Hey y'all, I finished reading "WWII and how it affects you today, and now I'm working on "WWI the rest of the story and how it affects you today" As I said in my other post, these are fantastic books and you
NEED to read them, especially if you are considering joining the military!
the basic "plot" is quite simple; wars lead to hard feelings which lead to wars which lead to hard feelings which lead to... you get the idea. It all started in Europe (duh) in, believe it or not, 1870 with the Franco-Prussian War in which the Prussian government won. Of course the French government was overthrown (again) and a new republic was declared (again), anyway, all this planted the seeds of resentment between European Nations and paved the way for WWI.
Eventually 1914 rolls around and WWI brakes out between the chief Allied Powers, (containing Belgium, the British Empire, France, Greece, Italy, Japan, Montenegro, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, and the United states) and the chief Central powers (containing Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, Germany, and Turkey.) As you can see, the Central powers really didn't have a prayer, and the war ends with the treaty of Versailles. In case you don't know what that is I'll explain; the Treaty of Versailles was the "treaty" in which all the chief Central Powers surrendered unconditionally to the chief Allied powers. The Allies humiliate the Central powers by making the Centrals pay for the Allies' war expenses. The German economy is crushed, the citizens turn to Adolf Hitler. nice work, Allies.
Japanese attack Manchuria, Franklin Roosevelt send help to China in the form of the Flying Tigers.
Hitler signs a cease-fire with Stalin (Ha! two lying cutthroats promise not to lie and cut each other's throats!). Germany invades Poland, Poland surrenders in 24 hours. England, France and others say: "Hey! if he can cut up Europe and keep the loot, why can't we?!?!?" Germany Declares war on the British Empire in defence of the European "loot". Germany and England duke it out, but Hitler doesn't have any boats to cross the English channel with.
In addition to helping the Chinese, Roosevelt completely cuts off all oil and mineral imports to Japan, sends almost the entire US Navy fleet to uber-vulnerable Pearl Harbor, and starts sending patrols through Japanese waters. this is
before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor!
FDR orders all the small craft, fighter planes and
new battleships out of Pearl Harbor, but leaves all the old, outdated, WWI battleships in the harbor; the Arizona being one of them.
Defeated at sea, Hitler decides to a) keep attacking England from the Air, and b) attack Stalin in Russia. Baaaaaaaaaaaad Idea... let me tell you why; the very first lesson an officer learns when he joins the military is, NEVER, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, ATTACK RUSSIA!!!!! here's why; the Russian Army has one of the greatest allies in history, one that can't turn on you... Winter. If the Russian Army doesn't slaughter you, the Russian winter will. Also, the Russian army has this little tactic they like to use on invading forces; fall back, stay low, draw them closer... then cut their supply lines. The attacker will be stranded in a frozen wasteland without supplies. If this strategy worked on Napoleon, it will work on Hitler too.
June 22 of 1941, Hitler invades Russia, September 12th of the same year, the first snow on Moscow, Hitler starts losing in the Eastern front... Russia's old Ally, Winter, has come into play.
Sunday December 7th 1941, 7:55 AM, Hawaii sees the first wave of Japanese fighters. The US Fighters are almost all destroyed because Admiral Kimmel, in charge of Navy activity in Pearl Harbor, has ordered all the planes be parked close together so the guards can watch them, Kimmel is afraid of Sabotage more than air Attack, it's not his fault, keep reading.
All this is part of Roosevelt's plan to get into the war, he wanted to get a piece of the action in Europe, but public opinion (acording to a gallup poll) was 88% against war. So he created a plan to goad the Japanese into attacking first, "unprovoked" and thus gain public support. So Roosevelt left bait; the USS Arizona and others, in an easy target; pearl harbor, and took away practically all the Ak-Ak guns Admiral Kimmel needed to protect the fleet.
In addition to giving Kimmel almost no protection, FDR frequently gave warnings to the Admiral saying that, "the Japanese are attacking soon"... Kimmel recieved almost 20 of these warnings over the course of... get this... 17 months! Washington DC was crying wolf, deliberately trying to get Kimmel to be unprepared. Want more proof? OK, you've all probably seen pictures of the USS Arizona exploding, well that picture was taken from the only safe spot in the harbor, with a color camera
8 minutes after the attack started! how on earth would a
color (were talking about a color camera crew! color in 1941 would hard to come by!) camera crew who "didn't know when the Japanese would attack" be able to be up and running in
8 minutes without some sort of warning from Roosevelt? Coincidence? I think not!
Anyway, the US Declares war on Japan, hurtling just another European blood-bath into a World War.
Roosevelt starts calling for unconditional surrender...
unconditional surrender, think about this for a second;
unconditional surrender, meaning no conditions. Normally when someone surrenders, they ask for conditions, such as "I'll surrender, if you promise not to kill me",
if you promise not to kill me is a condition. Unconditional means, "I'll surrender, and you can do anything you want to me".
This makes Berlin think of their "unconditional Surrender" after WWI which ended in the treaty of Versailles. Think about this, if your mortal enemy, who is trying to torture and kill you, said to you "surrender to me and I'll torture and kill you", would you want to surrender? Well the Germans didn't want another Treaty of Versailles and FDR's demand propels the world into another 3 years of war.
with Russians still kicking some serious booty on the eastern front, the US and Britain attacking on the western front, the Italian Generals decide they've had enough of Mussolini, so they kill him, and switch sides to start fighting against Germany.
Meanwhile, back in the Pacific, the US starts Island Hopping toward Japan and is soon in sight of the Japanese Homeland. the Nuclear bombs are in production, and testing is picking up speed.
June 6th 1944: D-Day. the US sets foot on French soil and starts it's offencive against Germany to take a little pressure off of Stalin. Remember that, D-Day was not about "liberating the French" , many of the French didn't want to be liberated! D-Day was about helping Russia in the Eastern front!
May 7th 1945, Germany Surrenders about a week after Hitler's suicide, Japan holds out for another few months, even though it has no Allies (there's the Unconditional surrender for ya' again). Nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima August 6th, 75 hours later, before waiting for a reply, the US area-bombs some more, and then drops the second Nuclear bomb on Nagasaki. tens of thousands of Innocent civilians killed... no, murdered. The nuclear bombs were not necessary as most people think, Japan was just about to surrender, but Truman, who succeeded FDR, decided that, he needed to drop not only one, but two atomic bombs, and not so he could avoid a gigantic amphibious invasion, but to scare the Russians. yes, the cold war had already started before WWII ended.
One war leads to hard feelings, which leads to another war which leads to hard feelings which leads to... etc.
Now right about here I gotta say something, the Good guy vs Bad Guy model you've seen in every war film you've ever watched is false. WWII was a Bad-guy vs Bad-guy war, as is almost every war in history. "oh...well Hitler wanted to take over the world" actually, Hitler's ambition only went as far as "living space" in eastern Europe. Hitler declared the need for only "living Space" in a speech given before the war broke out. Further, read this letter written by Winston Churchill to Franklin Roosevelt, and I quote: "I [Churchill] am half American and the natural person to work with you [Roosevelt]. It is evident we see eye to eye. Were I to become Prime Minister of Britain
we could control the world." end quote. I have put the last five words in red italics to make sure that you see them. "we could control the world"... wow.
if you have any more doubts about my idea of the bad-guy vs. bad-guy war, here are the body counts of the
Innocent civilians murdered by their country's governments. these are not soldiers killed, or civilians killed in battle, these are men, women and children
murdered as Hitler murdered the Jews.
Murders by the worst governments of World War II:AxisGermany: 20,946,000
Japan: 5,964,000
Axis Total:
26,910,000AlliesRussia: 42,672,000
China: 10,214,000
Allied total:
52,886,000And the Allies were the good guys?!?!?!?!?! if you measure badness by body counts, the allies were twice the cutthroats the Axis were! and don't get me started on the US and Britain! area bombing, unconditional surrender, and the A-bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are bad enough! Believe it or not, the English actually had a formula that stated how many tons of bombs were needed to be dropped to destroy X amount of houses. They called it, "Terrorization", scaring the German people into submission.
by the way, this is not just another conspiracy theory, this stuff is nothing new, dictators have been murdering Innocent people ever since the fall of Adam... why should today, or 1939-45 be any different?
Also, all historical facts concerning Pearl Harbor were taken from the FBI's storage wear houses. Death tolls are well known to historians and are widely available for research, and historical incidents such as the treaty of Versailles are also widely known and available for research.
right now, you may be asking "why?", "how could anyone purposely slaughter thousands of people and not feel remorse?" three words:
drunk with power. that's right, what good is it to amass a gigantic military and not use in on someone? Power corrupts, and the "leaders" during WWII were no exception.
Bear in mind, I'm not criticizing America's ideals, I love America, and I only want to live here in America, but the fact remains that given the power, people want to use it on someone. It's like a bully on a playground, why does the bully push over the little guy? Bullies are usually bigger than their targets; they have power. Why punch him? Why not? It's "fun!"
This brings me to my conclusion, what should have happened during WWII. America should have stayed put, like Switzerland, watch and shake your head, defend against attack, don't go looking to get into a war. Germany, England, Russia, Japan, China, and Italy would have beaten each other to pulp, Russia would be somewhat crippled, the Russian people wouldn't be afraid of the US and they would have revolted against their government far sooner, England would have had to release all it's colonies sooner, and millions upon millions of lives would have been spared.
Thanks for reading this extremely extensive "summary" of the event leading up to, during, and after World War II. Feel free to comment, I would love a good discussion. :-)
-Graydon L
P.S. The Nuking of Japan is also somewhat responsible for the 9-11 attacks on New York city! by scaring the Russian people with two unnecessary bombs, the US practically said to them "We're not afraid of you, or anyone else. Step out of line, and you'll all be little particles of radioactive dust" This statement made the Russian people cling to the only shield between them and and the force of the atomic bomb; their socialistic government. This started the Cold War, and made the US government make alliances in every direction... and making enemies just as fast. Osama Bin-ladin became an enemy...
9-11, just like pearl harbor, was not unprovoked.
Think about it.
Basically, a mouthpiece is rigged up to two valves, an "in" valve, and an "out" valve. These two valves are attached to two tubes, one which runs up to the goggles, and another which runs out of the bottom of the full-face mask, respectively. This way, I am constantly removing the hot, steamy air (that's the stuff that fogs up your mask) and sucking in cool, dry outside air through the vents on the mask itself. The hot air is then pushed out the second tube by way of my regular respiratory system. Breath in: hot air out of goggles, Breath in: hot air out of mask. It's as simple as that :-) This system is designed for full-face masks because that's where the problem is usually the worst.
Basically I cut some army-guys up at the joints and inserted pieces of paper clip wire to act as a joint. It may look immobile, but these guys are so small and the wire is so thin, that it works quite nicely.
Here's a close-up of the the upper torso of one of my "subjects". As you can see, the head is connected to the neck by a piece of wire and the arms connected to the shoulders the same way. the process allows movement which was (of course) not there before, making dozens of other tasks possible. this one used to be your basic, run of the mill, pistol-pointed-one-direction-head-turned-another commander dude. Now, he can command the troops, wave civilians along, shoot the bad guys, and look before crossing the street, all with just a few twists and turns :-)
The car has just part-way transformed. Where the 
Oh-well, too bad for him... I guess LEGO people don't know a transformer when they see one :-)
I know this picture is quite fuzzy, but it's only respectable one of the back of the jet I could get.
