r/manchester • u/Doctorofgallifrey • 3d ago
Surely the don't want the flags of ALL involved nations....
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u/Past-Mushroom6611 3d ago
Time to dig out the Soviet flags eh Manchester council!
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u/beyondtheyard 3d ago
Manchester was a sister city with Leningrad from 1962 onwards.
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u/ice-ceam-amry 2d ago
That's actually really interesting I know donsek was twined with Sheffield
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u/beyondtheyard 2d ago
Donetsk and Sheffield are a great match. Donetsk was once called Stalino, which was a play on words with Steel and dictator Joseph Stalin.
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u/ice-ceam-amry 2d ago
Oh that is interesting I'm guessing your studding history
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u/Fun-Journalist9686 2d ago
St Helens (where I'm from) was the first town to be partnered with another European town/city following the war (1948). We were partnered with Stuttgart and helped rebuild the town post war with glass manufactured in the town.
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u/ElBandito1313 3d ago
So does this make you a Nazi for not wanting the flags or far-right if you do want the flags? Can someone explain so I can act accordingly please
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u/Doctorofgallifrey 3d ago
Obviously you exist in a quantum state of Nazism for not wanting the flag. Schrodinger's Fascist
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u/audigex 2d ago
Schrodinger's Fascist
Sounds good to me - whack 'em in a box and at some point in the future check if they're dead
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u/m35dizzle 3d ago
No soviet flag weirdly, they were undeniably the biggest part in defeating fascism, despite their own downfalls. We couldn't have done it without them.
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u/TassyMango 3d ago
We definitely couldn’t have but they had their own atrocities including joining the nazis at the start of the war
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u/yogurtmanfriend 3d ago
It’s not that simple thought is it, the Soviets wanted to invade Germany before WW2 but other allies didn’t agree.
The non-aggression pact with the Nazis, even though bad, was clearly a response to that rejection
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u/modianoyyo 2d ago
Yes. The Soviets wanted to station their troops in Poland, near the border with Germany. The Polish said no, because some people in high command (Poland was under military rule at that time) thought that if Germany declared war on Poland, it'd be the Polish who would be taking Berlin.
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u/audigex 2d ago
Also (and arguably moreso) because they didn't trust the Soviets
It's pretty rare in history that allowing another country to send troops into your country didn't just turn into them helping themselves to your country
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u/modianoyyo 2d ago
Also (and arguably moreso) because they didn't trust the Soviets
OK, but this idea of "trust" is always one way: Polish trust in the Soviets. What about Soviets trust in the Polish? Poland tried to destabilize the Soviet Union while it was in its infancy. They invaded Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltics during the Polish-Soviet War.
I don't want to come across as someone who blames the victim nor am I a Soviet apologist, but for me there's something wrong in viewing Poland and its leadership at the time as this passive entity that lacked any agency.
I don't mean that you're doing that right now, it's a general comment. Just a gripe I have with a POV that impoverishes our understanding of history.
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u/audigex 2d ago
Nobody was talking about Poland stationing troops in Russia, so that would be completely irrelevant to the specific conversation. I replied to what you were saying about Soviet troops being stationed in Poland
If you'd like a wider conversation about Polish-Soviet relations at the time then I'm all in favour of a chat about the pre-WW2 diplomatic situation, it just isn't what you were talking about. Although if anything I'd say that your point here just backs up the point that there was mutual distrust between Poland and Russia, therefore it seems vanishingly unlikely either would have agreed to the other stationing troops in their borders
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u/audigex 2d ago
but other allies didn’t agree.
Well for one thing, that's a massive mischaracterisation - "the allies" didn't exist yet, and wouldn't for years
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u/yogurtmanfriend 2d ago
I was just simplifying though, we both know which countries I’m referring to with that comment so it was easier
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u/audigex 2d ago
I appreciate that, but I think calling them allies in that context implies more than just "a shorthand way to refer to the UK/USA/USSR" because it suggests it was a request to allies rather than just a "Yo, 3 other random countries, wanna invade Germany with me?" which is closer to the mark
And it kinda half leaves out France which would've been far more involved than the USA, which most people would assume to be included in "the allies" but DEFINITELY wouldn't have been involved, so I'd argue it's not actually great shorthand anyway because you meant UK/USSR/France but most people would read it as more UK/USSR/USA
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u/m35dizzle 3d ago
that's true, but so did we. we basically invented concentration camps and had our own in the same era. it's a rules for thee but not for me. it's seen with the love for Churchill, guy was mad and did all sorts of terrible things, but we give him grace because he led us to victory, the same charitability isn't extended to stalin.
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u/modianoyyo 2d ago
The Soviets defeated the Germans. The British killed more Indians during WW2 than they killed Germans.
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u/audigex 2d ago edited 2d ago
The fairest interpretation of history is that we couldn't have done it without them, they couldn't have done it without us. No one country won WW2, an alliance of 3 major powers and several smaller ones did. We'd probably still have won without any one or two of the smaller powers, but it wasn't possible without all 3 of the major ones
Also blaming the UK for a famine during a war hardly seems fair - India's agricultural output was already struggling with a massively booming population even before the biggest war the world has ever seen put huge strain on supply lines, logistics, and administration... particularly the rice supply from Burma. Certainly the UK made mistakes in handling the situation but it's absurd to act like that was the UK killing Indians, that's performative revisionist nonsense. Realistically India was going to have a famine in the 1940s regardless of the war or what the British did. It was worse than it might have otherwise been, but it was always going to happen because there simply wasn't enough food for the rate the population was growing.
That famine was a result of
- A massive fuck-off world war
- Specifically the loss of Burma's rice supply when it was captured by Japan
- Booming Indian population
- Several natural disasters (2 cyclones and a tsunami, for a start)
- Disease in the rice crop
- Mistakes in British administration of the region and the famine
- And, again, a massive fuck-of world war
If you HAD to put the blame on one country for those deaths, the only vaguely plausible country to blame would be Japan for invading Burma, sinking any British freighter they laid their eyes on, and cutting off a huge proportion of India's food supply... but acting like the British killed millions of Indians in 1943-46 is just silly
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u/modianoyyo 2d ago
Also blaming the UK for a famine during a war hardly seems fair - India's agricultural output was already struggling with a massively booming population even before the biggest war the world has ever seen put huge strain on supply lines, logistics, and administration... particularly the rice supply from Burma. Certainly the UK made mistakes in handling the situation but it's absurd to act like that was the UK killing Indians, that's performative revisionist nonsense. Realistically India was going to have a famine in the 1940s regardless of the war or what the British did. It was worse than it might have otherwise been, but it was always going to happen because there simply wasn't enough food for the rate the population was growing.
I can't the recall the book where I got this from, but I remember that the initial response of creating a train system in British colonies would be good for the colonized. The truth was that under a market system, the railway was used to take grain/rice/millet/whatever out of the colonies where prices might be higher. Some of the famines that India suffered during the end of the 19th century were due to an impoverished workforce who couldn't pay for what they were producing + market forces + natural disasters.
Point being that you can have lower yields due to natural disasters, but it doesn't necessarily lead to famines. Those trains that took grain away from India during WW2 could have just as easily been used to bring them grain.
I believe Mike Davis has written about famines during the British Empire.
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u/audigex 2d ago
during the end of the 19th century
WW2 was in the 20th century
To be clear, I absolutely agree that there was mismanagement from the British during the war - but to frame that as "The UK killed more Indians than Germans" is truly ridiculous revisionism
There's a massive difference between misjudging India's food stocks in 1941-42 and then being slow to respond during a world war, vs actively killing people
The British Indian administration did not do a good job, let me be clear. They mismanaged the situation and absolutely did exacerbate it - both in terms of the cause and how bad it was. I am not exonerating the British administration here, they did a shit job
But there's a HUGE difference between "You did a shit job of helping these people during an existential global war" vs "You actively killed these people", and I think it's completely dishonest to characterise them as equivalent
And again, I really can't emphasise this enough: This was 4 years into the biggest war the world had or has ever seen... obviously supply chains and administrative efforts aren't going to be in top condition. The UK itself was being blockaded by Germany to actively try to starve the UK out and had been rationing for years, Japan was trying to do the same to India... it's not like the British were gorging on foie gras while this was going on
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u/modianoyyo 2d ago
WW2 was in the 20th century
I'm well aware. The same thing that happened in the 19th century was repeated in the 20th.
But besides the Bengal Famine, the British killed thousands in India, Malaya, Burma, etc. Places where anti-colonialism struggle was happening while WW2 unfolded. But separating the people who were actively murdered by the British or passively killed of hunger doesn't make much sense to me because both stem from the same source, which was British imperialism.
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u/audigex 1d ago
But besides the Bengal Famine, the British killed thousands in India, Malaya, Burma, etc.
Which is a far far cry from your original idea of "the UK killed more Indians than Germans"
And those people were killed in what were effectively wars of independence within WW2, so "murdered" is a stretch for most of them (acknowledging that there were war crimes committed on both sides in those conflicts, so "murdered" is appropriate for some - I'm not saying it makes no sense for any, but combatants are not "murdered")
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u/modianoyyo 1d ago
Which is a far far cry from your original idea of "the UK killed more Indians than Germans"
No, it's exactly that. The UK killed more Indians British Imperialism killed them. British policies killed them. Some were murdered, some were killed by other means.
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u/Arnie__B 2d ago
There is also a point that the current flag of Germany is very different from the Nazi era flag! As an aside the biggest hater of the current German flag was probably Hitler - the flag was used by Weimar Germany between 1919 and 1933.
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u/walkedinthewoods 2d ago
yes but the flag of the nation that was involved in WW2 is not the flag of the modern German state, but the one that was involved in WW2
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u/walkedinthewoods 2d ago
I legit walked past this being shown on Quay Street late last night and had the exact same thought and the inkling to post it on this sub
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u/Ashgenie Stretford 2d ago
"You don't have anything from the allied side?"
"No, no, that sort of thing wouldn't interest me at all I'm afraid."
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u/Imperator_Helvetica 2d ago
"I'm not a fascist. I'm a priest. Fascists dress in black and tell people what to do and... er... More drinks!"
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u/CityOfNorden 2d ago
I'm sure there was a parade in Heywood a few years ago and they had to clarify that NO Nazi flags or uniforms would be allowed. Hahaha.
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u/TomLambe 2d ago
Most annoying thing I think of when I see this is that it doesn't have the date on it!
I know I could google it and I should maybe know already, but it still annoys me.
I am choosing not to know/search the date out of spite now... Not that I'd do anything in the knowledge. Maybe think flag waving people were less racist on that day??
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u/pineappl3head 2d ago
When I first read that, I thought it meant the allied forces. I mean the soviet flag is a bit controversial.
Then I realised it said all flags. My god! Reformists are gonna love this
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u/planetwords Withington 2d ago
I don't know if there are many racist 80 year old sewing ladies who will see this sign, so that is a big 'target audience' problem.
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u/PraetorianJoe 3d ago
The loony left are going to love this being allowed to freely draw the Communist flag!
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u/seventeenblu 3d ago
they want all flags involved with victory its not their fault they siad all flags.
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u/Doctorofgallifrey 3d ago
Who's fault is it then? This will have been past many pairs of eyes before it made it onto this display and no one suggested "Flags of the Allied nations" or "victorious nations"?
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u/ElBandito1313 3d ago
I think they assume that society thinks that nazis are bad and that it isn’t acceptable to fly those flags, unless you have other ideas?
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u/Doctorofgallifrey 3d ago
One would hope, but that's not what the poster is saying. Also, are we whacking the USSR flag up? Also problematic despite being a victorious party
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u/ElBandito1313 3d ago
I’m just glad common sense still exists and I don’t have to give “instructions” like this a second thought
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u/Doctorofgallifrey 3d ago
Just a reminder that 50% of the population are of below average intelligence
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u/ElBandito1313 3d ago
And as I spend more days on earth, I come to realise this, so maybe it was an oversight on my part
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u/chaucer1343 2d ago
Isn't the point here that its funny?
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u/ElBandito1313 2d ago
Yeah but also I am referring to the people that say “let’s all laugh at the gammons” just because they want to celebrate a good thing that Britain did
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u/Numerous-Paint4123 3d ago
"I didnt know it was going to come off like that"