Misconceptions of World War II

[AmateisGal]

Many thanks for the incredibly awesome discussion, everyone. I've got some great ideas for the article now, plus I've also been enlightened to new "misconceptions" that I had never heard of before. This is why I love the Lounge.

 

[the hairy bloke]

One misconception, that has arisen on another WWII Fedora Lounge thread, is that the British were starving.

Without US help we would have been in difficulty, but the situation was not dire. My mother was a girl during the War and she tells us food was dull, but always availible.

As I have posted on the Spam thread the Ministery of Food was well organised. Google "Margaret Paton" for more information on this.

As to a earlier contribution regarding the French, one of the odd things was that the Vichy Intellegence service was passing a lot of good information straight onto London. I don't know whose side they were on, but it certainly was not Germany.

 

[Cobden]

I think another one is, "In 1940, Britain was alone, and in peril"

Britain certainly didn't stand alone - though it is perhaps fair to say the British Empire and Commonwealth did, which is a completely different thing, especially when it included the largest all volunteer regular force of entire the war and the largest force of 1940 (The Indian Army), plus of course the dominions, and smaller empire forces. Related to this is the image of the war being a largely "white blokes affair".

Regarding in peril, it was the most danger Britain has ever been in since the Norman conquest, but seeing that Britain has never really been in peril for a thousand years that means quite a different thing. The peril was only relative; when you consider that the UK was a incredibly industrialised nation, huge reserves of manpower on account of the Empire, the best infrastructure in the world, the largest Navy, the largest merchant fleet, and could concentrate it's forces on the UK in a way that Germany couldn't, the myth rather dissolves. The fact that we didn't feel the need to move troops from the Empire to the UK, I think, speaks volumes for actual how secure we were in objective terms.

 

[Stearmen]

Dunkirk

I have read on this sight, the misconception that the French surrendered then the British evacuated Dunkirk. It was the other way round. The french fought just as bravely, and the real unsung heros were the Scottish troops! The French 1st Army held Rommel up for four long days, completely cut off, and keeping Rommel out of the majority of the Dunkirk battle. At Dunkirk, the British only defended one sector of the perimeter, the rest was held by the French and Scottish forces. The French held until June 4th, two days after the last British soldier left Dunkirk. To Churchill's credit, he did order the Royal Navy to make one last rescue attempt of French soldiers on June 4th! On June 4th French and the Scottish 51st Highlander Division counterattacked at Mareuil ridge, unfortunately they were outnumbered and the offensive ground to a halt. The 51st surrendered on June 12th and the 1st Royal Scots ceased to exist as a unit. Their are many in Scotland that are bitter to this day, and felt that Churchill sacrificed the Scot's to keep France fighting while the British troops pulled out of France. June 22nd the formal surrender was signed. When the tattered remnants of the British army returned home, there were wide scale cases of men throwing their rifles out the train windows, and simply going home. Only two Canadian Divisions were completely equipped, most of the BEF's heavy equipment was still on the Dunkirk beach. France fought bravely for their country, Austria and Czechoslovakia gave up with out a single shot being fired, who's the surrender monkeys? Of course, I will leave the final words to Churchill, 'Wars are not won by evacuations'.

 

[Doc Average]

The 51st surrendered on June 12th and the 1st Royal Scots ceased to exist as a unit. Their are many in Scotland that are bitter to this day, and felt that Churchill sacrificed the Scot's to keep France fighting while the British troops pulled out of France.

My dad was in a pipe band in Scotland from the 60s to the 80s. The Pipe Major had been in the 51st, and had been captured at Dunkirk. According to my dad he had been pretty bitter about. Once he'd been repatriated after the war he'd been a bit of a "wild man" as a result of his experience. I remember him as being a really tough, dapper little bull-dog of a man - the stereotypical Scottish soldier. He was a holy-terror as a Pipe Major, but a really good musician, and a man who commanded a lot of respect. Quite a character really. He never, ever lost his military bearing, and had the most fantastically neat short-back and sides I've ever seen!

Technically though, the 51st were British troops of course...

Nice to see them getting some credit. You're right, it's not a very well known story. Cheers!

 

[Shangas]

One misconception, that has arisen on another WWII Fedora Lounge thread, is that the British were starving.

That's not the thread I started about SPAM, is it? I don't think I ever implied that the British were starving, merely that there were significant food-shortages and that almost everything was replaced by something else.

I think another one is, "In 1940, Britain was alone, and in peril"

That Britain was fighting with its back to the wall from mid-1940 until late 1941/early 1942 is complete bupkiss. I remember hearing it a lot on documentaries, and I think that's where this misconception comes from.

Britain wasn't alone. The Free French, the Polish, the Australians, New Zealanders, Indians, Canadians and the Chinese were still fighting. And of course the Russians changed sides halfway through, from Axis to Allied. In EUROPE, yes, maybe Britain was alone, but it certainly wasn't the only country (or only country represented) that was doing the fighting for the Allies. In fact, a lot of German Jews who were shipped to Australia, trying to escape the Nazis were shoved into concentration camps here, Down Under. When it was discovered that THESE Germans posed no threat to Allied interests, they were set to work in munitions factories and production-lines. Some German Jews even joined the army and air-force to fight the Nazi-Germans.

 

[Edward]

I've met folks over the years who were extremely bitter as a result of the war. Back when I would have been maybe eight or ten, there was a campsite we stayed on a lot on Summer holidays in the caravan - Kilkerran, in Scotland (Ayrshire, nearby to Girvan / Ayr / Maybole, and not far from Culzean Castle - for any of you who have seen The Wicker Man, that was Laird Summerisle's house). The old boy who was the site Warden in the early Eighties, Joe, had been in WW2, and both his brother and best friend had been killed fighting alongside him, as I remember the story. Lovely guy, couldn't have been kinder or done more for anyone.... until one night a German family arrived in a campervan. In the end he let them stay one night as it was very late (they'd had a back breakdown, as memory serves), but no more. He couldn't take the idea of a German staying longer. I remember being extremely shocked by that. A cousin of mine's husband had the same experience in London in the early Eighties, turned away from a guesthouse for being Irish, by a woman whose son had been a squaddie in Northern Ireland and had been shot by the Ra.It's sad when that sort of hate gets a root, but wholly understandable.

No, no. Little Boy, the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, was a uranium based fission bomb. Fat Man, the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, was also a fission bomb, but used plutonium.
Fission is SPLITTING the atom.

Aha! Thank-you for the clarification, I knew there was a technical difference built in to the two bombs dropped, I just obviously misunderstood it.

As to a earlier contribution regarding the French, one of the odd things was that the Vichy Intellegence service was passing a lot of good information straight onto London. I don't know whose side they were on, but it certainly was not Germany.

Reminds me of the position of the Irish Free State (as then was). Much criticised for their tolerance of communications between the German Embassy in Dublin and Berlin, as well as deV's infamous message of condolence to Germany on the death of Hitler, the critics often forget that they also aided a number of RAF boys who made it back to the 26 Counties in getting back into British territory. Whatever the morality of remaining neutral in a war against a monster like Hitler (which must, of course, be seen not only in the context of the time period, but also the peculiar Irish situation), they certainly played the neutral position game very skillfully.

Regarding in peril, it was the most danger Britain has ever been in since the Norman conquest, but seeing that Britain has never really been in peril for a thousand years that means quite a different thing. The peril was only relative; when you consider that the UK was a incredibly industrialised nation, huge reserves of manpower on account of the Empire, the best infrastructure in the world, the largest Navy, the largest merchant fleet, and could concentrate it's forces on the UK in a way that Germany couldn't, the myth rather dissolves. The fact that we didn't feel the need to move troops from the Empire to the UK, I think, speaks volumes for actual how secure we were in objective terms.

On that score.... I don't know much as of yet myself, but I did learn over the Summer (from no less than Harry / The Warden on FL) that the average age of serving Home Guard men between 1940 and 1944 was.... 36. Far from the popular Dad's Army-induced notion that they were all old men. What seems to be more a matter of debate is how well armed they were, i.e. whether they were sufficiently equipped to be an effective defence force had Operation Sealion gone head, or whether they were simply a propaganda exercise. I need to do more reading on this.

 

[Puzzicato]

As I have posted on the Spam thread the Ministery of Food was well organised. Google "Margaret Paton" for more information on this.

Or even Marguerite Patten

 

[David Conwill]

That Britain was fighting with its back to the wall from mid-1940 until late 1941/early 1942 is complete bupkiss. I remember hearing it a lot on documentaries, and I think that's where this misconception comes from.

Or from period propaganda

-Dave

 

[dhermann1]

We have to keep in mind the difference in perception between today and then.
Most people who were in the know realized that the invasion of Britain was a very unlikely proposition, but that didn't make it impossible.
The German military juggernaut had done things that most people considered impossible several times before. The sweep across France was stunning. To be in Britain in 1940 would have been damned scarey no matter how much confidence one had in the RAF, the Navy, geography, etc. etc.
It's easy for us to be glib with hindsight. But it was still, in the words of the Duke of Wellington, a very near run thing.

 

[LizzieMaine]

We have to keep in mind the difference in perception between today and then.

Exactly. The biggest misconception of World War II is that we would have done things differently if we were there.

 

[eveready]

Four pages in, and no-one has yet mentioned something I heard very recently from many American kids on a web forum - "You'd have been speaking German if not for us..." lol

Lol.....Watch this clip from 1:35 on..........[video=youtube;khkJyEvEGFE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khkJyEvEGFE[/video]

 

[Flat Foot Floey]

[video=youtube;yYRK4X4SR8c]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYRK4X4SR8c&feature=player_embedded[/video]

 

[MisterGrey]

Perhaps this is generational, but, up until Saving Private Ryan, WWII was always depicted to us as a "gentleman's war," for lack of a better term. People died, of course, but it was clean and relatively bloodless and happened very gallantly and nobly. I suppose that this is true for much of the media presentation of war in the 20th century, but it seems to have been propagated most aggressively with WWII. Aside from the Holocaust, even the various barbarities happening in Europe and Asia were glossed over, and I'm still being surprised to this day by how awful things really were, after having been spoon-fed such a cleaned-up version of events; I had no idea about Japanese atrocities until I did some personal research on Iwo Jima for a college project, and nearly defecated myself in surprise and revulsion. Why didn't they ever tell us this in high school?

Surprisingly, 6th grade was as close as we ever got to the reality of war; it's the only time I recall the Holocaust being discussed in any great detail, and it was also the only time that the atomic bombings were really looked at in any detail further than "we dropped atom bombs on Japan. A lot of people died. Japan surrendered." Even then, the ethnic/racial aspects of the Holocaust were conveniently glossed over, and to this day I still know people with whom I went to school who believe that Judaism is simply a religion, and who think that the Jews who died in WWII were solely the target of a religious intolerance campaign.

Perhaps this is just regional-- I went to junior high and high school in Oklahoma-- but there's my two cents.

 

[Guttersnipe]

Perhaps this is generational, but, up until Saving Private Ryan, WWII was always depicted to us as a "gentleman's war," for lack of a better term. People died, of course, but it was clean and relatively bloodless and happened very gallantly and nobly. I suppose that this is true for much of the media presentation of war in the 20th century, but it seems to have been propagated most aggressively with WWII. Aside from the Holocaust, even the various barbarities happening in Europe and Asia were glossed over, and I'm still being surprised to this day by how awful things really were, after having been spoon-fed such a cleaned-up version of events; I had no idea about Japanese atrocities until I did some personal research on Iwo Jima for a college project, and nearly defecated myself in surprise and revulsion. Why didn't they ever tell us this in high school?

Surprisingly, 6th grade was as close as we ever got to the reality of war; it's the only time I recall the Holocaust being discussed in any great detail, and it was also the only time that the atomic bombings were really looked at in any detail further than "we dropped atom bombs on Japan. A lot of people died. Japan surrendered." Even then, the ethnic/racial aspects of the Holocaust were conveniently glossed over, and to this day I still know people with whom I went to school who believe that Judaism is simply a religion, and who think that the Jews who died in WWII were solely the target of a religious intolerance campaign.

Perhaps this is just regional-- I went to junior high and high school in Oklahoma-- but there's my two cents.

I think what MisterGrey notes speaks volumes about the greater issues at play when it comes to education in the United States. I was always surprised that anyone could say that they find history boring until I began tutoring inner city middle school and high school students last year. The quality of their social studies/history books is absurd and often obvious hogwash, even to a twelve or thirteen-year old.

All issues of politics and regionalism aside, I think anyone can agree that quality of education varies enormously state-by-state, district-by-district, and even school-by-school in the US. What is taught, by whom it is taught, and the content of textbooks used to teach it, has such an impact on young minds.

I personally know of two separate situations where two different, history scholars, both of whom are highly regarded in their respective fields, actually asked that their names be removed from passages they had contributed for textbooks after reviewing "revisions" by the "education" publishing company (read: censorship under the guise of simplifying complected topics for younger readers and/or "apolitical" sanitization that was, in fact, the result of pressure from special interests). They say history is written by the victor so, in those cases at least, it seems would seem as though the politicized-bureaucrats won . . .

 

[Widebrim]

I was always surprised that anyone could say that they find history boring until I began tutoring inner city middle school and high school students last year. The quality of their social studies/history books is absurd and often obvious hogwash, even to a twelve or thirteen-year old.

I did my student teaching in high school, and later taught middle school for a year. The history textbooks we used, apart from being watered down somewhat in content, often took two sentences to state what could have been effectively conveyed in one (to match the reading ability of the average student). Contrast that with high school history books produced in the 1950s, which today would be mistaken for college texts.

 

[Stearmen]

Tommy Guns

that the average age of serving Home Guard men between 1940 and 1944 was.... 36. Far from the popular Dad's Army-induced notion that they were all old men. What seems to be more a matter of debate is how well armed they were, i.e. whether they were sufficiently equipped to be an effective defence force had Operation Sealion gone head, or whether they were simply a propaganda exercise. I need to do more reading on this.

I did not know until recently, the first Thompson Submachine Guns, [Tommy Guns,] that went to Britain, were not issued to Commandos, but instead, to the home guard! To make maters worse, they were not issued .45ACP ammunition, they were told, in case of invasion, go to the nearest base to procure ammunition. As one guy said, the closest ammunition was 15 miles from him!

 

[Shangas]

By the 1940s, the Tommygun was considered outdated and old-fashioned. They were powerful and fast but the war had necessitated the invention and manufacture of better, lighter machine-guns. That said, the Tommygun was still used extensively during the war in the smaller, 30-round 'stick' magazines, instead of the big, 50-round drum-magazines, popularly seen in 1930s gangster-movies. I believe the Tommygun had a reputation for jamming and was best used fired in short bursts. Probably this jamming was what made it ill suited as a combat weapon.

Another thing about the Home Guard, from what I understand, was that they *were* that underpowered. Most of them had no rifles. They did firing practice with whatever they had - Some service-rifles, hunting-rifles, family farm-pieces, shotguns...and they did drilling with anything from walking-sticks to crutches, brooms and golf-clubs.

 

[Spitfire]

Exactly. The biggest misconception of World War II is that we would have done things differently if we were there.

Bravo! You are so right!

 

[Edward]

By the 1940s, the Tommygun was considered outdated and old-fashioned. They were powerful and fast but the war had necessitated the invention and manufacture of better, lighter machine-guns. That said, the Tommygun was still used extensively during the war in the smaller, 30-round 'stick' magazines, instead of the big, 50-round drum-magazines, popularly seen in 1930s gangster-movies. I believe the Tommygun had a reputation for jamming and was best used fired in short bursts. Probably this jamming was what made it ill suited as a combat weapon.

I'm sure I read somewhere, may even have been on the Lounge, that the sticks were always more common than the drums, the image of the latter being more a Hollywood thing than reality. I'm sure I also read the drums were much more prone to the sticking?