WWII Documentary

Good to know. Thank you. And I did mean Palermo Italy.

“Did Adolf Hitler, Mussolini, Germany and Italy really have to declare war on the USA with the news of the attack?”

The best way to answer this IMO is to listen to Hitler’s declaration of war against the United States speech with subtitles. In effect, the US was already conducting war against Germany, attacking or reporting German merchant and warship positions to Allies. So, despite Hitler’s repeated efforts before and throughout WW2, Hitler reluctantly declared war to show support of his greatest ally, Japan, but also because United States would have soon declared war on Euro-Axis and Germany had had enough of US’ underhanded ways.

You had lots of Hitler puzzles. That explains alot to us in these forums.

@Gargantua:

I would take chesty 1 on 1.

So long as I get a bayonet on my flamethrower!

Garg,

––While I’m usually on your side,…I don’t think you’d stand a chance against “Chesty” Puller even if you had a
16" naval gun strapped to you back!  :-o

“Tall Paul”

Totally AWESOME!

better engines and transmissions for the tiger and king tiger tanks. that would of be decisive in both eastern and western fronts

Also on the subject of Italian POWs: some Italians captured by the British in North Africa ended up being interned in the Orkney Islands, where they were put to work constructing concrete barriers to seal off the eastern entry route into Scapa Flow (the route taken by U47 when it torpedoed the battleship Royal Oak in October 1939).  Sometimes, arguments would break out between the Italians and the British personnel supervising the work, and an Army interpreter would be called in to sort out the dispute.  After one such altercation, a Navy officer took the interpreter aside and asked him why he had been translating for the Italian man who’d been complaining, saying that, “This fellow can speak English!”  The interpreter retorted that the man couldn’t “even speak Italian!” – an answer which no doubt baffled the Navy officer until the prisoner later confided that he’d been speaking in dialect.  (“Churchill’s Prisoners: The Italians In Orkney, 1942-1944.” St Margaret’s Hope : Orkney Wireless Museum, 1992.)

CWO Marc

Rommel praised the fighting ability Australian troops in North Africa, he considered 9th Australian the best division in Africa.