September 1st 1939 - Germans invade Poland

[Quadrajet]

I'll have to look that one up.

There were plans for taking the war to Germany if GB fell in 1940. Hence the B36. Still it would have been a nasty undertaking.

[der affe]

the B36??????

http://www.cowtown.net/proweb/B36_Home.htm

a little late for WWII

do you mean the B29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-29_Superfortress

or the B17?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-17_Flying_Fortress

[Ral]

came across this in Der Speigel, translated into English. Very interesting perspective on how easy it would have been to stop Hitler in his tracks had the West (read: France and England) not tried to appease Germany in the mid-Thirties.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,645707,00.html

[Ral]

I'll have to look that one up.

There were plans for taking the war to Germany if GB fell in 1940. Hence the B36. Still it would have been a nasty undertaking.

The B-36 was an abomination of an aircraft designed to deliver bombs to Russia, and wasn't built until after WWII.

[Quadrajet]

Yep the design of the B36 was started in WW2, just as the B29 was going into the testing phase. The specifications were laid out for range and payload in case Great Britain fell to the Germans. In reality that far sighted specification came handy for the Cold War.

This info from combat Aircraft of the World: German domination of almost the whole of Europe-except Great Britain-in 1941 let the USAAF to face the possibility that it would be necessary to attack European targets from North American bases. An aircraft to meet this need,the USAAF concluded, would have to fly 5000 miles with a 10,000-lb bomb load and then return to it's base, cruising at 240-300mph at 35,000ft. A maximum bomb load of 72,00lb was to be carried over shorter ranges.
Convair won the 1941 design competition for such an aircraft. -It goes on to state that production of the 2 prototypes was slow due to concentration on the B24 and B32(the competitor to the B29), but in 1943 interest quickened when it was thought the B36 could be used against Japan and a contract for 100 was signed. As it was the first XB36 didn't fly until 8 August 1946. So while it didn't fly until after the war was over, production of the aircraft started before the end of the war.

[der affe]

what happened to Germany AFTER WWI and the Treaty of Versailles made it ripe for Hitler and the National Socialists to come to power. you had a nearly bankrupt country with the socialists/communists and National Socialists battling for political power.

if not for the condition of Germany at the hands of the "allies" (England and France, to a much lesser extent the US) after WWI. WWII MAY have never happened (at least Germanys envolvement). something else you will never hear about in your HS history classes

[Ral]

^^ I took a class in College abou the rise of the NSDP (Nazis to the rest of the world.) You're absolutely right. And whether it was Hitler or someone else at the helm, Germany would have unshackled itself from the Versailles treaty one way or another. But perhaps, the NSDP could have been contained and a lot of people would have lived a lot longer had Hitler, Goebbels, Gohring, and the other top players in the Party not been overlooked by those too interested in wishing Hitler's aggression would end by giving Hitler what he wanted. WWII (or, WWI part deuce) might have had a much different outcome.

A Treaty of Versailles that limited arms growth (and enforced it) while encouraging economic prosperity would have been best, but the Western world was too angry to allow that to happen.

[nando]

what happened to Germany AFTER WWI and the Treaty of Versailles made it ripe for Hitler and the National Socialists to come to power. you had a nearly bankrupt country with the socialists/communists and National Socialists battling for political power.

if not for the condition of Germany at the hands of the "allies" (England and France, to a much lesser extent the US) after WWI. WWII MAY have never happened (at least Germanys envolvement). something else you will never hear about in your HS history classes

maybe they taught different history when I went, but that's pretty much the picture that was painted of the aftermath of WW1.

[der affe]

you're old like me, so you still recieved a decent education.
unlike they get today. younger kids i have talked to (read freinds kids) say that they leave that part out.

hell, when i went to school you could even get decent answers to questions not out of the text book.

out of curiousity, did they have Holocaust survivors come to your schools?
we had them from grade school up th HS every year.

[BobombETA]

Since some of us are sharing stories:

My grandfather, Papa Jack as he was known to me, fought during the Battle of the Bulge. He was wounded, and then captured when his unit surrendered. They were then forced to march many miles to the French border where a train was waiting to pick up prisoners. During this march anyone who stopped or delayed or collapsed was executed.

As they were marched down the main street of a town, there were crowds on both sides of the street throwing rocks and debris at them. He said a woman came from the sidewalk and punched him in the abdomen (where he had been hit/shot), but in her fist was an apple. It would be his best meal for the next 6 months.

The train took them to their POW camp, where he stayed until the war was over. They were fed a bowl of turnip soup with bread once a day. When he was rescued he weighed under 100 pounds (6' tall) and was suffering from serious malnutrition (something he called berry berry?) which would cause him health problems for the rest of his life.

He never liked to tell me about his experiences, I was young, and I was always too timid to ask. Towards the end of his life is when he told me the story about the woman who gave him the apple, which promptly brought him to tears. He still managed to live a decent and full life though. He started a furniture store and became a pilot, flying his plane everyday on his "lunch" breaks. He died in 2002 at the age of 79.

[nando]

out of curiousity, did they have Holocaust survivors come to your schools?
we had them from grade school up th HS every year.

no, our school was far too small for something like that. :p

[Quailane]

Pretty much everyone has relatives that fought, died, or were otherwise directly affected by the largest war in human history. A great grandfather of mine was a captian in the Pacific theater. Another lost his leg and his son as resistance fighters in Holland. My aunt's grandmother still remembers B-29's flying over her family's centuries old farm on their way to bomb Tokyo. My stepdad's father landed on the beaches of Normandy on June 7th.

My dad was 1st ID in wwII ..started in africa and ended in czechoslovakia.

Just started to get some stories the past few years...

Cool. The Big Red 1 is one of my favorite movies....

[Farbin Kaiber]

Pretty much everyone has relatives that fought, died, or were otherwise directly affected by the largest war in human history. A great grandfather of mine was a captian in the Pacific theater. Another lost his leg and his son as resistance fighters in Holland. My aunt's grandmother still remembers B-29's flying over her family's centuries old farm on their way to bomb Tokyo. My stepdad's father landed on the beaches of Normandy on June 7th.



Cool. The Big Red 1 is one of my favorite movies....

Your aunt's grandma lived in the Marianas Islands?

[Quadrajet]

My Grandfather on my Mom's side was captured at Corregidor and escaped during the Bataan death march. He fought as a guerilla fighter till the US Army returned, then rejoined the ranks and retired from the Army.

I remember as a kid seeing my Grandfather roaming the house at night talking to his buddies in the Malinta tunnel. Shortly before his passing his "trips" into the past became more frequent. I was finally able to talk to him about some of the things he wouldn't mention when I was a child.

[Aptyp]

what the fuck is Poland???? Is it like American Arkansas? Place no one gives a shit about?



Besides, Russians did apologize... We blew up Chernobyl and sent all of radiation and nuclear fall out that way, we're a very generous nation.