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 Post subject: Re: Max Hastings
PostPosted: Thu Sep 01, 2011 1:06 pm 
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glasgowgril wrote:
The testosterone level on this thread is stunning.


Mainly Polythene.

Check out the little boys who play with warhammer.
They're typically the ones from the back of the queue when testosterone was handed out.


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 Post subject: Re: Max Hastings
PostPosted: Thu Sep 01, 2011 1:38 pm 
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Indeed. For my part, I've noticed similarities with those mid-life crisis types who invest in Harley Davidsons and leathers. Maybe I should put my Airfix stash in the 'Guilty Pleasures' thread.

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 Post subject: Re: Max Hastings
PostPosted: Thu Sep 01, 2011 1:59 pm 
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glasgowgril wrote:
The testosterone level on this thread is stunning.


:oops: :oops: :oops:

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 Post subject: Re: Max Hastings
PostPosted: Thu Sep 01, 2011 2:17 pm 
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Montgomery was an arse, but he had fought in WW1 and wanted to reduce his casualties to a minimum.

Thanks to a friend I once had lunch in Monty's caravan at the IWM. We also had a fag because he hated smoking so much...


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 Post subject: Re: Max Hastings
PostPosted: Thu Sep 01, 2011 3:14 pm 
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Malcolm Armsteen wrote:
Montgomery was an arse, but he had fought in WW1 and wanted to reduce his casualties to a minimum.



Agreed.
A point much overlooked by the Americans, p[articularly Patton and especially after D-Day was that by 1944 the British simply lacked the resources for a war of attrition. Much was made (by the Americans) of the slow progress made by the British and Canadians in Normandy, particularly the liberation of Caen. In fact the plan was always for the experienced British divisions (veterans of the desert war) to draw in and engage the the majority of the German forces to alleviate the pressure on the Americans in the West and ensure the success of Cobra. Resistance was stiffer than expected, progress was slow and led to rather childish accusations of cowardice from Patton.

The failure of Market Garden is oft cited as Montgomery over reaching himself, but it very nearly worked and if the Western Allies had crossed the Rhine in September '44 it seems very likely that they would have reached Berlin before the Russians. The biggest mistake was the failure to take account of intelligence reports of unexpected German armour in the area which could have been erroneous and, to be fair, must have seemed improbable at the time. It is easy to be clever with hindsight.

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 Post subject: Re: Max Hastings
PostPosted: Thu Sep 01, 2011 5:51 pm 
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There's a theory that by late 1944, the western allies knew that there was likely another conflict coming with the Russians. Also, by that stage, Manhattan was in full swing, and the seizure of uranium mines and stores in southern Germany was more important long-term than grabbing Berlin. Berlin, after all, was just a city - albeit the capital of the enemy and the likely last stand point. Why sacrifice men to seize a city, then have to defend it against the Russians in the near future? Better to grab the goodies and leave the Russians to take the glory prize.

Also, about Montgomery and 'cowardice' - he was a veteran of the Western Front. He hated losing men unnecessarily. He waited in north Africa until he had overwhelming advantage in the form of a massive army (of many nations, including free Fench, free Poles and so on) to twat Rommel. Market Garden was an aberration, and it showed.

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 Post subject: Re: Max Hastings
PostPosted: Thu Sep 01, 2011 6:59 pm 
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Montgomery refought the Battle of Arras in most of his successful endeavours.


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 Post subject: Re: Max Hastings
PostPosted: Tue Mar 13, 2012 10:31 am 
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The Devil dwells in all of us. And when he possesses a soldier, it's fearful to behold what can be unleashed

Hastings' argument isn't as simplistic as the headline, but he does say:
Quote:
in a theatre of war the risk is always there that an individual — or more often small group of men — will snap under stress, giving way to feral instincts. In March 2006, for instance, four American soldiers of the supposedly elite 101st Airborne Division raped and killed a 14-year-old girl at her home south of Baghdad, also murdering her parents and six-year-old sister.

I'm not sure I buy this idea that civilised behaviour is a veneer that men struggle to maintain, while just below the surface lurk "instincts" to which they're always in danger of "reverting", as if such instincts represent the essence of man and masculinity. Hastings asks the question:

Quote:
What prompts men arbitrarily to kill?

but doesn't answer it. I don't agree with this:

Quote:
On the Western allied side [in WW2], while not all hands were clean, civilians were murdered only on the initiative of maddened, drunk or brutal individuals, often seeking sex.

It's an attempt to pathologise one set of people, to separate the mad and lusty them from the sane and restrained us. But it doesn't work like that.

As usual, Hastings attracts a following of Gareths from The office:

Quote:
I've often thought that if I'd been a soldier and had the shackles of civilized restraint removed from me I could kill hundreds and even worse 'like it'. Crossing that invisible forbidden boundary of 'the first one' must be the hardest then there'd be no turning back. Luckily for my soul I never had the chance to find out

- ron, Cumbria, 13/3/2012 2:57 Rating 34

Yikes.


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 Post subject: Re: Max Hastings
PostPosted: Sat Mar 17, 2012 4:32 pm 
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Red meat? It's food to die for: As a grisly new report says eating beef is not much healthier than drinking arsenic, MAX HASTINGS reaches defiantly for the steak knives

Quote:
in contrast to the hideous human spectacles on view in Britain and America.


Time to stop looking like a cunt then Max....

Quote:
If you roast your meat, as distinct from boiling or grilling it, they say, you might as well put your affairs in order immediately.


Yeah we know you were pulling the Clarkson trick of speaking in extremes, however that is not what the report says....

Tuck into your red meat Max. No one is stopping you. Least of all me. ;)

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 Post subject: Re: Max Hastings
PostPosted: Sat Mar 17, 2012 4:40 pm 
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Typical Hastings. Reactionary garbage. If you told him that jumping off cliffs was now banned, he'd knock out 500 words on how cliff jumping made him the man he is today...

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 Post subject: Re: Max Hastings
PostPosted: Sat Mar 17, 2012 6:00 pm 
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Yes Max.... jumping off cliffs is bad for you according to new studies....

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Last edited by Big Rob on Sun Mar 18, 2012 7:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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 Post subject: Re: Max Hastings
PostPosted: Sun Mar 18, 2012 2:20 pm 
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I hate him,Iam still trying to work out how someone can write good books but write utter shit in newspapers. :o


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 Post subject: Re: Max Hastings
PostPosted: Sun Mar 18, 2012 7:38 pm 
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Because he writes to order. He's carved a niche in doing 500 word rebuttals of whatever 'trendy' opinion has come out this week. Part fogey, part reactionary for the hell of it, given weight and seriousness by his reputation. I don't know if he personally believes half of what he writes, but he knows the Mail will pay good money for it.

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 Post subject: Re: Max Hastings
PostPosted: Sun Mar 18, 2012 8:10 pm 
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This is also on the v Science thread.

As I said there, I thought depressed people ate too many beefburgers. Now it seems red meat saves you from depression.


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 Post subject: Re: Max Hastings
PostPosted: Thu Mar 22, 2012 8:44 am 
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Still hooked on spending your money

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/artic ... z1ppUZQdBh

In short: Stalin McBroon is to blame for everything.
Quote:
For all the ministers' rhetoric, the Opposition and some sections of the media (particularly the BBC), it is absurd to talk about 'savage' or 'meaningful' cuts. The public purse lavishes hundreds of billions more than taxpayers can afford on state salaries, budgets, entitlements, giveaways and idiotic projects.


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