Most widely believed fictions about WW2.....

[Green_Lantern]

For one...the US didn't single handedly stop the Nazis.

Two...Churchill wasn't that popular and was a warmonger.

Three....Germany was never even close to gaining world dominance. Not wedged between Western resistance, Britain and Russia. Sorry to say the Holocaust went on so long because Europe, Russia, and the US were looking the other way.

Four...Hitler wasn't some military tactician or genius. He was more like Dubya or Sarah Palin who got where he was by telling fringe right-wingers what they wanted to hear.

http://www.cracked.com/article_18389_the-5-most-widely-believed-wwii-facts-that-are-bullshit_p2.html

[RandomThoughts]

1. And by the hardship of post WW1 Germany.

Although he never had a chance to win WW2 without Russia on his side, and no way those two would not eventually fight.


It seems his only attempt was to get the allies to give up or accept his rule. If he had taken Britain by sea invasion(without any ships to do that), if he had not had to fight the eastern front, if he had secured energy supplies, and if those things kept US out of war, he might have had a chance.


Or if he had the Abomb.

Luckily none of those things happened.

[Green_Lantern]

2. I just find it funny that we now justify going to war by saying

X is the next Hitler when Hitler was roundly defeated.

[Posteritatis]

9. Well, not so much "roundly defeated" as "defeated in a terrifyingly expensive manner." (nt)

[Confusious]

3. The holocaust didn't start in full until

The war was in full swing. What should we/could we should we have done? Bomb the camps? Then you'd be complaining we helped kill jews, because the bombing at that time was so bad that the area a bomb would land could be a 1/8 mile square.

That should have been included in the fictions.

[hlthe2b]

7. I think the comment refers to the failure of the US to grant asylum

for Jews to come in en masse as immigrants. We knew enough to realize that to not allow sanctuary for those fleeing the Nazis was placing them at harm, yet there was a decision made not to liberalize immigration law in response.

[Posteritatis]

8. And you guys were comparatively civilized about it

Canada's record on Jewish refugees and immigrants during that period is, well, better than Germany's at least.

[Confusious]

11. I don't think anyone had any idea of what was to come

And that boat traveled to a lot of other countries also.

Most were dealing with thier own problems and really didn't pay attention to the problems in other countries.

Besides, the OP stated "the holocaust"

[old mark]

16. They were not refused here because of inattention - Hatred of Jews in the US

was widespread and politically acceptable...it was not just a mistake - it was deliberate.


mark

[Posteritatis]

22. Yeah, the US at the time wasn't good about it as much as the least bad. (nt)

[Confusious]

27. Well, a lot of other countries were the same

That boat traveled to a lot of other countries and was refused entrance. It just wasn't the US, it was the world.

[atreides1]

10. I disagree.

The mass killings of about 1 milion Jews had already occured before the plans for the Final Solution were implemented in 1942, but it was only with the decision to eradicate the entire Jewish population that the extermination camps were built and industrialized mass slaughter of Jews began in earnest.


As for bombing the camps:

'On July 7, shortly after the U.S. War Department refused requests from Jewish leaders to bomb the railway lines leading to the camps, a fleet of 452 15th Air Force bombers flew along and across the five deportation railway lines on their way to bomb oil refineries nearby. Several nearby military targets were also bombed, and one bomb fell into the camp grounds.'

'Buna-Werke, the I.G. Farben industrial complex located adjacent to the Monowitz forced labor camp (Auschwitz III) located 5 kilometres (3 miles) from the Auschwitz I camp was bombed four times. On December 26, 1944, the U.S. 455th Bomb Squadron bombed Monowitz and targets near Birkenau (Auschwitz II); an SS military hospital was hit and five SS personnel were killed.'

'On August 24, 1944, the U.S. Army Air Corps carried out a bombing operation against a factory adjacent to the Buchenwald concentration camp. Despite perfect conditions, 315 prisoners were killed, 525 seriously harmed, and 900 lightly wounded.'

[Confusious]

12. The war started in 1939

How many had been killed by then?

Are you complaining about them bombing the camps? Looks like we killed some people. What would have been the point?

Germany still had air power in 1942, bombing rail lines would have been pointless. They can be easily repaired.

Those camps were also Deep in German territory. What is the point of freeing people when they have nowhere to go? Put airmens lives at risk for nothing?

[Green_Lantern]

18. well if the US and Russia would've entered the war earlier

The Nazis would've been defeated earlier. It may not have saved every Jewish person but it could mean millions less would be dead.

[Confusious]

20. So it's our fault, because we didn't enter the war sooner.

That is some lame reasoning.

Nobody wanted war (except for hitler), because everyone remembered world war one and the millions dead from that conflict, just 20 years earlier.

That's why Hitler got as far as he did.

[Green_Lantern]

24. you can't say no one wanted war...

In the US the govt's economic advisers and industrialists knew that another war would kick start the economy and that it did.

[Confusious]

25. You're weaseling my words

The majority of people didn't want war in the United States, England, France, etc.

Franklin Roosevelt even promised not to send kids off to die "in another European war"

I don't know if you noticed, but I'm not talking about small groups of people. I'm talking about the electorate of large countries.

[Green_Lantern]

29. no I just misunderstood you

I agree few American people wanted war.

[AnArmyVeteran]

32. My Dad went to Canada in 1939 to fight the Nazis.

A lot of American patriotic men went to Canada in 1939 to fight the Nazis. Canada entered WWII in 1939, two years before the US did. My Dad served six years in the Canadian Army and later served seven years in the US Army. Wingnuts like to bash Canada every chance they can get, but Canada was two years ahead of the US in WWII. They are also ahead of us in healthcare. Frankly, I'm thinking of going back to where I was born because the US is falling apart so quickly as a result of massive corruption on every level in society.

Note: Over a hundred Canadians lost their lives fighting in Vietnam. An older friend of mine was still a Canadian citizen when he served in the US Marines in Vietnam. He died at a young age 15 years after the war, from what I believe was exposure to Agent Orange. But his name won't be on The Wall in Washington along side the 58,000 other casualties of that horrible war. Neither will all the suicide victims as a result of PTSD.

[Green_Lantern]

13. Incorrect..

The Dachau concentration camp began in 1933...they may not have begun the killing but Jews were being rounded.

I never said we should've bombed the camps but it's a myth to say we fought the war to liberate Jews.

[Confusious]

14. Yes and it was a camp for political prisoners

Socialists, communists, anyone who opposed hitler.

They were just cruel, they didn't kill people.

To say that was part of the holocaust is incorrect.

[COLGATE4]

17. You can't be serious that at Dachau they didn't kill people

While Dachau was not an extermination camp (Auschwitz/Birkenau) executions of prisoners were certainly not uncommon there.

[Confusious]

23. Maybe I should spell things out for you

That'll make it easier, and you'll stop reading things into what I say.

Dachau was set up at first to hold political prisoners. There was no whole sale killing there.

It was only later on, during the "final solution to the jewish question" that it became a killing factory.

That "final solution" was asked for in a memo, the middle of 1942.

[Green_Lantern]

21. yeah it was part of the Holocaust...

Homosexuals and the disabled were killed there too.

[boppers]

28. Define "The Holocaust".

We've spent years on this over at wikipedia, and *still* have disagreements over the (many) definitions provided by others...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust

Did it start with the Aryan paragraphs back in the 1880's? The first camps? The T-4 program? (etc.)

These are not easy questions to answer.

[Confusious]

15. Dupe

[hlthe2b]

4. It is the fourth one that scares the shit out of me..

how easily so many people can be manipulated.

[Confusious]

5. A lot of people weren't manipulated

They were just silent. Out of fear. Or just didn't care. Or didn't want to know.

[Confusious]

6. Dup

[Greyhound]

19. 1. Weaselly false premise.

2. True

3. Is two topics the first is highly debatable, the second is worse than true, they actively hid what they knew.

4. Truthy. He got where he was through the backing of large companies that were fascist regimes all over the world. The German Teabaggers were made up of dupes and thugs.

[Green_Lantern]

26. on number the better premise was...

That it's incorrect when people say: "If Hitler had only ______ he could've won the war" when it really required multiple complex occurences.

[misanthrope]

31. I can fill in that blank...

..."If Hitler had only had more resources, military might, industrial capability, acumen and success he could've won the war."

How'd I do?

[Green_Lantern]

33. that's more than one thing

And includes complex variables.

For that he would've needed a better childhood and development and with that he wouldn't have been such an evil person.

[Greyhound]

34. Had he not been such an idiot and the people he worked for been so greedy and

impatient, we would live in a very different world today.

[Green_Lantern]

30. the thing you should know about this list

Is not to play Monday morning quarterback and say what should've happened it just shows inaccurate beliefs about what actually happened.

The US didn't to war to liberate Jewish people.

[customerserviceguy]

35. I must have missed something

When did Cracked magazine start becoming considered a hard news source around here?

[MadHound]

36. Well, neither of these, the myths or the article deal with much in the way of subtlety or analysis

The writers are being as black and white in their analysis as the myths they're trying to debunk.

For instance, no, the US didn't single handedly stop the Nazis, but neither were we some minor player playing second fiddle to the Russians. The fact of the matter was that the US was the factory for the Allies in this conflict, supplying arms, munitions and things like food and medicine to the rest of the Allies, including Russia.

Germany was actually fairly close to world dominance, but the closest they came was at the beginning of the war. Their technological advantage over every single other belligerent gave them a huge advantage. There was a reason they chose blitzkrieg tactics, they wanted to control all of Europe quickly, including the British Isles. The wanted this tucked away all nice and secure before the opposition started catching up to them technologically.

The FDR thing is still debatable. FDR had a list of actions to take in order to goad the Japanese into attacking the US. While officially discarding this list, it is amazing how closely he followed those actions in the months leading up to Pearl Harbor.

Let's not forget the part that US corporations and power elite played in this mess. The fact of the matter is that without the aid of IBM, Ford, GM, Union Banking, Brown Brothers Harriman and others, Hitler might not have even achieved power within his country. It is certain that without the aid of these corporate and human agents WWII would not have lasted nearly as long nor would the Holocaust been as devastating. Remember, when you buy something from IBM you are buying a product from a company that enabled the efficiency of the Holocaust and the Reich war effort.

[Canuckistanian]

37. Wrong about Churchill's popularity

He was wildly popular during the war, as a wartime Prime Minister. I can't think of anyone who criticized his general management of the war and national morale.

However, AFTER the war, his conservative economic and social policies in postwar Britain were a disaster and he was voted out.

[deaniac21]

38. In October of 1941 the Nazi's were in the suburbs of Moscow. If

the government had fallen, which was very nearly the case, it would have been a much different story.

[seattleblue]

39. #2 is not supported at all.

Churchill was defeated after WW II because the people wanted a change in leadership for peacetime. But Churchill was elected again in 1951. How did that happen if he was so unpopular? The charge he was a warmonger is right out of Pat Buchanan's speeches and columns. Pity we have DUers promoting Buchanan's BS.