World War II - 80 Years On

[James T. Kirk]

A remembrance thread.

September 1, 1939, from Wikipedia,

"Nazi Germany and Slovakia invade Poland, beginning the European phase of World War II."

"Switzerland mobilizes its forces and the Swiss Parliament elects Henri Guisan to head the Swiss Armed Forces (an event that can happen only during war or mobilization)."

"Adolf Hitler signs an order to begin the systematic euthanasia of mentally ill and disabled people."

[MajorHoy]

For many of here in the U.S., December 7, 1941 is a major date regarding the War since it was the attack on Pearl Harbor that officially caused our country to enter the conflict (though there had been aid to England and the Allied Forces prior to that).

[DrNewGod]

For many of here in the U.S., December 7, 1941 is a major date regarding the War since it was the attack on Pearl Harbor that officially caused our country to enter the conflict (though there had been aid to England and the Allied Forces prior to that).

I think the Captain's rememberance appropriate. Fascism had been on the move aggressively since 1936 (especially in China and Spain), but 80 years ago today was when the isolated brushfires exploded into a global conflagration. (The Sitskreig not withstanding)

[Electricmastro]

For many of here in the U.S., December 7, 1941 is a major date regarding the War since it was the attack on Pearl Harbor that officially caused our country to enter the conflict (though there had been aid to England and the Allied Forces prior to that).

And led to much hostility against the Japanese in a way that wasn't completely justified, as evidenced by Japanese civilians getting bombed and the internment of Japanese Americans: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intern...nese_Americans

Even when keeping in mind atrocities such as the Rape of Nanking, committed by Imperial Japanese troops, the Japanese Americans still didn't deserve to be in internment camps, suffice to say: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanjing_Massacre

[DrNewGod]

War never brings out the best in anything but arms manufacturers.

[Electricmastro]

War never brings out the best in anything but arms manufacturers.

It's hard for me see any sides I'm supposed to root for in war as winners when so much is lost, lives included. If anything, perhaps the only winners of war are those that get to live comfortably and peacefully.

[DrNewGod]

To the OP's point: these event shaped - and still shape - the world in which we live. Millions of lives were lost, and the future shaped by WWII's events. Remembering them, and their context is worthwhile.

James T. Kirk: keep it up.

[The Whovian]

I still find it incomprehensible that someone like Hitler was allowed to rise to power and how most Germans stood by him even when they knew what was going on. And saying "It was my job", doesn't make it right. They knew what was happening was wrong, and did nothing about it.

BTW, I love your avatar Electricmastro.

[jetengine]

I still find it incomprehensible that someone like Hitler was allowed to rise to power and how most Germans stood by him even when they knew what was going on. And saying "It was my job", doesn't make it right. They knew what was happening was wrong, and did nothing about it.

BTW, I love your avatar Electricmastro.

Look at Britain or America

[The Whovian]

Look at Britain or America

Agreed. However, the German example was done in modern times where people knew openly about what was being done. And in great numbers.

Not excusing Britain or America, just pointing out the differences. Don't get me started on America and their treatment of Native American Indians.

[Electricmastro]

I still find it incomprehensible that someone like Hitler was allowed to rise to power and how most Germans stood by him even when they knew what was going on. And saying "It was my job", doesn't make it right. They knew what was happening was wrong, and did nothing about it.

I'm having trouble finding reliable sources, but I was previously told that there were supposedly a considerable amount of Germans who were visited by Nazi officials at their homes and ordered them to join the German army, if they didn't join, they would kill them and their families. To my understanding, there were also a considerable number of German soldiers who only fought on the battlefield and never even set foot inside the concentration camps to help slaughter the Jews, and if at some point a German soldier who previously didn't know later found out about the core horror of the camps after they had joined, and proceeded to resist and leave, the Nazis would kill said soldier since they were that malicious.

Again, I'm having trouble finding reliable sources and evidence on this, so I'm not sure what are the most reliable sources out there.

BTW, I love your avatar Electricmastro.

Thanks!

[PwrdOn]

I'm having trouble finding reliable sources, but I was previously told that there were supposedly a considerable amount of Germans who were visited by Nazi officials at their homes and ordered them to join the German army, if they didn't join, they would kill them and their families. To my understanding, there were also a considerable number of German soldiers who only fought on the battlefield and never even set foot inside the concentration camps to help slaughter the Jews, and if at some point a German soldier who previously didn't know later found out about the core horror of the camps after they had joined, and proceeded to resist and leave, the Nazis would kill said soldier since they were that malicious.

Again, I'm having trouble finding reliable sources and evidence on this, so I'm not sure what are the most reliable sources out there.

I'm sure that the Nazis used plenty of coercion to find warm bodies for the front lines, but from most of the available accounts, German soldiers were for the most part fully on board with the Nazi ideology and only distanced themselves from Hitler after they started losing battles. The army was perfectly happy to comply with all of Hitler's orders when things were going well for them, but after the tide had turned they needed a scapegoat to explain why they were getting whipped so badly.

[abulafia]

I'm having trouble finding reliable sources, but I was previously told that there were supposedly a considerable amount of Germans who were visited by Nazi officials at their homes and ordered them to join the German army, if they didn't join, they would kill them and their families. To my understanding, there were also a considerable number of German soldiers who only fought on the battlefield and never even set foot inside the concentration camps to help slaughter the Jews, and if at some point a German soldier who previously didn't know later found out about the core horror of the camps after they had joined, and proceeded to resist and leave, the Nazis would kill said soldier since they were that malicious.

Again, I'm having trouble finding reliable sources and evidence on this, so I'm not sure what are the most reliable sources out there.



Thanks!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commissar_Order

Nazi propaganda presented Barbarossa as an ideological-racial war between German National Socialism and "Judeo-Bolshevism," dehumanising the Soviet enemy as a force of Slavic Untermensch (sub-humans) and "Asiatic" savages engaging in "barbaric Asiatic fighting methods" commanded by evil Jewish commissars to whom German troops were to grant no mercy.[11] The vast majority of the Wehrmacht officers and soldiers tended to regard the war in Nazi terms, seeing their Soviet opponents as sub-human.[12]

The enforcement of the Commissar Order led to thousands of executions.[13] The German historian Jürgen Förster wrote in 1989 that it was simply not true that the Commissar Order was not enforced, as most German Army commanders claimed in their memoirs and some German historians like Ernst Nolte were still claiming.[13] Every German general enforced the Commissar Order. Erich von Manstein passed on the Commissar Order to his subordinates, who executed all the captured commissars, something that he was convicted of by a British court in 1949.[14] After the war, Manstein lied about disobeying the Commissar Order, saying he had been opposed to the order, and never enforced it.[14] On 23 September 1941, after several Wehrmacht commanders had asked for the order to be softened as a way of encouraging the Red Army to surrender, Hitler declined "any modification of the existing orders regarding the treatment of political commissars."

[DanMad1977]

I still find it incomprehensible that someone like Hitler was allowed to rise to power and how most Germans stood by him even when they knew what was going on. And saying "It was my job", doesn't make it right. They knew what was happening was wrong, and did nothing about it.

BTW, I love your avatar Electricmastro.

I don't think that's easy to answer.

My grandfather fought for Hitler, he was one of the later drafted soldiers because he wasn't healthy. He hated him all his life and spoke openly about it, what was a Hughe risk and everyone of his family was frightened when he opened his mouth about Hitler.

Nothing ever happened, but his neighbor got pulled away. He replied German soldier that greeted with Heil Hitler: He cannot heal us anyway (Der kann uns eh nicht heilen) (Heil means Heal in German). His neighbor never came back.

So, when my grandfather would have refused to fight, he would have been killed, so he went with his two brothers. He got to russia where they took him hostage, but he survived. His brothers not. He died a broken man later. I read in his journal, it was a lose lose situation. Fight for someone you hate and hope to survive (and your family) or die at the spot.

What would you do?

[Jim Kelly]

One of my first jobs after high school was working at a rehab centre, in the kitchen, and serving food to the rehab clients. My supervisor was a blue-eyed blonde woman with a German accent; she told stories of her experience as a little girl in Nazi German, where they were taken out of school to go throw bricks at Jewish homes. Her husband worked in housekeeping at the rehab centre and he was Polish. When Poland was invaded, he was forced into the Nazi army, where he was in the tank corps. He said that, when they made the Nazi salute, the joke they made to each other was "How high is the shit?" this high.

My parents' generation were all involved in the war effort for Canada. My Uncle Jim was in the tank corps on the Canadian side. And he lost most of his stomach to a bleeding ulcer that the army doctors cut out. He was always very thin, as I knew him, and plagued with problems all his life--with a serious smoking habit and nearly deaf in his last years, before cancer took him.