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Nevada Convert

Compelling WWII Fact You Didn’t Know?

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On 5/5/2021 at 11:18 PM, thelawlorfaithful said:

Gino Bartali hid a Jewish family in his apartment and transported false papers for the Catholic Church to protect Jews from the holocaust. And then he lived the rest of his life and talked about it to almost no one.

Are you speaking of the great Italian  cyclist who bookended WW2 with multiple wins in Il Giro and Le Grande Boucle ?

"We don't have evidence but, we have lot's of theories."

Americans Mayor

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On 5/8/2021 at 1:29 PM, bornontheblue said:

This is True. Russia did the heavy lifting to win the war in Europe, the U.S. did the heavy lifting to win the war in the Pacific. 

If Hitler had been able to concentrate his forces in the West, The outcome would have been way different. I don't know if Great Britain and the US would have been defeated, but probably a negotiated treaty to end the war , with Hitler surviving to rule Germany. 

China did the heavy lifting in the Pacific Theater. It was Japan's, Soviet Union.

The Japanese war in China was where the vast majority of their resources and elite Military Units were utilized.

The US Navy beat up on the Japanese Imperial Navy.

"We don't have evidence but, we have lot's of theories."

Americans Mayor

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On 5/8/2021 at 9:00 PM, DestinFlPackfan said:

The only thing Russia did was provide millions of soldiers. We gave them 11.3 billion dollars worth of military supplies ( planes,  ships ammo,etc) in the Lend-Lease act . It was from 1941-1945. The idea was for us to lend them the military hardware and they'd give it back. Obviously,  we jumped in full scale when Japan made their fatal mistake. Could the Soviets have beaten Germany without our Lend? Perhaps, but it would have taken alot longer. We, the US , defeated Hilter by ' Lending ' Russia the weapons it needed.

The Soviets took the brunt of the Nazi war machine and Stalinism. I've read accounts where some historians believe Stalin killed more of his people than did the Nazis.

Even if the US had not provided lend lease aid, the Soviets would have won the war. It just would have taken a few more years and tens of million more souls would have died and suffered.

"We don't have evidence but, we have lot's of theories."

Americans Mayor

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On 5/8/2021 at 10:00 PM, DestinFlPackfan said:

The only thing Russia did was provide millions of soldiers. We gave them 11.3 billion dollars worth of military supplies ( planes,  ships ammo,etc) in the Lend-Lease act . It was from 1941-1945. The idea was for us to lend them the military hardware and they'd give it back. Obviously,  we jumped in full scale when Japan made their fatal mistake. Could the Soviets have beaten Germany without our Lend? Perhaps, but it would have taken alot longer. We, the US , defeated Hilter by ' Lending ' Russia the weapons it needed.

Russia did a lot more than that. They developed some of their own new weapons under horrible conditions, most notably the T-34 tank. They would drive those right out of factory onto the battlefield. It was quite a shock to the Germans that they could develop a good new tank and make so many with how bad they were beat down. They also had to relocate their factories because of the German advances, and that’s not easy in peace time. 

The Russians had a couple of great spies in the upper ranks of the Jap military and Stalin was notified that Japan had no plans to invade  them. So he was able to move all those fresh divisions stationed in the east into the fight and protect the factories. Those fvckers built over 80,000 T-34’s which at the time some German generals called the best tank in the world. Without it and without it in numbers, the Russians lose. 

kat.jpg

 

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If Ted, The Splinter, Williams not had his baseball career shortened by five years due to Military Service, three years in WW2 and two in the Korean War, he would have owned every major offensive record in the books.

I have seen more than one analysis of his projected career stats and they would have been astounding.

He would have finished with 713 Home Runs, surely he would have surpassed the Babe with that milestone in sight. The most amazing stat is that he would still be the career RBI leader with 2,465.

Hammerin' Hank Aaron would be a distant second at 2,297.

"We don't have evidence but, we have lot's of theories."

Americans Mayor

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8 hours ago, Spaztecs said:

China did the heavy lifting in the Pacific Theater. It was Japan's, Soviet Union.

The Japanese war in China was where the vast majority of their resources and elite Military Units were utilized.

The US Navy beat up on the Japanese Imperial Navy.

You don't think establishing naval superiority, which led to the carpet bombing of major Japanese industrial centers, and the impending invasion of the Japanese mainland primarily with US forces was heavy lifting??? Cmon now!!! China was run over and for all intents defeated by time they bombed Pearl Harbor. China can be thankful they did bomb Pearl harbor because that forced our hand, and took the brunt of the Japanese military off of them. You need to rethink this sir! 

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2 minutes ago, bornontheblue said:

You don't think establishing naval superiority, which led to the carpet bombing of major Japanese industrial centers, and the impending invasion of the Japanese mainland primarily with US forces was heavy lifting??? Cmon now!!! China was run over and for all intents defeated by time they bombed Pearl Harbor. China can be thankful they did bomb Pearl harbor because that forced our hand, and took the brunt of the Japanese military off of them. You need to rethink this sir! 

All excellent points. 

China was still Japan's Russia.

They were hopelessly bogged down in China and over extended. That war probably would have gone on another decade had it not been for Japan bringing the US into the Pacific War.

 

"We don't have evidence but, we have lot's of theories."

Americans Mayor

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11 hours ago, Spaztecs said:

Are you speaking of the great Italian  cyclist who bookended WW2 with multiple wins in Il Giro and Le Grande Boucle ?

That’s the one. 

We’re all sitting in the dugout. Thinking we should pitch. How you gonna throw a shutout when all you do is bitch.

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29 minutes ago, thelawlorfaithful said:

That’s the one. 

Great man and cyclist.

I did know he helped to harbor Jewish fugitives. Didn't know he kept mum about it.

Fear of retribution ?

Humility ?

A little of both ?

"We don't have evidence but, we have lot's of theories."

Americans Mayor

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56 minutes ago, Spaztecs said:

Great man and cyclist.

I did know he helped to harbor Jewish fugitives. Didn't know he kept mum about it.

Fear of retribution ?

Humility ?

A little of both ?

As he put it, “The good is done. It is not said. And some medals hang on the soul, not on your jacket.”


Humility and trauma, both individual and collective throughout Italy. The post war generation of Italy had been through a lot and was eager to move on with their destroyed lives. And of course with these revelations coming out decades later, and only popularly known in English after Bartali and most of the principles died, there is a decent argument based on the paper trail that Bartali didn’t do any of it. It was just one more myth Italians elected to believe about Bartali in addition to the other myths about him and themselves that allowed them to piece their fractured nation back together.

From the Bartali biography Road to Valor:

Gino avoided discussing what had happened during the war for much of his life. Although word about his involvement in Cardinal Dalla Costa’s secret network spread through pockets of the Jewish community in Florence soon after the war ended, it would be decades before the nation learned the details about it. Many of Gino’s countrymen were also reticent to speak about their wartime experiences and this silence was not unique to Italy. After years of occupation and war, citizens of several countries in Western Europe opted to willfully ignore the difficulties of the recent past, choosing to focus entirely in those first years on rebuilding for the future.

In 1978, a Polish Jewish journalist and filmmaker named Alexander Ramati published a book he had written with Father Rufino Niccacci about the work of the religious clergy in Assisi during the German occupation. (Ramati, an Allied war correspondent during the war, had first met Niccacci and Luigi Brizi on the day the Allied soldiers liberated Assisi in June 1944.) Seven years later, he followed up with a feature film based on the book. Although both were framed around Niccacci’s first-person perspective of events, they revealed a good amount about Cardinal Dalla Costa, the Brizis, and Gino. The Italian press covered this story with great interest, and lavished praise on all the protagonists named in the counterfeiting network.

Gino reacted to the coverage with anger, and privately threatened to sue an Italian television channel when it announced that it would air Ramati’s film. His son Andrea, however, argued against such measures, noting how closely Ramati had worked with Niccacci, Trento Brizi, and others. Gino slowly calmed down and came around to agreeing with his son, but he would remain tight-lipped with the press about his wartime activities for most of his life. The root of his reticence was a deeply felt concern that his celebrity as a cyclist would aggrandize his role in the network and overshadow the other participants’ contributions, ordinary Italians and Catholic clergy who took extraordinary risks to save others. Speaking in an Italian documentary made later in his life, Gino justified his silence as a matter of respect for those who had suffered more than he had during the war: “I don’t want to appear to be a hero. Heroes are those who died, who were injured, who spent many months in prison.”

We’re all sitting in the dugout. Thinking we should pitch. How you gonna throw a shutout when all you do is bitch.

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