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Jools

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The fact is that most Polish accomplishments are underrated by history because of a very uncomfortable political situation. The Brits tried to keep everything hush-hush since Poland was at war with the Soviet Union to which the allies were um... allied.

Not to mention that Soviet agents (Philby, Burgess, Mclane, Morton - high ranked government and MI-5 officers) did everything to downplay the role of the Poles...

These facts were ignored
-The largest underground army
-Pictures of massacres and concentration camps
-Documents of mass murder
-German war plans
-V-1 plans
 

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Originally posted by laelius


I looked in encyclopedia britannica about Turing.
(the bomba was the polish machine):
The Bomba depended for its success on German operating procedures, and a change in procedures in May 1940 rendered the Bomba virtually useless. During 1939 and the spring of 1940, Turing and others designed a radically different code-breaking machine known as the Bombe. Turing's ingenious Bombes kept the Allies supplied with intelligence for the remainder of the war.

If you would look into Polish encyclopedia instead of British you would certainly find a different story :D
 

Keynes

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Originally posted by sean9898

Burma and China were in the Pacific theater, and Commenwealth and Chinese troops did an enormous amount of heavy lifting.
[/B][/QUOTE]

PAcific theater, yes. But not in the Pacific OCEAN. :D

Yeah the Chinese kept lots of Japanese troops tied down and the CW had to slop through Burma. But the US did win the war in the theatre. If had been just CW and China vs. Japan the war might still be going on today.
 

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itogo

I think this sums it up:


W brytyjskim osrodku dekryptazu Bletchley Park najwieksze glowy matematyczne, w tym genialny Alan Turing, korzystajac z polskich odkryc mogly podjac - jeszcze kilka dni temu beznadziejna - walke kryptologiczna z Niemcami

loose translation:
W/o Polish help British work would not have been possible.
 

Richard Hakluyt

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Originally posted by Jan Zamojski


The title of the movie is derived from the title of the book by Jmes Jones on which it is based (as in most cases the book being much better than the movie). And the title has nothing to do with uniforms of US army. It is based on the mottos of the book. One that I can recall at the moment goes like that:"There is only thin red line between bravery and madness" which is pretty much what the book (and the movie) is all about. The other motto is from Mark Twain but I can't recall it at the moment (though it also has thin red line in it).
Thanks for that info Jan. The title still seems strange from the British perspective, but that is obviously our problem:)
 

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Originally posted by Richard Hakluyt

Thanks for that info Jan. The title still seems strange from the British perspective, but that is obviously our problem:)

Anyone know where the British version of the phrase result from a particular battle, or was it common usage? I seem to remember Waterloo sticking out in my mind, but was it in use before this
 

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Originally posted by sean9898


Anyone know where the British version of the phrase result from a particular battle, or was it common usage? I seem to remember Waterloo sticking out in my mind, but was it in use before this
Crimea.
 

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With regards Enigma, it is correct that the Poles were the first to crack Enigma enciphering, although the Enigma machine they cracked was not a military version but a diplomatic version with differed in detail from the military version. On the outbreak of war the Polish codebreakers handed their material to the French, who on the invasion of France handed it onto the British.

During the time the Polish codebreakers were at work the British at Bletchley Park had not been idle and had already made some of the same discoveries that the Polish team had, although both teams had found out information neither of the other had. The work done by both Polish and French codebreakers was to prove insufficent in cracking Enigma, the British made key breakthroughs not only in ways to speed up the cracking of the daily key, but for example, they also found an entiely new process of cracking the four rotor machines used by German u-boats and their HQ (The existing techniques proving incapable of this).

With regards the British not making good use of Polish codebreakers, this was an understandable although maybe misguided security precaution. It applied to anyone from an occupied country, including France and came about from a fear that pressure may be brought to bear on codebreakers from occupied countries by the fact that their families remained under German occupation.

The American involvement with regards Enigma was limited to providing the raw intecepts, Bombe production and there were some categories of messages that were deciphered in the US using British methods. There was no major US contribution on the methodology side of things of Enigma, or of other German codes although for Japanese codes the situation was entirely different (The US codebreakers tended to concentrate on Japanese codes).

Hope this helps.
 

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oh, and as for English actors playing villians in Hollywood movies. There is a very simple explaination! As any actor will tell you playing a villian is much tougher than playing a hero and as I am sure you will all apreciate English actors are just so much better at acting that their American cousins :)
 

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With regard to American involvment in breaking the Enigma (or at least some Americans view on that).

Some time after U-571 premiere I've spotted an aritcle in The Wall Street Journal. To be precise it was a letter to the editor printed in it's European Edition. In it an author criticised the story told in U-571 and informed the world that the real person behid breaking the Enigma code was certain American mathematician working for U.S. Army of course, who did that somwhere in 1943 or 1944. The letter pointed to a biography of that guy published at that time (sorry but I didn't bother to memorize his name). Not a word about any Brits or Poles or anybody else involved in that as far as I remember.

Hmm.. on second thought, if he did that in 1943 or 1944, perhaps he didn't know the job was alredy done. After all it was a top secret :D
 

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Originally posted by Jan Zamojski
With regard to American involvment in breaking the Enigma (or at least some Americans view on that).

Some time after U-571 premiere I've spotted an aritcle in The Wall Street Journal. To be precise it was a letter to the editor printed in it's European Edition. In it an author criticised the story told in U-571 and informed the world that the real person behid breaking the Enigma code was certain American mathematician working for U.S. Army of course, who did that somwhere in 1943 or 1944. The letter pointed to a biography of that guy published at that time (sorry but I didn't bother to memorize his name). Not a word about any Brits or Poles or anybody else involved in that as far as I remember.

Hmm.. on second thought, if he did that in 1943 or 1944, perhaps he didn't know the job was alredy done. After all it was a top secret :D

I am not sure which is funnier, Hollywood for bending historical truth or the WSJ for trying to set the record straight in such a cocked-up way.
 
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It's often supposed that the phrase "Thin Red Line" in reference to British infantry stems form Napoleonic times but it actually originated in the Crimea where British infantry in line routed a charge by Russian cavlry (something almost unheard of in pre magazine rifle warfare).
 

Ebusitanus

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Let me bring it up again...the movie "The red thin line" is a masterwork...what a photography and good dialogues. The music was great too...definetly one of my favourite war movies
 

swilhelm73

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Re: Hollywood WW2 Allies?

Originally posted by Warpup
Brits could be used as a convenient villain (a popular use of Brits in Hollywood movies). ;)

hey thanks to Political Corectness, Hollywood studio have four choices for villians:

Russians
Germans
Brits
Americans

There aren't that many good, or even known, actors from the first two groups, and well, movies with bad guy Americans tend not to do to well. You do the math... ;)
 

Dark Knight

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It's not as though American actors are incapable of portraying Russians or Germans, though; they do it all the time in fact (not necessarily well, but that's another issue :)). Also, there are plenty of movies with American bad guys, but obviously these aren't usually historical movies where British bad guys are much more common (except for WWII movies).
 

Ebusitanus

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Arabs make great villians lately too (beyond 9-11)
 
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In fairness we Brits don't ALWAYS not feature in Hollywood WW2 films. Sometimes we get to take a rest from being villainous and act as bumbling, stuck up military incompetants who are either second rate caricatured generals or well meaning working class Tommies who, lor' bless em squire, get shot due to being militarily incompetant. Or something.