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History Rewritten: Myths Busted & New Truths Uncovered

I suspect there were very few black people in Nazi Germany at that time.
 
If you watch the Nazi blockbuster fantasy Baron Munchausen from the war years, there are black actors in it playing guards, etc. I wonder who they were? Were they not afraid for their lives? How were they in Nazi Germany in the first place? Just shows you there was diversity there, but damn it raises a bunch of questions.

Afro-Germans comprised a potentially problematic population that was subject to a number of restrictions / prohibitions, but never specifically targeted for extermination like other groups (e.g., Jews, Roma) sharing the bottom rung of the Nazi racial hierarchy. The standard explanation was that their numbers were too small to justify the bother of policies and actions specifically addressing them.

In spite of their obvious repression / oppression, there were actually Afro-German members of the Hitler Youth and even the Wehrmacht.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_black_people_in_Nazi_Germany

The fact that the 1943 film was personally commissioned by Goebbels probably has a lot to do with why it has a Hungarian director, black actors, and a screenwriter who'd been a banned author for circa a decade (and whom the film never credits).

See: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036191/?ref_=ttfc_fc_tt
 
Fascinating, thanks! I wonder if the black actors' conscience troubled them, appearing in Nazi propaganda?

There is a film from the 1970s called The Black Gestapo, but that's a very different proposition.
 
Fascinating, thanks! I wonder if the black actors' conscience troubled them, appearing in Nazi propaganda?

There were Jews in the Wehrmacht. Religious or cultural observance can fade out over generations, probably a lot of them weren't even aware of their ancestry.
 
Coloured? COLOURED? Holy shit man, report for re-training immediately, you evil white devil slaver! You should say "person of colo(u)r", didn't anyone tell you?

I refuse to use the new name of the "Saracen's Head" pub in town. In fact, I refuse to use the pub, sod 'em.

Probably they did, but I might not have been listening.
 
Interesting article (from 2013) which suggests it was fear of a Soviet invasion of Hokkaido which finally forced Japan to surrender. The USSR had already defeated Japanese forces in Manchuria and Sakhalin Island. They were poised to attack Hokkaido which was lightly defended.

The Bomb Didn’t Beat Japan … Stalin Did
Have 70 years of nuclear policy been based on a lie?
BY WARD WILSON MAY 30, 2013

The U.S. use of nuclear weapons against Japan during World War II has long been a subject of emotional debate. Initially, few questioned President Truman’s decision to drop two atomic bombs, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But, in 1965, historian Gar Alperovitz argued that, although the bombs did force an immediate end to the war, Japan’s leaders had wanted to surrender anyway and likely would have done so before the American invasion planned for Nov. 1. Their use was, therefore, unnecessary. Obviously, if the bombings weren’t necessary to win the war, then bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki was wrong. In the 48 years since, many others have joined the fray: some echoing Alperovitz and denouncing the bombings, others rejoining hotly that the bombings were moral, necessary, and life-saving.

Both schools of thought, however, assume that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with new, more powerful weapons did coerce Japan into surrendering on Aug. 9. They fail to question the utility of the bombing in the first place — to ask, in essence, did it work? The orthodox view is that, yes, of course, it worked. The United States bombed Hiroshima on Aug. 6 and Nagasaki on Aug. 9, when the Japanese finally succumbed to the threat of further nuclear bombardment and surrendered. The support for this narrative runs deep. But there are three major problems with it, and, taken together, they significantly undermine the traditional interpretation of the Japanese surrender. ...

http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/05/30...al&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
 
Yes, no and possibly!

The bombs 'worked' in the sense that Allied servicemen did not have to be sacrificed in their 100,000s (Operation Downfall estimated 514,072 US casualties of which 134,556 would be dead or missing--and this doesn't account for other allied men).

If the surrender had not been made, nuclear bombs would have rained down on more cities until there was nothing to fight. There would have been a delay as I don't believe there were many in production, but it would have come all the same.

Perhaps the Soviet threat was the straw that broke the camel's back, but it seem only to be a historical dotting of the 'I's and crossing of the 'T's to try to guess.
 
Yes, no and possibly!

The bombs 'worked' in the sense that Allied servicemen did not have to be sacrificed in their 100,000s (Operation Downfall estimated 514,072 US casualties of which 134,556 would be dead or missing--and this doesn't account for other allied men).

If the surrender had not been made, nuclear bombs would have rained down on more cities until there was nothing to fight. There would have been a delay as I don't believe there were many in production, but it would have come all the same.

Perhaps the Soviet threat was the straw that broke the camel's back, but it seem only to be a historical dotting of the 'I's and crossing of the 'T's to try to guess.

But they had run out of functioning A-Bombs at that stage. The mass bombing using normal explosives resulted in the equivalent of a 4k A Bomb every night per each Japanese city targeted. This is also discussed in the article.

But if they had waited for the extra A-Bombs then the USSR would certainly have taken Hokkaido.
 
I think it's entirely possible that use of the A bombs in Japan may have actually saved lives on the Japanese side too.
At that stage in the war, the Japanese were reduced to using suicidal tactics (such as kamikaze pilots). This was already having an effect on how well they could fight the war. If they'd simply carried on, a lot of young men would have died and the war would have come to an end when only the old men were left. Something did come out of the war, in Japan...there was the realisation that the world had changed, and that some of the 'old ways' were irrelevant to the modern day. Also, there was the realisation that their Emperor was not to be listened to.
 
I'm strongly persuaded that this alternative interpretation could be entirely correct.

To what extent did Imperial Japan have any independant strategic intelligence regarding what were being developed as 'atom bombs'? I'm going to confidently-predict that they knew nothing about them.

That FP article is one of the most-interesting articles I've read in years, many thanks.

I'm going to come back to say a lot more about this thread, later...(I have a sudden family responsibiity to attend to...and I may additionally-consider opening another very Fortean can of atomic worms as well)
 
The article is interesting, but only as a relatively naive piece of armchair spin-doctoring.

It reasonably criticizes a narrative predicated on a simplistic single-point causality (i.e., atom bombs directly ended the war), only to turn around and promote an even more simplistic single-point cause (the USSR abrogating the non-aggression treaty and becoming an active adversary).

Stalin's move would certainly have shaken Japanese decision makers. For one thing, it undermined their confidence in hoping the USSR wouldn't be a factor until the treaty expired in 1946. It also served as a signal additional wolves were opportunistically moving in to feast on the empire - most particularly a Russian wolf with some serious old scores to settle (cf. the Russo-Japanese War). Even more broadly it highlighted the fact the European theater allies, having now eliminated Germany from contention, were free to turn their full attention to Japan.

On the other hand, the vast distances involved, the lack of any substantial Soviet naval capabilities in the region, and the Soviet military's relative deficiencies in amphibious assault capabilities all suggested that potential losses in the north were essentially limited to outlying islands and territories.

If anything, the fall of Okinawa was far more important to the calculus of war. In the wake of the battle for Okinawa, both the Japanese homeland's air and naval forces were effectively depleted. The homeland air defenses had been proven to be ineffective for at least a year already.

Once the mine-clearing was done (Operation Zebra; July 1945) Okinawa became a major naval base and mega-airbase within easy striking range of most anywhere in the homeland. The American bombers' one-way flight distance to the central islands was immediately reduced from circa 1500 miles (from Tinian) to circa 400 miles (from Okinawa). This set the stage for a markedly increased potential volume and tempo of homeland bombings.

The Tokyo firebombing raid in March devastated the capital city by employing over 300 bombers. The Hiroshima attack produced similar municipal devastation / disruption using only one. Crudely put, that's a force projection amplification of circa 30,000%.

The author of this piece makes a big deal of the days' delay in suing for peace after Hiroshima and Nagasaki - a hypocritical pirouette back to framing things with exclusive respect to the A-bombings for the sake of rhetorical leverage.

The most telling delay in all this wasn't the delay of days following the A-bombings - it was the foot-dragging delay of months following the loss of Okinawa and the Tokyo fire bombings. The writing had been on the wall for some time, and the Japanese leadership was in a state of denial as imminently catastrophic as their late ally Hitler's.

It's nonsensical to try and pin everything on a single-point cause when there was an entire constellation of factors unanimously auguring doom.
 
The Tokyo firebombing raid in March devastated the capital city by employing over 300 bombers. The Hiroshima attack produced similar municipal devastation / disruption using only one. Crudely put, that's a force projection amplification of circa 30,000%.
So to be clear on this: you are certain (with reasons) that the Japanese High Command were entirely-appreciative of this crucial 'amplification' point?

That their strategic appreciation of this game-changer was already pre-primed via intelligence, confirmed by Hiroshima, and then placed into beyond-fluke finality, precisely as per the conventional narrative?

How would they have become aware of this? Please note, I am genuinely interested, do we know if there was still any meaningful intelligence sharing going on between the Axis forces as late as 1944/45? On a similar note, is it known whether Nippon had done any heavy water /proto-atomic weapon research, as a parallel to the Allied and Nazi efforts?

Or, do you mean by balance of probabilities, the writer's revisionist position is just less likely?

I was unaware of the actual extent and tonnage of conventional US bombing, in the itemised detail outlined in the article, especially the fact (presumably true?) that neither the Hiroshima nor Nagasaki raids resulted in the highest death-toll or devastation....extended conventional bombing on other targets significantly-exceeded their thresholds. And yet I am unaware of having ever seen a picture of any bombed Japanese target other than the two 'nuclear cities'.

Your counter-point regarding the extended timeline of stubborn denial shown by the Japanese (being the much-more significant elapsement than the period following the first strike) is fair enough....but: is there no validity in the writer's statement about the Japanese lesser-of-two-evils being a US occupation, and not a Russian one? You almost support this possibility, with your excellent point regarding unsettled military scores between Russia and Japan from the previous decades.

Do you not share even the slightest common-ground with him regarding "The Bomb" being used, post-war, as a totemic substitute for much of Japan's military hierarchy's failings?

I'm sorry, I feel that there could be more than just a few nuggets of truth touched upon within his exposition. It is not an era of history that I understand enough of, but I feel some fascinating points are made within the piece.
 
The Japanese surrendered 6 days after Nagasaki was bombed. I'd say that was the turning point, that second bomb.
After the first bomb in Hiroshima, I'm sure somebody told the Japanese leadership 'that was one bomb...just one bomb' - and they were probably not believed. Then, after Nagasaki, the penny dropped and they realised that it WAS just one bomb. That realisation would be enough to strike fear into their hearts.
So...although it seems simplistic, I reckon that's how it played out.
 
So to be clear on this: you are certain (with reasons) that the Japanese High Command were entirely-appreciative of this crucial 'amplification' point? ...

As far as the force projection amplification induced by having seized Okinawa - yes, they could hardly have avoided realizing the strategic bombing campaign was poised to expand dramatically.

As far as the amplification factor of the new bomb ... A Japanese military observer was dispatched to Hiroshima by air, and reported the city's destroyed status within hours. Whether they were aware it had been a single bomb would have required knowing only a single B-29 was over the target at the time. The Hiroshima area air defense command observed this, but it's unclear whether or when this became known to Tokyo. In any case, President Truman revealed the fact it was a new type of bomb in his announcement circa 16 hours after the explosion.
 
... On a similar note, is it known whether Nippon had done any heavy water /proto-atomic weapon research, as a parallel to the Allied and Nazi efforts? ...

Japan was one of 5 nations (USA, UK, Germany, USSR, and Japan) whose physicists had advised the military / government authorities a nuclear bomb was conceivable, in some cases dating back to the late 1930's.

All five established nuclear weapons research projects with widely varying degrees of urgency and / or priority. The Japanese initiative was arguably the weakest of the five, insofar as:

- Japanese physicists initially opined no such bomb was likely to be built anytime soon;
- The Japanese initiative was scattered among multiple programs given varying degrees of support by the Army and / or Navy; and ...
- Of the five nations looking into nuclear weaponry the Japanese had the least access to uranium.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_nuclear_weapon_program
 
... s there no validity in the writer's statement about the Japanese lesser-of-two-evils being a US occupation, and not a Russian one? ...

There's absolutely no validity to the notion Japan faced an either / or choice between US and USSR occupation.

The USSR was not logistically equipped to occupy large portions of Japan, and in any case they were more interested in (re-?) taking Japanese-held territories along the east coast of China and Korea as well as the Kuril islands.

Furthermore, the USSR's entry into the Asian / Pacific war was by design and in accordance with agreements among the 'Big Three' going back years ...

Stalin had agreed at the 1943 Tehran conference to invade Japan (or, more accurately, the Japanese empire) once Germany had fallen. The USSR was stockpiling resources for that eventuality in their far eastern region from 1943 onward.

The February 1945 Yalta Conference focused Stalin's Tehran pledge into a promise of invasion within 3 months of a German surrender.

The Yalta Conference agreements were released by the US State Department in March 1945.

The USSR formally denounced the only thing standing in their way (the Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact of 1941) in April 1945.

The joint Allies' Potsdam Declaration (July 26, 1945) declared Japan's only choices were unconditional surrender versus "prompt and utter destruction."

The USSR's declaration of war occurred right on schedule on August 8, 1945, followed by their invasion of Manchuria on August 9.
 
... I was unaware of the actual extent and tonnage of conventional US bombing, in the itemised detail outlined in the article, especially the fact (presumably true?) that neither the Hiroshima nor Nagasaki raids resulted in the highest death-toll or devastation....extended conventional bombing on other targets significantly-exceeded their thresholds. And yet I am unaware of having ever seen a picture of any bombed Japanese target other than the two 'nuclear cities'. ...

The biggest Tokyo bombing event was the Operation Meetinghouse raid (March 1945) that burned much of the urban area. I've seen claims the incendiary approach was inspired by the Dresden fire bombing circa 1 month earlier. Japanese urban areas were far more susceptible to fire owing to the extensive wood (and even 'paper') materials used in smaller business / residential neighborhoods. Compared to Dresden, Tokyo and other Japanese cities of the era were virtual tinderboxes.

Neither the Japanese nor the Americans went out of their way to publicize the incident, and aftermath photos were rarely seen until the last couple of decades. For more, see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo

For a list of Japanese cities subjected to conventional 'fire bombing' prior to Hiroshima, see:

http://www.ditext.com/japan/napalm.html

NOTE: This latter link goes to a webpage specifically focused on napalm, war crimes, and the Fog of War documentary on Robert McNamara. I'm not sure all the listed attacks were quite as deliberately planned with a focus on starting fires as Operation Meetinghouse, but they all certainly had that effect. Traditional Japanese wood and paper architecture arguably made such areas the most flammable targets in the world.
 
The Fog of War documentary is a very interesting one: McNamara obviously felt tremendous guilt at all those deaths, civilian deaths at that, yet craved the forgiveness of knowing he did the correct thing. I wasn't sure how to respond to him by the end of the film.
 
... Do you not share even the slightest common-ground with him regarding "The Bomb" being used, post-war, as a totemic substitute for much of Japan's military hierarchy's failings? ...

Yes, I agree the new bomb, exclusively held by the primary adversary, provided a convenient excuse for capitulating long after they could have / should have if the welfare of their people had really been a concern.

I would also agree that it provided convenient rhetorical chaff for obscuring the fact the leadership had dilly-dallied for months, as their nation literally burned to the ground, in some vain hope previously conquered territories would remain theirs and the ancient domestic order (i.e., the emperor's throne) would be preserved.

However, I strongly disagree that seizing this excuse was a way of covering up a fear of some decisive Soviet invasion and / or occupation. I don't even 'buy' the explanation that the Japanese leaders were spooked into surrendering just because Stalin was no longer their go-to guy to serve as intermediary. It had already been months since the USSR had denounced their non-aggression treaty. How delusional did one have to be to consider Stalin a benevolent, reliable partner who'd serve you well as a front man in the first place?
 
The Fog of War documentary is a very interesting one: McNamara obviously felt tremendous guilt at all those deaths, civilian deaths at that, yet craved the forgiveness of knowing he did the correct thing. I wasn't sure how to respond to him by the end of the film.

He was an old man who had only slowly come to change his views in key (not all) respects. I think if he could have lived longer and been re-interviewed, you might have seen genuine remorse and contrition. What the viewer saw was a transitional stage, I think.

I thought it was remarkable viewing. All too human.

Online here, btw.

http://documentaryvine.com/video/the-fog-of-war/
 
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Here's an interesting history-rewrite / conspiracy theory I ran across on the Copenhagen Post Online site ... It not only touches on a rewriting of history to re-direct a succession, but involves dramatizing a Julius Caesar invasion and conquest of Britain that never actually occurred!

Caesar conquering Britain a 9th century invention by Alfred the Great

Saxon king fabricated 54 BC invasion to replace Viking-friendly heir and protect England from the Danes

The Saxon king Alfred, a late ninth century ruler who unified several kingdoms of England and thwarted the Danish Vikings from taking over at every turn, is commonly referred to as ‘the Great’ by historians.

But maybe ‘the Magnificent’ club of Suleiman, Lorenzo de’ Medici and co should make room for one more, contends Rebecca Huston, a former National Geographic Channel producer and American screenwriter who after ten years of original research and analysis believes the king single-handedly saved the country from being permanently absorbed into Scandinavia.

FULL STORY: http://cphpost.dk/news/caesar-conquering-britain-a-9th-century-invention-by-alfred-the-great.html

Here are some selected tidbits ...

Alfred simply demonstrated that the pen is mightier than the sword. ...

By doctoring a Latin version of one of the ancient world’s most famous writings, and altering several Old English manuscripts, he was able to convince his council of nobles that his son Edward was the rightful heir to his throne, not his nephew Æthelwold, a Saxon susceptible to alliances with the Danes.

And the astonishing upshot of this discovery is that Julius Caesar neither invaded nor conquered Britain in 54 BC.

Along with the collected letters of Cicero, the memoirs written by Caesar while he was conquering France and other areas of central Europe in the fifth decade of the first century BC is believed by many to be one of the few manuscripts to have survived the period.

But there is a very good chance that Caesar’s ‘Commentaries’ did not survive, and that ‘Bellum Gallicum’ (BG), the title it is known as today, was the work of other writers. ...

As an avid translator of Latin texts into Old English with all his kingdom’s manuscripts at his disposal, Alfred was ideally placed to meddle, and Huston claims she has found compelling evidence among 6,000 pages of ancient and medieval texts that Alfred fabricated Caesar’s two ‘invasions’ of Britain in 55 and 54 BC and added them to what would become BG. In reality, she says, the first ‘invasion’ did not take place, and the second was a passing visit. ...
 
So did Alfred also build the many Roman remains, several long distance roads & Hadrian's wall or were these constructed in their 'passing visit'?
 
So did Alfred also build the many Roman remains, several long distance roads & Hadrian's wall or were these constructed in their 'passing visit'?

The major Roman works constructed in Britain came after Claudius' invasion and sustained occupation from 43 AD onward. Hadrian's Wall wasn't constructed until the 2nd Century AD.

The key question would be:

What substantial Roman works in Britain have been definitively dated to the time between Julius Caesar's purported invasions (55 and 54 BC) and Claudius' invasion in 43 AD?
 
The inspiration for The Beatles Eleanor Rigby song .. and her name on a gravestone .. and an upcoming sale for deeds for a family grave (although Paul (or is it Faul etc) McCartney has denied a link between this gravestone and the song)

"It was at a church fete in 1957 that John Lennon and Paul McCartney first met. Just yards away lay the grave of scullery maid Eleanor Rigby, who had died, aged 44, in 1939."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-41162284
 
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McCartney has denied a link between this gravestone and the song

Rigby is quite a common name in Liverpool. The BBC article makes this point, though it fails to note that Rigby's Bar is one of Liverpool's most celebrated drinking-holes. I have sunk many a pint in there - one of the I-o-M Okell's few mainland outposts! :pcheers:
 
This is more a case of horrible irony/history repeating itself .. a light aircraft that took up the doctor who was in charge of the football team *deep breath* who had to resort to cannibalism in 1972 when their plane crashed in the Andes *another deep breath*, the situation made into the film ALIVE, has crashed during a flight to mark the anniversary .. the pilot was OK, the doctor's died ..

"The memorial match, which has been taking annually place for 44 years, alternately in Chile and Uruguay, is held to mark the match that never happened" .. again, this flight crash was connected to the the anniversary of the crash ..

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-41550526
 
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...a convenient excuse for capitulating long after they could have / should have if the welfare of their people had really been a concern.

Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman knew this during the American Civil War:

"We are not only fighting armies, but a hostile people, and must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war, as well as their organized armies. I know that this recent movement of mine through Georgia has had a wonderful effect in this respect. Thousands who had been deceived by their lying papers into the belief that we were being whipped all the time, realized the truth, and have no appetite for a repetition of the same experience."

"War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueller it is, the sooner it will be over."

Remember that - even after the bombs were dropped - the emperor's speech to his people announcing the cessation of hostilities included the almost comic evasion, "...the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage", and didn't even include an unequivocal declaration that Japan had, in fact, surrendered.

maximus otter
 
Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman knew this during the American Civil War ...

Yep ... Sherman's March represented one of the - if not the - earliest campaign explicitly aimed at breaking the will of the adversary's population. There had certainly been campaigns of similar civilian-focused destruction for centuries, but this one was specifically designed for that purpose.

Since then, breaking the enemy population's will has become a canonical objective in military theory.
 
The mystery behind a jet boat crash that killed world water speed record breaker Donald Campbell may finally have been solved following new analysis of photographs and footage of the accident. ...

The wreckage of Bluebird was salvaged from lake bed in 2001 and Campbell's body was also later recovered leading to an inquest into his death. ...

I couldn't find a more appropriate thread for this news item, and in any case it does involve some history being rewritten. In this case, the revision means ...

Campbell's Bluebird is no longer 'wreckage'. It's been restored and re-launched ...

Bluebird jet boat floats again, 51 years after fatal crash
The famed jet boat Bluebird returned to the water Saturday for the first time since a 1967 crash that killed pilot Donald Campbell during a world speed-record attempt.

Watched by well-wishers including Campbell’s daughter Gina Campbell, the sleek blue hydroplane was lowered into Loch Fad on Scotland’s Isle of Bute, where it will undergo low-speed tests.

Campbell had already set eight land and water speed records when he attempted to break his own 276.3 mph (445 kph) water-speed record on Jan. 4, 1967 on Coniston Water in northwest England’s Lake District.

The jet-powered Bluebird roared past 300 mph (482 kph) before it vaulted into the air, flipped and crashed into the lake, breaking in two and killing the 45-year-old Campbell.

It was 34 years before divers managed to raise the Bluebird’s wreckage from the bottom of 150-foot (45-meter) deep lake in March 2001. ...

A team has been working for 17 years to restore the vessel and hopes to return it to the Lake District next year. ...

Bluebird-Relaunch.jpeg

SOURCE: https://apnews.com/b745b91801674f089f06e947b594e3a9
 
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