The Night Mail

[Willie Whizz]

I have a great deal of sympathy for the suffering of Poland and its people during WWII, but it is difficult to see any practical way Britain could have “come to Poland’s rescue” in 1939. 
 

The Navy could not have penetrated the Baltic; the Army had been run down for years and was very much the “junior partner” to the French; and the Air Force was held back because of fears that whatever it did to Germany would be repaid many times over.   
 

The real failing was not going to the aid of Czechoslovakia in 1938; that country had a large quite modern army and a good armaments industry - all of which ended up in German hands after the  Munich agreement, acting as a ‘force multiplier’ for little cost. 

Edited August 4 by Willie Whizz

[Happy Hippo]

2 minutes ago, Willie Whizz said:

The real failing was not going to the aid of Czechoslovakia in 1938; that country had a large quite modern army and a good armaments industry - all of which ended up in German hands after the  Munich agreement. 

That failing to aid also holds true for all the other European countries who either turned a blind eye or were more than happy to appease Hitler.

 

Perhaps this is a reason for the support that Ukraine is getting today?

[jjb1970]

Powers are powers and act as such. I am not sure morality or concern for the plight of ordinary people has ever played much of a role in international relations except where it provides a useful justification in support of geopolitical decisions made for more pragmatic reasons such as preserving a balance of power or extending influence. 

[SM42]

17 minutes ago, Willie Whizz said:

I have a great deal of sympathy for the suffering of Poland and its people during WWII, but it is difficult to see any practical way Britain could have “come to Poland’s rescue” in 1939. 
 

The Navy could not have penetrated the Baltic; the Army had been run down for years and was very much the “junior partner” to the French; and the Air Force was held back because of fears that whatever it did to Germany would be repaid many times over.   
 

The real failing was not going to the aid of Czechoslovakia in 1938; that country had a large quite modern army and a good armaments industry - all of which ended up in German hands after the  Munich agreement, acting as a ‘force multiplier’ for little cost. 

 

True, Britain was in no position to fight a war in 1939 but still did try, with France, to honour the pact with Poland.

 

Let's not forget who declared war on who.

 

The efforts in France with assistance from an assortment of soldiers from across occupied Europe is often overshadowed in history by the evacuation  from  Dunkirk

 

The ultimate betrayal of Poland by Britain, IMO, came in 1945 with the acceptance of the Lublin Committee as the rightful government and the snubbing of the government in exile and the Polish armed forces that gave so much " for your freedom and ours"

 

Andy

[SM42]

I have a running out of storage memory message on my phone. 

 

I've been through the recycle bin and deleted the contents. 

 

I now have less storaged memory left than before I did this. 

 

How does that work?

 

Andy

Confused  by technology 

[rockershovel]

34 minutes ago, SM42 said:

 

True, Britain was in no position to fight a war in 1939 but still did try, with France, to honour the pact with Poland.

 

Let's not forget who declared war on who.

 

The efforts in France with assistance from an assortment of soldiers from across occupied Europe is often overshadowed in history by the evacuation  from  Dunkirk

 

The ultimate betrayal of Poland by Britain, IMO, came in 1945 with the acceptance of the Lublin Committee as the rightful government and the snubbing of the government in exile and the Polish armed forces that gave so much " for your freedom and ours"

 

Andy

Britain did nothing useful for Poland in 1939 because it was in no position to do so; declaring war on their behalf was an egregious folly which still haunts us. 

 

I don't believe if would have been possible to wage an aggressive war against Germany in 1939/40 because (a) the electorate would not have supported it (b) the Army were nowhere near equipped or trained for it (c) the French could not be trusted to play their part. 

 

My parents were of the opinion that declaring war on behalf of Poland was a means of circumventing the political and electoral impossibility of entering the war on behalf of France. 

 

Britain did nothing useful for Poland in 1945 because again, they had no means of doing so. They DID undertake a highly risky manoeuvre by which Denmark was kept under Western control. 

 

[PhilJ W]

2 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

This is the coupling on a Japanese C56, it looks like something off an old HO model.......

 

 

It's a chopper coupling, quite commonly used on narrow gauge throughout the world from Victorian times. It was also reproduced in scales as small as HO and with a tongue underneath to work in similar fashion to the hook and bar coupling on British 00. An automatic coupling that is also realistic.

[Willie Whizz]

Although the “writing was on the wall” as early as 1934, Britain and France didn’t seriously overcome public opinion and other priorities to begin rearmament until c.1936-37, with a broad target of being ready to fight by 1942. Hitler, no fool, didn’t wait, even though his own armed forces were still themselves rearming (and Germanys economy was starting to creak). 
 

iIt is not difficult to see potential parallels today. 
 

 

Edited August 4 by Willie Whizz

[PhilJ W]

1 hour ago, Willie Whizz said:

The real failing was not going to the aid of Czechoslovakia in 1938; that country had a large quite modern army and a good armaments industry - all of which ended up in German hands after the  Munich agreement, acting as a ‘force multiplier’ for little cost. 

Hitler exploited the fear of another war, don't forget that the Great War was a very recent memory. It also gave time for Britain and France to re-arm, something that was still a work in progress in September 1939. After Dunkirk there was talk of coming to an agreement with Hitler but Chamberlain was a very sick man (he died in November 1940), he resigned and then Churchill took over and the rest is history.  

Czechoslovakia was a democracy, the only one left in central Europe whereas Poland was a right wing military dictatorship. This may have influenced the (then Labour) government in 1945 to let Stalin take over. The democratic Czechoslovakian government was placed back in power in 1945 but by political assassination and the western allies reluctance to intervene Stalin was able to take over.

 https://english.radio.cz/may-1945-czechoslovakia-a-crossroads-8782161

[jjb1970]

1 hour ago, SM42 said:

 

True, Britain was in no position to fight a war in 1939 but still did try, with France, to honour the pact with Poland.

 

Let's not forget who declared war on who.

 

The efforts in France with assistance from an assortment of soldiers from across occupied Europe is often overshadowed in history by the evacuation  from  Dunkirk

 

The ultimate betrayal of Poland by Britain, IMO, came in 1945 with the acceptance of the Lublin Committee as the rightful government and the snubbing of the government in exile and the Polish armed forces that gave so much " for your freedom and ours"

 

Andy

 

The C56 loco I shared on the previous page highlights the selective memory and capricious behaviour of powers after WW2. The locomotive was used on the Burma railway, it is preserved in Yasakuni Jinja, the (in)famous shrine to Japanese war dead which is a rather controversial place but well worth visiting IMO.

 

We remember the dreadful plight of Allied PoWs forced to work on the Death Railway, it tends to be ignored that the vast majority of those who suffered and died building the line were Asian civilian slave labourers. After the line was finished they were put in rest camps (concentration camps) in which conditions and mortality rates were similar to the n*zi death camps. Now the real killer, after Japan surrendered,  Allied PoWs were repatriated (well, the survivors) while the civilians were left in the camps for up to another two years. Those people were in many cases European colonial subjects (we were responsible for them) yet we and the other Victor's left many to die after the end of the war.

 

I am a Japanophile or whatever the correct term is and have no ill will to Japan. I'm also a Sinophile but really don't like the grudge bearing thing towards Japan,  ditto for Korea and much of Asia.  However I do get why what happened in those years and the role of European colonial powers left a bad smell which still lingers.

 

There are lots of examples. Both the French and Americans abandoned those in Indochina and Vietnam who fought for them. The French also abandoned their own soldiers attached to montagnard tribes, I don't think anyone in the French regime was so naive or ignorant not to understand what telling them to make their own way south meant. We abandoned Burmese tribes which fought with us against the Japanese.

 

And it's not just ancient history.  I think getting out of Afghanistan should have happened long before it did,  but the way we did it, shafting Afghans who had fought for us, served as interpreters etc was awful IMO.

Edited August 4 by jjb1970

[jamie92208]

1 hour ago, rockershovel said:

Britain did nothing useful for Poland in 1939 because it was in no position to do so; declaring war on their behalf was an egregious folly which still haunts us. 

 

I don't believe if would have been possible to wage an aggressive war against Germany in 1939/40 because (a) the electorate would not have supported it (b) the Army were nowhere near equipped or trained for it (c) the French could not be trusted to play their part. 

 

My parents were of the opinion that declaring war on behalf of Poland was a means of circumventing the political and electoral impossibility of entering the war on behalf of France. 

 

Britain did nothing useful for Poland in 1945 because again, they had no means of doing so. They DID undertake a highly risky manoeuvre by which Denmark was kept under Western control. 

 

There were other manoeuvres on the Italian Yugoslav border that stopped the Russians taking Trieste where American and British troops were turned round and put on alert on Trueman's orders to stop the Russians. Believe that Churchill had already done something similar in Greece to stop a communist takeover. 

 

Jamie

 

 

[jjb1970]

This is a part of the history of WW2 we tend to ignore, but which left a legacy in Asia:

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sook_Ching

 

 

[jjb1970]

2 minutes ago, jamie92208 said:

There were other manoeuvres on the Italian Yugoslav border that stopped the Russians taking Trieste where American and British troops were turned round and put on alert on Trueman's orders to stop the Russians. Believe that Churchill had already done something similar in Greece to stop a communist takeover. 

 

Jamie

 

 

 

The western powers were pretty active suppressing Communist elements in Europe after 1945, in Greece it led to a civil war. With cold War politics it's easy to see why, but in many cases the Communists had been the most effective elements of anti-german resistance. 

[Winslow Boy]

6 hours ago, SM42 said:

I have a running out of storage memory message on my phone. 

 

I've been through the recycle bin and deleted the contents. 

 

I now have less storaged memory left than before I did this. 

 

How does that work?

 

Andy

Confused  by technology 

It's because each time you do an update it takes up more memory. Eventually you end up buying a new phone.

 

I think it's a conspiracy by the phone makers and the software providers to make you junk your old stuff and keep them employed. All done in the name of providing you with a better quality of life.

Edited August 4 by Winslow Boy

[Happy Hippo]

If you mix up coal dust and gorilla glue when you are trying to make up loads for the mineral wagons in your collection, it will stick to your fingers so well, that you need a cellulose thinners dip to loosen it up prior to scrubbing it off.

 

Next time, I'll wear some examination gloves.

 

The paxolin plate has now been levelled on the end of the colliery sidings outlet, glued in place and the screws inserted and tightened down.

 

The rails have been trimmed to length, and I'll align them, then solder them up tomorrow morning, before Gordon arrives for an ad hoc Tryne Klubb session.

 

 

[Tony_S]

8 hours ago, SM42 said:

I have a running out of storage memory message on my phone. 

 

I've been through the recycle bin and deleted the contents. 

 

I now have less storaged memory left than before I did this. 

 

How does that work?

 

Andy

Confused  by technology 

Is it an iPhone?

[rockershovel]

7 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

 

The western powers were pretty active suppressing Communist elements in Europe after 1945, in Greece it led to a civil war. With cold War politics it's easy to see why, but in many cases the Communists had been the most effective elements of anti-german resistance. 

See Evelyn Waugh's Sword of Honour trilogy regarding Communist partisan activities in Yugoslavia. 

 

No Empire prepares effectively for its passing, and the British Empire was no exception. Canada started the ball rolling by restricting access in 1946. No effective, coherent definition of British nationality existed in 1945; British rule in India rapidly collapsed and the subsequent 1948 Nationalities Act was an electoral disaster for Labour. 

 

In 1956 the Suez affair marked the end of the Empire. We fought a counter-insurgency in Malaya in the 1960s, to no useful purpose to the Nation. 

 

The French, Portuguese and Spanish fought protracted colonial holding actions in Africa and the Far East,  without success. The Dutch simply abandoned any attempt to hold their Asian possessions. We know the outcome of American attempts to prolong the war in Viet Nam. 

 

There was nothing we could have done East of Suez, and no value to try. 

 

 

[SM42]

4 hours ago, Winslow Boy said:

It's because each time you do an update it takes up more memory. Eventually you end up buying a new phone.

 

I think it's a conspiracy by the phone makers and the software providers to make you junk your old stuff and keep them employed. All done in the name of providing you with a better quality of life.

 

But I've deleted stuff, not added. 

 

Still confused

 

I believe updating sat navs starts a clock running for some part to fail. 

 

My last was the on off switch, previous the screen. 

 

A friend had had his 15 years, no update, still going.

Drives through lot of fields on it but that's why they put up road signs. 

 

Andy

[SM42]

2 hours ago, Tony_S said:

Is it an iPhone?

 

No.

 

Andy

[Tony_S]

27 minutes ago, SM42 said:

 

No.

 

Andy

Aditi’s previous android tablet did exactly as you described. It started running out of storage so she deleted stuff that didn’t release space. She bought a new one.
The reason I asked if it was an iPhone was because I had a similar fault also with a sim equipped iPad. It was something to with how it was syncing with cloud backups. 

[Winslow Boy]

2 hours ago, SM42 said:

 

But I've deleted stuff, not added. 

 

Still confused

 

I believe updating sat navs starts a clock running for some part to fail. 

 

My last was the on off switch, previous the screen. 

 

A friend had had his 15 years, no update, still going.

Drives through lot of fields on it but that's why they put up road signs. 

 

Andy

Argh you see you've fallen for the classic just because you can't see it, it doesn't mean it still isn't there. When you delete something it doesn't just disappear into thin air. It's like burning wood. Just because the original piece of wood is gone, doesn't mean it isn't still there. It's just been converted into other things.

 

That's why when you get rid of your phone, computer, laptop, tablet, watch etc etc you need to physically destroy it otherwise you'll be getting enquiries from Nigerian princes about holding onto there investments for them.

[SM42]

18 minutes ago, Winslow Boy said:

Argh you see you've fallen for the classic just because you can't see it, it doesn't mean it still isn't there. When you delete something it doesn't just disappear into thin air. It's like burning wood. Just because the original piece of wood is gone, doesn't mean it isn't still there. It's just been converted into other things.

 

That's why when you get rid of your phone, computer, laptop, tablet, watch etc etc you need to physically destroy it otherwise you'll be getting enquiries from Nigerian princes about holding onto there investments for them.

 

It worked last time. 

 

Double delete some stuff that has been saved elsewhere and hey presto, more space. 

 

Also deleted the recipes Mrs SM42 keeps sending me so she " doesn't lose them on the internet"

 

Too late my dear.

 

Don't think I need my pre travel covid test result from 2020 either

 

I'll see what happens with the next clear out.  

 

Andy

[AndyID]

Crivvens! My network file sever has crepped out. I use it both for backup and so that I can access files when I'm on the PC in the office or one in my shed. It's an old PC running Truenas and it has been running non-stop for four years so I'm not surprised it's conking out. I was getting a bit suspicious of it recently and I don't think I've lost anything.

 

A replacement has been ordered which has two drives and comes preconfigured with RAID for a total of 2 terabytes which is plenty for my needs.

[J. S. Bach]

Night Owl from the Piedmont.

[jjb1970]

5 hours ago, rockershovel said:

We fought a counter-insurgency in Malaya in the 1960s, to no useful purpose to the Nation. 

 

The French, Portuguese and Spanish fought protracted colonial holding actions in Africa and the Far East,  without success. The Dutch simply abandoned any attempt to hold their Asian possessions. We know the outcome of American attempts to prolong the war in Viet Nam. 

 

The Malay emergency (war) was declared over in 1960 and was one of the few successful anti-communist counter-insurgency campaigns. The British liked to see it as the result of superior counter-insurgency operations but the real differences between  Malaya and Indochina/Vietnam,  Algeria, Indonesia etc were that Britain supported a viable local force, that local force fought with us on the basis of gaining independence and the ethno-polirics of Malaya. The struggle may have been about political ideology on one side, to the Malays it was more about alien Chinese power and influence in their future country. Malaysia still retains the bumiputera system which is essentially institutionalised discrimination against the ethnic Chinese.

 

The Dutch fought a vicious war in Indonesia which ended up in a sort of stalemate with the colonial regime holding the big cities and the independence movement controlling most of the country. The Dutch launched punitive expeditions into the hinterland but lacked the power to reclaim it while the Indonesians lacked the power to defeat the Dutch in conventional battles to take cities like Batavia/Jakarta. Eventually the Dutch had their own Suez moment when the US told them they could get US aid and support at home or they could try and keep their Asian empire. The Dutch had a significant advantage over France in that unlike the Vietnamese independence forces Indonesia didn't have a land border with China to aid delivery of arms and supplies, provide safe training areas and bases.