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On the participation of Americans and Russians in WWII (1)

People of my social circles, and I could easily say, a lot of people in Mexico share this image about WWII where Hitler was defeated mostly because of the intervention of the Americans. Movies and television have done a very nice labor of propaganda there, and, for what I've noticed so far speaking to friends from different parts of the world, this propaganda has spread very widely in the world.

Yesterday it came to my mind to check if this conception was right, just out of curiosity. And to my surprise, opinions are quite different over here.

So far I have spotted two branches, west and east Europe branches. West Europe branch mainly influenced by T.V. and Hollywood, east Europe branch by official education (although I have to say that one of the sources is self educated in this subjects, i.e. with some distance from the official discourse).

The west branch shares the conception we have in Mexico, mostly. With the difference that people from Europe that belong to this branch tend to consider the participation of other European countries in the struggle.

The east branch was interesting to discover. My sources for this branch are 2 quite educated friends, one Russian and one from Berlin, and another, level of education not confirmed, Polish friend.

In this east branch, the participation of the US in WWII is quite diminished. The main idea is that Germany was already in the way to certain defeat before the Americans got involved in the war. They do admit that the time required to finally defeat Germany was decreased by opening a second front with the arrival of Americans, but, this was not crucial to the final result. Arguments given to this side range from the amount of resources Germany lost fighting in Russia and the constant retreat that the German army was already adopting. As the Russian army advanced over German occupied territory.

Now, up to now this east branch has pictured things very clearly and included good reasons to believe all this is indeed true. Just out of curiosity I think I'll devote some time to the subject and do some proper research about it. Expect some more comments on the subject. If you think you can contribute with some nice references in either of the arguments, please post in the comments. No discussion with out serious references please ;).

New Google's experimental search engine

Here is some interesting thing to test. This is the experimental search interface of Google. They are doing some research on how to improve the overall search experience.
And the search engine seems to be a little different also.

Concerning the search results, the very first links are often the same between the results that google.com and searchmash.com return, but for the rest you can easily spot differences. Some times even the very first links are different. I haven't searched for documentation on the differences, but I'll do and post back here.

As for the interface, it's is more usefull in general. I has just a little more things than usual, but in a very productive way. For instance, it seems that they want to introduce javascript in searching also (we all know it works wonders in gmail and all the rest of the applications they have). Try clicking on "more web pages". The wikipedia link is a great added value. As for the images, I would prefer to have them just after the wikipedia results, but well you can just minimize and maximize the serach boxes and you have everything in one place.

http://www.searchmash.com/

Thumb's up for Google again.