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At some point I would like to do an article on the political situatiions and decisions made during WWII, although it has to be said, don't look for it soon, entire shelves in libraries are dedicated to that single subject, so planning, typing and checking will take quite sometime. Still, I think it will be worth it. I have noticed that subjects like the Blitz (not necessarily here, but in general), give the facts but rarely a context. A simple example of that is the SHAEF decision to start bombing German towns once German forces had started to be forced back. Yes, the bombing did help reduce the German War Machine by hitting munitions factories and such like, but the fact is that there was no planned targeting, obviously no pin-point targeting because such a thing didn't exist, and very much a feeling of justified revenge for the Blitz from the British. What happened. 500,000 German civilians were killed in the bombing. That's a large figure. Now think of it as being one hundred and sixty seven government sanctioned 911's. Suddenly its a '''very''' big number, and that's what I mean by context. In fact, the bombing of German towns and the Blitz had a huge part to play in the Geneva Conventions ban on deliberatly targeting civilians. Yet you go into a pub and ask a young 20-something what they know of the Dresden bombings and see just how little they know.[[User:Ieuan|Ieuan]] 00:58 7/Nov/08 GMT
At some point I would like to do an article on the political situatiions and decisions made during WWII, although it has to be said, don't look for it soon, entire shelves in libraries are dedicated to that single subject, so planning, typing and checking will take quite sometime. Still, I think it will be worth it. I have noticed that subjects like the Blitz (not necessarily here, but in general), give the facts but rarely a context. A simple example of that is the SHAEF decision to start bombing German towns once German forces had started to be forced back. Yes, the bombing did help reduce the German War Machine by hitting munitions factories and such like, but the fact is that there was no planned targeting, obviously no pin-point targeting because such a thing didn't exist, and very much a feeling of justified revenge for the Blitz from the British. What happened. 500,000 German civilians were killed in the bombing. That's a large figure. Now think of it as being one hundred and sixty seven government sanctioned 911's. Suddenly its a '''very''' big number, and that's what I mean by context. In fact, the bombing of German towns and the Blitz had a huge part to play in the Geneva Conventions ban on deliberatly targeting civilians. Yet you go into a pub and ask a young 20-something what they know of the Dresden bombings and see just how little they know.[[User:Ieuan|Ieuan]] 00:58 7/Nov/08 GMT
::well the Brits themselves had little to do with the war before spring 1940 as well (it was called a phoney war). And the Soviets were on the Nazi side! Starting summer 1940 the US economy was mobilized into the war effort and the US drafted millions of men. As for leadership, the defeat of the Nazis did not happen in 1939, 40 or 41--in fact they were winning until the US entered the war and turned it around. Sorry about the Germans in the cities--they should have moved to the villages, as they were ordered to do by the USAAF and the RAF. They stayed in cities because they were building tanks and guns there. [[User:RJJensen|RJJensen]] 20:31, 6 November 2008 (EST)