The Battle of Britain Was The First Defeat For The German Luftwaffe.

[Bewolf]

Originally Posted by bongodriver

the main point of that article was about how Germans are used as the bad guys in video games.......I don't think the British can be held responsible for the video games industry, also I find it very offensive that people use our 'football hooligans' as the definitive ambassadors for what Britain is all about.

Uff.....

[bongodriver]

Originally Posted by Bewolf

Uff.....

Can I assume this means Uff da?.....as in so what....poor you? or whatever it means

[Bewolf]

Originally Posted by bongodriver

Can I assume this means Uff da?.....as in so what....poor you? or whatever it means

What else should I react like? If that is what you get out of the article...well, there's not much left to say.

[bongodriver]

Originally Posted by Bewolf

What else should I react like? If that is what you get out of the article...well, there's not much left to say.

Well it was the only point with any validity with regards to an unfair image of the germans, did you not notice most of the other stuff mentioned was about Hitler and Nazism?.....or do you think that Hitler also is getting a rough deal here?

[Bewolf]

Originally Posted by bongodriver

Well it was the only point with any validity with regards to an unfair image of the germans, did you not notice most of the other stuff mentioned was about Hitler and Nazism?.....or do you think that Hitler also is getting a rough deal here?

This article was not about the germans. It was about the british. I played enough Call of Duty like games and had too much fun flying a Tempests or Mustangs in IL2 to care too much if germans are getting killed in video games, I had too much fun doing that. It's just games, after all, and good entertainment on top.

Out of pure curiosuity..please could you explain to me your line of thought that made you attach certain criticism of british attitudes with a support for Hitler?

[bongodriver]

Out of pure curiosuity..please could you explain to me your line of thought that made you attach certain criticism of british attitudes with a support for Hitler?

When people suggest our Victory celebrations should be regarded as offensive to Germans it's easy to assume that said Germans forget what was really being fought against, so if the Germans feel so hard done by do they feel their war was just? the 'British' attitudes in regards to celebrating achievements in WWII seem no different to the celebrations of the USA's equivalents.....they just don't seem to be faced with the same criticism.

so with that in mind, could you explain to me why every time a Brit celebrates surviving a conflict and coming out on top (with help....nobody denies it), fighting against a widely aknowleged force for evil, we just get labeled as Nationalist idiots with an 'empire mentality'

[bongodriver]

With all due respect. You fight Nazis by removing the conditions that make their rise possible or more likely, not by showing people again and again that a man with a mustach and a swastika on his arm is bad news and using them to win an argument on a constant basis.

With all due respect how is that achieveable without resorting to techniques that they were infamous for, we fought a war for democracy and freedom of speech, even if that means you choose to be a Nazi. can you explain to me what constitutes the condition for cultivating a Nazi (appart from letting the French humiliate them)

[Sternjaeger II]

Blackdog, thanks for your input (I agree on both sides), on my part I'll do my best to keep it sober and polite.

Bongo, try and imagine for a second playing a videogame where you're a Nazi officer infiltrating in England and killing Tommies, would you play it?

I'll give you another example: I have no trouble playing with a sim and shooting down another aeroplane (even if, somewhere remotely in the back of my mind, there's always a "concern" in checking that parachutes pop out, and yes, I know it's a game, but after years of reading accounts of the dreadful missions of bomber planes I just can't help it... then sometimes I find myself strafing the parachutes.. go figure..), but I remember playing Hidden and Dangerous 2, a mission in Sicily, and having to shoot at Italian soldiers there.

For the first time in my life I felt a certain discomfort, it didn't last long and I was quickly sucked back in the game again, but it was there, and it was weird indeed..

[Sternjaeger II]

Originally Posted by bongodriver

When people suggest our Victory celebrations should be regarded as offensive to Germans it's easy to assume that said Germans forget what was really being fought against, so if the Germans feel so hard done by do they feel their war was just? the 'British' attitudes in regards to celebrating achievements in WWII seem no different to the celebrations of the USA's equivalents.....they just don't seem to be faced with the same criticism.

so with that in mind, could you explain to me why every time a Brit celebrates surviving a conflict and coming out on top (with help....nobody denies it), fighting against a widely aknowleged force for evil, we just get labeled as Nationalist idiots with an 'empire mentality'

no, it's more a case of how selective celebrations are. Can you think of any recurrent celebrations linked to the successes in the Pacific? The Falklands or the victory against the IRA? Or any other conflicts for the matter? Not even WW1 gets as much covering and celebration than the Battle of Britain (even if poppies are ideally inspired to WW1).

Truth is that nobody (apart for the neonazi nutters) can dispute the Evil of Nazism, so it became "THE Evil" that brave Britain fought against, but it's again more done for the sake of national insecurity than anything else.

It got me thinking some time ago: out of all the European countries, Great Britain is the only one with SO much celebration about WW2, and for a buff like me and you it surely is paradise, but have you ever wondered why it doesn't happen as much in the rest of Europe?

[Kurfürst]

Originally Posted by bongodriver

so with that in mind, could you explain to me why every time a Brit celebrates surviving a conflict and coming out on top (with help....nobody denies it), fighting against a widely aknowleged force for evil, we just get labeled as Nationalist idiots with an 'empire mentality'

Being concerned about maintaining colonial empires AND freedom and democracy at the same time is tended to be raise doubt, especially if in practice it means mean that a small group of privileged being have all the rights and 99% of the others don't. Being concerned about the freedm German-occupied Poles but not Soviet-occupied Poles, and state of democracy in Europe but not in India, Egypt, South Africa (... its a long list) tends to make people believe you're just another imperialist, who happened to realize he just met the bigger dog in the neighbourhood..

Probably has to do a lot with Churchill - he seems pretty concerned about maintaining the largest colonial empire at that time.

"What General Weygand has called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be freed and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands.

But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new dark age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, This was their finest hour."