Flying Fokker
Well-Known Member
3rd Sept 1939.
WW2. War started for Britain on this day. (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter Flying Fokker
- Start date
Brighton Sky Blue
Well-Known Member
Ordinarily would agree. But this one probably did more to change the course of history than any other before or after, you could go as far to say. As for kids today, History has become an extremely popular subject at least in the schools I’m familiar with and Nazi Germany is still firmly on the spec.
An ancestor of mine died at Dunkirk, not in 1940 but in April 1945. So the family was informed just about the same time that the country was celebrating the end. Always found that a bit sobering.
robbiekeane
Well-Known Member
Is it?
shmmeee
Well-Known Member
shmmeee
Well-Known Member
I still feel a real connection from my grandparents war stories. But to my kids? I’m just not sure there’s the same visceral connection.
Flying Fokker
Well-Known Member
Show them what modern warfare is like in Ukraine. It does not compare. More sophisticated in many ways but also bordering on WW1 in others.
We see little of the strategy involved in any war. What does strike home is the waste of life when infantry engages the enemy in any war. Normandy, Arnhem, The Battle of the Bulge etc.
My uncle died in about 2012. He’d have shared his stories of course, but with humility annd humor ant times. and only when asked. His memoirs talk of El Alamein (Squaddies took pot shots at the Sphinx), D-day plus 3? Netherlands, Germany, and Belsen through to Spandau Prison in 1946.
MID in Holland in the region of Brabant. He was in the RAOC? So I guess that’s why he moved about a bit.
We see little of the strategy involved in any war. What does strike home is the waste of life when infantry engages the enemy in any war. Normandy, Arnhem, The Battle of the Bulge etc.
My uncle died in about 2012. He’d have shared his stories of course, but with humility annd humor ant times. and only when asked. His memoirs talk of El Alamein (Squaddies took pot shots at the Sphinx), D-day plus 3? Netherlands, Germany, and Belsen through to Spandau Prison in 1946.
MID in Holland in the region of Brabant. He was in the RAOC? So I guess that’s why he moved about a bit.
dutchman
Well-Known Member
Where my dad came from, they never stop talking about September 1944. This British column is parked outside the railway station in Eindhoven:
rob9872
Well-Known Member
What I cant get my head round is I think of the Gulf war as much more modern and less important in history despite being around for it - that was 91 - 32 years ago!!! I was born in 72 which was only 27 years after WW2 ended. The kids today probably know very little about it as I toubt it makes the curriculum and even less about the Falklands.
Brighton Sky Blue
Well-Known Member
Nazi Germany has been on the curriculum for decades as has WW1. Though even there, there is nothing on the Easter Rising for example despite it ultimately leading to the formation of the modern UK.
skybluetony176
Well-Known Member
That’s because we don’t teach history in the UK where we are the baddies. History in the schools only purpose is to promote the UK inventing everything, modernising the world and being on the right side of history. In stark contrast teaching about the holocaust and Nazi’s is mandatory in Germany (although the far right in Germany wants to end this). The equivalent in the UK would be mandatory teaching of what we got up to in the Boer wars, or the blood on our hands from the creation of the British empire. Doesn’t happen though.
rob9872
Well-Known Member
Tbf it's 25 years since the Good Friday agreement. Hard enough trying to get people on both sides to forget, so perhaps not a bad thing, however pertinent to try and erase it and stir no hatred from a new generation. England V Germany football even still has a bit of spice like V Argentina and yet years ago.
Brighton Sky Blue
Well-Known Member
Well, we did also study the partition of India along with the campaign for Indian independence. The Troubles can be studied at A-level I’m pretty sure, or at least it could be.
As for WW2 though, there was nothing on the conflict itself aside from American economic involvement.
skybluetony176
Well-Known Member
It’s nothing about bashing, it’s about learning from past mistakes and not burying your head in the sand. Should Germany brush off what they did in WW2? You seem to be saying that they should otherwise they’re weird and bashing their own. Warped thinking.
skybluetony176
Well-Known Member
We did the Industrial Revolution and both world wars. I vaguely remember touching on the empire in primary but that was mainly because we did a class trip to a Victorian school museum (in Warwick IIRC) where they had us dress in period costumes and have lessons about how great the empire is while writing on slate. We followed that up at school with further teaching on the empire. Minus mentions of the raping, pillaging and other atrocities we committed in that period. Fact is we were the Nazis before the Nazis were. Prior to the declaration of war Nazi propaganda actually praised Britain and specifically the achievement of the British empire.
rob9872
Well-Known Member
I've said nothing of the sort, I simply dont have an agenda against the establishment. Does it really matter how things used to be? It's about what we do today. How many kids at school do you think have 8 great grandparents all born on Britain? I don't and as the generations move on and the world becomes smaller even less. We're not here to apologise for ancestry.
Grendel
Well-Known Member
You did that at A level?
Who said anything about apologising for it?
skybluetony176
Well-Known Member
WTF are you talking about establishment. I’m 50 years of age and have children in high school. For generations we’ve been extremely selective on what history we teach in schools, even when subjects like empire are addressed it’s done with a specific narrative. It’s warped that we’re not honest as a country about the things that ultimately shaped this country and we still feel the benefits of even today. It’s even more warped that people want to pull out lazy tropes like anti-establishment or anti-British. We can’t even have an honest conversation in this country about slavery without them lazy tropes being thrown about. We did it, simple as. Cancelling history to suit a narrative isn’t going to change that. It just makes those doing the cancelling arseholes whether they’re part of the “establishment” or a man in the street.
shmmeee
Well-Known Member
What about the Spanish, French, Dutch, Chinese, etc empires? What made Britain specifically so morally reprehensible for the time?
skybluetony176
Well-Known Member
skybluetony176
Well-Known Member
All as bad as each other on varying scales as far as I know. Not suggested otherwise, not sure what makes you think that I have. Not sure what they teach in the classroom about their empires, I would hazard a guess that it’s equally as selective as ours though. Again all in stark contrast to what they teach in the classrooms in Germany about their own historical indiscretions.
skybluetony176
Well-Known Member
You should probably read my post again, this time without adding your own context. Ironically you’re demonstrating perfectly the point that I was making. Thanks for your assistance.
rob9872
Well-Known Member
You forgot to add it was all the fault of the nasty Tories
shmmeee
Well-Known Member
But you’re comparing Nazi Germany in the 1940s with a system of conquest that was the norm at the time and every capable nation did. It’s apples and oranges.
Grendel
Well-Known Member
Hitler an historical indiscretion - fuck me
skybluetony176
Well-Known Member
Again demonstrating my point perfectly. The Tories were instrumental in ending the East India Company. Although ultimately it was Gladstone (as a Liberal, although he’d previously been a Tory) that finished it off bringing around the beginning of the end of the empire. The Tories only existed for the last 50 years of the East India Companies almost 300 years of existence. Now, if we taught an uncensored history of Britain in schools chances are you would have already known all that and not spouted all the bollocks you just have.
Grendel
Well-Known Member
So you learnt that at school?
skybluetony176
Well-Known Member
It’s all the same imperialistic mentality. It’s not apples and oranges at all, it’s all apples. The only apples and oranges is the difference between how Germany educate on their past imperialism and how we do. We have generations who think we’ve only ever been on the right side of history, which simply isn’t true.
Brighton Sky Blue
Well-Known Member
You should go to Spain and Japan
skybluetony176
Well-Known Member
Of course I didn’t. I had to find that out for myself.
shmmeee
Well-Known Member
That’s not what you’re saying though. Any half decent historian should laugh at the idea of the right side of history. But to compare a project to systematically eradicate an ethnicity and religion using industrial means and taking over countries for resources (and let’s be honest if you didn’t someone else would) is just ludicrous.
Every nation on Earth has been involved in war and conquest, it wasn’t “imperialism” that made Nazi Germany abhorrent.
Grendel
Well-Known Member
Well I did the Boer War at A level and we were made well aware the Britain enslaved Chinese Coolies and developed the concentration camp ideology - at A level you actually went to a Victorian School mock up and dressed up and said how great the Empire was?
