The Medium Is the Message
Hat tip Blackfive:
posted by wretchardthecat at 6/06/2007 11:05:00 PM
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17 Comments:
Brilliant, simply brilliant.
Wretchard
I have been reading a book which has a compilation of American journalism from WW2. The book has taken newspaper reports, journal entries, radio transcripts and placed them in a chronological order. Writers, journalists and reporters such as Ernie Pyle, Edward Murrow, William Shirer, Vincent Sheean, A.J. Liebling, Margret Bourke-White, Howard K. Smith to name just a few. Reading the book is a fascinating step back into a time and American culture.
The people of that generation were a heck of a lot different then those of their children and grandchildren. These were the folks who grew up in the depression. Strong, self reliant folks. Times were very different back then. To compare them to the baby boomers is an insult. I just don't have very many good things to say about the "Me" generations MSM. Your YouTube video hit's home as I could see todays media reporting Normandy exactly that way.
I am amazed at some of the stuff I have been reading in the book. There are passages which I can see in today's context concerning today's conflicts and politics.
When England and France, under Chamberlain and Daladier, let Hitler take the Sudetenland, Dorothy Thompson wrote "Let us not call this peace. Peace is not the absence of war. Peace is a positive condition- the rule of law. This peace has been established on lawlessness, and can only maintain itself on further lawlessness. This peace has been established by a dictatorship, and can only maintain itself by further dictatorship. This peace has been established on betrayal, and can only maintain itself by further betrayal. 'Peace,' said Spinoza,'is virtue caused by strength of spirit.' This is not peace without victory, for the victory goes to Mr. Hitler. This peace is without virtue. Therefore, it is not peace-but the initiation of a terrific world crisis."
All I can say is for Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and the other appeasers out there to take note. Today's Mr. Hitler is not sitting in the White House, he sits in a lawless area of North Pakistan. His allies are in Iran and Syria and is supported by fascists and appeasers in many other nations, including here.
If we sellout the Iraqis and not finish the job at hand. I can only speak for myself but I think I will clearly say, using the words of MS Thompson, "This peace has been established on betrayal of the citizens of Iraq, and can only maintain itself by further betrayal. This is not peace without victory, for the victory goes to Al Qeda, Iran, Syria and Mr. Bin-Laden. This peace is without virtue. Therefore, it is not peace-but the initiation of a greater world crisis."
Herkeng
PS
The Book is called "Reporting World War II" a two part series.
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The "Germans did not attack us" was a particularly nice touch along with the professor from Berkley who can't understand why we don't negotiate peace with the "Germans" who are ripe now for negotiations.
Should be submitted to NPR and journalism schools everywhere.
Oh yeah, and Wolf Blitzer.
World War I ended disastrously because the true victors--the Americans--did not press for an unconditional surrender under their own terms. Had the Americans done so, there would likely have never been a WWII.
The War on Terror will end disastrously unless the Americans--the only nation other than perhaps the Australians to take Islamic terror seriously--pursue the enemies of western civilisation to unconditional surrender.
A hudna will not do. An armistice will not do. It must be unconditional surrender. If you are academically lobotomised and psychologically neotenous--like most modern westerners--you will be unable to conceive the form of such a surrender, given the largely stateless nature of the enemy.
But that is not the real problem. The foundations of modern Islamic terror can be clearly seen by those who want to look for it. The real problem is the lack of grit and the lack of will in the western world.
That is why the Islamists believe they will win, and establish a world Caliphate with Sharia enforced worldwide--and infidels forced to live in dhimmitude. Because the westerners are mentally and morally weak, physically soft, and ideologically corrupt.
Very well done, could have even gone further citing the tough battle on Omaha. I love how the more inititially successful landings at Utah, Sword, Gold and Juno beaches were not even mentioned.
Very unrealistic. Where were the calls to evacuate the soldiers, NOW? Where are the instant denegrations of the pre-planning process? Where are the sneers at the viciousness of underclass-dominated US troops towards the noble German youth trying to fend them off?
Heh.
Actually, I was disappointed the clip wasn't long enough to jump forward to a few days later after the move inland had begun. Can you spell and chew 'CROW'?
Yesterday Neal Boortz, an Atlanta radio talk show host, former attorney and Libertarian played the original broadcast of the Address and Prayer by President Roosevelt as the Allies hit the beaches of Normandy.
I had to stop the car. The tears kept me from seeing the road.
Every time I see that scene in Band of Brothers where the Rangers were outside the fence of the Nederlandse farm house pondering if the occupants were Bund or patriots and the orange sheet was draped from the window, I sob.
Long live USA, Liberator of my Motherland, Liberator of the Oppressed (regardless of race, creed or faith)!
I love the fact I took the US Oath of Citizenship on June 6 33 years ago as a young Sailor.
Salaam eleikum.
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This piece brings to mind one of the more misunderstood controversies of WWII, that of Hitler directing that the Me-262 jet fighter be equipped to carry bombs. Supposedly this was a huge error that cost the Germans the war; in reality that is pure B.S.
As Dr. Alfred price has explained quite convincingly, Hitler was right. The Germans could never produce enough Me-262s to do much more than put on an impressive airshow. The one thing the aircraft was good for in the numbers in which it was available was to dart in with a few bombs during an invasion of the Atlantic Wall and try to sow panic and confusion in the landing force. If people then had the attitudes depicted in that video, that might have worked. The attitudes of today – as shown in that video- were what Hitler hoped for.
And Brian FH: It would take a more than few days of coverage to show the triumph. For weeks after the invasion, the allies remained confined to a very limited area, the British and Canadians stopped by strong Panzer forces to the north and the Americans bogged down in the Bocage country to the south. It was only after Operation Cobra got well and truly underway – and that was proceeded by a tragic bombing mishap that killed the highest ranking US Army officer lost in WWII – that Gen Patton and the 3rd Army broke out of the bridgehead and the Germans literally began to run for their lives.
By the way, Hitler rescinded his Me-262 fighter-bomber order in September 1944; Patton’s Sherman’s were idling on the banks of the Meuse by then, and Der Fureher’s idea on stopping the invasion became moot.
Forgive this repost of a comment I made on an earlier thread:
In 1939, a far poorer and relatively unarmed West faced down two of the most formidable military machines ever to roam the planet, destroyed them both within half a decade and presided over the rehabilitation of the societies which had created them.
By contrast, today an astonishingly wealthier U.S. spends more on its military than the next dozen or so nations combined. This is why all the talk about being stretched thin and the failure to prosecute this war and the reconstruction of Iraq to the fullest measure of our capabilities strikes me as a failure of political and societal will our grandfathers would not have allowed.
No guts, no glory.
That is what is to be expected of a generation of cowards and curs. Thankfully, most of our fathers (the Greatest Generation) have not lived to see this day.
RWE,the good doctor is mistaken.
"On 1 September 1944, USAAF General Carl Spaatz expressed the fear that if greater numbers of German jets appeared, they could inflict losses to the USAAF bombers heavy enough to cause cancellation of the Allied daylight bombing offensive."
Granted the main reason for the delay of the ME-262 into combat was trouble with its engines and the lack of materials to make them, nevertheless the demand by Hitler to turn it into a fighter-bomber (which would then require additional work on the troublesome engines) ensured that the jet would arrive too late to turn the tide in the air war over Germany. Had Hitler seen the true potential of the ME-262 and ordered a crash program to bring it into the defense of Germany prior to D-Day I think General Spaatz's worse fears would have been realized. The only effective tactic the Allies had against these fast sleek fighters was to wait for them over their airbases and attack them either on the ground or attempting to land. One of the great "What ifs" of WWII.
Tarnsman said...
"Had Hitler seen the true potential of the ME-262 and ordered a crash program to bring it into the defense of Germany prior to D-Day I think General Spaatz's worse fears would have been realized... One of the great "What ifs" of WWII."
World War II had so many "what ifs":
What if Hitler had put the money that went into the V-2 rocket program into nuclear weapons development and used the V-1 to carry gun type nukes?
What if Hitler had conquered England before he invaded Russia?
What if Hitler allowed the German general staff to run the war rather than micro-manage it?
What if Hitler had left the German Jews alone and permitted much of the German intelligenzia to remain in Germany rather than emigrate to the US?
The problem with these "what ifs" is the "Hitler" part. Hitler had significant early successes during WW-II but in the end his own meglomania caught up with him. Ultimately Hitler failed because he was Hitler.
Pretty good.
However, if it were today for real, on the June 5, 1944 front page of the NYTimes, the headline in massive black letters would have read:
"IT'S NORMANDY"
"Allied invasion force to invade at Normandy France on June 6."
THAT would be the coup de grace of today's "journalist."
Tarnsman: That is the old story that has been going around for 60 years - and it’s totally wrong. Gen Spaatz was wrong – but worrying about that sort of thing was his job, so it is understanable.
It did not matter what Hitler decided to do or not. The engines of the Me-262 required high nickel content alloys. The German had very little of those available – and they needed what they had for other applications as well, anyway. By the Spring of 1944 they had managed to build engines for the Me-262 that lasted around 25 hours each – so they needed LOTS of them, at best. So they either needed much better material to enable more reliable engines to be produced, or lots more material to enable lots and lots of lower quality engines to be produced – same problem, either way.
The available sources of nickel were beyond the Germans reach. There was a mine in northernmost Finland that was too hard to get to. The greatest source of nickel in the world was in Canada. Even today, the sources of nickel are so rare in Europe that the Russians recently proposed converting a Typhoon class ballistic missile nuclear submarine into a nickel ore carrier in order to enable sources in the Arctic region to be exploited.
The Germans also thought turbosuperchargers were really neat and greatly admired those used on USAAF bombers and fighters but found that they had the ability to build them but not the nickel required to produce them in quantity. Spraying aluminum over lower grade steel was found to be a poor substitute.
So, it did not matter whether Hitler decided to go full bore with the Me-262 or not – they could not build enough of them to hardly make the Allies notice.
In order to build enough Me-262s to win the war the Germans first had to … win the war. Say, capture Canada, or break the Allied naval blockade in order to enable large quantities of nickel to be imported from places like New Caledonia, defeat the USSR to enable a land bridge to Asia – and of which would be the equivalent of winning the war in the first place.
And my apologies to all for the length of this post.
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