Any WW2 fanatics out there

[OwlsFan]

Have to say, next to following Ireland, Wednesday and board games, WW2 is my big passion. I have a room full of books on the topic. MY special interest is in the Eastern Front but I'll read most on the topic, other than technical ones about weapons. Just finished Churchill's 6 or was it 5 volume history of the War. Excellent reading.

Favourite books though are the Forgotten Soldier by Guy Sajer (infantry man's experiences on the Eastern Front) and Iron Coffins by Herbert Werner recounting life on board U-boats during the war where there was a 75% casualty rate.

Presently reading a biography of Field Marshall Slim who kicked the Japs out of Burma and who was one of the best and most unheralded generals in WW2.

[paul_oshea]

there was a few fanatics around during ww2 alright!!!!

not being pedantic but how exactly can you be a fanatic about a lot of people dying?

[Poor Student]

Isn't "Japs" politically incorrect?:confused:

[paul_oshea]

watch out the foot.ie pc brigade are on their way!!!hehe

[dcfcsteve]

I'm a huge history fan, but for whatever reason I find WW2 rather dis-interesting. I'd be more interested in WW1, Vietnam, the Boer War, the Arab-Israeli wars etc. Even the Peloponessian Wars from Ancient Greece that I studied for my Ancient History A'Level kick more ass in my mind than WW2 does.

Bought myself a copy of 'The Second World War in colour' on DVD about 2 years ago (cheap in a sale). It's still in it's cling-film wrapper sitting on the shelf above my TV, which says a lot.....

God knows whay it disinterests me so. It's probably a mixture of overkill on TV, films etc, and the fact that it's not recent enough to feel modern/topical (unlike Vietnam) and not old enough to feel mysterious/requiring understanding/truely 'historical'.

Also - my great-grandfather fought in the Boer War and my Grandad in WW1 until he was injured (both for the British), whereas I don't have any close relations who fought in WW2, so I feel less of an urge to understand it.

[Poor Student]

Even the Peloponessian Wars from Ancient Greece that I studied for my Ancient History A'Level kick more ass in my mind than WW2 does.





What do you mean even? It's the war to end all wars!

[OwlsFan]

Isn't "Japs" politically incorrect?:confused:

No, but "Nips" might be. Japs is not a pejorative word for Japanese - just an abbreviation just like Brits for British people. Gook for Vietnamese would be different.

Why WW2 ? It's not just about people dying. It shaped most of the world we live in today. It was a victory over the worst evil man has ever seen. Brilliant military tactics. Conflict on a vast scale. Could you imagine the world we'd live in today if the Nazis/Japanese won ? No World Cup :eek: How the Allies won after losing the first 3 years of the War. The UK fought to stop one country (Germany) dominating Europe and ended up with another (Soviet Union) dominating instead.

Fascinating.

[Poor Student]

No, but "Nips" might be. Japs is not a pejorative word for Japanese - just an abbreviation just like Brits for British people. Gook for Vietnamese would be different.



http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=jap says:

Jap
n. Offensive Slang
Used as a disparaging term for a person of Japanese birth or descent.

Also it's on here in a wikipedia list of ethnic slurs:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Japs

I know you mean nothing by it Owl, but I am sure Jap and Japs are in fact politically incorrect terms.

[WeAreRovers]

Big history fan myself with WWII being a favourite and like OwlsFan the Eastern Front in particular.

My other big interest is Antarctic exploration - Shackleton, Scott and all that. Fascinating stuff and yes, I am a total geek.

KOH

[paul_oshea]

Also - my great-grandfather fought in the Boer War

I thought it was your great grandmother and she was a sow in it wasnt she??


No World Cup

im getting used to that unfortunately.

owslfan from a tactical and organisational point of view i understand, i just didnt see what you meant by the heading thats all. :)

[Schumi]

Big history fan myself with WWII being a favourite Sure Rovers fans are all neo-nazis anyway. ;)

[OwlsFan]

"When You Go Home, Tell Them Of Us And Say,
For Their Tomorrow, We Gave Our Today"

From the War Memorial in Kohima, Burma. And it is true. Far from perfect as the British, Yanks (hope that's not pejorative) and Soviets (especially them) were, we'd be under the jackboot now since the Celts were on the list of sub humans.

[Lionel Ritchie]

Facinated by the second world war. Particularly the war in the air. But the eastern front was the scene of some of the most vicious debased acts human beings have ever visited on each other.

There's a fabulous Belarussian movie out there called 'Come and See' -if any of you film buffs can find a copy of it I'd love to see it as I've not seen it since C4 showed it in the early 90's.

It centers on a couple of young fellahs of 12 or 13 in a Bellarussian village that switches from being behind german lines to soviet lines and back on an almost daily basis.

As the area is awash with weapons and is constantly shelled both armies are constantly checking to see what the locals are up to. If the germans find that someones been digging out weapons -they shoot some villagers. Then when the Soviets arrive -if they find the locals HAVEN'T been digging out weapons -they shoot some villagers.

harrowing stuff. I've tried googleing but cant find it anywhere.


My own interest is predominantly in the air war. I'm facinated with the aircraft of the time. There's a lot of 'History' we were thought growing up that was in truth closer to folk-lore than fact surrounding WWII ...peoples reasons for getting involved it in it etc... but one of the biggest fairy tales we were taught at school and in books when I was younger concerned the "might of the Luftwaffe" and the "Insurmountable odds" facing the RAF in the Battle of Britain. Now they were well outnumbered -but much closer to 2 to 1 than the 5 or 6 to 1 we were taught not so long ago.

other myths of the era include
*the Spitfire won the battle of Britain
Garbage. If the BoB was won at all it was won by Geography, Fuel-over-weight-by-distance ratios ...and to a lesser extent by the Spitfires slower, uglier, less romantic brother-in-arms the Hurricane. "Hurries" were better armed, better protected and far safer for the relatively inexperienced among the ranks that the RAF were starting to push forward with less than complete training.

Make a mistake landing a Hurricane and you'd walk away and get the ground-crew to have it airworthy by morning.
Make a mistake landing a Spitfire and you died.

Not an ideal countenance if you've just been swapping lead with Jerry over the drink and are bringing her home looking like a swiss cheese.

*Blitzkrieg was an unstoppable mechanised killing machine Lightning war was well co-ordinated by a brilliantly trained observer Korp. Beyond that though the myth has well overtaken the facts. Much of the German armour was horse-drawn ...like it had been in world war one. Many of the german planes including the Junkers 87 Stuka, Junkers 88, Dornier 17 and Heinkel 111 were out of date by the time the war kicked off, were underpowered, underarmed, had low payloads and had been vastly flattered by their success against puny opposition in the Spanish Civil War.

*Britain, and later America, entered the war to once again "defend small nations from tyranny" or other such sh1te:D I dunno where to start there. more amarach. maybe:o

[Green Tribe]

I'm a huge fan of it myself, probably because it is incredible to think that these things happened only just 50 years ago :eek:

[dcfcsteve]

There's a fabulous Belarussian movie out there called 'Come and See' -if any of you film buffs can find a copy of it I'd love to see it as I've not seen it since C4 showed it in the early 90's.

It centers on a couple of young fellahs of 12 or 13 in a Bellarussian village that switches from being behind german lines to soviet lines and back on an almost daily basis.

As the area is awash with weapons and is constantly shelled both armies are constantly checking to see what the locals are up to. If the germans find that someones been digging out weapons -they shoot some villagers. Then when the Soviets arrive -if they find the locals HAVEN'T been digging out weapons -they shoot some villagers.

harrowing stuff. I've tried googleing but cant find it anywhere.

Sounds very interesting. I've found it on imdb.com (Internet Movie Database) : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091251/ . Click on the readers postings at the end for details on where to get a copy. I might get my hands on a copy as well.

I'm a big fan of the original 'All Quiet on the Western Front" film. The bit where he knives the guy to death is a good representation of the horro of close combat (and was largely copied in Saving Private Ryan)


other myths of the era include
*the Spitfire won the battle of Britain
Garbage. If the BoB was won at all it was won by Geography, Fuel-over-weight-by-distance ratios ...and to a lesser extent by the Spitfires slower, uglier, less romantic brother-in-arms the Hurricane.

The Battle of Britain was won primarily by a significant tactical change on Hitler's part. In the early days of the 'battle' the Germans clearly had the upper-hand. The British air-bases in the south of the country were decimated (airplanes were having to take off and land in fields), anti-aircraft facilities and listening posts had been almost erased, the towns on the southern coast had been 'softened-up' in advance of the land invasion that was assembling on the French coast, and the Germans were clearly in the ascendancy.

However - on one particular German bombing raid at night (they started night raids to prevent the British form conducting repairs to machines and facilities under the cover of darkness), the Germans accidentally bombed a series of civilian targets in London. Hitler had actually forbidden attacks on civilian targets, as he didn't want to boost the Brits resolve. Anyhoo - in response, the British retaliated by bombing Berlin, which enraged Hitler. He then ordered the Luftwaffe to switch their strategy from military to civilian targets - thinking that he was failing to break them militarily, and that he might be able to break their will. This was a huge mistake, as it gave the decimated RAF the opportunity to get back on its feet and fix/replace its planes, air-fields, defences and surveillance facilities without interference. If the Germans had kept their focus and continued assaulting solely military targets day and night, there is little doubt that they would've impacted the RAF sufficiently to enable a land assault.


*Blitzkrieg was an unstoppable mechanised killing machine Lightning war was well co-ordinated by a brilliantly trained observer Korp. Beyond that though the myth has well overtaken the facts. Much of the German armour was horse-drawn ...like it had been in world war one.

I'm not sure this is broadly correct Lionel. There may well have been instances of horse-drawn armour, but to suggest that it was anything other than the exception would be totally incorrect. Blitzkreig relied upon light tanks, air support, and large number of troops moving quickly in half-track vehicles. It would simply have not worked as a tactic if it had been based largely or even significantly on horse-drawn power. Also - Germany was the most advanced industrial nation in Europe at the time. The Nazis had even set-up their own mass-production vehicle factories years previously (Volkswagen), and were creating more advanced vehicles at a lower cost than manufacturers elsewhere on the continent. They therefore had the means to not need to rely on horse-drawn 'armour' (how armoured is a horse...??). They would also have come nowhere near the results they did gain if they relied on more than a smattering of non-mechanised transport. The only cases of horse-powered fighting involved in the Blitzkreig period of WW2 that I have encountered was the Polish Cavalry. For the record, Poland effectively lasted a whopping 17 days against the Germans....


*Britain, and later America, entered the war to once again "defend small nations from tyranny" or other such sh1te:D I dunno where to start there. more amarach. maybe:o

I'm with you there. There are very, very few examples of altruistic military intervention in history. WW2 was far from being one such example.

[dcfcsteve]

I'm a huge fan of it myself, probably because it is incredible to think that these things happened only just 50 years ago :eek:

Or even 60 years ago....... :D :p

[SaucyJack]

Or even 60 years ago....... :D :p


always liked the sea battle stuff, The hunt for the Graff Spee, Sinking of the Bismark, and the fighting in the Pacific Theatre and the Aircraft carrier stuff, used to read loads about it when I was younger.

[Closed Account 2]

Studied Military History at University, did essays on WWII (War in the Pacific, Soviet-Japanese War and Eastern Front), also did work on the Soviet-Afghan War and the Balkans amongst other things.

[Mayo Red]

Favourite books though are the Forgotten Soldier by Guy Sajer (infantry man's experiences on the Eastern Front)


I am interested in WW2 and Military History in general, and between that and football books have enough to start a small library. The History Channel and the like are also great sources of information. Guy Sajer's book is outstanding and likewise is one of my favourite reads. Stalingrad by Antony Beevor is also excellent.

I also have an interest in the Irish Army/Naval Service/Air Corps and am looking forward to a new book coming out this week called "The Irish Army in the Congo 1960-1964: The Far Battalions" by David O'Donoghue.

[Green Tribe]

Or even 60 years ago....... :D :p

feck off :D Meant to write 60! :mad:

[dancinpants]

Ah the beauty of history!!!. At the end of the day lads no matter what you think about the course of history, there will always be a quotable retort to prove you wrong. :rolleyes:

[Lim till i die]

What annoys me most about WW2 is that the Soviet Union basically saved the world from Nazism (While the Yanks played politics on the domestic front, the Brits stayed firmly in Britain licking their post Dunkirk wounds and the French, resistance excepted, ran for their lives) but was of couse treated like a leper after the war so as to justify the massive defence budgets that the western military industrial complex had now become so merrily accustomed to spending. It's the incredibly brave soldiers of the Red Army that "won" WW2 not Tom Hanks or Steve McQueen or any of the utter $hite which you read in most contemporary history school texts. The decision of the British/Yanks to avoid creating a Western Front until late 1944 was a desplicable attempt to let Nazism and Communism cancel each other out and kill two birds with the one stone for the imperialist, capatilist West. It cost millions of innocent lives and should never be forgotten or forgiven :mad:

Like dcfcsteve I'm far more interested in aspects of history like ww1, Irish history, the growth of the political left and right, American foreign policy etc. I think its the utter drivel we are regularly fed about ww2 which makes it go down on my list of interests

[Lionel Ritchie]

Sounds very interesting. I've found it on imdb.com (Internet Movie Database) : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091251/ . Click on the readers postings at the end for details on where to get a copy. I might get my hands on a copy as well.
.

Steve thank you so much for this.:) :cool:



The Battle of Britain was won primarily by a significant tactical change on Hitler's part. In the early days of the 'battle' the Germans clearly had the upper-hand. The British air-bases in the south of the country were decimated (airplanes were having to take off and land in fields), anti-aircraft facilities and listening posts had been almost erased, the towns on the southern coast had been 'softened-up' in advance of the land invasion that was assembling on the French coast, and the Germans were clearly in the ascendancy.

However - on one particular German bombing raid at night (they started night raids to prevent the British form conducting repairs to machines and facilities under the cover of darkness), the Germans accidentally bombed a series of civilian targets in London. Hitler had actually forbidden attacks on civilian targets, as he didn't want to boost the Brits resolve. Anyhoo - in response, the British retaliated by bombing Berlin, which enraged Hitler. He then ordered the Luftwaffe to switch their strategy from military to civilian targets - thinking that he was failing to break them militarily, and that he might be able to break their will. This was a huge mistake, as it gave the decimated RAF the opportunity to get back on its feet and fix/replace its planes, air-fields, defences and surveillance facilities without interference. If the Germans had kept their focus and continued assaulting solely military targets day and night, there is little doubt that they would've impacted the RAF sufficiently to enable a land assault.
Yeah I didn't actually go into anything tactical yesterday in truth. I referred just briefly to the fact the Luftwaffe were sorely lacking a real heavy bomber, which in any event they wouldn't have been able to adequately escort, as the only effective fighter they had at the time -the ME109-E only had 10-15 minutes of loiter time in the target vacinity.

That said -they were making a real dent on the RAFs ability and if their Intelligence had been better -that is if they'd known that the southern command had less than a fortnights spares and were virtually on their knees they'd near certainly have absorbed the losses and kept hitting them. Plans were being made, had been made in fact, to withdraw Churchill and his government to York in anticipation of an actual dry land Battle of Britain.

The only thing I'd really question in what you said Steve is who hit a city first. Was it not a raid by RAF Whitleys on Bremmerhaven or somewhere that went wrong and hit a residential area that led Hitler to demand a vengeance counter strike?

I think the Berlin raid -which brought the message home to the Germans, possibly for the first time, that they'd a real fight on their hands -only came after that.

Hitler certainly had no specific interest in attacking British cities as it would certainly only drag out a war with Britain he'd no desire to be involved in. The British for their part were understandably hungry for revenge once the blitz started but never seemed to grasp -not even late in the war - that they were hardening the resolve of Germans to keep on going too.

When the USA entered the war their Army Air Force found the practice horrifically wasteful of ones own men and machines -they had a much different tack summed up in the question "where does Fritz get his ball-bearings?" which rightly identified that without ball-bearings you can't make coffee -much less tanks and aircraft.



I'm not sure this is broadly correct Lionel. There may well have been instances of horse-drawn armour, but to suggest that it was anything other than the exception would be totally incorrect. Blitzkreig relied upon light tanks, air support, and large number of troops moving quickly in half-track vehicles. It would simply have not worked as a tactic if it had been based largely or even significantly on horse-drawn power. Also - Germany was the most advanced industrial nation in Europe at the time. The Nazis had even set-up their own mass-production vehicle factories years previously (Volkswagen), and were creating more advanced vehicles at a lower cost than manufacturers elsewhere on the continent. They therefore had the means to not need to rely on horse-drawn 'armour' (how armoured is a horse...??). They would also have come nowhere near the results they did gain if they relied on more than a smattering of non-mechanised transport. The only cases of horse-powered fighting involved in the Blitzkreig period of WW2 that I have encountered was the Polish Cavalry. For the record, Poland effectively lasted a whopping 17 days against the Germans....
.

Having trouble finding figures for western Europe -but according to this site (http://www.wargamer.com/articles/bprelude_part1.asp) Barbarossa involved about 4 million men with approximately 3,000 tanks, 250 assault guns and 7,000 pieces of artillery supported by 625,000 horses and 600,000 various motor vehicles

Blitzkrieg worked because it co-ordinated highly concentrated tank attacks with air support and heavy shelling and the the troops (many of whom were on foot!!) just cleared up the remnants of the opposition who's communications had long since collapsed.

I know from my own reading about aircraft that the Germans were still using open cockpit Bi-planes -the Henchel 123 -as a frontline fighter when they attacked Poland. They weren't so daft as to try them against the French or British but rolled them out again for Barbarossa.

[Metrostars]

Clint Eastwood is currently directing two movies about Iwo Jima, one from the the Japanese pov and one from the US pov.

[SaucyJack]

Clint Eastwood is currently directing two movies about Iwo Jima, one from the the Japanese pov and one from the US pov.


http://www.comingsoon.net/news/topnews.php?id=11581



Next fall, Clint Eastwood will simultaneously release two movies telling the story of the battle of Iwo Jima – one will be from the American perspective, and the other told from the Japanese perspective, TIME's Richard Schickel reports in TIME's What's Next special issue (on newsstands Monday, Oct. 17).

Beginning next February, Clint Eastwood will start shooting the companion movie to Flags of Our Fathers, tentatively called Lamps Before the Wind. Typically, Eastwood is not able to articulate fully his rationale for this ambitious enterprise: "I don't know—sometimes you get a feeling about something. You have a premonition that you can get something decent out of it," he says. "You just have to trust your gut."

He asked Paul Haggis, who wrote "Flags," if he would like to write the Japanese version as well. The writer of Million Dollar Baby and director of Crash, Haggis was overbooked but thought an aspiring young Japanese-American screenwriter, Iris Yama****a, who had helped him research "Flags," might be able to do it. She met with Eastwood, and once again his gut spoke; he gave her the job and liked her first draft so much that he bought it. It was she who insisted on giving him a few rewrites she thought her script still needed, TIME reports.

Taken together, the two screenplays show that the battle of Iwo Jima—and by implication, the whole war in the Pacific—was not just a clash of arms but a clash of cultures. The Japanese officer class, imbued with the quasi-religious fervor of their Bushido code, believed that surrender was dishonor, that they were all obliged to die in defense of their small island. That, of course, was not true of the attacking Americans. As Eastwood puts it, "They knew they were going into harm's way, but you can't tell an American he's absolutely fated to die. He will work hard to get the job done, but he'll also work hard to stay alive." And to protect his comrades-in-arms. As Haggis' script puts it, the Americans "may have fought for their country, but they died for their friends, for the man in front, for the man beside 'em."

[SaucyJack]

kind of related, interesting type of story



Body Found in Glacier Thought to Be WWII Airman (post #1)
FRESNO, Calif. (Oct. 19) - Two climbers on a Sierra Nevada glacier discovered an ice-encased body believed to be that of an airman whose plane crashed in 1942.

The man was wearing a World War II-era Army-issued parachute when his frozen head, shoulder and arm were spotted Sunday on 13,710-foot Mount Mendel in Kings Canyon National Park, park spokeswoman Alex Picavet said.

Park rangers and specialists camped on the remote mountainside in freezing weather for an excavation expected to take several days. The body was 80 percent encased in ice, Picavet said Wednesday.

"We're not going to go fast," she said. "We want to preserve him as much as possible. He's pretty intact."

The excavation crew included an expert from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, a military unit that identifies and recovers personnel who have been missing for decades.

Park officials believe the serviceman may have been part of the crew of an AT-7 navigational training plane that crashed on Nov. 18, 1942. The wreckage and four bodies were found in 1947 by a climber.

Some 88,000 Americans are missing in action from past wars, military officers said. Most of them - 78,000 - are from World War II.

The Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command works on hundreds of cases a year, averaging two identifications a week, said spokeswoman Rumi Nielson-Green.

Finding bodies preserved in a glacier is unusual but not unheard of, command officials said. Two years ago, the unit recovered the body of a Cold War-era officer who died in Greenland.

[WeAreRovers]

OwlsFan - I bought The Forgotten Soldier on your recommendation and I can't put it down, brilliant stuff.

I googled Guy Sajer and came up with this fascinating row between historians about whether he's for real or not.

http://members.shaw.ca/grossdeutschland/sajer.htm

KOH

[the 12 th man]

I've been to the D Day landing beaches in Normandy-all bar Sword Beach.
.The adjacent US Cemetary in Colleville (featured at the start and finish of Saving Private Ryan)is a grim but spectacular memory to those who perished.


Very interesting war museums in Bayeaux & St Mere Eglise (Paratrooper hanging off spire of Church).

[Lionel Ritchie]

I've been to the D Day landing beaches in Normandy-all bar Sword Beach.
.The adjacent US Cemetary in Colleville (featured at the start and finish of Saving Private Ryan)is a grim but spectacular memory to those who perished.


Very interesting war museums in Bayeaux & St Mere Eglise (Paratrooper hanging off spire of Church).

Went to the Huisnes-sur-Mer German cemetery too -in the same area as Coleville I think. Beautifully maintained but barely even signposted and you'd miss it if you weren't specifically looking for it.

A very sad place indeed. Looking at the ages of these poor bast@rds and half them were teenagers or little more. There aren't headstones as such -more like wall plaques as they're interned in what is like a giant mound with a garden at it's centre that you can walk around. (Not trying to be funny but if you can imagine a huge version of the blast ditches they used pile around aircraft or guns -that's what it's like). But lots of the the plaques read no more than "Ein Deutcher Soldat".

[the 12 th man]

Went to the German graveyard too -in the same area as Coleville I think. Beautifully maintained but barely even signposted and you'd miss it if you weren't specifically looking for it.

A very sad place indeed. Looking at the ages of these poor bast@rds and half them were teenagers or little more. There aren't headstones as such -more like wall plaques as they're interned in what is like a giant mound with a garden at it's centre that you can walk around. (Not trying to be funny but if you can imagine a huge version of the blast ditches they used pile around aircraft or guns -that's what it's like). But lots of the the plaques read no more than "Ein Deutcher Soldat".


I'm afraid they (The German Soldiers) ended up getting buried in a less than satisfactory (rememberance wise) way because of the way they were percieved at the time ..invaders of the French Territory and the fact that the German empire was in melt down at the time of D Day.

btw,you're dead right about the German cemetaries as they are all over France but you wouldn't notice many of them.

[OwlsFan]

You're dead right about the German cemetaries as they are all over France but you wouldn't notice many of them.

The German cemetries are far more sombre with big overhanging trees and dark gravestones. The Allied cemetries have white crosses all neatly aligned - the difference between the victor and the vanquished. One died for something - the other died for nothing serving one of the most evil regimes in history.

As for the Soviet Union saving the world from Nazism as someone said, they only did because they were attacked and had no choice but to defend themselves and had before that made a pact with the Nazis and split up Poland between them.

UK went to war to prevent one country dominating Europe as it always had before but perversely, although they won, a different country ending up dominating Europe (the SOviet Union).

ANother excellent book on Stalingrad is ENEMY AT THE GATES if it's still in print. The Germans were amazing soldiers: tough, cruel but so resilliant despite one defeat after another.

[lopez]

I'm a great history fan myself but I'm not too hot on WW2. I done an MA on Modern European Studies but found the far-right far more interesting while they thought that the World was theirs. For instance, I've read Kershaw's two volumes of Hitler but come Barbarossa I found it all just too much where one battle blends into another, even though Kershaw's description of mental decline of Hitler was fascinating. Same with the Spanish civil war. Interested more in the politics either side of that drama than the carnage itself. One exception amongst this was 'The Fall of Berlin 1945' by Antony Beevor. Really good read and it will change anyone's mind about having Soviet troops anywhere near their female relatives.

[dcfcsteve]

UK went to war to prevent one country dominating Europe as it always had before but perversely, although they won, a different country ending up dominating Europe (the SOviet Union).

I'm not sure I would describe legging it from France at the first sign of the enemy, then hiding on the other side of the English Channel for 2 years until the Americans joined-in, as 'going to war' !

The English were happy to watch Europe being chewed up by a superior German army and do nothing themselves, so long as their little patch of the continent didn't get invaded. If the Yanks hadn't joined the war, they'd probably still be conducting nightly watches from the White Cliffs of Dover, waiting for the inevitable German land invasion....

[OwlsFan]

I'm not sure I would describe legging it from France at the first sign of the enemy, then hiding on the other side of the English Channel for 2 years until the Americans joined-in, as 'going to war' !

The English were happy to watch Europe being chewed up by a superior German army and do nothing themselves, so long as their little patch of the continent didn't get invaded. If the Yanks hadn't joined the war, they'd probably still be conducting nightly watches from the White Cliffs of Dover, waiting for the inevitable German land invasion....

Chased out of Europe rather than legging it - there is a subtle distinction.

As for being happy watching Europe being dominated by the German army, not much they could do about that other than send over bombers to remind the Germans they were still around, send convoys to the Soviet Union and fight the Axis in Africa.