World War II Thread

[puukao]

I am not an expert. I am a casual reader, and a sponge to new information.

I have questions to the real experts:

1. Stalin or Hitler, who was worse? I say Stalin for a number of reasons...

2. What happened with the famine in India? I seemed to miss this aspect during my first informal studies

3. Of course I believe in the Holocaust and millions of jews dying, but was the gas chamber not used as much as historians make us believe?

4. Did the USA kill German POW's in the millions (or close to a million) after the war?

5. I don't think we needed the second bomb of Japan......am I wrong?

6. Yalta.....ugggg

7. It's amazing when you think how racist USA was during this time....lynching of blacks, and FDR NOT voting for an anti-lynching policy. What am i missing?

I have tons of questions.......but I know I can learn from my fellow members.

feel free to talk about WW1, Treaty of Versailles, whatever......

I know I'm not the only one with an interest....

I guess Japan controlled Thailand, but I don't think occupied (?).....then USA came into play.

[LburtonL]

If I were you I will be asking about the upcoming of WWIII .....

Sooner that anyone could of thought

[IMA_FARANG]

4. Did the USA kill German POW's in the millions (or close to a million) after the war?

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No, but the Russians (Soviets) did.

The Soviets transported a large number of German POWs from their occupied zone POW camps to Siberia after the war.

Most of them died in Siberia in the Gulag camps.

Only a few returned years later.

The soviets also killed many Polish soldiers when they entered Poland at the start of the war.

The Russian tried to blame that massacre on the Germans but history now shows that it was Russians that did it.

I guess Japan controlled Thailand, but I don't think occupied (?).....then USA came into play.

-------------------------

When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor the Japanese also invaded Thailand.

Both the British and American ambassadors were ordered to declare war against the U.S.

The Thai (still Siam ambassador then) ambassador did deliver the declaration of war so the British were officially at war, but the Thai ambassador to the U.S. resigned his post and never actually delivered the declaration of war from his government.

So, technically Thailand was never at war with the U.S.

Not that really mattered as the U.S was an ally of the British, and U.S planes later bombed Japanese military and ships in Thailand with the Royal Air Force.

In fact in the 1970's a crashed U,S Army Air Force P-40 was dug up from a rice paddy in Thailand and sent back to the U.S. for a WW2 museum display there.

[NickJ]

The British Historian Max Hastings has written some great books you might enjoy. One each on each theatre of war and one on Churchill The War Years. He writes with a kind of man on the street during the time period slant. Asia Books in Bkk has them. If not they can get them. They are in soft back now.

[puukao]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre

I am aware of this...

[AlexRRR]

Depends on what books you read, the winners end up writing the history.

Second atomic bomb was it necessary? was the first? neither city had military installations worthy of a bombing run, a second bomber with full video equipment onboard as well as testing equipment should tell you something.

Hitler knocked off anyone including his own in the night of the long knives, the ovens were the answer to the spiralling cost of bullets used to kill off jews and gypsys and anyone else seen to be in there way as well as freeing up troops.

Your going to get a one sided view mostly in here, better you form you own opinions by reading the countless books out there on your interest, start by going back to the first world war, the politics before and during as well as after especially what was going on in Germany, the allies crippling the Germans and the economic issues.

Im not so much up on the Asian theatre but I'm pretty sure you would need to go back long before the actual war years for the reasons behind...mind you the whole of the world still had colonial tendentercys in those days.