Cracked wins again

[Bär]

http://www.cracked.com/article_18389_the-5-most-widely-believed-wwii-facts-that-are-bullshit.html

Hopefully some of the goons who use the line that since the 'US singlehandedly won WWII, Europe still "owes" us and should shut up' read this and get a bit of perspective. Nope - that'll never happen.

[KEND]

Interesting article,I have always found the John Wayne/Errol Flynn version of the war annoying. Some of the other points seem to ignore the role played by the Japanese and put too much faith in thre Russians war machine. Britain came very close to being invaded, if the bombing had been concentrated on the airfields rather than being switched to the cities they could have crumbled. The loss of Britain would have been incalculable in terms of morale.re Churchill, he was an incredibly flawed human being but as an icon for the British spirit he was a force to be reckoned with, he was adored by the people[I know, I was there]. Montgomery was despised by the rank and file soldiers[my uncles, who were Desert rats would go on about him for hours] Alexander IMHO was a much more important factor in defeating Rommel.

[Bär]

I never ever heard of 'Stalingrad' until college, which is sad.

[Darth Rock&Roll]

godamnit!!

every time you post a cracked article I wind up reading 4 more of them!

lol

the easter eggs in classical art was totally cool and got me back into thinking about that stuff and how artists would be subversive through their art even though the only way they could live off it was to be patronized by the church or wealthy people.

sucks to be an artist.

[Steve James]

As Hitler pointed out, the bigger the lie, the more it'll be believed. So, take whatever it is that you think is "truth" and understand that it is less than half the story. Anyway, the only thing I'd disagree with on the list is that Hitler was a genius, just not a military genius. He did, almost singlehandedly, lose the war for Germany --by declaring war on the US, for one thing, by turning to attack the USSR after he couldn't invade England, which was more a matter of pride than military necessity, and most of all by not listening to his commanders in the field. Of course, that's because he was also a certifiable nutcase. Churchill was disliked, especially by those who followed Chamberlain; but the guy Chamberlain wanted to replace him didn't want the job of wartime PM.

When I was growing up, I thought (and was led to believe) that the US 'won' the war. We minimized any and all possible contributions by the Soviets. Though, we generally weren't taught that Stalin originally signed a pact with Hitler. When this was brought up, it was added that Stalin was only playing for time. Dunno. We never learned how many Soviet citizens or soldiers were killed; we never even touched on Soviet technological advancements --for instance, even today, most Americans can name several German WW2 planes but not one Soviet plane, or the contributions of Soviet female pilots. Well, all this means to me is that history is interesting and the stories are still being written.

[Darth Rock&Roll]

In Canada we were less isolated from knowledge of the soviet union.

We sold them a lot of wheat and regularly kicked their asses in hockey.

Kinda like the awkward friend of two enemies.

oh canada.

[bailewen]

I only learned most of this stuff fairly recently from a podcast I really like called "Dan Carlin's Hardcore History Hour"

http://feeds.feedburner.com/dancarlin/h ... format=xml

Check out Ghosts of the Ostfront in 4 parts totally about almost 6 hours altogether. It really takes you through the fight between Hitler and Stalin in a nice, not overly academic, way. Completely changed the way I think about WWII.

[Andy_S]

As someone who has studied WWII fairly extensively, I am sometimes galled at the lack of knowledge people (usually Americans, but also South Koreans) have. So, glad to see a popular platform like Cracked tackle the issue - in its own, inimitable way, of course.