Bear Down Wildcats

Well, it's from Cracked, so they play pretty loose with the facts, but there are a few interesting historical tidbits here.

Never knew the Berlin Wall story they tell.

http://www.cracked.com/article_22044_6- ... story.html

Hmmmm....

Not sure having Rommel there at Normandy would have made any difference at all.

Germany ended WWI since they were starved due to the English blockade.

Bay of Pigs failed due to JFK's last minute decision not to support the rebels.

Merkin wrote:Hmmmm....

Not sure having Rommel there at Normandy would have made any difference at all.

Germany ended WWI since they were starved due to the English blockade.

Bay of Pigs failed due to JFK's last minute decision not to support the rebels.

Bay of Pigs was a failure from the get-go. It was designed that way. There was no way those guys were ready to start an insurgency and if JFK had committed us militarily to support them he would have been committing us to an invasion when they got their asses kicked. JFK nipped it in the bud and didn't allow US foreign policy to be painted into a corner.

As for Rommel, the big mistake wasn't him not being there. It was a combination of needing to get Hitler's permission to make any kind of strategic shift in forces, as they mentioned, and the fact that the Germans believed the Allies were invading Calais. Even DAYS later the Germans still thought Normandy was a feint and the real invasion would soon commence.

Katzenfreund wrote:

UAdevil wrote:Never knew the Berlin Wall story they tell.

Because it's bullshit.

Well, apparently this guy's press conference didn't lead to the fall of the wall, but his being unprepared issuing his statements seemed to have lead to masses of humanity demanding to cross, at least according the the never wrong Wikipedia.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Wall

Günter Schabowski, the party boss in East Berlin and the spokesman for the SED Politburo, had the task of announcing the new regulations. However, he had not been involved in the discussions about the new regulations and had not been fully updated.[78] Shortly before a press conference on 9 November, he was handed a note announcing the changes, but given no further instructions on how to handle the information. These regulations had only been completed a few hours earlier and were to take effect the following day, so as to allow time to inform the border guards. But this starting time delay was not communicated to Schabowski.[44]

Schabowski read the note, he had been given, out loud at the end of the press conference. One of the reporters, ANSA's Riccardo Ehrman,[79] asked when the regulations would take effect. After a few seconds' hesitation, Schabowski assumed it would be the same day based on the wording of the note and replied, "As far as I know effective immediately, without delay".[44] After further questions from journalists, he confirmed that the regulations included the border crossings through the wall into West Berlin, which he had not mentioned until then.[80]

Excerpts from Schabowski's press conference were the lead story on West Germany's two main news programs that night—at 7:17 PM on ZDF's heute and at 8 PM on ARD's Tagesschau. This, of course, meant that the news was broadcast to nearly all of East Germany as well. Later that night, on ARD's Tagesthemen, anchorman Hans Joachim Friedrichs proclaimed, "This is a historic day. East Germany has announced that, starting immediately, its borders are open to everyone. The GDR is opening its borders ... the gates in the Berlin Wall stand open."[44][78]

After hearing the broadcast, East Germans began gathering at the wall, at the six checkpoints between East and West Berlin, demanding that border guards immediately open the gates.[78] The surprised and overwhelmed guards made many hectic telephone calls to their superiors about the problem. At first, they were ordered to find the "more aggressive" people gathered at the gates and stamp their passports with a special stamp that barred them from returning to East Germany—in effect, revoking their citizenship. However, this still left thousands of people demanding to be let through "as Schabowski said we can."[44]

It soon became clear that no one among the East German authorities would take personal responsibility for issuing orders to use lethal force, so the vastly outnumbered soldiers had no way to hold back the huge crowd of East German citizens. Finally, at 10:45 pm, Harald Jäger, the commander of the Bornholmer Straße border crossing yielded, allowing for the guards to open the checkpoints and allowing people through with little or no identity checking.[81] As the Ossis swarmed through, they were greeted by Wessis waiting with flowers and champagne amid wild rejoicing. Soon afterward, a crowd of West Berliners jumped on top of the wall, and were soon joined by East German youngsters. They danced together to celebrate their new freedom.

I had a Russian history professor at U of A that basically just bragged for 4 months how his research and the book he wrote in the 80s was almost single handedly responsible for the fall of the iron curtain and of russian communism. It was pretty hilarious.

Chicat wrote:

Merkin wrote:Hmmmm....

Not sure having Rommel there at Normandy would have made any difference at all.

Germany ended WWI since they were starved due to the English blockade.

Bay of Pigs failed due to JFK's last minute decision not to support the rebels.

Bay of Pigs was a failure from the get-go. It was designed that way. There was no way those guys were ready to start an insurgency and if JFK had committed us militarily to support them he would have been committing us to an invasion when they got their asses kicked. JFK nipped it in the bud and didn't allow US foreign policy to be painted into a corner.

As for Rommel, the big mistake wasn't him not being there. It was a combination of needing to get Hitler's permission to make any kind of strategic shift in forces, as they mentioned, and the fact that the Germans believed the Allies were invading Calais. Even DAYS later the Germans still thought Normandy was a feint and the real invasion would soon commence.

Germany never had a chance in the West, regardless of who was commanding them. Their best units were all either engaged in the East, prisoners of war in the East or dead. The US was fighting against children, second rate units and POWs Germany had captured in the East in the early stagse of the war. Frankly, after Stalingrad and Kursk the outcome of the war had already been determined and the only question was what the new partition line would be between the western allies and Stalin.

The British fought against elite ss panzer units in Normandy. Later on and during the battle of the bulge there were elite German units in the west.