BS: WWII - 65 Years On

Subject: BS: WWII - 65 Years On
From: Billy the Bus
Date: 01 Sep 04 - 02:53 AM

Today, 1st Sept 1334, is the 65th anniversary of German troops entering Poland to start WWII. Alas, our NZ National Wireless, who are usually good at commemorating historic dates, haven;t said a word. Perhaps they'll cover it in a couple of day when we remember 3rd Sept 1939 when Britain and France declared war on Germany.

BBC - On This Day will give you an idea of what I am waffling on about.

What's happening in your neck of the woods to remember this date (and the 3rd))" Alas, when I listen to today's news --- the world hasn't changed.

Sam

Subject: RE: BS: WWII - 65 Years On
From: alanabit
Date: 01 Sep 04 - 04:01 AM

Is that a Muslim calender you are using there, Billy?

Subject: RE: BS: WWII - 65 Years On
From: Billy the Bus
Date: 01 Sep 04 - 06:41 AM

Pre Christian and Muslim calendar, alanabit. I do it dgitally - and don't have enough fingers to get the years right....:)

Cheers - Sam

Subject: RE: BS: WWII - 65 Years On
From: Wolfgang
Date: 01 Sep 04 - 07:18 AM

Nothing at all in three German newspapers.

But that may be a cultural difference. 65 means nothing special to us, 60 does and then 75. All our newspapers and TV-programs were full these months with the memorable 60s from WWII, like for instance D-day, liberation of Paris and so on.

I'm sure all the upcoming 60s like liberation of Auschwitz, Hitler's suicide, end of war in Europe, Hiroshima etc will be in all newspapers and TV news.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: WWII - 65 Years On
From: Bill D
Date: 01 Sep 04 - 08:33 AM

interesting times...I was a 3 month old baby when the war began....I remember the end and the death of FDR.
It is hard to ignore the dates and details over here, as programs on the History channel constantly run documentaries and films of various aspects of the war. There sure were a lot of journalists and 'official' military film makers there with cameras. Hitler, sure of victory, ordered LOTS of film of German 'progress', and consequently, got some film of the atrocities, too.

Do they show any of this in various parts of Europe?

Subject: RE: BS: WWII - 65 Years On
From: Wolfgang
Date: 01 Sep 04 - 10:24 AM

DER SPIEGEL has a feature on his website:

When the war came to Rybitwy (the article is in German)

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: WWII - 65 Years On
From: alanabit
Date: 01 Sep 04 - 03:07 PM

German television is excellent about showing detailed historical programmes of the Holocaust. I don't know if the documentaries of Dr.Guido Knopp are available in other countries, but I can recommend them to anyone.

Subject: RE: BS: WWII - 65 Years On
From: GUEST,robomatic
Date: 01 Sep 04 - 03:40 PM

I've never heard of Guido Knopp, but I had a chance to visit Dachau a bunch of years ago. There was a first rate not overlarge museum there and I had a chance to purchase a very good book published in Germany, in more than one language I believe, Konzentrazienlager Dachau, which went into some detail on events and publications leading up to the founding of the Camp in '33. There was also a rather sad little sign at the train station alerting tourists that there was more to see in Dachau.

I also remember studying in a law library in Stanford amongst shelves and shelves of foreign law books. I remember a bunch of English case law books from their colonies in Africa, full of the dry narrative of person to person anguish only with African names instead of European, and a group of Austrian law books post Anschluss, full of laws involving what jobs Jews could have and who they could and (mostly) could not marry. I wish my memory was more detailed, but I recall being impressed by the amount of ink spent on the matter.

Subject: RE: BS: WWII - 65 Years On
From: Ron Davies
Date: 02 Sep 04 - 06:58 AM

Wolfgang---

Fascinating article from Spiegel on Rybotny.

Points out how especially if you had any authority either the Nazis or the Soviets (or both) saw you as a threat.

The minister defended Germans, whose families had lived peacefully for generations, from a fearful Polish mob, as Hitler was invading. But the fact that he had been translator at the interrogation of the Germans-- ( and more, I believe, that he was an authority figure in the town)--- doomed him when the Nazis took Poland.    Question raised by this, and unanswered by the article---why didn't the Germans who had benefited from his intercession stand up for him when his time came? Were they no longer there?

Subject: RE: BS: WWII - 65 Years On
From: Billy the Bus
Date: 02 Sep 04 - 08:47 AM

Ehanks for the above posts folks. Just another thought..

'Twas 2nd Sept 1945 that Japan "surrendered" to end WWII - it lasted six years, almost to the day. It must have been hell for all concerned. Most nations celebrate a 'Veterans Day' Maybe we should all focus on this date for an anti-war day?

Peace - Sam

Subject: RE: BS: WWII - 65 Years On
From: Billy the Bus
Date: 02 Sep 04 - 10:43 AM

Mumble... I don't mean VK Day - it's too one sided. I'm listening to an hour of songs from the 40s on the wireless. "bluebirds over the White Cliffs of Cover" is the most appropriate tune for this thread - though an Air Force version of "Pistol Packing Momma" comes close.

Sam

Subject: RE: BS: WWII - 65 Years On
From: Wolfgang
Date: 02 Sep 04 - 10:48 AM

Ron,

questions like yours have haunted me all my adult life and I have no response. All those nice elderly people, the generations of my parents and grandparents, what have they done (or missed to do)? I see in their wrinkled faces with the benign looking eyes (most elderly look this way) with the smiles when they see children play and think: Have you been a murderer, a coward, a simple soldier, a good one among the perpetrators, a helper at the risk of your life?

These Germans in Poland; some will have been glad they'd could profit now from taking over bigger houses; some will have silently disagreed and felt bad about; some will have spoken against the murders and be silenced by simple bullying or beating; some may have spoken out loudly in protest and become silent when the first of them was shot.

There are a lot of stories from German people standing up against the terror and having survived, maybe even having been able to help in one single case. These are the stories of the survivors. There are many more who have been shot for speaking against evil. They can't tell their stories.

My aunt has told me a story about my father (my father doesn't recollect that story at all). At the day of the imperial pogrom night in 1938 also in their little home town (8,000 inhabitants) SS and SA were burning the synagogue and wrecking the shops of Jewish owners. Now this was a small town and so everybody knew everybody else. My father at that time was 19 years old and in the Hitler youth. Someone went to him and said he should come to help and to prevent the violence and abuse. He went off and, my aunt has told, came back with a grey face and said he had tried but could do nothing, all that was orchestrated 'from above'.

The Nazis nearly always sent their stormtroops from somewhere else to do the pogroms. The local Hitler youths or party members could not be trusted to

Subject: RE: BS: WWII - 65 Years On
From: Wolfgang
Date: 02 Sep 04 - 11:16 AM

A bit is lost, but the idea was there:

You just don't hit so easily the man in his face who has given you free sweets when you came into his shop as a small kid. When the person you kill or abuse doesn't have a name (or not even a face, when you shoot from behind) it is easier to be 'hard'. The Nazis even did train hardening the hearts. But the main trick: Never let the locals do the worst crimes, they are too weak.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: WWII - 65 Years On
From: Bill D
Date: 02 Sep 04 - 11:44 AM

Wolfgang---I'm sure there were many examples of people who said to themselves..."I should stand up to this, but all that would happen would be one more body in the street. If I wait, perhaps I can make a difference as a live dissenter, rather than dead hero"...

Some of those, as the family who harbored Anne Frank, were correct...some were perhaps only rationalizing their own safety...and even then I can't blame them TOO much. It is sad that the culture of the times allowed a situation where such choices needed to be made.

Subject: RE: BS: WWII - 65 Years On
From: Billy the Bus
Date: 02 Sep 04 - 11:46 AM

Wolfgang -yan are an angel = I love your posts - Sam

Subject: RE: BS: WWII - 65 Years On
From: alanabit
Date: 03 Sep 04 - 03:01 AM

The usual good sense and insight we have come to expect from Wolfgang. My girlfriend tells me that her grandfather - who was a proud Nazi - served Jewish customers quietly at night with the special shoes he made. It was not self interest. These people had been friends and customers for years. Maybe he was carried away by the rhetoric and unable to see what it really meant close up.
    I think there are many people like that. My parents spoke the most appalling racist rubbish at times, but at a personal level, they were not wilfully spiteful to anyone.
    By lumping people all together and identifying groups of them as "different", you have the breeding ground for spite and mistrust. When you get to know people face to face, it can become impossible to believe the myths on which racism and sectarianism are built.      Anonymity makes it easier to pretend that all the lies are true.

Subject: RE: BS: WWII - 65 Years On
From: Wolfgang
Date: 03 Sep 04 - 03:28 AM

Thanks, Sam.

The 'culture of the times', Bill, yes, may there never more be an 'unculture' (We can say 'Unkultur' in German, and even if you can't in English, you'll understand).

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: WWII - 65 Years On
From: GUEST,***Oo***
Date: 24 Jul 07 - 01:30 AM

Found this site. Lots of WW2 recordings. I think I'll make up a folder of the Pearl Harbor recordings and of the D-Day recordings for the old timers in my family. Teenagers at the start, at Normandy and the Ardennes later. Amazing collection of recordings.

http://www.archive.org/details/worldwarIInewsOTRKIBM

Subject: RE: BS: WWII - 65 Years On
From: GUEST,blindlemonsteve
Date: 24 Jul 07 - 03:19 PM

Alanabit, may i take this opportunity to thankyou for this sentence.

"By lumping people all together and identifying groups of them as "different", you have the breeding ground for spite and mistrust. When you get to know people face to face, it can become impossible to believe the myths on which racism and sectarianism are built.      Anonymity makes it easier to pretend that all the lies are true."

You have put into words exactly how i feel, i was trying to explain exactly this to a friend of mine the other day, but i was not so eloquent, i will email this passage to her now and tell her this is what i meant.

Thankyou.

Subject: RE: BS: WWII - 65 Years On
From: Don Firth
Date: 24 Jul 07 - 03:44 PM

Alan, I second what blindlemonsteve posted just above. Well, said, sir! Well said!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: WWII - 65 Years On
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 24 Jul 07 - 05:51 PM

I've made this recommendation in another thread but an excellent book on the wars of the 20th Century is Niall Ferguson's, 'The War of the World' (Penguin, 2006). Ferguson maintains that the 20th Century was one long world war - not just the conflicts of 1914 - 18 and 1939 - 45. There were plenty of conflicts between 1918 and 1939 and even more such conflicts after 1945. These wars were driven by 3 main factors; the collapse of empires, economic instability and the growth of stupid, but deadly, racist theories.
This book provides a global perspective on what we tend to think of as European based conflicts - albeit with Asian theatres (eg. the war with Japan) and US interventions.

Subject: RE: BS: WWII - 65 Years On
From: Little Hawk
Date: 24 Jul 07 - 07:33 PM

I too appreciate what you have said, Wolfgang. Very much. It explains a great deal.

As you say: "the main trick: Never let the locals do the worst crimes"

Soldiers and storm troopers who are brought in from some other area will easily obey orders to arrest, brutalize, and kill people, because they don't know who they are doing it to, they usually don't know the real reasons why the orders are given...and they tend, accordingly, to believe whatever they are told about the supposed "enemies of society".

Subject: RE: BS: WWII - 65 Years On
From: Mickey191
Date: 24 Jul 07 - 09:00 PM

I have a neighbor who with his Mother came from Germany around "43. The Mother is 96 & and he is 72. We happen to have the same eye Dr. I cannot tell you how very many times the old lady has asked me "Do you think Dr.---- is a Jew?" Out of respect for her age I simply would say-"I do not know." The other day I finally lost it. After the Q. I Yelled:

"What the hell difference does it make? Didn't you learn anything from the war?" She said a fast goodbye. No longer speaks to me. I felt badly. I just don't get it! Their hatred is so deep-The son always talks about the gold the Jews smuggled out of Germany. Some things never change.

Subject: RE: BS: WWII - 65 Years On
From: Little Hawk
Date: 24 Jul 07 - 09:19 PM

In regards to Mickey191's post - People are like that, unfortunately. (Many are, I mean...) They hang on to the hatreds and prejudices they picked up in their youth, because it's like an automatic reflex reaction. I too have known (some) Germans who still carried that sort of reaction to Jews, 50 or more years after the war was over. I have known others who certainly did not.

How many people have that kind of knee-jerk reaction to communists/leftists/socialists? Or to blacks? Or to whites? Or to Catholics? Or to East Indians? Or to Muslims or Christians? More than a few. Have they ever had the chance or taken the step to get past the stereotype, know some of "those people" personally and get past the weird boogyman they are carrying around in their heads? If they did, then their ideas might change.

These things get carried on thoughtlessly from one generation to the next. It takes a free thinker or a rebel to question what gets passed on and to break the chain, because to break the chain you must face what you are deeply afraid of, and face it without aggression...you must lower your defenses. You must be prepared to admit you don't necessarily know the whole story...or maybe even half of the whole story. You must also brave the disapproval of your peers.

The easiest thing is just to cling to a sense of certainty and believe everything bad you're told about "those people", and that's what a great many people do. Politicians count on that sort of thing. It helps them put certain drastic measures into effect if they are so inclined.

Subject: RE: BS: WWII - 65 Years On
From: robomatic
Date: 25 Jul 07 - 12:09 AM

I recommend Richard Rhodes: "The Making Of The Atomic Bomb" and his followup "Dark Sun" which focus on the watershed events of the Twentieth Century.

Subject: RE: BS: WWII - 65 Years On
From: Little Hawk
Date: 25 Jul 07 - 12:51 AM

A book I would highly recommend is William L. Shirer's "The Collapse of the Third Republic". It concerns the events leading up to and concluding in the fall of France in 1940, and it's a fascinating account.

He is more famous for "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich", which remains probably the most classic book on that particular subject.

He also wrote a rather short book on the sinking of the Bismark. It's fine, but there's a better one written by Ludovic Kennedy, called "Pursuit: The Chase and Sinking of the Bismarck".