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Originally Posted by Jelster
You obviously read different history books to me then..
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Quite possibly... Even when I was at school, a lot of what was in the history books we had was basically complete nonsense, you'd have thought the Russians did nothing. The history books do change. We had some that depicted Dunkirk as a mighty victory, instead of an 11th hour save, others that quietly forgot about US support, or the French resistance (still others that forgot about the vichy...)
By the time we got into continental europe, it wasn't so much about beating the germans- it was about beating the germans before the russians did, since stalin with most of europe under his belt wasn't a welcome thought. Damn right too... The red army was getting set up to march all the way to the english channel, as most see it now, and then we'd just have a different enemy/rival over the water, one with the biggest fighting force the world's ever seen and the willingness to grind it to a pulp to win.
As for "cheese eating surrender monkeys"... If we'd had our heads handed to us like the French did, I reckon we'd be just as fast to surrender. It's relatively easy to have a blitz spirit when there's not a thousand tanks in the streets. It was geography that stopped it from being us, not indomitable british courage and a stiff upper lip.