Fetishising WWII

I just saw a D-day commemorative coin being advertised, that's all. Just....enough already.

It's not that, Dux. I know it is. But I do feel like it's living off past glories when we aren't exactly happy and glorious now. Or maybe it helps make people feel like we were something once...

You think they'd want to be remembered in a commemorative coin....?

My grandfather fought in D-Day, I am not sure he would have wanted the fuss. I doubt he would have found it a particularly glorious memory, either.

glories is a bit suspect but broadly agree.The same level of gloating is somewhat missing in russia, US, and other continental countries. 

I hope after this 75th anniversary it will calm down a bit

Thanks for appreciating where I am coming from, Coffers. Having grown up in a house that seemed to watch The Greatest Day and that bouncing bomb film quite often and having been dragged around numerous museums and war memorials as a kid, maybe I have just had enough of all of it.

I still find the tales of the extraordinary things that very young normal people did fascinating.

I hope that if I died fighting for my country someone would remember in years to come.

agree there dusty. it is not that it mustn't be remembered but a realisation that generations have moved on and sometimes it feels like a drag on any progress. We are not operating in isolation in the real world. 

that said I did wear my poppy to the german office over the entire week earlier in November. 

it is not that it mustn't be remembered but a realisation that generations have moved on

THIS, 100%.

Sails, agreed - social history on that side is fascinating. But that's not really the aspect I am talking about.

I agree 100% with the OP.  If nothing else it diminishes the sacrifices made and the lives lost of more recent conflicts.  Kosovo, Bosnia, Iraq1, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Iraq2, Sri Lanka.  Where are their commemorative coins?  I have one.  And it was issued by the Kuwaiti government, not the British.

Utterly disingenuous. They were all professional soldiers who chose to have a career getting shot at. WWII was an existential threat to our nation, in which every able-bodied adult male played a part.

May want to talk to some commuters who go through Russel Square, Tavistock Square, Paddington, London Bridge, Kings Cross, Liverpool Street, Aldgate, before you go telling someone what you consider is or is not an existential threat to our way of life you fooking tool.

Are you suggesting a few terrorists trying to blow up the Tube is in any way comparable to a wholescale invasion by a foreign power? Have a word with yourself ffs.

LOL @ coffers’ suggestion that WW2 isn’t gloated over in Russia. They’re obsessed with it - see for the best example the colossal mother Russia statue in the Museum of the Great Patriotic War in Moscow. 

that said I did wear my poppy to the german office over the entire week earlier in November.

 

This is entirely acceptable. Does anyone doubt that they would not ave been flaunting their nazi armbands an party badges about the place ad it been them wot won? The sight of a poppy once a year is considerably less offensive than to ave ad to watch Hitler’s column rising every morning 

I took the kids to the Postal museum.  About 30% of the exhibits are given over to the Royal Mail during the second world war.  My kids are of the opinion that stamps somehow won the war.

It’s not the coin per se. It’s the constant harking back to one particular five year period (give or take) which most people can’t remember. I absolutely think we should know and acknowledge our history but with WW2 it goes far beyond that, even now. It was just a fleeting thought, i have family who fought and lived through it, there was no disrespect other than a feeling that we seem to talk about it a lot in this country and perhaps it makes us feel that we are still enraptured with Blitz spirit or whatever.

How unsurprising of you to completely misunderstand what i am saying. I’m not ungrateful. I’ve spent a lifetime thus far being grateful, ffs. And I’m allowed to think however i want without you being the usual patronising w**ker that you are. 
 

 

Fools.  It absolutely is fetishing (or fetishisation or whatever else it should be called).

Look, my dad was born in 1940.  He is dead.  Most of my family were actually killed during world war 2, only luck (heh?) prevented my paternal grandfather from joining them as he got TB.

On my mother’s side my grandad flew initially in Halifax bombers and then later Mosquitos.  

So it’s not like I don’t have family to respect who made sacrifices.  They did and I’m grateful.

But for gods sakes, it was a long time ago.  Look at our soldiers and sailors and airmen now, many of whom struggle with mental health issues as a result of the horrors they have seen.

What about the shipmates of the various Albion class vessels who approached the coast of Sri Lanka to be confronted with more than a hundred thousand dead bodies floating in the water in front of them?

Nonsense.  If the Germans were two years away from a viable nuclear device then they would have used whatever the hell they had against either the Soviets or us or preferably both.

If you are two years away from a viable nuclear warhead then you can create what is known as a “dirty bomb”.  It’s not exactly effective and it is far from efficient but it will get a job done.

They didn’t have that even, they did not understand the full methodology of detonating the right kind of bomb.  You may not entirely understand this but there is quite a lot of difference between an atomic bomb and a hydrogen bomb.  Making the old version work took hundreds of scientists at Los Alamos and included Richard Feynman for gods sakes.

The Germans had nothing comparable.  They were outstanding at rocketry, hence the use of them during the space race. 

“Once the rockets go up, who cares where they come down, that’s not my department said Werner Von Braun”. - Tom Lehrer.

Ducks, I know this is a difficult concept for you to grasp m88 but: there should be a commemoration, what there should not be is a lachrymose fetishisation designed primarily to stir nationalism If you think about this for a while I am sure you will get it.

It was Britain’s last moment as a major power

Subsequent rational opportunities to play a modern major power role, particularly being an influential and committed core member of the EU, have been spurned due to bedwetter nationalists pining for the  stories of empire their nannies used to read them.

Hmm.

Not sure you can say that a country armed with the most advanced weapons of mass destruction that the world has ever seen isn’t a “major power”.

But the last actions of Britain as a colonial power, I’ll give you that one all day long.  And also agree about this ridiculousness surrounding the world wars.  But Britain not being a major power while we still have Trident?  No.

 

Pakistan does not have 64 independent nuclear warheads on a continuous at sea capability that never sleeps capable of being launched in minutes and striking anywhere in the world.  There are nuclear weapons and there are nuclear weapons.  

Respectfully disagree with most of the above. We have had all sorts of different things on coins recently (Isaac Newton, 2012 Olympics, discovery of the DNA double helix).

It is completely appropriate to have one for D-Day on 75th anniversary given the importance of the event and the context of the war.

Tecco - of course those conflicts you mention are not be diminished but they are not on the same historical scale. I do not think that is controversial.

I agree that the far right and other bad actors politicise WWII for ungainly reasons but that is not a good enough reason for us to downplay its significance.

 

Please don't come around here with your respectful and reasonable views Diablo. They aren't welcome.

We want a commemorative coin for every disturbing event witnessed by a brit. With illustrations.

I completely agree that it is time to get over newton.  He fckd up his major maths theories and tried to make gold into lead.

My m7 dave once weed on him.*

*a statue of him

Coffers05 Dec 19 16:08

glories is a bit suspect but broadly agree.The same level of gloating is somewhat missing in russia, US, and other continental countries. 

I hope after this 75th anniversary it will calm down a bit

 

Yeah, they generally go all out for the 75th and then the 100th is always a quiet affair if not totally ignored.

 

Teclis05 Dec 19 20:35

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On my mother’s side my grandad flew initially in Halifax bombers and then later Mosquitos.  

that’s a weird mix given halifaxes were heavy bombers and mosquitos were light bombers

wot squadron was he?

i thought most mosquito pilots were previously light/medium bomber pilots

and conversely obviously most halifax pilots went on to fly lancasters etc if they changed

Ultimately, history doesn’t give a shit...

O it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, go away";
But it's "Thank you, Mister Atkins", when the band begins to play,

FYI the BBs didn’t fly for 633 squadron    
 

No one gives a toss...

He's a cheery old card,” grunted Harry to Jack

As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack.

But he did for them both by his plan of attack.

02 Jan 20 20:13

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I have no clue what squadron he was in, all I know is that Halifax during WW2 and then he was in Palestine with Mosquitos after the war.

oh right. where was he stationed in ww2?

from the palestine link and from a cursory check, he was possibly in 13 squadron or 680 squadron (more likely 13 as 680 seems to have flown mosquitos during the war)

maybe he misremembered? either that or he trained in halifaxes rather than flew them in anger

the lollersome things about horace are:

- his cognomen was “flaccus”

- despite claiming it was sweet to die for your country, he was v quick to not die and instead join the enemy when his side lost a battle

- he had pictures and mirrors everywhere in his bedroom, so he could look at porn from every angle

not sure he died for his country