Wars and ConflictsΒ permalink
Anglophobes in US Military Circa 40's
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Message 1.Β
Posted by kansasredlegs (U13976954) on Wednesday, 20th May 2009
I recently finished Rick Atkinson's book Day of Battle. One thing that stood out to me me was the rampant dislike for the English by some of the US Brass. Was this a one sided issue or did the English offices have their own version?
From A curious Yank -
Message 2
Posted by JB on a slippery slope to the thin end ofdabiscuit (U13805036) on Thursday, 21st May 2009
It was by no means common, but there were some notable Anglophobes. Sometimes it would be an ethnic issue for the Irish-Americans, sometimes a memory of the attitude in 1917 to Pershing's Army which the British High Command wanted to place under their direction, and sometimes it seems like stright national Chauvinism.
The worst example was Admiral Lesley King who commanded the Atlantic Fleet.
The British attitude was more likely to be a rather patronising assumption that Americans were what was known in those times as "British Stock" who would think of Britain as a wise elder to be heeded. Pershing's refusal to take the hard-won advice of heavy losses led to his troops entering the Western Front using 1914 tactics that cost them dearly.
The resentment that led to the jibe that the US Army was 'Overpaid, Oversexed and Over Here' was partly due to the absence of most British fighting men in North Africa, and partly to the relatively high pay of the NCOs and private soldiers whose pay was much closer to that of officers than in the British military.
The US Military produced a guide book for their servicemen arriving in Britain in 1942 which has been reprinted and is available today. As an exercise in politeness and respect, the advice it offers cannot be faulted. -
Message 3
Posted by Erik Lindsay (U231970) on Thursday, 21st May 2009
I believe if you check your history you'll find that the Admiral in command of all American naval elements was Ernest J. King, and he was definitely an Anglophobe. He refused to accept any advice from the British re convoying American merchant ships and/or darkening the eastern coast because all US vessels (and UK ones), were silhouetted against the lit coastline, making great targets.
Merchant navy officers (not to mention the British naval advisors in Washington) finally got fed up with his pig-headed attitude and began to harangue Roosevelt to do something about it, and he did.
The comment that Americans were ''over-sexed, over-paid, and over here'' was a line offered in a stage show in Britain by some half-baked English comic who thought he was being hilarious. Let me assure you that the Americans didn't think it was funny, because most of them didn't really want to be ''over here'' Γ‘ nor were Canadians amused, since it also applied to them -- they were over-paid compared to UK troops, and were also in a country they would have been happy to leave and go home.
A lot of Canadians had an Anglophobic streak as well because of the treatment often meted out to them by their UK superiors, many of whom treated them like half-educated colonials. -
Message 4
Posted by U3280211 (U3280211) on Thursday, 21st May 2009
Well, at the top of the greasy pole, Stalin found it easy to play Roosevelt against Churchill at Tehran, and again at Yalta.
At the coal face of war, there was no love lost between Eisenhower and Montgomery at Potsdam where Eisenhower did all he could to side with Zhukov while Montgomery was left to play on his own. -
Message 5
Posted by JB on a slippery slope to the thin end ofdabiscuit (U13805036) on Friday, 22nd May 2009
Nothing wrong with eth sources, it's the brain that's going. King was brought back to forntline service by his old friend Navy Secretary Betty Stark, and was far from unique in refusing to take advice from Non-American sources which is pretty much a universal trait among the products of the US Officer Academies then and now. As Churchill observed, 'Americans always do the right thing after they have exhausted every other possibility.'
Te response to the Overpaide etc jibe was that the British military were underpaid, undersexed and under Eisenhower. Goebbels missed a trick in not making more of it since it was such a touchy subject in 1942-43.
The Eighth Air Force were mostly Mid-Western farm boys, very polite and well-mannered. They came from an environment where for over a century there had been a shortage of marriageable females and so their manners were in marked contrast to many British young men who had grown up in a society with a surplus of spinsters thanks to the Great War. Their behaviour was in the main exemplary.
The senitive issue they brought with them was segregation and the attitudes that went with it. The British military operated a subtle form of apartheid, consigning West Indian volunteers to menial duties and dirty jobs as a matter of course. There was a rule that Officers in all three services had to be of 'British Stock', but this was never zealously enforced leaving space for Indian fighter pilots and the likes of Major Chaim Herzog, future President of Israel.
The USAAF often segregated entire English towns to avoid the frictions that occured mostly when the locals refused to serve whites first, especially when they committed the grave sin of jumping a queue. -
Message 6
Posted by LairigGhru (U5452625) on Friday, 22nd May 2009
Towards the end of the 1963 film 'The Victors', there is a wonderful vignette featuring George Peppard (the GI) and Mervyn Johns (the friendly, working-class, English family-man). The scene starts with Peppard standing in a terraced street in the pouring rain waiting for a bus that, Johns informs him, is not due to come for another two hours. With much initial reluctance, the GI is persuaded to enter the humble home and wait for the bus there. He is given refreshments and an armchair by the fire. Next thing, Johns returns to awaken him from his much-needed slumber, hands him his coat and hat and kindly urges him to go at once for his bus. Johns' family wish the GI goodbye and he takes his seat on the bus. As it drives away, he pulls out his packet of cigarettes and discovers a 10 shilling note that has been pushed into it! The whole scene is delightfully acted out and it stands as a monument to Anglo-American friendship.
The scene is not too fanciful and I'm sure such things happened quite a lot. Most English people were grateful and relieved that the Americans had come to help them win the war. -
Message 7
Posted by U3280211 (U3280211) on Friday, 22nd May 2009
Most English people were grateful and relieved that the Americans had come to help them win the war.Β
But was the view around Glen Dee and Blair Atholl, Lairig? -
Message 8
Posted by LairigGhru (U5452625) on Friday, 22nd May 2009
Ought I to have used the word "British" rather than "English"? Or have you some deeper point to make?
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Message 9
Posted by U3280211 (U3280211) on Sunday, 24th May 2009
I wondered whether you were implying that the Scots had a subtly different attitude to the American arrivals than the English.
You know the sort of thing, like the W.B. Yeats poem about the Irish Airman
...Those that I fight I do not hate
Those that I guard I do not love;...Β
In other words, in the same fight, but seeing things differently? -
Message 10
Posted by LairigGhru (U5452625) on Sunday, 24th May 2009
No, you have read something completely unintended into what I wrote. In future I'd better think very carefully before using the word "English" - but this seems a shame.
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Message 11
Posted by Spruggles (U13892773) on Sunday, 24th May 2009
Yes ... but unfortunately it's fiction. It may perhaps reflect Anglo-American relationship at the time but it might just also reflect the latent desire of the author and have little relevance to the real feelings of the British. My uncle, a Red-cap when the Americans started to invade us was ambiguous in his appraisal. He said that together they were loud and forceful with their opinions(and too often right)but individually some of them were pleasant, quietly spoken and polite.(just like we Anglo-Saxons really!)
My Uncle later went on to fight with the partisans in Yugoslavia and I have a notebook full of his observations about them too. -
Message 12
Posted by U3280211 (U3280211) on Sunday, 24th May 2009
LairigGhru.
Thanks for the clarification.
In future I'd better think very carefully before using the word "English" - but this seems a shame.Β
Don't do that on my account, I simply over-interpreted a noun. -
Message 13
Posted by Vizzer aka U_numbers (U2011621) on Monday, 25th May 2009
Very good posts JB (Message 2 and Message 5).
Also - I remember hearing a saying or a quote from the time which went something like:
"The British are willing to fight this war to the very last ... American."
or
"Churchill is willing to fight this war to the very last drop of (American) blood."
Does anyone know the exact wording of the saying or where it originated from? -
Message 14
Posted by Spruggles (U13892773) on Monday, 25th May 2009
The quote
I doubt very much if you will discover the generic form of this. I have heard various combinations. 'The Americans ... Italian ... Russian .... to the last drop of Scotish ... French ... Jewish blood etc etc. -
Message 15
Posted by LongWeekend (U3023428) on Monday, 25th May 2009
Vizzer
It was a staple of Nazi propaganda from the word go, and was applied however was appropriate. During the Phoney War, it was "The British are prepared to fight to the last drop of French blood" and vice versa.
In the Anglo-American context, it was first applied before US troops entered combat "The USA/Roosevelt will fight to the last drop of British blood" (following up the line that the war was being fought for US/Zionist/Capitalist conspiracy purposes) and then reversed in Italy (on the line that the war was not really the USA's fight, and they had been conned by the UK/Zionist/Capitalist conspiracy).
W B Yeats was trying to reconcile his Irish nationalism with the fact that there were brave and no less patriotic Irishmen in the British forces. I don't think any of them fought from complete disinterest in the British cause.
On the subject of propaganda in general, the USAAF appointed Yeats to their Bombing Survey after the war, possibly in the knowledge that he would do his best to criticise the RAF's "area bombing" against their "precision bombing". -
Message 16
Posted by Mikestone8 (U13249270) on Wednesday, 27th May 2009
resentment that led to the jibe that the US Army was 'Overpaid, Oversexed and Over Here' Β
Led to a rejoinder that the British were "Underpaid, undersexed and under Eisenhower". -
Message 17
Posted by White Camry (U2321601) on Wednesday, 27th May 2009
U3280211
there was no love lost between Eisenhower and Montgomery at Potsdam where Eisenhower did all he could to side with Zhukov while Montgomery was left to play on his own.Β
Where'd you read that either of them ever set foot in Potsdam? -
Message 18
Posted by U3280211 (U3280211) on Thursday, 28th May 2009
Where'd you read that either of them ever set foot in Potsdam?Β
Where'd you read that they didn't? -
Message 19
Posted by White Camry (U2321601) on Friday, 29th May 2009
U3280211
Where'd you read that they didn't?Β
If they had visited Potsdam it would have been well-documented. -
Message 20
Posted by colonelblimp (U1705702) on Friday, 29th May 2009
I recently finished Rick Atkinson's book Day of Battle. One thing that stood out to me me was the rampant dislike for the English by some of the US Brass. Was this a one sided issue or did the English offices have their own version?Β
Indeed they did. Alexander, for one, was apparently very critical of the US Army: for example, he remarked of Eisenhower and Patton "they are not professional soldiers, not as we understand that term". He should perhaps have considered that the Germans could justly have said the same thing about the British Army, considering that it took some 3 years of war before (with the benefit of overwhelming material superiority, largely provided by US largesse) it succeeded in winning its first real victory against them by defeating a relatively small German force in North Africa. Montgomery, of course, was critical of almost everybody: he didn't single out Americans! -
Message 21
Posted by U3280211 (U3280211) on Sunday, 31st May 2009
White Camry (19)
If they had visited Potsdam it would have been well-documentedΒ
OK. Are you saying that you have searched the relevant documents?
Have you actually done any research on the topic?
For example, what sources have you checked to demonstrate that Eisenhower was not there? -
Message 22
Posted by JB on a slippery slope to the thin end ofdabiscuit (U13805036) on Monday, 1st June 2009
According to Anthony Beevor on R4 Start The Week this morning, Monty's arrogant manner made the Americans so mad that they were unable to acknowledge his acheivements during the Normandy Campaign, a tenadancy which laid the foundations for the postwar US myth that they won it on their own and 'There were only Americans on Utah Beach,' as Steven Speilberg claimed.
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Message 23
Posted by Mikestone8 (U13249270) on Monday, 1st June 2009
There's a websitesite called "Footage Farm" at
Its list of contensts includes a section entitled "Potsdam Conference Footage" which reads as follows.
"220444 11:36:02 - 11:45:59 1945 Germany B/W Si
Potsdam
Flags in Berlin of USSR, England & USA. Various VIPs at airport saying farewell. Clement Atlee with army officer getting into C-54 (4 motor) plane. Take off. Truman walks out and shakes hands with soldiers. Boards plane. Honour guard putting US flag on pole & running it up. More shots Attlee and Truman saying goodbyes. British man & Truman talking; Truman waves from plane entrance. Potsdam conference round table from above as Molotov comes in others sit down. Shots Stalin and Truman at round table.
11:44:55 Montgomery; Churchill arrival in military uniform down steps of aircraft shakes hands with Monty - other military officers, nice shot ChurchillΓ•s female aide smiling excitedly. Top shot as Churchill inspects troops. Sailors at attention."
So it would appear that Montgomery was indeed present at Potsdam. As to what he may or may not have said, I don't know, but he wasn't exactly famous for tact. -
Message 24
Posted by White Camry (U2321601) on Monday, 1st June 2009
JB-on-Sea,
According to Anthony Beevor on R4 Start The Week this morning, Monty's arrogant manner made the Americans so mad that they were unable to acknowledge his acheivements during the Normandy Campaign, a tenadancy which laid the foundations for the postwar US myth that they won it on their own and 'There were only Americans on Utah Beach,' as Steven Speilberg claimed.Β
OTOH, Harry Butcher, Ike's aide, recorded in his diary a grapevine grumble among US officers - probably Patton - that "Ike is the best general the British have." -
Message 25
Posted by U3280211 (U3280211) on Monday, 1st June 2009
Thanks Mikestone.
There is also a photo of Bradley, Eisenhower and Truman arriving in an open-topped limo at the conference.
But I was hoping that, just for a change, White Camry would startle us all and get off his idle B**T and do some of his own research.
His interventions here usually consist of the 'doubting Thomas' one-line formula of
"What makes you say that?"
We then run around doing his work for him and if you demonstrate your point he will accuse you of
"..Taking this board too seriously"Β
as he did when I showed that the script for the film U571 was a load of Hollywood, 'the US won the war on her own', ordure.
One day, perhaps, WC will make that transition from idle formulaic 'challenger' to actual contributor.
I heard the Beevor piece this morning and one has to agree with his assessment of Monty. But my earlier post was intended to show that Eisenhower took every opportunity to show him up in front of Zhukov.
This from chp 21 ('The Control Council and Potsdam')of Zhukov's memoirs (1969) p.661...
Montgomery was about to object when Eisenhower said:
"Don't argue Monty, Marshal Zhukov is right. You'd better get out of Wittenberg as soon as possible..."Β -
Message 26
Posted by Mikestone8 (U13249270) on Monday, 1st June 2009
I heard the Beevor piece this morning and one has to agree with his assessment of Monty. Β
Churchill might well have concurred. Didn't he once describe Monty as "In defeat, indomitable. In victory, insufferable"?
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