V.E Day Predictions

Despite being absent from the daily news conference for the last month, Johnson turns up dressed like Geri Halliwell, punches the air and declares that with a bit of Bulldog Spirit we'll win this war on Covid.

 

He could come on and say happy Viagra erection day now it's o.k to nip out for a poke.

 

I’m hoping he comes out and declares that they are dissolving all party politics and are going to put the most talented and qualified people in the country in all key positions. I then hopes he relinquishes all pensions to politicians past and present, finishes his glass of water and ***** off.

 

Everybody that calls it "Victory *Over* Europe" day spontaneously combusts (I'm looking at you, Daily Mail). Everyone that calls it the end of the war loses the ability to speak until they learn the error of their ways (August 15th or September 2nd were the end of the war - although the Soviets occupied Bornholm until handing it back to Denmark in April 1946). It might have been the end of the war in Europe, but just celebrating one theatre of conflict diminishes the sacrifice of our armed forces in the Pacific including a sizable number that died or were injured in conflict there. Either celebrate *both* (and it wouldn't hurt to move the August bank holiday or have an extra one this year) or celebrate neither.

 

If us and the yanks had steam rolled the tired Russians in Germany instead of shaking hands and building a wall. Would the world be a better place today?

 

I suspect that we wouldn't have beaten the Russians then. The ferocity with which they fought (and they were fighting on two fronts as well) would have beaten our tired troops before we made much headway - unless we nuked Moscow of course.

 

OFFS , do we have to turn everything on here with politcal leanings. VE day was a big thing when it happened and still is for the folk who lived trough it, leave em alone!

 

Knee jerk reaction is to say yes but on balance i reckon not. The Russia we'd have defeated is the one that went with the Berlin wall anyway and look at what a destabilising, corrupt shower they are now. I think some sort of thuggery displayed by Russia, China etc will always fill a vacuum and you also have to ask what America would have turned into given almost total world domination. I mean, they're bad enough as it is.

 

Maybe so. I'm a bit half and half. I just look at the Cold War that followed and Russia developing it's nuclear power and think that wouldn't have happened had the allies pushed on.

I also go by theory that the Second World War shouldn't have happened and was a result of sanctions the allies put on Germany after the First World War humiliating them.

The Second World War effectively ended the British Empire as it crippled it financially. The navy was more or less dispensed with and countries around the Commonwealth destabilised as a result. We have famine in Kenya, apartheid in South Africa, the ills of the conflict over Kashmir are still felt today. Hong Kong didn't want to go back to China too.

 

It's all a bit butterfly theory. Domino after domino.
i was actually thinking this morning about whether Germany would have won the war in europe if he'd knocked us out when he had the chance rather than starting a second front. If he had i don't think the Yanks would have come anywhere near Europe and we'd be looking at a very different world today.

 

I heard somewhere that Hitler wanted to keep England as intact as he could and was also scared by the legend of King Arthur. There's a parody of this theory in the Disney film Bedknobs and Broomsticks.

 

Germany in 1940 didn't have the ships suitable for a land-based invasion of the UK, but could quite easily by the end of that year have an Empire stretching from the Spanish border to Russia and Turkey (if you include "partners" like Italy/Bulgaria and puppet states like Albania). I suspect at that stage, the UK would have signed some form of truce/ceasefire as we didn't have the forces to invade Europe either. If Hitler hadn't gone east into Russia, most of Europe would have been Germany for a long time with sporadic terrorism attacks in the various former countries until the resistance was finally beaten - and with the Italians going into Africa it could have stretched over a lot of that continent without the need to push East in Russia where they lost most of their forces.

Whether a Germany stretching across the mainland of Europe would have built up forces to launch an eventual invasion of the UK or been happy controlling Europe (and Africa) is another question.

 

I've nothing against celebrating VE day and remembering the sacrifices of those that died, but those that died (or lost family) in Asia should also get the same opportunity. One is a big thing, the other barely mentioned.

And I don't feel that happening to be on the winning side in a conflict that killed 70+ million people means that we get to constantly brag about it like many people (who weren't even born in 1945) seem to want to.

It should be a day of quiet reflection, mourning the dead and making sure it doesn't happen again.

 

Countries in the Commonwealth were pushing for independence before the war even started Not the utopia so fondly remembered!

 

surely that’s what VJ Day is for?

 

When did we have (and why aren't we having) a bank holiday for VJ day? And why do we (15th August) celebrate it on a different day to America (2nd September)?

 

We never usually have one for VE day either, and we haven't this year really, its just the Mayday one that's been moved on a bit to coincide with its 75th anniversary.
Think ones the day that fighting finished and the later one the date of the official surrender.
It was you who said we didn't recognise both, when the folk who matter quite clearly do.

 

I think landings in Northern France by a multi national brigade led by an USCC,on the western flank. On the southern flank a smaller force of North Americans,again led by a USCC. On the Eastern flank a enormous Soviet brigade. All these forces coordinating their attacks on a weakened German military and war weary population, leading to a end within 12 months, surrender by the failed Nazi regime. This operation had been desired and wanted by the U.S. and USSR since 1942,but blocked by W Churchill.
Not propaganda but in his wartime diaries.
The argument that we would have been speaking German if it wasn't for the americans,is only partly correct. It was the sacrifice of the Soviet union and its people that aided victory along with the allied forces. More people died at Leningrad in 1942 than the combined deaths of UK civilians and military throughout the war. The role of the UK was significant but was only one of a much larger team.

 

See also China in Asia, who lost nearly as many as the Russians fighting the Japanese.

Honorable mention to Tito and the Yugoslavs who fought the Germans back from that part of the world too.

 

I meant that we could have moved the August Bank Holiday too to celebrate the 75th anniversary for the end of the war. Either one week earlier for the ceasefire or one later for the surrender. We didn't do it 25 years ago either - although that was the only year I wasn't at school or work and missed the change in Bank Holiday dates then.