Quote:
Originally Posted by Richard T. Eger
I Googled Brian's claim and it is verified. See:
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-n...-after-6862200 amongst other items.
Okay, I've looked at the article on President Obama's Cairo speech. As I promised Nick and John, I will not go into the trap of political discussion. Enough said.
As for the supposed ineffectiveness of leaflets or subterfuge in WW II, there was one incident at the end of the war of Allied misdirection that, when the war actually ended, caused many receiving the supposed official surrender notice to question its voracity... let me expand my "leaflet" idea to anything along the lines of information/misinformation that helped win the war for the Allies. For that matter, there well may have been effective use of such by the Third Reich against the Allies.
As for your claim Paul of no affect on the German population, just why were there repeated attempts on Hitler's life if everyone was happy with their lot? |
Dear Richard,
What the articles say is very different from the screaming headline. The only susbtantive Chinese quote provided is as follows: "Xi Jinping said: 'China will strengthen cooperation with the international community, resolutely crack down on violent terrorist operations that devastate innocent lives and safeguard world peace and security.'" None of that constitutes a 'declaration of war', whatever that may involve when a terrorist organisation is the enemy. To address the point directly, there is a possible parallel with the Spanish civil war, where Stalin
did send his army and air force, but for purposes very different from those declared by his Western supporters. See this link for the genesis of the Soviet air component, among other things -
http://www.gutenberg-e.org/kod01/kod14.html .
You are welcome to ignore the Cairo speech if you wish. It did have direct consequences for air power, specifically the suspension of US F-16 and Apache deliveries to Egypt just as the current Sinai conflict began.
By expanding the discussion regarding leaflets to information/misinformation as a whole, you are completely changing the terms of the discussion. Disinformation is of course of essntial importance in war and there are many examples of its success. I do not recognise the ULTRA story as you describe it, but I believe Martin Pegg may be working on this at the moment. It had been contemplated that the Allies might be forced to issue the surrender orders to the Germans themselves -
http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/ETO/Surrender/ECLIPSE/ .
In operations against ISIS, disinformation is usually employed by the US and alllied forces to sow doubt as to the exact nature of the information available to them. As an example, see the report of a raid in Syria this May, where the details of the intelligence obtained are carefully obscured by vague phrases. There is an operational security aspect of this, of course, but disinformation is also an important consideration -
http://edition.cnn.com/2015/05/16/mi...-isis-us-raid/ .
I did not at any time claim that the German population was 'happy', indeed such a claim would be intolerably vague. The number of attempts on Hitler's life, especially those with any reasonable chance of success, was limited when seen in the context of a 12 year dictatorship which initiated a World War. The German population was largely quiescent, that it was what I claim and it would be very difficult to deny it. There was no equivalent inside Germany to the Ukrainian UPA or Baltic 'Forest Brothers', which fought Soviet military and paramilitary units for some years from 1944 onwards.
Regards,
Paul