Colin’s Comments (group member since Dec 16, 2012)

Colin’s comments from the THE WORLD WAR TWO GROUP group.

A German Mk IV tank crew in Norway sank a British destroyer offshore in 1940, details not not totally clear.

Doreen wrote: "Colin wrote: "Yes, if you go to any pub let them know you are American, and if a veteran, flash a coin or ID, I never paid for a drink when I showed my 101st Airborne coin."

Not a veteran but my d..."

That would do it

At 700 pages, get comfortable.

The plan did backfire, when my late friends Erich Topp and Reinhard Hardegen unintentionally sank the first American ships prior to war being declared, FDR took the temperature of Congress. The read he got was that asking for a declaration of war against Germany was not going to happen.

Yes, if you go to any pub let them know you are American, and if a veteran, flash a coin or ID, I never paid for a drink when I showed my 101st Airborne coin.

Will be released in October from Harper Collins.

That happened only three times, two on penalty calls. Penalty called when it was just outside the box and a handball in the box. Third was a ball crossing the line for a goal that was not called by the ref or linesman.

FDR issued an executive order to escort convoys, knowing full well that eventually one of those destroyers would get nailed by a U-Boat. That was his plan and pretext for getting us into WW II.

I just received my massive complimentary copy of Max's "Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy 1945-1075. It was nice to see my name in the bibliography as a source, and it was great to assist him with making contacts.

I have played World of Tanks since 2013, love it.

It is about the money indeed. The VAR reduces referee corruption, because the VAR director can overrule a questionable call, especially if it is a penalty questions.

God Bless Lend Lease! And Hitler's incompetence.

As a former A league professional player before the military, and one season after, and now a part time referee when not writing books. I understand it all. It is now all about commercialism. The VAR system was resisted by many, but I think that it is the right call. Not long ago there was the referee corruption scandal, and a German ref and others were stripped of their licenses. They were caught manipulating calls for money ensuring victories in national matches. Keeps everyone more honest.

That is as funny as happy hillbilly hell. Reminds me of a story I heard about a guy who found an old Teller anti tank mine, did not know what it was, and had it in his living room and used it as a door stop. Sometimes you have the remember what Darwin said....

Himmler called it "guilt by blood", the motivator was to psychologically push men into battle, knowing that death in combat was better than what was behind them, especially for their families.

One of the great intellectual failures of our nation's foreign policy history was at Yalta, and FDR's idiocy and weak minded agreement to forcibly hand over all Soviet POWs into Stalin's custody at war's end. He was warned about what would happen to them, but in believing Stalin would guarantee "free" elections in Poland and the rest of eastern Europe, Franklin "the Fool" did not believe what he was told, regarding the fates of the POWs when released from German camps.

Frank never had a chance. He was not a medical doctor, nuclear physicist, etc.

Most people do not realize that when the liberals in America laud over the great leadership if President FDR, they do not know or fail to acknowledge that he was a true Demcocrat. That means that he was different from today's mindless, liberal and hypocritical Democrats.

The Dems back then were the party of Jim Crow, the leftovers of the Confederacy, the KKK, and "Separate but Equal" and FDR was their champion. he was not going to allow anyone into the country unless he could be persuaded that they could benefit the military in some way. he wanted to be reelected, so why abandon his base? Even in 1936 FDR knew there would be a war, due to stirrings in Europe and China.

FDR was of the same mind as Henry Ford and the KKK, although to his credit he did oppose outright violence against anyone. He still believed in the segregated nation and military, he believed in keeping Jews out of the country (he and Henry Morgenthau came to several disagreements and see SS St. Louis incident).

Those who laud over FDR's domestic programs such as the TVA fail to realize that WW II was what eventually brought the USA out of the Great Depression and started the great prosperity period, despite the high cost of the war.

Well, calling the 12th SS H-J Division "elite" is a stretch. The senior leadership of the division down to the company level was staffed with battle seasoned veterans, with several hard corps types at the helm. However, the rank file enlisted volunteers of the H_J (and the rest of the new Waffen SS) in 1944 were as green as their Allied counterparts, and they had less training before deployment.

Stalin also had an entire collection of American silent movies, then collected "talkies", and his favorite silent films were those of Charlie Chaplin. Once, while watching "The Kid" he was laughing during the film he had seen many times, casually signing the stack of death warrants handed to him by Levrenti Beria. These films were what spawned his decision to create an entirely new propaganda department, the Department of Film and Nostalgia. Thus, Sergei Eisenstein's career was born.

Stalin won his war by attrition. When you see that they lost 25 million during the war, remember that Red Army troops ran into battle with their own NKVD and machine guns at their backs. Death would come from the front or from behind. At least they had the conscript population to do it. I interviewed a few former Soviet soldiers and officers who had their stories.

Tukhachevsky was the brightest mind of the bunch. It was he who considered creating a massive civilian auxiliary that would later become know as "partisans" in case of any German invasion, which he predicted. He laid out an elaborate plan for unconventional warfare supporting the Red Army, and he also accurately predicted most of the primary strategic targets that the Germans would go after. Remember that this was in 1936. he was a visionary.

Heydrich did in fact plant seeds of doubt in the heads of the Soviets. The mass starvation program against the Ukrainian was already well known, hence offering the opportunity to make Stalin believe in the 5th column movement. Ironically, Heydrich did not know was that there actually WAS a subversive Ukrainian movement building under Stepan Bandera.

The Ukrainians would later volunteer and staff three Waffen SS Regiments, one becoming a full division, and Lt. Gen. Andrei Vlasov would create the ROA (Russian Army of Liberation), made of defectors and anti-Communists. These events probably gave Stalin mental justification for his actions.

You may like my website at www.heatonlewisbooks.com see what we have dome on that subject.