Your WWII Movie

@DiegoMaxwell

Congratulations to Mr. Prewitt. It should be noted, however, that France’s highest order of merit is called the Legion of Honour (Légion d’honneur), not the Legion of Armour, and also that France doesn’t actually have knighthoods in the same sense as Britain does. “Chevalier” (knight) is indeed one of the Legion of Honour’s five levels, and the name is a holdover from the days when France still had an aristocracy, but the French nobility system went out the window with the French Revolution. I once saw a series of amusing cartoons depicting what life in France would be like today if the Bourbon monarchy hadn’t fallen, and one of them showed an irate air traveler standing at the ticket counter of “Royal Air France” and telling the ticket agent “But I’m a baron and I have a confirmed reservation!” The agent replies, “I’m sorry, sir, but the Duke of So-and-so has precedence over you, so we gave him your seat.” In fairness, the same sort of thing actually happens in real-life republican France. A few years ago, there was scandal involving one of the major D-Day anniversaries (I think it was the 50th one), when the French government contacted various hotels in Normany and appropriated some of their existing reservations so that various French officials could have rooms for the event. Some of those rooms, however, had been reserved by foreign veterans of the D-Day invasion. When the story broke on the front page of French newspapers (under such headlines as “Our Liberators Insulted!”), public opinion was outraged and the French government beat a hasty retreat. The prevailing editorial opinion over this affair was: Do this to our own citizens if you want, but don’t do this to the heroes who ended the occupation of France.

Here’s a great project that a filmmaker has been working on. And I think it’s especially nice that he’s a young man, not someone from a generation closer to WWII.

Thursday, February 28, 2019 6:38AM EST

A young American filmmaker is on a mission to interview every last Second World War veteran to share the stories of as many combat veterans as possible – before it is too late.

Rishi Sharma has spent the past three years documenting the lives of living Second World War veterans in the U.S., U.K. and Canada for his non-profit organization Heroes of the Second World War.

The average age of Second World War vet is now 93 years old, and the number of survivors is slowly diminishing with the passing of time.

After three years of visiting seniors’ homes to record veterans’ stories, Sharma says has filmed more than a thousand interviews.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/lifestyle/american-filmmaker-on-a-mission-to-interview-every-last-second-world-war-veteran-1.4316271

Well as I said before, Italy shot Germany in the foot that lead to Axis defeats years later and Hitler already knew this, that is why he began to reject Italian help whenever it was sent.

Look at it like this, Italy invaded Greece because Muso wanted to restore the Roman Empire hence his attack on Greece plus he just defeated two nations prior without help so in his mind, he thought Greece would be cake. Attacking Greece and being counter attacked by Greek/UK forces lead to the Wehrmacht being sent in to help the Italians which leads to Greek defeat. That lead to the pyrrhic victory that became Crete. Axis looked at paratroopers as being cancer and that lead to the Allies learning why paratroopers are useful which that bit the Axis in the A$$ in the end.

Of course as for Africa, I am sure Germany didn’t mind helping Italy because I figured Germany taking Egypt would cut of the UK navy from India as well as link Axis forces in the Middle East gaining oil reserves and possibly a secondary front against USSR. I don’t know if Germany would have the balls to attack India in this situation.

Obviously Germany had virtually no respect for the Italians. I think Rommel was the only one who spoke favorably about the Italian soldiers, hated their officers. After Italy surrendered and about half of the Italian military joined the Allies, Germany had no problem going from defending their allies to suddenly occupying a nation as well as engaging their former allies.

He used it in the same manner as Hitler ( incorrectly) used Stalingrad to engage the bulk of German forces that are not bearing down against Moscow.

The Shetland Bus was the nickname of a clandestine special operations group that made a permanent link between Shetland, Scotland, and German-occupied Norway from 1941 until the German occupation ended on 8 May 1945. From mid-1942 the official name of the group was “Norwegian Naval Independent Unit” (NNIU). In October 1943 it became an official part of the Royal Norwegian Navy, and was renamed the “Royal Norwegian Naval Special Unit” (RNNSU).

The unit was operated initially by a large number of small fishing boats, and later augmented by three fast and well-armed submarine chasers – Vigra, Hessa and Hitra.

Crossings were mostly made during the winter under the cover of darkness. This meant that the crews and passengers had to endure very heavy North Sea conditions, with no lights, and constant risk of discovery by German aircraft or patrol boats. There was also the possibility of being captured whilst carrying out the mission on the Norwegian coast. However, early on it was decided that camouflage was the best defence and the boats were disguised as working fishing boats, with the crew as fishermen. The fishing boats were armed with light machine guns concealed inside oil drums placed on deck. The operation was under constant threat from German forces, and several missions went awry, of which the Telavåg tragedy is a prime example. Several fishing boats were lost during the initial operations, but after receiving the three submarine chasers there were no more losses.

Leif Andreas Larsen (popularly known as Shetland Larsen) was perhaps the most famous of the Shetland Bus men. In all he made 52 trips to Norway, and became the most highly decorated Allied naval officer of the Second World War.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shetland_bus

The Shetland Bus is a little known story of WWII.  What do you guys think?

The Barbarossa aspect of this could be argued two ways. Would a six week head start been to Germany’s benefit? The attack caught the Soviet Union completely off guard, and resulted in the rapid encirclement and surrender of millions of Soviet soldiers. Germany achieved a 10:1 exchange rate during Barbarossa.

The problem with starting all that six weeks earlier was that spring rains were worse than usual that year, and persisted later into the spring than expected. The effect of surprise would, at least initially, have been largely counteracted by muddy roads. That would have given the Red Army the chance to get the worst of the surprise over with, and at least begin the process of getting its legs back underneath itself, at a time when Germany could not take maximum advantage of the situation. It’s possible that they could have accelerated the beginning of Barbarossa by a week or two without running into the muddy roads problem. But not six weeks.

A second point to bear in mind is the value of not having the British military on the European mainland. Italy might have eventually been able to defeat the Greek army. But as Britain sent more and more reinforcements to Greece, the combined Anglo-Greek force would have quickly become too tough a nut for Italy to crack. Britain could draw troops not just from its home islands, but also from its enormous colonial empire. The last thing the Axis needed was for Egyptian or Indian soldiers to gain a stronghold in the Balkans. If that force grew strong enough Germany might eventually have been forced into a two front land war, even without American involvement. There was also–as I mentioned earlier–an absolute necessity to keep British bombers from bombing Romanian oilfields. Without that oil the German war machine could not function.

I don’t think that the invasion of Greece was responsible for the full six week delay in Barbarossa. If Hitler had gone for Greece only, maybe it would only have been a three to four week delay. That’s acceptable due to the late spring rains. Unfortunately for the Axis, the government of Yugoslavia was overthrown in a military coup. As Hoover pointed out in his book, FDR encouraged that coup by falsely promising members of the Yugoslav military that, if they overthrew their own government, the United States would provide military aid against German retaliation. With perfect foresight, the Germans would have allowed Yugoslavia to remain neutral, instead of pressuring it to join the Axis.

But let’s say their foresight wasn’t quite as good as that decision would have implied. The next-best decision would have been to launch Barbarossa even while mopping up opposition in Yugoslavia and/or Greece.

Your Grandfather did good ABWorsham, thanks for sharing.

Imperious Leader - and I quote “NO Americans died in WWII - Because America is invincible.”