The biggest "LIES" the movies ever told me.

[skeptic]

As I recall from about 10,000 programs about the Battle of Britain (more guys died in movies about World War II than died in the actual war itself) it seems to me that Hitler tried to break Britain by bombing it with V1 buzz bombs (early crude cruise missiles) and V2 rockets. These were crude terror weapons which could not be accurately targeted. They just blew up buildings at random. The British people showed their mettle by surviving this attack and demonstrating their will to fight on. What this has to do with the actual military progress of the war or how it could even conceivably be called a turning point is beyond me. Please explain what this had to do with Britain actually winning the military battles which eventually defeated Hitler. I'm sure you'd agree that Britain could not have pulled off the D-Day invasion without America. They hardly had much of an air force until America showed up. They were not only not winning the Battle of the Atlantic, but their lifeline was the shipping from America which kept them alive at all. Then how would they have defeated the Germans? We bailed them out just as we did in World War I and in the Cold War. At least they stood by us in Iraq. Well at least Tony Blair did. I don't think most of the rest of them were happy about it.

[kexodusc]

Those 10,000 programs are pretty vague recollections at best, then. Battle of Britain was Hitler's first defeat. It crippled his air force, and resulted in numerous counter-attacks on Germany from the U.K. It was hardly civilians surving bombs.
Granted, Britain probably wouldn't have won a full fledged invasion of Germany without the rest of the world's help, especially ours, but that comes down to the definition of victory then.

Skeptic, why are you so pissed off at France? Since our intelligence, military, and leaders have basically admitted incompetence and started the blame game with the whole Iraq thing, wouldn't that justify France sitting out? Seems to me if anything, we owe them an apology for not trusting their clearly superior intelligence and threat assessments.

[skeptic]

"Seems to me if anything, we owe them an apology for not trusting their clearly superior intelligence and threat assessments."

What the hell are you talking about kexodusc? Their intelligence believed the same thing ours did. They didn't want to go to war with Saddam Hussein because they were making a tens of billions off of the graft and illegal deals they were making around the UN trade restrictions. The bribes went all the way up to Chirac's inner circle of cronies. Furthermore, they will do anything to challenge the US because their inferior civilization has waned to the point of near insignificance. They still have dreams of the way it was a couple of hundred years ago. I lived in France. I know France. France is no friend of the United States.

As for Britain winning the war aginst Germany you must be joking? It took the American submarine fleet a couple of years after we entered in the Battle of the Atlantic to kill off enough U-boats just to keep the supply lines going. Montgommery was bailed out by American troops again and again and again. On his own he probably would have been killed or captured sooner or later. Even with the vast American Air Force combining with The RAF to pound Germany day and night, losses of aircraft were immense. Had the RAF had to go it alone against German air defences, they would have been completely anhillated. At one point, it got so bad that the life expectancy of an RAF pilot in active combat was 11 days. They were running out of pilots even faster than they were running out of planes. No they could not have defeated Hitler on the ground or in the air themselves in continental Europe and were it not for the American navy and merchant marine, the U boats would have strangled them. Without America's help they could not win and Germany could not lose.

[kexodusc]

"Seems to me if anything, we owe them an apology for not trusting their cleaAl Samoud 2 rly superior intelligence and threat assessments."

What the hell are you talking about kexodusc? Their intelligence believed the same thing ours did. They didn't want to go to war with Saddam Hussein because they were making a tens of billions off of the graft and illegal deals they were making around the UN trade restrictions. .

10's of billions? WTF? Making numbers up now? Why stop there?
France's intelligence only confirmed the existance of those "Al Samoud 2" missiles and other NON-WMD type weaponry...yes, in violation of the UN restrictions on Iraq...but definitely not bio or nuclear weoponry that was capable of reaching America or even France.

The bribes went all the way up to Chirac's inner circle of cronies. Furthermore, they will do anything to challenge the US because their inferior civilization has waned to the point of near insignificance. They still have dreams of the way it was a couple of hundred years ago. I lived in France. I know France. France is no friend of the United States..

You won't get an argument from me on any of these points. But to put things into perspective, I lived in France, too. Most of the French don't hate America, far from it. Most could give a rats ass either way. The politicians...well that's another matter. But even you can't deny that the US is far from squeaky clean when it comes to bribes and the UN or that there were financial considerations in the decision to go to war. We can't be hypocritical here. We insult and make life miserable for them as much as they do us. France isn't so different from us in this regard.

As for Britain winning the war aginst Germany you must be joking?

This I never said, or suggested...shame on you for suggesting otherwise...are you looking for a Flame War or something? Slow down. This discussion began because too many movies make it seem like the USA single-handedly won WWII...U-571 for example...The fact is, most scholars and historians are in agreement that Hitler would have lost one way or another without our direct involvement with troops and weaponry. I stand by this claim. I won't speculate as to how the war would have ended, or how many years or decades it would have taken. Hitler took it on the chin in going to Britain and Russia too soon though, suffered pretty bad losses, and was not going to rule the world or even all of Europe at this point...It would have been impossible for Hitler to win no matter how many u-boats he had. Sure, Germany was a fortress that was hard to penetrate...and definitely, Britain never would have marched into Hitler's back yard without America. I never said they could.

Without America's help they could not win and Germany could not lose.

At best this is impossible to prove, at worst, it is just wrong.

[skeptic]

I remind you or inform you in case you didn't know, it was the French that built the nuclear reactor Israel bombed and if Israel hadn't bombed it, by 1991 Iraq would surely have had nuclear weapons.

Even if France didn't have 5 million arabs living within its borders whom it has to cater to politically in some degree, it always has been anti American and anti Israeli. That goes back as Far as DeGaulle who BTW also tried to break up Canada when he stood in front of the crowd in Quebec and shouted the famous phrase "Viva Quebec Libre." You don't have to be a logician to put all of the pieces together including the very words of Chirac himself to come to the conclusion that France will oppose the US at every opportunity just for the sake of being a pain in the rear. That alone was why going to the UN Security Council was a total waste of time. Russia and to some degree China are the same.

As for losing the war to Germany, I don't care what kind of spin overly generous historians sympathetic to Britain put on it. It was an isolated group of islands with not much in the way of resources up against a vast continental power with hundreds of millions of slaves producing for them. Had America remained truely neutral Britain's resources would have dwindled to nothing. And most important, like the French, they weren't very smart or they never would have gotten into the second world war in the first place. They sowed the seeds of that war and nurtured them themselves. They have noone else to blame for it. ( I thought you said you wrote a PHD thesis on this, what happened?)

[kexodusc]

PHD thesis? WTF? Where'd you pull that out of? France trying to divide and conquer Canada. I guess that makes sense.

Alright Skeptic, you win, I was wrong. The UK would be nothing if not for us and the world would be speaking German. I withdraw any earlier claims to the contrary.

[skeptic]

America bailed Europe out three times in the twentieth centruy. The last time took almost fifty years, cost trillions of dollars of American taxpayer money and at one point nearly resulted in the end of all life on earth. (That was the Cuban missile crisis in 1962.) And what is the gratitude they show for it? They treat us like $hiT. Our grandparents would be turning over in their graves if they knew what kind of crap they dish out to us and what we take from them. Frankly, the next time, I say let them go to hell. And judging from the pending collapse in their economies, their aging populations and demographic time bombs, and the large number of legal and illegal immigrants they are getting whom they desparately need but hate, it won't be long.