Multiple choice is evil. I checked all.

You do ask some very strange different questions Andrew. Some leaders might be evil but this doesn't apply to a country or its people.

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Those Polish pilots felt betrayed as Britain & France acted too late to save their country from being invaded. This is understandable but looked at realistically there's very little anyone could have done to prevent it. Even if resources had been available it takes time to assemble & deploy any sort of task force. France & the rest of western Europe was to find out a few month later just how powerful & efficient the German forces were. International affairs are cumbersome at the best of times & diplomacy must be given every chance. No country declares war lightly.

I can produce a remarkably long list to prove my case Björn, in fact most of the wars of the 20th century for a start

Maybe I should have qualified my statement with the little word democratic.

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Interesting point - I did a quickl mental exercise to see if I could come up with at least ONE war who's origin could not be due to a "corrupt dictatorship trying to hold to power" and the only one that I could possibly say is an exception, is the Vietnam War, whose origin I trace to a colonial power trying to retain that which it had effectively lost...

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Maybe not outright war but there are many similar examples. WWII changed the face of the world for ever & when former colonies were freed from occupation in 1945 they were not prepared to put the clock back as though nothing had happened. This would have been seen by the nationalists as effectively swapping one oppressor for another. Britain lost the remains of its great Empire as a result. Some of these places have been troublespots ever since. http://www.britains-smallwars.com/main/index1.html

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That might explain why their recital of Hamlet's speech may wind up as distorted as mine .

I checked them all, after all it is threatening, not most evil.  You might go "Germany was the most threatening though!"  But imagine if you were a german soldier stationed in France circa early 1944.  You didn't exactly agree with Nazi ideals, but you wanted to serve the Fatherland, and your father was proud. I know if I was in that position I'd probably be pretty scared of the US, UK, and USSR.

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I once read a quote from a German soldier...

"All you need to do in war is get on the side fighting the Americans, get captured, and live out the rest of the war in relative luxury". (it was something along the lines of this)

The point was that they'd rather be prisoners of the US or UK rather than of the USSR. If they were killed by any of them, any fear they had was short-lived .

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More like another thing that's feared, wartime or not !

Nobody could compare to the US in WWII, and here's why.  Though this doc referrs to the Pacific War, it's contents are obviously applied to all combattants and theaters of war.

http://www.combinedfleet.com/economic.htm

Andrew! Can you close the poll now?

Woah! Yeah, thats true H! Maybe  I should close this thing!


A.

I wasnt implying that the country as a whole was a badass, but saying that the actions commited under it's flag were.


A.

P.S That's probably my fault, I should have clarified.

What you say about the parachutes is only one side. Originally it was the Germans who shot parachutes and the Poles returned the favour in the battle of Britain! I'm not saying it was right, just how it is. Often, in the Battle of Poland, Polish fighter pilots helped downed Germans out of aircraft and even bandaged them up. The Poles had (in their opinion) every reason to hate the Germans for invading their country and doing terrible things to their people- deportation of Jews, the Katyn Massacre. While it's fair to say that the German people didnt do these things, it is fair to say that a portion of the blame must lie with them for not doing anything to stop it. Also, Hitler sincerley believed Poland had no right to exist- he beleived it to be Prussia- and therefore living space, taken away from Germany after Versailles.


Second of all, you say they weren't  betrayed by the British. (you provided no evidence to the contrary)  However, the Brits promised to liberate Poland, which is the reason they went to war in the first place. Churchill then ceded to Stalin's demands for eastern europe, taking places such as Lublin, in return for Britain having a 100% hold on Greece.

Thirdly, you say they were war criminals. While you make special effort to separate the Nazis, Hitler and the Germans, you make no such effort to do the same for the Poles. For them it was simply a case of Quid Pro Quo . The Germans were partly responsible for giving Hitler a mandate and not stopping his atrocities (and dont give me that "They couldn't fight the SS!"crap) . Men like Dietrich Bonhoffer tried, because he saw that it was wrong and that it must stop.
All countries have war criminals- no one is perfect.

Lastly I suggest you read the Polish national anthem, called 'Poland lives on as long as we still live.' They are good people, who are tenacious.They have had a damn hard time of it.


A.

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Fighting with sticks in the outback while riding on kangaroos and throwing all kins of creepy and toxic reptiles at themselves, I doubt that we'll hear even a single "ka-boom" from down under.
Methinks we wouldn't give a crap anyways.

Which reminds me that I have a lot stuff to work on and clean up out back. 8)

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Hi Andrew,


Sorry I haven't replied in a while. Anyway, about parachutes, sorry, what I said is what I heard on some doco, it isn't nice to return the favor though. And I didn't know they tried to help the German pilots in the Battle of Poland. Quite nice of those Poles Of course they had every right to hate the Germans. They went in to their country, killed lots of people and acted like it's their space to live in. I'm not saying they have no right to hate the Germans. And, Hitler must be even more cuckoo than we all thought, because Poland dated back to, as I said, the Middle Ages. The "Holy Roman Empire", or Teutonic Germany under the leadership of Frederick Barbarossa was expanding rapidly and Poland was sitting right in their path. So they conquered it for 'living space'. So Poland wasn't just something taken from them after Versailles, it was a country way before that.

When I said they weren't betrayed I was talking about when the Battle of Poland came and then Britain declared war on Germany for doing that but were already too late to save Poland. If anything else happened that made Poland 'betrayed' by Britain, then yeah I'm not arguing about that.

Yes, the majority never said anything against Hitler to take him out of power. Why should I seperate the Poles right now? I s'pose after reading your post they're all good

Everyone has war criminals....yeah, maybe.

Germany:

Adolf Hitler

Herrman Goering

Adolf Eichmann

Heinrich Himmler

Some SS guy, forgot his name, that guy who got killed by Czechs.

Maybe some more.......hmmm

Britain:

Arthur Harris, for flattening cities horribly, destroying the hospital city Wuerzburg that had no arms factories, destroying Dresden, nearly obliterating Hamburg in Operation Gommorah, shameless bombing of any other civilian targets. I hate him

USA:

Whoever got the USAAF to join in on the Dresden horror, ordering men to machine-gun civilians (well I'm not sure if he/they ordered this, but it happened)

Curtiss LeMay for fire-bombing Japanese bombings.

France:

Um, no one

Italy:

Benito Mussolini, maybe, I don't know what he did so I'm not quite sure about him.

Japan:

Hideki Tojo for, urm, I don't know, but the things the Jap soldiers did in WW2 were horrific, particularly in China. Those **^%$#$#%^$^s!

Australia:

Well, it looks as if we've stayed clean, but if anyone can say of any Australian war crimes please post!

Russia:

Josef/Joseph Stalin for sending those smart guys to freeze in Siberia, what else, well all I can say is he invaded Finland for some living space () and a lot of his soldiers pillaged and raped in Germany and Hungary Johnen should've strafed some of those little pigs when he was in a Nachtjägergeschwader (Night Fighter Squadron) in Hungary

Any other countries I've missed out?


The Poles have had a damn hard time of it? True! Invaded twice by Germany, the second time was horrific! Sadly they became part of the darn Eastern Bloc after the war

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Melikes the sound of that!





Bombardier

bombings of the cities was mainly done "to break the spirit od the civilian population", on both sides.
it might look barbaric from today's point of view, back then it was considered legitimate, and essentiell for fast conclusion of the war.

the real war crimes in WW II were done on the ground, and not so much at the frontline, but mostly in the occupied territories.

war crimes WERE commited in all wars. i guess some people just loose it.