wrote you a pmOriginally Posted by sgtfcm
taking watches from the dead was a common thing for every soldier
wrote you a pmOriginally Posted by sgtfcm
Raising the flag over Reichstag - Raising the flag on Iwa Jima
Both events were real, later re-enacted for the cameras.
DE6 - I was speaking of the Kekkoken's mention of the supposed photographs of rampant looting by the Soviet Army or his claims of hundreds of thousands of rapes taking place in Berlin. Those claims are unsubstantiated.
As for the picture - good catch on the two watches. But then, whose army did not loot in WWII? I have two watches in my possession - am I all of a sudden a looter? And if you are a frontline soldier with all of your personal belongings fitting in a knapsack - how would you keep the two watches if you just happened to own two?
Heck, how many historical artifacts and art pieces ended up in the hands of the GI's?
Yeah, they had put up a heroic defense all the way back from Balticum and fell on the streets of Berlin, just outside Hitler's bunker.Originally Posted by Kekkonen
"This well known photo of a blown-up armored car in Berlin was actually one of the Schwedenkompanie's vehicles in the Nordland Division. It could have been company commander Pehrssons command vehicle that was shot up on the Friedrichstrasse just south of the Hitler Chancellery on the 1st of May, 1945. The fallen Unterscharführern to the right of the armored car is in that case identical with the driver in the car, Ragnar Johansson from Stockholm, that was killed by a Russian handgrenade."
This a great book about these events by the way.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...glance&s=books
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WTF?????Originally Posted by koutch
Not in my effing unit!
-jippo
Just one example:Originally Posted by StukaJr
"Mayakovskoye (Russian Маяковское, German Nemmersdorf) is a village in Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia. It is located to the south east of the town of Gusev, at the banks of the Agrappa river. It is notable for its World War II history.
Until 1945 the village was a part of German East Prussia. It was one of the first German settlements to fall to the advancing Red Army on October 22, 1944. It was recaptured by the Germans soon afterwards and the German authorities reported that the Red Army killed civilians there. Nazi propaganda widely disseminated the description of the event with horrible details, supposedly to boost the motivation of German soldiers. Today the name "Nemmersdorf" is a symbol of war crimes of the Red Army, as an example of the pattern of its behavior in East Prussia.
When the Germans returned to Nemmersdorf they found that many civilians, and about 50 French POWs, had been summarily shot. Others had been killed by blows with shovels or gun butts. An eyewitness report filed by one Karl Potrek of Königsberg states, in part: "... down the road stood a cart, to which four naked women were nailed through their heads in a cruciform position. ... parallel to the road stood a barn, and to each of its two doors a naked woman was nailed through the hands in a crucified posture. In the dwellings we found a total of 72 women ... children and one old man ... all dead. ... some babies had their heads bashed in."
The Germans organized a neutral medical commission, which subsequently reported that all the dead females, who ranged in age from 8 to 84, had been raped. However, an attempt by the Nazi regime to make an international incident of the Nemmersdorf massacre failed, due to wartime psychology and the opprobrium the Nazis had brought upon Germany by mass atrocities in Poland and the east. Accounts of the massacre were dismissed as propaganda, photos as fakes.
Even the German civilian population at first was skeptical. Marion Gräfin Dönhoff, who lived in the village of Quittainen (Kwitany) in western East Prussia, near Preussisch Holland (Pasłęk), wrote:
"In those years one was so accustomed to everything that was officially published or reported being lies that at first I took the pictures from Nemmersdorf to be falsified. Later, however, it turned out that that was not the case. Naked women were in fact nailed in a crucified position to barn doors, and 12-year-old girls were raped."
After the war, Dönhoff became co-publisher of the Social Democratic weekly, Die Zeit, in Hamburg.
There are theories that the massacre was actually performed under the command of Joseph Goebbels, in an attempt to stir up the civil resistance before the advancing Red Army. Bernhard Fisch in his book Nemmersdorf, October 1944. What had actually happened in East Prussia managed to present this picture of the events."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemmersdorf
Just one city:
"The city surrendered on April 9, 1945, following a desperate four-day battle. However, all German residents who remained at the end of the war, (includes the few who returned after the Amistice) an estimated 200,000 out of the city's prewar population of 316,000, were subject to evacuation, expelled or executed by Soviet forces from 1945-49. Many people died of hunger during the war's closing stages and the shortages which followed, as well as during the Soviets' arduous expulsion process."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%B6nigsberg
If you want more examples, unfortunately there are plenty...
-jippo
During WW2 in this region we had Don Cossacks fighting with Germans. The old people here still remember those strange and fierce soldiers and their horses. Although they stayed quite a long time around here,and mainly deployed to hunt bandits , they didnt commit any crime against civilians. In 1945 they surrendered to the british troops in Austria.Unfortunately they were soon handed over to Red Army and executed them and their wives. A very similar case happened with Ustashas, slaughtered in the forest of Bleiburg by Tito partisans.
fyr
http://www.holycross-hermitage.com/p...e/cossacks.htm
http://members.tripod.com/~shtyetz_j...-cossacks.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleiburg_massacre
That's your opinion. You're entitled to it.Originally Posted by StukaJr
Doesn't prove anything, other than the census from before the war to after the war, followed by allegations of attrocities. Colorful, but unsubstantiated.Just one city:
"The city surrendered on April 9, 1945, following a desperate four-day battle. However, all German residents who remained at the end of the war, (includes the few who returned after the Amistice) an estimated 200,000 out of the city's prewar population of 316,000, were subject to evacuation, expelled or executed by Soviet forces from 1945-49. Many people died of hunger during the war's closing stages and the shortages which followed, as well as during the Soviets' arduous expulsion process."
You can believe it all you want - I don't... A little convenient, don't you think?"Mayakovskoye (Russian Маяковское, German Nemmersdorf) is a village in Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia. It is located to the south east of the town of Gusev, at the banks of the Agrappa river. It is notable for its World War II history.
Until 1945 the village was a part of German East Prussia. It was one of the first German settlements to fall to the advancing Red Army on October 22, 1944. It was recaptured by the Germans soon afterwards and the German authorities reported that the Red Army killed civilians there. Nazi propaganda widely disseminated the description of the event with horrible details, supposedly to boost the motivation of German soldiers. Today the name "Nemmersdorf" is a symbol of war crimes of the Red Army, as an example of the pattern of its behavior in East Prussia.
When the Germans returned to Nemmersdorf they found that many civilians, and about 50 French POWs, had been summarily shot. Others had been killed by blows with shovels or gun butts. An eyewitness report filed by one Karl Potrek of Königsberg states, in part: "... down the road stood a cart, to which four naked women were nailed through their heads in a cruciform position. ... parallel to the road stood a barn, and to each of its two doors a naked woman was nailed through the hands in a crucified posture. In the dwellings we found a total of 72 women ... children and one old man ... all dead. ... some babies had their heads bashed in."
The Germans organized a neutral medical commission, which subsequently reported that all the dead females, who ranged in age from 8 to 84, had been raped. However, an attempt by the Nazi regime to make an international incident of the Nemmersdorf massacre failed, due to wartime psychology and the opprobrium the Nazis had brought upon Germany by mass atrocities in Poland and the east. Accounts of the massacre were dismissed as propaganda, photos as fakes.
Even the German civilian population at first was skeptical. Marion Gräfin Dönhoff, who lived in the village of Quittainen (Kwitany) in western East Prussia, near Preussisch Holland (Pasłęk), wrote:
"In those years one was so accustomed to everything that was officially published or reported being lies that at first I took the pictures from Nemmersdorf to be falsified. Later, however, it turned out that that was not the case. Naked women were in fact nailed in a crucified position to barn doors, and 12-year-old girls were raped."
Gestapo widely used crucifixion against the captured Communists and brutalizing women before they hung them. Photo documenting their theatrical crimes into a sick fetish - now, they conveniently recapture a single city and find a similarly staged massacre? Convenient. I especially liked this "independent medical commission"... I wonder if it was consisting of the "doctors" no longer employed in Babiy Yar or Auschwitz?
God bless Korolov.Originally Posted by Léon
That vehichle was the command vehicle from Gösta Pehrsson, and the driver was from Skövde not Stockholm.Originally Posted by Thor
un_swe
Sorry mate but someone with such avatar as yours can not be considered as someone with completely impartial judgement in this matterOriginally Posted by Kekkonen
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Among them , there was some French ss too , they destroyed 62 Russian tanksOriginally Posted by StukaJr
More here: http://www.axishistory.com/index.php?id=881April 29 1945
At dawn, Russian tanks attempt again to progress alongside the Wilhelmstrasse. The shooting of the French panzerfausts blocks the first ones. But the others tanks shoot back, trying to collapse the buildings where the SS are ambushed in this central part of Berlin. Vaulot destroys four new tanks, while his friend Untersharfuhrer Albert Brunet gets three. Haupsturmführer Fenet must back up, his HQ totally devastated by the shells, and retreat before the survivors of his units are encircled. In fact the Russian infantrymen begin seep in party and of other of his position. His men set fire to the buildings to cover their withdrawal. Henceforth, the French SS will now fight few dozens meters behind their preceding front line.
They hold now the Puttkammerstrasse crossroad . The HQ is installed in a bookstore that will be under fire from Soviet 120 mortars
" One of us discovered an album in colour devoted to the Spain that becomes the distraction of the shelter where, to role turn, the men will take a little rests. We leaf through it as if we searched through these sunny landscapes an antidote to our inferno visions". Standartenjunker Protopopoff is killed by a shell in the yard building behind the HQ. The Russians launch a third armoured assault. Shells do not stop hitting, brightness whistle. The SS Rostaing is buried under gravat and we believe he is dead when he arises, white of dust, to the HQ of the battalion to receive the first class iron cross. In the evening of April 29, the French volunteers hold again and again their positions. But they count many KIA, notably among the officers, such as Standartenoberjunker Block and de Maignan, and many injured as Standartenoberjunker de Lacaze, Abacus, Frantz and Untersturmführer Berthaud. Untersturmfuhrer Labourdette disappeared in the corridors of the subway during a clash with a Russian patrol. According to the men of the 1st company, he was killed
...
http://www.amazon.fr/exec/obidos/ASI...7668437-611301