Propaganda Thrives In Wars

During wars, propaganda flourishes ....

Donald Speaks The Truth ...
... The Russians Are Coming!

 .... This has happened since the first wars began, and whether true or false, its aims have always been to influence public opinion both at home, and often abroad, to support one cause against another.

Small Sparks Can Start Big Fires

President Vladimir Putin of Russia (and that countries latest Tzar) ...

Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact -
Set Terms For Invasion Of Poland?

.... has decided that it was also Poland, and not just the old USSR and Nazi Germany (via the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact), who started the Second World War.

Snowflake Nation

Teens today must be the most lily livered, weak personality examples of their generation that we have ever produced.

A Million Snowflake Memes .... This Is Just One Of Them.

I don't just say that from the pedestal of an older generation, there is some empirical evidence that supports the view that generation snowflake is utterly useless compared with previous generations ...

We Don't Make Them Like This Any More

Nearly all Victoria Cross winners have a tale to tell, if they survive, and if not, then someone else will tell it for them.

Victoria Cross - Only The Bravest.

Take Royal Navy Flying Officer John Cruickshank, who flew Catalina seaplanes during World War Two.

The Price Of Freedom

The French are commemorating and acknowledging, the loss of lives caused by Allied bombings during the Second World War for the first time, during the D Day remembrances this week. The estimated death toll is around 57,000 French civilians (which some unkindly, and untruthfully have said was more than the French army casualties resisting the Germans), which is comparable to the 60,500, that the British lost as a result of Luftwaffe bombing over the same period.

I can almost feel the first stirrings of the legal aid lawyers in the UK, preparing the compensation claims against the British, Canadians and US governments, for carrying out what one commentator, Andrew Knapp, history professor at the UK's University of Reading, has described in the following terms: "It's fairly clear, that on the basis of the treaties we have signed now - not the treaties we had signed then - some of these raids would be eligible for the category of war crimes."

Le Havre - Bombed By Allies 1944

However I would suggest that not only did the allies have a right to bomb (under the conventions of the time), but that the casualty figures demonstrably show that they did take care greater care in their bombing of France than might have normally been the case .... partly because Winston Churchill worried that Anglo-French relations might be soured for decades if the bombing was wilful. See General de Gaulle to understand that worry. The actual figures, are that approx. 75,000 tonnes of German bombs were dropped on the UK (including Hitler's V missiles), during the war, while in France, it's around 518,000 tonnes dropped by the UK and USA while attacking German troops etc.

Now by my simple maths 60,500 / 75,000 = 0.81 civilian deaths per explosive tonne dropped in the UK, by the Germans, who definitely took no care whatsoever.

Whereas 57,000 / 518,000 = 0.11 deaths civilian per explosive tonne in France, from bombs dropped by the allies .... a ratio of nearly 8 times as few deaths caused by the allies per tonne of explosive.

The Price Of Freedom Was Not Cheap For France

However, its a funny thought, that if the second world war was fought today, France would be permanently an occupied country, as the Western powers wouldn't be able to bomb the Germans in France enough to invade under current rules of war .... that’s what PC politics, and Health and Safety concerns have done to us.

Thankful Villages

While I was thinking about the fact that it was "Remembrance Day", when I stumbled across a small story about an aspect of the remembrance day events that I had never heard of  before. There are villages and communities in Britain and France that were known as "Thankful Villages" because despite sending many men to fight in the first world war, every man jack of them came back alive, albeit missing the odd limb. In Britain fifty two such villages have been identified, and all are in England (none in Scotland, Wales or Ireland).

Upper Slaughter, one of a handful of  'Doubly Thankful' villages. 

There are an even smaller of these villages, just fourteen, like Upper Slaughter in England, that have come to be known as 'doubly thankful' for also losing no-one from WWII as well (24 men and one woman joined the services in WWI and a further 36 men in WWII) .... the original term "Thankful Villages" was first coined by the writer Arthur Mee in 1930's.

 

In contrast to these lucky few, there were over 16,000 British communities which paid the highest sacrifice during those wars, such as Wadhurst, in East Sussex, which with a population of just over 3,500 people, which lost 649 men in WWI. On a single day in 1915 at the Battle of Aubers, twenty five men from Wadhurst were killed, nearly 80% of all those who went forward into no-man's land, and almost certainly the heaviest per capita casualties of any community in the UK for one day's battle ....  the majority of those killed had no known grave.

In France, there is a similar tale, but there is one village, Thierville in Normandy that has not lost any soldiers (in any arm of the services), in any of France's last five national wars (the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, World Wars I and II, Indochina, and Algeria).

If anyone is interested in more on this story, a good starting point is the lengthy BBC story that I based this post on, which is here.