Chaos Magnet

Now THAT was a war

With all of this talk about Iraq, it's interesting to go back and listen to the real radio broadcasts of World War II. And I'm not just talking about broadcasts you've heard a gazillion times in retrospectives. I'm talking about weekly "world news updates" -- sponsored by Admiral radios, which regrets that because of defense orders, they can't make consumer radios until the war is won, but see your Admiral dealer to keep your radio in tip-top shape for the duration, no matter what brand it is -- in addition to British news, and perhaps the most interesting, English-language German propoganda broadcasts.

But what's really interesting to me is the scale of things. We have, what 125,000 troops in Iraq? The D-Day invasion involved 4 and a half MILLION allied troops. The war touched every part of American life, right on down to (unless I didn't hear it correctly) the edict that all able-bodied men between 20 and 45 were to receive military training. And factories taken over by the defense department because they weren't producing material fast enough.

The complete broadcast is 60 hours, and covers the whole war chronologically. I recommend trying to catch the early war, when the Axis was winning. It's quite a perspective changer. Especially the Germans saying that the fact that they were so technologically advanced that they conquered France in 6 weeks should tell the British they couldn't possibly stand up to Germany. And we all know how that ended.

Interesting lessons history teaches, if we pay attention.

Technorati tags: war | Iraq | Germany | United States | WWII | World War II | radio |

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