Picture of the day
- Thread starter jwhc
- Start date
Dark Alley Dan
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- Darkest Edmonton
Jesus, miles of that glue. Poor damned horses.
Different uniforms was the clue for me, even before seeing the date at the bottom. What a hell that must have been.
Early spring on the Eastern Front '42.
Hell on men and horses.
Funny thing is, the Wehrmacht still used horse-drawn transport right up to the end of WWII.
Oops, missed the date stamp on the photo, and here I thought I was smart.
Hell on men and horses.
Funny thing is, the Wehrmacht still used horse-drawn transport right up to the end of WWII.
Oops, missed the date stamp on the photo, and here I thought I was smart.
Yep. I'd guess it was a lot more than that. Horse-canada.com says 8-10 million. The germans used horses as much as vehicles in some theaters of the war. A lot of veterans were haunted by the huge numbers of dead horses after the Normandy landings. People like horses and dogs, particularily when humans seem so detestable.
My Grandfather was a "driver" in WWI with the Canadian Field Artillery. He drove a team of mules pulling ammunition wagons to the guns. He was 17 years old when he arrived in France. He lied about his age to get in. I have a scan of his intake papers and it says "apparent age" of 20. The army needed troops and I guess they turned a blind eye to the minors signing up.
I only remember two things that he told me about the war. The first is he told me about being caught in a German barrage when he was out in the open with a wagon load of shells, he said he took shelter under the mules. Fat lot of good that would have done if a German shell had hit his wagon! The second thing I remember is that I asked him why he signed up. I was expecting a "For King and country" sort of answer but instead he said he did it so he could send some money back to his mother, she was a widow raising three boy pre-welfare.
okcorral1881
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- East of Toronto
Yes, first thing that came to mind when I saw the picture!
The Japanese had a cap like that, but they put the neck flap on it. I believe the neck flap on the Kepi went when it ceased to be part of the combat uniform. Too bad, as if you're going to live that life you might as well look good while you're at it. The knife turns out to be the "M4 Bayonet" for the M1 carbine.
As for the Germans in the Legion, it's one of those little ironies of history, like the Frenchmen of the SS Charlemagne "Division" fighting in Berlin in 1945, or before that fighting against the German ex-POWs in the Soviet organized Seydlitz Division. Or the Alsations in the 3rd SS Pz. Division who helped to murder the men women and children of Oradeur Sur Glan one fine morning in 1944...
And POWs? They lived the life of effing Reilly in Canada, the USA, South Africa, Australia, while ours put up with all kinds of brutality and harassment, and were shot en masse for escaping in one case.
So Eisenhower turned away the Red Cross trains? I wonder where he sent the food instead? There were a lot of hungry mouths in Europe in 1945, thanks to you know who, and it wouldn't have been hard to find some more deserving recipients while the Dutch for example were starving to death by the thousand thanks to the Germans seizing all their food stocks. Eisenhower needs no defence from me. A great man, but he had had enough of his ancestral homeland by 1945.
Just reaping what they sowed, and not much of a harvest either.
Thanks for chiming in Smellie...I was going to call B.S. on that myself. We certainly gave better than ever received where POW's are concerned. (a relative didn't make the march to Bataan)
Well, the War was over, so it wasn't a War Crime.
Of course, only the Other Guys ever committed War Crimes.
But the death by deliberate starvation of a million men has to be called something.
How about "mass murder"?
Combined with the Morgenthau Plan, you might even call it "attempted genocide".
Point is, the War was OVER.
Time to start living like civilised Human Beings again.
And I think most of the guys who were actually THERE would agree.
THEY were smarter than WE are: they let the hate die when it should have died: 1945.
Of course, only the Other Guys ever committed War Crimes.
But the death by deliberate starvation of a million men has to be called something.
How about "mass murder"?
Combined with the Morgenthau Plan, you might even call it "attempted genocide".
Point is, the War was OVER.
Time to start living like civilised Human Beings again.
And I think most of the guys who were actually THERE would agree.
THEY were smarter than WE are: they let the hate die when it should have died: 1945.
Well Smellie, I don't think we can speak for all the men who were there. I've talked to a few myself. Some of them wouldn't be in the same room as a German or a Japanese forty years later, and they had good reason.
As for James Bacque, his conclusions have had plenty of holes shot in them.
It's rather hard for most people to imagine how people felt in 1945 after just finishing up a second world war begun by Germany for no reason at all except paranoia and an arrogant belief that might makes right. So they lost a million or two? What did the rest of the world lose?
Not a choice I would have made if it was mine, but then I didn't fight through WWI and WWII and see my country's best slaughtered for no damn reason. If I had I might have felt differently. I don't know, I wasn't there.
The taps of hate aren't turned off by a surrender or two; it took long enough to open them. And before we rush to shake hands and make up, it might be worth finding out if the other side is of the same mind, eh? Otherwise we're just fooling ourselves, again.
Yes, it's a pity the hate couldn't have been left behind somewhere, if some folks could have done that we would have been spared two world wars and the loss hundreds of millions of our best people; I don't mean only those who were killed, I mean the ones who were never born.
I wish I could agree with everything you say Smellie, but we just came to the fork in that road.
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"It's rather hard for most people to imagine how people felt in 1945 after just finishing up a second world war begun by Germany for no reason at except paranoia and an arrogant belief that might makes right. So they lost a million or two? What did the rest of the world lose?"
RRCo, you need to delve into the reasons for the second world war and who were the perps that shoved Germany into giving so much power to a mad man.
For one reason or another, the mad men of Europe seemed to be able to offer a Cornucopia of plenty to the masses in Russia and to both the masses as well as the rich in Germany. They were hailed by many all over the world as being the new saviors of the plebes.
Many of the same conditions that existed in Europe during those times are prevalent today in several parts of the world, including Europe. In 2010, Angela Merkle of Germany stated to EU that WAR was a definite possibility if the EU didn't pull itself out of its fiscal difficulties in a regulated manner.
The Middle East is a powder keg of racism and religios problems. China is having difficulties with its outlying provinces and so is India. Let's not forget the constantly seething battleground we call Africa.
RRCo, you need to delve into the reasons for the second world war and who were the perps that shoved Germany into giving so much power to a mad man.
For one reason or another, the mad men of Europe seemed to be able to offer a Cornucopia of plenty to the masses in Russia and to both the masses as well as the rich in Germany. They were hailed by many all over the world as being the new saviors of the plebes.
Many of the same conditions that existed in Europe during those times are prevalent today in several parts of the world, including Europe. In 2010, Angela Merkle of Germany stated to EU that WAR was a definite possibility if the EU didn't pull itself out of its fiscal difficulties in a regulated manner.
The Middle East is a powder keg of racism and religios problems. China is having difficulties with its outlying provinces and so is India. Let's not forget the constantly seething battleground we call Africa.
They say character is fate bearhunter, and that applies to nations as well as individuals. Who was pushing Germany into war? It can't have been the same folks who were rushing to do business with her and Mr. Hitler. It can't have been France and Britain, who bent over backwards and threw the Czechoslovaks to the wolves in an effort to keep the peace at any price.
Oh but hang on, maybe you mean they were pushing Germany into war because their cringing and fawning merely encouraged the Nazi leadership to be more aggressive?
Who shoved Germany into the arms of Hitler? Well, who inflated the Mark into oblivion in the early 20s? Nobody but the German government. They did it to get out paying their war reparations. They impoverished millions of Germans in the process, but that was a cynical gamble that such suffering would tend to drive them more to the right than the left.
It's true we had a Great Depression after that, everyone did. I'm not sure it's an excuse for voting the Nazi party into office, except maybe in Germany. But of course the Nazi party grew out of "The Crisis of German Ideology" (I recommend the book) and ideas which were nothing new: "Volkisch" thought and a whole stew of similar stuff, which boiled down to the core ideas of Naziism: a claim to racial and cultural superiority and the concomitant right to trample on the "Untermensch".
I'm no stranger to the undercurrents of history; one of my favourites aspects of it in fact, but undercurrents are often nothing more.
Russia was the victim of Bolshevism, it never elected them. It was shoved down their throats by foreign powers, principally Germany which gave Lenin and his friends free passage on the infamous "sealed train" in 1917, and a healthy dose of gold to help him on his way. Of course there were other donors as well.
War in Europe today? Not a chance in a million IMO, except future civil disorder as the muslim population reaches critical mass. Who's going to fight who otherwise?
Yes, lots of other hot spots in the world, but China-India and China-USA are the real issues for the future. India might be a hot war, but the US is more likely to be attacked financially, though that could degenerate into a shooting war conceivably. China is evolving into the world's largest fascist state, wearing a red fig leaf, but that is their choice not ours, isn't it?
I'd welcome a PM though, if you have some info I've overlooked.
