How is British history taught in schools?

[mjw47]

I'm sorry tto challenge you on Montgomery. He took over the 8th Army in the desert after Wavell made such a mess of it. In the end he and his desert rats marched through the desert along with his American allies into Sicily and into Italy. He was then appointed by Churchill as second in command to Eisenhower. He was ordered to take Caen after DDay, but faced enormous problems getting there. His greatest concern was the lives of his men, instead of rushing headlong into a wall of fire. Too many good men had been lost in WW1 doing just that. He was loved by the men who served under him, regardless of what Patton and also Hollywood made of him. I was a kid at the time, and knew the respect our people had for him then.

 

My father served under him, & I can assure you he did not 'love' him. And neither did his comrades in arms.

 

---------- Post added 09-05-2013 at 23:51 ----------

 

of course Stalin would have executed officers. Churchill might have done that as well if he could. He certainly thought the execution of Admiral Byng was a jolly good thing in the history of the admiralty. You just couldn't get away with doing that sort of thing in Britain by the 1940s and he had to content himself with just sacking them, which he did a lot of.

 

there is no definition of a client state. It is a stupid expression that means ally. Obviously alliances shift with the times. China has been embarking on a massive campaign to build alliances with African nation states, as well as others, in the past decade or so - dozens of them. Obviously China is miles more powerful than Zambia is, just like the USA is miles more poweful than Djibouti. However China's alliance with the much weaker Zambia, does not make Zambia a Chinese 'puppet state'. It doesn't even make Zambia a 'client state'. The two, China and Zambia, are just allied at the moment, just like the United States and South Korea are - except South Korea is, unlike Zambia, a very significant frontline global security arena.

 

If you do not know what a 'client state' means, how can you know what it doesn't mean?

 

As for Churchill executing people if he could. Yes, no doubt, there was less than a cigarette paper difference between the (lack of) character of Churchill, Stalin & Hitler. All egomaniacs.

The difference was that the British system did not allow for a Dictator.

 

We should be grateful for that & guard against politicians attempting to change it for their own purposes.

 

Lord Acton, said 'Power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely' he also said ' Most great men are bad men'. He was not mistaken.

[Annie Bynnol]

Eisenhower and Churchill considered removing Montgomery from command in Normandy in June 1944 was because he continually failed to report the true military situation to his commanders.

His inability to maintain the momentum initially gained before Caen which involved withdrawal from strategic points was heavily criticized by British and American commanders alike.

He hid his own view of the risk of pushing forward because a large part of his veteran army had become war weary and risk averse. Eventually the Caen attack was 80% more costly than expected.

 

Ironically this inability to go forward encouraged OKW to keep 10 and many of the best German divisions in his sector to be worn down by the shells and bombs of the RN, RAF, USAAF and RA, this Montgomery regarded as his plan.

[callippo]

it was PR. They couldn't sack him after all the El Alamein euphoria, even though it was already almost two years before. Monty was the first British general that hadn't actually managed to lose catastrophically, but just about scraped a victory. He was untouchable.

[Harleyman]

Callipo. you have admitted that you don't know what the term ' client state' means. It means that the senior politicians & administrators of that State are 'bought & paid for'. It means that if the US wants something from that State it gets it. It means that a foreign power exerts an undemocratic influence over another State. It means that that State is merely a Puppet of the US.

 

As for your claim that Stalin didn't interfere. You are aware that he had Military Commanders executed for not performing to his satisfaction?

Don't know about you, but if I was stood up against a wall facing a firing squad I would definitely regard it as interference.

 

---------- Post added 09-05-2013 at 22:19 ----------

 

And for my views on the USA reread my post no. 76

 

How about Syria and Iran as client states of Russia? You never mention anything about this only keep harping on about the US and it's "invisible Empire"

 

Would you sooner have China or Russia replace the US as the dominant military power and exporter of culture.

 

You see what Russia and China have done for their client state Syria? Provided Assad with weapons to kill his own people and more than likely some of it was WMD

[mjw47]

Can only comment on my fathers view of the man. He was universally disliked by the troops. Regarded as a self promoter who cared more for his own reputation than the welfare of his own men.

It may seem an inconsequential thing, but he was a non smoker who insisted on imposing his views on other people. Now, if you are in a battle zone & liable to get killed at any moment, the risk attached to your health compared with the comfort you get from a fag must seem fairly minor.

I have never smoked myself but can understand that quite easily. The fact Monty couldn't ,& insisted on imposing his views on people under his command didn't go down well.

Also, the double cap badge affectation made him appear a bit of a poser.

 

He was, like many of his contemporaries, a product of previous campaigns. Someone once said that Armies are always prepared for, & wanting to fight, the last war, rather than the one they are actually faced with.

 

That is why men like General Zhukov are regarded as the best.

 

---------- Post added 10-05-2013 at 00:36 ----------

 

How about Syria and Iran as client states of Russia? You never mention anything about this only keep harping on about the US and it's "invisible Empire"

 

Would you sooner have China or Russia replace the US as the dominant military power and exporter of culture.

 

You see what Russia and China have done for their client state Syria? Provided Assad with weapons to kill his own people and more than likely some of it was WMD

 

AGAIN! read my previous post 76 regarding my view of the USA. We are talking about the US not Russia or China. The US is 'full of it' but still the best of a bad bunch, OK?

[Harleyman]

Harleyman. The three greatest battles of WW2 fought against the Germans were fought on Russian soil. Stalingrad, Leningrad & Kursk, Zhukov was in charge of all of them & won all of them. He was the first Field Commander in the Soviet Army to be made a Marshal of the Soviet Union during the War & is acknowledged as 'the best of the best' by his peers including Eisenhower & Montgomery. On both the number & the scale of victories to his name Georgy was the man.

 

As to being indifferent to the losses suffered by his men you need to factor in the circumstances. He was faced by the best trained, most efficient army in the world at that time & had an inferior (in terms of experience, training & equipment) force to face them with. Losses were bound to be substantial.

He also had a psychopathic lunatic as a boss who kept 'sticking his oar in' as & when he felt like it.

Despite which Zhukov prevailed, & effectively got exiled by Stalin for his trouble.

 

It also has to be said that not many Generals lose sleep over losses. They probably wouldn't make very good Generals if they did, a certain callousness is in the job description.

 

You have to give Adolf Hitler some credit for helping the Russians achieve victory. His continual interference and countermanding the orders of his generals in addition to his policy of give no ground and if surrounded fight to the last man contributed a great deal in the useless sacrifice of German troops.

The German equipment was inferior to the Russian equipment when it came to winter and summer warfare. Their motor vehicles would not start in temperatures below 50 degees, the horses they use extensively to haul artillery pieces perished by the thousands and there was a critcal shortage of supplies coming to the front due to behind the lines partisan action.

 

Thier tanks were however far more technolgically advanced than the Russian T-34 and superior in firepower. The Russian tankers learned however that the armour plating on the turret sides of a Tiger was less thick than on the front end and they could knock out the tank from a side shot. This strategy was practiced with great success during the battle of Kursk.

 

Not to diss the old T-34 however. It was definitely one of the best tanks ever produced in WW2

 

Hitler's greatest mistake was launching an attack on Russia in 1941. Why he did is a mystery. Stalin had no plans to declare war on Germany or carry out any rash warlike act that could trigger off a war between the two countries.

Stalin in fact refused to believe British intelligence reports that an attack on Russia was imminent and put the intelligence reports down to mischief making by Churchill. He had no reason to trust Churchill either after Britain sent troops to aid the White Russian army against the Reds following the overthrow of Czar Nicholas

[callippo]

How about Syria and Iran as client states of Russia? You never mention anything about this only keep harping on about the US and it's "invisible Empire"

 

you mean Iraq, not Iran. Of course Iraq and Syria were allied to the Soviet Union during the cold war era (except with Iraq for a very tiny short period towards the end when the US bailed out Saddam and resumed diplomatic relations after a 16 year gap because they were scared Iraq was going to lose the war with Iran). I have referred myself to both Syria and Iraq as being 'client states' of the Soviets in other discussions and you could make a case for Syria being a Russian 'client state' even now. But trouble is, I don't know what a 'client state' is supposed to be, and I don't think that anybody else does either. It's just another expression for the word ally, that became fashionable and is now used almost interchangeably. Big powers have always formed alliances with smaller ones and the word ally always sufficed to describe their relationship. Nobody ever says Serbia was a Russian 'client state' when they refer to the the build up to the 1914-18 war. They just say ally. I'm not sure about the precise etymology of 'client state' but nobody said anything about any 'client state' until about 30 years ago, when a bunch of pseuds appeared to start using the term whereas before, they would have just said ally.

[LeMaquis]

Hitler's greatest mistake was launching an attack on Russia in 1941. Why he did is a mystery.

 

Why he did it is such a mystery that he had written years earlier in Mein Kampf about his desire to conquer the Soviet Union. His three main goals in launching Operation Barbarossa were to create Lebensraum in the east for his Germanic empire (Barbarossa was a former Holy Roman Emperor), to get his hands on Soviet raw materials and to wipe out Slavs who he considered to be sub-humans controlled by Jewish Bolsheviks. From Hitler's point of view there could hardly have been a better target. The Red Army proved him wrong on that one though.

[Annie Bynnol]

..Montgomery ... took over the 8th Army in the desert after Wavell made such a mess of it.

 

Wavell was highly regarded by Rommel and was not commander of the Eighth Army- it did not exist then.

He was CinC Middle East and his Western Desert Force defeated the Italians-"Never has so much been surrendered by so many, to so few." Eden.

 

He was ordered to move his main forces from Libya to Greece/Iraq and Lebanon after, allowing the Germans and Italians back into Libya in force.

Unable to stop the vastly superior axis force Auchinleck swapped with Wavell as CinC Middle East on Churchills' orders after Tobruck.

Auchinleck replaced Eighth Army commander Alan Cunningham with Neil Ritchie and then himself.

 

But both Wavell and Auchinleck were heavily criticized for their poor appointments of field staff.

Auchinleck stopped Rommel at El Alemein but was replaced by Harold Alexander who appointed Montgomery to Eighth Army command.

[callippo]

Russia's War

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Russias-War-Richard-Overy/dp/0141049170/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1368174376&sr=8-1&keywords=russia%27s+war

 

that is a good, well-written and pacey, very readable, but not short on scholarship account that came out quite recently with the emphasis on Russia's point of view post civil war throughout the interwar period as well as the post-Barbarossa part. His overall conclusion is that Russia being a communist tyranny throughout that time, definitely did not help.