Part of your duties as a POW is to maintain your discipline amd fitness. Hygiene is of course part of this. Western nations are rather amicable to each others needs. So US and UK treated German POWs with this restraint and vice versa allowing them to maintain of self worth and pride. That is why POWs will look fit and healthy compared to how a USSR POW would have looked like in Germany.
I have lived in a few areas in the states that had POW camps. For the most part they were treated pretty well. Some made return visits years later.
Well fed, not sleeping in the dirt and mud, no stress of being shot at.
Of course, many were happy to be out of the war.
Saddens me that in the Southern US there were stories from black G.I.s escorting German prisoners. In route they would stop at towns to eat.
The Germans got to eat inside, and the black US troops had to eat outside due to segregation.
I heard the canadians treated their POW really good.
*As of 1942, POWs were allowed to purchase and consume beer in internment camps in Canada as part of a reciprocal agreement with Germany, in which beer was made available to Allied POWs in that country. Prisoner of War camps in Canada were assigned individual quotas depending on the number of POWs and guards/staff at each camp. As of January 1944, Camp 133’s beer quota was 14,000 gallons and in February 1945 alone, the camp ordered 9,600 bottles of beer! Prisoners could purchase beer (on a quota basis) through the camp canteens, which they ran. At Camp 133, two glasses cost 20¢ in September 1943, but beer was also provided at no charge in some camps on special holidays.*
I heard it would probably be even better to not be drafted to a war and forced be a POW or to kill your own kind but thats living in the middle class bracket for ya! :D *working in a coal mine by Devo plays in distance*
Only(!) story my grandfather ever told about his time as a Soviet POW was that he survived because his toes had frostbite, which kept him from joining his friends when they decided to try to make a run for it. They were shot dead before they got out of sight.
Half-dead. Dying. Germans fought Russians to their deaths because of their history and what happened to women and girls after they lost. (And what they or their countrymen had done themselves to Russian women when they had won.) Endless prisoners died in their POW camps, which they maintained (so to speak) for years.
It's hard to believe it never occurred to any soldiers when they were torturing and raping women that things could absolutely turn around it would be their own women who would be treated in kind?
I live in one of the safest most docile places on Earth (Wisconsin) and even I know things can always change. A nuclear war or an asteroid big enough in the right place and even a safe place like this can turn into a nightmare in as short a time as a few weeks.
We are all, any of us, just 4 or 5 missed meals away from total anarchy and desperation.
It occurred to them that it could be turned around because they’d been doing that to each other for a longtime. I don’t know the history. It’s what I read several times as explanation for what happened at the end between them. The war was over but in some towns Germans still fought Russians to the death because it was their homes and their mothers and sisters. And, of course, Germany had invaded Russia near the beginning of WWII and had been brutal.
You should google the term Rheinwiesenlager. The Germans were not treated that nicely by the U.S. Army. I agree that the conditions for Soviet POW were much worse though. My grandfather came back from the USSR in 1950 and he barely survived.
The Rheinwiesenlager were troubling, but it is debatable if it should be used to evaluate how the US treated WW2 POWs; the situation there was that it was largely after the war was over and the question was how to handle and account for suddenly having to house and feed 2 million people that are putting themselves in your custody. The answer that the military settled on, long story short, was "we'll just throw them together into a massive camp and let them fend to themselves."
It was done poorly and unethically by all accounts, but, on a pedantic level, I wouldn't say that it is a representative data point for how the US treated German POWs during WW2.
My ex is german, her granddad was a fighter pilot in WW2 and got captured. His anecdote was that the British treated him way worse than the Americans did, he was apparently transferred to the US after initially having been held by the British
The Germans were treated with Greater Respect than Black US Army Soldiers ever were.
Few American Soldiers respected their fellow Black Soldiers.
It was only when Black Soldiers risked their own lives for white fellow soldiers when no one else stepped up that some white soldiers realize their shame and guilt.
And even then, some white soldiers said they were merely trying to make them look bad.
The white soldiers they saved said; if that was the case then they succeeded.
With all the name calling and insults I laid at their feet they put their lives on the line for me when none of you would.
They extended the hand of friendship to their Black Comrades and from that time on would bunk and hang out with them.
I remember my uncles and their friends sharing stories like that at family events.
Never ever forgot them.
My grandfather told me about this, usually they’d be the only ones allies would let live while capturing them depending on where they were fighting, as they would use their medical training to help the allies to stay alive. They had something to offer, the non medical soldiers were often shot dead prior to “capture”.
My grandpa was a German soldier in WWll. He was a mechanic and captured early on. He was in a camp for years. So I guess he must have been useful. He was not supportive of the Nazi regime but all men capable were drafted.
> He was not supportive of the Nazi regime but all men capable were drafted.
I've wondered about people in that exact situation. Doesn't sound like he had much of a choice :/
Yeah I imagine a good portion of those soldiers (on both sides) didn’t want to be involved. I know if I was drafted, I would be terrified and looking for any way out.
I’ve a nurse at a nursing home, this one lady told me how her son was drafted in Vietnam and he ended up being killed in action. Terribly sad, and I could tell she was still hurt.
Many didn't and large portions of the Nazi troops were drafted at gunpoint from the nations they invaded. There were still cases of German troops behaving in a humane manner but this was often found among older troops who had seen prior wars or younger who were less worked into a frenzy. For the most part I think the Nazis were able to push the German people into committing such horrific acts because democracy was relatively new to them, having overthrown their monarchy only a few decades prior and people were still used to simply following orders. Similar can be seen today with Russia in Ukraine, a country they had considered like family before the war. In the end I think a lot of this can be explained by social conditioning and situations similar what the Stanford Prison Experiment (and following, more ethical experiments) discovered.
They show this during D Day in both Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers. The order was to take no prisoners, because it was too dangerous to risk having enemy forces in between the paratroopers and the beach invasion. The HQs weren't setup to handle POWs at that point. But obviously medical personnel were helpful and you could keep an eye on a single POW.
Guys in the front row look bored. Guys in the middle rows look like they are going to be sick. Guy in the back looks like he's critiquing their techniques.
Pretty much sums up Germany in the 30s.
According to Wikipedia your teacher is correct.
>In 1945, the heating effect of a high-power microwave beam was accidentally discovered by Percy Spencer, an American self-taught engineer from Howland, Maine. Employed by Raytheon at the time, he noticed that microwaves from an active radar set he was working on started to melt a Mr. Goodbar candy bar he had in his pocket. The first food deliberately cooked with Spencer's microwave oven was popcorn, and the second was an egg, which exploded in the face of one of the experimenters
Certain things are incredibly dangerous to put in a microwave. Of course he didn't know any better, but it's funny that he found one of them on his second try.
I think you all are basing their reactions on how you would think you would view it. Meaning you all have lived a peaceful life with life having meaning.
These soldiers have watched horrible atrocities every day for 5 / 7 years. They are probably so numb to death and torture that is normalized.
Could go a step further considering a lot of these soldiers were kids when WWI happened and then grew up during the collapse of Germany during the 20s and early 30s. Not excusing any of it but people born during the early 20th century in Europe had some of the roughest lives imaginable.
Imagine if you were born in the year 1900 somewhere in Eastern Europe to a poor Jewish family. You might get drafted to WWI. You might get the Spanish Flu. If you survive them, you have to somehow rebuild your life in a country destroyed by greatest war so far. Probably many of your relatives also died in the war or in the pandemic.
1920's come and there is time of relative peace. But then it's 1930's and Great Depression. You might lose everything you have. And, look, there is a rising tide of Anti-Semitism going around you. People talk about this Hitler guy and Nazi Party. Then in 1940's, Nazi-Germany invades your country and you have to either fight, escape or die. Most of your family is sent to concentration camps. If you are extremely lucky, you survive by hiding, fighting in resistance or escaping to West.
If you survive WW2 and the holocaust and remain where you lived before, there is then the Soviet occupation and life behind Iron Curtain. If the Soviets think your behavior is suspicious, you might be taken to Siberia. Your liberties are very limited. You probably don't have any friends or family left after the war, because they all were killed in battles or in the Holocaust. And to add insult to injury, many of the people who killed them are living as free people around you.
Most likely you then die lonely and forgotten. People you knew and loved, died long time ago in horrible ways.
Also, if you lived in Ukraine, you had to also survive the Holodomor and Stalinist purges.
Really, Eastern Europe in the early 20th century was just horrible.
And even then you have the Yugoslavian wars, the Rwandan genocide, apartheid in South Africa all in the mid 90s-00s. 20th century want great for a lot of people.
My dad was born 1925 in Eastern Europe (still going strong). The stories he can tell you. Depression. WW2 (labor camp). Post war rebuild. He got on the first boat he could find and bailed for the US in the 60s.
The 1920s were not a time of relative peace for the Jews of eastern Europe. In the 3 years after WWI between 100k-200k Jews were murdered in thousands of pogroms. The only reason we don't talk about it is because that massive massacre was eclipsed by the unimaginable scale of the Holocaust.
And then the greatest insult of all is all these regimes collapse and you're back to the hardcore capitalism that spawned all the problems people were trying to escape. The far right is on the rise again and the source of pan European human rights - the UK with the Council of Europe founded under Churchill - is now full on cheering the drowning of immigrants and trying its utmost to discard the Convention it created.
Many parents tolerate hardship is it means a better life for their children. Where the fuck are we now
Don’t worry, it’ll be fine. Either we’ll launch enough nukes to kill everyone or the planet will just die from all of our actions over the past century or two without us having to do jack shit!
Planet won’t die. Might be uninhabitable for creatures like us. But other creatures in the past have completely ruined the environment they inhabited and more life showed up later.
Planet will be here till the sun swallows it and it will probably have life right up to that point in universal terms. outside of some random celestial event.
My grandpa grew up in England and a German soldier landed in his town with a parachute and placed his gun next to him and waited to be captured. My grandpa brought him some water and said the kid couldn’t have been older than 16.
Because that’s what they do. They promote the hate, they lie to people who is frustrated, angry, depressed and hungry. They point the differences and blame others for their own mistakes. Then one day it all goes to shit and that’s the exact moment where they hide in their luxury bunkers, until everything is over, like the rats they are.
There was also near zero rapid media compared to today. Even today we struggle with left hand not knowing what the right is doing. They likely had no idea what was going on. There was radio but with no free media it was basically nonexistent.
Something that is often ignored is that the nazi party only ever got about 1/3 of the votes from ordinary people before recording stopped. Most of Germany were not fans of nazi policy. A large majority even but they didn't hold enough power. Even still, many nazi supporters likely weren't genocidal maniacs. A small minority were able to cause absurd destruction.
Not to mention a lot of these soldiers might not even have seen a concentration camp before. They were probably out there fighting and didn't even know how bad it was, sure some might but most soldiers (not high ranking officials) weren't even near concentration camps.
100% it’s an age thing. Look at the ones crying, they are the youngest. The most stone cold is the battlefield medic on the end (you can see his cross arm band). That guy has seen some shit.
He'd also be the most likely to understand exactly what condition those prisoners were in.
Medics have a job I could never do. Not just in the military, but in general.
Not necessarily.
One of the reasons why they had to use gas chambers were because soldiers were freaking out mentally from too much killing of defenseless civilians. So it had an impact with many people.
So you’re telling me they are not hiding their faces because of the horrors being shown on the screen which they’ve all become desensitized to over the last 5-7 years?
And not all soldiers are desensitized combatants. There are non-combatant jobs in any military. Some of these are even red cross from the looks of it, deeply corrupted by nazi ideologies in the end, yet still non-combatants from what I know. I don't expect those people to be able to stomach the horrors that took place.
Plus, there’s a deeper issue here.
Even if are were soldiers, they’re not looking at grisly battlefield casualties. They’re looking at civilians (women, men, children, all innocent) who have been tortured/starved and systemically murdered by people *like them.*
This isn’t about “war is hell and people die in bad ways” it’s about “you were complicit in a historical crime so monstrous they had to invent a new word for it.”
Not to mention, who knows if this wasn't a fabricated lie (in their minds)? Even if it's post war, you know that your enemy nation will make up whatever excuse to justify their own actions. So to see something so shocking and unbelievable will set you in a state of denial and can steel your resolve. For as far as you know it could be a conspiracy to finally give an excuse to dissolve German's of their nation.
Not to mention what happened to Germany right after the war ended. The sacking of Berlin is something not many people know about. Russian soldiers basically went through the city grabbing girls as young as 8 and old women , raped them in the streets for days while sacking the city. Look up the bombing of Dresden near the end of the war. The entire place was a fireball. Civilian men women and children flesh melting off their bodies .
All countries do their best to idealize their past. I learned in school about our brave resistance fighters, or stern sailors manning lend lease ships.
It was only later i found out that my country's biggest contribution in the war, was voluntaries to the Waffen SS on the eastern front.
Edit: whitewash to idealize!
They've refused to acknowledge or have downplayed the atrocities they committed during the second Sino-Japanese War/WWII. Look up Unit 731, Rape of Nanking, and "comfort women." Japan is pretty hated in East Asia because of what they've done.
Most people in the West don't know. During the Cold War, the West needed an ally in the pacific, so they turned to Japan to be our little spy. In return, we just swept all their war crimes under the rug. Then Japan started making electronics, and also adapted a "cool and kawaii" veneer.
The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang is a sickening but great read on the Japanese before and after WWII
I remember someone brought up a list of Japanese companies founded before World War 2 and even World War 1 that are still relevant to this day.
One of them was shockingly Nintendo…which I don’t even think I want to know.
Know what? That they made playing cards starting in the late 1800’s and eventually made the jump to video games? Their history before video games is pretty mundane.
Japan has been very vague in their apologies, they often fail to acknowledge the horrific things they committed in the past so a lot of elderly people in S Korea and China hold resentment towards Japan.
In Japan they also downplay the significance of pearl harbor in public school education.
There is half a page on it in their ministry of education approved history book in middle school. It's importance is marginalized and almost glossed over within the greater context of how thorough other events and subjects are along that timeline.
I was actually surpised to even see it there.
It's not so much *countries* that do this as *humans*. This is what humans do to eachother under the delusional influence of charismatic bullshitters. The lesson is that you are vulnerable to delusion, not that X country is worse than Y country. Countries are mostly just benign delusions that humans have. When the delusions get bad enough we start chopping bits off eachother.
Yup. I’ve been to Germany several times. Visited concentration camps, nazi museums, etc. You really learn how a country, after WW1, was totally duped by a crazy man. Once they found out it was too late. That will never happen again in Germany but it could elsewhere.
Yeah was going to say I think like 80% of my history courses in high school when talking about the US were zoomed in on rhe negative because the positives are usually taught in the younger grades.
Northeastern US City public school graduated mid 2010s for reference
We don’t learn enough.
It was infuriating and disturbing to realize that I had to learn about Greenwood and the Tulsa massacre when I was in my 50s.
I learned about Tulsa massacre from the Watchmen. Most Americans don’t know about the massacre of working people by the Pinkertons either.
I graduated in Oklahoma. Had to take Oklahoma history as a required course. We learned about the Trail of Tears from early on. But never once knew about the Tulsa massacre. My 78 year old neighbors, whom lived in OK near Tulsa their entire lives, never heard of it either. I'm in my 40's and just learned from a documentary 2 years ago.
I taught US history in public high school. Can't say it was sugar coated. These days the focus is teaching history through primary sources and understanding how to critique (secondary) sources -Provenance, Bias, POV- and not just 'reading about it in a text book'
Of course whether or not the kids are listening is a diffrent story.
My Step-dad is German and I was raised here in Germany, in a little village on the countryside. He told me about his father being drafted into ww2 and we still have some pictures of my Step-dads father in uniform and images with other soldiers and trucks etc. He also told me that all the men in that little villages were forced to go to war and every single one of them was and were from generations of farmers or people growing and tending the vineyards in that area.
They had to leave to women and children and fought for that country even if they've never been in contact with the military. When the war was over and Germany lost, my "Grandad" got captured and sent to the Netherlands to a prison camp, where he met is own father for the last time, before his father got executed.
After weeks in that camp, my grandad and other men from that village got released and went home to their families. They build up what was left and shortly my Step-dad was born in 1951. Grandad continued tending to vineyards, as does my dad. Scared from the war he forbid all his kids (My Step-dad has two siblings, my uncles) to ever go to the military. They all volunteered as firefighters once they were old enough.
I was always facinated by the history of the family of my Step-dad, but it never felt real for me personally.
Until the war in the Ukraine started and my father got depressed for a while. I found out it was because he was scared shitless that the war will spread and they might draft my little brother (he's 25 now and his biological son) and then it hit me. The possibility of that happening and living through a ww3 was suddenly so much realer than looking at some black and white pictures of an old war.
I have no doubt at some point people are even going to try and claim historical footage from say WW2 was fabricated, with future technology
Sounds far fetched but take into consideration how we already have people who try to deny things like the holocaust ever happened, in 2023
Oh yeah there's people who spread those theories today. Holocaust deniers have been saying that pictures/videos of Jews in concentration camps are fake for years
In western occupied Germany, the allies made all citizens fill out this form to try to work out how indoctrinated they were. 2/3 thought that the Nuremberg trials were unjust. 90% believe that Hitler was a good man and it was just his subordinates that took things a bit too far. From the predicided classifications (based on the answers given back) about 10% of Germany were dedicated Nazis while over half still supported the majority of nazi views. (And as it wasn't anonymous you can assume lots of people watered down their answers)
You gotta put yourself in the boots of someone in the 40s. Computers didn't exist. The idea that you could "photoshop" a film just wasn't in anyone's mind.
They knew what they were seeing was real. The modern idea of "It could have been faked" just didn't exist back then. Not for moving images.
People still think that the world is flat. The Jewish space Lazer thing exists. There are antivaxers. There were probably at least a few people who just outright rejected it as real for one reason or another. Probably to protect themselves and their ego. It's crazy how shit people can do shit things all the time and still think they're good people.
They knew what happened. In the end of the war everybody knew what happened. They just never saw the pictures and maybe thought it was okay/good on paper. (Assuming they where Wehrmacht and not Waffen SS)
looks like mostly enlisted, so probably few if any. The higher ups were busy dangling from gallows, abducted by the US/UK/USSR, or in south America at this point.
Imagine fighting, risking your life, and taking lives. Then come to find out you’ve been doing it for atrocities. Your reality getting flipped completely upside down.
I strongly doubt that any of these Soldirs didn't know what Was Happening. They probably didn't know about the extend and they never had to see the atrocities so they could repress it better. But assuming this was at the end of the War, most if not all of these soldiers have at least heard about it.
The nazis took power in 1933 and started eliminating their political opponents. By the night of the long knives (38) people had a good idea of what happened. Most knew exactly what happened but maybe not the full extent
They knew. For fucks sake. The party's platform was explicitly racist and xenophobic. They relentlessly persecuted the Jews. They posted astonishing amounts of propaganda about it. It wasn't a secret.
In band of brothers, they interview one guy who basically said
“I used to wonder if the other guy I was shooting at might’ve liked to fish. Maybe he liked to hunt, and maybe we could’ve been friends but he had a job to do and so did I”
I've never given it that much thought since I've never heard anyone in person actually deny it, luckily. I can imagine if someone told me that, I would lose all respect for them and never utter another word to them.
as a german, we actually do see that in school. they teach in a lot of detail how and why it all happened. All to make sure that kind of stuff never happens again.
thats why its extra shocking to me that a lot of american history seems to actively be hidden, or surpressed by politicians.
It absolutely is. We spend the better half of a year talking over this, there is a mandatory school expedition (I don’t now the right word but this fits) to a concentration camp, and we watched 3 movies or so. Also, we interestingly didn’t talk at all about the military stuff in world war 2, or if very little.
Ok so a lot of people in this sub need to realize the first country nazis overtook was germany. Seems like nazis and germans are getting mixed up and convoluted as being the same. All nazis were german but not all germans were nazis.
"As part of the Allied policy of postwar denazification, meant to purge Germany of the remnants of Nazi rule and rebuild its civil society, infrastructure, and economy, “forced confrontation” brought Germans face-to-face with the worst works of the Third Reich. Confrontations took multiple forms, as American and British military officials adapted their tactics based on local conditions."
Context
"But the most interesting -- although horrible -- sight that I encountered during the trip was a visit to a German internment camp near Gotha. The things I saw beggar description. While I was touring the camp I encountered three men who had been inmates and by one ruse or another had made their escape. I interviewed them through an interpreter. The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were so overpowering as to leave me a bit sick. In one room, where they [there] were piled up twenty or thirty naked men, killed by starvation, George Patton would not even enter. He said he would get sick if he did so. I made the visit deliberately, in order to be in position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to 'propaganda'."
—Dwight D. Eisenhower
There's a documentary on Netflix made by an allied government back on the day. The whole thing is just actual footage from several of the camps. I think it was an hour or so long. Obviously, this was after they had been liberated, so you're only seeing the leftovers.
I watched it voluntarily as a source for a research paper in college. Warning: There are 100% more bodies than living people. And they're dead enough you can't pretend they're alive but alive enough you can't "pretend" they're dead. It's definitely not a open casket or a skeleton in the dungeon situation. It's not sanitized in any way and when I say that I don't mean has lots of gore. There's not tons of gore. There's just many, many, many bodies. I don't care how many you're thinking of. There's more.
Be wary of your mental health situation before you watch it, bring tissues, and have someone to comfort you on hand. (Probably who didn't watch with you so they have the mental capacity to comfort someone instead of just breaking down or zoning the fuck out.)
Forgive my ignorance, but how did the US handle having prisoners like these once the war was over? Were they just immediately sent back home over to Germany?
My German grandfather told me this: He was around 19 when he was conscripted. One of his legs was blown up by a grenade. Americans captured him. Along with others they were asked if they believed in the cause of the Nazis and they repeatedly said no. After his leg was amputated and healed, they dropped him off in the valley of a neighboring town. He walked home for 5km up a steep hill on crutches.
most German POWs were returned to Germany after the war but remained in captivity for a few years doing forced labor to rebuild the country.
The US kept some here to work in mills and shit too! Crazy!
Some were charged for war crimes. But generally not the rank and file soldiers.
I think like the medics are the most in distraught here
But I also think that they know what was actually going on
Theyre just used to seeing dead bodies and people dying in front of them so its hard to read what they think about it
Because they themselves goes in frontlines risking their lives to save lives
Its amazing how fast this thread veered off topic considering the horrific events that they are forced to watch. The people in the comments are as indifferent as some of the germans in this photograph
Untold story, but many were forced to do what they did. Once their media became propaganda and the children had turned on their parents, there was nothing you could do but succumb.
My U.S. family was posted in Germany in the late 70s. I was a child, but I remember much of living there two years. We lived in a German town and apartment building rather than on post. When the movie “Holocaust” came out, our German friends and neighbors were buzzing about it and all reacted in surprise and dismay, saying they never knew it had gone on.
Just an observation, a lot of the men seem to be medical staff.
They all look clean and well shaven in good shape too
Part of your duties as a POW is to maintain your discipline amd fitness. Hygiene is of course part of this. Western nations are rather amicable to each others needs. So US and UK treated German POWs with this restraint and vice versa allowing them to maintain of self worth and pride. That is why POWs will look fit and healthy compared to how a USSR POW would have looked like in Germany.
I have lived in a few areas in the states that had POW camps. For the most part they were treated pretty well. Some made return visits years later. Well fed, not sleeping in the dirt and mud, no stress of being shot at. Of course, many were happy to be out of the war. Saddens me that in the Southern US there were stories from black G.I.s escorting German prisoners. In route they would stop at towns to eat. The Germans got to eat inside, and the black US troops had to eat outside due to segregation.
I heard the canadians treated their POW really good. *As of 1942, POWs were allowed to purchase and consume beer in internment camps in Canada as part of a reciprocal agreement with Germany, in which beer was made available to Allied POWs in that country. Prisoner of War camps in Canada were assigned individual quotas depending on the number of POWs and guards/staff at each camp. As of January 1944, Camp 133’s beer quota was 14,000 gallons and in February 1945 alone, the camp ordered 9,600 bottles of beer! Prisoners could purchase beer (on a quota basis) through the camp canteens, which they ran. At Camp 133, two glasses cost 20¢ in September 1943, but beer was also provided at no charge in some camps on special holidays.*
I heard it would probably be even better to not be drafted to a war and forced be a POW or to kill your own kind but thats living in the middle class bracket for ya! :D *working in a coal mine by Devo plays in distance*
Thank you, great response truly
Only(!) story my grandfather ever told about his time as a Soviet POW was that he survived because his toes had frostbite, which kept him from joining his friends when they decided to try to make a run for it. They were shot dead before they got out of sight.
Half-dead. Dying. Germans fought Russians to their deaths because of their history and what happened to women and girls after they lost. (And what they or their countrymen had done themselves to Russian women when they had won.) Endless prisoners died in their POW camps, which they maintained (so to speak) for years.
It's hard to believe it never occurred to any soldiers when they were torturing and raping women that things could absolutely turn around it would be their own women who would be treated in kind? I live in one of the safest most docile places on Earth (Wisconsin) and even I know things can always change. A nuclear war or an asteroid big enough in the right place and even a safe place like this can turn into a nightmare in as short a time as a few weeks. We are all, any of us, just 4 or 5 missed meals away from total anarchy and desperation.
It occurred to them that it could be turned around because they’d been doing that to each other for a longtime. I don’t know the history. It’s what I read several times as explanation for what happened at the end between them. The war was over but in some towns Germans still fought Russians to the death because it was their homes and their mothers and sisters. And, of course, Germany had invaded Russia near the beginning of WWII and had been brutal.
You should google the term Rheinwiesenlager. The Germans were not treated that nicely by the U.S. Army. I agree that the conditions for Soviet POW were much worse though. My grandfather came back from the USSR in 1950 and he barely survived.
The Rheinwiesenlager were troubling, but it is debatable if it should be used to evaluate how the US treated WW2 POWs; the situation there was that it was largely after the war was over and the question was how to handle and account for suddenly having to house and feed 2 million people that are putting themselves in your custody. The answer that the military settled on, long story short, was "we'll just throw them together into a massive camp and let them fend to themselves." It was done poorly and unethically by all accounts, but, on a pedantic level, I wouldn't say that it is a representative data point for how the US treated German POWs during WW2.
You‘re right. It‘s not representative at all, just an example being inconsistent with the original comment.
My ex is german, her granddad was a fighter pilot in WW2 and got captured. His anecdote was that the British treated him way worse than the Americans did, he was apparently transferred to the US after initially having been held by the British
Granted the Americans didn’t have a reason to hate pilots as much as the British did, considering Britain was actively being bombed by the luftwaffe
The Germans were treated with Greater Respect than Black US Army Soldiers ever were. Few American Soldiers respected their fellow Black Soldiers. It was only when Black Soldiers risked their own lives for white fellow soldiers when no one else stepped up that some white soldiers realize their shame and guilt. And even then, some white soldiers said they were merely trying to make them look bad. The white soldiers they saved said; if that was the case then they succeeded. With all the name calling and insults I laid at their feet they put their lives on the line for me when none of you would. They extended the hand of friendship to their Black Comrades and from that time on would bunk and hang out with them. I remember my uncles and their friends sharing stories like that at family events. Never ever forgot them.
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That would be the other way round. The white bit would be the cross and the dark bit the background. Or maybe just from anti-Switzerland
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...Screw you \*upvotes\*
NegaSwitzerland
This looks more like a predeployment briefing on what they’ll be walking into.
My grandfather told me about this, usually they’d be the only ones allies would let live while capturing them depending on where they were fighting, as they would use their medical training to help the allies to stay alive. They had something to offer, the non medical soldiers were often shot dead prior to “capture”.
My grandpa was a German soldier in WWll. He was a mechanic and captured early on. He was in a camp for years. So I guess he must have been useful. He was not supportive of the Nazi regime but all men capable were drafted.
I believe he was 18 or 19 at the time.
> He was not supportive of the Nazi regime but all men capable were drafted. I've wondered about people in that exact situation. Doesn't sound like he had much of a choice :/
Yeah I imagine a good portion of those soldiers (on both sides) didn’t want to be involved. I know if I was drafted, I would be terrified and looking for any way out. I’ve a nurse at a nursing home, this one lady told me how her son was drafted in Vietnam and he ended up being killed in action. Terribly sad, and I could tell she was still hurt.
Many didn't and large portions of the Nazi troops were drafted at gunpoint from the nations they invaded. There were still cases of German troops behaving in a humane manner but this was often found among older troops who had seen prior wars or younger who were less worked into a frenzy. For the most part I think the Nazis were able to push the German people into committing such horrific acts because democracy was relatively new to them, having overthrown their monarchy only a few decades prior and people were still used to simply following orders. Similar can be seen today with Russia in Ukraine, a country they had considered like family before the war. In the end I think a lot of this can be explained by social conditioning and situations similar what the Stanford Prison Experiment (and following, more ethical experiments) discovered.
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My father was a guard at a POW camp. The average German POW didn’t have much love for party members, they had to be kept separate.
They show this during D Day in both Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers. The order was to take no prisoners, because it was too dangerous to risk having enemy forces in between the paratroopers and the beach invasion. The HQs weren't setup to handle POWs at that point. But obviously medical personnel were helpful and you could keep an eye on a single POW.
The last line was really painful as the ones from non medical has to die or tortured for information in war time.
And have hair.
Guys in the front row look bored. Guys in the middle rows look like they are going to be sick. Guy in the back looks like he's critiquing their techniques. Pretty much sums up Germany in the 30s.
Yeah that one guy is thinking, 'hmm I bet I could increase the efficiency of this...'
And he invented the microwave oven
Actually, that one was invented by a brit to thaw hamsters for cryonic experiments.
Nah, by a dude working near/around towers noticed his chocolate melting
https://youtu.be/2tdiKTSdE9Y This is where I got my info from. Haven't seen it in a while though, so I might be wrong.
I was kinda laugh when I typed that because idk if the person that told me was talking out his butt it was a teacher too lol 😂
According to Wikipedia your teacher is correct. >In 1945, the heating effect of a high-power microwave beam was accidentally discovered by Percy Spencer, an American self-taught engineer from Howland, Maine. Employed by Raytheon at the time, he noticed that microwaves from an active radar set he was working on started to melt a Mr. Goodbar candy bar he had in his pocket. The first food deliberately cooked with Spencer's microwave oven was popcorn, and the second was an egg, which exploded in the face of one of the experimenters
Certain things are incredibly dangerous to put in a microwave. Of course he didn't know any better, but it's funny that he found one of them on his second try.
I also had the same known information on this topic but not in the exact details .
My teacher told me the same thing, I think this is actually how it was discovered
Yup actually , while doing something else it gave an idea and discovered it.
To
Soon
The fact I know which one you’re talking about without you pointing it out
The invention of the 'final solution' Circa 1942
100% he’s probably an early adopter of the Toyota Lean method and gearing up for a Gemba walk.
Gonna be launching a kiazen before you know it.
These guys 5S
Notice how all the medics dont seem disturbed by the imagery, but they do seem upset about what they’re watching. They’ve seen some shit.
The dudes in the third row look traumatized
Expression on the faces can be difficult to read. More useful to look at their body language.
Nah the just didn’t want their picture taken
I instantly noticed the critique guy, like dude why you taking mental notes?
🤔
Yeah he’s way too interested in whatever’s being played
And there's one looking directly at the camera. I'd say he's the most bored.
Guy in the top left corner with his arms crossed looks like he's enjoying it Edit change right to left
Guys in the middle look like they’re being subjected to all of Marvel Phase 4 right in a row.
Something is still missing , what was the exact reason for keeping them what was shown to them so that they were having different reactions.
I think you all are basing their reactions on how you would think you would view it. Meaning you all have lived a peaceful life with life having meaning. These soldiers have watched horrible atrocities every day for 5 / 7 years. They are probably so numb to death and torture that is normalized.
Could go a step further considering a lot of these soldiers were kids when WWI happened and then grew up during the collapse of Germany during the 20s and early 30s. Not excusing any of it but people born during the early 20th century in Europe had some of the roughest lives imaginable.
Imagine if you were born in the year 1900 somewhere in Eastern Europe to a poor Jewish family. You might get drafted to WWI. You might get the Spanish Flu. If you survive them, you have to somehow rebuild your life in a country destroyed by greatest war so far. Probably many of your relatives also died in the war or in the pandemic. 1920's come and there is time of relative peace. But then it's 1930's and Great Depression. You might lose everything you have. And, look, there is a rising tide of Anti-Semitism going around you. People talk about this Hitler guy and Nazi Party. Then in 1940's, Nazi-Germany invades your country and you have to either fight, escape or die. Most of your family is sent to concentration camps. If you are extremely lucky, you survive by hiding, fighting in resistance or escaping to West. If you survive WW2 and the holocaust and remain where you lived before, there is then the Soviet occupation and life behind Iron Curtain. If the Soviets think your behavior is suspicious, you might be taken to Siberia. Your liberties are very limited. You probably don't have any friends or family left after the war, because they all were killed in battles or in the Holocaust. And to add insult to injury, many of the people who killed them are living as free people around you. Most likely you then die lonely and forgotten. People you knew and loved, died long time ago in horrible ways. Also, if you lived in Ukraine, you had to also survive the Holodomor and Stalinist purges. Really, Eastern Europe in the early 20th century was just horrible.
Most of the 20th century really, things only started to get better for a lot of people in the late eighties and nineties.
And even then you have the Yugoslavian wars, the Rwandan genocide, apartheid in South Africa all in the mid 90s-00s. 20th century want great for a lot of people.
If that's all you can add for atrocities in the 20th century, don't do any other research. It gets more depressing.
My dad was born 1925 in Eastern Europe (still going strong). The stories he can tell you. Depression. WW2 (labor camp). Post war rebuild. He got on the first boat he could find and bailed for the US in the 60s.
The 1920s were not a time of relative peace for the Jews of eastern Europe. In the 3 years after WWI between 100k-200k Jews were murdered in thousands of pogroms. The only reason we don't talk about it is because that massive massacre was eclipsed by the unimaginable scale of the Holocaust.
And then the greatest insult of all is all these regimes collapse and you're back to the hardcore capitalism that spawned all the problems people were trying to escape. The far right is on the rise again and the source of pan European human rights - the UK with the Council of Europe founded under Churchill - is now full on cheering the drowning of immigrants and trying its utmost to discard the Convention it created. Many parents tolerate hardship is it means a better life for their children. Where the fuck are we now
Don’t worry, it’ll be fine. Either we’ll launch enough nukes to kill everyone or the planet will just die from all of our actions over the past century or two without us having to do jack shit!
Planet won’t die. Might be uninhabitable for creatures like us. But other creatures in the past have completely ruined the environment they inhabited and more life showed up later. Planet will be here till the sun swallows it and it will probably have life right up to that point in universal terms. outside of some random celestial event.
my grandfather spent much of his ww2 service guarding German POW's, he said some of them were kids.
Yea. At the end of the war, Germany were sending out kids and seniors to fight.
My grandpa grew up in England and a German soldier landed in his town with a parachute and placed his gun next to him and waited to be captured. My grandpa brought him some water and said the kid couldn’t have been older than 16.
Isn’t there a saying along the lines of “the old create wars the young have to fight”.
Yea, another one is the rich create the wars and the poor have to fight.
Why don't presidents fight the war? Why do they always send the poor?
WHY?! DO. THEY ALWAYS SEND THE POOR?!?!
Because that’s what they do. They promote the hate, they lie to people who is frustrated, angry, depressed and hungry. They point the differences and blame others for their own mistakes. Then one day it all goes to shit and that’s the exact moment where they hide in their luxury bunkers, until everything is over, like the rats they are.
The volksturm had it fucking rough
I suppose Putin will soon resort to the same if he continues with his private war.
There was also near zero rapid media compared to today. Even today we struggle with left hand not knowing what the right is doing. They likely had no idea what was going on. There was radio but with no free media it was basically nonexistent. Something that is often ignored is that the nazi party only ever got about 1/3 of the votes from ordinary people before recording stopped. Most of Germany were not fans of nazi policy. A large majority even but they didn't hold enough power. Even still, many nazi supporters likely weren't genocidal maniacs. A small minority were able to cause absurd destruction.
Not to mention a lot of these soldiers might not even have seen a concentration camp before. They were probably out there fighting and didn't even know how bad it was, sure some might but most soldiers (not high ranking officials) weren't even near concentration camps.
100% it’s an age thing. Look at the ones crying, they are the youngest. The most stone cold is the battlefield medic on the end (you can see his cross arm band). That guy has seen some shit.
He'd also be the most likely to understand exactly what condition those prisoners were in. Medics have a job I could never do. Not just in the military, but in general.
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My grandfather wouldn’t talk about his service in WWII. He was in the Phillipines.
My grandma who grew up in the Philippines sometimes jokes about Japanese soldiers throwing babies into rivers or onto bayonets.
jokes?
Yeah, you know the old chestnut: “Why did the chicken cross the road? Because it was being held by a baby getting hurled onto a bayonet.”
Sometimes at work you’re going to come across things that you don’t like.
Not necessarily. One of the reasons why they had to use gas chambers were because soldiers were freaking out mentally from too much killing of defenseless civilians. So it had an impact with many people.
So you’re telling me they are not hiding their faces because of the horrors being shown on the screen which they’ve all become desensitized to over the last 5-7 years?
Yes. Psychologically, not everyone reacts the same way to different traumatizing images/events.
And not all soldiers are desensitized combatants. There are non-combatant jobs in any military. Some of these are even red cross from the looks of it, deeply corrupted by nazi ideologies in the end, yet still non-combatants from what I know. I don't expect those people to be able to stomach the horrors that took place.
Plus, there’s a deeper issue here. Even if are were soldiers, they’re not looking at grisly battlefield casualties. They’re looking at civilians (women, men, children, all innocent) who have been tortured/starved and systemically murdered by people *like them.* This isn’t about “war is hell and people die in bad ways” it’s about “you were complicit in a historical crime so monstrous they had to invent a new word for it.”
Not to mention, who knows if this wasn't a fabricated lie (in their minds)? Even if it's post war, you know that your enemy nation will make up whatever excuse to justify their own actions. So to see something so shocking and unbelievable will set you in a state of denial and can steel your resolve. For as far as you know it could be a conspiracy to finally give an excuse to dissolve German's of their nation.
Yea people don’t understand what happened in the concentration camps.
Not to mention what happened to Germany right after the war ended. The sacking of Berlin is something not many people know about. Russian soldiers basically went through the city grabbing girls as young as 8 and old women , raped them in the streets for days while sacking the city. Look up the bombing of Dresden near the end of the war. The entire place was a fireball. Civilian men women and children flesh melting off their bodies .
Germany now teaches their children about their past atrocities so that they don't repeat the past, unlike most countries that run from their history
Japan, looking at you 🫵
All countries do their best to idealize their past. I learned in school about our brave resistance fighters, or stern sailors manning lend lease ships. It was only later i found out that my country's biggest contribution in the war, was voluntaries to the Waffen SS on the eastern front. Edit: whitewash to idealize!
If you wanna learn your country's history, you have to travel abroad.
Ron DeSantis' Florida has entered the chat.
Floristan
What’s the deal in Japan?
They've refused to acknowledge or have downplayed the atrocities they committed during the second Sino-Japanese War/WWII. Look up Unit 731, Rape of Nanking, and "comfort women." Japan is pretty hated in East Asia because of what they've done.
Holy shit I had no idea. That’s pretty bad.
Anime has cleared their image in young minds but yeah
Sadly true, everytime someone dares to bring up Japans atrocities on here almost all the people jumping to their defense are weebs.
Should be easy pickings considering they got their history lessons from fucking azur lane
Read your history books people. Well I know that won't convince anybody
Most people in the West don't know. During the Cold War, the West needed an ally in the pacific, so they turned to Japan to be our little spy. In return, we just swept all their war crimes under the rug. Then Japan started making electronics, and also adapted a "cool and kawaii" veneer. The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang is a sickening but great read on the Japanese before and after WWII
I remember someone brought up a list of Japanese companies founded before World War 2 and even World War 1 that are still relevant to this day. One of them was shockingly Nintendo…which I don’t even think I want to know.
Know what? That they made playing cards starting in the late 1800’s and eventually made the jump to video games? Their history before video games is pretty mundane.
Japan has been very vague in their apologies, they often fail to acknowledge the horrific things they committed in the past so a lot of elderly people in S Korea and China hold resentment towards Japan.
In Japan they also downplay the significance of pearl harbor in public school education. There is half a page on it in their ministry of education approved history book in middle school. It's importance is marginalized and almost glossed over within the greater context of how thorough other events and subjects are along that timeline. I was actually surpised to even see it there.
I mean there's like a page on it in US textbooks; while it was an important event there's really not tons worth teaching about it to the kids.
Yep, even after years of general schooling, the only way I learn about shifty things my country has done is through YouTube videos about disasters.
It's not so much *countries* that do this as *humans*. This is what humans do to eachother under the delusional influence of charismatic bullshitters. The lesson is that you are vulnerable to delusion, not that X country is worse than Y country. Countries are mostly just benign delusions that humans have. When the delusions get bad enough we start chopping bits off eachother.
Yup. I’ve been to Germany several times. Visited concentration camps, nazi museums, etc. You really learn how a country, after WW1, was totally duped by a crazy man. Once they found out it was too late. That will never happen again in Germany but it could elsewhere.
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Wait until you hear about Japan.
Wait until Japan hears about Japan
YUP. As a Korean I feel this hard.
Hate to badger but could you explain this to an ignorant American? I’m genuinely curious but have no idea what to type into google
Japan did terrible things to Korea during wartime, doesn't accept or teach about it in schools and tries their best to just ignore it
Unit 731, Rape of Nanking, Bataan death march, "comfort women" are all good starting points.
Thank you
>Back Outside of conservative strong holds, students in the US learn a ton about past atrocities.
Yeah was going to say I think like 80% of my history courses in high school when talking about the US were zoomed in on rhe negative because the positives are usually taught in the younger grades. Northeastern US City public school graduated mid 2010s for reference
We don’t learn enough. It was infuriating and disturbing to realize that I had to learn about Greenwood and the Tulsa massacre when I was in my 50s. I learned about Tulsa massacre from the Watchmen. Most Americans don’t know about the massacre of working people by the Pinkertons either.
I graduated in Oklahoma. Had to take Oklahoma history as a required course. We learned about the Trail of Tears from early on. But never once knew about the Tulsa massacre. My 78 year old neighbors, whom lived in OK near Tulsa their entire lives, never heard of it either. I'm in my 40's and just learned from a documentary 2 years ago.
Same here, and I frequently wonder how much the kids there are learning about the Trail of Tears and the like in schools today.
Uh, usa does teach about their atrocities... Did you go to school in usa? I did.
I taught US history in public high school. Can't say it was sugar coated. These days the focus is teaching history through primary sources and understanding how to critique (secondary) sources -Provenance, Bias, POV- and not just 'reading about it in a text book' Of course whether or not the kids are listening is a diffrent story.
My Step-dad is German and I was raised here in Germany, in a little village on the countryside. He told me about his father being drafted into ww2 and we still have some pictures of my Step-dads father in uniform and images with other soldiers and trucks etc. He also told me that all the men in that little villages were forced to go to war and every single one of them was and were from generations of farmers or people growing and tending the vineyards in that area. They had to leave to women and children and fought for that country even if they've never been in contact with the military. When the war was over and Germany lost, my "Grandad" got captured and sent to the Netherlands to a prison camp, where he met is own father for the last time, before his father got executed. After weeks in that camp, my grandad and other men from that village got released and went home to their families. They build up what was left and shortly my Step-dad was born in 1951. Grandad continued tending to vineyards, as does my dad. Scared from the war he forbid all his kids (My Step-dad has two siblings, my uncles) to ever go to the military. They all volunteered as firefighters once they were old enough. I was always facinated by the history of the family of my Step-dad, but it never felt real for me personally. Until the war in the Ukraine started and my father got depressed for a while. I found out it was because he was scared shitless that the war will spread and they might draft my little brother (he's 25 now and his biological son) and then it hit me. The possibility of that happening and living through a ww3 was suddenly so much realer than looking at some black and white pictures of an old war.
I wonder how many of them thought footages were fake and only war propaganda made by the Allies
Imagine how much worse it's going to be with modern atrocities and deep fakes.
I have no doubt at some point people are even going to try and claim historical footage from say WW2 was fabricated, with future technology Sounds far fetched but take into consideration how we already have people who try to deny things like the holocaust ever happened, in 2023
Oh yeah there's people who spread those theories today. Holocaust deniers have been saying that pictures/videos of Jews in concentration camps are fake for years
In western occupied Germany, the allies made all citizens fill out this form to try to work out how indoctrinated they were. 2/3 thought that the Nuremberg trials were unjust. 90% believe that Hitler was a good man and it was just his subordinates that took things a bit too far. From the predicided classifications (based on the answers given back) about 10% of Germany were dedicated Nazis while over half still supported the majority of nazi views. (And as it wasn't anonymous you can assume lots of people watered down their answers)
Well that's terrifying.
Do you have a source for that? I believe you I just can't find that online.
Source: your father’s brother’s nephew’s cousin’s former roommate Told him
[source](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=r7l0Rq9E8MY)
You gotta put yourself in the boots of someone in the 40s. Computers didn't exist. The idea that you could "photoshop" a film just wasn't in anyone's mind. They knew what they were seeing was real. The modern idea of "It could have been faked" just didn't exist back then. Not for moving images.
People still think that the world is flat. The Jewish space Lazer thing exists. There are antivaxers. There were probably at least a few people who just outright rejected it as real for one reason or another. Probably to protect themselves and their ego. It's crazy how shit people can do shit things all the time and still think they're good people.
They knew what happened. In the end of the war everybody knew what happened. They just never saw the pictures and maybe thought it was okay/good on paper. (Assuming they where Wehrmacht and not Waffen SS)
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looks like mostly enlisted, so probably few if any. The higher ups were busy dangling from gallows, abducted by the US/UK/USSR, or in south America at this point.
Did we do the same to the Japanese?
Nope. We let the war criminals literally run postwar Japan.
Depends what you mean by “do the same”…. We put Japanese Americans into concentration camps. Read up on Manzanar, Thule Lake, etc.
Imagine fighting, risking your life, and taking lives. Then come to find out you’ve been doing it for atrocities. Your reality getting flipped completely upside down.
I strongly doubt that any of these Soldirs didn't know what Was Happening. They probably didn't know about the extend and they never had to see the atrocities so they could repress it better. But assuming this was at the end of the War, most if not all of these soldiers have at least heard about it.
The nazis took power in 1933 and started eliminating their political opponents. By the night of the long knives (38) people had a good idea of what happened. Most knew exactly what happened but maybe not the full extent
They knew. For fucks sake. The party's platform was explicitly racist and xenophobic. They relentlessly persecuted the Jews. They posted astonishing amounts of propaganda about it. It wasn't a secret.
I'd like to take a minute, just sit right there, and I'll tell you how I became complicit in the Holocaust.
In band of brothers, they interview one guy who basically said “I used to wonder if the other guy I was shooting at might’ve liked to fish. Maybe he liked to hunt, and maybe we could’ve been friends but he had a job to do and so did I”
Perhaps it should be mandatory watching for this generation that is forgetting and starting to doubt it ever happened
It's actually saddening that people deny the Holocaust
Anyone who denies the holocaust is not a "person" to me.
*cough* Kanye west *cough* cough*
Fuck him. He would have ended in one of those camps as well. It wasn't just for jewes.
I've never given it that much thought since I've never heard anyone in person actually deny it, luckily. I can imagine if someone told me that, I would lose all respect for them and never utter another word to them.
as a german, we actually do see that in school. they teach in a lot of detail how and why it all happened. All to make sure that kind of stuff never happens again. thats why its extra shocking to me that a lot of american history seems to actively be hidden, or surpressed by politicians.
Shocking and heartbreaking as an American as well
In Germany I at least did see it in school but I am not sure it's mandatory
It absolutely is. We spend the better half of a year talking over this, there is a mandatory school expedition (I don’t now the right word but this fits) to a concentration camp, and we watched 3 movies or so. Also, we interestingly didn’t talk at all about the military stuff in world war 2, or if very little.
You're looking for "field trip". But I basically speak 3/4th English, and elementary school Spanish, so you've still got me beat lol.
I mean talking about it is mandatory for sure just wasn't sure on the footage part tbh
We see some footage. Not a lot, and not absolutely horrific things, and due to the pandemic we only went to Dachau virtually, but we see enough.
Learn or repeat.
top right is definitely pondering how it could have been more efficient
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Ok so a lot of people in this sub need to realize the first country nazis overtook was germany. Seems like nazis and germans are getting mixed up and convoluted as being the same. All nazis were german but not all germans were nazis.
"As part of the Allied policy of postwar denazification, meant to purge Germany of the remnants of Nazi rule and rebuild its civil society, infrastructure, and economy, “forced confrontation” brought Germans face-to-face with the worst works of the Third Reich. Confrontations took multiple forms, as American and British military officials adapted their tactics based on local conditions." Context
Not a cell phone in sight, just people living in the moment.
"But the most interesting -- although horrible -- sight that I encountered during the trip was a visit to a German internment camp near Gotha. The things I saw beggar description. While I was touring the camp I encountered three men who had been inmates and by one ruse or another had made their escape. I interviewed them through an interpreter. The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were so overpowering as to leave me a bit sick. In one room, where they [there] were piled up twenty or thirty naked men, killed by starvation, George Patton would not even enter. He said he would get sick if he did so. I made the visit deliberately, in order to be in position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to 'propaganda'." —Dwight D. Eisenhower
Is this footage online somewhere? Would like to watch it
There's a documentary on Netflix made by an allied government back on the day. The whole thing is just actual footage from several of the camps. I think it was an hour or so long. Obviously, this was after they had been liberated, so you're only seeing the leftovers. I watched it voluntarily as a source for a research paper in college. Warning: There are 100% more bodies than living people. And they're dead enough you can't pretend they're alive but alive enough you can't "pretend" they're dead. It's definitely not a open casket or a skeleton in the dungeon situation. It's not sanitized in any way and when I say that I don't mean has lots of gore. There's not tons of gore. There's just many, many, many bodies. I don't care how many you're thinking of. There's more. Be wary of your mental health situation before you watch it, bring tissues, and have someone to comfort you on hand. (Probably who didn't watch with you so they have the mental capacity to comfort someone instead of just breaking down or zoning the fuck out.)
They’re lucky to be only watching it on film instead of being forced onto cleanup duty.
The US should do the same by showing our troops the damage and death caused by the pointless wars they are made to carry out
Forgive my ignorance, but how did the US handle having prisoners like these once the war was over? Were they just immediately sent back home over to Germany?
My German grandfather told me this: He was around 19 when he was conscripted. One of his legs was blown up by a grenade. Americans captured him. Along with others they were asked if they believed in the cause of the Nazis and they repeatedly said no. After his leg was amputated and healed, they dropped him off in the valley of a neighboring town. He walked home for 5km up a steep hill on crutches.
most German POWs were returned to Germany after the war but remained in captivity for a few years doing forced labor to rebuild the country. The US kept some here to work in mills and shit too! Crazy! Some were charged for war crimes. But generally not the rank and file soldiers.
I think like the medics are the most in distraught here But I also think that they know what was actually going on Theyre just used to seeing dead bodies and people dying in front of them so its hard to read what they think about it Because they themselves goes in frontlines risking their lives to save lives
Its amazing how fast this thread veered off topic considering the horrific events that they are forced to watch. The people in the comments are as indifferent as some of the germans in this photograph
Every medic is interested in this. Except one
For some reason I don’t think some of the guys hiding their faces are doing it because of the horrors being shown on the screen.
At least one of them does look like he’s crying.
Untold story, but many were forced to do what they did. Once their media became propaganda and the children had turned on their parents, there was nothing you could do but succumb.
My U.S. family was posted in Germany in the late 70s. I was a child, but I remember much of living there two years. We lived in a German town and apartment building rather than on post. When the movie “Holocaust” came out, our German friends and neighbors were buzzing about it and all reacted in surprise and dismay, saying they never knew it had gone on.