Remind me again why we were producing Liberty Ships, our merchant marine was taking major losses and we were depthcharging U-boats? Oh, it was to force unwanted food on Britain because they had over-abundant resources and we were just a bunch of do-gooders who had resources to throw away while we were going through austerity measures here at home. Thank you for helping me better understand history.

Now, in the improbable event of a McCain victory tomorrow, tho, while still disagreeing, I would think that citation was provided.

If the United States sucks, why?

It really doesn’t conform to Wikipedia’s standards. No wonder it was quickly reverted.

OF course history would be different if the US wouldn’t have intervened in Europe. The war ould have been longer and most likely ended in a peace deal with the UK and an German near-victory over the Russians. (The lend and lease program incidentally was REALLY important in the turnaround of the Eastern Front. Russian logistics there relied on US made trucks.) The Russians might have slowed the Germans down but it would have been a Forever War there, which the Russians had the manpower for and the Germans had the morale for, so a historic stalemate.

I actually wouldn’t mind speaking German, English (UK), English (US) or hell I’d even speak French or Danish for that matter in light of the economic meltdown over here.

Towards the end of the war (I believe this could have been the winter of 1944, but I’m not sure) while the Allies had already liberated Rome but had stopped the far side of the Po for unclear reasons that might, or might not, have to do with the fact that Italian Resistance was at the time largely socialist/communist leaning and there might have been a secret wish to let the Nazis, er, decrease their numbers, my bit of Italy was annexed to the Third Reich. This mean that every male over the age of 18 was to be drafted.

My uncle Mario, then 18, took to the roof when the SS came to round him up to enlist him, but they threatened to shoot the rest of the family and so he climbed down. He refused to enlist and was tried for desertion. At the trial he delivered what family history says was a vibrant, defiant declaration that he did not recognize the Third Reich as his country and would never fight for Hitler, and was therefore sentenced to death.

He was put in a jail in, IIRC, Tarcento, where he laid waiting for the firing squad for several weeks, while his brother-in-law, who was himself in hiding and working for the Resistance, but also had influential friends in high places, pulled strings and called in favours to have his execution delayed.

My uncle was eventually freed when not the Americans, not the Russians, but Yugolslavjian Titoist partisans stormed the prison and set all the prisoners free, after which my uncle followed a band of Titoist partisans around the mountains for a bit, then made his way home.

Apart from all of this, that comment might have come from Germany, Japan, or, shock, horror! the US.

Or maybe Nicaragua, Chile, Iraq, Vietnam, the Dominican Republic, Panama…

40 comments and nobody mentioned U571 yet?

Don’t mention the War …