A different sort of stash

[BarleyBop]

Seeing as I'd mentioned the Great War...

 

[Littlemarten]

Seeing as I'd mentioned the Great War...

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What's impressive about this, is the insanely brave photographer who took it.

 

[BarleyBop]

the insanely brave photographer who took it.

Yes.
We can point at the heavy censoring of wartime reporting, the propaganda leverage it was often used for.
But those guys behind the lens, hauling their typewriters, scrawling short dispatches under fire to the folks back home, telling the stories best they knew how... blows my mind.

 

[BarleyBop]

So many horses. Google it, and estimates range between 2 and 5 million horses died in WW2.

...not the impression I got from Hollywood movies in the 60s.

Poland, Aug 1939



Germany, September 1939 (bonus planes!)

 

[Littlemarten]

Horses are remarkably fragile creatures, far more fragile than their human riders (contrary to what you saw in the movies in the 60s. Their advantage in a relatively modern (WWI & WWII) is that they don't run on a petroleum product. But they don't do well when used against machine guns or effective massed fire. (Agincourt, Crecy—apparently the Poles never got the memo.)

 

[BarleyBop]

contrary to what you saw in the movies in the 60s

True about the vulnerability of our faithful steeds.

I was thinking more along the lines of never seeing them in WW2 movies, just jeeps, planes, tanks and battleships!

 

[Littlemarten]

After horses ceased being a major form of motive power, they became much less plentiful, one could almost say rare. I recall westerns from when I was a kid in which a "herd" was somewhere around thirty—or less.

 

[OldManModeler]

True about the vulnerability of our faithful steeds.

I was thinking more along the lines of never seeing them in WW2 movies, just jeeps, planes, tanks and battleships!

WWII was the first largely mechanized war.

The fact was, that the German army still used equines for major transport duties... Antiquated for the time... And they lost the war. Poland was a equine tragedy.

But Germany's loss of the war really wasn't about horses, it was about large bodies of water. If it wasn't for Britain being an island, the German army would have conquered Britain in days or weeks after Germany took France. Thank God that Germans aren't known for being excellent sailors.

If it wasn't for two large oceans between Europe and the US / Canada, and between Japan and the US / Canada; North America would have fallen also.

There were too many bleeding hearts in the US to join the war before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. That fact almost cost the world. Seriously, the entire world. And would have let the AXIS powers win and dictators rule.

In retrospect... it sounds too familiar in today's news. The very same country (China) that we, the allies, helped to extricate the tyrant Japanese forces 70 or 80 years ago... is now the free worlds threat.

 

[Jakko]

What's impressive about this, is the insanely brave photographer who took it.

Or: it's staged. Get a few soldiers into a ruined wood, throw some smoke, take a few pictures.

I'm sure you've seen this footage before:



This gets shown in pretty much every documentary about the First World War, and usually as authentic combat footage. But it's staged, too, to the best of my knowledge. The soldier who slides back down the trench side isn't shot, IIRC he just slipped and played dead.

 

[Jakko]

There were too many bleeding hearts in the US to join the war before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

That makes it seem like you think going to war is generally a good idea. Yes, the USA came out of the Second World War better and more powerful than it went into it, but this is very much the exception, and has only a few other examples in history (the Eighty Years War being another one, which comes to my mind easily because I happen to live in the country that came out far better off than it went into that one).

That fact almost cost the world. Seriously, the entire world. And would have let the AXIS powers win and dictators rule.

Quite probably, Nazi Germany would have been defeated by the Soviet Union even without American aid. But, of course, that would also have lead to a world, or at least a Europe, ruled by a single dictator, and it's very debatable whether the average person would have been better off under Nazism or Stalinism.

The very same country (China) that we, the allies, helped to extricate the tyrant Japanese forces 70 or 80 years ago... is now the free worlds threat.

Is it the same country, though? I'd say the China that was saved in 1945 is now limited to controlling Taiwan, since the principal ally of the western world back then was the Kuomintang, who lost the Chinese Civil War to the Communist side and then withdrew to Taiwan.