To think there are a lot of people out there who have no grasp of WW2 history

[Stripyseagulls]

My grandfather fought in WW2 and I have visited the Normandy sites & it’s extraordinary how moving they are.

Today on Facebook/Twitter I have seen loads of really disturbing posts saying stuff like ‘our war hero’s didn’t fight world war 2 to live in a country full of muslim/ foreigners’ etc. Really really disturbing and horrible.

Aibu to think people don’t understand history and that the war was fought to defeat facism and these kinds of beliefs. Hitler didn’t start off gassing people- it was a long propaganda campaign against religious and ethnic groups that ended up with the holocaust.

Aibu to be disturbed by the lack of understanding of why the war was fought and what it was fought against. I find some of the attitudes in the UK today so troubling.

don't have much understanding, it doesn't interest me at all. I hate the glorification of war. I think it promotes further wars. I am a pacifist. There is no excuse for war, that's all we really need to teach.

Then what would you like to have been done to stop Fascism?

If you go the history section of any half-decent bookshop, you will finds loads of books about WWII which will give you a good overview, or which will discuss, say, the role of the French resistance in helping SOE. Of course bookshops in the UK will focus more on how the war looked from here: go to a bookshop in Singapore and you'll find lots of books on how the war looked from there. But I do agree that a lot of teaching in schools in the UK is skewed: the war in the Pacific is barely mentioned.

As for Russia and the US being allies, Russia didn't get involved in the war until Hitler broke the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact by invading the USSR. Then suddenly the conflict went from being a feud between evil imperialists which was no concern of communists to a threat to Mother Russia. Then the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor which drew the USA into the war, so the USA and the USSR were only really incidental allies. By the end of the war there was a lot of mistrust, and the Cold War kicked off pretty quickly.

I'll stop now. I could bore on for hours...

Appeasement does not work against people who are unreasonable or for whom violence is acceptable.

Also re. 'the school system makes you not learn about Russia etc' well that's just crap schools because we were taught about Russia and the Eastern front, not sure I believe that all I know is based on The World At War!

Another one that boils my blood is that Brits btoke Enigma code. As always, all by themselves, genious!

I'm not sure where you got that one from.

All the (British) books I have read on the subject have stressed the role the Poles played in cracking Enigma. I have one in front of me now published in 1978. The 1970s BBC series "The Secret War" also emphasised the Poles' work.

From 4:11

@mindproject, so long as a significant nation poses a military threat, it's neighbours can't afford to be fluffy.

War is horrendous. Any former or current soldier will tell you that. There is no glory, just lots of mud and blood and suffering and death. But consider how the world would look now if nobody had been willing to stop Hitler.

How much do you really think it's possible to cover in an hour a week of history lessons over 3 years? It's definitely not taught in a biased way.
Some people are just not interested in listening to their teacher/ reading around the subject/ watching documentaries. That's why they don't know about this stuff.

Somewhat simplistic Mindproject.
Indeed, showing you probably do need to study some history.

I'm a pacifist too mindproject but I don't think we ever have even a chance of avoiding future wars if we don't have a good understanding of what led to previous ones and how they played out, and can draw on the reality of past wars to counter the glorification of their memory and of the 'just cause' argument - especially in a country very prone to glorifying our own contribution at the cost of others'.

To stop future wars each generation must know the awful reality of war.
Not the nationalist flag waving "our brave boys" but the desperation, the pain and the horror.

Actually Hitler wasn't a fascist at all. He was a national socialist. He was extremely left-wing, not right-wing.

Some didn’t have a choice .... my grandfather was forced to fight because if he didn’t he would be interned ...

We learnt about WW1 and WW2 but the treatment of the subject was quite biased ..

'counter ... the 'just cause' argument'?

So what should the UK have done in 1939, then? Sit by and watch Hitler conquer another country while doing nothing to stop it?

Films like the Benedict Cumberbatch movie The Imitation Game and general popular history of Bletchley has English people solving Enigma.

Actually Hitler wasn't a fascist at all. He was a national socialist. He was extremely left-wing, not right-wing

True. In fact he was so far to the left that he was coming back round from the right.

Erich from my DS's history lessons in primary school few years ago. That's where I heard it first.

Imitation Game is another example not mentioning Poles.

Article I attached says itself it's been only recently admitted.

As for Russia and the US being allies, Russia didn't get involved in the war until Hitler broke the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact by invading the USSR

The Soviet Union invaded Poland on 17th September 1939 (where the NKVD immediately began liquidating the intelligentsia and any other potential political threat), and then proceeded to attack Finland on 30th November the same year.

It was involved in WW2 for 9 months before Barbarossa as an ally of Nazi Germany.

Thanks for that explanation Grumpy MA woman.

Are schools any better at teaching about the WWs now than they were in the 80's?

I have wondered if it was a deliberate ploy not to really mention it. It was barely discussed other than remembrance day.

I seem to recall lots of irrelevant history, Romans, Vikings, how people lived 300 years ago.

I think my main issue is that people don’t seem to have learnt the lesson. A lot of the public seem to get their history from Facebook sites that have a dubious agenda. To hate Muslims or people from turkey or foreigners generally is exactly the kind of belief system that the WW2 was fought to stop. So many people died for peace and yet now there is so much division & hatred and intolerance about. Brexit took the lid off a lot of it and has legitimised some of these views. It’s all so depressing

Films like the Benedict Cumberbatch movie The Imitation Game and general popular history of Bletchley has English people solving Enigma

That is correct. The Poles cracked the earliest pre-war version of Enigma. Once the Germans discovered that it had been compromised and added additional layers of encryption, rendering it exponentially more difficult to decode, it had to be cracked all over again. That's where Bletchley Park and Alan Turing came in.

#JasperHale

What has just been admitted? That the Poles did the donkey work of cracking Enigma.?

If that is what the article said, perhaps the BBC should watch their own 40 year old documentaries and read a few books on the subject.

What socialist principles did the Nazi Party espouse and carry out, after Hitler had taken them over?

For a socialist party, there was an awful lot of anti-communism, especially anti "Jewish Marxism" whatever he thought that was.

That is correct. The Poles cracked the earliest pre-war version of Enigma. Once the Germans discovered that it had been compromised and added additional layers of encryption, rendering it exponentially more difficult to decode, it had to be cracked all over again

And again when the Germans introduced a fourth rotor.

Vicious, I think it's fair to say that the USSR took what it could from the M-R pact (a large swathe of Poland and Finland).

And then later did their thing on the resistance in Warsaw, sitting on their hands on the other bank of the Vistula and watching the Nazis wipe them out.

Earlier today I was at work when about 5 teens walked in
It just so happened the radio news was on and it was saying it’s been 75 years since it happened
The teens all loudly started loudly talking about how they where sick of hearing about it and how it should just go away
I almost lost it and had to be dragged away before I lamped the spoilt little brats
If it wasn’t for the bravery of these men they wouldn’t have the freedoms we take for granted
Still think I should have had the chance to lamp the spoilt little fuckers

Ed, history is never irrelevant!

I get just as excited about the Bronze Age stuff my mate finds in local fields as I do about WWII.

Possibly I should get out more.