1940-41 War comes to England
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=iRy-8-WkjyQ

And this for just one day during the Battle of Britain:

One day in the sky of britain 1940:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=zPFHX1QFF1g

To put this dreadful history into better perspective, Britain’s population in 1940 was c. 40 million, almost exactly half that of Germany plus Austria at 79 million.

In round numbers, RAF fighter pilot losses during the Battle of Britain were just under 600, approximately a quarter of the Luftwaffe aircrew losses during the battle.

All told during the war 1939-45, civilian losses in Britain from air raids were just over 60,000. About 65,000 aircrew were lost in RAF Bomber Command during the war as a result of bombing raids over mainland Europe but then that was about equal to German civilian losses in Hamburg alone from the 1000 bomber raids during the summer months of 1943.

Or was it the resistance to Communist led movements in South and Central America that you find “militaristic?”

He was shortly replaced as ambassador thereafter.

Listen to one of the Americans, Ed Murrow, who stayed behind in London to report on the course of the war in Europe – the link includes records of CBS broadcasts by Murrow as bombers were flying overhead:
http://www.otr.com/murrow.shtml

Pilots who came to Britain from overseas to fly fighters in the Battle of Britain:

Australia (32 pilots), Barbados (1), Belgium (28), Canada (112), Czechoslovakia (88), France (13), Ireland (10), Jamaica (1), Newfoundland (now a province of Canada) (1), New Zealand (127), Poland (145), Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) (3), South Africa (25), and the US (9).

“My own impression in Washington at that moment was that it might be difficult for President Roosevelt to get Congress to declare war on Germany. There seemed to be a strong feeling in both Houses as well as in the Army and Navy that the country ought to concentrate its efforts on defeating Japan and not take on the additional burden of fighting Germany at the same time.”

Britain had declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939. Germany declared war on America on 11 December 1941.

Iterrogated by the Soviets after WW2 Europe had ended, Von Rundstedt – CinC West in the German high command – was asked which was the decisive battle of the war. He responded, the Battle of Britain in the summer of 1940 and he was right. Had that battle for air supremacy over southern England been lost in 1940 or had Britain sued for peace – as Hitler believed – there could have been no Normandy invasion in June 1944.

For a four part TV doc on the Battle of Britain, try: Spitfire Ace 1 of 4
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3742264430725368338

Btw the Soviets signed a friendship treaty with Nazi Germany on the 28 September 1939 when Britain and France were already at war. [Norman Davies: Europe (OUP, 1996) p.1000].

The Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941 came as a complete surprise to Stalin – despite warnings from incoming intelligence from Soviet agents which he dismissed as “misinformation”.

I’m confused. Are you trying to infer by labeling “the good war” a “founding myth” that the Allied efforts in whole or in part were somehow unscrupulous/illegitimate and therefore a poisoned well from which to draw valid precedents upon which to act in the future? And exactly what sort of “militarism” displayed by America or Britain during the cold war did/do you object? The part about forming and arming NATO to reject the Soviets and basing US troops in Europe? The role America played in the Cuban missile crises? Or are all of your questions about the legitimacy of America’s actions wrapped up in the war in Vietnam? Or was it the resistance to Communist led movements in South and Central America that you find “militaristic?” Or do you see other examples of American “militarism” rooted in the “founding myth?”—like our present-day entanglements in the Middle East perhaps? And what metrics do you use to describe/measure “militarism?” Seems like a pretty broad label tossed around pretty casually to me….Just askin’, that’s all……

In September 1941, Charles Linbergh delivered this speech at Des Moines, Iowa:

” . . The three most important groups who have been pressing this country [America] toward war are the British, the Jewish and the Roosevelt administration. . .”
http://www.charleslindbergh.com/americanfirst/speech.asp

NS

So your suggestion is correct then, it is Christmas 1940?

Honestly, and don’t take this the wrong way, I feel a lot more ambivalent about WWII propaganda than I used to. Post-Iraq I feel much more aware of the ways in which the “good war” served as a kind of founding myth to justify militarism during the Cold War and after. That may be more a U.S. than a British issue.

And the visual tube station-stable analogy got to me.

But even with the stagey language and the set up children playing their war games, it works for me, too. As it should, probably. And it does connect to real experience – a bit of googling got me this, which is a real child’s memory of the raid which blew her house up around December 23rd, 1940.

“…and the ARP man carried me along the front garden wall and hedgerow to a brick airraid shelter. It was a terrifying experience I remember – the sky was all orange and red, with flashing searchlights, gunfire and incendiary bombs falling all round us.”

The 1941 date was provided by the BFI, and I guess it reflects their archiving conventions.