We Cannot And Should Not Forget

[GS_Dirtboy]

Here is a great example of honor on the battlefield. It is WWII German / American.

Nazi pilot Franz Stigler flying a BF-109 escorts heavily damaged B-17, pilot and crew out of Germany. Pilots meet years later.

https://www.youtube....h?v=_8EkmyoG83Q

 

[scotttswan]

Both my uncles Tom and Rhys, from a coal mining village in South Wales, flew in bombers over Germany during the war.
They both survived and came home, but never ever spoke about their experiences, at least not to us.I respected them for that.
My father was a Captain in the Royal Navy (submarine service), but was too young to serve in the war and whenever I asked him about his job he would say "Is that on a need to know basis?"
I used to rib him him about that surly type of reply, but eventually I understood.

My grandad was a morse code operator for the RAF. He wouldn't tell me much about his time but he ended up fighting all over northern africa although he did tell me about when he was captured by "turks" and escaped by zig zagging through the desert at night with another guy whilst someone shot at them with a machine gun. Found some Australians and joined with them for a bit until he found some Brits and rejoined the RAF.
The Australians wanted him to stay with them, but luckily for me he didn't otherwise i might never have been born.

He was an avid photographer and apparently there are many negatives and some very small "Stamp" sized prints from these. (photography paper wasn't cheap in those days.) I've never seen all of them but i hope to someday.

I have no idea who he meant by the Turks as Turkey weren't part of WW2 really, I do know he was in Egypt at some point though so he may have even been fighting in Iraq.

The other story he told me was about his pet tortoise he had. Apparently he left it with some guys when he went off on a mission and it fell off a table and died. I think my mum still has the shell somewhere.

 

[French jurist]

My great-grandfather participated in both WW1 & WW2.
He was an inventor (invented a heating system for ambulances + a new design for tank tracks during WW1, writer, even translated comics books from English to French). To add to that, he even won medals during the Olympic games (in fencing if I recall). He's better known for his boxing activities (he discovered Primo Carnera and was his manager until he "sold" him to US-Italians... My grand-father was living with him in the US in the late 1920/early 1930s, I heard stories so incredible). During WW2, he was a Resistant and got jailed at Fresnes, together with two of his sons.

His pic below




My grand-father was a poet, tapdancer, inventor, etc. He fought and finished in a Stalag (his duty was to sort seized/broken vehicles for the nazis = you can imagine the way he was doing it, he he). He was an athlete (used to do boxing, and he was a tapdancer with my grandmother) and one day a nazi officer fell into water and was about to drown. Since he was an excellent swimmer, he saved his life and received some kind of paper after that. Finally, he escaped from the Stalag and entered the Resistance (his fake name was Jacques Roubaix), and got captured by the Gestapo. He ended up in the basement of where the Ministry of Interior is now located in Paris (torture = waterboarding, etc.). He should have been shot but the fact he save a nazi officer saved him. Back to a Stalag. Once again he escaped and joined again the resistance (was a dispatch rider on a motorcycle since he loved those vehicles, even wrote a poem about them that I still have).

WW1 has been the most deadly in my family (and for the French too = major losses, both civilians + army).

 

[dennisr]

Let me see, biological father KIA before I was born:1944. Hell of a start in life. My Uncle Kenny went to Canada and joined the Canadian Navy at the ripe old age of 15 in 1940. What a story, he forged everything. My Uncle Max was a courier in Europe and road one of those WW II Harley Davidson during the war. He was an original, Harley Davidson were in his life until he passed. Of course I had to try and out do them all and spent more than the required years in Vietnam. Hard not to find someone that was not touched by the events in Europe during WWII.

 

[geoffreym]

I wonder what the Russians really think about this celebration and glorification of D Day by the US and UK and its Allies. For the Russians it was a life and death struggle on their own land which cost them over 20 million dead whereas the Ameicans lost less than 500,000 in total. On top of that the death toll for them was exasperated by the Western Powers refusing to negotiate for a peace with Germany one year earlier when the opportunity was there. No wonder Putin has so much support. The truth of the matter is the Russians broke Germany back long before D Day.

 

[ajoknoblauch]

My great-grandfather participated in both WW1 & WW2.
He was an inventor (invented a heating system for ambulances + a new design for tank tracks during WW1, writer, even translated comics books from English to French). To add to that, he even won medals during the Olympic games (in fencing if I recall). He's better known for his boxing activities (he discovered Primo Carnera and was his manager until he "sold" him to US-Italians... My grand-father was living with him in the US in the late 1920/early 1930s, I heard stories so incredible). During WW2, he was a Resistant and got jailed at Fresnes, together with two of his sons.

His pic below


My grand-father was a poet, tapdancer, inventor, etc. He fought and finished in a Stalag (his duty was to sort seized/broken vehicles for the nazis = you can imagine the way he was doing it, he he). He was an athlete (used to do boxing, and he was a tapdancer with my grandmother) and one day a nazi officer fell into water and was about to drown. Since he was an excellent swimmer, he saved his life and received some kind of paper after that. Finally, he escaped from the Stalag and entered the Resistance (his fake name was Jacques Roubaix), and got captured by the Gestapo. He ended up in the basement of where the Ministry of Interior is now located in Paris (torture = waterboarding, etc.). He should have been shot but the fact he save a nazi officer saved him. Back to a Stalag. Once again he escaped and joined again the resistance (was a dispatch rider on a motorcycle since he loved those vehicles, even wrote a poem about them that I still have).

WW1 has been the most deadly in my family (and for the French too = major losses, both civilians + army).

My uncle, who turned 90 a few days ago, was shot down over France in 1944, but was fortunate to find a Resistance farmhouse after spending the night hiding. They made him a fake ID that identified him as a deaf-mute (he has a harelip, so the Germans could easily believe he was handicapped and could not speak). With Resistance help, he crossed by foot and train into Switzerland, where he spent the rest of the war.

 

[ghost]

Allow? In the case of Hitler, it was more like aid and abet.

At the end of the First World War, the Germans laid down their arms based upon agreed terms. Then the French insisted upon altering those terms to something far more harshly punitive. The USA was the 800-pound gorilla in the room, and could have prevented this, but did not, because the destruction of the German economy would allow US corporations to buy up German assets for pennies on the dollar. And if this reminds you of what was done to Argentina at the end of the Malvinas War, then you win a gold star.

But the destruction of the German economy also set the stage for the rise of National Socialism.

In the 1930's, many US corporations, (including the nascent Bush Family empire), were heavily invested in German industry. Ford Motor Company bought a controlling interest in Opel as late as the mid-30's. And Opel manufactured the trucks which converted the German leg infantry to motorised infantry. All of this was done, could only have been done, with the at-least-tacit agreement of the US government.

But of course they don't teach us any of this in high school, or even college. Because history books are written by the victors.

If you want to talk war crimes, let's discuss the fire bombing of Dresden, which had been declared an open city. Or the incendiary raids on Japanese cities in 1944 and 1945, which served no military purpose whatsoever, but were intended to punish and terrify the civilian population, in clear violation of the laws of war.

If the Allies had lost WW2, it would have been Allied generals and politicians on trial at Nuremberg. Because history books are written by the victors.

My point is not to defend National Socialism. My point is that we have been sold a grossly oversimplified version of history, one with white hats and black hats, where the hero gets the girl and rides off into the sunset. History is not like that. All parties involved in WW2 had bloody hands up to their armpits. There were no good guys then, and there are no good guys today. War is a racket.

Warped history is now bitching about warped history. Your "facts" are bent. But your little Pink Heart is in the right place.

 

[MDZ]

I am may be putting words into someone else's mouth, and not really interested in a dragged out analysis of this, but it's probably that you can't even paint an organization like the Waffen-SS with that broad of a brush. Many, many officers and soldiers serving in the Waffen-SS, and also very much the other branches (non Waffen) of the SS, deserve every bit of the scorn and derision you describe. Many others were little more than conscripts that were fairly indistinguishable from the rest of the German military machine. Then there was the whole multi-ethnic dimension that was another complicated element.

While it's entirely true and fair that the organization was established and led by leaders with a horrific political/ideological agenda, and the organization (both its Waffen and non-Waffen elements) committed a disproportionate share of the heinous acts of the Third Reich, there is a need for some flexibility there on an individual-to-individual basis.

That is exctly why I used the wording "most of them do not reserve any respect". Of course there are exceptions.

 

[GS_Dirtboy]

That is exctly why I used the wording "most of them do not reserve any respect". Of course there are exceptions.

Wait a second. Weren't you Germano?

 

[Redpossum]

Wait a second. Weren't you Germano?

Go to his profile and there's a button at the right that says Name Change History.