Posted on 12/24/2017 1:12:14 PM PST by 3161J410
The Winston Churchill biopic Darkest Hour will feed into the debate around the nature of President Donald Trump’s abrasive, confrontational form of leadership, says Joe Wright, the film’s director. Wright suggests that Darkest Hour, which stars Gary Oldman as the British prime minister during arguably the UK’s most testing period of the second world war, is directly relevant to the US’s current political turmoil.
“There’s a big question in America at the moment: what does good leadership look like,” says Wright,
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
We saw it as well. A certain amount of things might be misconstrued by the lefties. After all Churchill drank...tsk tsk. And he called idiots out. (No tweeting though)LOL
My thoughts after the movie: Leadership works every time it is tried.
I just find it funny that before D-Day, the Russians were whining about how they were doing all the dying. And then when we were in a position to get to Berlin earlier and end the war earlier, they Russians didn’t want that.
Maybe he’s hoping that the people will vote him out, just as he is winning, as the Brits did to Churchill.
yep, I understand the philosophy of brutality. But there was alcohol, poor discipline and blind hatred. The podcast I mentioned earlier would really interest most of the Freepers I think. Check it out. It really is good.
It’s because they wanted payback.
>Up until late ‘44 even with all the other fronts the Germans had a 4-1 kill ratio, including tanks, on the eastern front. I do not think the Germans could have defeated the Soviets only because i do not think the Soviets would have ever surrendered.
The Soviets were out of manpower by late 1944. Without US aid, which required UK control of the sea lanes the Soviets would have run out of both food and gear in by 1943. You can order a man to fight to the death but starving men without gear or re-enforcement don’t fight effectively as the German army discovered in WW1.
Thank you I will check it out.
you’ll love it
please let me know what you think. I’m interested to see if others enjoy this as much as I did.
Absolutely true on all counts, save one. I did calculations on the amount of air power, anti-air, personnel, and fuel the Germans dedicated to the anti-bombing campaign in the west, 90% of which was against daytime bombing by the Americans. It was about 30% of their resources in any category.
If you put 30% more air over Kursk, the Germans win. It’s not close. They were winning the battle up to the point they lost air superiority. The Stukas with the tank buster guns were slaughtering the Russian armor. So without the US in the war, I don’t know if Germany beats Russia, but it’s a much, much longer war.
Also, the material that flowed in was astounding. In 1941-early 1942, the BEST Russian fighter plane on the front was the P-39 AirCobra, a plane so bad we wouldn’t even put our own pilots in it. So despite the massive power of the Red Army (offensives of 100 divisions!), they were using Ford trucks and American transports to move all their infantry. And they used American/Brit radios extensively. In short, the Russians were able to focus really on just three things: men, cannons, and tanks.
This excellent video has been around for a while, but fits right in with your comments on Russian losses. Check out the sickening, seemingly never-ending graphic representation of their losses at around 5:35. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwKPFT-RioU
“...we were right to think ‘ugh...after the FIRST World War and the Europeans are at it (mutual self-destruction) AGAIN?’ ... But most everyone else was isolationist by nature. ...” [GoldenState_Rose, Post 26]
“Ok, but other than The Magna Carta, what have the Brits EVER done for us?” [dfwgator, Post 67]
American citizens of 1914, and 1930-1940, were fools. Also self-regarding, self-congratulatory, self-righteous, and condescending. The country was founded as a trading nation, not a “city on a hill.”
No trading nation could stand apart from the World Wars.
As American citizens of today, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that we may be bigger fools. The world trades at levels undreamt of in 1940, and we will enjoy still less success than we did before, if we believe we can isolate ourselves.
On a practical level, Britain’s Royal Navy policed the sea lanes, promoting world trade, and the Industrial Revolution: that’s what the Brits did for us (and many others also).
Trump, like Churchill, is a man. He does not lack testosterone. Metro men cannot begin to understand, nor relate to real men. They are to them as aliens from another planet.
“... In 1941-early 1942, the BEST Russian fighter plane on the front was the P-39 AirCobra, ...”
Not sure who’s feeding data to LS, but I’d have to know a lot more about how “best” is judged here before accepting any such claim.
The VVS and PVO of the Red Army were well-served by fighter aircraft of the Lavochkin bureau, early MiGs, and the Yakovlev series of fighters: the notion that Bell’s P-39 outclassed them is ridiculous.
Production variants of the P-39 were equipped with inferior superchargers, limiting high altitude performance of what was otherwise a very innovative design. Above 12,000 ft MSL, it was very vulnerable to fighters with better turbochargers.
If you want to blame anyone, blame the penny-pinching morons in the US Congress who laid such tight funding constraints on the US Army Air Corps that system development was truncated. The design never recovered.
And the Soviets did not use P-39s for ground attack as a primary mission. Much of that work fell to Ilyushin’s Il-2 Shturmovik, a larger two-place aircraft with heavier armament and armor. It became the most-produced combat aircraft in history: made in about nine times the numbers of the P-39s the United States supplied to the USSR.
Records do indicate that Bell’s fighter fared well against the Luftwaffe’s Ju-87s, twin-engine bombers, and early Me-109s.
A lot of men would have been ruined after a disaster like Gallipoli. But Churchill was so determined to work his way back he volunteered to fight on the front lines during WWI.
“...the P-39 AirCobra, a plane so bad we wouldn’t even put our own pilots in it. ...”
This is erroneous.
Total P-39 production exceeded 9,500. Less than half went to the Soviet Union. The rest equipped the UK RAF, the RAAF, France, Italy, Portugal, and US units, with which they saw action in the Pacific and the Mediterranean.
Dundirk was a bore. Horrible movie. Nothing at all like hacksaw ridge which was excellent
“...But Churchill was so determined to work his way back he volunteered to fight on the front lines during WWI.”
Winston Churchill did not expect to work his way back. He went to a unit on the Western Front as a LtCol, and said later he expected to be killed in action.
As a member of Britain’s Cabinet, Churchill was the first to suggest an attack on the Dardanelles in high government councils. After months of severe casualties and stalemate on the Western Front, the British were desperate for some bit of success, anywhere: government officials and senior military officers found the notion of a strike at the Turks appealing, and immediately caught “victory disease,” eagerly speculating (fantasizing) about the strategic advantage to be gained by knocking the Ottoman Turks out of the war - before the first steps of detailed planning were taken.
The first attack was purely naval - bombardment of shore defenses at the southeast end of the straits, to be followed by a fleet sailing to the docks of Constantinople. It was anticipated the Turkish government would throw in the towel.
The worst luck plagued the Allies - including a naval minefield laid in the narrower stretches of the straits by courageous Turkish units the night before the first attack. Major warships were lost, in a hurry.
The most severe tactical/technical limitation turned out to be the poor performance of naval guns against fortifications on shore: high angle fire was essential, but naval rifles were capable only of low-angle, direct line-of-sight fire - and the guns of warships were the only heavy firepower the Allies could bring into action. Fire directors could barely make out their targets ashore; after the first salvoes, dust clouds rose and obscured targets more fully. Sparse feedback on mission success caused the Allies to lose the sole chance they had; only after the war did they learn that the first bombardments knocked out a large percentage of Turkish defenses.
The Allies hesitated. During the lull, the Turks - ably led by their own officers, and well advised by German liaison officers - scrambled to repair fortifications and build more.
All this happened before any Allied troops landed.
When Allied assault forces did hit the beaches, they were poorly supported by intelligence on local terrain and on the Central Powers forces opposing them. Ship/shore coordination was spotty, and friendly fire hit Allied formations. Breaches in the Turkish defenses went unrecognized and unexploited; the Allies were never able to force their way through the lines nor go around them. Th effort was abandoned and the assault units were evacuated early in 1916.
The British government fell (for other reasons as well as the failure at Gallipoli) and Winston Churchill became the scapegoat.
Have not seen it yet.
Let me guess. Were there scenes of the following: Churchill as moody, workaholic, irascible and dismissive of his wife then demonstratively apologetic, pensive gazes out of a moving car window, all filmed in a haze of cigar smoke with a scotch bottle nearby?
What may forever be debated and never resolved is the issue of how many German divisions were either pre-occupied or, ultimately, destroyed on the different fronts. The Russians kept millions of German soldiers on the Eastern front and killed or captured huge numbers of them, which, in turn, meant that the Western Allies did not have to contend with them in their theaters of operation. The reverse is also true, though on a somewhat lesser scale: the Anglo/American West kept large numbers of German forces from being available on the Eastern front and/or forced the Germans to draw on forces that were fighting elsewhere.
The calculus of just who created the greatest strategic benefit is almost impossible to reckon, but, without question, the Russians, regardless of their kill ratios, tied up and destroyed huge numbers of Germans, which I believe was their greatest contribution to the Allied victory.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.