V-E Day!

[indianasmith]

Seventy years ago today, Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz, having served as Fuhrer of the Third Reich for 8 days following Hitler's suicide, unconditionally surrendered the armed services of Nazi Germany to the Allies. World War II in Europe was finally over. Happy V-E Day!


I posted this onto my FB page, and one of my very sharp former students found this incredibly rare film clip of the moment that Admiral Doenitz found out that he was now the ruler of the rapidly crumbling Third Reich.  Check it out!


http://youtu.be/FHnyQXyuTGY

[RCMerchant]

That IS funny,Indy!
Im a big WW2 geek,myself. I love reading about,watching docs on it-(Ken Burns the WAR is essential viewing!) That and American Indian history-fasinates me! I even own,and actually read-The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich  and Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee-when I was in the hospital I reread it. I loved History class when I was a kid.
I like this song-sums up our attitude towards Nazis-were gonna kick your ass!!!

EDIT-I posted the Bottle by Gil Scott Heron-I meant to post this!

http://youtu.be/I1583adUqSg

[indianasmith]

That was a big hit back in 1942!!
I am reading William Manchester's bio of Churchill, DEFENDER OF THE REALM, right now.
Magnificent book about a magnificent man.

[Flangepart]

Love Spike Jones and the City Slickers. When I need simple, good natured fun music, it's always makes me feel better.

[Allhallowsday]

90 years ago today, my mother was born.  Meaning May 8. 
RICKY NELSON would have been 75. 

[RCMerchant]

Folks b***h and moan about us going to war and how long we f**k around in Iraq and Afghanistan-and well they should-Iraq is a war we started by putting a dictator in there in the first f**king place! and the Muslim problem started when after WW 1 we promised the Arabs land to help us fight the Germans-and the British reniged on that. So we f**ked ourselves. The ISIS s**t goes back to dam post WW 1. Do Your history.
As far as wars go-what is going on now-with terrorism-is kids stuff-Nazis-WW2-world wide carnage-THATS war-this is peanuts.
Vietnam was carnage-this is Girl Scout run.

[lester1/2jr]

One bad thing about thing about WW2 is that it gave a kind of legitimacy to communism. I follow Russians on twitter and WW2 is like yesterday for them. Same thing with obnoxious socialists around the world. They fought the fascists so they're good guys. There are still communist parties on ballots all throughout Europe for this reason.

[indianasmith]

Communism has such a horrible human rights record I don't know how anyone can possibly endorse it.
Every communist regime in the history of the world has carried out campaigns of mass murder against its own citizens.

[lester1/2jr]

I often think of this book "illness as metaphor" by Susan Sontag I read in college. in the early 1900's if you got TB you were seen as this beautiful poetic sort of person, where people with cancer were seen as cold and unloving. I think the same sort of subconscious stereotype happens in politics. The commies were trying to be good, they just messed up, whereas the Nazis were horrible because they were right wing (ostensibly though many would question that of course).

[indianasmith]

There is a great quote from Alan Bullock's dual biography of Hitler and Stalin . . . I don't have it in front of me, but his basic point was that the evil of Nazism was its end - racism and genocide are just flat out bad things.  He said the evil of communism was the means it consistently employed in an attempt to reach a benevolent, utopian end.

I don't know that I agree.   The problem with communism is that you de-value the individual and give all power to the collective.
That just makes it to easy to marginalize and eliminate individuals who won't cooperate with the game plan.

[lester1/2jr]

I tend to think of it as just as a weird top down economic system and all the problems stem from that. The Nazis did the same thing too https://mises.org/library/vampire-economy with the fig leaf of private industry being respected.