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Through my life I've seen many comments from Americans "We saved you from speaking German".
Correction: The heroes who fought in Europe saved us, those who did something during the fall of the EU, during the evacuation at Dunkirk and at Battle of Britain saved us. America helped the EU when the invasion of Europe occurred by the Allied forces but this was years after the start of WW2.
Sometimes I think they generally don't educate their own people of the build up to WW2.
Let's have a look at a few details shall we?
The Nazis actually had invaded a nation and annexed another before they even got to Poland, before the EU nations declared war - after all they were pretty desperate for peace.
Those two nations? Austria was annexed and Czechoslovakia was invaded. Their reasoning on Austria was they are Germans (course it was a lie). During this entire time the allies still continued to push for peace.
Germany invades Poland causing the allies to declare war.
At this stage America had still done barely anything anything.
Europe actually fell relatively easy with German generals willing to take risks and the allied generals taking a more cautious approach by not pushing back. The Nazis invasion had got to France where the allies had prepared a hard defensive line.
Somme - Anyone who knows their history of WW2 will know this is a pivotal moment in the invasion of France - the allies lines crumbled and got surrounded and out flanked. Also this is when Italy also joined the war and invaded France (something many people don't mention nor talk about).
The EU had fallen, the remaining allied troops pulled back to Dunkirk, the famous evacuation of not a few troops but instead over 300,000. They left behind equipment, tanks, vehicles, weapons and supplies (sabotaging what they could).
America had still not got involved. And Britain had lost a major portion of it's fleet while protecting the evacuation.
Battle of Britain, Hitler took a much more cautious approach to Britain. He knew we had the Airforce and the plan was to destroy it before invading. Germany had prioritised airfields by bombing them, launching wave after wave after wave at England. One of many factors gave Britain a chance - German bomber accidently hit London (they had bombs, were lost so decided to drop them). This caused other issues/problems but the end result was it gave the airfields a breather because the priority for the Nazis was to hit other targets.
During the Battle of Britain 9 American pilots were involved.
At the final days of this battle, a battle that lasted from July to October; the Nazis had prepared an invasion force and when the German Airforce had taken it's final beating - it cancelled the invasion.
The "heroes" on those who saved us are the many who fought in the above and other battles. The above prevented the German invasion of England. Not America, Not thousands of American troops or dozens of American ships.
America didn't really get involved until Pearl Harbour December 1941. I say "really" because there was supply laws or "pacts" that involved in shipping supplies/resources to the allies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Pearl_Harbor
Battle of Britain started July 1940 till the end of October 1940.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Britain
America carried on pretending there was no war, that it was Europe's problem.
Germany invaded Poland in September 1939.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Poland
Canada had declared war on Germany along with other allies - While America's official stance was "neutral".
The invasion of England didn't happen due to the Battle of Britain although there was other factors and other plans to invade England (even the Isle of Wright which was recently discovered in a book). The end result was the same - Germany didn't invade Britain.
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