Are the English people friendly to American expats?

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British-American World War II Tanks

One often hears of the special relationship between American and Britain, which today does not always seem so significant but was a very big deal during World War Two.

I know what I was taught in school, and it wasn't that the US saved the world.  If I remember anyone trying to "teach me" that message, it was outside of school.

Maybe not that explicitly in school, but if you added elementary school history to the American popular cultural view of WWII (for example, about a zillion war movies from the 1950s to the present day) you come away with the idea that America saved the world.  Maybe you and I and the other expats on here see things differently, but my guess is that if you sampled Americans between 25 and 40 and asked them to summarize WWII, the "America saved the world" theory would have a large following.  (If you think I'm wrong, watch more Fox News  .)

I'm not saying that you or I or anyone else having this discussion thinks you can boil down WWII in such a simple way, but for someone who hasn't looked into the history of the war, their understanding of it is probably not as nuanced.

But where do they get this idea that the US turned up late? It is of interest.

Like the view I mentioned above ("America saved the world"), I don't think the "America showed up late" view is held by people in the UK who study history in a serious way.  When I've heard it it's been a good-natured dig based mostly on the fact that the war was going on in Europe for some time before the US got involved.  In other words, it's a populist view that's good for making jokes, but not much else.   

Jennie:

One of the things we should always be careful of is not to get too cavalier about what is still a very living issue for some....I hope no one here has caused offense.

Especially myself for bringing it up....

Like the view I mentioned above ("America saved the world"), I don't think the "America showed up late" view is held by people in the UK who study history in a serious way.  When I've heard it it's been a good-natured dig based mostly on the fact that the war was going on in Europe for some time before the US got involved.  In other words, it's a populist view that's good for making jokes, but not much else.   

Izzard on World War 2 Skip to 4:20

Jennie:

One of the things we should always be careful of is not to get too cavalier about what is still a very living issue for some....I hope no one here has caused offense.

Especially myself for bringing it up....

Oh, no worries at all, like I said, I was brought up thinking that the most important thing about history was the time you spent talking and debating about it. (And you should have heard some of the discussions, you'd think it was happening right outside the door, people would get so excited!) I was just mentioning my experiences because I hadn't really ever thought about how different it was, necessarily. History was just something my family "did", and our personal history was something that (maybe because a lot of family history was lost) we all were brought up to value.
I love discussion and debate, and, that said, I think that knowing so much European history has really stood me in good stead here in the UK as I've been able to *shock* people by contributing to discussions and pub quizzes!

Also, any debate where Eddie Izzard quotes appear is always an excellent one, I would think.

Skip to 4:20

Hilarious!   

Maybe not that explicitly in school, but if you added elementary school history to the American popular cultural view of WWII (for example, about a zillion war movies from the 1950s to the present day) you come away with the idea that America saved the world.  Maybe you and I and the other expats on here see things differently, but my guess is that if you sampled Americans between 25 and 40 and asked them to summarize WWII, the "America saved the world" theory would have a large following.  (If you think I'm wrong, watch more Fox News  .)

I am definitely not saying that people don't think it in the US.  They just didn't teach it in my school.  Maybe elementary, but I distinctly remember them teaching us that Columbus sailed to the Americas because he was trying to prove the world wasn't flat.  That's a persistent myth for which we have Washington Irving to thank.  I honestly don't remember what we were taught about WWII in elementary school.  That's awful, but true.  I remember both times we were taught it in Jr and Sr High though (once from an American History perspective and once from World History perspective).

I distinctly remember them teaching us that Columbus sailed to the Americas because he was trying to prove the world wasn't flat. 

Haha!  Yeah, we got that one, too.   

I am definitely not saying that people don't think it in the US.  They just didn't teach it in my school.  Maybe elementary, but I distinctly remember them teaching us that Columbus sailed to the Americas because he was trying to prove the world wasn't flat.  That's a persistent myth for which we have Washington Irving to thank.  I honestly don't remember what we were taught about WWII in elementary school. 

I don't remember much from elementary school or at least what wasn't further explained and taught in Junior and High school. I remember though being taught that the US saw WWII as "Europe's war."

We got into the complex issues in middle/high school, but what do you expect people to teach in elementary?  The kids are under 10 and there is only so much time since the classes, at least in my school, weren't separate from social studies until middle school. 

My fourth grade teacher taught us about Marxism.  Kids are capable of learning and understanding more than some adults think.

I remember doing an experiment about *communism* in elementary school. We were given a quota of how many cars we needed to cut out and color in, aka 'manufacture.' We were split into groups of five and each group had to come up with an impossible quota of 50 cars per round, which was about 3-4 minutes each. Of course, no group met the quota. I remember we tried the first round, but we learned that it didn't matter if we met the quota or not, we got 'paid' the same no matter how many we 'manufactured'. In later rounds our teacher would take away some of our coloring and cutting supplies to see how we would manage with less to work with. Also with our 'wages' we could buy more supplies or food, however, the prices would keep going up to the point people could only sparingly make purchases.

My group still tried our hardest   which might say something about whether or not incentives work...but that's another topic.

I'm not saying kids couldn't learn it. We had a whole scheme set up earning "money" through home works points and using them in a checkbook.  All the kids made or brought items in for "sale" teaching me how to balance a checkbook at age 9.  We also were given a budget in 5th and had to use the newspaper to find an apartment and a car and create a budget that involved food, clothes and entertainment. 

As I said, the issue was time.  Social Studies was the topic we had in elementary, which had to cover history, social topics, geography as well as a number of other topics.

There was only so much time until I got to middle school when those were taught in different topics.

Ryan, that is a terrible illustration of socialism! I want to write your teacher....

Why not do away with all those cars and make one bus? Then with the spare time you could sing a beautiful song...

I wonder why the most important lesson we teach children is to share, then we graduate from high school and it's 'screw you buddy'.

I’m sorry I have to speak up a bit here.  I have a degree in WWII and Holocaust and Genocide Studies.  I do remember how learning about the war prior to university was very different than what actually happened.   I think that’s because a lot of it can get quite complicated and more than can really be discussed in a class that covers 200 years of history over nine months for only, what, 30 minutes a day. 

When you look at the why and when the US got involved in WWII you have to back track to WWI.  General thought in the US (and most historians agree with this point of view now) at the time was that we didn’t belong in that war.  This made it very difficult to get the public behind another major war.  This wasn’t going to be a small military action, it was going to take the draft and huge numbers of men (and women) power.  It’s important to keep in mind that for every person fighting on the front line, there were ten people not in combat roles behind him.  Prior to the US declaring war on the Axis powers we sent a lot of money abroad and sold a lot of weaponry to Britain and Russia.  At this time you could sit on the beaches of NJ at night and watch the German u-boats blow stuff up, they never attacked land though.   Pearl Harbor was the main catalyst to Roosevelt being able to declare war.  It was the event that got the US public behind the fight.  That’s why there are so many conspiracies that the government knew it was going to happen. 

Whoever mentioned the anti-Jewish sentiment as a deterrent was correct.  You just have to look at the SS St. Louis that was full of Jewish children, neither the US, Cuba or Canada would take them.  All of the children died in the camps.  The thing is, while government officials knew about the camps, and knew quite a lot about them, not as much info got into the papers. 

I just overall adore history.  A major way I’m ‘preparing’ for my move is to read book after book about English history.  Prior to doing Bunac I read the Biography of London.  I found it really fun when students (I worked in events for international students) would come and just complain, or remark how something was strange about London and I would have an answer.  It really shocked my coworkers. 

I find people in the UK to be quite similar to those in the US.  One difference might be in my head.  In college I took a children’s lit course and we discussed the differences between UK and American books.  One study had asked kids to draw pictures.  The Americans drew houses, their family, a hill and maybe the sun while the Brit kids would draw dragons and castles.  I think that British history is ingrained in people in a different way than in America.  It’s my thought though, and I might be wrong.  I’ve gotten quite good at UK history now and can usually hold my own with the topic turns to that.   Sometime I do have to just let comments roll off my back though, it’s not always worth getting in an argument with someone I like over something silly.