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General Discussion => The Speakeasy: OOG/Off-topic Discussion => Topic started by: Nicoletta Mithra on 12 Jul 2014, 15:53
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So, you have heared that after the snowden thing last year and the US listening into Chancellor Merkels handy, there have been now found two people apparently spying on the german government for the US intelligence services. Germany reacted with asking the top US intelligence officer to leave, US/German relations are frosted.
(If you haven't, I think this BBC news report (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgXXXJk9y9w) covers it pretty well.)
The question here is, how do you people (especially from the US) see this? Do you care at all, do you think the German government overreacts?
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I think anyone who expects countries not to spy on each other regardless of relations is a complete moron. This happens everywhere, and the only reason any noise is being made about it is because people got caught doing it.
Frankly, I would be surprised if Germany's government truthfully didn't know about most of this shit and wasn't partly using Snowden's "revelations" as an excuse to act indignant for the sake of the populace.
I would also be quite surprised if Germany didn't have its own spies over here. Let's face it: politicians are liars by profession. They can say "we aren't doing X" all they want, but it has no bearing on whether or not they actually are doing X.
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I think anyone who expects countries not to spy on each other regardless of relations is a complete moron. This happens everywhere, and the only reason any noise is being made about it is because people got caught doing it.
Maybe true: But does that mean that if you get catched the party you offended shouldn't/has no right to complain in your opinion?
Also, if Germany has spies in the US, they certainly seem to do a better job in not getting caught. :P
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Most US citizens, myself included, don't care if our government spies on other governments. Hell, most of us think it's a smart idea. Even allied countries can become enemy countries at the turn of regime or even simple policy change. It's happened before, and it can/is/will happen again. Not spying on other countries is tantamount to willful ignorance.
The only thing US citizens honestly care about is how much our own government spies on us. There are lines that have been crossed, and we are angry about that. But do we mind Germany being spied on? No, of course not.
Also, if Germany has spies in the US, they certainly seem to do a better job in not getting caught. :P
Yes, they do, but Germany doesn't have a whistleblower pointing us in the right direction of where to find them.
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Well, it'd be (and in the case of spying on the german government is) a big waste of money. But with political channels open to russia and industry interests in the middle-east we're basically terrorists anyways. And also on the verge of transforming into a surveillance-happy fascist police state with the next few elections, with all that nice army gear we give out to our cops. Wait, I think I'm mixing a few bits something up.
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surveillance-happy fascist police state with the next few elections, with all that nice army gear we give out to our cops.
Well sign me up, but you fuckers better get it right this time. Don't wanna have to burn Lapland. Again.
PS. No attacking Russia during the winter this time, k?
PPS. I think you are being sarcastic about US aren't you... No fun ._.
PPPS. Waiting for 4th reich, with 100% less genocide this time.
PPPPS. But with even more stylish uniforms.
PPPPPS. And with spaceships and lasers and shit.
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Well, it'd be (and in the case of spying on the german government is) a big waste of money. But with political channels open to russia and industry interests in the middle-east we're basically terrorists anyways. And also on the verge of transforming into a surveillance-happy fascist police state with the next few elections, with all that nice army gear we give out to our cops. Wait, I think I'm mixing a few bits something up.
Nope, I'd say you have a fairly firm grasp of the situation.
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SOMEONE has to make sure ze Germans are not hogging all the FREEDUM.
On a more serious note though, the whole X doesn't spy on Y is total BS. Everyone wants to know everything about everyone else. Nation states are literally worse in character and actions than the most inane of high school drama-llamas.
In this case, the Germans can use this "offense" to score political points on the US and potentially get some diplomatic concessions. That is until some other offense can be drummed up to send it back the other way. Maybe the US will take offense to the 7-1 drubbing of the Brazilian team, call Germany poor sports and try and score some points back that way? Who knows.
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I am under the impression - which I am not sure is totally accurate, but have seen it described this way a few times - that spying on nominal allies commonplace, and when such agents are discovered by the nations they are spying on they are quietly removed, prosecuted, and returned to their home countries. The reason this has become international news is the manner in which the story was broken.
Assuming this is accurate, the embarrassment for us remains that we have such poor security that stuff like this continues to leak, rather than being able to behave ourselves quietly and professionally like most other countries.
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Also, if Germany has spies in the US, they certainly seem to do a better job in not getting caught. :P
Yes, they do, but Germany doesn't have a whistleblower pointing us in the right direction of where to find them.
One more reason why the German intelligence service does an apparently better job, no? Whistleblowers should be avoided in the spying business. ;)
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http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-11-18/australia-spied-on-indonesian-president-leaked-documents-reveal/5098860
It happens. No one is going to try and fuck up important security and economic relationships because of it, especially in the case of Germany and the United States.
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Also, if Germany has spies in the US, they certainly seem to do a better job in not getting caught. :P
Yes, they do, but Germany doesn't have a whistleblower pointing us in the right direction of where to find them.
One more reason why the German intelligence service does an apparently better job, no? Whistleblowers should be avoided in the spying business. ;)
I'd be, if not the first, certainly in the line to descry some of the things my country gets up to, if only because they hurt me. But as for spying? Well, the sort of person who finds the U.S. spying to be somehow immoral seems to me to be rather naive. Everyone spies on everyone. It's not just to find out things that others don't want you to know, it's also to make sure that what they are telling you is true.
Oddly enough, when we found ten Russian spies in the U.S. a couple years ago, no one seemed to think anything of it. When the U.S. does it, of course, only then is it "wrong".
It happens so often now that it's just standard. Expel some people, whine piteously about how "we are supposed to be friends", and then try to get something while hoping they never find yours.
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As long as they use that as an excuse to blow that dystopic free trade transatlantic agreement out of the sky AGAIN, i'm perfectly happy.
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Vikarion, the US and Russia aren't supposedly friends. Germany and the US is another story. With the words of Obama who told the German audience: peace and progress "require allies who will listen to each other, learn from each other and, most of all, trust each other."
Guess he meant 'listen to each other' and 'learn from each other' not the way a German would understand 'trust each other'.
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The below is not meant as an excuse, but as a description of how it may work. I have no actual insight into the matter. It is all hypothesis.
I do not think the US and Germany have systematic spying programs on each other. Like the US-UK, there is significant cross-talk at numerous levels of government between the two nations on a myriad of topics at numerous classification levels.
Put another way, I do not think the US policy is "Spy on Germany," which I think it is for Russia, China, etc.
I think the NSA was/is listening/collecting intelligence on everybody.
I think the German counter-espionage is very good. German has lots of practice thanks to the Cold War.
I think that US intelligence agencies have the task of figuring out how much Snowden has without revealing possibly unleaked details. It is hard to have cross-talk about details you do not wish to divulge. Telling the Germans you know that Radicals A are planning an attack on Target 1, how you did it is another (especially if it causes diplomatic issues).
I think the US intelligence operations in Germany probably have a budget closely linked to Cold War vs present day needs. When you need to spy on East German, the Soviet Union, and the rest of the Warsaw Pact activities from West Berlin, you get a big budget. I would not be surprised if a lot of the US intelligence infrastructure in Germany is linked to those out-of-date missions.
In a resource rich situation, 25,000 Euros is a drop in the bucket, especially when it likely achieves the desire goal.
I doubt the low-level operational detail that has become the scandal was briefed to the President ahead of time.
Vikarion, the US and Russia aren't supposedly friends. Germany and the US is another story. With the words of Obama who told the German audience: peace and progress "require allies who will listen to each other, learn from each other and, most of all, trust each other."
Guess he meant 'listen to each other' and 'learn from each other' not the way a German would understand 'trust each other'.
Pro-tip: President Obama is very good at telling people what they want to hear. He is also never just speaking to the audience in front of him.
Also, the statement is correct. It is a question of who needs to work more at listening, learning, and trusting the other.
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Vikarion, the US and Russia aren't supposedly friends. Germany and the US is another story. With the words of Obama who told the German audience: peace and progress "require allies who will listen to each other, learn from each other and, most of all, trust each other."
Guess he meant 'listen to each other' and 'learn from each other' not the way a German would understand 'trust each other'.
Heh, nice one.
Yes, it does make it a little more awkward when the person you are spying to is allied to you. But, on the other hand, it's also not uncommon. Consider the fact that Israel, whose biggest ally is the U.S., still loves to spy on us.
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German intelligence has been more than happy to piggyback on our NSA tech for spying on their own citizens and giving us assistance, so these latest 'revelations' shouldn't surprise anyone in the slightest.
One thing I can guarantee is that none of us know the tiniest tip of the iceberg about what is actually going on and whom is involved.
These sorts of public intelligence purgings are far more often about being well timed politics than any new information or revelations.
Realpolitik time, the US has a substantial interest in how Germany placates or cozies up to Russia. It's harder for the US to influence the Russian oil market to our benefit when Western Europe remains their largest and most dedicated customer, afraid to bite the hand that feeds (and warms) them. Since most of the countries Russia is 'selling' its gas to aren't going to piss them off, it's been harder for the US to move them on any number of issues. Listening to every little thing the Germans are up to makes sense to get a better handle on the situation.
Public 'outrage' over any of this from the political establishment borders on the comical.
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Oh and I had to add:
ALL UR SECRETZ R BELONG TO US
:bear:
We will use this intelligence to discover how to make Americans give a shit about soccer and how to assemble a winning squad that shows up to more than ten minutes of a game.
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To expand a bit more, and that is exactly as Orange said, hypothesis, and what I feel.
Firstly, while the US empire has lost some ground on the material world past Vietnam, Afghanistan, Irak, Sommalia, etc, they still conserve their full supremacy in the immaterial one for the simple reason that they literally created it (being the world of information, virtual data, etc), as the Snowden case showed again.
Not only with the transatlantic treaty, the european countries have lost since long their power and supremacy on material matters, seem to have lost most notions of power, except maybe Germany that might have actually understood what are the stakes, and how power can be projected through economic matters. In France, the last one still aware of that was De Gaulle, and it ended up in 1969.
We have european elections without any debates, where everyone seems happy not to have one, where everyone seems disinterested. We prefer to talk about football teams and send people to circus games rather than speak about how people will actually feed and live in the coming years. When it has come to that level of democracy, it seems we have lost our dignity to state a thought and take actual international positions when it comes to the american umbrella.
And we are losing it the same way in the immaterial world with the total absence of debate and reflexion following the Snowden case. And the only condition for that to happen is that Europe actually takes its future into consideration, and where cutting the link with the USA so that Europeans actually recognize themselves in their own identity and that they are the actual masters of their economic, political, cultural and religious future, instead of depending of a declining empire like the US.
And I think that only Germany currently, even if very timidly, is vaguely aware of that, and that's what might be behind their current doings.
I'm not saying this in a negative or positive judgement of value regarding relationships with America, but that Europe has lost all will to actually weigh internationally for long and stand as equals rather than into pure submission everytime.
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I'm not saying this in a negative or positive judgement of value regarding relationships with America, but that Europe has lost all will to actually weigh internationally for long and stand as equals rather than into pure submission everytime.
Very good points Lyn. I'm not European but I have to imagine the Western Europeans rightly still have some issues and hesitancy with having "weight" internationally considering the last few world wars / colonialism they spearheaded.
Perhaps easier for them to assign responsibility (and blame) to the US for many of these things.
It's a difficult position for Europe, on the one hand they might be temped to be interested in taking more direct control of their security apparatus/military/etc, but on the other hand their public seems to have less than zero interest in either paying for or participating in military adventures.
It's also an interesting position for them to be in, they can champion all sorts of anti war/ diplomatic solutions while at the same time relying on the US for military security blanket.
There are plenty in America who would like nothing more than to completely withdraw to our continent and let the rest of the world solve their own problems, to cease providing military buffers and regional security. Some of these points are very valid.
But on the other hand power abhors a vacuum. If we didn't have a bunch of aircraft carriers and military bases in the Pacific, the Japanese / S Koreans / N Koreans / Chinese / Taiwanese would 100% be in a military arms race with disastrous consequences.
Eastern Europe would look much, much different right now if NATO were to dissolve and Russia were left to act however it pleased. It would probably not take long at all before Germany and the rest of Europe re-armed themselves and we'll be right back to the last 50 times that the Europeans killed a few million people on each other's doorsteps.
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Silas, I think you US people have your very own view on things, mostly shaped by the fact that you never had to experience any real wars obn your own soil. I'm quite sure that the situation in Europe at large and easter Europe in particular doesn't depend as much on the US involvement as you make it sound there.
Also, I don't think at all that Europe has lost its will to 'weigh internationally', I think that it rather has a more mature approach to international politics than the US, who apparently still think that all problems can be solved by military intervention, when history showed that this isn't the case. Also, Europe doesn't solve internal problems by ignoring them and focusing on external power projection, like the US seems to do in my opinion. And it's an open secret that the US has at least as many internal peoblems as Europe.
I'm quite happy that by US standards, I live in a communist paradise.
All that said, if the US has a vested interest in Germany not 'cozying up' with Russia, then they do a damn fine job with their dilletant spying to alienate Germany from themselves. I don't see how there is a commensurate risk/benefit ratio given the way how incompetent the US is in it's damage control, if not already the intelligence gathering.
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Speaking about post world wars, which left a definite scar in European history (mostly WW2, WW1 was just a bloodier variant and conclusion of the war of 1870), the result of that war probably had already a great impact on the already completely isolationist USA before they were provoked by Japan into the war, was nothing compared to what most western Europe got out of it. It may have brought beneficial ideals depending on the eye of the beholder - but for me it's definitely beneficial - ideals that despise war more than ever and look to alternative, more modern and enlightened society ideals (which could be part of post modern ideologies part of the global western ideological spearhead) , but it also brought a complete refusal to look conflict right up in the eyes, playing instead the ostriches when the inevitable happens. Current society absolutely despises conflict, especially in Western Europe, and that also means that when it comes to project power and actually understand that it's precisely because of the current american power supremacy that we live the lives we have, being an elite that is nothing but a minority in a world still full of people and countries opposing post modernism, be it traditional nationalists like Putin or fundamentalist nutjobs, I can safely say that we still reap more profit than anyone else. And that's precisely thanks to western power remaining the supremacy in the world, now threatened by the chinese as well as other powers.
I also don't think that participating in military adventures is the direct defining vector of Power anymore. That's still part of it, but most of it now resides in economic and memetic/information/media warfare (aka the material vs the immaterial worlds). I mean, even in the case of France we still take part in a lot of conflicts, mostly in Africa, and that is done very quietly and professionally where nobody ever talks about it, except when it is for American involvement like in Lybia, or recently in Mali because terrorist islamic fundamentalists are involved (and suddenly it becomes all over the media). It's still a feeble will to project power to defend our own interests and pillage Africa for what's still there (raw resources like Areva mines and also cultural influence, to the contrary of all old english colonies that didn't work the same way at all). That's not that people do not want that we go to war, they shrug it off and do not really care. It's the job of the military and they do it, but it has become so disconnected that well... They just started to call for a return of the troops sent in Afghanistan because that has never been considered "our" war and started to seem pointless. There is a huge distrust in America, and I bet that most people do not like the US very much, mostly out of prejudice I believe. Not getting involved in the second war in Irak was probably the most clever move we did, and at the same time, was disastrous on our capacity to project power as well and comforted us in the current position we hold as europeans. But that's just military, stuck up in old doctrines instead of focusing where the current power really lies (economy, influence, and information).
But the real question is why people do not like the US in the world ? It was not the case before Vietnam, when their storytelling machine choked and knelt a bit before going full speed again. It's a question of double standards, when always presented as the keeper of freedom, human rights and democracy, and still getting more and more disconnected with the ideals it continues to project with failures like Irak, and others. USA are often viewed where I live as the biggest hypocrites in the world, and i'm pretty sure that trend takes its roots in a certain discontinuity between the surgarcoat, and what really lies under.
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the fact that you never had to experience any real wars obn your own soil.
You may wish to re-phrase this statement, as it is patently false.
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the fact that you never had to experience any real wars obn your own soil.
You may wish to re-phrase this statement, as it is patently false.
British burn Washington (https://www.google.com/search?q=british+burned+washington&tbm=isch&ei=fCLDU_KvD4XqoASc9oHwDg) in 1814 (taking the capital of a dispersed nation is not as effective as doing against a more consolidated nation)
1860-1865 was a bitch of war. (https://www.google.com/search?q=Civil+War+atlanta&rlz=1C1CHFX_enUS442US442&es_sm=122&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=VB_DU8G8DNPYoAT194EI&ved=0CDsQsAQ&biw=1093&bih=787#q=american%20civil%20war%20destruction&revid=1702383217&tbm=isch&imgdii=_) (Death count: ~625,000 Americans.)
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I think you asked a bunch of Americans how we feel about spying on your country, and did not like the answer.
I'm sorry, but we as normal citizens are more concerned with those internal problems you've hinted at. We really don't care that your country got spied on. We care that we're getting spied on, by our own government.
Those in this thread who have provided justifications for it were probably trying to give you a more satisfying answer for debate that you may have been seeking - but I doubt they worry half as much about Germany being friendly with Russia as they do about the NSA tapping their emails and mobile data without warrant.
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For what it's worth, I'm one American, of at least some, who very much wishes that we would sever all alliances and military cooperation with Europe and the Middle East. Contrary to popular belief, we are a net exporter of oil, and quite frankly, there's almost certainly nothing Western Europe or Eastern Europe has that would be worth (economically, to the United States) going to war with Russia or China over.
As for if I'm concerned about the NSA, the CIA, or any other American agency spying on you...well, no. I don't want them spying on me - we have a right to privacy here. But I don't expect other countries to stop spying on us, and I don't consider it unusual. If you think that your country is the special snowflake that should be exempt from realpolitik, that's wonderful for you, but it does nothing for anyone else.
That said, spying does not indicate ill intent. It often indicates a worry about another's intent. In the case of Germany, that's historically warranted, as with many other European countries. For all that the U.S. gets shit on, and sometimes deservedly so, it's not like it has some sort of patent on occasionally deciding to go gallivanting off on some truly nutty adventure.
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Katrina, it's not that I don't like what I percieve as answers given to to how people feel about US spying on Germany. E.g. I have nothing against the answer at all which you sketch there. To me it's quite interesting to hear that USAmerican citizens apparently worry more about the NSA tapping into their private stuff than international politics. And I greatly appreciate answers to that or similar effect.
What seems quite interesting to me is the difference in mentality there. I'm quite sure that a lot of Germans would think that it is wrong for German intelligence agencies to spy on allied contries. It's not like the NSA merely spied on our goverment. We have a right to privacy over here as well and the Germans I know of are as indignated that the NSA seems to ignore that right in the US as they don't like that they're ignoring it here. In 'the German mind' they should respect the right to privacy in general, regardless of location. There seems to be a difference in mentality there between USAmericans and Germans that seems to me to explain why USAmericans don't seem to understand the outrage of the German side. And by the way, I don't think that we're morons because of that. It's not that we don't think that it does happen, but rather that it shouldn't happen. Maybe Germans see a more stark contrast between what is and what should be and also place more value on the latter than people in the US? Just as a thought to explain the differences in view, adding to the past in regard to spying as covered in the BBC news thingy I linked.
So, no problem with the answers in that regard, it's not that I expect USAmericans to care and am grumpy if they don't. Rather the answers in that regard were interesting in my opinion and gave me food for thought. :) Thanks for that!
But then I get a bit agitated if people tell me I'm supposed to be thankful that the US is spying on the German government and me, because else the Europeans would slaughter one another. Maybe instead of reacting to those posts, I should've rather thanked the people that made all the other posts - which were in the majority in my eyes - that were enlightening on how you people see the issue I was interested to hear opinions about.
So, what I really take issue with was imho a trajectory off topic. Still, I want to say a few things to that off-topic trajectory.
As to my comment that the US had never to experience a real war on their own soil:
What I meant is that the US basically never had to experience foreign forces invading them in a ground war covering any area covering a substantial part of an average US member state.
The british burned Washington, but the War of 1812 was laregely confined to a) the Atlantic ocean, b) Canadian territories and the Great Lakes and c) the Gulf coast.There were inland raids along rivers, but those were aimed at cities along them and didn't take the form of foreign forces occupying any larger patches of land, afaik.
The American Civil War didn't see any foreign forces invade the US. Doesn't mean it wasn't bad, true. But it's different from foreign forces invading you in a ground war.
So, the only war that comes to my mind where US troops had to deal with foreign troops in a ground war covering large quantities of area is the American Revolutionary War and that wasn't foreign troops invading the US either, strictly speaking.
If I look at Europe, there have been a lot more wars with foreign forces invading in ground war even since the formation of the US.
Now, this is not to say that the US is any worse than the EU for that reason and in fact I think it's quite a good thing if one doesn't have frequently foreign forces invading nations in large scale gound war. Still, that Europe has a history of such stretching up to at least the generation of my grandparents lead to quite a different view on wars in Europe than the US and I think that part of why Europeans see war quite different from USAmericans.
So, the point I really want to make is: Europeans have a quite different history in regard to the wars they had to experience, how those were conducted in their contries, the area of their contries which was covered by those wars and thus how much they were effected by said wars from antiquity onwards to modern times. This goes hand in hand with the US being quite a young nation compared to European nations which have unbroken or broken histories stretching back into late antiquity.
This history translates to another way to deal with wars and that Europeans are more hesitant to project power through armed conflict than the US is quite a lot informed by that history and experiences and not so much - in my opinion - a loss of will to 'weigh in internationally'. For example the EU/its member states pour a lot more money into ODA then the US. If we had no will to weigh in internationally, I'm sure we wouldn't put that much money in there. Europe - and especially Germany just prefers other instruments than waging war.
And I'm quite sure that those are at least as conducive to peaceful Europe as the US threat of military intervention.
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As to my comment that the US had never to experience a real war on their own soil:
What I meant is that the US basically never had to experience foreign forces invading them in a ground war covering any area covering a substantial part of an average US member state.
The british burned Washington, but the War of 1812 was laregely confined to a) the Atlantic ocean, b) Canadian territories and the Great Lakes and c) the Gulf coast.There were inland raids along rivers, but those were aimed at cities along them and didn't take the form of foreign forces occupying any larger patches of land, afaik.
The American Civil War didn't see any foreign forces invade the US. Doesn't mean it wasn't bad, true. But it's different from foreign forces invading you in a ground war.
So, the only war that comes to my mind where US troops had to deal with foreign troops in a ground war covering large quantities of area is the American Revolutionary War and that wasn't foreign troops invading the US either, strictly speaking.
Now, if I look at Europe, there have been a lot more wars with foreign forces invading in ground war even since the formation of the US.
Now, this is not to say that the US is any worse than the EU for that reason and in fact I think it's quite a good thing if one doesn't have frequently foreign forces invading nations in large scale gound war. Still, that Europe has a history of such stretching up to at least the generation of my grandparents lead to quite a different view on wars in Europe than the US and I think that part of that is that Europeans see war quite different from USAmericans.
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And I'm quite sure that those are at least as conducive to peaceful Europe as the US threat of military intervention.
First off, I understand your point. However, I think it is important to touch upon the points you brought up above.
Working backwards through time:
To my great-great-grandparents, the Union Army of the Potomac was a foreign invasion. My great-grandparent's would have disapproved of me marrying a woman who grew-up in the North and whose ancestors were from the area of New York City. The reason General Lee was not commanding the Army of the Potomac (and probably ending the war much quicker), was because he considered himself a Virginian more than an American. The idea of being American before Texan, New Yorker, Virginian, Ohioan, etc is a post-Civil War idea.
In the War of 1812, the United States, especially the majority of cities, were/are on the Atlantic seaboard and Gulf Coast. Your description essentially covers the entirety of the populated United States at the time and a huge chuck of it today. Relatively few people lived/lives in the area between the Mississippi River and Rocky Mountains (and today to the Pacific Coast). Taking Washington, DC means the Philadelphia and New York were probably vulnerable.
To not consider the British army from 1775 to 1781 a foreign army in the 13 American colonies ignores that a many of the colonists ancestors had arrived from Britain (and elsewhere) in the mid-1600s, a hundred years and a few generations separated them from being truly British.
Based on that logic, one might consider many of the wars in Europe over time to not be foreign invasions, but cousins fighting over who had the right to grand-father's land. For example, the Hundred Years War between England and France might be described as a war between various factions of Frankish nobility using whatever men they could call upon, whether they were Angle, Saxon, Norman, Frankish, Celtic, or otherwise.
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Some good stuff here!
Mithra, how do you feel about your own intelligence agency cooperating with our NSA and using our sneaky tools to spy on your own citizens? I feel it is a case of acting angry on one side of the mouth while the other is very happy to borrow our software to spy internally?
This isn't a pointing a finger contest I just haven't seen this brought up in the discussion yet.
Regarding power vacuum's and EU/rest of the world, we might just have to disagree. Of course the US is not going to go to a war in Europe over Ukraine, but we are the only ones holding any cards with much weight in being able to organize and motivate economic sanctions against Russia? We don't need to buy any of their oil. EU will absolutely cave to Putin and let him steamroll as he pleases for fear he will turn off the spigot.
I am not in a glass house throwing stones; the US track record recently has been particularly bad in the Middle East, and we've got plenty of mis-steps over the last 150 years or so of being on the world stage, and make plenty of mistakes. Our legacy of violence especially in central and south america during the cold war is complicated and difficult; much of the current problems in those countries stems from our willingness to support anyone who was anti-communist, however awful they might be. An awful calculation to make but I'd like to think understand the stakes of the US not allowing another Cuba situation on it's geopolitical doorstep again.
That being said our record of violence and economic exploitation is still quite a bit behind you folks. Give us a few hundred years perhaps we will catch up at this rate, though :P
But if the US recently is guilty of being too quick to overreact with military force then you folks can also be too guilty recently of standing idly by and letting too much happen.
I honestly have no doubt that without an overarching security apparatus in Europe it would take little time before many of those countries start arming themselves and killing each other for all the usual reasons. I absolutely do not buy the European 'we are so peaceful now and we abhor war' concept. Plenty of your countries sell many many weapons to just as many awful people and governments, and are perfectly happy (as are American companies) to make money selling weapons to black and brown people to kill each other in Africa and the Middle East. It's also only been 70 years since the last time you people dragged the world into misery, since the last time you all did that, before the previous time you all did that, etc, etc :P and there probably only hasn't been another one because there was little left and people with larger guns on all sides making sure you didn't.
Anyway I really do love Germans and you all won a fantastic world cup final today :)
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For what it's worth, I'm one American, of at least some, who very much wishes that we would sever all alliances and military cooperation with Europe and the Middle East. Contrary to popular belief, we are a net exporter of oil, and quite frankly, there's almost certainly nothing Western Europe or Eastern Europe has that would be worth (economically, to the United States) going to war with Russia or China over.
It makes perfect sense for the US to try and force things like that transatlantic treaty upon Europe, at the contrary. It's not only about raw resources that the USA probably have in more quantity than Europe. Still from the lens of power, it's economic warfare at its finest, and besides the fact that this thing is really pulled behind by huge corporate interests that want better tools to sue countries whenever they want, and thus inverting the balance of power (law serves the corp instead of the state, see how tobacco industry already sue countries that pass restricting laws on smoking, and win huge sums of money, one example among many), Europe in that case has very little to earn out of this deal. It's an american deal made for America and to re assert America control over Europe.
As new challenging powers emerge around the world, the US know that they have to keep most of their assets on their side. Before the 2000s, it was unthinkable that China and others would someday grow so fast and threaten US supremacy. The US invested colossal sums of money in China and if one of both economies collapses, the other one will follow instantly considering how intricate both have become. Now though, powers have emerged, and when the US let Europe and Atlantic trade alone for a while, they are now intensely focusing on it, and not only because of :russiaineurope:. The EU can also become a potential challenger, or at least a huge bloc not under their control that also threatens them directly on their field : immaterial world.
Which tends to make me think that's actually the US that need Europe more than the contrary. For its corporations. We are already seeing it here in France where General Electric tried to buy out one of our high tech energy and transport companies (Alstom). That's technological pillaging of national technological assets at its finest (yeah, the chinese are not the only ones to do that), and we were almost dumb enough to let it happen (they finally just sold the energy branch only). And with that in mind, they constantly try to lower Europe barriers (that are already dramatically low) where they of course have huge protectionist policies on their soil. And Europe is dumb enough to swallow.
This history translates to another way to deal with wars and that Europeans are more hesitant to project power through armed conflict than the US is quite a lot informed by that history and experiences and not so much - in my opinion - a loss of will to 'weigh in internationally'. For example the EU/its member states pour a lot more money into ODA then the US. If we had no will to weigh in internationally, I'm sure we wouldn't put that much money in there. Europe - and especially Germany just prefers other instruments than waging war.
That's because you live in Germany. As I said above, Germany may be the only remaining country that understood what is at stake. Everywhere else, even if there is of course a few things going that way here and there, it's total apathy.
As to my comment that the US had never to experience a real war on their own soil:
What I meant is that the US basically never had to experience foreign forces invading them in a ground war covering any area covering a substantial part of an average US member state.
The british burned Washington, but the War of 1812 was laregely confined to a) the Atlantic ocean, b) Canadian territories and the Great Lakes and c) the Gulf coast.There were inland raids along rivers, but those were aimed at cities along them and didn't take the form of foreign forces occupying any larger patches of land, afaik.
The American Civil War didn't see any foreign forces invade the US. Doesn't mean it wasn't bad, true. But it's different from foreign forces invading you in a ground war.
So, the only war that comes to my mind where US troops had to deal with foreign troops in a ground war covering large quantities of area is the American Revolutionary War and that wasn't foreign troops invading the US either, strictly speaking.
Now, if I look at Europe, there have been a lot more wars with foreign forces invading in ground war even since the formation of the US.
Now, this is not to say that the US is any worse than the EU for that reason and in fact I think it's quite a good thing if one doesn't have frequently foreign forces invading nations in large scale gound war. Still, that Europe has a history of such stretching up to at least the generation of my grandparents lead to quite a different view on wars in Europe than the US and I think that part of that is that Europeans see war quite different from USAmericans.
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And I'm quite sure that those are at least as conducive to peaceful Europe as the US threat of military intervention.
First off, I understand your point. However, I think it is important to touch upon the points you brought up above.
Working backwards through time:
To my great-great-grandparents, the Union Army of the Potomac was a foreign invasion. My great-grandparent's would have disapproved of me marrying a woman who grew-up in the North and whose ancestors were from the area of New York City. The reason General Lee was not commanding the Army of the Potomac (and probably ending the war much quicker), was because he considered himself a Virginian more than an American. The idea of being American before Texan, New Yorker, Virginian, Ohioan, etc is a post-Civil War idea.
In the War of 1812, the United States, especially the majority of cities, were/are on the Atlantic seaboard and Gulf Coast. Your description essentially covers the entirety of the populated United States at the time and a huge chuck of it today. Relatively few people lived/lives in the area between the Mississippi River and Rocky Mountains (and today to the Pacific Coast). Taking Washington, DC means the Philadelphia and New York were probably vulnerable.
To not consider the British army from 1775 to 1781 a foreign army in the 13 American colonies ignores that a many of the colonists ancestors had arrived from Britain (and elsewhere) in the mid-1600s, a hundred years and a few generations separated them from being truly British.
Based on that logic, one might consider many of the wars in Europe over time to not be foreign invasions, but cousins fighting over who had the right to grand-father's land. For example, the Hundred Years War between England and France might be described as a war between various factions of Frankish nobility using whatever men they could call upon, whether they were Angle, Saxon, Norman, Frankish, Celtic, or otherwise.
That's a good point. Even at some point half of North America was french colonies (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_colonization_of_the_Americas#mediaviewer/File:Nouvelle-France_map-en.svg), which makes me think that they were probably very foreign to each other at that time.
Regarding power vacuum's and EU/rest of the world, we might just have to disagree. Of course the US is not going to go to a war in Europe over Ukraine, but we are the only ones holding any cards with much weight in being able to organize and motivate economic sanctions against Russia? We don't need to buy any of their oil. EU will absolutely cave to Putin and let him steamroll as he pleases for fear he will turn off the spigot.
Well, yes, but Europe could also buy from countries like middle east, and... Iran. Which would piss the US to no end. And would be, of course, more costly. That's also why there is a huge "pipeline war" in the region of Baku and around (Turkey) where Russia constantly try to rerout and control all pipelines, even those that are not located in Russia, through deals and other "coercicion" (the word is maybe too strong and biased), so that they can keep their trade over Europe.
Ukraine might also enter in that category of conflict on some points.
I honestly have no doubt that without an overarching security apparatus in Europe it would take little time before many of those countries start arming themselves and killing each other for all the usual reasons. I absolutely do not buy the European 'we are so peaceful now and we abhor war' concept. Plenty of your countries sell many many weapons to just as many awful people and governments, and are perfectly happy (as are American companies) to make money selling weapons to black and brown people to kill each other in Africa and the Middle East. It's also only been 70 years since the last time you people dragged the world into misery, since the last time you all did that, before the previous time you all did that, etc, etc :P and there probably only hasn't been another one because there was little left and people with larger guns on all sides making sure you didn't.
Honestly you should see Europe from the inside. It's not that they are all lovey dovey and abhor war (which couldn't be furthest from the truth) but that they learned to live together since past WW2 and all share more or less the same general ideals and way of life. We can say whatever we want about the EU, but considering how open the Shengen space has become and how everyone can move freely everywhere, how students move between countries like nothing else, how those countries interact and speak to each other, we may not be a Federation, but it's not that far in the spirit already.
I wouldn't think they would start again to kill each other, no. Unless there is some kind of apocalyptic event where it becomes free for all or something (global warming ? resource scarcity ?)... Or unless this new trend of anti EU nationalists rising everywhere actually bears its fruit someday...
Even for the newest countries of East Europe which may not share the same values and way of life yet, I have a hard time to see them wardecing western Europe tbh...
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Good points again Lyn!
It just sometimes feels from this side of the Atlantic, and perhaps not understanding the ethnic histories and complexities, that many european countries do not handle immigrants/assimilation/ethnic tension very well. We have the perhaps uninformed opinion that every ten or twenty years one Balkan country is exploding civilians in another one for being the wrong religion, or that the Italians are sending back boatloads of refugees to drown, or the French and Germans and Nordic countries can be terribly cruel to Mediterranean and African immigrants and refugees, along with what would appear from here to be far-right nationalist parties getting legislative seats in many countries?
Granted we are currently setting an awful example on our own Southern border :ugh: , but we've overall got a pretty good history of 'melting pot' culture....or at least only persecuting each minority for a few generations until a new racial group replaces them... :/
Anyway, love the topic and thread
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First off, I understand your point. However, I think it is important to touch upon the points you brought up above.
Working backwards through time:
To my great-great-grandparents, the Union Army of the Potomac was a foreign invasion. My great-grandparent's would have disapproved of me marrying a woman who grew-up in the North and whose ancestors were from the area of New York City. The reason General Lee was not commanding the Army of the Potomac (and probably ending the war much quicker), was because he considered himself a Virginian more than an American. The idea of being American before Texan, New Yorker, Virginian, Ohioan, etc is a post-Civil War idea.
In the War of 1812, the United States, especially the majority of cities, were/are on the Atlantic seaboard and Gulf Coast. Your description essentially covers the entirety of the populated United States at the time and a huge chuck of it today. Relatively few people lived/lives in the area between the Mississippi River and Rocky Mountains (and today to the Pacific Coast). Taking Washington, DC means the Philadelphia and New York were probably vulnerable.
To not consider the British army from 1775 to 1781 a foreign army in the 13 American colonies ignores that a many of the colonists ancestors had arrived from Britain (and elsewhere) in the mid-1600s, a hundred years and a few generations separated them from being truly British.
Based on that logic, one might consider many of the wars in Europe over time to not be foreign invasions, but cousins fighting over who had the right to grand-father's land. For example, the Hundred Years War between England and France might be described as a war between various factions of Frankish nobility using whatever men they could call upon, whether they were Angle, Saxon, Norman, Frankish, Celtic, or otherwise.
Well, thank you for the input there. Still, I think that the US wars 1861 to 1865 had quite a different impact on the collective subconscious of the people in the US than wars in Europe - which certainly were largely cousins fighting over their grandfather's land, viewed in one way. The war of 1861 to 1865 came to be known as the American Civil War after all and as it became cast in historiography it wasn't understood or retold as a war of differing American nations at all, but as a civil war in which no foreign powers intervened.
All that said, North Americans aren't used to war on their continent nowadays, I feel. Europeans are to this day. So not only is WW II something that had a more direct effect on Europeans recently, but it's also the fact that there's no generation since then that didn't see war in (eastern) Europe since then.
So I think even if I take your fair comments into consideration the historical experiences with war are different in Europe and the US and they explain a difference in outlook in regard to what war can and does achieve.
Some good stuff here!
Mithra, how do you feel about your own intelligence agency cooperating with our NSA and using our sneaky tools to spy on your own citizens? I feel it is a case of acting angry on one side of the mouth while the other is very happy to borrow our software to spy internally?
This isn't a pointing a finger contest I just haven't seen this brought up in the discussion yet.
I feel as indignated about that as any other German, really. The German intelligence agencies shouldn't be allowed to spy on German citizens and honestly I'm unhappy with our Government in so far as it seems to have a problem with the US spying on them, but not so much on us citizens. Maybe you don't hear about that, but there's a broad movement in Germany opposing that our state spies on us either directly or through the US. In fact Germans are very sensitive and easily agitated in regard to these topics for historical reasons.
Regarding power vacuum's and EU/rest of the world, we might just have to disagree. Of course the US is not going to go to a war in Europe over Ukraine, but we are the only ones holding any cards with much weight in being able to organize and motivate economic sanctions against Russia? We don't need to buy any of their oil. EU will absolutely cave to Putin and let him steamroll as he pleases for fear he will turn off the spigot.
I am not in a glass house throwing stones; the US track record recently has been particularly bad in the Middle East, and we've got plenty of mis-steps over the last 150 years or so of being on the world stage, and make plenty of mistakes. Our legacy of violence especially in central and south america during the cold war is complicated and difficult; much of the current problems in those countries stems from our willingness to support anyone who was anti-communist, however awful they might be. An awful calculation to make but I'd like to think understand the stakes of the US not allowing another Cuba situation on it's geopolitical doorstep again.
That being said our record of violence and economic exploitation is still quite a bit behind you folks. Give us a few hundred years perhaps we will catch up at this rate, though :P
But if the US recently is guilty of being too quick to overreact with military force then you folks can also be too guilty recently of standing idly by and letting too much happen.
I honestly have no doubt that without an overarching security apparatus in Europe it would take little time before many of those countries start arming themselves and killing each other for all the usual reasons. I absolutely do not buy the European 'we are so peaceful now and we abhor war' concept. Plenty of your countries sell many many weapons to just as many awful people and governments, and are perfectly happy (as are American companies) to make money selling weapons to black and brown people to kill each other in Africa and the Middle East. It's also only been 70 years since the last time you people dragged the world into misery, since the last time you all did that, before the previous time you all did that, etc, etc :P and there probably only hasn't been another one because there was little left and people with larger guns on all sides making sure you didn't.
While I said that Europeans are used to war on their continent even nowadays, it's on the other hand a very important factor that the EU has been a force for peace and stability inside it's boarders - and it is arguably providing an overarching security apperatus even without the US. Historically speaking the EU is quite the exceptional thing in European history and the member states of the EU are aware of this an cherish the prosperity and peace it brings a lot. (This in addition toe the european spirit that many of the europeans citizens hold up, which lyn described.) I think it's quite out of question that the EU will be warring amongst itself. And if it collapses it's certainly not because of the US retreating from the 'European arena'. Quite to the contrary I think that if the US would step back there it would rather strengthen the EU. If the EU gets into trouble, then it's in my opinion because Germany tries to strongman the other members into following it's lead.
That said, Germany is not, in my opinion, the only country determined to weigh in internationally.Germany always had a peculiar status as a bridge between the European east and west, which oftentimes meant it tried to play both sides - sometimes quite successfully, sometimes with disastrous results. I think that Germany nowadays steers back towards this politics of playing both sides is a direct result of it feeling that the US treat 'us' increasingly like a far away country under their Empire's sway. But I wouldn't say that one should mistake that for Germany being any more determined to weigh in internationally than other European countries. In fact in terms of ODA France is in the lead in Europe and - not last because of their colonial past - both GB and France are quite involved internationally in my perception. The Nordic countries are the most generous contries in regard to ODA measured by % of GNI (and even Greece was only 0.02% below the US in 2009 in that regrad).
And I really think that you've got quite an outsiders view of Europe there, Silas. At least I can tell you that while I don't think that refugees are treated as good here as they should and there are many problems with how they are treated, they do have it much better here than the socially underprveleged in the US - at least for Germany and Norway I can say that with certainty as I just participated in an EU program that's -amongst other things- taking a look at that system. You see German citizens with Turkish, Italian, Greek, etc.pp. background on the streets here every day. I don't think that it's worse here than in the US which have certainly more troubles than merely a little prosecution of minorities. Germany was a 'melting pot' of cultures since late antiquity with slavic and germanic tribes, italo-romans etc. intermingling all the time. Being a melting pot culture doesn't mean there aren't tensions in the melting process, though. On the contrary, it - historically speaking - always comes with identity struggles as new influences come to the old ones. I think in the US are just as many people worrying about the 'white Character' of the population in face of hispanic immigration as there are Germans worrying that immigrants 'take their jobs'.
Also, I have the impression that many 'far-right nationalist parties' here in Europe are not that far right if you weigh them by US standards in policies. Like here in Germany you are far-right if you're for something like the US Border Protection, Anti-terrorism and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005.
P.S.: Anyway I really do love Germans and you all won a fantastic world cup final today :)
Well, I do love Americans as well. ;) And thanks for the congratulations on the world cup, though I think the world cup final wasn't such a fantastic game. It was tense and good, but the viewing pleasure wasn't that of an interesting 3:2 game with turns and goals on both sides. ^^
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Speaking of the cup, Merkel was sitting awfully close to Putin :P
Good points Mithra, I really do enjoy hearing about these things from people overseas. Perceptions can so often be wrong based on not good information.
I think my overall point was we all have a lot of work to on all of these issues to live up to any of our supposed ideals :)
I'm a minority and my father's family were Cuban refugees fleeing the Castro regime in the 1960's, so I do sometimes have a more optimistic view on immigration here and the opportunities possible than the evidence lately might support. Social mobility used to be one of our country's main selling points, and was a real thing that was possible here before the Oligarchy took complete control :/
*EDIT* getting off topic, will discontinue this line of conversation
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Two points.
First, allies always conduct intelligence operations in each other's territory, with or without the hosts knowledge.
Second, there is a difference between that kind of work, and the kind of work which involves the host enacting a counter-espionage operation. That sort of work suggests serious transgressions against the interests of the host country.
Also, third semi-point, I'm not sure most people seriously consider the reverse scenario, if German agents were operating and being arrested in the US.
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Silas, can you clarify what you mean by 'the French and Germans and Nordic countries can be terribly cruel to Mediterranean and African immigrants and refugees".
Italy sending refugees to drown might also be pushing (http://www.unhcr.org/5347d8fa9.html) it a bit (http://www.unhcr.org/532c4cbb6.html).
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Silas, can you clarify what you mean by 'the French and Germans and Nordic countries can be terribly cruel to Mediterranean and African immigrants and refugees".
Italy sending refugees to drown might also be pushing (http://www.unhcr.org/5347d8fa9.html) it a bit (http://www.unhcr.org/532c4cbb6.html).
Not pushing it, although I don't have many more specific examples on hand at the moment.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/no-welcome-for-refugees-as-italy-turns-boat-away-2242923.html
At the office, but will try and be more specific regarding african/middle-eastern refugees into Europe shortly.
Don't take it personally though, we have more than enough crazy anti-immigrant abhorrent behavior on the US border to make us all embarrassed.
EDIT: A few quick links, although I have not vetted these articles:
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/05/26/euroskeptic-anti-immigrant-parties-make-big-gains-in-european-union-elections/
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/03/31/europe-anti-immigration/5706575/
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/sep/24/sweden-immigration-far-right-asylum
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/significance-swiss-immigration-limits/
http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/03/european-commission-bankrolls-anti-immigrant-policies/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ahmed-moor/europes-anti-muslim-racis_b_565651.html
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Good points again Lyn!
It just sometimes feels from this side of the Atlantic, and perhaps not understanding the ethnic histories and complexities, that many european countries do not handle immigrants/assimilation/ethnic tension very well. We have the perhaps uninformed opinion that every ten or twenty years one Balkan country is exploding civilians in another one for being the wrong religion, or that the Italians are sending back boatloads of refugees to drown, or the French and Germans and Nordic countries can be terribly cruel to Mediterranean and African immigrants and refugees, along with what would appear from here to be far-right nationalist parties getting legislative seats in many countries?
Granted we are currently setting an awful example on our own Southern border :ugh: , but we've overall got a pretty good history of 'melting pot' culture....or at least only persecuting each minority for a few generations until a new racial group replaces them... :/
Anyway, love the topic and thread
Well, if you speak about non EU countries in Europe (including Turkey), that's true that it might be a little different then. There was war in the balkans not so long ago, and even though it has settled now, I wouldn't believe that everything is fine and tensions vanished, but to me that's mostly local, internal conflict, at best. Also, Croatia entered the EU the last year, and other countries are still applying (like Bulgaria iirc ?) so... Although yes, Turkey, which may be a member of NATO and being a big player, at least militarily, in Europe, might still see its application to the EU delayed a lot considering the recent events... lol.
Most countries do not handle immigration very well. They can do it for a tiny bit when it's voluntarily opened to immigrants, like it was in the 60-70s, but now... You have to understand that the Mediterranean sea is somewhat similar to the border between the US and Mexico, and currently more than ever. The spanish enclave in North Africa is literally assaulted by refugees and immigrants from all Africa. They recently built 3 more walls and increased them from 3m to 9m heigh. Italy has been calling for help at the EU parliament for months now because they just admitted that it has got completely out of their control and are just overwhelmed. And most EU countries play the ostriches for now because they either are part of the south countries, that are the ones witnessing the crisis at its fullest and so have other things to deal with (like their own immigrants), or because they don't really care, like France and Germany which are supposed to be the pillars of the EU. And i'm not even speaking about the UK that doesn't care much for anything else except that them too have to deal with a fuckload of immigrants. Then you have also immigration in Greece, a country that is completely bankrupted, and that is seeing massive influx of refugees from Syria coming through either the Aegea sea, where sea patrols got highly intensified, or through the Turkey border, that also got recently blocked. So now they go around and pass through non EU countries like Bulgaria and end up in countries that are not prepared to deal with them.
Also, no, Italians are not sending back boatloads of refugees to drown. They actually drown when coming in with boats and crappy rafts loaded with twice their normal load. So Italy launched operation Mare Nostrum, one among many initiative, to actually try to save as many as they can, but they come from everywhere, at day, at night, and make sure they try to avoid being detected, because yes, eventually, it means ending up in refugee camps or more generally being sent back from where they come. And Europe is trying more and more to close its borders to that kind of things because it just becomes untenable for the south.
Being cruel to immigrants ? Well, not more than anywhere else I guess... Not that I heard of. We just try to send them back into their countries, but the problem is the discrepencies in how it's done. Some can still spend dozen of years on european soil, without any papers, with their families and children at school and suddenly been sent back. Which is completely wtf / nuts. And maybe that's when it tends to turn cruel and insensible. The real, true problem, is that all these immigrants can actually pass through the net. It becomes obnoxious for everyone, either the locals or themselves which just end up living in misery (which can still be better than where they come from...).
As for the metling pot culture, it generally happens in most cultural big cities, like New York, etc, I believe. Working myself in Paris, it's indeed a fucking huge melting pot. And now we are in summer I only hear people speak in foreign languages everywhere... And just generally fucking weird people and demented artists everywhere, but I digress... Should be the same in the US, if not more in certain places ? But go on the countryside and go ask a redneck what they think of melting pot and multi culti...
But unlike America, the number of cultures in Europe is thousand times higher and diverse thanks to older history and we unfortunately don't have only one south border to cover., all of that with conflicts nearby either in Africa (what happens there is just insane, go look up genocides and people being forced to eat their friends alive, or refugee camps in Kenya, while we only hear of Syria, Palestine and Ukraine, which are almost "soft" conflicts in comparison), middle East or Ukraine.
the EU gets into trouble, then it's in my opinion because Germany tries to strongman the other members into following it's lead.
That's already a strong feeling, yes, especially in southern EU member states that try to follow to the letter predicaments made by Germany.
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Interesting statistics!
http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/big-six-arms-exporters-2012-06-11
France, Germany, UK, consistantly 3rd, 4th, 5th place for exporting weapons.
You love peace nearly as much as we do :P
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In regard to refugees, Germany actually is the country of the EU that is getting most requests for asylum - followed by France and Sweden. Most arrive in Spain and Italy, but they usually don't remain there. So, I don't think that Germany isn't doing enough there. And while the US is taking in more refugees than any other OECD country (68,000 in 2012) Germany is a close up second (64,540) followed by France (54,940). So, France and Germany alone take in more refugees than the entire US, all the while having less population which can buffer taking in people and being more densely populated! (Sweden is at 43,890).
As to immigrants, there's a similar situation. The US (with around a million legal immigrants a year the last few years) take in the most people of all OECD countries, but if we add up the EU countries we don't take in any less: The UK takes in the bulk of immigrants (591,000 in 2010), followed by Spain (465,200), Italy (458,900) and Germany (404,100), making up nearly two thirds of total immigration to EU countries.
Of course, though, the way from the Near East or Africa to the US is bit longer than to the EU, so I see that this is a factor. Then again, the US is already quite unhappy about the numbers of refugees/immigrants they recieve, it appears.
So, living in a small town of about 70,000 people I have daily contact with people who emmigrated to Germany from outside the EU, not counting the people that came here from EU member states. (We have people that moved here from Italy, Greece, Spain, and Portugal, mainly, in regard to EU countries.) There's no day going by that I don't hear people speak Turkish or Russian or some more exotic languages in the streets here (except for the days I stay at home). If I'm in Hamburg that increases of course. Then there are some towns in Germany that didn't see any recent immigration, but that only means that immigrants don't spread evenly across the country - obviously they move to where the jobs are.
the EU gets into trouble, then it's in my opinion because Germany tries to strongman the other members into following it's lead.
That's already a strong feeling, yes, especially in southern EU member states that try to follow to the letter predicaments made by Germany.
It was France's job as a strong partner to Germany to keep Germany in check in that regard! Alas, now you sell parts of Alstom to US investors rather than having German companies taking it over. A sad state. Hopefully germany will muster some self control. :(
Interesting statistics!
http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/big-six-arms-exporters-2012-06-11
France, Germany, UK, consistantly 3rd, 4th, 5th place for exporting weapons.
You love peace nearly as much as we do :P
Yah, Germany was always exceptionally strong in exporting (No. 3 exporting nation, No. 1 net exporteur) and weapons are no exception there. It's criticized a lot in Germany, but to little avail (though, actually, German arms producers would like to export much more). German economy depends on exports and weapons are strong there.
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Speaking of the cup, Merkel was sitting awfully close to Putin :P
No, Putin was sitting awefully close to Merkel. ;)
Good points Mithra, I really do enjoy hearing about these things from people overseas. Perceptions can so often be wrong based on not good information.
True, same here. I think I'm full of prejudices about the US and thus am happy to communicate with you people here to purge me of those - or at least try!
I think my overall point was we all have a lot of work to on all of these issues to live up to any of our supposed ideals :)
So true!
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But unlike America, the number of cultures in Europe is thousand times higher and diverse thanks to older history and we unfortunately don't have only one south border to cover., all of that with conflicts nearby either in Africa, middle East or Ukraine.
Why do western Europeans think this?
It is as if the waves of immigrants from Europe in the 19th and 20th century mean there is some sort of separation from that history. That Polish-Americans and Italian-Americans do not have distinct cultural heritage from English-Americans.
Do you think those fleeing conflicts in Africa, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe only walk/row to where they are going?
Do the refugees and waves of immigrants from Asia not count (nearly 5% of the US population) for the United States?
Is the requirement for multiculturalism speaking a different language? Or does it count if we have different traditions due to our ancestry? How about the culture differences from one area of the US to another or one group to another? Do they not count?
Then again, the US is already quite unhappy about the numbers of refugees/immigrants they receive, it appears.
The issue is the number of illegal immigrants who enter the country along the 3,145 km border with Mexico. For comparison, the entire land border of Germany is 3,621 km and the entire land border of France is 2,889 km. The border between the Ukraine and Russia is 1,576 km.
These illegal immigrants are not all Mexican, many of them are from further south. Mexico is worried about illegal immigrants on its southern border!
All that said, North Americans aren't used to war on their continent nowadays, I feel. Europeans are to this day. So not only is WW II something that had a more direct effect on Europeans recently, but it's also the fact that there's no generation since then that didn't see war in (eastern) Europe since then.
Mexican Drug War (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Drug_War)? Which bleeds into the southwest US (that long border thing). I do not think that is very different than someone living in Denmark or the Netherlands claiming the ethnic conflict in the Balkans impacting them.
I notice the impact of being at war on the other side of the world for all my adult life. I notice the young amputee passing me in the 10k run or at the airport - maybe I am just more attuned to look for it. I have a reminder I wear everyday of the cost of war. But I am not the American average.
My opinion is that most of western Europe grew very comfortable from 1945 to 1990 under the umbrella of NATO Article 5 and UK, US, and French nuclear and conventional deterrence. It also is an explanation for why eastern European countries, especially those bordering a resurgent Russia, are interested in joining NATO. Estonia (for example) simply can not fight-off a Russian invasion and needs the threat of a wider conflict to protect its sovereignty.
Through the 1990s, western Europe was able to continue to depend on the UK and US for conventional military power projection. To include bringing an end to the ethnic conflicts in the Balkans, when diplomacy failed.
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For cultures I may have spoken too quickly then, or in a clumsy way... That's true yes, though they tend to fade a little when all intermingled in a single state. I think that is progressively being the case in Europe too. All those cultures together remain, but also fade and form something else, bigger.
It was France's job as a strong partner to Germany to keep Germany in check in that regard! Alas, now you sell parts of Alstom to US investors rather than having German companies taking it over. A sad state. Hopefully germany will muster some self control. :(
Siemens was heavily rejected, especially by public opinion, since their respective fields were completely overlapping, and that even with promises made by the company, people were expecting a lot of lost jobs in the process.
Also, France has a problem in that it lost a lot of seats in the EU parliament in the last election from what I heard, which is a problem. Though I thought the number of seats was supposed to be fixed by country ? Not sure of myself here...
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For Lyn
Seats per country in the European Parliament are fixed, not decided by election. Otherwise the UK would have like, 3 seats.
The drama with France, and the UK for that matter, is that anti-EU right-wing parties were the top of the polls in both countries. Front Nationale for France, UKIP for UK.
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For Lyn
Seats per country in the European Parliament are fixed, not decided by election. Otherwise the UK would have like, 3 seats.
The drama with France, and the UK for that matter, is that anti-EU right-wing parties were the top of the polls in both countries. Front Nationale for France, UKIP for UK.
Another fascinating topic for me is what constitutes 'extreme' across the ocean. There's interesting mixtures of issues where your average middle of the ground political stance in Europe is wildly left wing here, and vice versa, something that would be fairly middle ground here would be wildly radical overseas.
Do your radical parties simply get more 'exposure' for elections rather than actual support?
One of the difficult (or perhaps brilliant) things with American politics is that the overall winners for national contests have to toe a very careful line usually in the middle on many issues, essentially triangulating a position on most issues that pleases the most people and alienates the fewest. That's all well and good for national elections, but you must first be 'elected' by your political party to run nationally, and your own party is the only one voting for that contest. This makes for a sort of disastrous early contest where each party's fringe/radical elements get enormous support in the primaries but have 0 chance to win nationally. So the middle of the road candidate has to play a game early on where they appear radical enough to make it out of the grueling primary contest against their own party brothers/sisters and then they have to tack sharply to the middle to win a national election. The opposing side nationally gets a lot of free points because they just get to play tape of the candidate saying something crazy from a few months ago from trying to win the party candidate slot.
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But unlike America, the number of cultures in Europe is thousand times higher and diverse thanks to older history and we unfortunately don't have only one south border to cover., all of that with conflicts nearby either in Africa, middle East or Ukraine.
Why do western Europeans think this?
It is as if the waves of immigrants from Europe in the 19th and 20th century mean there is some sort of separation from that history. That Polish-Americans and Italian-Americans do not have distinct cultural heritage from English-Americans.
Do you think those fleeing conflicts in Africa, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe only walk/row to where they are going?
Do the refugees and waves of immigrants from Asia not count (nearly 5% of the US population) for the United States?
Is the requirement for multiculturalism speaking a different language? Or does it count if we have different traditions due to our ancestry? How about the culture differences from one area of the US to another or one group to another? Do they not count?
While I don't think the US has less 'cultures' than the EU, I think the point Lyn wanted to make there (and his recent post points into that direction) is that if you have a nation that is a cultural melting pot, then there is a greater degree of assimilation, than if you have several different nations which all do assmilate foreigners that enter, but remain less impacted by the other nations. The difference between a Texan and someone from New York seems more like the difference between a Bavarian and a Meckelnburg-Wersternpommeranian to a European (And make no mistake, that is a hughe difference there already!), than that of Greek and an English. This is because there is less opportunity to identify as 'European' or 'EU-citizen' than as 'American' or 'US-citizen'.
So, ethnic diversity doesn't translate 1:1 into cultural diversity - and Europe isn't really less ethnically diverse than the US: We might not have as many black people in the EU on avaerage, but there's an argument to be made that we have in general a greater influx of immigrants of differing ethnic origins nowadays and the cultural identities of the black people that came as slaves to the US were at least gravely wounded during those centuries.
Then again, the US is already quite unhappy about the numbers of refugees/immigrants they receive, it appears.
The issue is the number of illegal immigrants who enter the country along the 3,145 km border with Mexico. For comparison, the entire land border of Germany is 3,621 km and the entire land border of France is 2,889 km. The border between the Ukraine and Russia is 1,576 km.
These illegal immigrants are not all Mexican, many of them are from further south. Mexico is worried about illegal immigrants on its southern border!
Now, those border comparisions are funny! Germany is much smaller than the US, so of course it's border is 'small' by your standards. But what you really would have to compare is the border of the EU to other states - including the Mediterranean Sea, because that's where the EU gets its immigrants. Now if you look at the number of border crossings (cause that's more interesting then the length of the border if we talk about immigration...) then there is a far greater influx of people into the EU than the US (as I already wrote).
So, don't throw around these numbers as if they'd say that the EU doesn't know how it feels if people cross your borders. The EU is taking in three times as many immigrants as the US and yes, we aren't talking illegal immigration there, yet, which the EU has as well.
Also, there's a simple solution to illegal immigration: Raise your immigration quota. And while it has been done, four countries of the EU still take in about two times as many immigrants as the entire USA.
All that said, North Americans aren't used to war on their continent nowadays, I feel. Europeans are to this day. So not only is WW II something that had a more direct effect on Europeans recently, but it's also the fact that there's no generation since then that didn't see war in (eastern) Europe since then.
Mexican Drug War (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Drug_War)? Which bleeds into the southwest US (that long border thing). I do not think that is very different than someone living in Denmark or the Netherlands claiming the ethnic conflict in the Balkans impacting them.
I notice the impact of being at war on the other side of the world for all my adult life. I notice the young amputee passing me in the 10k run or at the airport - maybe I am just more attuned to look for it. I have a reminder I wear everyday of the cost of war. But I am not the American average.
My opinion is that most of western Europe grew very comfortable from 1945 to 1990 under the umbrella of NATO Article 5 and UK, US, and French nuclear and conventional deterrence. It also is an explanation for why eastern European countries, especially those bordering a resurgent Russia, are interested in joining NATO. Estonia (for example) simply can not fight-off a Russian invasion and needs the threat of a wider conflict to protect its sovereignty.
Through the 1990s, western Europe was able to continue to depend on the UK and US for conventional military power projection. To include bringing an end to the ethnic conflicts in the Balkans, when diplomacy failed.
I never said you wouldn't notice the impact of war: I said that the average US citizen experiences the impact of war differently than the average EU citizen. And it'd be interesting that you bring up the amputed soldier and talk about the cost of war. If I think of the cost of war, I think of things like the number of babies born with spina bifida, cyclopia... due to the uranium ammunition that is contaminating their environment. I think of the half-a-dozen bombs that had to be defused just in my neighbourhood the last year: And the town I live in wasn't bombed a lot. And that makes me reflect of how NATO bombs inflict on the lives of civilians in lands that we bombed. So, when was the last time you had to leave your home because a bomb had to be defused from one of the world wars?
And what do you mean by Europe depending on UK and French nuklear and conventional forces? UK and French forces are European forces. It's like saying that, the USA is depending on the member states where nuklear weapons are actually stationed.
Also, more generally speaking, I think you mistake an aversion to war for 'growing confortable'. You apparently seem to follow the idea that 'military power projection', aka killing people in armed conflict, could bring an 'end' to ethnic conflicts. Well, ... let's just say I'm less optimistic about what war can achieve there.
It was France's job as a strong partner to Germany to keep Germany in check in that regard! Alas, now you sell parts of Alstom to US investors rather than having German companies taking it over. A sad state. Hopefully germany will muster some self control. :(
Siemens was heavily rejected, especially by public opinion, since their respective fields were completely overlapping, and that even with promises made by the company, people were expecting a lot of lost jobs in the process.
Well, I think it's understandable that you didn't want to sell to a German company, given that it'd have been another economical lever for Germany against France. On the other hand, I can see why you wouldn't want to sell to US corporations either. France is in a difficult position, it seems to me, and it needs to get back on track, imho, for the sake of Europe.
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Another fascinating topic for me is what constitutes 'extreme' across the ocean. There's interesting mixtures of issues where your average middle of the ground political stance in Europe is wildly left wing here, and vice versa, something that would be fairly middle ground here would be wildly radical overseas.
Do your radical parties simply get more 'exposure' for elections rather than actual support?
One of the difficult (or perhaps brilliant) things with American politics is that the overall winners for national contests have to toe a very careful line usually in the middle on many issues, essentially triangulating a position on most issues that pleases the most people and alienates the fewest. That's all well and good for national elections, but you must first be 'elected' by your political party to run nationally, and your own party is the only one voting for that contest. This makes for a sort of disastrous early contest where each party's fringe/radical elements get enormous support in the primaries but have 0 chance to win nationally. So the middle of the road candidate has to play a game early on where they appear radical enough to make it out of the grueling primary contest against their own party brothers/sisters and then they have to tack sharply to the middle to win a national election. The opposing side nationally gets a lot of free points because they just get to play tape of the candidate saying something crazy from a few months ago from trying to win the party candidate slot.
Yah, that is quite the correct observation in my opinion. The political spectrum is shifted to the 'left' in Europe, if compared to the US, as I see it. A Party like the 'Linke' ('Leftist Party') in Germany, which would be considered to be on the left fringe of the political spectrum here would prolly be out-of-the-question communist extremists in the US.
As to the radicals and elections... this all depends a lot on the election system and thus a lot on the level on which elections take place - like national or EU. I think the election for the EU parliament is largely similar across the countries, but there are differences! E.g. Germany had a '5% hurdle' you needeed to get above to get any of the german seats in EU parliament elections until last elections. This was to prevent radicals from entering there, but it was opposed by small, non-radical parties.
I think the real problem with the EU parliament is that most EU citizens see it as kind of a sham. Thus, the moderate voters aren't very interested in how this turns out, while on the other hand the radicals will always cast their vote. So, while a lot of the decisions of the EU are in the last instance made by the national governments coming to an agreement, we have an over representation of anti-EU radicals in the EU parliament - and of course they try to make their influence felt on the matters that the EU parliament can decide.
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For Lyn
Seats per country in the European Parliament are fixed, not decided by election. Otherwise the UK would have like, 3 seats.
The drama with France, and the UK for that matter, is that anti-EU right-wing parties were the top of the polls in both countries. Front Nationale for France, UKIP for UK.
I don't remember where I heard that loss of seats and what I got mixed up with...
Also that's drama yes, but that's also funny since both can't bear each other. UKIP spent their time rejecting alliances with FN since they do not share the same ideals at all. UKIP is just anti EU, FN is... more than just that. And then you have right wing extremists parties like in Greece that are more or less close to fascist ideologies that did decent score too, and that no other right wing party wanted to associate with...
They may be more numerous than ever, but they are completely isolated.
Well, I think it's understandable that you didn't want to sell to a German company, given that it'd have been another economical lever for Germany against France. On the other hand, I can see why you wouldn't want to sell to US corporations either. France is in a difficult position, it seems to me, and it needs to get back on track, imho, for the sake of Europe.
Maybe they didn't for those reasons, but I hardly think so. They don't even think that far, all that people saw was a possible loss of hundred jobs. And that kind of things is taken very seriously here in the media, among other things. Anyway they did good damage control by only allowing GE to buy the energy part of the company, which was the failing part, and not the transport part, which is what really matters in my eyes in terms of national technology (rail especially).
However I don't think the country is in such a difficult position, it just could be better. The national debt, for example, is slightly lower than Germany's one, and yet they make a big deal out of it in the EU just because the commercial balance is negative.
There is also another issue that cripples a lot of countries is the high level of the currency, that is kept that way because it benefits Germany. But it certainly doesn't help other countries to export against countries like the US or China that spend their time lowering theirs.
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RE: American politics being so far to the right compared to everyone else, there are a couple of major factors to that.
The major one was the Red Scare. We spent a couple decades being afraid of leftists. We decided that Socialism and Communism were the same thing (anti-intellectualism doesn't help this issue), etc. This is still an issue - I had a friend on facebook tell me that he thought I sounded like a socialist because I supported food stamps, and that socialism was bad because the Nazis were socialists.
Your next big event is Newt Gingrich writing the book (literally, he wrote a book on how to do this) describing a way to win elections by slandering your opponent as anti-family, anti-flag (how the fuck does that work?), anti-child (lolwut?), anti-patriot, etc. And it fucking worked. So you ended up with Democrats having to shift to the right to deal with this. But then, rather than declaring victory ("Woohoo, we made the democrats act like us!") the Republicans instead decided that they had to keep tarring the Dems as liberals - which doesn't work if you have the exact same policy positions. So they had to move even farther to the right. End result is that our "liberal" party holds positions that would make them conservative in Europe, and our mainstream "conservative" party holds positions that line up nicely with Europe's far right. And our far right wing... well, they end up sounding like Europe's neo-nazis. Fuck.
RE: America and the scars of war, there are a few reasons why our experience with this is so different from Europe's. The biggest is time: The civil war happened 80 years before WWII. That's 3 generations - 4 or 5 in certain parts of the country :lol: And the experience of that war was very different depending on which part of the country you were in. The south fought it on their own turf and got hammered. The north only saw a bit of fighting in MD and PA. For those in the south whose great-great-...-grandparents died in the war and are burried in their back yard, it's still a very personal thing. But for most of the country, it's just a history lesson, and one with a very heavy moral slant. So even though it was devastating at the time (roughly 2% of the population killed), the portion of the population that felt that and could pass on the memory has been shirnking ever since because:
This all happened long before in a country with a shit-tonne of immigration. The side of my family that I know the geneology for didn't even come over from the Netherlands until the early part of the 20th century, and then moved to Michigan. As far as I'm aware, neither side of my family has any connection to the antebellum south.
The other thing is a matter of scale. The American Civil War was horrific, and yet even the higher fatality estimates (750K) pale in comparison to WWI's 16 million and WWII's 20-30 million. There were more deaths in the battle for Stalingrad alone (right around 2 million) than the US military has suffered in the entirety of its 240 year existence (1.5 millionish, 2/3s of which occurred in the Civil War and in WWII).
So yeah, while the US does have experience with war, it's still very different than that of Europe.
And this is a cool thread that I wish I had more time to pay attention to.
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It's okay, we spent a couple of decades being afraid of nazis. :P
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This is still an issue - I had a friend on facebook tell me that he thought I sounded like a socialist because I supported food stamps, and that socialism was bad because the Nazis were socialists.
yeah, I see this a lot on the interwebs...
people will claim that Nazis were left-wing because they have socialist in the name :s
National socialist. Far-right.
brr.
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Silas, can you clarify what you mean by 'the French and Germans and Nordic countries can be terribly cruel to Mediterranean and African immigrants and refugees".
Italy sending refugees to drown might also be pushing (http://www.unhcr.org/5347d8fa9.html) it a bit (http://www.unhcr.org/532c4cbb6.html).
Not pushing it, although I don't have many more specific examples on hand at the moment.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/no-welcome-for-refugees-as-italy-turns-boat-away-2242923.html
At the office, but will try and be more specific regarding african/middle-eastern refugees into Europe shortly.
Don't take it personally though, we have more than enough crazy anti-immigrant abhorrent behavior on the US border to make us all embarrassed.
EDIT: A few quick links, although I have not vetted these articles:
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/05/26/euroskeptic-anti-immigrant-parties-make-big-gains-in-european-union-elections/
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/03/31/europe-anti-immigration/5706575/
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/sep/24/sweden-immigration-far-right-asylum
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/significance-swiss-immigration-limits/
http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/03/european-commission-bankrolls-anti-immigrant-policies/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ahmed-moor/europes-anti-muslim-racis_b_565651.html
I didn't talk about small groups that barely make it into national parliaments, if at all. The one article you provided is three and a half years old. The article I've linked covers the Lampedusa sinking as the starting point in changing the treatment of these refugees. That not everyone's accepted is quite a different story to 'sending people to drown'. Everyone wants to help refugees - but "please not in my front yard.", so overall it's a pretty shit situation to be a refugee.
As bonus points, the huffingtonpost article is quite a read - been some time since I've consumed such mentally challenged bullshit.
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For Silas and others.
I can't much speak for the whole of Europe, but for the UK specifically there is just a different history and thus attitude.
Keeping it as brief as possible, immediately after WWII in 1945, the electorate actually voted out Churchill's government in favour of the left-wing (and broadly anti-soviet) Labour Party under Clement Attlee (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clement_Attlee), which won in a landslide. In just five years, the National Health Service was established, the welfare state fully established and mass nationalisation of industry and infrastructure.
It derived very much from a simplified and oft-repeated maxim; if you can organise a state and it's people so effectively for war, the same can be done for peace, to build schools, hospitals etc.
In just five years, there were about 200 major reforms enacted, which saw quality of life rise in a manner which has not yet been repeated. People who were once in fear of being killed by common diseases were taken care of, people were housed and housed well, wages rose, generally things improved. And to top it off the budget books were balanced.
You have to remember that people feared that what happened after the First World War would happen after the second, which was huge, crippling poverty, pestilence, unemployment and general decline.
Now things move on, obviously, but the postwar years massively changed this country, probably making it one of the most socialist country, certainly one of the most successful in the world of the time. My own grandparents, both of them lifelong conservatives consistently tell me that Attlee was the greatest Prime Minister of the 20th Century.
The reason why this is so important is because it laid the foundations for Britain even up until this day. There is still a National Health Service (observed by a Conservative minister to be "the closest thing the the English have to a religion), and the general trend, even after the Thatcher years is that the welfare state should be continued.
Just a little history for you. Enjoy.
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That's interesting Nmaro! I didn't know that.
History of social services is a little different over here in Germany and of course it's connected to Marx. But basically the social services were instituted by monarchist forces under Bismark, thus by meeting the needs of the workers in Germany taking away ammunition from the communistic/anti-monarchist movement of the time quiet successfully.
So, social policies have a long standing tradition with the german right/conservative politicians as - if nothing else - a way of controlling the population. And while the ideas behind social services and practice are at times quite different between the two ends of the spectrum, the practice is quite similar.
Especially in post WWII Germany the social services were build up extensively by all governments (at first Adenauer) for pretty much the same reasons as you state for the UK, Nmaro. There was fear of an impoverished population that would turn into a mob and that the story of the Nazi rise to power would repeat itself under such conditions. The US pumping money into Germany helped with that a lot, of course. In the end Germany worked so well with the money we got from the Marshall plan that after paying it back we had worked out a profit through investments with it.
Now, the social services are cut back in Germany, but indeed the consensus is that the welfare state needs to be continued in some form.
(...)
So yeah, while the US does have experience with war, it's still very different than that of Europe.
And this is a cool thread that I wish I had more time to pay attention to.
You're making my point about how I see the difference in US experience with war compared to the European far better than I could! This is kind of the line of thinking I'mfollowing as well.
I'm happy you like this thread! I enjoy all the people chiming in as well, I think it's quite great indeed!
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In regards to war casualties, I'm going to be a bit cruel (IOW, realist) here, because the truth is cruel.
Americans didn't have far fewer casualties in World War 2 because Asians and Europeans (I am speaking in geographical, not racial, terms here) just suffered more. Americans had fewer casualties than the other combatants because the other combatants were fucking awful at training and supplying their soldiers.
Take the Imperial Japanese Army. They carried single shot Arisaka bolt-action rifles with fixed bayonets, and a standard tactic for much of World War 2 was firing followed by a "banzai charge". This was not because the Japanese Army were somehow hugely primitive, but because this tactic worked in actions against Chinese opponents armed with similar rifles. And Japanese army training consisted in large part of brutalizing a recruit into possessing unquestioning obedience and endurance in the face of privation.
In contrast, American Marines were trained in the use of specific weapons, were issued as a main arm the Garand .30-06 semi-automatic rifle, with an eight-round clip that automatically ejected, and were taught tactics, land navigation, and equipped with squad weapons suitable to jungle and island fighting. And rather than train a Marine to simply do without, American logistics usually ensured that troops were supplied with enough (if often rather tasteless) food. That's not to say American troops didn't starve - they did. But they went home looking like they'd been malnourished. The Japanese sometimes starved to death.
Which meant that when Americans went up against the Imperial Japanese Army, they tended to achieve KIA rates of anywhere from 1-3 to 1-10 in the favor of the Americans, even on ground entirely favoring the IJA. That's not patriotic bullcrap, it's just history.
On the same level, the Russians confronted the Nazis while possessing many of the same disadvantages. Results were often similar, with the opposing downside for the Germans that their homefront was far inferior to the American one, which supplied itself, the Russians, the British, the French Resistance, and even, sometimes, the Chinese. And when the Nazis went up against the Americans, American and British tactics were still superior, as was most of their equipment, including the Sherman, when understood in the totality, including such things as production costs (two exceptions: the German infantry machinegun (mg42) and infantry anti-tank weapons were better). Aside from those two things, American planes were better, American guns were better, American tanks were better (in terms of war effect, rather than relatively rare tank-to-tank combat), and American artillery was better.
This is my preferred area of study, and I am not saying these things because I am an American. Indeed, part of the reason American equipment was better was because we shamelessly stole everything we could, such as collaborating with the British on the P-51 Mustang.
But when it comes to low casualties, the reason American casualties were so low is in large part because American logistics and production were so good. Where a German commander might be able to order a 10 minute daily barrage, an American commander could order one wherever he found resistance - and with proximity detonation shells to boot. Where a Russian commander would order divisions of bolt-action riflemen forward, an American commander could fire an artillery barrage, then move forward under a moving mortar screen, with his squads equipped with flamethrowers, bazookas, BARs, Garands, Thompson submachineguns, and with accompanying tank support, on a smaller front. As you might imagine, this greater expenditure of ammunition resulted in smaller loss of life. If that weren't enough, the fact that surrendering to Americans, Canadians, and British soldiers meant time in a POW camp far more comfortable than war-time Germany probably reduced the desire to fight to the bitter end.
In other words, and to put it cruelly, the reason Americans didn't have the same experience of war as Europeans did isn't just because of geographic isolation, it's also because they were just better at killing people without getting killed, usually by the expenditure of a truly enormous amount of ordinance that no other side could afford.
But it's not just that. Let me give an example.
Take U.S. carriers. In World War 2, naval combat transitioned to carrier combat. While it is true that the Japanese started the war with a carrier strike at Pearl Harbor, it is less well known that the foremost pre-war advocate of air power was Billy Mitchell, a U.S. serviceman. While he was court-martialed, that was more for being an ass than being right. And American carriers reflected this. Unlike British carriers, American carriers were designed with "soft decks", that is to say, they were designed with wooden decks to allow quick repair of the flight deck (theoretically), and a larger complement of aircraft. While this might seem odd, what it reflected was the understanding that the only defense a fleet has is to get planes in the air, and if you cannot repair the runway quickly, you are fucked. To make up for this, American hangar decks were vented and open to the outside air - preventing fume build-up, and American damage control was decentralized and relied on massively redundant systems, water-tight compartments, and extensive and unending damage control drills and training. American carriers had crash barriers - which meant less time clearing flight decks, and American carriers also avoided fueling planes on the hangar decks, which also prevented fume build-up. Oh, and American AA (anti-aircraft fire) was computer controlled, and the American attitude towards AA capability was such that some observing it thought that the ships firing were actually on fire - in other words, as many AA guns as you could fit on a ship. Any ship. And American AA shells had proximity fuses not long after Midway.
Meanwhile, Japanese carriers had two hangar decks, which they would fuel on, enclosed in a hull which would become rife with fumes. Their magazine elevators and procedures often ended up with them temporarily storing weapons on these same barely-ventilated hangar decks. Some Japanese carriers had only two mains for conveying water for fire-fighting, which could both be easily knocked out. And while the Japanese started the war with elite pilots, their training system was inferior to the American one, as was their flight control, their radar, and their radios. Some Japanese pilots removed their radios to save weight, they were considered so useless. And when it came to sending aircraft out, Japanese pilots often did not carry parachutes, and flew planes without armor or self-sealing fuel tanks for the majority of the war, in the majority of situations.
If one were then to comment that Americans don't know what it's like to lose a major carrier battle, I think Americans might well be pardoned for raising an ironic eyebrow.
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The US pumping money into Germany helped with that a lot, of course. In the end Germany worked so well with the money we got from the Marshall plan that after paying it back we had worked out a profit through investments with it.
Marshall Plan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan)
The Marshall Plan money was in the form of grants that did not have to be repaid.
(http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y27/cadetorange/web%20graphics/MarshallPlanMech_zps94232344.png)
The entire book can be found from USAID (http://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PDACQ201.pdf).
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Americans didn't have far fewer casualties in World War 2 because Asians and Europeans (I am speaking in geographical, not racial, terms here) just suffered more. Americans had fewer casualties than the other combatants because the other combatants were fucking awful at training and supplying their soldiers[...]
The 45 million civilian dead might have had a few other factors to add.
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Murica
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The US pumping money into Germany helped with that a lot, of course. In the end Germany worked so well with the money we got from the Marshall plan that after paying it back we had worked out a profit through investments with it.
Marshall Plan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan)
The Marshall Plan money was in the form of grants that did not have to be repaid.
Nnnyes, *mostly* in the form of grants; except in the case of Germany, which was more complicated. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan#Loans_and_Grants (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan#Loans_and_Grants), especially that last paragraph -- presumably the developments Nico is referring to.
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The 45 million civilian dead might have had a few other factors to add.
He did admit geographical isolation was part of it. Just not the whole of it.
I don't think anybody needs to examine the reason why 45 million civilian deaths occurred during World War II. Atrocity and collateral, mostly. The rest of this conversation is starting to sound like "Americans in the mainland haven't died enough." Sorry, but I think that's a pretty disgusting attitude to have.
Anyways, I don't think we need to be pointing fingers angrily about World War II in the year 2014, and this conversation is getting pretty damn close to it.
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I'm not angry; it's not a contest about whose soil is more blood-soaked; but I also couldn't disagree more with that statement. The reasons why those deaths occurred are exactly the fulcrums of modern European history, and it seemed worth pointing out that the superior equipment and training of the armed forces of the United States are a tiny factor in that whole.
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Superior equipment and training my ass. And certainly not at the start of the war, either against Japan or Germany.
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The US pumping money into Germany helped with that a lot, of course. In the end Germany worked so well with the money we got from the Marshall plan that after paying it back we had worked out a profit through investments with it.
Marshall Plan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan)
The Marshall Plan money was in the form of grants that did not have to be repaid.
Nnnyes, *mostly* in the form of grants; except in the case of Germany, which was more complicated. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan#Loans_and_Grants (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan#Loans_and_Grants), especially that last paragraph -- presumably the developments Nico is referring to.
According to that paragraph, Germany in the end received a similar ratio of loans to grants as the UK and France (15% to 85%).
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Either way, there were loans it recieved and it had to pay back those.
Also, in regard to deaths in WW II: It's not at all about 'more USAmercians should have died'. Still, there is a huge difference in how a war impacts on the collective conscious of a nation depending on whether there were huge civilian losses or not. It's quite telling that Vikarion writes a wall of text about why there were less US soldiers killed in WW II(and his geographical isolation point isn't really there to explain the comparable lack of civilian casualties).
If one reads his post, war casualties seem to be restricted to soldiers - which they were, largely, for the US. It shows in how Europeans deal with WW II in comparison to USAmericans.
So again, it's not at all saying American civilians haven't died enough - at the contrary, I think it is enviable and if anything it seems rather weird to me that someone feels that the fact that US civilians were quite safe in WW II compared to Europeans leads to the conclusion that there should've been more US deaths. It's not at all, like Shiori says, a macabre contest about whose soil is more blood soaked.
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Either way, there were loans it recieved and it had to pay back those.
The US pumping money into Germany helped with that a lot, of course. In the end Germany worked so well with the money we got from the Marshall plan that after paying it back we had worked out a profit through investments with it.
The way I read your previous statement was that Germany paid back all the money it got. My point is that Germany did not nor did it have to pay back lots of that money.
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If reading texts that can be interpreted in different ways, try to apply the Principle of Charity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity).
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I don't think anybody needs to examine the reason why 45 million civilian deaths occurred during World War II. Atrocity and collateral, mostly. The rest of this conversation is starting to sound like "Americans in the mainland haven't died enough." Sorry, but I think that's a pretty disgusting attitude to have.
Anyways, I don't think we need to be pointing fingers angrily about World War II in the year 2014, and this conversation is getting pretty damn close to it.
I didn't get the impression that anyone was saying that, we were just discussing the different experience that America has with war compared to Europe. The suggestion is not that the US should have suffered the horrors that Europe and parts of Asia did, but simply that it didn't and that that colors our view of war.
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I wasn't replying to explain the entirety of the casualties, just some of them. It's also true that Britain suffered far fewer civilian casualties than did, say, the Soviet Union. So did France.
But I think it's just slightly disingenuous to make the claim, if one were to make it, that, say, Britain is far more peace-loving than the United States because it suffered so much more. Well, maybe. But Britain suffered around 450,000 total casualties, and the United States comes in at about 420,000. I suppose one could argue that it was a greater proportion of the population, or that the destruction of infrastructure helped change the psychological condition, but then, what about Norway, which only suffered around 9,000? If we consider it as on "proportion of population" levels, Denmark suffered far less than the U.S., at 0.08 to the U.S.'s 0.32.
On the other hand, take China, which suffered probably around 20,000,000 dead, or 3.86 percent of its population, and is not known for it's pacifism or unwillingness to embrace violence. Are only Europeans capable of learning from being killed in job lots? Probably not.
And, it's not like Hitler didn't want to bomb New York, or that the Japanese High Command didn't want to attack the western United States. The Japanese went so far as to try balloon bombs, which were about as effective as you might expect. What kept them from doing so was the destruction of their carriers.
I would have included this last night, but I got tired. Nor was I trying to be inflammatory. I should probably start a separate thread about military hardware, if anyone cares to discuss it. And if giving the Americans any credit makes you feel bad, there's still the fact that many of these innovations were taken from European inventors, and produced with resources harvested from land stolen from its original inhabitants, by a country that was still treating blacks as third-class citizens and interning its Japanese immigrants. :P
But my opinion would be that the European attitude about war and violence probably stems from other factors than simple exposure to war or casualties. I would suspect that there is quite involved in that sort of cultural shift. It may even be that it was the constant threat of nuclear annihilation hanging over their heads from two opposing superpowers that instigated it, much as it helped spawn a peace movement in the United States.
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(http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41K9CRSPCNL._SS500_.jpg)
Britain
For All Members of American Expeditionary Forces in Great Britain
INTRODUCTION
YOU are now in Great Britain as part of an Allied offensive -to meet Hitler and beat him on his own ground. For the time being you will be Britain's guest. The purpose of this guide is to start getting you acquainted with the British, their country, and their ways.
America and Britain are allies. Hitler knows that they are both powerful countries, tough and resourceful. He knows that they, with the other United Nations, mean his crushing defeat in the end.
So it is only common sense to understand that the first and major duty Hitler has given his propaganda chiefs is to separate Britain and America and spread distrust between them. If he can do that, his chance of winning might return.
No Time to Fight Old Wars. If you come from an Irish-American family, you may think of the English as persecutors of the Irish, or you may think of them as enemy Redcoats who fought against us in the American Revolution and the War of 1812. But there is no time today to fight old wars over again or bring up old grievances. We don't worry about which side our grandfathers fought on in the Civil War, because it doesn't mean anything now.
We can defeat Hitler's propaganda with a weapon of our own. Plain, common horse sense; understanding of evident truths.
The most evident truth of all is that in their major ways of life the British and American people are much alike. They speak the same language. They both believe in representative government, in freedom of worship, in freedom of speech. But each country has minor national characteristics which differ. It is by causing misunderstanding over these minor differences that Hitler hopes to make his propaganda effective.
British Reserved, Not Unfriendly. You defeat enemy propaganda not by denying that these differences exist, but by admitting them openly and then trying to understand them. For instance : The British are often more reserved in conduct than we. On a small crowded island where forty-five million people live, each man learns to guard his privacy carefully-and is equally careful not to invade another man's privacy.
So if Britons sit in trains or busses without striking up conversation with you, it doesn't mean they are being haughty and unfriendly. Probably they are paying more attention to you than you think. But they don't speak to you because they don't want to appear intrusive or rude.
Another difference. The British have phrases and colloquialisms of their own that may sound funny to you. You can make just as many boners in their eyes. It isn't a good idea, for instance, to say "bloody" in mixed company in Britain-it is one of their worst swear words. To say: "I look like a bum" is offensive to their ears, for to the British this means that you look like your own backside ; it isn't important-just a tip if you are trying to shine in polite society. Near the end of this guide you will find more of these differences of speech.
British money is in pounds, shillings, and pence. (This is explained more fully later on.) The British are used to this system and they like it, and all your arguments that the American decimal system is better won't convince them. They won't be pleased to hear you call it "funny money," either. They sweat hard to get it (wages are much lower in Britain than America) and they won't think you smart or funny for mocking at it.
Don't Be a Show Off. The British dislike bragging and showing off. American wages and American soldier's pay are the highest in the world. When pay day comes it would be sound practice to learn to spend your money according to British standards. They consider you highly paid. They won't think any better of you for throwing money around; they are more likely to feel that you haven't learned the common-sense virtues of thrift. The British "Tommy" is apt to be specially touchy about the difference between his wages and yours. Keep this in mind. Use common sense and don't rub him the wrong way.
You will find many things in Britain physically different from similar things in America. But there are also important similarities-our common speech, our common law, and our ideals of religious freedom were all brought from Britain when the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. Our ideas about political liberties are also British and parts of our own Bill of Rights were borrowed from the great charters of British liberty.
Remember that in America you like people to conduct themselves as we do, and to respect the same things. Try to do the same for the British and respect the things they treasure.
The British Are Tough. Don't be misled by the British tendency to be soft-spoken and polite. If they need to be, they can be plenty tough. The English language didn't spread across the oceans and over the mountains and jungles and swamps of the world because these people were panty-waists.
Sixty thousand British civilians-men, women, and children-have died under bombs, and yet the morale of the British is unbreakable and high. A nation doesn't come through that, if it doesn't have plain, common guts. The British are tough, strong people, and good allies.
You won't be able to tell the British much about "taking it." They are not particularly interested in taking it any more. They are far more interested in getting together in solid friendship with us, so that we can all start dishing it out to Hitler.
THE COUNTRY
England is a small country, smaller than North Carolina or Iowa. The whole of Great Britain-that is England and Scotland and Wales together-is hardly bigger than Minnesota. England's largest river, the Thames (pronounced "Terns") is not even as big as the Mississippi when it leaves Minnesota. No part of England is more than one hundred miles from the sea.
If you are from Boston or Seattle the weather may remind you of home. If you are from Arizona or North Dakota you will find it a little hard to get used to. At first you will probably not like the almost continual rains and mists and the absence of snow and crisp cold. Actually, the city of London has less rain for the whole year than many places in the United States, but the rain falls in frequent drizzles. Most people get used to the English climate eventually.
If you have a chance to travel about you will agree that no area of the same size in the United States has such a variety of scenery. At one end of the English Channel there is a coast like that of Maine. At the other end are the great white chalk cliffs of Dover. The lands of South England and the Thames Valley are like farm or grazing lands of the eastern United States, while the lake country in the north of England and the highlands of Scotland are like the White Mountains of New Hampshire. In the east, where England bulges out toward Holland, the land is almost Dutch in appearance, low, flat, and marshy. The great wild moors of Yorkshire in the north and Devon in the southwest will remind you of the Badlands of the Dakotas and Montana.
Age instead of Size. On furlough you will probably go to the cities, where you will meet the Briton's pride in age and tradition. You will find that the British care little about size, not having the "biggest" of many things as we do. For instance: London has no skyscrapers. Not because English architects couldn't design one, but because London is built on swampy ground, not on a rock like New York, and skyscrapers need something solid to rest their foundations on. In London they will point out to you buildings like Westminster Abbey, where England's kings and greatest men are buried, and St. Paul's Cathedral with its famous dome, and the Tower of London, which was built almost a thousand years ago. All of these buildings have played an important part in England's history. They mean just as much to the British as Mount Vernon or Lincoln's birthplace do to-us.
The largest English cities are all located in the lowlands near the various seacoasts. In the southeast, on the Thames, is London-which is the combined New York, Washington, and Chicago not only of England but of the far-flung British Empire. Greater London's huge population of twelve million people is the size of Greater New York City and all its suburbs with the nearby New Jersey cities thrown in. It is also more than a quarter of the total population of the British Isles. The great "midland" manufacturing cities of Birmingham, Sheffield, and Coventry (sometimes called "the Detroit of Britain") are located in the central part of England. Nearby on the west coast are the textile and shipping centers of Manchester and Liverpool. Further north, in Scotland, is the world's leading shipbuilding center of Glasgow. On the east side of Scotland is the historic Scottish capital, Edinburgh, scene of the tales of Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson which many of you read in school. In southwest England, at the broad mouth of the Severn, is the great port of Bristol.
Remember There's a War On. Britain may look a little shop-worn and grimy to you. The British people are anxious to have you know that you are not seeing their country at its best. There's been a war on since 1939- Tile houses haven't been painted because factories are not making paint-they're making planes. The famous English gardens and parks are either unkept because there are no men to take care of them, or they are being used to grow needed vegetables. British taxicabs look antique because Britain makes tanks for herself and Russia and hasn't time to make new cars. British trains are cold because power is needed for industry, not for heating. There are no luxury dining cars on trains because total war effort has no place for such frills. The trains are unwashed and grimy because men and women are needed for more important work than car-washing. The British people are anxious for you to know that in normal times Britain looks much prettier, cleaner, neater.
Although you read in the papers about "lords" and "sirs," England is still one of the great democracies and the cradle of many American liberties. Personal rule by the King has been dead in England for nearly a thousand years. Today the King reigns, but does not govern. The British people have great affection for their monarch but have stripped him of practically all political power. It is well to remember this in your comings and goings about England. Be careful not to criticize the King. The British feel about that the way you would feel if anyone spoke against our country or our flag. Today's King and Queen stuck with the people through the blitzes and had their home bombed just like anyone else, and the people are proud of them.
Britain the Cradle of Democracy. Today the old power of the King has been shifted to Parliament, the Prime Minister, and his Cabinet. The British Parliament has been called the Mother of Parliaments, because almost all the representative bodies in the world have been copied from it. It is made up of two Houses, the House of Commons and the House of Lords. The House of Commons is the most powerful group and is elected by all adult men and women in the country, much like our Congress. Today the House of Lords can do little more than add its approval to laws passed by the House of Commons. Many of the "titles" held by the lords (such as "baron" and "duke" and "earl") have been passed from father to son for hundreds of years. Others are granted in reward for outstanding achievement, much as American colleges and universities give honorary degrees to famous men and women. These customs may seem strange and old- fashioned but they give the British the same feeling of security and comfort that many of us get from the familiar ritual of a church service.
The important thing to remember is that within this apparently old-fashioned framework the British enjoy a practical, working twentieth century democracy which is in some ways even more flexible and sensitive to the will of the people than our own.
THE PEOPLE-THEIR CUSTOMS AND MANNERS
The Best Way to get on in Britain is very much the same as the best way to get on in America. The same sort of courtesy and decency and friendliness that go over big in America will go over big in Britain. The British have seen a good many Americans and they like Americans. They will like your frankness as long as it is friendly. They will expect you to be generous. They are not given to back-slapping and they are shy about showing their affections. But once they get to like you they make the best friends in the world. In "getting along" the first important thing to remember is that the British are like the Americans in many ways-but not in all ways. You are quickly discovering differences that seem confusing and even wrong. Like driving on the left side of the road, and having money based on an "impossible" accounting system, and drinking warm beer. But once you get used to things like that, you will realize that they belong to England just as baseball and jazz and coco-cola belong to us.
The British Like Sports. The British of all classes are enthusiastic about sports, both as amateurs and as spectators of professional sports. They love to shoot, they love to play games, they ride horses and bet on horse races, they fish. (But be careful where you hunt and fish. Fishing and hunting rights are often private property.) The great "spectator" sports are football in the autumn and winter cricket in the spring and summer. See a "match" in either of these sports whenever you get a chance. You will get a kick out of it-if only for the differences from American sports.
Cricket will strike you as slow compared with American baseball, but it isn't easy to play well. You will probably get nothing but a private contest between the bowler (who corresponds to our pitcher) and the batsman (batter) and you have to know the fine points of the game to understand what is going on.
Football in Britain takes two forms. They play soccer, which is known in America; and they also play "rugger," which is a rougher game and closer to American football, but is played without the padded suits and headguards we use. Rugger requires fifteen on a side, uses a ball slightly bigger than our football, and allows lateral but not forward passing. The English do not handle the ball as cleanly as we do, but they are far more expert with their feet. As in all English games, no substitutes are allowed. If a man is injured, his side continues with fourteen players and so on.
You will find that English crowds at football or cricket matches are more orderly and polite to the players than American crowds. If a fielder misses a catch at cricket, the crowd will probably take a sympathetic attitude. They will shout "good try" even if it looks to you like a bad fumble. In America the crowd would probably shout "take him out." This contrast should be remembered.
It means that you must be careful in the excitement of an English game not to shout out remarks which everyone in America would understand, but which the British might think insulting.
In general, more people play games in Britain than in America and they play the game even if they are not good at it. You can always find people who play no better than you and are glad to play with you. They are good sportsmen and are quick to recognize good sportsmanship wherever they meet it.
Indoor Amusements. The British have theaters and movies (which they call "cinemas") as we do. But the great place of recreation is the "pub." A pub, or public house, is what we could call a bar or tavern. The usual drink is beer, which is not an imitation of German beer as our beer is, but ale. (But they usually call it beer or "bitter".) Not much whiskey is now being drunk. War-time taxes have shot the price of a bottle up to about $4·50· The British are beer-drinkers-and can hold it. The beer is now below peacetime strength, but can still make a man's tongue wag at both ends.
You are welcome in the British pubs as long as you remember one thing. The pub is " the poor man's club," the neighborhood or village gathering place, where the men have come to see their- friends, not strangers. If you want to join a darts game, let them ask you first (as they probably will). And if you are beaten it is the custom to stand aside and let someone else play.
The British make much of Sunday. All the shops are closed, most of the restaurants are closed, and in the small towns there is not much to do. You had better follow the example of the British and try to spend Sunday afternoon in the country.
British churches, particularly the little village churches, are often very beautiful inside and out. Most of them are always open and if you feel like it, do not hesitate to walk in. But do not walk around if a service is going on.
You will naturally be interested in getting to know your opposite number, the British soldier, the "Tommy" you have heard and read about. You can understand that two actions on your part will slow up the friendship-swiping his girl, and not appreciating what his army has been up against. Yes, and rubbing it in that you are better paid than he is.
Children the world over are easy to get along with. British children are much like our own. The British have reserved much of the food that gets through solely for their children. To the British children you as an American are "something special." For they have been fed at their schools and impressed with the fact that the food they ate was sent to them by Uncle Sam. You don't have to tell the British about lend-lease food. They know about it and appreciate it.
Keep Out of Arguments. You can rub a Britisher the wrong way by telling him "we came over and won the last one." Each nation did its share. But Britain remembers that nearly a million of.her best manhood died in the last war. America lost 60,000 in action.
Such arguments and the war debts along with them are dead issues. Nazi propaganda now is pounding away day and night asking the British people why they should fight "to save Uncle Shylock and his silver dollar." Don't play into Hitler's hands by mentioning war debts.
Neither do the British need to be told that their armies lost the first couple of rounds in the present war. We've lost a couple, ourselves, so do not start off by being critical of them and saying what the Yanks are going to do. Use your head before you sound off, and remember how long the British alone held Hitler off without any help from anyone.
In the pubs you will hear a lot of Britons openly criticizing their Government and the conduct of the war. That isn't an occasion for you to put in your two-cents worth. It's their business, not yours. You sometimes criticize members of your own family-but just let an outsider start doing the same, and you know how you feel !
The Briton is just as outspoken and independent as we are. But don't get him wrong. He is also the most law abiding citizen in the world, because the British system of justice is just about the best there is. There are fewer murders, robberies, and burglaries in the whole of Great Britain in a year than in a single large American city.
Once again, look, listen, and learn before you start telling the British how much better we do things. They will be interested to hear about life in America and you have a great chance to overcome the picture many of them have gotten from the movies of an America made up of wild Indians and gangsters. When you find differences between British and American ways of doing things, there is usually a good reason for them.
British railways have dinky freight cars (which they call "goods wagons") not because they don't know any better. Small cars allow quicker handling of freight at the thousands and thousands of small stations.
British automobiles are little and low-powered. That's because all the gasoline has to be imported over thousands of miles of ocean.
British taxicabs have comic-looking front wheel structures. Watch them turn around in a 12-foot street and you'll understand why.
The British don't know how to make a good cup of coffee. You don't know how to make a good cup of tea. It's an even swap.
The British are leisurely-but not really slow. Their crack trains held world speed records. A British ship held the trans-Atlantic record. A British car and a British driver set world's speed records in America.
Do not be offended if Britishers do not pay as full respects to national or regimental colors as Americans do. The British do not treat the flag as such an important symbol as we do. But they pay more frequent respect to their National Anthem. In peace or war "God Save the King" (to the same tune of our "America") is played at the conclusion of all public gatherings such as theater performances. The British consider it bad form not to stand at attention, even if it means missing the last bus. If you are in a hurry, leave before the National Anthem is played. That's considered alright.
On the whole, British people-whether English, Scottish, or Welsh-are open and honest. When you are on furlough and puzzled about directions, money, or customs, most people will be anxious to help you as long as you speak first and without bluster. The best authority on all problems is the nearest "bobby" (policeman) in his steel helmet. British police are proud of being able to answer almost any question under the sun. They're not in a hurry and they'll take plenty of time to talk to you.
The British welcome you as friends and allies. But remember that crossing the ocean doesn't automatically make you a hero. There are housewives in aprons and youngsters in knee pants in Britain who have lived through more high explosives in air raids than many soldiers saw in first class barrages in the last war.
BRITAIN AT WAR
At Home in America you were in a country at war. Now, however, you are in a war zone. You will find that all Britain is a war zone and has been since September, 1939- All this has meant great changes in the British way of life.
Every light in England is blacked out every night and all night. Every highway signpost has come down and barrage balloons have gone up. Grazing land is now ploughed for wheat and flower beds turned into vegetable gardens. Britain's peacetime army of a couple of hundred thousand has been expanded to over two million men. Everything from the biggest factory to the smallest village workshop is turning out something for the war, so that Britain can supply arms for herself, for Libya, India, Russia, and every front. Hundreds of thousands of women have gone to work in factories or joined the many military auxiliary forces. Old-time social distinctions are being forgotten as the sons of factory workers rise to be officers in the forces and the daughters of noblemen get jobs in munitions factories.
But more important than this is the effect of the war itself. The British have been bombed, night after night and month after month. Thousands of them have lost their houses, their possessions, their families. Gasoline, clothes, and railroad travel are hard to come by and incomes are cut by taxes to an extent we Americans have not even approached. One of the things the English always had enough of in the past was soap. Now it is so scarce that girls working in the factories often cannot get the grease off their hands or out of their hair. Food is more strictly rationed than anything .else.
The British Came Through. For many months the people of Britain have been doing without things which Americans take for granted. But you will find that shortages, discomforts, blackouts, and bombings have not made the British depressed. They have a new cheerfulness and a new determination born out of hard time and tough luck. After going through what they have been through it's only human nature that they should be more than ever determined to win.
You came to Britain from a country where your home is still safe, food is still plentiful, and lights are still burning. So it is doubly important for you to remember that the British soldiers and civilians are living under a tremendous strain. It is always impolite to criticize your hosts. It is militarily stupid to insult your allies. So stop and think before you sound off about lukewarm beer, or cold boiled potatoes, or the way English cigarettes taste.
If British civilians look dowdy and badly dressed, it is not because they do not like good clothes or know how to wear them. All clothing is rationed and the British know that they help war production by wearing an old suit or dress until it cannot be patched any longer. Old clothes are "good form." One thing to be careful about-if you are invited into a British home and the host exhorts you to "eat up-there's plenty on the table," go easy. It may be the family's rations for a whole week spread out to show their hospitality.
Waste Means Lives. It is always said that Americans throw more food into their garbage cans than any other country eats. It is true. We have always been a "producer" nation. Most British food is imported even in peacetimes, and for the last two years the British have been taught not to waste the things that their ships bring in from abroad. British seamen die getting those convoys through. The British have been taught this so thoroughly that they now know that gasoline and food represent the lives of merchant sailors. And when you burn gasoline needlessly, it will seem to them as if you are wasting the blood of those seamen, and when you destroy or waste food you have wasted the life of another sailor.
British Women at War. A British woman officer or non-commissioned officer can and often does give orders to a man private. The men obey smartly and know it is no shame. For British women have proven themselves in this war. They have stuck to their posts near burning ammunition dumps, delivered messages afoot after their motorcycles have been blasted from under them. They have pulled aviators from burning planes. They have died at the gun posts and as they fell another girl has stepped directly into the position and "carried on." There is not a single record in this war of any British woman in uniformed service quitting her post or failing in her duty under fire.
Now you understand why British soldiers respect the women in uniform. They have won the right to the utmost respect. When you see a girl in khaki or air-force blue with a bit of ribbon on her tunic-remember she didn't get it for knitting more socks than anyone else in Ipswich.
ENGLISH VERSUS AMERICAN LANGUAGE
In your contacts with the people you will hear them speaking "English." At first you may not understand what they are talking about and they may not understand what you say. The accent will be different from what you are used to, and many of the words will be strange, or apparently wrongly used. But you will get used to it. Remember that back in Washington stenographers from the South are having a hard time to understand dictation given by business executives from New England and the other way around.
In England the "upper crust" speak pretty much alike. You will hear the news broadcaster for the B.B.C. (British Broadcasting Corporation). He is a good example, because he has been trained to talk with the cultured accent. He will drop the letter "r" (as people do in some sections of our own country) and says "hyah" instead of "here." He uses the broad a, pronouncing all the a's in "Banana" like the a in "father." However funny you may think this is, you will be able to understand people who talk this way and they will be able to understand you. You will soon get over thinking it is funny.
You will have more difficulty with some of the local dialects. It may comfort you to know that a farmer or villager from Cornwall very often can't understand a farmer or villager in Yorkshire or Lancashire. But you will learn and they will learn to understand you.
Some Hints on British Words. British slang is something you will have to pick up for yourself. But even apart from slang, there are many words which have different meanings from the way we use them and many common objects have different names. For instance, instead of railroads, automobiles, and radios, the British will talk about railways, motor-cars, and wireless sets. A railroad tie is a sleeper. A freight car is a goods wagon. A man who works on the roadbed is a navvy. A streetcar is a tram. Automobile lingo is just as different. A light truck is a lorry. The top of a car is the hood. What we call the hood (of the engine) is a bonnet. The fenders are wings. A wrench is a spanner. Gas is petrol-if there is any.
Your first furlough may find you in some small difficulties because of language difference. You will have to ask for sock suspenders to get garters and for braces instead of suspenders if you need any. If you are standing in line to buy (book) a railroad ticket or a seat at the movies (cinema) you will be queuing (pronounced "cueing") up before the booking office. If you want a beer quickly, you had better ask for the nearest pub. You will get your drugs at a chemist's and your tobacco at a tobacconist, hardware at an ironmonger's. If you are asked to visit somebody's apartment, he or she will call it a flat.
A unit of money, not shown in the following table, which you will sometimes see advertised in the better stores is the guinea (pronounced "ginny" with the "g" hard as in "go"). It is worth 21 shillings, or one pound plus one shilling. There is no actual coin or bill of this value in use. It is merely a quotation of price.
A coin not shown in the table below is the gold sovereign, with a value of one pound. You will read about it in English literature but you will probably never see one and need not bother about it.
SOME IMPORTANT DO'S AND DONT'S
Be friendly but don't intrude anywhere it seems you are not wanted. You will find the British money system easier than you think. A little study beforehand will make it still easier.
You are higher paid than the British "Tommy." Don't rub it in. Play fair with him. He can be a pal in need.
Don't show off or brag or bluster-"swank" as the British say. If somebody looks in your direction and says, "he's chucking his weight about," you can be pretty sure you're off base. That's the time to pull in your ears.
If you are invited to eat with a family don't eat too much. Otherwise you may eat up their weekly rations.
Don't make fun of British speech or accents. You sound just as funny to them but they are too polite to show it.
Avoid comments on the British Government or politics.
Don't try to tell the British that America won the last war or make wise-cracks about the war debts or about British defeats in this war.
Never criticize the King or Queen.
Don't criticize the food, beer, or cigarettes to the British. Remember they have been at war since 1939.
Use common sense on all occasions. By your conduct you have great power to bring about a better understanding between the two countries after the war is over.
You will soon find yourself among a kindly, quiet, hardworking people who have been living under a strain such as few people in the world have ever known. In your dealings with them, let this be your slogan :
It is always impolite to criticize your hosts;
It is militarily stupid to criticize your allies.
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@Vikarion
I think I will have to disagree with your US military equipment and training being 'superior' to the other combatants for WW2.
I've always understood it that Pound for Pound the Wermacht were by far better trained, better equipped, and better tactically than everyone else. Their defeat was because of ridiculous political and strategic objectives handed down and demanded by a lunatic - the field commanders and tacticians along with the equipment and manpower and training, were very, very far ahead of all competitors.
It's sort of the golden lesson of history that even with superior military equipment, training, and motivation, if you've got a lunatic giving you crazy orders on who to attack and what your priorities are, you're going to lose in the end.
IE even with a madman in supreme command essentially making them fight with one hand behind their back they still conquered Europe and came -this- close to winning everything. Basically they did stupidly well despite having a terrible commander in chief.
I'm separating this particular convo from the Pacific theater, which showed quite a bit of US tactical brilliance and campaigning along with several good rolls of the dice and fortune.
Not to say that this wasn't true in Europe, but I've always had more of the impression that it wasn't so much that the Allies 'won' more that the Axis made enough repeat terrible decisions from Hitler that they gave it away, so to speak.
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I've always understood it that Pound for Pound the Wermacht were by far better trained, better equipped, and better tactically than everyone else. Their defeat was because of ridiculous political and strategic objectives handed down and demanded by a lunatic - the field commanders and tacticians along with the equipment and manpower and training, were very, very far ahead of all competitors.
~stuff~
Just going to step in here and say that this (and any other terms using the phrases "better", "best", or "superior" in a general fashion) is a hugely subjective comparison. Both sides had good and bad vehicles, good and bad tacticians, and good and bad political leaders; although it is accurate to argue that the Axis were often hindered by blunders delivered from the highest levels, to say that this is the only reason the lost despite complete technical superiority is inaccurate in the extreme.
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@Vikarion
I think I will have to disagree with your US military equipment and training being 'superior' to the other combatants for WW2.
I've always understood it that Pound for Pound the Wermacht were by far better trained, better equipped, and better tactically than everyone else. Their defeat was because of ridiculous political and strategic objectives handed down and demanded by a lunatic - the field commanders and tacticians along with the equipment and manpower and training, were very, very far ahead of all competitors.
That's actually just a very well popularized myth, not least by the German fighting men who survived and (justifiably, perhaps) did not want to be seen as simply losers. And, in fairness, German training was generally good, especially in the early years of the war, if not as good as that of, say, U.S. Marines, or, probably, British Tommy's, who, man for man, often outfought the Wermacht.
Tactically, perhaps, the Germans had more opportunities to demonstrate brilliance than the Allies for most of the war, as the allies were on the offensive, and often constrained by terrain and strategic aims to fighting at certain geographic points. The Germans certainly displayed precious little tactical and strategic "brilliance" when on the strategic offensive after 1941. That said, in terms of actual tactical innovation, it was the Soviets who pioneered the tank-killing aircraft, and Americans who truly brought combined arms together. I can discuss this extensively if you like, but it might be easily framed as such: what tactical innovations did the Germans display that the Allies did not?
As for equipment, for example, it is true that, in a 1v1 tank battle in a flat field, at long distance, it was generally better to be in a Tiger or Panther than a Sherman. Unfortunately, "the better weapon" is not, and has never been, solely determined by the best armor or the most devastating firepower. The "best weapon" is the one that accomplishes your objectives to the greatest degree, including logistical ones. And yet, Germany produced only about 1,400 Tigers, while the Allies produced almost 50,000 Shermans. And the loss rate was far less than 10-1 or even 5-1. For example, in Hitler's last armored thrust of the Battle of the Bulge, the Germans lost 180 Panthers out of 415, with about 55% of the remaining Panthers out of action due to battle damage or mechanical problems. The U.S. First Army (which did most of the fighting) lost 320 Shermans, which left them with, well, 980 operational Shermans.
Why was the Sherman better?
When it was produced, it outclassed the Panzer IV in almost every way, aside from (perhaps) optics, with better armor, a better 75mm gun, and simple but rugged construction that made it one of the most reliable machines of the war. Unlike the Tiger and Panther, it was well designed mechanically, with generally easy to service parts and a long road life, including such innovations as rubber tracking on its treads. Its only major downside in regards to mechanical excellence was its narrower treads, resulting in a higher ground pressure. Contrast this with the high breakdown rate of German tanks, especially the Tiger 1, the King Tiger, and the Panther, whose drive train (transmission, etc) might last you 150km. If you were lucky. It also had the nasty habit of breaking if you accelerated or decelerated rapidly. And if you just sat there, a design flaw would sometimes flood the engine compartment with gasoline fumes, with predictable results. To put it in historical terms, at the Battle of Kursk, 184 Panthers were deployed. 44 of them promptly suffered "mechanical failures". That's 25% casualties without the enemy having to fire a shot.
If you did fire a shot, the Tiger had a great gun. The Panther, for some reason, had been given a gun that tended to wear out quickly due to its design, while not being any better at killing tanks than the Tiger's 88mm, and being significantly worse (due to a small HE shell) at providing infantry support - which is a tank's primary occupation most of the time. As if that weren't enough, the Panther's side armor was bad, and almost all German tanks had slower turret rotations than the Sherman. And once Shermans were equipped with 76mm guns and HVAP shells, they could penetrate the frontal armor of anything but a King Tiger at almost any reasonable combat distance. This was helped by the addition to the Panther of a "shot trap", that is to say, the design of the Panther's turret tended to direct ricochets downward - right through the top of the tank deck and into the driver or ammunition storage.
And if you were hit, despite claims soon after the war, compiled statistics show that Shermans were no more likely to burn than other tanks - and once water jackets for ammunition were introduced, far less. German tanks, on the other hand, were among the most likely to brew up, if hit, not least because of a lack of internal ammunition protection throughout the entire war. Many "destroyed" Shermans were quickly repaired and sent back onto the battlefield.
The verdict of history might also give us a clue. In the Battle of Arracourt, one of the few true tank battles between American and German forces, the Wermacht attacked an outnumbered American armor command with Panthers and assault guns. Using fire and maneuver, the American force then proceeded to destroy 86 tanks and assault guns at the cost of 32 of their own, a ratio of more than 2:1 in favor of the U.S. forces. After the war, Shermans continued to be used with great success, such as in the Korean war, where the Sherman proved more than a match for the T-34-85, and by the Israelis, who up-gunned it and wiped out more modern Soviet armor.
This is not the only example of looking beyond popular myth. As well, consider that the standard German battle rifle was a bolt action weapon, which was never fully replaced, while, say, the American GI was issued the Garand. Or that the German MP40 had an inferior magazine feed compared to the Thomson (American) submachine gun, and fewer rounds than the Soviet PPsH, while also possessing less stopping power than either the Thompson or M3 American submachine guns. And the Germans couldn't make as many submachine guns as either the Americans or Soviets.
Again, this sounds a bit jingoistic. But it's not just Americans who had better equipment than the Germans. The Germans would have been far better off just copying the Soviet T-34-85 than building the Panther, and the British Spitfire was better than the Me109E. The Stuka was a terrible plane, out-classed by the British Typhoon, the Soviet Sturmovik, AND American P-47, the latter of which was ALSO a better fighter than the ME109 and was probably better at high altitudes than the Focke-Wolfe (turbocharger, fuck yeah!). Both British bombers and American bombers carried more bombs, were better defended, and flew higher than their German counterparts. German tank destroyers were produced in astonishing variety, but probably only the Hetzer and Marder were worth the cost, while Soviet and American tank destroyers and assault guns performed superlatively. German U-boats were well-built, with good torpedoes, but American subs had far longer range and reasonably close maximum depth ratings (depending on the class).
I suppose the Me262 was a technological innovation that the allies did not match during the war, but the resources devoted to it would have been better spent on Focke-Wulfs, rather than trying to come up with wonder weapons that, in the end, were not significantly better at knocking allied bombers out of the sky.
In other words, the allies really did tend to have, overall, better equipment for winning a war, even if it didn't look as cool (and German equipment did look cool). And the allies, especially the Soviets and Americans, actually understood modern warfare as being an exercise in logistics and production, more than of training and fighting spirit.
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The strategy was for aircraft to support rapidly moving ground forces. Blitzkrieg. Twin engined bombers such as the Heinkel 111, or Junkers 88, were sufficient for this role. And the Stuka was also sufficient for what it was intended for - supporting a fast moving land war on the European continent.
And the Luftwaffe had many veteran pilots, from the Spanish Civil War, and had evolved modern tactics for high performance monoplane fighters.
But, after that, there was not a plan for long range heavy bombers, no real plan for aerial defence of Germany, the entire Luftwaffe was simply not set up for a long war.
German high command did not have proper plans for war against Britain, and were then somewhat in disarray for the rest of the war.
Germany never really implemented "Total War", whereas Britain did.
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I'm not really dedicated to debating the superiority of military equiment and training: I think it is largely uninteresting for the debate at hand. What I find more interesting is the following:
But my opinion would be that the European attitude about war and violence probably stems from other factors than simple exposure to war or casualties. I would suspect that there is quite involved in that sort of cultural shift. It may even be that it was the constant threat of nuclear annihilation hanging over their heads from two opposing superpowers that instigated it, much as it helped spawn a peace movement in the United States.
I think that here agian the threat was much more in the foregorund of the European consciousness. I mean, people here in Germany were traind in the 'Bundeswehr' with the explicit announcement, that all they had to do was keeping 'the Russian' occupied until the A-bomb hit. Here again, the US mainland wasn't under threat, while Europe was all the time... I don't think it's something different from how WW II was experienced by Europeans (on average), but a continuation.
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I wasn't replying to explain the entirety of the casualties, just some of them. It's also true that Britain suffered far fewer civilian casualties than did, say, the Soviet Union. So did France.
But I think it's just slightly disingenuous to make the claim, if one were to make it, that, say, Britain is far more peace-loving than the United States because it suffered so much more. Well, maybe. But Britain suffered around 450,000 total casualties, and the United States comes in at about 420,000. I suppose one could argue that it was a greater proportion of the population, or that the destruction of infrastructure helped change the psychological condition, but then, what about Norway, which only suffered around 9,000? If we consider it as on "proportion of population" levels, Denmark suffered far less than the U.S., at 0.08 to the U.S.'s 0.32.
On the other hand, take China, which suffered probably around 20,000,000 dead, or 3.86 percent of its population, and is not known for it's pacifism or unwillingness to embrace violence. Are only Europeans capable of learning from being killed in job lots? Probably not.
...
But my opinion would be that the European attitude about war and violence probably stems from other factors than simple exposure to war or casualties. I would suspect that there is quite involved in that sort of cultural shift. It may even be that it was the constant threat of nuclear annihilation hanging over their heads from two opposing superpowers that instigated it, much as it helped spawn a peace movement in the United States.
None of these stands up as an individual cause, but as contributing factors. Combine the greater casualties with the bombing of civilian targets, that sort of thing.
You also have differing historical narratives - in the US, we're basically taught that we defeated the Nazi's and imperial Japan, with some help from our European allies. It was personal research that lead to the realization of just how much the Russians contributed to the fall of Nazi Germany. Now, if Germany and Russia hadn't fought each other, we might still have defeated Germany once the Bomb was ready, but the way US history lessons minimize role of the Soviets is absurd.
So you end up with a sort of national myth where we look at ourselves as the great saviors of western civilization. If you then make a point of not teaching any of the Cold War history where the US goes around and fucks up other countries, replacing democratically elected leaders with brutal military dicators (Guatemala's Junta, the Shah of Iran, and many more) you end up with a country that thinks it holds moral high ground over the rest of the world.
Regarding your point about Denmark and Norway, here's another way to look at it: Seeing what war is like. While they may not have lost as many soldiers themselves, they had front row seats to the two greatest wars in history. The US, on the other hand, watched them from across oceans, filtered through news and other media. That may make up for the fact that they didn't actually lose as large a portion of of their population. Look at how US opinion changed when the news media gained the technology to give us a better look at what war could be like during Vietnam and then in Iraq. And that was still something happening "Over There" rather than "Next Door."
RE: China and Russia. They suffered horrendous casualties and didn't come out as pacifists. I think there are a couple reasons they don't compare as well to the US and western Europe.
The first is government: Neither was run by a popularly elected government, but rather both were run by dictatorships of one kind or another. So we can't really gauge how the war impacted the people based on how their governments behaved afterward.
The other major difference is cultural, and is related. China in particular has a culture much different than the West and likely responded to the violence it suffered very differently (I don't actually know much in this regard). In Europe, IIRC, there were efforts made at reconciliation after the war, so that the French and Germans wouldn't decide to hate each other for another generation or three. In China, no such thing happened. There wasn't (to my knowledge) any sort of forgiveness offered to the Japanese, any of the "They were just soldiers following orders" feeling. For example, my stepmother is of Chinese decent, came to the US when she was 4. Her mother has lived here in the US for 40ish years and still refuses to own a Japanese car - she was a teenager during WWII.
So you end up with a reaction to the war and the losses suffered that was much more ... angry isn't quite the word I'm going for, although there was certainly some hate included as well, but perhaps 'defensive'?
Following the war, both Russia and China (and America) were home to incredible propagandists who could drive public sentiment where they wanted it rather than being driven by it. I could be mistaken, but I don't get the impression that the rest of Europe could be as easily herded in whichever direction its government desired. As such, we don't really know how the people of Russia or China responded to the incredible losses they endured - only how their respective governments did. Stalin would go on to butcher millions of his own people, so we know he didn't give two shits what they thought. I don't know enough about post-war China to comment on the matter there.
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The strategy was for aircraft to support rapidly moving ground forces. Blitzkrieg. Twin engined bombers such as the Heinkel 111, or Junkers 88, were sufficient for this role. And the Stuka was also sufficient for what it was intended for - supporting a fast moving land war on the European continent.
And the Luftwaffe had many veteran pilots, from the Spanish Civil War, and had evolved modern tactics for high performance monoplane fighters.
But, after that, there was not a plan for long range heavy bombers, no real plan for aerial defence of Germany, the entire Luftwaffe was simply not set up for a long war.
German high command did not have proper plans for war against Britain, and were then somewhat in disarray for the rest of the war.
Germany never really implemented "Total War", whereas Britain did.
Louella, I would say that I think your analysis is largely correct, save for a couple points. First, even for blitzkreig, the HE111 was kinda bad, as it was designed and used as a strategic bomber. The Ju88 could fill a multitude of roles, however, it took part in the Battle of Britain thanks to Goering's "tactical brilliance".
Even for a strategic bomber, though, the He111 was pretty bad, carrying a max load of around 7,050/3200 pounds/kg. Its contemporaries, the British Halifax and American B-17, carried a max load of about 13,000/5896 pounds/kg and 17600/7983 pounds/kg respectively.
And the Stuka appears to have been constructed by someone under the impression that his opponent would not have an airforce. While an accurate dive bomber, and relatively sturdy, but it carried a relatively small load, and was neither maneuverable nor fast. Which meant that every time it encountered an enemy air force of even moderate coordination and capability, it tended to die quite a bit, as the British demonstrated in the Battle of Britain.
Consider this: the British themselves created better planes than the Germans in all of these categories, with a better strategic bomber (Halifax), a better multi-role bomber (DH.98 Mosquito, which was fucking amazing, I must say), and a better ground attack aircraft (the Typhoon).
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I'm not really dedicated to debating the superiority of military equiment and training: I think it is largely uninteresting for the debate at hand. What I find more interesting is the following:
But my opinion would be that the European attitude about war and violence probably stems from other factors than simple exposure to war or casualties. I would suspect that there is quite involved in that sort of cultural shift. It may even be that it was the constant threat of nuclear annihilation hanging over their heads from two opposing superpowers that instigated it, much as it helped spawn a peace movement in the United States.
I think that here agian the threat was much more in the foregorund of the European consciousness. I mean, people here in Germany were traind in the 'Bundeswehr' with the explicit announcement, that all they had to do was keeping 'the Russian' occupied until the A-bomb hit. Here again, the US mainland wasn't under threat, while Europe was all the time... I don't think it's something different from how WW II was experienced by Europeans (on average), but a continuation.
Perhaps, but don't be too sure that American's didn't also live in fear of "the bomb". I get that I'm somewhat arguing against myself here, so understand that I do agree that there's a difference between the idea of a nuke going off and being able to drive right up to a border from which an invasion might issue forth at any instant.
Also, I'm a bit sick at the moment, so, please read what I write with the maximum charity possible, as I'm not the best at conveying meaning atm. :D
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You also have differing historical narratives - in the US, we're basically taught that we defeated the Nazi's and imperial Japan, with some help from our European allies. It was personal research that lead to the realization of just how much the Russians contributed to the fall of Nazi Germany. Now, if Germany and Russia hadn't fought each other, we might still have defeated Germany once the Bomb was ready, but the way US history lessons minimize role of the Soviets is absurd.
My education did not convey this idea to me, and I know others of the same experience, but I have also heard of that sort of propaganda-lite kind of education. I agree, it's bad. On the other hand, it's wise not to go too far the other way and forget that the Soviets benefited massively from American aid. By the way, this is a great interview with a Russian tanker who drove a Sherman: http://english.iremember.ru/tankers/17-dmitriy-loza.html (http://english.iremember.ru/tankers/17-dmitriy-loza.html)
So you end up with a sort of national myth where we look at ourselves as the great saviors of western civilization. If you then make a point of not teaching any of the Cold War history where the US goes around and fucks up other countries, replacing democratically elected leaders with brutal military dicators (Guatemala's Junta, the Shah of Iran, and many more) you end up with a country that thinks it holds moral high ground over the rest of the world.
I absolutely agree. I think that many of the things the U.S. did during the Cold War were obscene. On the other hand, you have things like the Korean War, and I think that it takes a bit of delusional sophistry (which I am not accusing you of, certainly) to think that South Korea would be worse off without the United States. Nor was the United States an exception - consider how France fought bloody actions in French Indochina (named so at the time) and Algeria in the hopes of retaining it's colonial possessions. As bad as Vietnam was, it appears to be the case that the North Vietnamese did execute a bloodbath after we withdrew. Knowing what it ended up costing, it was obviously a bad choice, but that is in hindsight. Some decisions we made were made because all we had to go on was how communists had acted up to that point. That said, we would have done well not to interfere in South America at all. We had very little positive influence there, besides perhaps in Panama.
Regarding your point about Denmark and Norway, here's another way to look at it: Seeing what war is like. While they may not have lost as many soldiers themselves, they had front row seats to the two greatest wars in history. The US, on the other hand, watched them from across oceans, filtered through news and other media. That may make up for the fact that they didn't actually lose as large a portion of of their population. Look at how US opinion changed when the news media gained the technology to give us a better look at what war could be like during Vietnam and then in Iraq. And that was still something happening "Over There" rather than "Next Door."
That's...somewhat possible. Keep in mind that the U.S. made the choice to air graphic war footage of places like Tarawa in movie theaters. This did not have the effect of weakening American morale.
As such, we don't really know how the people of Russia or China responded to the incredible losses they endured - only how their respective governments did. Stalin would go on to butcher millions of his own people, so we know he didn't give two shits what they thought. I don't know enough about post-war China to comment on the matter there.
Minor corrections: China didn't have "a" government, it was involved in a long civil war between Chiang kai-shek's Nationalists and Mao's Communists. World War 2 did not end the fighting in China...that continued until around 1949. Stalin had conducted most of his mass killings and starvation programs before 1939, which is one reason the Red Army performed so poorly in the Winter War with Finland and when fighting Germany in 1941-1943.
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And the Stuka appears to have been constructed by someone under the impression that his opponent would not have an airforce. While an accurate dive bomber, and relatively sturdy, but it carried a relatively small load, and was neither maneuverable nor fast. Which meant that every time it encountered an enemy air force of even moderate coordination and capability, it tended to die quite a bit, as the British demonstrated in the Battle of Britain.
It's possible, that under blitzkrieg doctrine, then the thinking would be yes, the opponent would not have an airforce, or at least not one capable of resisting.
In the European land war, the Bf-109s, would sweep the skies clear of enemy fighters, in front of the Stukas, which would be attacking in support of the ground forces, nearer the front.
When used at the Battle of Britain, against radar stations and airfields, it was soon found that Bf-109s cannot defend Stuka dive bombers effectively once the Stukas commence their attack, and Hurricanes and Spitfires find that a Stuka with its dive brakes on, is practically a stationary target, thus very easy to hit.
As for attitudes to war, and exposure to things, I think it might be useful to compare perceptions of the war against Japan as experienced by British people (also the Korean War), compared with the war against Germany. VE Day was a big, big thing in Britain. VJ Day, not so much. The Korean war, is sometimes called the forgotten war, in terms of British perception. VE Day meant no more V2 rockets, no more blackouts, no more air raid sirens. VJ Day, in comparison, was more like "oh, it's over", for Britain, as it was that much further away.
The Houses of Parliament were damaged by aerial bombing, there are discontinuities in the stonework that remain visible today. For people living in Britain, then the experience would be that the RAF is defending Britain to the best of its ability, and it is very able indeed, but... Britain is still getting bombed. Defence only determines how badly you're being bombed, not whether you're bombed at all.
And in Germany, the Nuremberg Raid, was a significant defeat of Bomber Command by the Luftwaffe, but... Nuremberg was still heavily bombed, even though the RAF lost.
When the best defence only seems to minimise, rather than prevent, attacks, then that probably has a big effect on attitudes.
Also, did mainland USA have widespread rationing ? was there an air-raid blackout in place ?
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Also, did mainland USA have widespread rationing ? was there an air-raid blackout in place ?
There was widespread rationing of luxuries and war-necessary materials, yes. However, I do know that it was nowhere near as bad as for the U.K. Coastal cities had blackouts.
Some rationing materials: http://www.ameshistory.org/exhibits/events/rationing.htm
Incidentally, it's also a matter of note that V-J day was a source of both joy and great relief to Americans, who were expecting casualties of around 1,000,000 in the invasion of Japan. It may be that one of the reasons for the nearly complete reversal of attitudes about Japan comes from the fact that, unlike with Germany, Japan did not fight until the occupation of its homeland.
Someone earlier made a point about how governmental control was more palatable in Britain after the war, because of the governmental direction of the U.K.'s economy. In America, governmental direction was probably associated with a necessary but unpleasant downgrade in living standards (no new cars, rationing, etc). This was in part to our total war footing, and in part because America was supplying every allied nation with vast amounts of materials and munitions.
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They still dig out a lot of bombs to this day, too. Sometimes they even dig themselves out.
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@Louella - 'Instructions for American Servicemen in Britain 1942' really interesting read - both in context of the conversation topic and how much has changed and how much has stayed the same. We certainly have a lot of coca-cola now :P
Regarding how attitudes in Europe might be different from America - can't really speak for anyone (I wasn't alive!) but from what I understood, the attitude in Britain was informed by already having been bombed and at war for a few years (and the toll that's taken) and also, I guess, the feeling that Hitler was on the doorstep and an invading force.
But more important than this is the effect of the war itself. The British have been bombed, night after night and month after month. Thousands of them have lost their houses, their possessions, their families. Gasoline, clothes, and railroad travel are hard to come by and incomes are cut by taxes to an extent we Americans have not even approached. One of the things the English always had enough of in the past was soap. Now it is so scarce that girls working in the factories often cannot get the grease off their hands or out of their hair. Food is more strictly rationed than anything .else.
The British Came Through. For many months the people of Britain have been doing without things which Americans take for granted. But you will find that shortages, discomforts, blackouts, and bombings have not made the British depressed. They have a new cheerfulness and a new determination born out of hard time and tough luck. After going through what they have been through it's only human nature that they should be more than ever determined to win.
You came to Britain from a country where your home is still safe, food is still plentiful, and lights are still burning. So it is doubly important for you to remember that the British soldiers and civilians are living under a tremendous strain.
Like it says, really. The 'blitz spirit' and 'stiff upper lip' stereotypes would be the 'determination born out of hard time and tough luck' (i.e bombing and rationing) bit.
So yeah. Not a competition as to 'who had it worse' but the circumstances would've factored on our national attitude, if you like.
The best authority on all problems is the nearest "bobby" (policeman) in his steel helmet. British police are proud of being able to answer almost any question under the sun. They're not in a hurry and they'll take plenty of time to talk to you.
:| yaah...times have changed a bit there.
So if Britons sit in trains or busses without striking up conversation with you, it doesn't mean they are being haughty and unfriendly. Probably they are paying more attention to you than you think. But they don't speak to you because they don't want to appear intrusive or rude.
Heh. Sometimes I don't realize how typically British I am :ugh: I often get told that if you ask people questions, they warm to you, because you're showing an interest in them. But I don't want to do that, because I would rather be left alone and not interrogated :P
How to make friends and influence people 8)
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So if Britons sit in trains or busses without striking up conversation with you, it doesn't mean they are being haughty and unfriendly. Probably they are paying more attention to you than you think. But they don't speak to you because they don't want to appear intrusive or rude.
Heh. Sometimes I don't realize how typically British I am :ugh: I often get told that if you ask people questions, they warm to you, because you're showing an interest in them. But I don't want to do that, because I would rather be left alone and not interrogated :P
How to make friends and influence people 8)
This quite true for northern germany as well. Last time I visited England I was so happy that no one started to interrogate me on the bus or so like in some other foreign countries. Then again, it's also nice to get into contact with people at times. <,<
P.S.: Are there similar instructions for Germany, somewhere?
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P.S.: Are there similar instructions for Germany, somewhere?
For the U.S. Army? In World War 2?
I suppose the Geneva Convention counts. I know some educational movies were made for occupying troops after the war.
...Found one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvcf9DKSpPw
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Vikarion, Louella,
Thank you for absolutely interesting posts. Very illuminating. I'd suggest a Mod perhaps splinter off this thread into perhaps a more generic ' WWII chit chat' away from the OP?
I'm exceedingly out of my knowledge base on those topics, but super interesting.
I'd only add that most of the planet lived under fear of the bomb, and if you were in Russia or the US in any sort of major city or close to military things you had pretty good odds that if 'it' went down you'd be vaporized.
I grew up outside of washington DC which means I'd be vaporized several times for good measure. :P
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P.S.: Are there similar instructions for Germany, somewhere?
don't know if there's the text available, but these two threads on a military history forum have pictures of the books, Instructions for British servicemen in France and Germany
http://www.armchairgeneral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=106909 -France
http://www.armchairgeneral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=107168 -Germany
There's probably several others.
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Vikarion, Louella,
Thank you for absolutely interesting posts. Very illuminating. I'd suggest a Mod perhaps splinter off this thread into perhaps a more generic ' WWII chit chat' away from the OP?
I'm exceedingly out of my knowledge base on those topics, but super interesting.
I'd only add that most of the planet lived under fear of the bomb, and if you were in Russia or the US in any sort of major city or close to military things you had pretty good odds that if 'it' went down you'd be vaporized.
I grew up outside of washington DC which means I'd be vaporized several times for good measure. :P
Tbh i'm not in the mood to debate Vik's points that are sometimes far stretched or make so many shortcuts that it's mindboggling.
I could cite how AM6 planes litterally slaughtered american planes for most of the war, or at least the first half, how they also proved to be superior to even british spitfires in India, how comparing the spit being above a bf109-E is innacurate since the plane was more recent and that the next versions of the BF-109 (F) was already perfectly able to fight spitfires, even in its newer versions as well, that the point of stukas as said by Lou already was to have the air superiority beforehand (thus why it was the primary goal either in the battle of England and the battle of France, where the Luftwaffe lost almost a third of its fighter planes iirc).
I could cite how poor were American planes at the start of the war (p-39, p-40, F4F, really ?), or how poor American troops performed in their first steps in Africa, time for them to get experience of war at the same level than their european counterparts already fighting for years.
So yes, it's easy to cite a few examples to make generalities out of it.
I'm not disagreeing per se with the examples, but with the wide sweeping generalizations and conclusions made out of a few of them. It's a not a black and white US stuff was better, it had its pros, and its cons, like everyone else. And one of their major pros was the industrial backbone behind, make no mistake.
When Isoroku Yamamoto said before Pearl Harbor "i'm afraid that we might have made a mistake by awaking a sleeping giant", I wonder if he knew how right he was.
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I could cite how AM6 planes litterally slaughtered american planes for most of the war, or at least the first half,
They didn't. The F4F is simply not as bad of a plane as it was made out to be. You're right that it was not as good as the Zero, but it was hardly "slaughtered", possessing at least reasonable engine power and much better armor than the Zero. The P-38 was better at everything besides turning battles, and the Hellcat was introduced in 1943 - a better plane in almost every way than the Zero - and the Hellcat was available for most of the fighting after Midway. Have to go to work, can cover more later.
how they also proved to be superior to even british spitfires in India,
That might be. Some Euro theater models did not perform well in the Pacific and vice versa.
how comparing the spit being above a bf109-E is innacurate since the plane was more recent
Well, should I compare what both sides were mostly using at a certain point, or should I pull the most advanced models out of German history to face up a particular British one? I mean, the F-15 is probably also a "better plane" than the Spitfire. The fact is, the Germans did upgrade the 109 to the F, and then the G. And the U.K. upgraded the Spitfire.
and that the next versions of the BF-109 (F) was already perfectly able to fight spitfires, even in its newer versions as well,
Even the 109E could fight Spitfires. They just weren't quite as good. And as I noted, the 109E was the major German fighter in the BoB, after which BOTH sides upgraded their planes. Eventually, after all, the British collaborated with America to create the P-51, which outclassed every non-jet fighter in the war.
that the point of stukas as said by Lou already was to have the air superiority beforehand (thus why it was the primary goal either in the battle of England and the battle of France, where the Luftwaffe lost almost a third of its fighter planes iirc).
The Luftwaffe never achieved that sort of total air superiority against any opponent after 1941 or so. Given that, is it a good plane with no purpose, or a bad design? I favor the latter way of describing it, but the effect is the same.
I could cite how poor were American planes at the start of the war (p-39, p-40, F4F, really ?),
Yes, and I could point out that only the F4F was still in production. The others were phased out, and generally were sold to allies or posted to backwater theaters. At the same time, we also had the P-38, which was a wonderful plane for the Pacific, and as I said, the F4F was bad, but not our primary carrier fighter for about 2/3s of the time we were in the war.
or how poor American troops performed in their first steps in Africa,
As did, in some locales, German troops when they fought for the first time, Russian troops in 1941, British and French troops in 1941, and etc. An exception must be made for both U.S. Marines and the IJA: they performed fairly well in the Pacific from the start, although it must be noted that the IJA did have some rather catastrophic engagements before the opening of hostilities with the Soviets.
time for them to get experience of war at the same level than their european counterparts already fighting for years.
Most sides learned reasonably fast. The Soviets took longest, something usually attributed to Stalin's habit of shooting those with rank or experience.
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That's the perfect illustration of why I don't want to engage in such one sided debates that can be found everywhere on the internet, that are bordering on the national bias and epeen WW2 contest. It will just end up in "X is better because I said it".
I see it everyday on the very forums of my company, with people ten times more knowledgeable than any of us bickering about that fighter is the best because X, no that one because Y (while they all actually have their pros and cons) and it's depressing tbh, especially when afficionados or even military guys can't even agree and still insist that what they say are universal facts.
I shouldn't even have made a single remark, my apologies.
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Well, to show that we Germans look at this with (our special kind of) humor, too, a link to a youtube vid (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AongxyDqPKY).
Maybe I'llfind time to translate the lyrics tomorrow.
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That's the perfect illustration of why I don't want to engage in such one sided debates that can be found everywhere on the internet, that are bordering on the national bias and epeen WW2 contest. It will just end up in "X is better because I said it".
I think that this is essentially implying that whatever views I hold, I hold because "national epeen". I don't think that that's the case. I'm perfectly comfortable acknowledging that my country has had some truly epic foul-ups in terms of weapons design and tactics. For example, the M16 could have been done a lot better. U.S. fighter design in the '50s left something to be desired. The U.S. did not exactly save the world in World War 1. The American Revolution owes a lot to the French and Spanish. The war of 1812 was stupid, and, at best, a draw. And the U.S. has had the shit kicked out of them every time they tried to invade Canada.
But I also have done a lot of study on World War 2. And, frankly, I think that if you study how Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan requisitioned, designed, and built their weapons, you'll have a reasonably skeptical outlook on their utility as well. Consider the Panther, which was supposed to be a medium tank but got mutated into well, the tank with the flaws I mentioned. This was not least due to the involvement of a certain A. Hitler. Imagine if every weapons design the U.S. came up with had had to be run by the President?
Is it so unreasonably to think that the war which made the U.S. a superpower might have also been the war in which they developed a truly good suite of weapons and tactics?
P.S. And the Leopard 2 is probably better than the M1A2 Abrams.
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No, though reading the statement "i'll be cruel and stating facts that the American training and equipment were superior" made me itch a bit...
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No, though reading the statement "i'll be cruel and stating facts that the American training and equipment were superior" made me itch a bit...
Oh. Well, that's a bit of an odd way to phrase it, I know. I should elaborate. I've been active on boards and in discussions where I've had to put up with "Euro-perfectionists" who believe that the U.S. has never ever won a war and everything it builds is shitty, as well as Nazi-tech apologists who believe that the only reason "Glorious Fatherland Reich" lost the war was because we and the Soviets each had 15 tanks for every one of theirs and the each Panthers killed 22 of them anyway and etc. Popping their bubbles can be a little, well, mean.
I could see how that might be offensive, though. I'll edit it after work today, alright?
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Nobody really gives a fuck one away or the other outside Germany. Not at this moment. Seriously.
Israeli Jews are taking page from the 3rd Reich playbook and going for some genocide on the Palestinians. Russian endorsed "separatists" drop civilian planes out of the sky over Ukraine. There's bigger problems afoot than some hurt prides over some spy incident. Get over it.
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Nobody really gives a fuck one away or the other outside Germany. Not at this moment. Seriously.
Israeli Jews are taking page from the 3rd Reich playbook and going for some genocide on the Palestinians. Russian endorsed "separatists" drop civilian planes out of the sky over Ukraine. There's bigger problems afoot than some hurt prides over some spy incident. Get over it.
(http://files.abovetopsecret.com/files/img/sn4fc4b756.jpg)
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(https://p.gr-assets.com/540x540/fit/hostedimages/1380422443/840534.png)
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(http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mb8tf8JQWy1rrkifbo1_500.gif)
I think we may be deviating.
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No, though reading the statement "i'll be cruel and stating facts that the American training and equipment were superior" made me itch a bit...
Oh. Well, that's a bit of an odd way to phrase it, I know. I should elaborate. I've been active on boards and in discussions where I've had to put up with "Euro-perfectionists" who believe that the U.S. has never ever won a war and everything it builds is shitty, as well as Nazi-tech apologists who believe that the only reason "Glorious Fatherland Reich" lost the war was because we and the Soviets each had 15 tanks for every one of theirs and the each Panthers killed 22 of them anyway and etc. Popping their bubbles can be a little, well, mean.
I could see how that might be offensive, though. I'll edit it after work today, alright?
Well it seems that we both have faced the kind of writings that makes us word a bit on the other extreme out of frustration. Don't worry as long as I understood what you tried to achieve it's ok. =)
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I think, maybe, one of the issues about this spy scandal is what was reported to be happening.
What I recall hearing about, was that quite a low ranking German official was just handing classified documents to their CIA contact.
So it's might be more of a "If you're going to spy on us and get caught, at least try to make it look like it took some effort" thing. So that if the CIA are caught spying, they're caught doing something that makes it look like they had to expend a bit of effort. Also, make it look like the German agencies are competent, and so on.
The whole thing about getting caught spying on your allies, is that it makes both of you look bad, in front of everyone.
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Nobody really gives a fuck one away or the other outside Germany. Not at this moment. Seriously.
Israeli Jews are taking page from the 3rd Reich playbook and going for some genocide on the Palestinians. Russian endorsed "separatists" drop civilian planes out of the sky over Ukraine. There's bigger problems afoot than some hurt prides over some spy incident. Get over it.
A) This thread started before the Gaza escalation and before the shot plane. Get over it.
B) Why are you saying Israeli jews, not israeli or just jews. Plain "The Jews" too antisemitic for this forum, so you're trying to break it down a bit to make it sound more acceptable?
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B) Why are you saying Israeli jews, not israeli or just jews. Plain "The Jews" too antisemitic for this forum, so you're trying to break it down a bit to make it sound more acceptable?
There are non-jewish people in Israel. There are non Israeli jews.
Seems pretty specific and accurate to me.
And calling a specific group of people out for exploding women children with alarming regularity at slow pace for decades is not 'anti Semitic.' It does however deserve a thread split.
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I think, maybe, one of the issues about this spy scandal is what was reported to be happening.
What I recall hearing about, was that quite a low ranking German official was just handing classified documents to their CIA contact.
So it's might be more of a "If you're going to spy on us and get caught, at least try to make it look like it took some effort" thing. So that if the CIA are caught spying, they're caught doing something that makes it look like they had to expend a bit of effort. Also, make it look like the German agencies are competent, and so on.
The whole thing about getting caught spying on your allies, is that it makes both of you look bad, in front of everyone.
That's a lot like I see it, in regard to where 'spying' on allies is kinda 'justifiable' as 'necessary business'. Don't be an amateur about it, don't expect the ones you spy on in such a fashion to cover up for you if you fuck up.
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B) Why are you saying Israeli jews, not israeli or just jews. Plain "The Jews" too antisemitic for this forum, so you're trying to break it down a bit to make it sound more acceptable?
There are non-jewish people in Israel. There are non Israeli jews.
Seems pretty specific and accurate to me.
The non jewish Israeli take part in the Gaza actions as well. One should be allowed to ask why they get spared of the 3rd Reich allegation... <,<
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B) Why are you saying Israeli jews, not israeli or just jews. Plain "The Jews" too antisemitic for this forum, so you're trying to break it down a bit to make it sound more acceptable?
There are non-jewish people in Israel. There are non Israeli jews.
Seems pretty specific and accurate to me.
And calling a specific group of people out for exploding women children with alarming regularity at slow pace for decades is not 'anti Semitic.' It does however deserve a thread split.
Citizenship doesn't equal religious affiliation. Apart from that there's this tendency to use ye olde fashioned and well trusted ressentiments to make it socially acceptable. Sprinkling deeply polemic arguments on top doesn't really help your case.
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[mod]Thread mostly derailed, and also see the sticky for this forum section regarding political/religious/etc topics.[/mod]