The irony, it burns.
In his 1933 novel The Shape of Things to Come, H.G. Wells describes his prediction of the next war and of how the German forces, including it’s vaunted tanks, would be brought to a complete halt by the mighty Polish army. Hilarious in a “if you didn’t laugh you’d cry” way.
As mentioned upthread, the Jews didn’t believe (until late in the war) that Germany was actually out to exterminate the entire Jewish population. They had had centuries of experience with anti-Semitism in Europe, and probably sighed and thought that this was just another wave of pogroms like so many before. When the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto realized differently they fought back but it was barely a blip on the Eastern Front scale of war and slaughter.
A thread I once started on that topic: Would you have shot the gun confiscators when they came to your door?
Inglourious Basterds was a work of fiction.
…says the woman who thought Germany invaded Switzerland.
Probably not very much, sadly. The situation you’re talking about did, essentially, take place, just with Germany instead of the UK, and those civilians who took up arms really didn’t make a huge amount of difference; because, at that point, the forces arrayed against them (and the remaining armed forces protecting them) just weren’t enough to make a difference. And you have to take into account those areas where civilians simply can’t fight back; a defeated RAF would mean that the Luftwaffe could simply undertake widescale bombing attacks at whim. The big difference, again, is probably the Channel, since the Allied forces had much of Europe to eventually muster and sortie from, but by that point they wouldn’t have even the kind of defenses such as at Normandy to really rely on.
It’s worth taking into account that one of the actions of the British government of the day was to organise in advance several units of, essentially, trained terrorist groups within the country to assassinate public figures and sabotage what they could in the event of an invasion; they prepared for that eventuality. But those groups were expected to last for, and supplied for, a couple of weeks at most. If the Nazis could get into a position where they could actually invade, then civilian resistance would not have helped all that much. A cowed UK that could, in time, rebuild and act again as a staging point for attacks on continental Europe would be of much larger threat to whatever hindrance civilians at that point could muster.
Susanann, get it into your head that the armies of the countries you’re talking about were defeated. Their countries were overrun. They were surrounded or otherwise deprived of the ability to keep fighting. The point had been reached where continued resistance would have resulted in vastly disproportionate casualties, while delaying the inevitable by days at best.
The Russians didn’t win because of superior character, but because they had enough extra territory and manpower to regroup and strike back. Vast numbers of Soviet troops surrendered during the early stages of Operation Barbarossa.
Part of the confusion between military and civilian resistance is due to the fact that military resistance is going to be crushed forthwith, while the civilian population is overlooked at first and thus theoretically afforded some opportunity organize resistance. The question then becomes avoiding detection.
But in the end, those who chose not to commit suicide-by-Nazi were right in that most of of them lived on after the 4 or 5 years of bullshit. Those who assumed that the Nazis wouldn’t or couldn’t kill them all were right.
Of course when the Muslim invade the US it’ll a whole nuther story.
Who needs rifles anyway. Just use a sharp stick and your magic “never surrender” force field.
As an interesting factoid one of the more devastating blows in my opinion to the German war effort was a little know battle in Norway whose name now escapes me where Jodl convinced a panicky Hitler to exhort the soldiers to stand their ground and fight to the last man and in the end the Germans prevailed. That episode warped Hitler’s views on strategic warfare and led directly to his disastrous interference with OKW and the brain dead no retreat orders on the eastern front.
The Finns didn’t fight “with” the Germans, we accepted weapons and had a kind of we wont invade you while you fight the Soviets, we were fighting a common enemy. And then the English declared war on us! WTF they sided with the Soviets, I will never understand this.:smack:
Oh yeah and then the bloody Nazis wanted to take over Lapland, just like the Russians we killed twice as many of them as they did of us and finally they went home in April 1945.
So the lesson is here, don’t piss off a Finn as we will kick your arse whether you are left or right. Sisu indeed.
[Finland in World War II - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org
/wiki/Military_history_of_Finland_during_World_War_II)
It’s easy to sit here 70 years later and ask why they just surrendered, but we have the gift of hindsight: we know that a great many were only going to be slaughtered later even if they gave up peacefully. They didn’t know that their options were to fight back and probably be killed at home, or to be tortured for a long while then most likely to be killed. At the beginning they probably thought that surrender offered the chance of getting through alive, you know? That had to be seen as more logical than attacking a force that had you outclassed in nearly every way.
And you can’t compare them to modern day Isreali citizens because like us they also have the same hindsight that allows them to know just how bad things could be if they choose not to fight if another situation like this arises. Their grandparents didn’t yet know how bad things could be, so of course they didn’t react the same way.
:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:
Fuck me. You’re the one that’s been arguing this entire thread that if the Jews had simply blown away the Nazis as soon as they showed up at their doors, the Holocaust would never have happened.
I will say one thing, mowing down your arguments is a hell of a lot easier than mowing down a squad of SS.
Ok an army of Jew Civilians then. That shoot lasers with their eyes. They can talk with dinosaurs.
Seriously, the whole thread has just been one troll feed fest for at least two pages.
Not only yourself, but also the whole neighborhood and maybe even the whole town.
Nazi forces used this kind of terror. They routinely used reprisals against civilians as a means to discourage partisan and resistance actions, and they actively advertised that fact. They’ve even rounded up and killed every adult male from the age of 14 and upwards in a town as a reprisal against rather small resistance actions. Such knowledge sort of takes the fighting spirit out of a lot of people.
If you’re thinking of the Lidice Massacre, the age was 16, but you’ve got the right idea. From the link:
I wrote a long reply to Susanann that took me about half an hour to write about the history of the Polish army and Polish resistance during World War II,which then got eaten, and which I really don’t want to do again. But suffice it to say, the Polish army started fighting in September of 1939 and continued fighting until May of 1945, and that meanwhile, the civilian Polish resistance didn’t give up their fight throughout the occupation.
That’s one of them, yes. Couldn’t remember the specifics, not even enough to Google it, so thanks for the correction.
<zombie voice>
Coooffeeeeee… moore coooffeeeeee…
</zombie>
Now you’re just being silly. It’ll be when the UN led New World Order tries to make a one-world government with the black helicopters and the FEMA concentration camps once Obama gets the go ahead from George Soros that we’ll all be saved by the gun behind every door in Alabama. 
The first no retreat orders from Hitler in the face of the Soviet winter counter-offensive of '41/42 on the eastern front actually did make sense. There was nowhere for the Germans to retreat to that would have improved their situation; no fall back lines or defensive positions had been prepared in the event that Operation Typhoon had fizzled out in its last attempt to break the Soviets before serious winter set in by taking Moscow. With the temperature as low as it was and the Germans already straining their logistics with where they were voluntarily retreating would have meant abandoning most of their heavy equipment and thousands of additional casualties to exposure to the elements for no real gain. A retreat in this situation could also easily have turned into a rout; the disintegration of the Grande Armee of Napoleon during its retreat in the Russian winter was a specter in the German high command’s mind.
Subsequent no retreat orders from Hitler were largely as you said brain dead and only made matters worse.
A disorganized, dispersed, untrained, inexperienced population of civilians living in their homes - including many who are elderly or children or simply not inclined towards fighting - isn’t remotely like a trained, organized guerrilla force hiding out in a jungle or mountain range. I don’t care if some genie had handed weapons to every last Jew, they would still have been slaughtered. Guns aren’t magic, nor are they the most important thing that separates a military force or government from a random collection of civilians.
Where do you think guerrilla movements begin? Did the French Resistance exist before the Germans occupied France? Such movements come from the
If they already have civilian stockpiles of guns to draw upon, then it is that much easier for them to begin bleeding the enemy. I am not going to discuss this further with you, Der Trihs. Firstly, it would be a hijack. Secondly, I am aware in advance that there is a dioesque level of possibility of you modifying your opinion in any way.
From a small percentage of the civilian population. Not from six year olds, pregnant women and the elderly.