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You said Churchill was living in a fantasy land for saying we won, I believe? snoopcester Send a noteboard - 08/04/2011 10:56:51 AM
There is a key distinction.


you made it very poorly, in my opinion. I would dispute it even as you state it here as well - the UK, as part of the allies, clearly won the war. As a nation the UK achieved both the aim of removing German occupation from Poland which had brought them into the war and also the underpinning reason of limiting Germany and restoring the balance of power in Europe, a centuries old aim. That all this was at such a massive cost and speeded up the loss of Great Power status wasn't avoidable, not going to war would have been at a far greater cost - which if one wants to look beyond the the stated reason and the underlying reason would also be a win.

Furthermore, the issue, based on your responses, is not that I "don't know what the Polish contribution was", but that you seem to have an odd definition of "decisive". A "decisive" contribution is one that changes the outcome. Not hastens an outcome, but changes it. It affects the DECISION of the war, not its cost to those fighting it.


Common usage of "decisive" very much includes "crucial" and that is exactly what the Poles work on the Enigma machine was - without them managing to solve the problem of how the German military Enigma machine differed from the "public" version their codes would probably never have been cracked. Of course you seem concentrated on their breaking of cyphers, which is a pretty minor contribution compared to their major contribution but you seem to only be talking about the latter - that does suggest you are either unaware of what they actually did or don't understand it.

So, NO, something that reduced the length of the European war by two years is NOT, in any way, a "decisive" contribution. It is a significant contribution, but clearly not decisive. It didn't change who won.


It was "a" decisive contribution - not "the" decisive contribution. The work they did was a key part of the war effort against Germany and it enabled much other effort against Germany.

Furthermore, given how large the Red Army was (35 million Soviets were in its service at one point or another during the war) and how sophisticated its industrial production was getting, the Soviets could have destroyed the Wehrmacht without significant Allied contributions, and the Enigma decoding played only the most minor role on the East Front.


That might be but the Soviets did have significant Allied aid and would have struggled far more with out it - they received of tanks, trucks, artillery guns and aircraft... and copied the designs of them to update their somewhat antiqued designs, as well as tonnes of food that "powered" the Soviet's industrial production. So they might have been able to do it alone but they actually did it with massive Allied aid... which as imperfectly as the information obtained from the cracking of Enigma was obtained, it helped greatly with.

If Germany did not receive the oil it needed from Romania, I doubt that Operation Barbarossa would have gotten as far as it did. It wasn't until the fall of the Ploesti oil fields in 1944 that Germany's oil supplies started to suffer. Hitler got the oil he needed until then.


Germany was getting, if I recall correctly, 4 million barrels a year from the Soviets and this wasn't enough, hence Operation Barbarossa which was fuelled by using up most of Germany's oil reserves. By '42 massive efforts were being made to convert vehicles to run on wood and it was basically policy to supply no one, not even the military, with the full amount of fuel they needed. Hitler had enough fuel to do what he did, not enough to do what he wanted to do... which is a massive difference

I repeat: the underlying assertion that led to this entire thread is little more than a lot of backslapping to ease the perpetually bruised ego of the Poles. Hell, that whole Guardian article is little more than such backslapping. So the cavalry didn't charge tanks, but just armored cars and mobile infantry. The Poles still had a terrible defence plan and lost even though they knew exactly what Germany was throwing at them.


It is a poor article, I will agree on that and the only thing that can be said for Poland's efforts on the field of battle is that they were brave. Sadly for the brave Polish military, they were fighting a modern military with modern (too modern for the British Army, doh!) military tactics while they had WWI equipment and tactics.
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The myth of Polish cavalry charging tanks - 06/04/2011 09:31:09 AM 1227 Views
Re: The myth of Polish cavalry charging tanks - 06/04/2011 10:22:35 AM 627 Views
I find this slightly sad. - 06/04/2011 10:23:08 AM 652 Views
Trust the British to make up the nutty quota. *NM* - 06/04/2011 10:25:04 AM 218 Views
Actually I meant the Polish pilots who served with the RAF - 06/04/2011 02:29:28 PM 584 Views
Yeah, I know it's BS, but it's one of my favorrite weapons to use against Poles who harass me - 06/04/2011 02:04:06 PM 1405 Views
are you often harrassed by Poles? *NM* - 06/04/2011 02:14:18 PM 261 Views
Many people don't appreciate what Germany has suffered at the hands of Poland. - 06/04/2011 03:00:56 PM 589 Views
yes but I still wonder about the modering gangs of Poles who are harrassing people - 06/04/2011 04:51:58 PM 495 Views
It's so bad I had to learn Kung Fu! *NM* - 06/04/2011 07:25:21 PM 219 Views
I am! - 06/04/2011 07:19:16 PM 594 Views
There is something scewy going on with my PC and it keeps reloading pages - 06/04/2011 08:46:08 PM 456 Views
"A decisive role"? What is Ben Macintyre smoking? And there's something wrong with the picture. - 06/04/2011 03:01:00 PM 699 Views
He makes a fair point - 06/04/2011 03:46:14 PM 523 Views
In all fairness, no he doesn't. - 06/04/2011 07:02:56 PM 633 Views
I don't agree - you are relying on speculation - 06/04/2011 07:19:19 PM 592 Views
No, YOU are relying on speculation - 06/04/2011 11:13:10 PM 1134 Views
I think you are a bit old to get away with the "No you are" line of argument - 07/04/2011 11:16:50 AM 529 Views
Churchill saying "we won the war" is already a fantasy world. - 07/04/2011 03:35:14 PM 550 Views
You think the allies lost? Erm... okay.... - 07/04/2011 04:41:49 PM 612 Views
I didn't say the Allies lost. I said the UK didn't really "win". - 07/04/2011 05:31:10 PM 477 Views
You said Churchill was living in a fantasy land for saying we won, I believe? - 08/04/2011 10:56:51 AM 606 Views
they still charged on a machine gun wielding infantry battalion ... - 07/04/2011 02:06:02 AM 526 Views
With armored cars *NM* - 07/04/2011 02:44:52 AM 223 Views
They may have had better luck against the tanks - 07/04/2011 03:38:40 AM 483 Views
My 8th grade history teacher was Polish and she embellished the myth. - 07/04/2011 05:43:10 PM 511 Views

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