Theos-Talk Archives (June 1997 Message tl00424)

In a message dated 97-06-16 23:10:49 EDT, Alan wrote:

> You sent a long post, Lynn, so I shall try and respond to it in parts,
>  as here.  I don't know how many of the German people under the Nazis
>  were armed, but my guess is not all of them by any means.  The fact that
>  is often forgotten in general discussions re Nazis was that the Nazi
>  party in pre-WWII Germany was fairly and democratically elected.

Oh, I agree with you all the way on this. It's been quite a few years since I
read the early chapters of "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich", but the
democratic election of the Nazi party does coincide with my sieve-like
memory. They did some nasty things like the Reichstag fire, etc. in their
rise to and consolidation of power, but they were indeed elected.
>
>  As for king George, well he was crazy.  Whether or not the colonialists
>  in what became the US were armed, he had not a hope in hell of waging a
>  successful campaign from such a vast distance.  Sending fresh ammo some
>  3000 miles by sailing ships would not have worked too well ...

Those would have been looooooong supply lines, even today. ;-D
>
>  As an aside, one of the lesser known dangers in England during WWII was
>  shrapnel falling out of the sky during air raids.  We kids used to try
>  to collect it after air raids - a BIG piece was highly prized.  I found
>  a real good lump one day, only it was still very hot, and I burned my
>  hand.  People were occasionally killed by the stuff making holes in them
>  on its way to earth.
>
>  Alan :-)

I'm truly glad that you weren't one of them!! When I was working for NATO,
the British technician I worked with told me similar stories about the air
raids, including the terrifying whistle of incoming V2 rockets, the balloons
used to confound enemy bombers, etc. To this day, I look upon those who
survived the London Blitz without a permanent case of post-traumatic stress
disorder as a truly hardy group of people. (One of my favorite movies, BTW,
is about WWII from the viewpoint of children living in London during the
blitz and the Lake area where the main characters went to escape it. Your
experience with collecting shrapnel sounds incredibly like the types of
things the kids did in the movie. I think the movie was called "Hope and
Glory". That sieve-like memory again!!)

Lynn