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Old 28th May 2017, 07:41 AM   #161
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Originally Posted by Henri McPhee View Post
I don't know much about Barbie. I remember the case in the newspapers, when it happened, but I didn't take much notice at the time.
So you knew about his trial. Why then did you assume he went unconvicted, and mentioned him in one breath with Mengele, who indeed evaded being captured? Do you have any other example of a hihg-profile Nazi - and one, at that, who was so cruel to earn the nickname "Butcher of Lyon" - who went to trial and was acquitted?

Originally Posted by Henri McPhee View Post
The newspaper reports never mentioned that Barbie murdered people by throwing them into a lime pit.
I never paid attention to his particular methods of torture, but Google throws up nothing on that. The wiki article I linked to says this:
Quote:
He established his headquarters at the Hôtel Terminus in Lyon, where he personally tortured adult and child prisoners,[3][4][5]—breaking extremities, using electroshock and sexually abusing them (including with dogs), among other methods. He became known as the "Butcher of Lyon".[6] The daughter of a French Resistance leader based in Lyon claimed her father was beaten and skinned alive, and that his head was immersed in a bucket of ammonia; he died shortly afterward.[4]
and if you follow the links there are many more gruesome torture methods - but nothing about lime pits.

Why do you make stuff up at every single turn?
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Last edited by ddt; 28th May 2017 at 07:47 AM.
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Old 29th May 2017, 08:28 AM   #162
Henri McPhee
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Originally Posted by ddt View Post
So you knew about his trial. Why then did you assume he went unconvicted, and mentioned him in one breath with Mengele, who indeed evaded being captured? Do you have any other example of a high-profile Nazi - and one, at that, who was so cruel to earn the nickname "Butcher of Lyon" - who went to trial and was acquitted?
Many of these SS and Gestapo types were never identified after the war. Some were executed and others given lenient sentences. There is a bit about all this in a book called the Secret Hunters by Anthony Kemp published in 1986 and with quotes by Prince Yurka Galitzine:

Quote:
It was in such an atmosphere that lip service was paid in pursuing the perpetrators of war crimes, with pressure brought by the French and by all the countries in Europe that had been occupied. The French, the Dutch, the Danes and the Norwegians, all were diligent in looking for those responsible. Not so the British; the organisation was there but neither the will or the enthusiasm.......

I have sometimes wondered if the chase should still go on for beasts like Mengele and Barbie and I have come to a very definite conclusion that such monsters must be tracked down and their story re-told. In this way the lessons for the future will not be forgotten. Luckily we have the ability of the media to remind and expose, let us hope that they will continue to watch for any recurrence in the conflicts of today.......

Those of the hunted who had been imprisoned were all released by the early 1950s and those still at large were able to breath more easily as they participated in the 'economic wonder' of Adenauer's reborn Germany. Any still alive were now old men who have probably been able to wash their consciences clean. Apart from a few dedicated prosecutors, there is no desire in Germany today to rake over the Nazi past........

I'd had a lot of vey scarring experiences and one was inclined to be rather wholesale in one's judgements. I was. I didn't recognise the difference between Germans - to me all Germans were cruel, and as a result I was very vengeful.

For many years I just could not bear to be in the same room with a German and it made me absolutely shake. But then after forty years one learns that there are a lot of different facets to a nation. I've got a lot of very good German friends. I've gradually got to know them and respect them. I admit, most of the Germans I know were born after 1939. And to them it's another world, and we never talk about those sort of things.

But at the back of my mind, I shall never forget what happened before and I think it was very important that they were brought to justice, and I think it's very important too that young people of this generation and of the next generation know what happened. Because it could happen again.
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Old 29th May 2017, 09:13 AM   #163
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but one of the two that you named was convicted.
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Old 29th May 2017, 09:20 AM   #164
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Originally Posted by Henri McPhee View Post
Many of these SS and Gestapo types were never identified after the war. Some were executed and others given lenient sentences. There is a bit about all this in a book called the Secret Hunters by Anthony Kemp published in 1986 and with quotes by Prince Yurka Galitzine:
The book you refer to appears to be about SAS agents hunting down German servicemen who murdered captured commandos in obedience to criminal orders from Hitler. More of these perpetrators are likely to have remained undiscovered, or been acquitted, as such murders of POWs most often took place during or soon after armed action.

The statement you quote from Prince Golitzine unfortunately contains childish material like this
For many years I just could not bear to be in the same room with a German and it made me absolutely shake. But then after forty years one learns that there are a lot of different facets to a nation.
Many people learn that in less than forty years.
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Old 29th May 2017, 11:34 AM   #165
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Originally Posted by Henri McPhee View Post
Many of these SS and Gestapo types were never identified after the war. Some were executed and others given lenient sentences. There is a bit about all this in a book called the Secret Hunters by Anthony Kemp published in 1986 and with quotes by Prince Yurka Galitzine:
That doesn't answer my questions:
(1) as you knew that Barbie was put on trial, why did you claim he went unconvicted?
(2) why did you make up the stuff about Barbie dumping bodies in lime pits? Was the actual torture he committed not gruesome enough (in fact, IMHO, more gruesome)?
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Old 30th May 2017, 05:24 AM   #166
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Originally Posted by jimbob View Post
but one of the two that you named was convicted.
Well, let's be fair, a 50% hit rate is pretty good for Henri.
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Old 31st May 2017, 02:19 AM   #167
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I still think that if I traded places with Chamberlain in some fantasy land I would have done exactly the same thing in his position. Some say Chamberlain's so-called appeasement policy, and his famous piece of paper, was based on military judgement at the time. I think that's fair comment.

There is a quote in a biography book called Sir Antony Eden about the hare brained Edenites like Churchill by Alan Campbell-Johnson published in 1955:

Quote:
He would perhaps have reacted more strongly if he could have known that a mere ten days after Munich Hitler with unparalleled arrogance was to make the maintenance of good relations with Germany conditional upon the continuation in office of Britain's existing leadership. Should Eden, Churchill or Duff-Cooper come into power, the result, declared the Fuhrer, would inevitably be war with the Reich.
A sense of humour was not Eden's strong point.

Britain seems to have signed the Geneva convention on prisoners of war, unlike Isis/Taliban now, who have also never signed the UN convention on chemical warfare, or on beheadings. The International Criminal Court should be informed of this.

For some unknown reason the Russians never signed any of those agreements and they suffered greatly in the war as a result. The British investigated some German war criminals after the war as it affected murdered Britishers, and British agents. The Israeli Mossad tracked down German war criminals in South America, including Eichman who was executed. The Americans quickly regarded German war criminals as being on their side, while as far as I know the Russians did practically nothing about German war criminals. It's true that only a small percentage of German prisoners of war taken to Siberia ever returned home.

Somebody on that World at War TV documentary said that about a million Russian prisoners of war were shot dead by the Germans. Others were tortured or made slave labour. That's monstrous.

There is some background information to this on the internet:

Quote:
Peter Calvocoressi, Guy Wint, Total War — "The total number of prisoners taken by the German armies in the USSR was in the region of 5.5 million. Of these, the astounding number of 3.5 million or more had been lost by the middle of 1944 and the assumption must be that they were either deliberately killed or done to death by criminal negligence. Nearly two million of them died in camps and close on another million disappeared while in military custody either in the USSR or in rear areas; a further quarter of a million disappeared or died in transit between the front and destinations in the rear; another 473,000 died or were killed in military custody in Germany or Poland." They add, "This slaughter of prisoners cannot be accounted for by the peculiar chaos of the war in the east. ... The true cause was the inhuman policy of the Nazis towards the Russians as a people and the acquiescence of army commanders in attitudes and conditions which amounted to a sentence of death on their prisoners."
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Old 31st May 2017, 02:52 AM   #168
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Originally Posted by Henri McPhee View Post
Britain seems to have signed the Geneva convention on prisoners of war, unlike Isis/Taliban now, who have also never signed the UN convention on chemical warfare, or on beheadings. The International Criminal Court should be informed of this.
I'm not sure what your post is about, but with regard to that point about ISIS: I don't think it would be regarded as competent to sign undertakings of that kind, as it is not recognised as a legitimate state. In November 2015, the UN Security Council declared SC/12132, 20 November 2015
The Security Council determined today that the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant/Sham (ISIL/ISIS) constituted an “unprecedented” threat to international peace and security, calling upon Member States with the requisite capacity to take “all necessary measures” to prevent and suppress its terrorist acts on territory under its control in Syria and Iraq.
In 1938 the governments involved in the various international transactions were all recognised as legitimate and competent to sign treaties and make other commitments.
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Old 9th June 2017, 02:34 AM   #169
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Originally Posted by Dave Rogers View Post
There's a story I've heard, possibly apocryphal, that Sandhurst war-gamed a German invasion in 1940 in which the forces available to Britain were Snoopy in his Sopwith Camel, Captain Pugwash and the Black Pig, and the Walmington-on-Sea platoon of the Home Guard, and the German invasion still failed. Germany's logistical planning was virtually non-existent; their plans involved requisitioning the entire stock of barges in northern Europe (handwaving away the economic effects), towing them in strings across the channel, working up to full speed before releasing them to turn inland and hit the beach by momentum alone, blowing the bows off with explosive bolts to land the troops, then re-using the same set of beached, bowless barges for a daily cargo lift until they could capture a major port in good enough shape to use it - something they later found wasn't all that difficult to prevent. Plus, the Army demanded a large scale attack on multiple fronts, while the Navy could barely scrape together a plan for a single landing. There never seems to have been a coherent enough plan for any of it to be more than just a colossal bluff.

Dave
Churchill and the public and the House of Commons and mainstream media thought the German threat of invasion, with amazing complacency, had been exaggerated. This was not a view shared by the British High Command who thought that a wrong answer may mean the end of life as we have known it in this country and the end of the British Empire.

From the diaries of General, later Field Marshal, Alan Brooke:

Quote:
I had been worried by the possibility of the Germans combining an airborne attack on London with their invasion. There was ample room for a series of parachute landings in the large London Parks. The more I examined those possibilities the more I realised the chaos which such landings would create, if they occurred at night it would be necessary to rush troops into London, and their arrival would clash with the morning flow of men, women, milk, vegetables, fruit, fish, etc. I therefore prepared an exercise to test out the very complicated arrangements required to minimise the chances of chaos.....

Have I really taken the proper dispositions for the defence of this country? Am I sufficiently insured in the South-East? Can I reinforce this corner without taking undue risks in the North? Am I under-appreciating the air threat? Ought I to further denude the beaches to cover the aerodromes? If I do , am I opening the door to sea-invasion? Will the air support be as efficient as the Air Ministry would like us to believe? How long will the Navy take to concentrate its forces in Home waters? Shall we be able to hold the thrust of Armoured divisions in Kent during this period?....
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Old 9th June 2017, 02:59 AM   #170
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Brooke was having a bit of a mental tizzy there.
A Para drop in Hyde Park would have been a disaster for the Germans.

Dropping paras with no support, and no chance of support for weeks (not days), is simply throwing away your troops. Look at Arnhem and Crete, both of which were planned to receive land support within days.
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Old 9th June 2017, 09:11 AM   #171
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Originally Posted by Henri McPhee View Post
From the diaries of General, later Field Marshal, Alan Brooke:
Talking about what could at worst have been a nuisance raid. Paratroops can't just invade a country unaided, and it looks like what he was worried about was just the level of disturbance involved.

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Old 10th June 2017, 06:36 AM   #172
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Originally Posted by Tolls View Post
Brooke was having a bit of a mental tizzy there.
A Para drop in Hyde Park would have been a disaster for the Germans.

Dropping paras with no support, and no chance of support for weeks (not days), is simply throwing away your troops. Look at Arnhem and Crete, both of which were planned to receive land support within days.
To put it more into perspective with the time he wrote it: on 10 May 1940, the day Germany invaded the Netherlands, there were various para drops to capture airfields and the Royal Family in the West of the country. They were all spectacular failures.
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Old 11th June 2017, 04:19 AM   #173
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Originally Posted by Tolls View Post
Brooke was having a bit of a mental tizzy there.
A Para drop in Hyde Park would have been a disaster for the Germans.

Dropping paras with no support, and no chance of support for weeks (not days), is simply throwing away your troops. Look at Arnhem and Crete, both of which were planned to receive land support within days.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing. There were two SS divisions opposing the landings at Arnhem. Crete was a victory in the end for the German paratroopers. General Alan Brooke was not so sure about the situation at that time as people seem to be nowadays. This is from his diaries of September 15th 1940:

Quote:
Still no move on the part of the Germans. Everything remains keyed up for an early invasion, and the air war goes on unabated. This coming week must remain a critical one, and it is hard to see how Hitler can now retrace his steps and stop this invasion. The suspense of waiting is very trying, especially when one is familiar with the weakness of one's own defences. Our exposed coast line is just twice the length of the front that we and the French were holding in France with about eighty divisions and the Maginot line. Here we have twenty-two divisions of which only about half can be looked upon as in any way fit for any form of mobile operations. Thank God the spirit is now good and the defeatist opinions expressed after Dunkirk are no longer prevalent. But I wish I could have six months more to finish equipping and training the forces under my command. A responsibility such as the defence of this country under existing conditions is one that weighs on one like a ton of bricks, and it is hard at times to retain the hopeful and confident exterior which is so essential to retain the confidence of those under one and to guard against their having any doubts as regards final success.
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Old 12th June 2017, 03:08 AM   #174
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Originally Posted by ddt View Post
To put it more into perspective with the time he wrote it: on 10 May 1940, the day Germany invaded the Netherlands, there were various para drops to capture airfields and the Royal Family in the West of the country. They were all spectacular failures.
Quite.
The only major success was the drop on Eben Emael. And they were relieved in about 24 hours.

Originally Posted by Henri McPhee View Post
Hindsight is a wonderful thing. There were two SS divisions opposing the landings at Arnhem. Crete was a victory in the end for the German paratroopers. General Alan Brooke was not so sure about the situation at that time as people seem to be nowadays. This is from his diaries of September 15th 1940:
Crete cost the Germans their airborne force.
Arnhem was supposed to be relieved in 3 days.
What German force could have got across the channel and into London to relieve a few hundred paras in 3 days?
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Old 12th June 2017, 06:11 AM   #175
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Originally Posted by Tolls View Post
Quite.
The only major success was the drop on Eben Emael. And they were relieved in about 24 hours.
Yep, and that was, what, 30 km from the border. And they had been training for that nearly a year.
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Old 13th June 2017, 12:49 AM   #176
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Originally Posted by ddt View Post
Yep, and that was, what, 30 km from the border. And they had been training for that nearly a year.
And they struck lucky that one of the gliders landed on the roof.
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Old 13th June 2017, 02:44 AM   #177
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Originally Posted by Tolls View Post
And they struck lucky that one of the gliders landed on the roof.
The last UK parachute drop was at Suez. It was successful in securing its target, but the campaign as a whole was a fiasco.
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Old 13th June 2017, 03:29 AM   #178
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Originally Posted by Craig B View Post
The last UK parachute drop was at Suez. It was successful in securing its target, but the campaign as a whole was a fiasco.
One of these days I'll actually read up on Suez...

Obviously there were lots of successful drops, but all of them had the idea of being relieved within a couple of days at most.

Dropping in a park in London doesn't really fit the bill.
I was thinking of other issues with it...how would you handle the landing? I know London had blackouts, but wouldn't any pathfinders have issues? How are you supposed to guide the rest of the paras in?

As I say, the most likely explanation for Brooke's comment is he was having a tizzy at the time over the initial reports coming in from the continent. May was not a happy time.
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Old 13th June 2017, 03:39 AM   #179
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Originally Posted by Tolls View Post
... May was not a happy time.
I misread that at first. The words "May" and "happy time" don't go together very well.
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Old 13th June 2017, 03:58 AM   #180
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Originally Posted by Henri McPhee View Post
Crete was a victory in the end for the German paratroopers.
You mis-spelled "was a victory and the end for the German paratroopers."

Originally Posted by Henri McPhee View Post
General Alan Brooke was not so sure about the situation at that time as people seem to be nowadays. This is from his diaries of September 15th 1940:
Which doesn't mention paratroopers at all.

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Old 13th June 2017, 04:21 AM   #181
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Originally Posted by Craig B View Post
I misread that at first. The words "May" and "happy time" don't go together very well.
To be honest, that was a bit deliberate on my part...I've been enjoying the past few days far too much.
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Old 24th June 2017, 02:26 AM   #182
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World war II and appeasement came to an end in 1939. This is from a book called Sir Anthony Eden by Alan Campbell-Johnson published in 1955:

Quote:
On 15th March 1939, Hitler's legions marched into Prague thereby converting the Munich agreement within six months of signature into yet another scrap of paper. A week later they had annexed Memel. On 31st March 1939, Britain had made the fateful guarantee to Poland. Appeasement had suffered sudden death and in the process there was neither time nor opportunity for post mortems.
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Old 24th June 2017, 03:18 AM   #183
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Originally Posted by Henri McPhee View Post
World war II and appeasement came to an end in 1939. This is from a book called Sir Anthony Eden by Alan Campbell-Johnson published in 1955:
What is your point?

That Britain and France were no longer pursuing a policy of appeasement by the time they declared war in response to the invasion of Poland?

I am pretty sure that is uncontested.
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Old 24th June 2017, 08:47 AM   #184
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Originally Posted by Henri McPhee View Post
World war II and appeasement came to an end in 1939.
Well, one of them did at least.

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Old 7th July 2017, 01:59 AM   #185
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There is a difference between appeasement and being hare-brained.
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Old 7th July 2017, 04:49 AM   #186
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Originally Posted by Henri McPhee View Post
There is a difference between appeasement and being hare-brained.
How did this difference manifest itself in the late 1930s?
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Old 8th July 2017, 05:56 PM   #187
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Originally Posted by Henri McPhee View Post
Crete was a victory in the end for the German paratroopers.
It was also a near run disaster for the Germans. Hitler needed to eliminate Crete has a possible base for aircraft to threaten his rear during the upcoming Operation Barbarossa and it had to be done quickly Hence the planning for the operation was slapdash and poor. Student's plan was quite simply bad. Basically trying to capture three widely separated airports at the same time along with very poor planning in terms of the planning for each attack. Student would have been better off concentrating on one airfield and relying on small detachments and German air superiority to keep reinforcements at bay. Instead he tried to do too much and the result was near catastrophe for the Germans.

May 20th was a disaster for the Germans, casualties were horrific among the paratroopers.

The Germans were able to win because they were able to gain control of the airport at Malme early on the 21st of May due to their own fighting prowess and what can only be called an in excusable mistake by the local British commanders at the airfield who withdrew on the night of the 20th-21st of May. leaving the airport to the Germans.

Student took advantage of that along with German air supremacy to send enough troops through to Malme to secure victory.

Interestingly the local Greek Army contingents and local Cretans fought very well despite a lack of arms. The British failure to distribute arms to these forces is in retrospect a serious mistake.

As it is given that the British had superior numbers, (They also had Ultra intercepts.), were on the defensive and Student's plan was a disaster waiting to happen. It is remarkable that the Germans won at all.

But has it is the British made their own serious mistakes which in the end more than counter balanced German errors.

1. They apparently didn't think that the airports were that crucial to a successful German invasion by parachute. In fact it appears that the British thought that the Germans didn't need airports land troops in by plane. They actually thought the Germans could land troops anywhere there was level ground.

2. In all the many months they were on the island the British did not arrange to arm the local population or the local Greek Army units. The result is these forces fought half armed or armed with captured German equipment during the battle.

Despite the above and of course German air supremacy, which created huge problems for the British, the Germans still came within a whisker of catastrophe. If a few units had not withdrawn from the area of Malme Airfield on the night of the 20th-21st of May 1941 it is extremely likely the Germans would have lost.

As it is Student didn't lose his desire for more mass airborne operations, proposing Malta, Cyprus and even Port Said for future operations. Hitler because of the heavy losses and near failure, thought differently and the Germans engaged in very few airborne operations for the rest of the war. It also appears the Hitler realized that Students plan had been poor and had lost confidence in him has a planner of such operations.
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Old 11th July 2017, 09:42 AM   #188
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There is an interesting reference to appeasement in general in a 1932 book called English Justice written by a solicitor:

Quote:
We assume that all must be well to an extent that may some day lead to disaster. To take one instance, after enjoying a naval supremacy fought for during centuries and unchallenged for more than fifty years, we obstinately refused to see that ironclads had rendered our wooden fleet obsolete. And this at a time when our relations with the French, who had built those same ironclads, were of the worst. Within our own generation high naval and military authority ridiculed the notion that aircraft could play any important part in war.
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Old 11th July 2017, 10:22 AM   #189
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Originally Posted by Henri McPhee View Post
There is an interesting reference to appeasement in general in a 1932 book called English Justice written by a solicitor:
Source. Or else it is pure BS.

Especially as the British had 16 ironclads afloat or building within three years of the French completed the Gloire.
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Last edited by erwinl; 11th July 2017 at 11:09 AM. Reason: spelling 'completed' a bit better.
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Old 12th July 2017, 01:49 AM   #190
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What does any of that have to do with appeasement in any case, eve if it were the case?

Just to add to what erwinl says, the Gloire was launched end of 1859.
The Warrior (which was a far better ship, and made the Gloire pretty much instantly obsolete) was launched at the end of 1860.

Not exactly a case of our navy holding back.
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Old 12th July 2017, 03:05 AM   #191
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Originally Posted by erwinl View Post
Source. Or else it is pure BS.

Especially as the British had 16 ironclads afloat or building within three years of the French completed the Gloire.
I don't believe that remark by a solicitor about wooden ships in the British Navy being obsolete is factually incorrect.

This is a background quote about the matter from an internet article:

Quote:
THE END OF WOODEN WALLS: A COMPARISON OF HMS WARRIOR (1861) TO THE USS MONITOR (1862) David L. Hirsch

Abstract: In this article I will compare and contrast two warships, the British HMS Warrior and the American Union’s USS Monitor. These ships were the early ironclads which brought an end to the wooden ship navies of the world. Although they never met in battle, both ships were available for military action during the first years of the American Civil War (1861-1865). From early November 1861 until the end of December of the same year Britain and the American Union almost came to war with each other over the HMS Trent Affair. This article will speculate whether the British ironclads would have bested the Union ironclads and broken the Union’s blockade of the Confederate sea ports.

While Britain and France were allies during the Crimean War (1857-58), the French Navy had a wooden steam fleet which briefly achieved numerical equality to the British wooden steam fleet. “This fact, in combination with the laying down of Gloire [by the French] in March of 1858, sparked off the [British] invasion scare of 1858-59.”

The Gloire was an armor-clad wooden ship. French Emperor Napoleon III ordered the construction of the Gloire as a direct challenge to the previous forty five year British command and control of the world’s seas using wooden ships. HMS Warrior was the British answer to Gloire and the policy that she represented. “Warrior was in every respect a more advanced ship than Gloire, indeed so advanced that she could not have been built in France.” The Gloire was 256 foot, 5,500 ton ironclad wooden ship whereas the Warrior was an iron- hulled ship. The word “ironclad” is used in this essay and by other authors to refer to both armor- over-wood and entirely iron ships.

The Gloire was a seagoing harbor assault ship whereas the Warrior was a 420 foot long and fast 9,000 ton frigate which was not designed for harbor assault. The Warrior had four and one half inch thick wrought iron armor and forty 8 inch smooth bore and 7 inch rifled guns. Unlike the Gloire, these guns gave accuracy and armor piercing capability. When she entered service in 1861 HMS Warrior instantly rendered every other warship afloat obsolete and her combination of size, speed and firepower helped to defeat Imperial France in a major naval arms race. She was the ultimate Victorian deterrent.

The design deficiencies of the Warrior were significant. The screw propeller shaft was above the water line and a lucky shot could have disabled the vessel. The shaft should have been protected by armor. Since the knowledge of how to apply copper to iron did not exist at the time, the Warrior’s iron hull was easily fouled by barnacles that greatly reduced her speed and maneuverability. The British and the French had previously attached copper to the bottom of wooden ships in order to discourage fouling. Because of her 420 foot length, only a few.............

1 Andrew, Lambert, HMS Warrior 1860 Victoria’s Ironclad Deterrent. (Conway Maritime Press, 2011), p.8.
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Old 12th July 2017, 03:16 AM   #192
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Originally Posted by Henri McPhee View Post
I don't believe that remark by a solicitor about wooden ships in the British Navy being obsolete is factually incorrect.

This is a background quote about the matter from an internet article:
Quote:

Quote:
THE END OF WOODEN WALLS: A COMPARISON OF HMS WARRIOR (1861) TO THE USS MONITOR (1862) David L. Hirsch

Abstract: In this article I will compare and contrast two warships, the British HMS Warrior and the American Union’s USS Monitor. These ships were the early ironclads which brought an end to the wooden ship navies of the world. Although they never met in battle, both ships were available for military action during the first years of the American Civil War (1861-1865). From early November 1861 until the end of December of the same year Britain and the American Union almost came to war with each other over the HMS Trent Affair. This article will speculate whether the British ironclads would have bested the Union ironclads and broken the Union’s blockade of the Confederate sea ports.

While Britain and France were allies during the Crimean War (1857-58), the French Navy had a wooden steam fleet which briefly achieved numerical equality to the British wooden steam fleet. “This fact, in combination with the laying down of Gloire [by the French] in March of 1858, sparked off the [British] invasion scare of 1858-59.”

The Gloire was an armor-clad wooden ship. French Emperor Napoleon III ordered the construction of the Gloire as a direct challenge to the previous forty five year British command and control of the world’s seas using wooden ships. HMS Warrior was the British answer to Gloire and the policy that she represented. “Warrior was in every respect a more advanced ship than Gloire, indeed so advanced that she could not have been built in France.” The Gloire was 256 foot, 5,500 ton ironclad wooden ship whereas the Warrior was an iron- hulled ship. The word “ironclad” is used in this essay and by other authors to refer to both armor- over-wood and entirely iron ships.

The Gloire was a seagoing harbor assault ship whereas the Warrior was a 420 foot long and fast 9,000 ton frigate which was not designed for harbor assault. The Warrior had four and one half inch thick wrought iron armor and forty 8 inch smooth bore and 7 inch rifled guns. Unlike the Gloire, these guns gave accuracy and armor piercing capability. When she entered service in 1861 HMS Warrior instantly rendered every other warship afloat obsolete and her combination of size, speed and firepower helped to defeat Imperial France in a major naval arms race. She was the ultimate Victorian deterrent.

The design deficiencies of the Warrior were significant. The screw propeller shaft was above the water line and a lucky shot could have disabled the vessel. The shaft should have been protected by armor. Since the knowledge of how to apply copper to iron did not exist at the time, the Warrior’s iron hull was easily fouled by barnacles that greatly reduced her speed and maneuverability. The British and the French had previously attached copper to the bottom of wooden ships in order to discourage fouling. Because of her 420 foot length, only a few.............

1 Andrew, Lambert, HMS Warrior 1860 Victoria’s Ironclad Deterrent. (Conway Maritime Press, 2011), p.8.
highlighted
Huh!? This is simply not true. It is as if that person has never seen a picture of Warrior. The propellor shaft is underwater now and that is with Warriors diminished draft (her not carrying any coals, ammo and other stuff). With a full load, the shaft is even deeper under water.

Should be, because a propellor shaft above water would not work for a ship like that (or any ship for that matter).

Considering the highlighted nonsense in this quote. What else is nonsense as well?

edit:
I've found the abstract. It is even worse than the quote you mentioned above.
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Old 12th July 2017, 03:23 AM   #193
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Originally Posted by Henri McPhee View Post
I don't believe that remark by a solicitor about wooden ships in the British Navy being obsolete is factually incorrect.
Which was not, of course, the point that was being made; the point being made was that HMS Warrior, in service the year after La Gloire, was a superior ship, and that the Royal Navy did not therefore ignore the superiority of ironclads over wooden warships. Rather, it adopted a very sensible policy of "imitate and overtake", producing superior designs to the initial French ironclads and then relying on superior industrial capacity to build up a significantly superior force.

Originally Posted by Henri McPhee View Post
This is a background quote about the matter from an internet article:
I suggest you read it yourself. It comprehensively refutes the point you were trying to make with your earlier, and very poorly informed, quote.

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Old 12th July 2017, 06:32 AM   #194
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Originally Posted by Henri McPhee View Post
There is an interesting reference to appeasement in general in a 1932 book called English Justice written by a solicitor:
The passage you cited does not reference appeasement.

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Old 14th July 2017, 06:20 PM   #195
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Churchill's Appeasement

Churchill was guilty of appeasement of Stalin. He agreed at Yalta to give Poland to the Soviet Union. This was after fully knowing what a murderous tyrant Stalin was as he had helped to cover up the Katyn massacre for him.
www.heretical.com/miscellx/churchil.html The Soviet Union invaded Poland on September 17 1939 -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Poland
Churchill completely ignored this and appeased Stalin after the soviet-nazi war broke out. Then in 1945 he agrees to Poland being given to Stalin. The entire British Empire (Australia, Canada, Fiji, India, New Zealand, South Africa etc) went to war because Germany invaded Poland and yet Churchill hands it over to Stalin at wars end. It made a mockery of the reason for going to war in the first place -
www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYJ1_RG2xS4
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Old 16th July 2017, 01:55 AM   #196
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Originally Posted by Mondial View Post
Churchill was guilty of appeasement of Stalin. He agreed at Yalta to give Poland to the Soviet Union. This was after fully knowing what a murderous tyrant Stalin was as he had helped to cover up the Katyn massacre for him.
www.heretical.com/miscellx/churchil.html The Soviet Union invaded Poland on September 17 1939 -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Poland
Churchill completely ignored this and appeased Stalin after the soviet-nazi war broke out. Then in 1945 he agrees to Poland being given to Stalin. The entire British Empire (Australia, Canada, Fiji, India, New Zealand, South Africa etc) went to war because Germany invaded Poland and yet Churchill hands it over to Stalin at wars end. It made a mockery of the reason for going to war in the first place -
www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYJ1_RG2xS4
You mean because Churchill complied with Stalin (who occupied Poland in 1944-45 because he wanted to, and had the opportunity), that justifies Hitler's invasion of 1939? Stalin presented his incursion into Poland (justifiably) as intended to evict the Germans from that country; he created a Polish government (of a kind agreeable to himself, needless to say) and committed crimes, but not genocide. Nothing in Stalin's behaviour, or the Allies' response to it, justifies Hitler's unprovoked prior invasion of Poland, or the fiendish atrocities perpetrated there by the Nazis.

Your linked source, by the way, has another piece of alleged information about Churchill, that you have omitted from your post. Here it is.
‘Cunning, no doubt, came to Churchill in the Jewish genes transmitted by his mother Lady Randolph Churchill, née Jenny Jacobson/Jerome.’
ETA Another item from the same source.
International Jewry declared war against Germany in 1933 simply because the German government had removed Jews from influential positions and transferred power back to the German people.

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Old 17th July 2017, 02:20 AM   #197
Henri McPhee
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Originally Posted by Mondial View Post
Churchill was guilty of appeasement of Stalin. He agreed at Yalta to give Poland to the Soviet Union. This was after fully knowing what a murderous tyrant Stalin was as he had helped to cover up the Katyn massacre for him.
www.heretical.com/miscellx/churchil.html The Soviet Union invaded Poland on September 17 1939 -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Poland
Churchill completely ignored this and appeased Stalin after the soviet-nazi war broke out. Then in 1945 he agrees to Poland being given to Stalin. The entire British Empire (Australia, Canada, Fiji, India, New Zealand, South Africa etc) went to war because Germany invaded Poland and yet Churchill hands it over to Stalin at wars end. It made a mockery of the reason for going to war in the first place -
www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYJ1_RG2xS4
I agree that both Roosevelt and Churchill, and even Eisenhower, can be accused of appeasement at Yalta with Stalin in 1945 with regard to Poland and Poland's elections and frontiers. This despite the fact it was obvious that Stalin had treated the Poles abominably by not giving them practical encouragement during the Warsaw uprising, and also Stalin was determined to install a Soviet administration in Poland. The excuse would probably be that it was necessary to keep Russia in the war as it was still not won.

I remember once reading a book by the Polish General Anders who fought with the Allies during the war. He said that the Germans were defeated by General Mud and General Frost, and then he called for Britain and America to march on Moscow. The problem with that was the UK was nearly bankrupt then, and it would not have been supported by public opinion. I think it was sad that no Polish troops or airmen attended the Victory Parade in 1945, possibly in order not to offend Stalin.

Churchill can also be accused of appeasement in agreeing to Roosevelt's demands at the beginning of the war for self determination of the British colonies, and for them to be given to the black people, though I agree we could not have held on to India after the war.

I still think that Putin is not Stalin and that there is no evidence, as the Liberal politician Shirley Williams thinks, that Putin desperately wants to annexe the Baltic states.

There is a bit about this matter in a book called Sir Anthony Eden by Alan Campbell-Johnson published in 1955:

Quote:
It was at Yalta that agreement was finally reached with Russia on the Polish question, and although it is undoubtedly the fact that it would have been impossible to have insisted upon any other solution without imperilling the Grand Alliance at a time when the war was not yet won, many consciences in many of the Allied countries were uneasy The Polish Government in London announced that they refused to accept the conditions.
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Old 17th July 2017, 02:31 AM   #198
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There are people now, including the former British ambassador to Bonn in the 1950s, Sir Roy Denman, who think it was a mistake for Chamberlain to give Poland a guarantee in 1939 and to introduce conscription and that Britain should have stayed out of the war. I find this extraordinary. Britain and even Canada and America would have been next after Russia was defeated, and with Panzers and the Luftwaffe a few miles off of the South Coast of the UK.

Harold Nicholson once wrote that three nobleman at his club had told him they would prefer a Nazi government in London to a Corbyn style government because Corbyn doesn't have a talent for business. They were the real appeasers and not Chamberlain.
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Old 17th July 2017, 04:07 AM   #199
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Originally Posted by Henri McPhee View Post
Churchill can also be accused of appeasement in agreeing to Roosevelt's demands at the beginning of the war for self determination of the British colonies, and for them to be given to the black people, though I agree we could not have held on to India after the war.
Eh? Am I reading this correctly, or do you really mean what you have written? "Giving British colonies to the black people" is "appeasement"?
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Old 17th July 2017, 04:36 AM   #200
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No where near enough perspective is given to the influence of WWI on the decisions made in the run up to WWII. All of the politicians involved clearly remembered WWI. The British and French did not want an all powerful Germany upsetting the balance of power. After allowing it to return to WWI size, they watched as the expansion continued, hoping war could be avoided, but they had to draw a line in the sand, which was Poland. The aim was keep a balance of power so no one would want to fight anyone else and destroy each other. It was like the later MAD policy re nuclear weapons.

I also think that not enough attention is spent on what Hitler actually wanted. His aim was Lebensraum in the east, removal of the Jews and a buffer against communism. He hoped to get that with France and the British keeping out, thinking they would support his fight with communism. There was also enough anti-Semitism in Britain and France for him to think they would not be too concerned about the Jewish people. He did not recognise fascism is just another anti-democratic, repressive, dictatorship, which would also be opposed.
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