"Call me Meier" - I was wrong

[Andrew Clarke]

In a discussion re Marcelle Meyer and music in France during the Occupation, I unwisely suggested that Goering's boast that if a single British bomb lands on Berlin "you can call me Meyer" was necessarily an ironic reference to Nazi antisemitism. In fact the phrase is/was a German idiom meaning "virtually impossible" and best translated as "you can call me a Dutchman" or "you can call me a monkey's uncle".

It is translated as "You can call me a Dutchman" in an excellent documentary on Berlin life during WW2 available on YouTube.

Andrew Clarke
Canberra

[nmsz...@gmail.com]

Searching YouTube for "You can call me a Dutchman" I couldn't bring up that documentary. If possible, can you please post its URL?

[Frank Berger]

What most of the references dismissing the remark as not being antisemitic omit
is any explanation of the origin of the expression. If you say, "...... or you
can call me a Dutchman or a monkey's uncle", the saying makes no sense unless
you think it would be a bad thing to be a Dutchman or a monkey's uncle. To say
that Mayer is not exclusively a Jewish name in Germany doesn't prove Gorring
didn't mean it in an antisemitic way. Meyer or Meir was a common Jewish first
name and very well could have been seen that way. For all we know EVERYBODY in
Germany interpreted it that way when Gorring said it. I think Occum's razor
applies here.

[O]

In article <KcSdncCiMOADTAPH...@supernews.com>, Frank

Various references - it's all over the web:


http://www.historynet.com/why-did-goering-say-you-can-call-me-meyer.htm

From https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Hermann_Göring:

" € No enemy bomber can reach the Ruhr. If one reaches the Ruhr, my
name is not Göring. You may call me Meyer.
€ Addressing the Luftwaffe (September 1939) as quoted in August
1939: The Last Days of Peace (1979) by Nicholas Fleming, p. 171;
"Meyer" (or "Meier") is a common name in Germany. This statement would
come back to haunt him as Allied bombers devastated Germany; many
ordinary Germans, especially in Berlin, took to calling him "Meier",
and air raid sirens "Meier's Trumpets". It is said that he once himself
introduced himself as "Meier" when taking refuge in an air-raid shelter
in Berlin."

And a pretty thorough discussion/argument about it at:

https://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=76&t=174241

Not that any of this would make Göring more or less antisemitic. Of
course, guessing Göring's intent is impossible, but in this group, we
often attempt the impossible - we use words to describe music!

-Owen

[Frank Berger]

Let me repeat what I asked/said in the first place? What sense does the
statement make if "Meyer" isn't derogatory in some way? If we agree it must be,
why would it be derogatory?

[Andrew Clarke]

Here you are,

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YksqcLwzFnA>

Andrew Clarke
Canberra

[Andrew Clarke]

Frank, I originally took it to be 100% antisemitic, but it was pointed out at the time that there are thousands of Germans with the surname Meyer / Meier who aren't of Jewish descent, and in fact it's the second most commonly found surname in Germany. Some are Jewish, some are not.

I also read somewhere that Meier/Meyer may have been a Germanisation of something more evidently Jewish, both as a family name and as a first name (cf all the Irvings, Murrays, Sonias and Shirleys out there, especially in the USA).

Meyer as a first name sounds to me as if it's also an example of the use of surnames as personal names, cf Truman (Capote), Stanley, Harvey, Milton etc.

If Goering had really wanted to be overtly and unambiguously antisemitic in this instance, he could have said "you can call me Goldberg". But he didn't.

Andrew Clarke
Canberra

[Ricardo Jimenez]

On Tue, 6 Mar 2018 16:20:40 -0800 (PST), Andrew Clarke
<andrewc...@gmail.com> wrote:

>If Goering had really wanted to be overtly and unambiguously antisemitic in this instance, he could have said "you can call me Goldberg". But he didn't.

Hmm. Anybody know if the listing of Reiner Goldberg here is correct?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Jewish_opera_singers

Was Johann Gottlieb Goldberg of Jewish ancestry?

[Frank Berger]

I keep repeating myself, it seems. If the expression "call me Meyer" isn't an
antisemitic reference to Jews (Meyer was the third most popular Jewish first
name at the time, I read somewhere) then what does it mean? It has to mean
something. It has to have some origin. Call me a Dutchman or call me a
monkey's uncle are east to understand. Both are derogatory or intended as such.
What would call me Meyer mean? As to why he wouldn't say call me Goldberg,
perhaps he just wanted to be subtle. Bad journalism is one of my pet peeves. I
don't mean biased, I just mean stupid. If you write an article saying, "Oh
no.....call me Meyer probably isn't an antisemitic reference because Meyer was a
common non-Jewish name, you should a) consider what it might otherwise actually
mean, and b) look a little deeper to discover Meyer was very common Jewish first
name, so the antisemitic reference is certainly not dis-proven in any way.

[Frank Berger]

I have encountered some non-Jewish Goldbergs and this is one apparently.
Although "Gottlieb" sounds Jewish to my ear, it is just German and not a mostly
Jewish name. I do have a Jewish Gottlieb (as first name) in my family tree and
a great great grandmother whose first name was Gotlibe - same thing really but
Yiddish.

[smo...@hotmail.com]

In Danish we have the expression “Hvis ..., må du kalde mig Mads” which apparently comes from a German expression “Wenn ..., will ich Matz heissen” which means “If ..., you can call me Matt.” Mads and Matz both come from the biblical name Matthew, but there is nothing Jewish about Mads - it is a common Danish name (perhaps you know of the actor Mads Mikkelsen?). The expression definitely isn’t anti thought of as Semitic. Don’t know about the German Matz.

Two possibilities: Either Göring substituted Meyer/Meier for Matz to stress his point or Meyer/Meier is commonly substituted for Matz in German. Someone from Germany ought to know...

Soeren

[Bastian Kubis]

On 03/06/2018 10:50 PM, Frank Berger wrote:
> [...]

> Let me repeat what I asked/said in the first place?  What sense does the
> statement make if "Meyer" isn't derogatory in some way?  If we agree it
> must be, why would it be derogatory?

I am not a historian, and I haven't done research on this. I believe I
have an interest in history in general, and Nazi Germany in particular,
that is way above average. I have known that supposed Goering saying
for decades. Today, reading this thread, is the very first time it has
ever occured to me that people may read this statement in an antisemitic
context. [It seems to me that German Wikipedia also mentions nothing in
this direction.]

I'll go out on a limb and claim that no German would understand "Meier"
as a Jewish name; as others have said, it is quoted, next to "Müller" or
"Schmidt", as one of the most common among all last names in Germany.
Even though there is a form derived from a Jewish first name (as I now
learnt), I think the last name as such is much older.

I am actually also not aware that an expression like "you can call me
Meier" is of general use at all, let alone some kind of German proverb;
I think I know it *only* from this context. So the way I always
understood Goering's words is in a sense like "you can call me John Doe"
[I know that is not an actual saying]: if this and that happens, I, the
all-important Reichsmarschall des Großdeutschen Reiches, will become the
most insignificant, average, nondescript German. [But also this
interpretation is one I have never actually discussed with other people.]

Bastian

[Frank Berger]

Yes. I'm just speculating.

[Frank Berger]

Certainly a plausible view.

[HT]

> I'll go out on a limb and claim that no German would understand "Meier"
> as a Jewish name; as others have said, it is quoted, next to "Müller" or
> "Schmidt", as one of the most common among all last names in Germany.
> Even though there is a form derived from a Jewish first name (as I now
> learnt), I think the last name as such is much older.

"Meier" is a substantive in Dutch as well as a name. It's derived from the Latin "maior", referring to someone in general - often in a pejorative sense. Another use of "Meier" is derived from the Hebrew word for hundred (me'ah sp?) and is the Jiddisch name for a banknote.

Henk

[Frank Berger]

So its pejorative meaning of someone in general (probably meaning someone
insubstantial) could be the way Gorring intended it. It had to be pejorative
somehow or the expression wouldn't make sense at all.

[nmsz...@gmail.com]

Thank you very much.


>
> Andrew Clarke
> Canberra

[HT]

>
> So its pejorative meaning of someone in general (probably meaning someone
> insubstantial) could be the way Gorring intended it. It had to be pejorative
> somehow or the expression wouldn't make sense at all.

These days a "meier" is a man. To my knowledge there are only pejorative combinations. The compound "kletsmeier" refers to someone who keeps talking. "Kletsmeier" is also written as "kletsmajoor", which shows its Latin origins more clearly.

Henk

[Andrew Clarke]

It ain't pejorative, Frank - it simply means that in the speaker's opinion, something isn't going to happen or can't be the case. Here's a recent example from the German business paper "Handelsblatt":

"Drollig war dies: Als ein amerikanischer Professor seinem deutschen Kollegen anbot "Call me Bob". Und der deutsche Professor war so perplex, dass auch er spontan an seine Grenzen ging und meinte: "Call me Mr. Meier."

<http://www.handelsblatt.com/karriere/nachrichten/business-behaviour-call-me-mr-meier/2483942.html>

The joke wouldn't make sense if the expression was pejorative and wouldn't have been published if it was antisemitic.

Andrew Clarke
Canberra

[Andrew Clarke]

Don't forget the celebrated Cecil B. De Meier whose name is associated with an entire period of Viennese cultural history ...

Andrew Clarke
Canberra

[Frank Berger]

I don't know. There seem to be three prevailing views. The one you're holding
now which makes little sense to me (i.e. that it means nothing at all). Second
that Meyer refers to "a nobody" with or without a subtle antisemitic reference.
I don't think it has been or ever will be proven what Gorring meant.

[Andrew Clarke]

Well, the view I now hold seems to be the opinion of the entire German-speaking population. And you can't beat the Rathaus ...

Andrew Clarke
Canberra

[Frank Berger]

My own perusal of the subject doesn't support that the "entire German-speaking
population...." Especially the part about it meaning "a nobody."

[Andrew Clarke]

It's an idiom, Frank. Idioms don't have to make much literal sense. Why the French say "between dog and wolf" when they mean dusk or twilight is not immediately obvious, but that's what they say and that's what they mean.

When Goering made his "call me Meier" remark, he was pretty well correct - in the early years of the war British bombers were in general small, lightly armed and no match for the German night fighters or the German flak. They flew by dead reckoning without electronic guidance - that came later. In fact a British study So "you can call me a monkey's uncle if the British ever bomb the Ruhr" was a fairly accurate assessment. In fact when a small group of RAF bombers bombed Berlin it was by accident, as Berlin wasn't the designated target. In those days not many British bombs did.

Andrew Clarke
Canberra

[Alan Dawes]

In article <37dddb70-79ed-43c1...@googlegroups.com>,

Andrew Clarke <andrewc...@gmail.com> wrote:
> When Goering made his "call me Meier" remark, he was pretty well correct
> - in the early years of the war British bombers were in general small,
> lightly armed and no match for the German night fighters or the German
> flak. They flew by dead reckoning without electronic guidance - that
> came later. In fact a British study So "you can call me a monkey's uncle
> if the British ever bomb the Ruhr" was a fairly accurate assessment. In
> fact when a small group of RAF bombers bombed Berlin it was by accident,
> as Berlin wasn't the designated target. In those days not many British
> bombs did.

I think you've got that the wrong way round. Hitler's order at the start
of the Battle of Britain was that civilian areas of London were not to be
bombed but on 24 August an off course German bomber jettisoned its bombs
on central London killing 9 people. At that point Britain was losing the
battle as it's aerodromes were being destroyed so Churchill used the
bombing as an excuse for bombing Berlin the next night using 93 bombers.
This saved the RAF fighters as Hitler's anger caused him to change the
policy to bombing London not the airfields. German aircraft had further to
come, further to go back, their fighter escort had only a few minutes
endurance over London and were now within range of the fighters of 12
group based around Duxford north of London. There was time for 12 groups
"big wing" of 6 or more squadrons to form up and be waiting for the
Germans. That's how Britain won the Battle of Britain but then had to
suffer months of the Blitz.

Alan

--
alan....@argonet.co.uk
alan....@riscos.org
Using an ARMX6

[Andrew Clarke]

Alan, you're perfectly right about the motivation for the RAF's first Berlin Raid: now I'm over seventy, I can't trust my memory as much as I once could. I must verify my references.

The raid was characteristically ineffectual for reasons originally given: of the three medium bombers used, only the Wellington could be considered adequate for the job, I suppose.

Andrew Clarke
Canberra
the home of "G for George"
<https://www.awm.gov.au/articles/encyclopedia/george>

[Frank Berger]

Due to self-interest, chauvinism, bias, what have you, in the U.S. we hear all
about the U.S. air action in Europe but not so much about the British. My
father was a B-17 navigator and radar operator. He flew 7 missions in the
spring of 1945 when the war ended. What I think I know is that the daytime
bombing was ineffective because it was innacurate in good weather and impossible
in bad, and impossible losses of aircraft and crews to enemy aircraft. The ealy
losses were horrendous. Two innovations turned the tide. One was the
introduction of the P-51 Mustang fighter which could escort the bombers to
Berlin and back and the other, the development of radar which allowed bombing
through cloud cover. I always wondered why the U.S. bombed in the day and the
Briitsh at night. I thought it was just a convenient division of labor until I
read somewhere that it was because the Americans were squeamish about killing
civilians and the British weren't, so since daytime bombing was more accurate,
that was how they divided it up. This could be plausible considering the random
German bombing of England, but i have no idea of it's true.

[nmsz...@gmail.com]

Fat man Goering should have met US' Fat Man.

[Frank Berger]

LOL

[Johannes Roehl]

Am Mittwoch, 7. März 2018 13:23:15 UTC+1 schrieb Bastian Kubis:
> On 03/06/2018 10:50 PM, Frank Berger wrote:
> > [...]
> > Let me repeat what I asked/said in the first place?  What sense does the
> > statement make if "Meyer" isn't derogatory in some way?  If we agree it
> > must be, why would it be derogatory?

[...]

> I am actually also not aware that an expression like "you can call me
> Meier" is of general use at all, let alone some kind of German proverb;
> I think I know it *only* from this context. So the way I always
> understood Goering's words is in a sense like "you can call me John Doe"
> [I know that is not an actual saying]: if this and that happens, I, the
> all-important Reichsmarschall des Großdeutschen Reiches, will become the
> most insignificant, average, nondescript German.

This is the way I always understood that episode. The name would never be spontaneously associated with Jews (unlike Goldstein, Rosenzweig, Silberberg etc.) because it is far too common. But Goering did not make this up. I have definitely read in Pre-Goering literature the general phrase "if this is true/if I do this/if this will come to pass, call me some odd name that is not my own" and only the Meyer variant is associated with Goering. It is also clear that it can only be a second name, not the Jewish first name. Very few people would have understood such a reference, German Jews were usually quite assimilitated and rarely had obviously "Jewish" first names, that's why the Nazis forced the Israel/Sarah middle name on them.

According to what I read later one some brave people referred to Goering as "fat Mr Meyer"

As someone already explained the root is probably Latin "maior" as in maior domus, meaning in the middle ages not a mere house keeper but the highest servant/administrator in a noble house or even the chief administrator at court (the Carolinginan line started as serving this function for the Merovingians). Also other types of lower administrativ positions, comparable to the mayor (sic!) of a village would be called that.

[Andrew Clarke]

Frank, I would like to take this opportunity to express my admiration for your father and his colleagues who had the courage to fly at high altitude in box formation never knowing when the fighters would infiltrate the bomber stream or when they would be shot down by flak. They all knew what the odds were against their completing a tour of duty alive. People have disputed the effects of the war in the air on the German economy, but the heroism of men like your father is beyond dispute.

To answer your question about the RAF: at the beginning of the war the idea was to avoid bombing civilian targets and to bomb tactically, i.e. to attack airfields, bridges, war industries etc., which could only be done by day. It didn't take them long to discover that their light and medium bombers were sitting ducks taking unsustainable casualties and causing little damage. So they switched to night operations, which were still dangerous, and initially even more inaccurate, given the effectiveness of German air defences and the lack of electronic navigation systems. So they then had to take the ethically controversial step to commence area bombing, where heavy civilian casualties were unavoidable.

Best wishes,

Andrew Clarke
Canberra

[Andrew Clarke]

On Friday, March 9, 2018 at 6:56:03 AM UTC+11, Johannes Roehl wrote:

> According to what I read later one some brave people referred to Goering as "fat Mr Meyer"
>

Thanks for the clarification, Johannes: jokes about Goering, his weight, and his delight in flashy uniforms seem to have been quite common. For example, when the battleship "Bismarck" was briefly stuck on the slipway during the launching ceremony, it was said that the Reichsmarschal had to personally lean on the ship's bow to get it moving again.

Andrew Clarke
Canberra

[Frank Berger]

My father, who passed in 1998, never really talked much about the war. I've
learned about his service on my own and have done a lot of reading. I got a
thrill last year sitting in a B-17 at my father's navigator station. My 5-year
old grandson enjoyed it also. There were essentially no losses on any of my
father's seven missions, so I figured at first that German air defenses were so
lacking by March 1944 that they couldn't put up much resistance. That was
mostly true, but a mission on the day in between the days of two of my father's
missions suffered tremendous losses. I don't know if it was "The Greatest
Generation," but you won't get any argument from me.

[richard...@gmail.com]

On Thursday, March 8, 2018 at 10:43:36 AM UTC-5, Frank Berger wrote:

The reason for US daylight raids, as I understood it, was that US bombers were pressurised, so could fly high enough to avoid most AA fire. British bombers were not, so flew at night to reduce the risk of being brought down.

At the start of the Battle of Britain the life expectancy of Spitfire pilots was quite low. About 30% were killed on their first day of action. An old man had survived 30+ flights and would be sent to train others. For bomber crews the mortality rate was also very high, so night flights were expected to save lives of crews, if not Germans. Precision bombing was possible, but very dangerous. Read the book 'The Dam Busters' to see just how dangerous. The book begins with training for the raid on the Ruhr dams, and with Wallis designing a bomb that could do it. It proceeds to follow the squadron through its later actions. It was very hard to bomb railways beyond repair. To do so it was necessary to bomb viaducts that would be hard to replace. Wallis designed 10 ton ground- penetrating bombs that detonated under the foundations of pillars in the viaduct, which would then fall into the cavity created while the shock wave would destroy much of the rest. The same bombs were used against U-boat pens.

German bombing of the UK was not random. They really do seem to have tried to hit targets of military value, but with limited success. Partly this was due to the success of British fighters, as the best way to escape was to jettison bombs when necessary.
Bombing of civilian targets in daylight was a Great War tactic, using Zeppelins, which could fly at altitudes greater than aeroplanes could reach, and also beyond the range of AA guns at the time. They hoped to create panic. My grandmother was bombed by a Zeppelin in 1917 in Birmingham, near the Boulton and Watt works and the Royal Mint. (A legitimate industrial area.)
In WW2 my mother worked at Dunlop's in Birmingham. This was a legitimate target too, but it was also next door to an airfield and the Spitfire factory. It attracted quite a lot of attention from the Luftwaffe, but with little success. AFAIK production was never stopped.
There were some very brave German pilots involved. One followed main roads in daylight to reach Dunlop's. He waved at my grandmother who was waiting at a bus stop. Flying at 30-40' was quite a feat. My mother was overflown by another such fighter who machine gunned the workers leaving the factory at 6pm until he was destroyed by AA batteries.

My parents, now in their 90s, are beginning to share some of these experiences, which were never spoken of earlier.

[Lawrence Kart]

In Richard Overy's "Why the Allies Won"

https://www.amazon.com/Why-Allies-Won-Richard-Overy/dp/039331619X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1520567879&sr=1-1&keywords=richard+overy+why+the+allies+won

Overy makes a convincing case that Allied bombing of Germany played a crucial role in winning the war but in a kind of unintended consequences, three-cushion-billiard-shot manner. Determined to resist and defeat the Allied bombing campaigns, which were not in fact economically ruinous, the Germans switched the emphasis of their airplane production heavily to fighters, while those fighters and the pilots that manned them were eventually decimated by American fighter escorts that were equipped with long-range fuel tanks and that could accompany the bombers all the way to their targets and back. The result was that when the Allied invasion of France came in June 1944, there very few German bombers available to attack and harass Allied ground forces and very few German fighter planes available to contest the hear-total Allied command of the skies on the western front. (Unimpeded Allied tactical airpower played a crucial role in France.) Overy concludes that if German airpower had not been so distorted and then expended in the attempt to defend the Reich from Allied bombers, the invasion of France, a close-run thing for a good while, would have been a great deal more difficult. Again, no one planned that Allied bombing of Germany would have these effects, but it did.

[graham]

On 2018-03-08 8:09 PM, richard...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Thursday, March 8, 2018 at 10:43:36 AM UTC-5, Frank Berger wrote:

>
> At the start of the Battle of Britain the life expectancy of Spitfire pilots was quite low. About 30% were killed on their first day of action. An old man had survived 30+ flights and would be sent to train others. For bomber crews the mortality rate was also very high, so night flights were expected to save lives of crews, if not Germans. Precision bombing was possible, but very dangerous. Read the book 'The Dam Busters' to see just how dangerous.

--------------------------

Guy Gibson who led that raid was only about 25 years old. It's difficult
to imagine anyone of that age these days accomplishing that.

[Frank Berger]

I loved the movie "The Dam Busters" when I was a kid.

[Lawrence Kart]

[MickeyBoy]

I agree completely that few 25 year olds today could accomplish anything near what these heroes did. Most American lads cannot even pass the physical for induction or throw a grenade at least 20 meters.

A great new book I recommend heartily is Victor Davis Hanson's the Second World Wars (Wars is plural.)

[Andrew Clarke]

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Rosenthal_(USAAF_officer)>
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olsAMx0fPq0>
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9g-HazD1AwA>

Andrew Clarke
Canberra

[graham]

In the movie they build a model dam to illustrate the explosion method
to the big wigs. That actually happened during the war and one of my
school teachers built the original for Barnes Wallace. Another teacher
did research on meteorological conditions around dams not knowing that
it was for this raid until later.

[Alan Dawes]

In article <p7vpgq$sth$1...@dont-email.me>,

In 1942 a year before the bouncing bomb, Barnes Wallis was allowed to test
the theory that the hydrostatic shock caused by a relatively small bomb
placed in the water at the base of a dam could breach it. This was carried
out at the Nant-y-Gro dam in wales (originally built to provide water for
a navvies' village) and its remains can still be seen today.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nant_y_Gro_Dam_-_geograph.org.uk_-_887096.jpg

617 aquadron (dambusters) practiced on the Elan valley dams which provided
water for Birmingham (obviously with dummy bombs!). There is a large model
of those dams in Canon Hill Park Birmingham.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/63/Elan_Valley_mac_model.jpg/1280px-Elan_Valley_mac_model.jpg

https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/06/62/c4/31/cannon-hill-park.jpg

To get back to this music group, I've always enjoyed Boult's performance
of Coates' Dambusters March on a cfp LP called the Philharmonic on Parade
:-)

[Andrew Clarke]

Barnes Wallace was also the designer of the geodetic fuselage structure of the Vickers Wellington:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vickers_Wellington>

To get back to this music group, I've never been to Barnes, I admired Ian Wallace and of course Jon Vickers, but I cannot abide "Wellington's Victory" ;-)

Andrew Clarke
Canberra
on wings of song

[weary flake]

The second volume CD of violin composer Amanda Maier (1853-1894) has
been released:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B075NZVZR8

[HT]

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 23:11:49 UTC+1 schreef weary flake:

> The second volume CD of violin composer Amanda Maier (1853-1894) has
> been released:
>
> https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B075NZVZR8

At least as interesting as Röntgen himself.

Henk

[O]

In article <deef8a19-0f8b-4f95...@googlegroups.com>,

Lawrence Kart <ljk...@aol.com> wrote:

> In Richard Overy's "Why the Allies Won"
>
>
> https://www.amazon.com/Why-Allies-Won-Richard-Overy/dp/039331619X/ref=sr_1_1?s
> =books&ie=UTF8&qid=1520567879&sr=1-1&keywords=richard+overy+why+the+allies+won
>
>
> Overy makes a convincing case that Allied bombing of Germany played a crucial
> role in winning the war but in a kind of unintended consequences,
> three-cushion-billiard-shot manner. Determined to resist and defeat the
> Allied bombing campaigns, which were not in fact economically ruinous, the
> Germans switched the emphasis of their airplane production heavily to
> fighters, while those fighters and the pilots that manned them were
> eventually decimated by American fighter escorts that were equipped with
> long-range fuel tanks and that could accompany the bombers all the way to
> their targets and back. The result was that when the Allied invasion of
> France came in June 1944, there very few German bombers available to attack
> and harass Allied ground forces and very few German fighter planes available
> to contest the hear-total Allied command of the skies on the western front.
> (Unimpeded Allied tactical airpower played a crucial role in France.) Overy
> concludes that if German airpower had not been so distorted and then expended
> in the attempt to defend the Reich from Allied bombers, the invasion of
> France, a close-run thing for a good while, would have been a great deal more difficult. Again, no one planned that Allied bombing of Germany would have these effects, but it did.

I can see the point that Overy makes, but it poses a quandary as well.
If the Germans had continued to make bombers at the same rate as
previously what would they have done with them in the meantime?
Continue the bombing of Britain? Wasn't it more that, instead of
bombers, that Germany (or, to be more precise, Hitler) wanted to move
to the buzz bomb and V2 rockets for strategic bombing? (Not to mention
the quantity of US made aviation overwhelmed the Luftwaffe in pure
numbers alone, to assure air superiority?)

This exchange on the subject is interesting:

<https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/22s6lq/why_did_germany_
lose_air_supremacy_during_wwii/>

-Owen

[Lawrence Kart]

The V-1 and V-2 were chracterized by Hitler as tit-for-tat "revenge" weapons, which pretty much says it all. The motives behind their development and use were primarily emotional, not strategic.

Who cares what Germany would have done with its bombers in the meantime? Fact is, they were desperately needed in June 1944 to harass Allied ground forces, as were fighters that could have challenged Allied control of the skies over the battlefield -- German fighters instead being almost entirely occupied in air defense of the Reich. Another key factor emphasized by Overy is that Allied aircraft production eventually was very efficient/focused on producing/refining a few key models, while the German military, lacking the sort of oversight in war production matters that the U.S. had, demanded that the German aircraft industry produce a much too wide variety of planes/models, which led to smaller numbers of planes being built.

Larry Kart

[O]

In article <263f3f72-f12e-4713...@googlegroups.com>,

My use of "strategic" was incorrect. Certainly, the rockets weren't
accurate enough for anything other than civilian harassment.

> Who cares what Germany would have done with its bombers in the meantime?
> Fact
> is, they were desperately needed in June 1944 to harass Allied ground forces,

My point being the point of view of Germany's planners, who, if
presented that idea in 1942-43, would've met with the challenge "who
are we going to bomb with them?" I can't imagine someone daring to
suggest that they could use them to cover their retreat in France back
to Germany. Instead the money and manpower went to (in)securing the
Atlantic Wall.

> as were fighters that could have challenged Allied control of the skies over
> the battlefield -- German fighters instead being almost entirely occupied in
> air defense of the Reich.

I don't disagree that it would have been Germany's best interest to do
so, just that the lack of success of the Luftwaffe over England
probably destroyed Hitler's faith in airpower as a successful offensive
weapon.

-Owen

[Lawrence Kart]

Germany's military planners in 1942-43 were not doing much rational planning for a variety of reasons -- there was a great deal of fragmentation/competiveness among branches of the military, plus the role of Hitler at the top.

Yes, Hitler lost faith in the Luftwaffe after the Battle of Britain, but we're talking about the use of air power in close support of ground operations, a different game altogether and one that German forces had played very well in 1940. Further, the role of German airpower in France in June 1944, if such airpower had been available, would have been to help defeat the Allies, not to cover a German retreat from France. Yes, things might not have worked out that way even if German airpower had been able to play a major role, but the Allied campaign in France was a close-run affair for a good while and one in which
Allied air power, operating in close support of ground forces, played a key role.

Larry Kart

[mikimo...@gmail.com]

Can you send me a link or the name of the YouTube vid plz

Miki

[Andrew Clarke]

On Wednesday, June 12, 2019 at 10:06:23 PM UTC+10, mikimo...@gmail.com wrote:
> Can you send me a link or the name of the YouTube vid plz
>
> Miki

Here it is, Miki,

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YksqcLwzFnA>

Andrew Clarke
Canberra

[Mottled Finish]

On Tuesday, March 6, 2018 at 4:50:58 PM UTC-5, Frank Berger wrote:
> On 3/6/2018 1:13 PM, O wrote:
> > In article <KcSdncCiMOADTAPH...@supernews.com>, Frank
> > Berger <frankd...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> On 3/6/2018 12:10 PM, nmsz...@gmail.com wrote:
> >>> On Tuesday, March 6, 2018 at 8:47:57 AM UTC-5, Andrew Clarke wrote:
> >>>> In a discussion re Marcelle Meyer and music in France during the
> >>>> Occupation, I unwisely suggested that Goering's boast that if a single
> >>>> British bomb lands on Berlin "you can call me Meyer" was necessarily an
> >>>> ironic reference to Nazi antisemitism. In fact the phrase is/was a German
> >>>> idiom meaning "virtually impossible" and best translated as "you can call
> >>>> me a Dutchman" or "you can call me a monkey's uncle".
> >>>>
> >>>> It is translated as "You can call me a Dutchman" in an excellent
> >>>> documentary on Berlin life during WW2 available on YouTube.
> >>>>
> >>>> Andrew Clarke
> >>>> Canberra
> >>>
> >>> Searching YouTube for "You can call me a Dutchman" I couldn't bring up that
> >>> documentary. If possible, can you please post its URL?
> >>>
> >>
> >> What most of the references dismissing the remark as not being antisemitic
> >> omit
> >> is any explanation of the origin of the expression. If you say, "...... or
> >> you
> >> can call me a Dutchman or a monkey's uncle", the saying makes no sense unless
> >> you think it would be a bad thing to be a Dutchman or a monkey's uncle. To
> >> say
> >> that Mayer is not exclusively a Jewish name in Germany doesn't prove Gorring
> >> didn't mean it in an antisemitic way. Meyer or Meir was a common Jewish
> >> first
> >> name and very well could have been seen that way. For all we know EVERYBODY
> >> in
> >> Germany interpreted it that way when Gorring said it. I think Occum's razor
> >> applies here.
> >
> >
> >
> > Various references - it's all over the web:
> >
> >
> > http://www.historynet.com/why-did-goering-say-you-can-call-me-meyer.htm
> >
> > From https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Hermann_Göring:
> >
> > " € No enemy bomber can reach the Ruhr. If one reaches the Ruhr, my
> > name is not Göring. You may call me Meyer.
> > € Addressing the Luftwaffe (September 1939) as quoted in August
> > 1939: The Last Days of Peace (1979) by Nicholas Fleming, p. 171;
> > "Meyer" (or "Meier") is a common name in Germany. This statement would
> > come back to haunt him as Allied bombers devastated Germany; many
> > ordinary Germans, especially in Berlin, took to calling him "Meier",
> > and air raid sirens "Meier's Trumpets". It is said that he once himself
> > introduced himself as "Meier" when taking refuge in an air-raid shelter
> > in Berlin."
> >
> > And a pretty thorough discussion/argument about it at:
> >
> > https://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=76&t=174241
> >
> > Not that any of this would make Göring more or less antisemitic. Of
> > course, guessing Göring's intent is impossible, but in this group, we
> > often attempt the impossible - we use words to describe music!
> >
> > -Owen

> >
> Let me repeat what I asked/said in the first place? What sense does the
> statement make if "Meyer" isn't derogatory in some way? If we agree it must be,
> why would it be derogatory?

Meyer was a Jewish name. Goring was really saying if one bomb falls (wherever it was), "you can call me a Jew."

[Frank Berger]

Coming in a little late, aren't you? If you had read the whole thread you would have none that everybody except one idiot knew that.