Re:US Army's Land Trains (2020)
by freeflight on Monday May 16, 2022 @09:21PM
(#31404949)
> didn't the Germans court the Mexicans in WWII?
Italians and Germans were active all over the Americas, in response the US created the Office for Inter-American Affairs [0] to spread its own counter-propaganda. Among other things, they hired Disney to create The Grain That Built a Hemisphere, using corn as a symbol for Pan-American unity.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_the_Coordinator_of_I...
> didn't the Germans court the Mexicans in WWII?
Yes [1].
The Zimmermann Telegram was WW1 though, not WW2.
We got revenge in Heartbreak Ridge and got our shitty dentist students back.
"Couldn't conceive" is pretty strong - it was the era of the Cold War, GI Joe, a hangover from the Cuban Missile Crisis, the contras. Maybe accurate to say the average American would find it highly improbable, and our eventual victory always assured because Chuck Norris, Rambo, and the inherent virtue of our cause against totalitarianism.
Anyway, I think the paratroopers that appear in Red Dawn are from Cuba or a socialist country in Central/South America, right? Which isn't terribly far-fetched in the context of the eighties imagination - maybe more accessible idea than a Soviet D-Day-style invasion. Also not out of line in history - didn't the Germans court the Mexicans in WWII? The French during the Civil War (I use the word "court" loosely with the French 'intervention', but hell, we got a holiday out of it).
The film was marketed saying that no foreign invasion of US soil had happened, though it ignored the Japanese invasion of Alaska. The "average American" probably still doesn't think of Alaska very often except for reality TV, much less its history.
https://www.archaeology.org/issues/433-2107/letter-from/9780...