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

[Sternjaeger II]

Originally Posted by MD_Titus

no, i'm not actually, i'm putting myself in a position of occupying europe and keeping it. to do that i wouldn't leave a belligerent country off my shores.

you are giving assessments of the situation as if you were playing Risk, the situation was a tad more complicated than that.

after 1949 it became fact that bombing civilian population centres was unjustifiable. you're applying hindsight here. on the other hand it was always considered a bit unsporting to abuse or kill large sections of your own population, the occupants of invaded lands (to some degree anyway) or prisoners of war.

ah ok, so you're confirming what I was saying: the killing of civilians before 1949 was ok, so you're implying that the killing of Jews was right? All in all the Nazis considered them their enemy, and to pursue their cause they wanted to eliminate them.. Do you realise the nonsense you're saying to justify the killing of civilians perpetrated by the Allies?

i do like the way you switch between contextual "fact" and historical revisionism, and all the while taking it off the simple topic of "was the battle of britain a defeat for the luftwaffe" and putting words into people's mouths that they simply did not say.

hey, I was going on topic, your friends then start changing topic and then blame me for going off topic. Read my comments re. the BoB, I've exposed them more than once.

so, to sum up - yes. it was. it was not a draw either at the time or in retrospect.

you're summing it up on assumptions, not on facts.

jesus man, why did BoB veterans in the luftwaffe show each other their appendix scars? is that the act of a force that drew, that was not pressed into a shoddy plan beyond it's capability, that on the biggest day of operations was appalled to see the supposedly shattered and destroyed RAF put many times it's reported strength into the air against them... how is that not a defeat of the tactical and strategic aims of seelowe?

apart for the scar thing which I didn't get, you're making assumptions again. The Germans fought until 1945 even when they really were doing it against all odds, do you reckon that the situation in 1940 was such a blow for morale? Who's delusional now?

you don't deny that the axis committed war crimes, and boy were some of them BIGGIES. but you do a hell of a lot to gloss over them and instead discuss the allies war crimes. and don't do the "won't somebody think of the children" schtick, it's pathetically transparent.

yeah, you already said that killing kids is fine, if it's a good cause. I don't see how this puts you in a better position than Nazis frankly.

how about bombing factories that happen to be in the middle of population centres? surely that's justifiable by your standards?

one thing is collateral damage, another is intentional attack of civilian targets. Do you know that the Americans refused to bomb Germany civilian targets when Harris asked for help?

solve the war amiably? by subjugating the country with military might and an invasion? that's amiable?? oh just lol.

"hey boys they let us escape, let's make friends! those bombs they were dropping on our boats and the strafing runs were just some friendly joshing about, no harm done eh lads"!

you might have heard that there were secret meetings and tentative agreements between Germany and some of your political and royal family members. Germany was hoping to find another Quisling in the UK, and occupy it like they did with Norway.

Saving the life of 300k soldiers was a huge sign of wanting a truce: the Stukas could have made a slaughterhouse of Dunkirk.

as for enlisting the help of the japanese to attack russia... um, seeing as they had a sound thumping at the hands of the red army freshly in their minds, and pretty much ignored the soviets for the length of the war.

seriously.

the plans were the work of a madman with all the strategic and logistical sense of a woodlouse, who enlisted a heroin addicted transvestite to conduct a reduction of british aircover over the channel to allow an unprecedented and unprepared for amphibious invasion, and operated a divide and rule strategy amongst his own staff officers that was inefficient at best, and at worst downright destructive. if you want to convince yourself that it was a case of getting drop tanks in time, or being able to knock russia out of the war in a year then fine, i'll leave you to your teutonic knights fantasy.

you obviously aren't capable of a sober view on the matters. Calling historical character names or disputing renown theories and possible scenarios is just banter, you have no idea how close you were to a very different scenario in the end of 1940.

[MB_Avro_UK]

Hi all,

I'm the creator of this thread.

A couple of German posters have decided to post that the British Army in WW2 was not as 'good' as the German Army.

I'm pleased to hear it.

The British and Commonwealth armies were drawn from volunteers and eventually conscripts.They were not products of the fanatical Hitler Youth.

The German Army of today has thankfully no resemblance to the German soldiers of 1940. In fact, they resemble the British Army of 1940.

Democratic soldiers are not fanatics.


The Battle of Britain enabled pilots from democracies across the world to give the Nazis a 'bloody nose'. And that's a fact.

And thanks to these pilots, we are free to post what we like.

Another German comment here is that Britain and France caused WW2 by declaring war on Germany in September 1939. Hmmm...let's examine the facts shall we?

Who invaded Poland? Who caused the death of 20% of the Polish population?

Who invaded the rest of Europe?

Was it America?

Was it England?

No. It was Germany.

And which country (Shall we guess?) invaded Russia and killed 10 million + of their people.

In other words, try not to take the moral high ground.


Now, let's have as beer. Prost!



Best Regards,
MB_Avro

[arthursmedley]

Avro, at last! How do you do it? Sixty-nine pages in nine days!

Legendary!!!!!

[Skoshi Tiger]

Originally Posted by MB_Avro_UK

Another German comment here is that Britain and France caused WW2 by declaring war on Germany in September 1939. Hmmm...let's examine the facts shall we?

Best Regards,
MB_Avro

+1
Lets go back to original British declaration of war

Originally Posted by WC

""I am speaking to you from the Cabinet Room at 10, Downing Street. This morning the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German Government a final note stating that unless we heard from them by 11 o'clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently this country is at war with Germany.
You can imagine what a bitter blow it is to me that all my long struggle to win peace has failed.

Yet I cannot believe that there is anything more or anything different that I could have done and that would have been more successful. Up to the very last it would have been quite possible to have arranged a peaceful and honourable settlement between Germany and Poland.

But Hitler would not have it. He had evidently made up his mind to attack Poland whatever happened; and although he now says he put forward reasonable proposals which were rejected by the Poles, that is not a true statement. The proposals were never shown to the Poles nor to us; and though they were announced in the German broadcast on Thursday night, Hitler did not wait to hear comments on them, but ordered his troops to cross the Polish frontier next morning.

His action shows convincingly that there is no chance of expecting that this man will ever give up his practice of using force to gain his will. He can only be stopped by force and we and France are to-day, in fulfilment of our obligations, going to the aid of Poland, who is so bravely resisting this wicked and unprovoked attack upon her people.

We have a clear conscience. We have done all that any country could do to establish peace, but a situation in which no word given by Germany's ruler could be trusted and no people or country could feel themselves safe had become intolerable. And now that we have resolved to finish it, I know that you will all play your part with calmness and courage."

Britain and France were bound in a treaty with Poland and were obliged to come to their aide. Hitler and the German high command knew this. They either hoped that Britain and France would not honour their alliance OR they were provoking them into war. Which one was it?

[Theshark888]

How could the Germans make the same mistake as 20 years before by opening a two-front war? Instead of blaming the victorious allies or the Jews, hitler should have known that what he was doing was recreating the same war/same result again!!!

Bismarck was rolling in his grave twice during the twentieth-century!

Stern-
Americans refused to join Harris, not because of being noble, but because the USAAF was trained to bomb pinpoint targets, not population centers. The weather in Europe would modify this somewhat.

Avro-
Don't get me started on the behavior/actions of the German Army in Afghanistan

[ZaltysZ]

Originally Posted by Skoshi Tiger

Britain and France were bound in a treaty with Poland and were obliged to come to their aide. Hitler and the German high command knew this. They either hoped that Britain and France would not honour their alliance OR they were provoking them into war. Which one was it?

I think it was both. Munich agreement could have created a hope that Poland may be happily fed to Germany too, and that other counties would be reluctant to enter the war or at least they would want to hold active actions for some time. Pre war territorial gains of Germany were almost like probing of willingness of other countries to fight: take something; no opposition, then take more.

[SNAFU]

Good that the tread opener jumped back in and brought the discussion back to the main esscence, which fed the plebs for the last 69 pages:
Us and them!

And someone still wonders, how the 2nd WW was possible?

[Sternjaeger II]

I am frankly disconcerted about the fact that people had an "us vs them" perspective on most of the posts of this thread, I really think it's either a huge case of "lost in translation" or approach to the topic in an incorrect manner.

[adonys]

Yes, the war actually started with both Germany AND Russia invading Poland.

No, Germany haven't invaded the rest of Europe, in case you've forgot, both Britain and France declared war against Poland invaders (though not on Russia..), so actually Germany was in a state of war with France and Britain.. so, that's not an invasion (as in we've invaded them over night), but a legit part of the war actions.

Yet.. DO you know about this little declaration?!! Read it carefully please, and go dig it into the war magazines archives in case you think it's forged:

"Poland wants war with Germany and Germany will not be able to avoid it even if she wants to." (Polish Marshal Rydz-Smigly as reported in the Daily Mail, August 6th, 1939)

What if actually Poland was acting as the small thug, knowing it has binding treaties with other two BIG thugs (read France and Britain) to jump in for it, no matter what?!!

There are voices saying that actually Poland was salying german population from the german territories taken from Germany and given to Poland at the end of WWI, and that was actually the reason for which Germany invaded Poland.. read Polish Atrocities Against the German Minority in Poland, and read it full, not just the main article in there


Things are much more complicated than they are presented to us by "official history"..

PS: also, there's another thing I keep hearing in this "if Germany would have won, history would have been very different".. implying it would have been much worse than the actual outcome.. yet.. I find this disturbing.. are you VERY SURE things wold have been much worse?

have any of your big-mouths-stating-this-bold-declaration countries spent the past 50 under the paw of the communist russian bear?!! do you have any idea what was like to live in eastern Europe from 1945 to 1990?!! Germany killed 6 millions in concentration camps, official record (which actually might be a much pumped-up number), but do you have ANY IDEA how many of my eastern europe fellows died in russian gulags?! the 50 millions number tells you anything?!! do you have any idea what happened in the countries and towns occupied by the soviets at the end of WWII?!! has the word mass rape any meaning to you?!! do you know that whole industries were dismantled from these countries and went to the brother russian as war compensations, leaving east european countries with nothing?! and then enslaved for the following 50 years to pay ten times the named war compensations (namely at the "fair" prices imposed by the russians)?!!

I'll tell you just one story, I've heard it countless times from all the elders I've talked with which were living those times.. when germans came, if you had two pigs, they would have taken one, and eventually give you something (no matter how symbolic) in exchange for it, and leave you the other.. when russian came, they would have taken both pigs, rape your wife and daugthers, take anything which could be carried away and eventually set everything remaining on fire..

THIS was your better alternative..

[Kobold10]

Originally Posted by MB_Avro_UK

Hi all,

I'm the creator of this thread.

A couple of German posters have decided to post that the British Army in WW2 was not as 'good' as the German Army.

I'm pleased to hear it.

The British and Commonwealth armies were drawn from volunteers and eventually conscripts.They were not products of the fanatical Hitler Youth.

The German Army of today has thankfully no resemblance to the German soldiers of 1940. In fact, they resemble the British Army of 1940.

Democratic soldiers are not fanatics.


The Battle of Britain enabled pilots from democracies across the world to give the Nazis a 'bloody nose'. And that's a fact.

And thanks to these pilots, we are free to post what we like.

Another German comment here is that Britain and France caused WW2 by declaring war on Germany in September 1939. Hmmm...let's examine the facts shall we?

Who invaded Poland? Who caused the death of 20% of the Polish population?

Who invaded the rest of Europe?

Was it America?

Was it England?

No. It was Germany.

And which country (Shall we guess?) invaded Russia and killed 10 million + of their people.

In other words, try not to take the moral high ground.


Now, let's have as beer. Prost!



Best Regards,
MB_Avro

True words.... WW 2 was a total bloody mess and a clash of ideologies! And it was Germany starting the war. We shall never forget that Europe was very close to disapear as a center of culture and innovation. (Beside the fact that we were very innovative in killing each other!) The roots of conflict of WW 2 was WW1, ore to mention it with Brithish words the 2nd 30 years war. Especially the phase after WW I was the "trigger-phase" that enabled the NAZIS to start with their dirty work. -planning a new war-
I think we all should respect each other and do what flight enthusiasts can do best: Fly on our PC´s and respect those who had to suffer and pay the ultimate prize for freedom. The battle of Britain was fore shure the first major defeat of NAZI Germany-Austria. But it was not a fatal defeat. It paved the way for all the things that happened afterwards. From the perspective of the pilots of that time there was no right or wrong. All served their country with great enthusiasm. It was the fault of the politicans to find a sollution of jumping out the road that led to war. - And they failed- I totally agree that we all should have a beer and stop sensless discussions who was wrong or right. Let´s start playing and thank god that whenever we shoot at each other nobody is hurt, because it´s simply a game. Prost!