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| 5/23 |
| 2007/6/20-24 [Reference/History/WW2/Germany, Politics/Foreign/MiddleEast/Iraq] UID:47024 Activity:very high |
6/20 Clint Eastwood's twin Iwo Jima movies triggered island name change.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070620/ap_on_re_as/japan_iwo_jima
\_ Of course, the proper romanji is "ioutou" or "ioujima." Can't
they get anything right?
\_ more like they are reverting it to original name, and Iwo Jima
was just a mistaken name brought about in WWII that stuck.
\_ I find it intersting that with all the fuss over the Iraq war losses
they are about just over half what the US lost just in the battle
of Iwo Jima.
\_ I find it interesting that you confuse an asymentrical war
of choice entered on false principles and no exit strategy
with a provoked war involving several major powers.
\_ Exit strategy? War has only one exit strategy: kill the
enemy until they stop fighting back.
\_ yeah, and those 200K dead Iraqis are just a rounding error.
\_ what we see reported daily is the 3000-odd US deaths. If the
Iraqi casualties are reported, its usualy an afterthought.
\_ if we are doing this right, US casualties is about
20,000. Consider that we only got less than 120,000
troops, US casualty rate is a bit high.
\_ We don't count Germans and Japanese when we talk about WWII
losses, either.
\_ WWII was not an asymmetrical war. -tom
\_ Well, it sort of was -- The USSR suffered something like
9 million military casualties and 16 million civilian
casualties, but the were on our side.
\_ Asymmetric warfare refers to the power of the actors,
not the number of civilian casualites. -tom
\_ USSR utilized asymmetric warfare tricks in
territories conquered by the Germans by using
'partisans.'
\_ You think the 'actors' were equally powered? Yes,
that is why Polish troops charged German tanks on
horses with lances. Read a book some time.
\_ If Germany was so much more powerful than the Soviet
Union, why did they lose the war?
\_ If Germany was so much more powerful than the
Soviet Union, why did they lose the war?
\_ Hitler was a bad general, the Germans were
fighting on multiple fronts, the US had
a huge industrial base and was effectively
immune from attack, the Russians destroyed
everything as they retreated, the Russians
were able to use&build industrial capacity
in the far east well out of German range
and ship weapons, etc to the front on
trains. Is that enough reasons?
\_ They did no such thing. This was a "ha ha
stupid Polacks" propaganda story in Germany
after the 18th Uhlans demolished a German
infantry concentration at Krojarty. They
retreated when German tanks moved up. Read a
book some time. -John
\_ Sounds like you got that from the unsourced
wikipedia article. Got a URL?
\_ Actually, no. There was a good
description with sources on one of the
military history boards I read If you
are interested, contact me and I will dig
it up when I have a moment. -John
\_ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Krojanty
\_ Ahem: "This article does not cite any
references or sources. Please help improve
this article by adding citations to
reliable sources. (help, get involved!)
Any material not supported by sources may
be challenged and removed at any time.
This article has been tagged since March
2007." This article is no better than me
writing my own article saying it was
Martians on magic brooms who followed their
noble leader, Elvis, a Great Warrior from
the future, into battle to defeat the
Nazis.
\_ OK, where's your reference for
the Polish charging tanks with
lances?
\_ Lots of reasons. My theory is the Germans
eventually fell to the power of the Russian
Human Wave Attack, and the industrial output
of the United States was able to prop up and fuel
the Russians so they could concentrate on more
important things like flinging themselves into
battle with the Germans. Thanks, Russian people!
You rule. The Brits helped a little, the French
were too dazed from WW1, and I dunno what Italy
was doing but trying to pave Ethiopia.
\_ Watch some History Channel. More powerful
does not always win. See American War for
Independence.
\_ Lots of people seem to underestimate USSR's
industrial output, as did Hitler. USSR got
a lot of US stuff but even at the war's start
they had a huge number of tanks for example.
\_ T-34!!!
\_ US industry and fuel helped, but not as much as
the Americans would like to believe. Personally,
I think the biggest turning point in the war was
when the Soviet leadership decided to actually
fight, move everything beyond the Urals, etc.
Western non-involvement would have pushed
the storming of Berlin off by a year or two.
Germany was fighting a hopeless war in the East.
A modern industrialized nation in the 21st
century can't seem to be able to pacify a country
many times smaller than USSR. What hope did
Germany have? Especially after they started
shooting civilians, and antagonized the native
population even more (!?) than Stalin himself.
-- ilyas
\_ If they had ignored Stalingrad and gone after
Moscow, and not been diverted to Greece
earlier in the year, I think they could have
broken the Soviet government. They didn't
want to occupy all of it anyway, just annex
a big chunk of lebensraum. Still kind of a
long shot. And Germany losing the air war
in the west was critical.
I think small groups of people today have
better ways of terrorism than was
available in the 40's. Iraq is also a
limited case: the US does not take ruthless
measures against the population. Hitler
could have forcefully expelled huge numbers
of people to alleviate these kinds of
problems. Finland etc. would have managed
their own zones as well.
Also, I don't think the Russians were as
suicidally zealous as Islamic militants.
\_ So there you have it. The Greeks won
WW II by beating back the Italians. It is
pretty much what the Greeks have always
claimed. Glad to see someone
acknowledge it! --dim (Greek)
\_ As a Greek I implore you to not claim
yourself as a Greek, ever, again.
The last thing we need is a dim-
witted guy who claims to be a Greek
\_ Napoleon took Moscow. So what? You can't
win a war against Russia really, if Russia
still has the will to fight. Germany
simply had no way to control the sheer
territory involved. Even in the
occupied parts of Russia, there were
huge parts where German soldiers simply
dared not go. -- ilyas
\_ Hmm. They "won" in WW1, sort of. They
had a good chance at defeating the
main military forces, if they acted
fast enough. Controlling the actual
land wouldn't be important except for
supply lines...
Look what happened to millions of
Germans after the war, and what was
happening to Poland, and most of the
Palestinians. It's not like Iraq
where you can't tell who's who and
anybody might blow you up with a bomb
made out of consumer electronics.
\_ Germans got favorable terms vs.
Russia in WW1 because Lenin thought
it was prudent to get out of the war
to consolidate power. The leadership
didn't have the will to fight since
they had bigger fish to try -- it
took a quite extraordinary period
of history for Germany to walk
of history for a country to walk
away from a 'land war in Asia'.
Russia did employ 'terrorist
methods' extensively vs the Germans
in WWII. It was a very effective
tactic due to the differences in
technology, manpower, and land
sizes involved. -- ilyas
sizes involved. Additional food
for thought: I heard that the two
worst winters on record in Russia
happened in 1812 and 1943. -- ilyas
\_ I wish there was a HD version of the history channel. I think
the bbc has 'THE WORLD AT WAR'? maybe i'll go buy it. love
the war. love the MAIL CALL. I heard the mail call say
that our b52 bombings convinced the north vietnamese to sue
for peace.... i think it was actually a secret message from
Mao that did that. I'm too apathetic to write them a letter
and complain. |
| 5/23 |
|
| news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070620/ap_on_re_as/japan_iwo_jima AP Japan changes name of Iwo Jima By HANS GREIMEL, Associated Press Writer Wed Jun 20, 10:49 AM ET TOKYO - Japan has changed the name of the Pacific island of Iwo Jima, site of the famous World War II battle, to its original name of Iwo To after residents there were prodded into action by two recent Clint Eastwood movies. Click Here The new name in Japanese looks and means the same as Iwo Jima -- or Sulfur Island -- but sounds different, the Japanese Geographical Survey Institute said. The institute announced the name change Monday after discussing the issue with Japan's coast guard. An official map with the new name will be released Sept. Before the war, however, the volcanic island was known as Iwo To by the 1,000 or so civilians who lived there. They were evacuated in 1944 as US forces advanced across the Pacific. Some Japanese navy officers who moved in to fortify the island mistakenly called it Iwo Jima, and the name stuck. After the war, civilians weren't allowed to return and the island was put to exclusive military use by both the US and Japan, cementing its identity. Never satisfied that the name Iwo Jima took root, locals took action in March after the release of Eastwood's two films "Letters from Iwo Jima" and "Flags of Our Fathers" spotlighted the misnomer. "Though we're happy for Iwo To, which has been forgotten by history, the islanders are extremely grieved every time they hear Iwo To referred to as Iwo Jima," the local Ogasawara newspaper reported at the time. Ogasawara, the municipality that administers Iwo To and neighboring islands, responded by adopting a resolution making Iwo To the official reading. Residents and descendants of Iwo To evacuees petitioned the central government to follow suit. "These people are now scattered nationwide and are not able to go back to Iwo To," said the survey institute's Mitsugu Aizawa. "These people have said that the place is originally called Iwo To and their claim lead to this revision." Today the only inhabitants are about 400 Japanese soldiers. The 1945 battle for Iwo Jima pitted some 100,000 US troops against 22,000 Japanese deeply dug into a labyrinth of tunnels and trenches. Nearly 7,000 Americans were killed capturing the island, and fewer than 1,000 of the Japanese would survive. The Americans occupied the island after the war, and returned it to Japanese jurisdiction in 1968. The US Navy still uses an Iwo To airstrip to train pilots who operate from aircraft carriers. US Marines of the 28th Regiment, 5th Division, raise the American flag atop Mt Suribachi, Iwo Jima, on Friday, Feb. Strategically located only 660 miles from Tokyo, the Pacific island became the site of one of the bloodiest, most famous battles of World War II against Japan. In a neglected vault buried under New York's Rockefeller Center, a musty, hot space with little room between rows of rusted-shut file cabinets, The Associated Press found pieces of history. The unearthing of thousands of documents, fragments of the 161-year history of the news cooperative, led to the publication of a new history of the AP, the first since the outbreak of World War II. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. |
| en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Krojanty Heinz Guderian's memoirs, the Polish cavalry charge impressed the Germans and caused a widespread panic among the soldiers and the staff of German 20th Motorised Infantry Division, which delayed their offensive and forced them to consider a tactical retreat. This was however prevented by personal intervention of Gen. They were shown the battlefield, the corpses of Polish cavalrymen and their horses, as well as German tanks that had arrived at the place after the battle. One of the Italian correspondents sent home an article, in which he described the bravery and heroism of Polish soldiers, who charged German tanks with sabres and lances. World War II it was still used by Soviet propaganda as an example of stupidity of pre-war Polish commanders, who allegedly did not prepare their country for the war and instead wasted the blood of their soldiers. |