Hitler

Laoislion8383

Watched a documentary on Croatia during the war it was unreal, a far right crowd called Ustaše came into power and they began to persecute the Serbs of Crostia and this was all fully supported and encouraged by the Catholic Church, a camp called Jasenovac was set up the stuff that went on there was unreal

donegaLroad

a photo of Joseph Goebbels just after he was told that the photographer was Jewish..

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/3e/18/84/3e18849ec3111b516e0d3ec7ffc4c9f0.jpg

Crann na Beatha

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Grayson

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Given that the people involved in planning that campaign had lived through the Blitz it's very hard to see how they could justify it even at the time.


Also that campaign directed bombers away from real war wining tasks.

Tirpitz was just one ship. But it's existence more or less kept several battleships and aircraft in the Atlantic when they could have been far more useful in the Pacific. Could have more bombing missions against.

Lots of other tactical and strategic missions were suspended if favour of generic carpet bombing. German output increased until 1944 and it was raw materials shortages that was the main problem. Aerial mining of seas and rivers like the Rhine and Danube would have reduced this sooner.

B29's dropping mines at sea wasn't sexy. But it pretty much stopped raw material imports and naval and troop movements around Japan. And at far lower risk than bombing cities.

It's a little known fact but one of the reasons Hiroshima and Nagasaki were chosen was because they were untouched by bombing. Any city of strategic significance had already been bombed and burnt to the ground.

Amalgam

1913: When Hitler, Trotsky, Tito, Freud and Stalin all lived in the same place. (BBC)

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21859771

They all frequented the same coffee shop, surreal.

Dyr

donegaLroad wrote: »

a photo of Joseph Goebbels just after he was told that the photographer was Jewish..

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/3e/18/84/3e18849ec3111b516e0d3ec7ffc4c9f0.jpg

http://farm1.staticflickr.com/138/327671461_d59457cda1.jpg

Just sayin'

Fred Swanson

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Wibbs

Amalgam wrote: »

1913: When Hitler, Trotsky, Tito, Freud and Stalin all lived in the same place. (BBC)

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21859771

They all frequented the same coffee shop, surreal.

Oddly enough Hitler was quite accessible to the public even quite late on in his tenure. He used to hang out in another coffee shop on a weekly basis when he was already chancellor.

Laoislion8383 wrote:

Watched a documentary on Croatia during the war it was unreal, a far right crowd called Ustaše came into power and they began to persecute the Serbs of Crostia and this was all fully supported and encouraged by the Catholic Church, a camp called Jasenovac was set up the stuff that went on there was unreal

Jasenovac was a true hell on earth. It made Belsen look like Butlins. And no I'm not joking there. Belsen was one of the more "cushy" camps until later in the war. No gas chambers or any of that, though quite the number of sources claim there were. Including a couple eye witnesses seen as reliable who claimed they saw them. Not true, but stories tend to grow in the telling.

Oh and BTW before any gobshíte suggests I'm a denier or some bullshít, a rellie of mine was with the British team who went in soon after the liberation of Belsen and his stories chilled my childhood body to the bone. Micheal Bentine(he of the Goons and Potty time ) put it well when he later wrote;

"Got any medical orderlies?" he shouted above the roar of the aircraft engines. "Any K rations or vitaminised chocolate?"

"What's up?" I asked for I could see his face was grey with shock.

"Concentration camp up the road," he said shakily, lighting a cigarette. "It's dreadful – just dreadful." He threw the cigarette away untouched. "I've never seen anything so awful in my life. You just won't believe it 'til you see it – for God's sake come and help them!"

"What's it called?" I asked, reaching for the operations map to mark the concentration camp safely out of the danger area near the bomb line. "Belsen," he said, simply.

Millions of words have been written about these horror camps, many of them by inmates of those unbelievable places. I've tried, without success, to describe it from my own point of view, but the words won't come. To me Belsen was the ultimate blasphemy.

After VE. Day I flew up to Denmark with Kelly, a West Indian pilot who was a close friend. As we climbed over Belsen, we saw the flame-throwing Bren carriers trundling through the camp – burning it to the ground. Our light Bf 108 rocked in the superheated air, as we sped above the curling smoke, and Kelly had the last words on it.

"Thank Christ for that," he said, fervently.

And his words sounded like a benediction"

Actually IMHO his and his fellow Goon Spike Milligan wrote well on that war. Spike went for laughs mind you and the surreal nature of it all, as he would. Insightful mind you.

Over the years I collected books penned by German combatants and always looked for the first editions that came out just after the war, when memories were fresh and they were less edited. An interesting and nuanced picture often emerges from them.

Cold War Kid

I saw that documentary 1945: A Savage Peace last week too - it was horrific, very upsetting. Still trying to process some of it.

Hate when people try to mitigate what Hitler and his henchmen did with "Well the Russians did worse" stuff though.

Both committed inconceivable horrors, I don't know why the "But what about" stuff has to start.

Fred Swanson

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Cold War Kid

Fred Swanson wrote: »

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That doesn't lessen what was done to people under Hitler and his crew.

Like someone said on the slavery thread, there always seems to have to be "But what about this and this" when all were horrible, and there's no need to compete them with each other.

Amalgam

Wibbs, I want to do a (European) War tour some day.

Just to say, to other boardsies, the death of millions was triggered by Hitler's death.

The following BBC feature has appeared on various sites, including YouTube, in the last few days.

Search for: 1945 The Savage Peace

Millions died with the defeat/retreat of the military personnel, along with the extermination of civilian populations in, umm.. 'German enclaves' (language and culture distinct from the host country), that had littered outlying countries since or before medieval times.

Grim stuff, for the BBC, you have been warned.

Capt'n Midnight

Wibbs wrote: »

Jasenovac was a true hell on earth. It made Belsen look like Butlins.

+1

Not all concentration camps were equal.

There were two main types of camps.
Concentration camps , which are what you see on TV and films.

But there were also the Extermination camps where the real killing took place. Pretty much if you weren't assigned to the Sonderkommando after getting off the train you'd be dead inside an hour at most.

You've heard about concentration camp survivors. Most extermination camps had very, very few survivors. Between Chelmno, Belzec and Majdanek there were four Jewish survivors.

And there were the three million Russian POW's who died in captivity during first six months of the war with Russia. A death rate higher than anything later. This and the extermination camps distinguish the Nazi regime and their co-travellers from others. But the Russians were in the care of the Wehrmacht not the SS. Normal soldiers not fanatics.

SEPT 23 1989

Amalgam wrote: »

Wibbs, I want to do a (European) War tour some day.

Just to say, to other boardsies, the death of millions was triggered by Hitler's death.

The following BBC feature has appeared on various sites, including YouTube, in the last few days.

Search for: 1945 The Savage Peace

Millions died with the defeat/retreat of the military personnel, along with the extermination of civilian populations in, umm.. 'German enclaves' (language and culture distinct from the host country), that had littered outlying countries since or before medieval times.

Grim stuff, for the BBC, you have been warned.

I can understand the murder of the people in power by the victors but the murder and rape of innocent women and children makes them as bad as the Nazis

Cold War Kid

SEPT 23 1989 wrote: »

I can understand the murder of the people in power by the victors but the murder and rape of innocent women and children makes them as bad as the Nazis

And men.

Same mindset: "They've done nothing but they share the same nationality as the enemy so they're fair game".

And reading reviews of the programme (which was very well put together) numerous social media commenters shared the same mindset. It's a really base way of looking at things.

Dyr

Wibbs wrote: »

Over the years I collected books penned by German combatants and always looked for the first editions that came out just after the war, when memories were fresh and they were less edited. An interesting and nuanced picture often emerges from them.

Black Edelweiss is good for this

the_monkey

Melisandre121 wrote: »

I once saved lots of pictures of Hitler on my friends computer. Then one day she and her aunty were looking through her pictures and suddenly loads of pictures of Hitler popped up. She wasn't too pleased with me for that one..

Gold!

My uncle loves WWII history and has a lot of books on the subject, but we noticed a lot of ones in particular about Hitler or the SS ...

Myself and the brother printed a pic of Hitler and got a cheap frame and hung it up in his house when we visited once.

Don't think he noticed it for weeks !!

circadian

Cold War Kid wrote: »

That doesn't lessen what was done to people under Hitler and his crew.

Like someone said on the slavery thread, there always seems to have to be "But what about this and this" when all were horrible, and there's no need to compete them with each other.

Exactly, no wrong is any better or worse than another. They are all horrible incidents in their own right.

People love a bit of whatabouttery though.

Hoop66

Melisandre121 wrote: »

hitlrt.JPG

The little b-ollox

Fuck, just realised he's the image of my nephew there...