Australians' WW2 efforts on film

[Old Koreelah]

Japan can rightly claim to have been forced into war with America- if we ignore their appalling invasion of China.

 

Their attempt to expand north into Siberia was beaten by Zhukov’ Red Army; some Japanese units refused to surrender and were slaughtered to a man. 

[Bruce Tuncks]

Those Japanese militarists were bad guys for sure. And Macarthur, for all his faults, did some good stuff and the alliance we have to this day with Japan is largely his legacy.

Macarthur was responsible for "winning" the Korean war with his daring attack on the north Korean capital.

[Bruce Tuncks]

I reckon the yanks were the only big army in history that really cared about the lives of their own troops. This makes them better than the poms and our lot.

[facthunter]

The Korean war hasn't ended.   Nev

[Old Koreelah]

16 hours ago, Bruce Tuncks said:

Macarthur was responsible for "winning" the Korean war with his daring attack on the north Korean capital.

MacArthur was also responsible for that war expanding to include China. 

https://koreanwarlegacy.org/chapters/north-toward-the-yalu-river/

[facthunter]

If you study all of that you will get a glimpse of why North Korea and China have armed themselves to the extent they have.  Nev.

[Bruce Tuncks]

You guys are probably right, but I still reckon that the way Germany was treated after WW1 caused Hitler to get in and Macarthur learned well from that, as witness the Japanese to this day.

I will study the stuff though. But were we not allies of the Chinese? There was the "himalayas " air route to china for example.

[spacesailor]

Allies 

To China & Russia. 

Now, it seems,  They are the bad guys .

spacesailor

[Marty_d]

Go back 78 years and the Germans and Japanese were the bad guys. In the 80's the Taliban were the good guys. The role changes pretty often.

[Old Koreelah]

43 minutes ago, Marty_d said:

Go back 78 years and the Germans and Japanese were the bad guys.

For most of the time since it opened to the world, Japan has been our ally.

Britain’s policy down the centuries has been to shift alliances to prevent any single European nation from getting too powerful. The Germans helped Britain defeat Bonaparte. The Turks helped them rein in the Russians. 

 

43 minutes ago, Marty_d said:

In the 80's the Taliban were the good guys… 

Those primitive bastards were never good. Reagan helped their fathers, the noxious Mujahadeen, to defeat a secular, modernist government in Afhganistan.

[Marty_d]

It was tongue-in-cheek OK, my point being that "good guys" and "bad guys" are arbitrary labels applied by the most powerful western democracy of the day.

[Bruce Tuncks]

I'm with old K on this one... there is a pic of a young man, about to be executed by the taliban, which haunts me. The caption read" communist schoolteacher " which could mean anything at all.

They were once called "the northern alliance" and they were given thousands of stinger missiles which they used against the russian helicopters to great effect.