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.

Both my sets of grandparents lived through WW2 - one grandad was a soldier and spent time as a POW, and the other had his skills turned to the building of battle ships. All four grandparents died before I was really old enough to ask questions about it.

I think it's partly because as we move on in time, history becomes... more historic. Accounts get lost. The witnesses die etc. It stops being as meaningful every generation.

The twats who use it to further their racist rhetorics are a different kettle of fish altogether. If it wasn't the world wars, they'd find something else.

You are confusing Communism and socialism. They are not the same thing.

Socialism is the idea that the means of production should be collectively owned by all of the people. Communism is the idea that the means of production should be owned entirely by the state, and that man should be dependent on the state for everything.

I think people attribute meaning to wars that wasn't really there at the time.

You are taking on the American narrative about freedom but the public weren't really aware of Nazi atrocities until after the war. Americans weren't interested in the war until the Japanese forced them into it.

Same with Britain really. The war wasn't fought for the Jews, we joined because German expansions become a threat to the homeland.

Without their "donkey work" Turing would not be able to do his work. Singlehandedly of course 🙄

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).

That's as maybe. But your initial claim that the Soviets didn't get involved in the war until they were invaded by Nazi Germany would come as a rather massive surprise to Poles and Finns.

Oh, dear, so much inaccurate information on a thread bemoaning the general lack of historical knowledge. 🤦🏻‍♀️

You are confusing Communism and socialism. They are not the same thing.

No. I'm not.

I'd be less terse, except I've had the 'pleasure' of reading your posts on other threads.

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

Har. Do love it when idiots come out with that one.

I also think the importance of D-Day is exaggerated in the West. Germany couldn't win the war by that point, the Soviet's had already won it on the Eastern front.

Why did Japan get involved? I know they were part of the Axis but what was in it for them?

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

That is a total re-writing of history. Hitler included the “Socialist” part to fool people into thinking it was a Socialist movement. Most of his book ( mein Kampf) was praising the Italian fascist party, who’s own beliefs were based on 19th century ideology.

This guy explains it far better than my “layman’s” knowledge can

www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Fascism.html

7Days- short answer, treaties. The long answer's too long

I'm 38 grew up in Scotland and was very much educated about the war in fact both wars. Helped I suppose that I loved history growing up so educated myself and still have a shelf full of books about the rise of Nazism, the war efforts. If people want to understand what happened and why they can there is no excuse for ignorance

madmonarchist.blogspot.com/2009/10/hitler-right-wing-dictator.html

I think you should read this. Obviously, it isn't "scholarly", but I happen to know the Mad Monarchist and I know that his knowledge of history is quite extensive.

madmonarchist.blogspot.com/2011/11/enemy-of-monarchy-adolf-hitler.html

Another example.

I am age 44. I had 13 years of education (1980 - 1993) and was not taught anything about WW1 or WW2. Personally I developed an interest - mostly through children's books like Carrie's War - so I sought out information. I find I am still learning new bits all the time. I find comments like the ones the OP mentions do seem to come from people around my age.
However my 11 old has studied both WW1 and 2 at her primary school which is good because at least the next generation may have different attitudes towards this important history.

Sorry agnurse but I don’t tend to take “mates’ blogs” as the height of historical accuracy

Correct me if I'm wrong, but our grandfathers fought because they were largely conscripted (forced).

Hitler didn’t start off gassing people- it was a long propaganda campaign against religious and ethnic groups that ended up with the holocaust.

He kinda did if you were Polish or Hungarian. We see the "final solution" as a long path from 1935 and the Nuremberg race laws. But that was policy in Germany, not elsewhere.

If you were Jewish in Poland, you might know what was happening in Germany but it wasn't until the German invasion on 1939 that such ideologies would directly affect your life. And they would seem to come out of nowhere, which is why so many Jewish Poles were victims. Many didn't realise what was happening until it was too late, whereas a lot of German Jews did and got out of Germany - - hence the reason why Germany only had about 250,000 Jewish people by 1939 whereas Poland had millions.

The reality is that the victims of the Shoah are largely Jewish people of countries invaded by the Nazis. Had Hitler never invaded another nation state, there would have been no holocaust.

I say this because I think it's very important to recognise the nature of genocide and the circumstances that allow for it. If we don't, we miss critical signs and make allowances for actions that really ought to be perceived in a very different light: the invasion of Iraq, for example, or the western involvement in Syria.

From another perspective, "Western intervention" fatalities in the Middle East over the last twenty years look rather like a type of casual genocide. Just because there aren't policies against Arabs owning businesses in Europe or the US doesn't mean there isn't something very troubling occurring.

Britain's First once published a pic of RAF pilots with that "They didn't fight to have country full of foreigners" bullshit.
It was pic of Czechoslovakian unit 😂

As a foregner, I just laugh at these. Nothing else I can really do🤷‍♀️

I also think the importance of D-Day is exaggerated in the West. Germany couldn't win the war by that point, the Soviet's had already won it on the Eastern front

That old chestnut. Conveniently fails to explain why Stalin repeatedly begged Churchill and Roosevelt to open a second front up to the point that it happened.

Total up German ground and air forces stationed in France, Italy, Norway and the Balkans, add in the 1.15 million men employed to defend the Reich from Allied strategic bombing, and you come to a figure of well over 2 million men, plus thousands of aircraft and tanks, that would otherwise have been shoved in front of the Red Army and stopped it dead in its tracks well before it got into Germany.

Overlord was crucial to the winning of the war.

I’m afraid the first blog post is utter nonsense. The writer has cobbled together a few facts (e.g., that Hitler as a vegetarian), ignored most other evidence, and jumped to a conclusion that bears no relation to reality. I didn’t bother to read the second entry.

agnurse: Do you actually also think that North Korea is a "democratic" country-it must be because of it's name = "The Democratic Republic of Korea", and the "World Series" of baseball is played , well, throughout the world, is it not?

As another poster so aptly put it, there is a lot of people on this thread who have little grasp of WW2 History, never mind the wider public.

Have you actually read Mein Kampf? Why do you disagree with the politico-economic definitions of Communism, Fascism and Socialism in the previous link I posted-these are internationally recognised definitions, and not just someone's opinions.

Genuine question to all the people who are saying “we didn’t do it at school”. Do you read books? Do you think you have a responsibility to educate yourself about the most important events of European history in the century in which you were born?

I think you should read this. Obviously, it isn't "scholarly", but I happen to know the Mad Monarchist and I know that his knowledge of history is quite extensive.

Thank you for descending to new depths in this thread.