The Real Reason for the British Nuclear Deterrent

[thosewhotravel3]

what episode is this clip from? anyone know? :D it's hilarious ^^"

[JezSpice]

what a fool I am wanting to get rid of Britains nuclear weapons. The French are our enemies. Makes perfect sense lol

[dantae666]

Like it

[Sidslotm]

brilliant



[essertpitay]

Against the French !

[cadian14758]

@dadsdaisy just like you never thanks the americans for helping you?

[DraculasHenchwoman]

@cadian14758 Britain never needed liberating though - just buckets of firepower and chickens.

[cadian14758]

@DraculasHenchwoman ww2?

[DraculasHenchwoman]

@cadian14758 yeah I mean in ww2. Not big enough guns and not enough food was our problem, but the Nazis never conquered the UK.

[cadian14758]

@DraculasHenchwoman they were suprsisingly close to destroying our air defences, and with that gone we would have been open to attack

[DraculasHenchwoman]

@cadian14758 Yes, the battle of britain, but fortunately Hitler gave up before our air force was completely demolished. We would have been sitting ducks if the Nazis had destroyed the airplanes, it's true. I don't doubt that America saved everyone's asses in WW2, just not in the way we saved France's.

[cadian14758]

@DraculasHenchwoman Yeh.

[juzt156]

@DraculasHenchwoman. We don't like to admit it but the Russians had a lot to do with it. Not to mention thier ally Winter.

[SuperGareth007]

@juzt156 Of course,all the russians have to do is to call on the forces of winter. it's like Aragorn getting all the ghosts to fight in Return of the King. LOL

[jacksawild]

@DraculasHenchwoman It was the Russians who saved everyone's asses (sic). Just look at the casualty rates. The Americans joined in after the war was clearly winnable. They were happy to bleed the UK dry, selling weapons and food while we struggled and they fully expected us to succumb. It was the superiority of the RAFs aircraft which made Hitler switch tactic and disastrously turn on Russia before beating us. He thought we were spent but hadn't realised that we knew his codes, which is what won

[jacksawild]

@CityofLight11 Rommell was a fine general and an honourable man but let's not forget his fall from grace was due in large part to him failing to overcome Monty in Africa. He still deserves respect though, for probably being involved in the bomb plot against Hitler and refusing to act like a typical nazi, he was a soldier. The war might have ended very differently if Hitler had paid attention to him. What can I say, Hitler was batfuck crazy.

[AussiePolitics]

@jacksawild how does the russian casualty rates prove anything other than that it threw millions of untrained and badly equipped soldiers before the machine guns of the german army? you also have to realise that america threw massive amounts of supplies the russians way so that they could hold the front. who's to say that without all the american supplies the russians would not have done what they had for the past few years? suffer defeat after defeat

[DomWeasel]

@AussiePolitics

The Russians destroyed 85% to 90% of the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front. The idea of unarmed Russian troops charging German machine guns has been greatly exaggerated, happening mainly in Stalingrad; a small spot in a battlefront over a thousand miles long.

The German defeat is down largely to Hitler's reluctance to bring Germany to a total war standing early on. The entirety of the Soviet Union geared to war in 1941 (Britain in 1940) while Germany matched this policy in 1943.

[AussiePolitics]

@DomWeasel right and its just coincidence that the war started turning around since the americans started their lend-lease deliveries to the USSR which added up to:

14,795 aircraft

7,056 tanks

51,503 jeeps, 375,883

the list goes on for half a page but finishes with over 15.4 MILLION pairs of army boots. i question how well equipped the russians were if they required america to supply their own boots.

[DomWeasel]

@AussiePolitics

Your argument seems to be mainly above proving that American enjoyed considerable war profiteering.

[AussiePolitics]

@DomWeasel what a pathetic comment. you were argued that the poor state of the Russian army was hugely exaggerated, yet if they required in excess of 15 million boots from america because they could not even give their army shoes it makes a mockery of your claim. funny how the point when the eastern front began to turn it was when the americans started giving the USSR hundreds of thousands of machine guns, tanks, trucks, motor bikes, explosive etc etc.

[AussiePolitics]

@DomWeasel and yes I am well aware that there was a grammatical error in my previous comment. it was due to the fact that I was trying to find the words to describe just how weak a retort you made and I had amended it a couple of times.

your entire argument was based on the poor state of the USSR army being "exaggerated" yet as I have clearly shown; if they required 15 million pairs of army boots from america they obviously were very poorly equipped.

[DomWeasel]

4,102 Shermans delivered to the USSR.

62,424 armoured vehicles produced by the USSR, including 22,559 T-34-85 tanks.

As most Soviet soldiers fought in their own boots (Which German soldiers hacked off the legs of Soviet corpses because they were so well made and designed for the winter) your point is moot. In terms of what won them the war; fighter bombers, tanks and artillery, the Soviet Union made all it needed.

[AussiePolitics]

@DomWeasel yet it was ONLY when american deliveries started to the USSR that the war began to turn around at all. thousands of their planes were destroyed on the first day of operation barbarossa and they were barely hanging on before hundreds of thousands of tonnes of weapons and explosives started arriving.

if the USSR was so badly equipped they required 15 million pairs of boots from america then i find it hard to believe it was just coincidence they started to win after the deliveries.

[DomWeasel]

@AussiePolitics

American deliveries started in 1941, war turned decisively against Nazi Germany in 1943...

Your Ouroboros argument is no longer everlasting but self-destructive.

[AussiePolitics]

@DomWeasel actually the statistics I was quoting were from 1943-1945. it is a table on page 36 of the book by Norman Davies entitled 'Europe at War' and he references George C Herring's work titled 'Aid to Russia 1941-1946: strategy, diplomacy, the origins of the cold war'. (New York 1973).

of course there was aid before 43 and after 45 but i was referring to the aid that CHANGED the soviet war effort. thank you for proving my point.

[DomWeasel]

We started this over whether or not the Soviets charged machine guns without weapons. They didn't.

Now we're arguing why the Soviets defeated the Wehrmacht in 1943.

Might have something to do with 250,000+ Axis troops taken prisoner in North Africa by Commonwealth forces.

The million soldiers the Germans lost fighting for Stalingrad when Hitler refused the 6th army permission to retreat.

The 200,000 casualties taken at Kursk.

Manpower the 3rd Reich couldn't replace, condemning them to defeat.

[AussiePolitics]

@DomWeasel if the soviets were so well equipped then why did they require millions of boots of their soldiers and hundreds of thousands of weapons, explosives, trucks, tanks and planes from the USA?

if no-one had been sending supplies to the soviets I find it laughable to suggest they would have turned the war around in the manner which they did

[DomWeasel]

The supplies they received merely ensured a hastier end to the war.

And enough with your boot fetish.

[AussiePolitics]

@DomWeasel Don't be snide, it is a serious point I am making: if the soviets were so badly equipped and supplied they required 15 million pairs of boots from america in just 2 years then that indicates they could barely supply their own troops and really did require all that aid. which certainly does makes the portrayal of soviets as cannon fodder all the more plausible.

without aid from the USA both the soviets and the uk would have lost the war.

[DomWeasel]

The British Empire only ever had one war goal; the defence of Britain and the Empire. As far as liberating Europe went, it wasn't much of a priority. We won the battle of Britain and the Kriegsmarine couldn't defeat the Royal Navy. We won our war

[AussiePolitics]

@DomWeasel that is incorrect. if the defence of britain was their only priority then they could have easily made peace with the germans. they had some rather more noble ambitions than that - helping their allies and ending the occupation. however the UK like the soviets received vast amounts of resources from the USA at the time when they were most desperate. of course both empires did immense jobs by themselves, but were it not for that initial help they would have not gotten too far

[DomWeasel]

We were never going to sue for peace with the Germans, it would have given us far more satisfaction to have them begging for peace. Churchill was an imperialist after all.

Don't talk about nobility when the USA put a dollar price tag on defeating the forces of fascism and genocide.

Ever looked at a map of the USSR? When Barbarossa started the Soviets moved their industrial bases beyond German range. The Soviets had already prevented defeat when Hitler failed to take Moscow before winter.

[archivesbc]

@DomWeasel remember, they couldn't finance the movement of their manufacturing military industries without the Americans. My father fought with the Red Army and says that without American equipment. The Russian military industrial complex was capable of creating the equipment, but didn't have enough raw source materials to make them. That's why you had thousands of Russian soldiers rushing the Germans with a gun without bullets.

[DomWeasel]

The Axis powers lacked the industrial base for a prolonged war (I had to study German industry for two years) that's why they over-extended themselves trying to take the Caucasus oil fields.

I never said the Soviets weren't poorly equipped at the start but by the time of 1943 when they tore the heart out of the Axis armies the entire nation was geared to fighting a war (Also had to study the Russian economy)

[DomWeasel]

Also at the end of the war, the Red Army stood at 2.2 million men and was the largest, best equipped and most experienced military force on the planet. It lacked the long range bombers of the US and Britain and thus was at a disadvantage on that front.

Oh and 12% of the Soviet air force came from the US and Britain before you get picky.

[redgeorgieredgeorgie]

@cadian14758 In a way we did thank the Americans for helping us. They just sent us a bill to repay them. We only just finished paying it off a few years ago.

[AsianCrackhead91]

lol....funny and true

[Slaphappy1975]

lol

[dadsdaisy]

You can't trust the French,they have never

forgiven us for liberating them.

[colonellemon]

So funny and true