Posted on 04/27/2024 10:38:51 PM PDT by RandFan
Check out the YouTube circa 1956.
I want to know if life was like that: Congested dance halls, Rock n' roll, a post-War boom?
Seems like another world... One you kind of hanker for.
Can any Freepers recall the era depicted?
(Excerpt) Read more at youtube.com ...
Funny how many of us grew up not bothered and seemingly unaware of race, ethnicity, religion or socio economic status etc. Now that's the entire focus of K-12.
I remember wearing them so long rips would develop around the knees. Now kids buy them like that LOL
Certainly, you remember "This is a test! This is only a test! If this were a real emergency, you would be instructed to ...". You probably also remember those small triangles on the AM radio dial, marking the CONALRAD frequencies. These were examples of how seriously the prospect of nuclear bombardment was taken in the '50s. It was a time of opposites. Yes, there was optimism that we would all live in a Jetson's future with rocket cars and enjoy a cure for any disease. At the same time, we built fallout shelters, and post-apocalyptic dramas like On the Beach (1959) were taken as sagely prophetic.
One of the most interesting shifts in our popular thought occurring in the '50s was the skepticism which arose concerning science. This was directly related to the atomic bomb, which although it ended WW2, was generally seen as a great threat now that other countries had it. Consider, for example, the 1934 film Things to Come in which science defeats barbarism and elevates mankind. Now, compare that with Howard Hawks' The Thing (1951) where the pursuit of science is characterized as dangerous, destructive, and anti-social. Note that the scientist foil - who wears a goatee and is clearly foreign - in The Thing is willing to endanger everyone's life in pursuit of pure science. Where once we trusted science and scientists completely, in the '50s the wheel was turning and we had a more skeptical view of its benefits.
If the Nazis and Commies killed each other off, while we stayed out, we would have been the winners.
We were winners and the Nazis and Russians killed a lot of each other. We became the world leader and just look at where all we have military bases. The EU acts like our b. Some of them are like vassal states. If we demand, they will institute sanctions that cripple their own economy. If we blow up a valuable pipeline, they will investigate with no result. The EU is still in the Articles of Confederation stage but nearing the Constitution when it will be something like the United States of Germany.
The Germans killed about 25 MILLION Russians. And the Russians kept coming until they had destroyed the German army.
https://www.worldwar2facts.org/siege-of-leningrad.html#siege-of-leningrad-losses
Siege of Leningrad LossesRed Army:
1,017,881 killed, captured or missing
2,418,185 wounded and sick
Civilians:
642,000 during the siege, 400,000 at evacuations
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties_of_the_Soviet_Union
World War II losses of the Soviet Union were about 27,000,000, both civilian and military from all war-related causes, although exact figures are disputed. A figure of 20 million was considered official during the Soviet era. The post-Soviet government of Russia puts the Soviet war losses at 26.6 million, on the basis of the 1993 study by the Russian Academy of Sciences, including people dying as a result of effects of the war. This includes 8,668,400 military deaths as calculated by the Russian Ministry of Defence.The figures published by the Russian Ministry of Defence have been accepted by most historians outside Russia. However, the official figure of 8.7 million military deaths has been disputed by Russian scholars who believe that the number of dead and missing POWs is not correct and new research is necessary to determine actual losses. Officials at the Russian Central Defense Ministry Archive (CDMA) maintain that their database lists the names of roughly 14 million dead and missing service personnel. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev stated in 2009 that more than 2.4 million people are still officially considered missing in action, and that of the 9.5 million persons buried in mass graves, six million are unidentified. Some Russian scholars put the total number of losses in the war, both civilian and military, at over 40 million. In 2020, Mikhail Meltyukhov, who works with the Russian Federal archival project, claimed that 15.9–17.4 million civilians were killed on Soviet territory by Germany and its allies during the war.
By the way, we had also been fighting the Germans since 1941. Our sailors and airmen were the first to take on the Nazis, and our soldiers began fighting them beginning with the North Africa landings in 1942, and we did plenty of fighting in Italy before the Normandy landings.
We had air raid drills, and were taught to hide under our desks at school, and were aware of a threat, but it didn’t stop us from being kids. Not in my neighborhood. Maybe because I lived very close to the Raritan Arsenal which was a ten square mile of military bunkers filled with tanks, jeeps, weapons, etc. Many of our neighbors worked there as contractors or as military personal. The Arsenal had a yearly “Neighborhood Day”. There was burgers and hotdogs, soda and beer for adults, rides on tanks and other military vehicles, and I saw myself on an experimental television in 1958. There was a great feel of patriotism in spite of the Russian Threat. We were comfortable and knew our country could overcome anything. I don’t remember any kids “traumatized” by the drills either.
You sure do Fiji Hill:)I was a teen in the 50’s.We wore bobbie socks and buckskin shoes.I appeared on bandstand,it was local.Once a week I did a spotlight dance cause It was my Birthday;).Finally Dick Clark said -not today Betty,not today:)
Bandstand Boogie--Les Elgart & His Orchestra (1954)
Oh yeah, and they sold patches you could just iron on.
Cars didn’t have swat belts.
In the 60s as a kid we stood up in the backseat.
Good old Romper Room.
That don’t bother me at all.
Playing solitare till dawn with a deck of 51.
When you are a slave under a Communist dictator you fight to the death, there isn’t any choice.
If one only looks at who lost more men in a war, then the Communists win that measure every time, they can fight and possibly live or protest or retreat and be destroyed.
Those Soviet soldiers who were taken prisoner and survived the Nazi prison camps were sent to the Gulag as soon as they were repatriated, as Solzhenitsyn has described in his writings.
We know how the troops on the line had troops behind them to kill them if they faltered.
When I was reading a book by a German Ace he described how much the German pilots admired the Russian bomber gunners who fired all the way until hitting the ground when their craft was shot down, the admiration diminished when they found out they were chained to their guns.
Battle of BerlinResult: Soviet victory
• Death of Adolf Hitler and other high-ranking Nazi officials
• Unconditional surrender of German garrison in Berlin on 2 May
• Capitulation of Germany on 8 May
• End of World War II in Europe
The unconditional surrender of the German garrison in Berlin happened over two months before the arrival of the U.S. Army.
V-E day is celebrated on May 8th, when Germany capitulated to the Soviets.
Eisenhower became the Commander of the Alied Expeditionary Force in 1944. The Soviet Union was not part of the AEF.
https://www.liberationroute.com/pois/249/u-s-troops-occupying-berlin
At the end of April 1945 the Soviet forces occupied Berlin, the capital of the German Reich. American and British troops did not enter the city until two months later on 4 July, the French forces participating initially with only a small unit. During those first two months, the Soviet Union was the sole occupying force, reorganizing life in the city in line with its own ideas and objectives.
The credit for defeating the Germans should go to the Soviet/Russians. The Allied Expeditionary Force was formed in 1944 as a British-American expeditionary force. When US./British forces arrived in Berlin. the Soviet forces were there waiting. The vast majority of German casualties were inflicted by the Russians, not the Americans/British.
https://www.britannica.com/place/Italy/World-War-II
Italy became a war zone. For 18 months the Allies fought the Germans up the peninsula, wreaking untold devastation throughout the land. The Allies took Naples in October 1943 but reached Rome only in June 1944, Florence in August, and the northern cities in April 1945.
The Allies took the northern cities of Italy in April 1945, and the Germans tendered the unconditional surrender of the Berlin garrison on May 2, 1945 — to the Russian army.
Nobody won the war with Germany in North Africa. The war in Europe was decided in Europe. The Germans suirrendered to the Russians, and then the Russians waited two months for the Americans to get there.
blah blah blah
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Berlin
Battle of BerlinResult: Soviet victory
• Death of Adolf Hitler and other high-ranking Nazi officials
• Unconditional surrender of German garrison in Berlin on 2 May
• Capitulation of Germany on 8 May
• End of World War II in Europe
The unconditional surrender of the German garrison in Berlin happened over two months before the arrival of the U.S. Army.
V-E day is celebrated on May 8th, when Germany capitulated to the Soviets.
Eisenhower became the Commander of the Alied Expeditionary Force in 1944. The Soviet Union was not part of the AEF.
The U.S. took the surrender of Japan.
How does that change who won the Battle of Berlin, or who accepted the surrender of the German army?
Post 213 is accurate, and you respond with blah, blah, blah?
It was a wonderful decade. A great time to grow up. There was practically no crime. People didn’t even lock their doors. Neighbors looked out or one another. People were thronging the churches. We walked to school only four blocks away. Made friends for life in those walks. Schools had morning devotions. Traffic was light. Cars were dazzling and exciting.
Girls wore poodle skirts. Boys played baseball. Life was good. Young people were expected to refrain from sex until marriage. There were few if any pregnancies out of wedlock. Civilization reined.
We were not inundated with uneducated immigrants from third world countries flooding into the country to work as laborers and become a tax burden. There was a housing boom. Veterans could buy houses with no money down. Eisenhower was the President.
We were were safe, happy, healthy, prosperous and gave God the glory for blessing America. The nation was 90% white. Race relations were cordial. Imagine that. The pathologies that rage today were either absent or well contained.
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