I could be all patriotic and create a video of how the RAF would have failed without Canadian support, about how we tried to defend Hong Kong from the Japanese (in vain) and how courageous Canada was for being in the front line during D-Day (and quite ironically, they debarked on the wrong beach!)
But nah, I prefer not. People will always say degrading things.:P
' Wrote:I could be all patriotic and create a video of how the RAF would have failed without Canadian support, about how we tried to defend Hong Kong from the Japanese (in vain) and how courageous Canada was for being in the front line during D-Day (and quite ironically, they debarked on the wrong beach!)
But nah, I prefer not. People will always say degrading things.:P
Actually, I don't really have too much of an issue with that, Herlock. You guys did good then. I'm not sure what's exactly happened to you since then to screw up things up there, other than possibly the French, but Canada used to be quite good. Of course, those of us who grew up in the generation between WWII and the present one today - and by that I mean between 40 and 60 years of age - are trying to figure out what the hell happened to the WORLD today.
' Wrote:In my humble opinion, your video is lacking backgrounds. A lot of.
I know it's easy to go into the direction, everybody goes in, which is in general: Germans (and allies) were the bad, the rest was good. Please don't misunderstand my words here, as I don't want to justify the history. War is always a bad thing, but it's important to understand the reason of wars. (Because this is a very complex topic, I only want to bring up some points, which are significant in my opinion.)
You missed the statement, that Germany didn't start the war because they were all mad or evil. I studied many historical documents and talked to a lot of people about that. My conclusion was: Poland provoked the start of the war with their behaviour against the Germans on their territory. (Which was heavily supported by the UK.) This goes hand in hand with the fact, that Poland received parts of the old German Empire unlawfully. (As it's against the Hague Convention respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land.)
I could talk for hours and bring up a lot of more facts, but I think this would be wrong here.
My only wish would be: please look at both sides before creating such propaganda.
Actually I was going to flame the video, but I gotta flame this post first.
Yes, germans suffered in ww1 and afterwards and the contract of Versailles was what laid the ground for getting Hitler coming to power (althought that issues has nothing to do with hte video itself).
But if you have to say so simplified 'germans werent mad and evil in ww2, it was just war', I will say 'yes they were!'. The whole nazi idiology, in fact, states that being 'good' is for the weak, and that the moral guideline for germany should be the law of the jungle (survival of the fittest). The victorious allies didnt make that up, you can look it up in 'Mein Kampf', speaches of nazis, or any piece of authentic nazi-time propaganda material you find on utube. Maybe the contract of Versailles and the reparation and occupation by the 2 empires (france and britain) that didnt want a third empire sparked hatred and led people to believe in that idiology, but by the standards we have today that idiology is as 'evil' as it gets.
It wasnt 'only' that there was a war, nazi idiology also included:
-euthanasia (I personaly knew a physically handicaped person that was suposed to be gassed, my mother knows a mentally handicapped persons that was to be gassed, and both only survived because people in the villages hid them until the americans arrived)
-racism and antisemitism (all those holocaust denyers are hillarious... look at what nazi propaganda says, look at the 50 million dead in ww2, look at 10 million germans dead, and tell me why the nazis would let the people they hate most live to live a better life than themselves once the allies won, while even feeding them through till the end of the war while they are sending their own 14 year old children into a pointless death for the 'f?hrer')
-systematic murder and discrimination of anyone who didnt agree with them ('degenerate art', any sort of politcal oposition: democrats and communists murdered in concentration camps before the war even started, my mother remembers nazis setting dogs on polish slaves that were forced to work in the fields and whiping them in public)
Maybe you can argue that Stalin wasnt better, but Stalin and Hitler were buddies till Hitler attacked him too. And you did NOT have this sort of thing on a comparable scale in USA, France, or Britain.
Ok now for the Video:
Its a totally dillusional interpretation of the role of Switzerland in WW2, sorry.
I understand you want to be patriotic, may hate nazis, and some swiss like to think so, but switzerland was NOT a bastion against the nazis. They turned back jewish refugees, traded with nazi germany before and during the war, and didnt stand up to them militarily or idiologically. Why didnt the germans invade? Switzerland was not a threat, traded with germany, and represented no strategic interest whatsoever since it was landlocked by nazi allies. Trying to invade it would have been a pointless waste of resources, and fighting them would have been hard to justify by the nazis to the german population in their propaganda. Just because they drew some maps of how an invasion could look doesnt mean they were seriously considering it. The defense ministry in USA probably has the same sort of war-game scenario for Canada and Mexico.
Edit: dont get me wrong, Switzerland didnt have much choice to behave the ay it did. Attacking the Axis powers would have been suicide. What is -really bad- about this video is that it pretends the Swiss won the war for the alies when it didnt even fight. I also think the video is very offensive to great britain, who did not surrender when everything looked hopeless for them and didnt even accept an armistice in that situation, simply because they recognized nazi germany as the beast it was. The world owes Winston Churchil for that, controversial as he may be. Yet you only mention him, the russians (who won the war and suffered beyond our imagination), and the americans (who saved the world from Stalin afterwards) on a sidenote. Instead you represent it as if Swiss was in the same situation as Great Britian and replace Winston Churchil with this swiss guy with a silly hat who's biggest achievement was to stay out of the fight. Like blunt pencil said, people who REALLY fought nazi germany might find that offensive.
first off, nothing in that video is fictional. It's all facts and true. We were the only democracy in Europe and the video says that the Nazi's virtually controlled every country in mainland Europe. Not the entire continent. There was no one else surrounded like we were. I think if people really paid attention and read other posts they wouldn't say repeated things that I already answered.
The refugees. Turn back a page in this thread where I posted stats of the thousands of refugees we took in. Thousands. Every farmable piece of land was used, rations were cut, and it wasn't easy. Even when we couldn't afford to take in more refugees we did, but after a while we do need to live. People had ration cards and all that stuff, and we took in the refugees who fled to us for help, and we gave it to them. Not many other countries did. The United States didn't and they could have taken more to their ability.
Were we a threat? Yes, we were. Idiology plays a big role in this. We're a democracy and are a free country. We took in those who others didn't want. We're a fortress of different people coming together under a common banner. Fascists and Communists tried to recruit, and destroy Switzerland from the inside but failed because we had a stronger will to survive than their will to destroy us. Also, the entire reason for WWII, lebensraum. We had some, Hitler wanted it, but didn't get it.
And yes, they were seriouslyt considering attacking Switzerland. Especially with the aid of the Italiens. The planed atatck was supposed to take place in the summer after D-Day, but like I said already, d-day caused the Axis to divert forces to the western front. Obviously.
The video DOES NOT say we won the war for the allies. Here's a secret, we're NEUTRAL. The allies were as much an enemy as the axis. And both were a threat. The Video is not offensive to great britain at all. I know about churchill, and I give credit to Britain's fight against the axis to him. He was the only one to give out messages and talk to people about victory. Parliament, the king, people wanted to give in and surrender, but Churchill got the country out of it. The difference is that Great Britain waged war against the Axis and wanted Victory. Switzerland managed to stay neutral. Victory was worlds away for us, we knew we couldn't win against an Axis assault, but we'd give them hell before they would have taken over, and that's what we prepared for. We did fight germany, and we fought the allies as well. Planes on both sides, if they flew over switzerland, were shot down. The Germans sold us Messerschmidt's, and we made them better and shot down German planes with them. They asked for the planes to be returned but we refused. We were a safe haven for those who needed a way out but were land-locked in Europe. We were a safe haven for Allied pilots who flew missions over Europe and knew they couldn't get back to Britain or where ever they launched from. Or maybe they didn't want to go back. They knew they could land in Switzerland and be safe.
American Newspapers had articles on the bravery of the Swiss, that against all odds, there was still freedom in Europe, despite totalitarian Axis control. If Switzerland had fallen, democracy would have fallen and people around the world would have lost hope. But we kept the spirit of freedom and liberty alive and showed the world that we weren't going to give it up.
It's easy to say you would never have given up witout an invasion actually taking place. I'm sure the French said the same in 1939.
The Polish, however, fought for the entirety of the war, in spite of actual occupation.
As to being the only democracy in Europe, that is simply incorrect. Britain fell under this, having democratic elections, as did Ireland, Norway, Sweden and others, such as Malta (which was under British rule). And these are only the countries that weren't occupied. There were others which were occupied with democratic traditions.
The potential for offence lies in the claim that armed neutrality scaring off the Nazis is something to be proud of, when it isn't. As you yourself claimed, Germany was going to invade, but the good fortune of Allied intervention in Normandy prevented this.
Effectively, by your own argument, Switzerland was saved by the Allies (inadvertantly), who then did nothing for the Allies, and even shot at their planes.
I tried to say it... I dont blame the swiss for doing anything wrong -how could I... hell, I'm german. I just think that the way you made that video, it looks like the swiss played a central roll in the defeat of nazi germany. It didnt. If it did anything, swiss neutrality helped the german war economy. Dictators around the world have been storing the money they plunder from their empoverished populations in swiss banks for decades, making Switzerland a rich country. Thanks to the great 'neutrality' which also kept them pretty much unharmed in WW2. You are better informed that me about refugees probably, but its a fact that many jewish refugees were turned back at the border, and the number of how many people were turned back was never protocolized. Again, thats not only a swiss problem, but of every nation. The problem is your video says the swiss are the greatest and did everything right and saved everyone through their greatness.. and thats simply not true.
I would say if USA, Britain, or Russia made the same sort of one-sided video with flags everywhere and pompous music and statues of the supreme leader, I would also object although their countries did a hell of a lot more to end nazism. Yet I havent seen such a one-sided propaganda movie from them yet, because they dont need to prove to anyone how much they fought nazism. And if they did maybe I wouldnt voice it so openly though, because those countries fought against nazi germany. Swiss didnt. Im not saying they should have gone on a righteous suicide-war. Just dont pretend they did when they didnt.
' Wrote:Of course, those of us who grew up in the generation between WWII and the present one today - and by that I mean between 40 and 60 years of age - are trying to figure out what the hell happened to the WORLD today.
Include a literate 21 year old over here.
Been here since Discovery 4.77 (lurk mode engaged)
Zapp Wrote:I have recently met and discussed with Atalawohisdi the trader that flies the Caribe. Just so everyone knows, I engaged in Sigma 13. He flies through half the system before going back to New Berlin, where he cruises from one side of the system to the other, hugging the sun as close as he can. All the while, he flies near Battleships trying to scrape me off. I finally send out the white flag, and move back to Sigma 13. However, it was a ruse, and he bit. Knowing his trade route, I interdicted the trade lane and the chase began anew. It ended, an hour after it began, with me retreating, out of Countermeasures and getting very irritated.
He kept boasting how he has never been caught; I'd like to see him beat until he begs to pay, then beaten some more.
The world has always been this way, the present world state is no better than the years in between WW2 and now. The Cuban missile crisis, Vietnam, Korea, Bosnia, Libya, Nigeria, Apartheid, Pol Pot, this list goes on and on. The present world state is pretty much how it has always been, i.e a mess.
But really, have you noticed? *almost* every single 1900-2000 decade has been a war fought? Its very scary.
more like one every year. :(
I'd just like to say that it's a good video. I don't know much about the swiss, only their actions, and not their intents or ideology. Obviously, I am then unable to make an intelligent post. If anybody would like to have a discussion about world war II, create your own thread. This isn't the place to talk about it. This thread's about a video, not a war.