A couple of people on this board were recently speculating that the horrors of WW2 had left a lasting imprint on the American psyche
No doubt about that.
But proportional to its population, AFAIK the US lost significantly less lives than any other major combatant. In fact, the world lost about 2.5% of its population in the war and the US lost about 0.3% (by my rough calculations).
Not saying the horrors weren't real for the US. But with a slightly larger population the Soviet Union lost about 60 times as many lives. It was horrible all over.
I remember my uncle, who fought the Japanese in Papua New Guinea, telling me about how the Aussies were living on the most basic, barely palatable army rations while the American servicemen had plenty of cash and fresh food including things like tomatoes.
Oh yeah. It must be said, there was actually much resentment against Americam GIs in England. Popular saying was that they were "overpaid, oversexed and over here", or alternatively "overfed..."You can imagine how British soldiers felt about leaving their families the mercy of German bombers, whilst the Yanks seemingly occupied their time lounging about on British Airbases and copping off with their women. And not only that, they were well provided for , unlike said families and soldiers, which made it all the easier to cop off with said women. Rationing in Britain was really punishing, and continued for years and years after the war, right into the fifties... on account of our pledge to help rebuild Germany, so I've heard.
Living in Britain during WW2 must have been a lot like living in modern day Syria. I grew up, in the sixties, listening to the old folk's stories of the horrors; although it has to said that many of the worst affected were too traumatised to ever talk about it. And the British Propaganda Machine played down the horror, and played up the bravado, of course, so there's not much left in the way of truthful accounts. ( I saw an intersting TV program, a few years ago, which had managed to dig up some accurate accounts and some repressed statistics).
Even in the sixties, you could still see the bombed-out shells of houses on almost every urban street, whole streets of them in places; and growing up with that , it just seemed a normal and natural part of the lanscape ; we kids called them "ghost houses" and dared each other to go inside. It's only looking back that that I think "Good god..."'
The americans have no idea. It's pretty gross to play one-up-manship with horror isn;t it? so i was trying
not to do that. It's not as if the British experience of War invalidates the American experience is it? I wouldn't want to deny that modern day Ameicans are still dealing with the fall-out, just because we had it worse, statistically speaking. Experiences like that should unify people, and make them more sympathetic to each other, not divide them.
That said, resentmentment against the Yanks, at the time, was mult-faceted , and entirely understandable. Ther Brits disliked for the Yanks for their racism, for another thing, and would often take the black GI's side in pub brawls , according to an article I recently read. But , most of all, there's the galling fact that America was a very late entrant into both World Wars. Which brings me neatly back to Peaky Blinders. Here's one amusing clip, from series 4, in which this Italian-American mafioso type is driving down an english country road on his way to an execute one , or more, of the Shelby family (not really a spoiler)
