can be blamed more on rank stupidity. I doubt the English much cared about the starving Irish, but it wasn't an official policy.
This is no defense of the Brits who were responsible for the common Irish subsisting mostly on potatoes. And during the famine they exported beef to Britain as the Irish people starved.
After the news of starvation reached England, various charities there tried to set up food aid for the Irish. Too little too late.
FWIW, it was somewhat sobering to see all the "famine houses" in many parts of Ireland when the wife and I visited six years ago. When we got to one B and B in Doolin we exclaimed that we hadn't seen a famine house in the area. Then we opened the window curtain in our room...there was one right across the road from our B and B.
Ah, Patton! The greatest soldier of W.W.II.
Not true. I am not going to pretend racism didn’t exist in the UK, but there were tens of thousands of black Caribbean, black African and even a tiny number of black Britons who served in the British armed forces. And were treated very well. As were most black GI’s. In fact the British preferred them to the white GI’s. Who had the reputation of being arrogant.
There were even instances of GI attacking BRITISH black soldiers/airmen.
Bollocks. Not perfect by any means, but we dont have anything like the history of racism the US had. We abolished slavery over 50 years before you, even in the Empire. And we have nothing remotely like the social racism of the 1800s and 20th C.
Still waiting for the first female President. Or the first Jewish President.
That attitude is probably why they weren’t liked. Of course those young men who did die (and god bless them) actually saw war unlike you, saw what the UK suffered, and admired the British and others for their courage.
Those young Americans are ten times the man you are.
Well, when I visited there I got quite a bit of attitude just for being American. You guys aren’t perfect.
It wasn’t deliberate. Badly handled certainly, but the idea the Catholics were deliberately murdered is Irish-American And Republican myth.
Firstly, the famine killed at least 100000 PROTESTANTS!. possibly UP TO 300000. The six northern counties with their Anglo-Scottish Ulster peoples were also hit, Ulster worst of all. So how is I deliberate when the UK’s ‘own people’ in Ireland are also starving to death?. Why kill the bedrock of Britishism in Ireland?.
Secondly, the UK govt, even if it badly handled the Famine, also brought in or struck down laws to help allievarte the Famine. Britain also bought millions of tons of grain at taxpayer expense and shipped it to Ireland in 1846.
No, he does though.
Quite right, we need to grasp the reality of this Chinese future.
Thanks for the troops you sent in 1914 and 1939.
See my reply above.
Shameful?. Yes.
Genocide?. No.
Misunderstood and distorted?. You better believe it.
Erm, no. The most overhyped. But not even close to the best. Neither was Monty.
Erm, no. The most overhyped. But not even close to the best. Neither was Monty.
I don’t blame the British for slavery in general - just the slavery that existed in the American colonies during their rule. Slavery was established in the colonies by the British, so of course I’m going to blame them. It existed in the colonies for nearly 200 years before the American Revolution and the economy of the southern colonies was almost entirely dependent on slavery by 1776; so no, it would not have been very realistic to expect they would immediately eliminate slavery once they got rid of British rule. The bottom line is that Great Britain was neck-deep in the slave trade for a couple of hundred years, so I don’t have much patience for any imagined moral superiority from them on that particular issue.
It wasn't Nazi sympathizers, every US veteran I've met who served in WWII who served in Europe said it. It's a concise if harsh summation of what went on. It can't compare with the blanket statement above -- that the entire US armed forces was made up of racists, so up yours.
I hardly blame the UK for fighting as little as possible and letting the Germans punch themselves out in the USSR, while constantly insisting on sideshows that were low priority for Hitler but just by coincidence of strategic importance to the UK after the war. World War 1 had been monstrously costly in terms of human life on the allied side in the west, about 2.5 times worse than that endured by the Central Powers. Had Germany suffered equal losses, there wouldn't have been a second WW. The rapid collapse of France in 1940 is often attributed to that previous lost generation.
In 1940 the British were losing the Pacific to the Japanese, enduring the terror bombing by the Luftwaffe, and the US didn't get pulled into the war (despite FDR's best efforts) until late in 1941. Earlier in 1941 the industrial output of the US was rising, and the US was laying keel and pushing every kind of needed item that could be moved by sea to the UK, almost 3000 purpose-built cargo ships.
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