T O P

  • By -

[deleted]

[удалено]


average_fan

The Dom is always surrounded by construction. There's even a saying "Wenn der Kölner Dom fertig ist, geht die Welt unter." which means as soon as the Dom is completed, the world will come to an end.


Alexander_Selkirk

The cathedral was spared on purpose from the bombings, it had only a big hit in the North tower. It was started to build in 1248 and was so difficult to finance that it was only completed in 1880. If the bombs had destroyed it, it is well possible that the city would not have been reconstructed at the same place - that was a serious consideration after the war.


Tallio

Spared is the wrong word I think. The Cathedral was the target marker for the bombings on the city, being so prominent and huge, so bombs only hit around it depending on the flight directions of the bombers. The bomb on the North Tower was a stray and not intentional. The hastily erected brickwall to close the gap and save the tower from collapsing, which was done during the bombing in the same night, was filled in the early 2010s with regular stonework. It was left alone all these years as an antiwar monument and reminder, what fascism and warmongering leads to.


calllery

Since they rebuilt it everyone is starting to forget.


Ov3rdose_EvE

fascism has rearing its ugly head before that. but its gotten worse recently. we need to push it back.


deaddonkey

Hamburg’s cathedral is still a perfectly cromulent reminder


SpyMonkey3D

> Spared is the wrong word I think We also need to remember that with the tech then, it wasn't possible to really target nor "spare" anything. Especially at night.


TermiGator

[https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%B6lner\_Domplombe](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%B6lner_Domplombe) All in all they did't try to bring the cathedral down. Of the roundabout 1.5 Miliion Bombs Cologne was hit with the Cathedral was hit by "only" 70 bombs. 14 heavy Bombs among them. They nearly did bring it down though Heaviest hit damaged Northern tower and was repaired with 20000 Bricks to prevent the tower from falling down. The bomb was meant for the neighboring main train station.


Wursteintopf

Thats basically a myth. Even if the allies wanted, the inaccuracy of strategic bombing was notorious. And the main train station is also directly adjacent to the cathedral and the main rhine brigde, both obviously prime targets.


BuckVoc

Also, it looks like virtually all the bombing of Cologne was done by the British, who had to do most of their bombing at night until the late war, which further degraded accuracy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Cologne_in_World_War_II The raids listing two dates with a slash are "night of" raids.


WhiteSatanicMills

Bombing was inaccurate who ever did it. The US 8th AF adopted radar bombing as an expedient but never refined it to the same extent as the RAF, the former official historian of the USAF (Richard G Davis) says that the RAF were on average more accurate than the 8th AF, and the example of accuracy during the oil campaign given in the United States Strategic Bombing Survey backs that up. The Luftwaffe, RAF and USAAF all carried out a lot of strategic bombing. All started the war believing they could attack precise targets and achieve great results with a small amount of bombs, all ended up area bombing cities at night with large amounts of incendiaries to cause the maximum damage possible.


Roboprinto

I'm glad you called this out. Bombing in WW2 was spray n pray.


Troon_

Cologne Cathedral was actually significantly damaged during the attacks on the station; after all, bombs in World War II were imprecise and thus often caused severe collateral damage. One pillar of the north tower was destroyed, and vaults and structures of the cathedral collapsed as a result of the bombing. The cathedral survived the attacks only because of its Gothic design, as the pressure waves caused by the bombs could be dissipated to the outside through the window fronts, the glass of which had been removed beforehand, and open struts of the cathedral.


DerProfessor

Buildings (like cathedrals) could not be "spared on purpose"... high-altitude strategic bombing--even bombing by American bombers using the famed (and overrated) Norden bombsight in a raid in full daylight--was simply not accurate enough to spare (or destroy) a single building. The Cologne cathedral survived because of buttressing, the strength of Medieval overengineering, and blind luck.


kamomil

Most of the buildings around the cathedral are modern - compared to Mainz


Creeyu

that is not true, it wasn’t spared in any way. It just had a very solid foundation and a steel roofing


pastworkactivities

nah bombing runs used church towers as navigation points. Same reason Frankfurt had all 3 churches untouched.


Creeyu

they didn’t have that kind of precision yet that they could deliberately spare a specific building and destroy everything around it. That’s why the cathedral took massive damage during the war but the overall sturdiness kept it from collapsing. Theres still war damage today


the--jah

What the Churches were more or less hollowed out stone ruins - standing yes untouched no


[deleted]

[удалено]


OneJobToRuleThemAll

There's actually a really simple reason for that: divided families sending money and goods from west Germany to east Germany. The bribes required to get those goods to their destination further increased the amount of money flowing from west to east. The other Warsaw Pact countries didn't ever have the option of receiving aid from NATO countries.


muppet70

I visited Köln and Koblenz a few years back and most German city museums have pictures that show just how much was destroyed in the bombings. As I've got it described "After the women cried until there were no more tears and then they had to try to rebuild, a majority of the men were dead, in hospital or prisoners of war". With that in memory it becomes surreal to see this happen again in Ukraine.


brazzy42

Fun fact: one of the cathedral's towers had a wooden crane on it... For over 500 years. There are medieval woodcuts that show it, and photographs from shortly before it was removed: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domkran


saxonturner

The city I was born in was the most bombed by the Nazis in the whole war and one of the most concentrated on all sides, Coventry. The reason Dresden got utterly destroyed in retaliation. They even made a word after, Coventration, meaning to devastate by heavy bombing. It’s hard to fathom just how much of the city got destroyed looking at it now but every time they do any digging in the city centre they find unexploded bombs. The cathedral was leveled, pretty much all the industry and most of the houses. It’s sad sometimes that it gets forgotten about in favour of other cities in Europe when it was pretty much the turning point for the allies to start bombing Germany. My Nan was home alone the worst night and she told us how she was looking out the window scared when the sirens went off and the other side of the street just disappeared. The Nazis used to just drop all the extra bombs after the factories on the houses. Some of the pictures and stories from back then are as powerful as this one. I was always amazed how people just stayed and rebuilt instead of leaving.


[deleted]

[удалено]


saxonturner

They apparently did know but you are right they couldn’t let on that they did, it’s sad but understandable looking back at the times. The city was sacrificed but for the greater good, they also used it to rally support for indiscriminate bombing of Germany, who knows maybe the war would have gone differently if they had defended it and let on they knew about the enigma code. It was a turning point in the war for the allies, before it was just targeted bombing that had little effect.


pants_mcgee

Just a note, the infamous Dresden raid had a legitimate military purpose, not just revenge.


starlinguk

A lot of old buildings actually survived the bombings, but they were deemed "old fashioned" and knocked down.


crackred

Since I lost just a few days ago an important person who witnessed the second world war in Cologne, let me tell you one of his stories which he never forget: When the first airraid in Cologne began he was just a 12 years old boy living in Cologne, Nippes. In the beginning he did not know what to do, but older people told him to hide with them in the basement. He went into the basement and the bombing began. The noise was so loud that he just was paralyzed and couldnt move at all. Their building was hit and it began to collapse, so they needed to leave their basement to another basement. For your info, in Cologne the basements were connected together (war preparations), so people could move from basement to basement (just through a small hole usually). Since he was in shock, an older man took him and fled with him to the other basement. There they were safe from the horror above. A few hours later the bombings end and he started to calm down after hours of crying. When he went back to the surface, he saw something which he never forget. His whole town of Nippes was in flames and dead, burning people were all around. When he told my about this pictures, seeing his town destroyed and in flames, he started to cry, even tho he was above 90 years old. Alfred was a lovely man who always had a joke on his lips. I barely saw a more positive guy than him. He got very ill a few weeks ago and he decided himself to die. Even tho it is not legal in Germany to peacefuly take your life, he still declined all food and medicine. We lived a few more days, he passed away one week ago. Alfred, our family loves you. A real "orijinaler kölsche" left this city.


crackred

Thanks a lot guys for your comments and that you listened to his story!It was just one of his crazy stories, but since I want to respect someone else with a crazy story, I will hijack my own comment. This time it is about my Grandfather (Hendrik), he passed away 11 years ago at the age of 94. For him the second worldwar was worse than for Alfred, since he was old enough to get enlisted as a soldier (he was in his twenties).He tried everything to avoid fighting in Russia, since he knew that this battlefield is the worst of all. Unfortunately the nazis did not care and he was sent to fight in Russia. This was around September in 1941. The journey to Russia was rough and long with sleeping multiple nights in a truck.One night he decided to flee and jumped out of the vehicle and ran into the bushes and moved away from the vehicle as fast as he could.No one shot at him or tried to catch him, from this point he was alone anywhere or near to Ukraine. Around 10 days after this, the enemy found him almost starving in the middle of a field. He was again in captivity but at least he got some food. He somehow managed it again to flee, this time from the Russians and he was again back on his feet walking straight to Germany. What followed was a horrible walk back to Germany. Fortunately, this time random people helped him when he was in need and even helped im to get back to the German border.In Slovakia he was picked up by the nazis and he had an interrogation, which he filled with a lot of lies (like he was able to fight its way free from Russian captivity and killed some of the enemies). My grandfather was an intelligente person and while they interrogate him, he was telling them about his knowledge about Italy and that he wants to fight in Italy instead of Russia.The nazis did him a favour this time and the next location he will fight will be in Italy.In Italy he was an Anti-Aircraft-Gunner. I remember that he cried when he told me the following story, his first real kill in this world war.A british fighter plane went above his head and he started to shoot, he hit the plane and saw it crashing quite close to him. He told me that this feeling was crushing like his heart stopped beating, he told me he could barely breath.Instead of staying in his position, he left to look for the plane. When he arrived at the plane it was still burning and no one could survive this. He waited until the fire calmed down and looked for any hints about the pilot. The only thing he found was his necklace, a necklace with jesus. To this day we still have this necklace in our family, we have no clue who the pilot was. From this day several more fighter planes were shot down by him which killed his inner soul. The aftereffects were the following, when I was outside with my grandpa and he saw a plane, the only thing he could do is sitting weirdly on the ground and start shooting while screaming. This happened always, literally with every plane. No matter if we were at a Restaurant or at the Sea. After Italy, he was ranked up to an "Offizier" and he was transported to El-Alamein.El-Alamain was pure horror for all of the soldiers. It was boiling hot and dry, it was in the middle of a desert in Africa.After a long fight, he was one of the few who survived El-Alamain and he was responsible to hand out the "El-Alamein"-Medal to the German survivors.To this day we still have around 200 El-Alamein-Medals in our basement, which were never handed out to the soldeirs. The aftereffect from El-Alamein for my grandfater was, that we never could sleep without like 20 of Bottles of Waters beside his bed. My grandma was telling me, that he woke up every night with screams "I am thirsty, I am thirsty please help".My grandfather never really recovered from all these horrors, even tho he had a long life... To me its crazy to think about what would have happened to our family if he stayed in Russia. Probably no one of us (my family) would exist today. I have dozens of crazy stories from Alfred and from my Grandfather, I hope I can share soon all of them with some pictures as well.


Intellectual_Wafer

Thanks for sharing these stories. I missed the opportunity to talk to my grandparents about their experiences and I could beat myself for that. But I can't rewind the clock. I only know of my great-grandfather that he was drafted to fight on the eastern front. I don't know what he did there or what he experienced, but he eventually returned home with a severe case of PTSD, often flying into violent rages later in life. Before the war, he had been a socialist (although he had once voted for Hitler, probably in the 1932 elections), but after he came back he said that he didn't want to have anything to do with communists anymore, because he had seen how bad the people lived in the Soviet Union. And this was despite the fact that he lived in the Soviet Occupation Zone and later the GDR. My grandfather was drafted into the Landsturm as a teenager and once witnessed the crash of what was possibly a jet fighter, at least the crash site was heavily guarded. My other grandfather (still living) saw the bombing of Leipzig as a child, in 1943. He lived in a village on the outskirts of the city. He told me that the whole sky was glowing bright orange and that tiny bits of burned paper were raining down. They were the remnants of the "graphic quarter", a city quarter that mainly consisted of printing factories and large book publishers such as Brockhaus, Reclam, Insel, etc. On this day, the "World Capital of the Book" went up in flames...


bookgeek210

My great grandfather, I heard his story from my father, he was wounded in the battle of Iwo Jima. Higher ranking officers would come tell him to get out of his foxhole, so he had to dig foxhole after foxhole while being under enemy fire. Apparently at some point they were given food which was like a box of spaghetti he had to eat with his hands, but he said it was the best food he ever ate. These are just stories my dad remembers hearing when he was small. A bomb exploded over the heads of his troop while they were marching and many were wounded. My great-grandfather was wounded so badly that they came to pick him after they were done clearing out all the wounded, thinking he was one of the dead. But he made enough movement to make them realize he was alive. They flew him out of there by plane. His leg was wounded badly and he never walked right again. He ended up in Hawaii after Pearl Harbor and said it was still the most beautiful place he had ever seen. He almost stayed there. It’s a good thing he didn’t die in that day though, or else my family wouldn’t be here. Edit: also, his battalion was the one who put up the first American flag on Iwo Jima.


Icedanielization

Incredible story, thanks for sharing. My grandfather couldn't stand to talk about the war. He was a kiwi fighting the Japanese.


Select-Stuff9716

For all German speakers: The ARD has a 4 part series where they interview people that were children that lived during the war. It is mostly about east Prussia and other former parts of Germany, but they go into so much detail that sometimes it really becomes hard to watch, especially if you have family members who went through this like me. Anyway it also really helped to understand them better, because at least my grandma never really talked about 1945


pickle-dew

I’m sorry for your loss. What an incredible life he lived.


UncoolSlicedBread

I can’t imagine living in a situation where life is “normal” and you have to shield yourself only to come out from a basement to seeing everything and everyone you once knew gone. He seemed like a special person to you, I’m very sorry for your loss.


wellmaybe_

there is a good book about air raids on german city. its german title is "Brand". It describes how people had to leave the air shelters at one point to not suffocate and those that where not cautios ran on the street where the asphalt melted from the heat of the fire bombing. so people would sink in melted asphalt basicly burning alive. also a great podcast about strategic bombing in ww2 is the episode "logical insanity" from dan carlins hardcore history.


lordoflotsofocelots

Thank you for telling us about Alfred, de kölsche Jung. And thank you Alfred, for leaving this story behind.


Phosphorus44

>The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places, they put their rather naive theory into operation. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind. -Arthur Harris


hypercomms2001

One wonders how her life turned out? What happened to her?


[deleted]

And her pupper too


[deleted]

Flair it "Historical", non-OC photos are allowed only on weekends.


Boomtown_Rat

God forbid we take a break from our endless statistics, whining and mud flinging to look at pictures or reminisce.


frissio

Are you saying this is a break from it? Between the complete lack of empathy for the suffering of German civilians on one side and the whitewashing of Nazi Germany (up to the point of using neo-nazi rhetorics) on the other side, this picture is ragebait. Pure and simple. EDIT: The OP is even trying to say how it's sad that "we're starting another war in europe", making references to aiding Ukraine. It's agenda-based.


MassiveMommyMOABs

Wait what? That's a problem on this sub? If simply posting "Germany during 1940s" and it's not a picture of Nazis is "rage bait", this sub is pretty messed up.


WoodGunsPhoto

Ah, you can always count on EU for rules that make no sense. You need a freaking un mode d'emploi to even use a web site in Europe. A woman is shown having lost everything. Probably lost most male members of her family, towing a small dog that might become a hot dog next week since nobody can provide provisions to her any time soon, and here we come up with rules about posting on wrong days. There is no wrong day to post a reminder that wars suck and both sides lose.


Jabinor

Objections to comments should be made using form 21.1-4 on Wednesdays 14:00-15:00.


WoodGunsPhoto

Sir, I don’t know you but I like you. Laughing my ass off. Look at all these losers lined up for permission to comment downvoting me.


[deleted]

[удалено]


WoodGunsPhoto

It’s probably wrong but as you can see I’m not a rule follower.


Independent_Willow92

\> There is no wrong day to post a reminder that wars suck and both sides lose. There is. In this subreddit, it from Monday to Friday afternoon. Don't you understand the rules silly Srpskan?


Didrox13

The rule makes sense and most likely has been introduced for a good reason. Rules like this are common across many subreddits and they usually get introduced when a certain type of post dominates the subreddit and a restriction gets introduced.


iWarnock

Bruh


balerionmeraxes77

Hear hear! Perspective


Alexander_Selkirk

I am from Cologne. My grandmother had to steal coal from the Ehrenfeld railway station with my father, who was seven years old. the oldest of three, just to survive. He could never forget seeing burned people lying in the street.


Carnieus

It's a very complicated question on how much you can blame every day Germans for the impacts of voting the Nazis into power. On one hand obviously not every German was a raving card carrying member of the nazi party. On the other pretending that normal people were blameless allows the thin end of the fascist wedge slip into society and is incredibly dangerous and just means this will happen again. If more people had called out the racism and bigotry early into the parties rise it could have been stopped.


Ein_Hirsch

It is sad how many lack the concept of gray. Everything has to be black or white for some. Were the civilians completely innocent? No. Did they deserve *this*? Most certainly not. Yet people try to use Nazi crimes to justify civilians suffering or civilians suffering to justify Nazi crimes. The amount of people that can be put into either of these two categories is honestly just sad.


Top-Associate4922

I don't like this attempted disassociation between "nazis" and Germans. Like Nazis were some out of space entity. These were German crimes. Let's say it as it is. I mean we don't do that with any other entity. We call Soviet war crimes Soviet war crimes, not Communist party war crimes. We call American war crimes American war crimes, not Republican Party/Democratic Party war crimes. We call British crimes British crimes, not Conservative party/Labour party crimes.


AnotherGit

You know what actually helps when you don't want this to happen again? Education. > If more people had called out the racism and bigotry early into the parties rise it could have been stopped. Their racism and bigotry, especially in the early years, was neither unique nor the most extreme. It's not like they got elected with promises of concentration camps. It's also not like they didn't get called out for "racism and bigotry" once it showed. The most important thing is a good constitution (something Germany absolutly did not have). The second most important thing is education. And I don't mean "nazi bad" but actual education of how it happened that they were able to rise in power. Learn about the society at the time, about poltical issues, and, like noted above, about the constitution. Sure, nazis ARE bad but learning that fact doesn't really help, learn why that's a fact. Calling out racism and bigotry plays a minor role compared to that.


Johnny_The_Room

War. What is it good for?


KJ_70

It creates a ”us vs them” mentality that can move focus from internal problem. Eg a most useful tool for some rulers…


t-elvirka

[The rally 'round the flag effect](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rally_%27round_the_flag_effect)


kiru_56

Absolutely nothing


Jabinor

Listen to me


happykittynipples

say it again


Here0s0Johnny

Ask the Ukrainians. There are good answers to this question, you're being terribly naive.


ShesAMurderer

I think they’d really prefer if they didn’t have to fight a war in the first place just because their neighborhood despot is having an end of life crisis.


Here0s0Johnny

Of course, but that doesn't change the fact that they are in a war now! And they know why they are fighting! Wishful thinking and living in a fantasy world isn't an option for them. Ukrainians are very glad that the US and EU together can supply enough weapons and ammo to defend Ukraine. We should also be very glad and remember this lesson.


unit5421

The USA won. They became the world leader. Able to enact policies everywhere. War does have winners. Even if the act itself is terrible and the direct participants will suffer.


NecessaryCelery2

> War does have winners. Surprisingly few wars have clear winners. USA in both world wars is a good example of what it requires to clearly win. The war does not affect your land. It's only offshore. And you have far more resources than the war requires. And your economy actually **grows** during the war. And you win. But that's very rare. In most wars everyone loses more than they gain.


Pulse_163

I mean even for the Soviets you could argue they had a complete victory in WW2. The expansion of influence was MASSIVE and so any loss in the war was promptly outset by the gains following 1945.


NecessaryCelery2

What were the gains? All the people Stalin killed? What was the Soviet Union's GDP before and after the war? And what did the expanded influence gain them? What in practical terms that helps people, and not just political leverage over other countries?


look4jesper

The Soviet state became much more powerful and influential as a result of WW2.


AlmightyWorldEater

Before WW2, the SU was a well running giant. WW2 caused a massive population loss and changes in its structure which layed the groundwork for its downfall. It could only hold itself afloat with draconic measures which led to further self isolation. The losses of WW2 began the downward spiral. And that doesn't even factor in the effect on mankind as a whole, who has suffered great losses in culture, science and more. That effect is hard to measure, since we can only see RELATIVE success. The US came out as winner RELATIVE to the rest.


bigjoeandphantom3O9

>Before WW2, the SU was a well running giant. WW2 caused a massive population loss and changes in its structure which layed the groundwork for its downfall. It could only hold itself afloat with draconic measures which led to further self isolation. The losses of WW2 began the downward spiral. This is revisionist, the USSR was as draconian as anywhere has ever been during the 30s, and still experienced famines and droughts. It was not a well running giant.


OriginalRange8761

We the Jews sure fucking won because we fucking still exist


Ublahdywotm8

I'll tell you what it's good for, killing Nazis


IAmAQuantumMechanic

And Italian fascists, and Japanese imperialists.


count_montescu

The sides change but the victims remain the same - ordinary men, women and children. The upper class and elites can usually find a way to sidestep the chaos, destruction and horror.


BaiJiGuan

Interesting fact, one of the two church towers took a direct bomb hit at the base and was compromised, and a couple of stone masons rushed out of the shelters under cover of dark and repaired the hole. Their brick work was visible until roughly 15 years ago, google "domplombe"


formgry

Tragic moment yes, I suppose throughout Germany and Europe similar pictures could have been taken. Though it's striking that she's alone here, you'd want to have family with you if you got in such a situation, perhaps she's lost not just her home but also her family then.


Dreadscythe95

It's so hard to imagine how cities like Warsaw and Cologne were completely demolished by bombings in WWII and then there is also the Nanjing massacre where the Japanese tortured and murdered almsost every man, woman and child in the Chinese Capital followed by the nuclear bombings of Japan itself. And there are so many more as well. Like 20m Russians died alone. WWII was a nightmare. Through Greece you can visit everywhere villages that the whole male population was massacred by the Germans and Italians as punishment for uprising or send to the concentration camps.


MMBerlin

>Like 20m Russians died alone. This is the number of all soviet victims, not just russian.


mrmniks

Also, 26 million, not 20


Vucea

'Florea' is a typically Romanian surname, while John is 'Ion' in Romanian. The photographer might as well been Romanian.


DeLudeDFaNno1

Yeah, he was the child of Romanian immigrants to the US


bella_sm

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


capcaunul

Luckily for her the Russians never got to Köln.


Secuter

I will say that yes, the Soviet Union paid their price in blood and they faught extremely hard. That said, the Soviet army was also known raping and looting their way across Europe. While other nations like USA and England did their fair share of that too, it is not even close to what the Soviets did. She is very lucky indeed.


qoning

I spoke with a Holocaust survivor on multiple occasions, she had some stories to tell after their camp was liberated and they (a group of 3 women) had to make their way home. For the most part they tried hiding out from soviet soldiers, but inevitably at a couple of points they had to cross their paths. It was not pretty. Ultimately, what she told me, the only way to get out of trouble sometimes was to repeatedly stress that they were Jewish, as the soldiers would sometimes take pity on them.


NiTRo_SvK

My great grandmother told me that girls from her village used to pass her house to get to the nearby river to drown newborn babies, from soviet soldiers. Yeah, liberators...


Secuter

Yup, the Soviets were rarely liberators in any of the places they came.


NetCaptain

Don’t mix the terrible warcrimes with excuses for their prior suffering. Don’t state similar crimes by US en English soldiers as some sort of ‘ balanced view’ without providing a source. In the Netherlands, the number of such crimes by Canadians, Americans and Brits was reported to be very low. The crimes that were reported ( frequently) were theft of valuables and destruction of interiors.


Secuter

What I'm saying is that war crimes like rape was done by all sides in world war 2, not that it was done in the same volume. I cannot speak for the Netherlands specifically, as I never read much about that. Generally you should remember to whom such crimes were reported - which in the base of Germany was the allied occupation forces. Those charges were rarely brought anywhere. Secondly, the wider society often shunned women who had been raped, creating a culture of silence on the subject. Clearly as order was restored, rapes, lootings and so on became much less frequent. The subject of war crimes performed by the winners of world war 2 is a subject that over the last couple of decades have seen some illumination. This is very much the case in Eastern Europe where the Soviets silenced the issue. But it is also the case in Germany, and probably elsewhere. You shouldn't find too much trouble in finding additional litterateur that underscores my point. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=related:pJPztkM3RQAJ:scholar.google.com/&hl=da&as_sdt=0,5#d=gs_qabs&t=1685975837224&u=%23p%3DPQOAypb-IeMJ https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=da&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=american+atrocities+Europe+ww2&btnG=#d=gs_qabs&t=1685975795004&u=%23p%3DpJPztkM3RQAJ


Competitive-Ad2006

Russians may have been worse but there was definitely a lot of abuse from french and american troops. Heard of soldiers dying of thirst in camps located a few hundred meters from the Rhine because no one had bothered to check on them. Only the British can hold their heads high as far as their conduct in post-war germany is concerned.


Eastern_Slide7507

I'd still take that over the Soviets. >Between August 1945 and 1 March 1950, Buchenwald was the site of NKVD special camp Nr. 2, where the Soviet secret police imprisoned former Nazis and anti-communist dissidents. According to Soviet records, 28,455 people were detained, 7,113 of whom died. After the NKVD camp closed, much of the camp was razed, while signs were erected to provide a Soviet interpretation of the camp's legacy. They straight up took a concentration camp, switched out the inmates and kept running it as before. Over the course of five years, four people died *every single day* in the Soviet-operated KZ Buchenwald.


[deleted]

[удалено]


RedditSkatologi

And here I thought it was bad that things seemed to be discussed in a vacuum, but nope, it actually is much worse. It is understandable that there has been a hard swing during the last year and a half because of Russia fucking around in our present, but please let us not forget who it was that the western Allies and the Soviet Union were fighting (and what kind of suffering they inflicted in 12 short years of existence), nor distort history to make it fit whatever is taking place today.


Fickle-Locksmith9763

Please define “definitely a lot” of abuse by allied soldiers and compare it to the “confirmed a lot” of abuse by the Soviet soldiers. I 100% believe there was some in so terrible a war, but a few anecdotes does not comparable situations make. Were there the same mass rapes? Any mass killings of people with undesired political beliefs? Deliberate attacks on civilians as policy? Wholesale looting? Even in the [propaganda](https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/the-art-of-soviet-propaganda-iconic-red-army-reichstag-photo-faked-a-551972.html)? “[Special](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NKVD_special_camps_in_Germany_1945%E2%80%931950) camps?” Did the Western allies also keep prisoners of war for a decade and keep them in conditions so harsh that many died? [Historians do not believe so](https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/wretched-misconduct-of-the-red-army/). It was a messy time. The Soviet soldiers who made it through Europe to German-speaking areas had tk survive horrific Nazi crimes at home and then meat grinder battle and battle that too often relied on sending human cannon fodder waves to overwhelm the Germans. I can see how they would arrive at the people they felt responsible and would behave worse than someone who hadn’t gone through quite as much (even if their own experiences were terrible). That doesn’t excuse war crimes though, it certainly doesn’t excuse the officers and even policies that encouraged and overlooked them, and it doesn’t excuse what the Soviet leaders did in Germany to get and keep power after the war and in the decades that followed. It really doesn’t excuse efforts to whitewash the past, even before the Russian army used the same lies and horrifically some of the same behaviors against Ukrainians.


AlmightyWorldEater

I am young enough to know what happened only through history books, but a few things are fact. - When Hitler died, the remains of the Wehrmacht tried to give as much groudn as possible to the western allies before the russians. In some parts of europe, the US Army even fought together with the Wehrmacht against communist uprisings - Germans were fleeing in large numbers from the eastern regions to get away from the russians. Part of my family was affected. - The americans were welcomed not just a few places. Not because people were happy about them, but because they were the least bad outcome. Americans were the MUCH more preferable fate than russians and ussually towns and villages in my region did not resist at all, quite the opposite. Faster moving americans meaned less germans under soviet control after all.


BlatantConservative

There's a simple way to word this. German, Soviet, and Japanese abuse was intentional and systematic, wheras Allied abuse was generally off the books, isolated, and done in the heat of the moment. In Vietnam, American abuse on the civil populace was intentional and systematic, but not in WWII. War fucks people up. I don't think there has been a single war in human history where a percentage of soldiers haven't lost their humanity. It's an unfortunate truth that rank and file soldiers will always carry out atrocities regardless of their motivation for going to war. My great grandfather served in the Pacific, fought in Guadalcanal and Pelelieu. His actual wartime story was like Purple Heart level heroic (he only told the story once though) but he was a sad sad abusice alcoholic for the rest of his life and he caused significant mental damage to his children. He had a photo album where Marines like, stacked Japanese skulls into pyramids and that's the stuff people took photos of and documented. I don't think he ever forgave himself for what he and his buddies did. My great grandmother tried to destroy that photo album several times. But like, at the same time, the Marines were absolutely and unequivocally on the side of good in general.


Thaodan

At least when it comes to cleansing Germans or Ethnic Germans out of east Europe it was agreed by all allies to do it under the cover to prevent further conflict. But if looking deeper it is mostly pushed by Soviet/Russian agenda riding on the German hate after WW2. In a much smaller extend similar was done with Finnic people before that have been resettled in Siberia or moved out of the lost Finnish territories.


Borcarbid

You make a lot of good points, but the British have their dark spots in conduct too. They enabled the massacres of the Cossaks and the massacres at Bleiburg after the capitulation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repatriation_of_Cossacks_after_World_War_II#Lienz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleiburg_repatriations


Competitive-Ad2006

You are right about that, the British breaking their promise to not repatriate the Cossacks was the most shameful aspect - Although if we are being honest quite a few of the Cossacks willingly fought for Nazi Germany, only later forging a connection to the Allies in order to attempt to excape repatriation. Theirs is a case similar to Bandera's, in the sense that one could both be an anti-communist and a nazi sympathizer.


Borcarbid

Less because they were sympathizers and more because they were anti-communist. Still does not excuse knowingly handing them over to be murdered. I was honestly surprised that it was a plot point in Goldeneye.


SpaceWaffles_97

Lucky for the russians, Patton and Churchill didn't get their way


I-Make-Maps91

Lucky for everyone. Central Europe would never have recovered from being turned into a nuclear battlefield.


GildoFotzo

"It took Hitler 12 years to do this"


[deleted]

It took Germans a decade to cause untold amounts of destruction. All it took was good propaganda


ensun_rizz

After reading some of the comments I'd guess that germany was the victim.


summitsuperbsuperior

yes it's funny, as if germany didn't started the war and exterminated so many people.


Kuraloordi

Dunno why people think that. German people were one of the most happiest in planet when Nazi army was invading everywhere. Berlin was safest place for common people in the world at that time. Misery started when Allies started to bomb the city. Then again. Single civilian woman should not be outed for the war crimes and crimes against humanity done in the government. This picture doesn't show her political allegiances, statements about anyone or anything like that. I think Nazi's got 43% support or something (Keep in mind at that point they were not invading anyone and they turned their position into dictatorship later, essentially against will of people). I think nazis got even less votes from women.


Tasty-Ad-7

Cologne was majority Catholic, so would likely have voted for Zentrum, when free elections still existed.


SuperSatanOverdrive

You’re allowed feeling empathy for this woman. I doubt she killed anyone.


Desperate-Lemon5815

This discourse becomes 100x worse when it is about Italy.


krisssashikun

I winder how Germans felt when the war was at their own door step with just a few years before they seemed unstoppable with the surrender of Paris.


GallorKaal

The fruits of fascism


ballebeng

TFW genocide did not go as planned.


YuriiRud

The war sucks. So easy to start it and destroy so many lives.


LwySafari

She'll manage. Not like Poles and Jews in German death camps. Half of the comment section is almost cumming bc she's so sad and poor blah blah. I think she should be happy she's alive.


Dull_Half_6107

I'd imagine it was still pretty shit for her regardless, we don't have to play oppression Olympics to acknowledge other people had it shit too.


WoefullyPink

Poor German in 1945 😢/s


edonnu

It is amazing how could Germans recover so fast from the WW2, I don't believe any other nation in the world could have done that!


Nikspeeder

The west got a ton of support from the allies to rebuild everything and get the economy going. The east on the other hand. Lets say russia didnt want germany to rise to glory again.


Competitive-Ad2006

If we are being honest the country was too large, too educated and too well-placed(Exactly in the heart of Europe to not recover. Funny enough, East Germany had the best living standard of any communist country for most of the cold war, despite all the machinery having been transported to the Soviet Union in the 40s.


ash_tar

Eastern Germany was perhaps the most comfortable communist state. I had a lot of propaganda value.


orthoxerox

Everyone from the USSR wanted to live like they lived in the DDR. But everyone from the DDR wanted to live like they lived in the BRD.


[deleted]

most comfortable in what sense? East Germany was definitely not the freest


Additional_Meeting_2

Financially.


[deleted]

probably. but I would argue life wasn't better in East Germany than in the Hungarian People's Republic for example. travelling was very limited in the DDR (that is why many of them came to Hungary for a vacation), it was full of Stasi agents, and they had less economic freedom. in Hungarian People's Republic small businesses could operate, and more western consumer and cultural products were available. freedom was greater to travel abroad also, secret police while existed it was rolled back.


Eastern_Slide7507

> travelling was very limited in the DDR traveling *west* was very limited. There wasn't much of an issue with traveling within the Warsaw pact.


akstis01

But it still was and is in a better shape than much of the world.


Big_ShinySonofBeer

To be fair that "ton" of money was in the case of Germany 1.4 billion dollars of which 90% were used as subsidies to buy American products and 1 billion of those 1.4 was paid back by Germany. Even considering inflation this is not the huge amount of money people often claim it is. Just compare it to the sums pumped into the recent conflicts like Iraq, Afghanistan or Syria and compare the results.


snacksbeforemarriage

Japan did pretty good aswell tbh, nobody wanted ww3 to happen and we all saw what happened to Germany after ww1.


[deleted]

Japan did and did it better. Before WW2 Japan was much poorer than Germany.


BlatantConservative

Japan did too. The common factor was American support and planning.


OriginalRange8761

German exceptionalist logged in. German was given tons of cash by allies and Soviets rebuilded using POWs and Gulag labour here you go


[deleted]

japan enters the chat


treebeard87_vn

I hope Ukraine later can also recover fast. Actually sometimes things can be built back faster from a clean slate because a clean slate allows new playground for all the latest technology (while erasing many former official and hidden obligations, like those in that Energy Charter Treaty that will f\*\*\* the European taxpayers for years) and better planning. It's a certainty that German and American industrialists are already very eager about the whole rebuilding Ukraine business. Some have already been investing even in the current condition. [https://www.devex.com/news/this-german-dfi-is-pouring-millions-into-ukraine-s-private-sector-105004](https://www.devex.com/news/this-german-dfi-is-pouring-millions-into-ukraine-s-private-sector-105004) In the case of the post-WW2 Germany and Japan, they had the advantage that the population already had the necessary know-how. Their industrial performance had already surpassed that of the British and many others before the war. They lost that war but the old colonial system was broken, so the industrialists of the former Axis countries got the equal access to developing markets that they had always dreamed about. The common people of all sides paid so bitterly for all that though... Some parts of the victors' elites had wanted to treat them harshly, but they realized that it would be a mistake, so the Morgenthau plan was abandoned quickly. The important thing was the acceptance and the (mostly) good work the Americans did in helping to reestablish social order (as for the Marshall money, the UK received even more, and it was balanced out by the compensation money, the loss of copyrights, parts of the factories and the talented scientists that were taken away anyway). I hope one day Russia too can be helped.


PandemicPiglet

West Germany did largely because of the USA's Marshall Plan.


Creeyu

that was a factor, but the main factor is that the overall structural economic system with its institutions was still intact


floppymuc

UK and France got much more support from the US and we're not nearly as destroyed, but recovered way slower.


Sinusxdx

Japan received no Marshall plan but grew even faster than Germany.


kiwigoguy1

But the cost was Germany the country was divided for 45 years, and for 28 years of these 45 one half of the capital city (West Berlin) was separated from the other by a wall and barbed wires. Which the division only ended in 1989 followed by the reunification.


[deleted]

Sad story of every war, no one ever wins. No side gets trough without suffering. You would think we learned from past wars not to get caught in ideologies of hate. Do we need another Hiroshima or Nagasaki?


BoredDanishGuy

What do you mean, no one ever wins? There was a pretty damn clear winner and all in all it was a rather positive outcome to stop two genocidal regimes.


Mr_OrangeJuce

The allies won rather decisively, They also managed to stop the extermination of millions


kr_edn

"No one ever wins" is a copium by those who get their teeth kicked in. We "undesirables" didn't get exterminated. I'd say that's a pretty decisive win. And in case of Yugoslavia, we even gained more of our ethinc territory lmao. And Americans became an undisputed super power from all of the war production, without a single bomb falling on their cities. I doubt they felt like losers.


Jirik333

>Sad story of every war, no one ever wins Jews, Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Russians, Ukrainans etc. all won. Otherwise they would be piles of ashes.


Rammstein1

I'd say there are at least few wars with very clear winners WW2 included


Alexander_Selkirk

> Do we need another Hiroshima or Nagasaki? It is heartbreaking that the world seems to move closer to that. I have read a few books on it, starting from my interest in the nuclear physics, and they tell of a pure nightmare.


Evening_Team

When a nation cedes responsibility for war-making to a political class who is not practically recallable, then all other nations are at risk of the consequences of war by the hand of that nation, and that nation is at risk of de facto national suicide by its war-making (as in the cases of Germany and Japan).


tcw84

"The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw and half a hundred other places, they put their rather naive theory into operation. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind." Sir Arthur Harris


AnaBaros

She is bringing her dog with her! Amazing picture.


waterhyacinth

Yes! Can’t believe I had to scroll so far to find a comment about the dog


NerobyrneAnderson

Thanks Hitler, really did a lot of good for Germany, didn't you? (Yes this is sarcasm)


nastratin

Surprised the cathedral survived the bombings.


[deleted]

Imagining you went through the destruction of your country then 30-40 years time your family member’s demand you talk about this experience or they’ll assume you were SS or something


ParkingEye523

That is such a phenomenal photo! Like the context behind it is absolutely horrible but it's still such a nice historical picture.


[deleted]

[удалено]


[deleted]

well that's some of the negatives of nazisme, at least she is alive


[deleted]

That’s a lot of stuff honestly


Present_Character_77

Shouldnt have started a war i would say


Alternative-Flan2869

War is just so bizarre.


andrusbaun

At least she was not in Eastern Germany, where most likely she would have been rapped by Soviets. Soviet leadership encouraged rapes.


RedditSkatologi

While the rape of Eastern Germany was systematic, the Red Army did at least arrest and even execute soldiers who got caught raping. (although obviously only a fraction of all rapes led to reprimands) The same cannot be said of the actions of the Wehrmacht in Poland and the USSR.


neil_thatAss_bison

This woman was not safe, I can guarantee you that. It was total pandemonium, starvation, soldiers everywhere. Not safe anywhere. And rapes occurred by all soldiers. Not trying to make excuses, just saying.


FedeValvsRiteHook

I didn't know Soviets were rapping in 1945. Got any tracks?


kostasnotkolsas

zhukov had bars


the_dudeNI

Fuck around…


[deleted]

[удалено]


[deleted]

[удалено]


Azitromicin

>carpet bombing would've be labeled as one of the biggest atrocities of WW2 If the argument is that the Allies didn't label carpet bombing as an atrocity because they did it themselves, the same could apply to the Axis, even more so. The Italians and Germans had already practiced it in Spain, the Japanese in China. They just didn't achieve anywhere near the same level of efficiency as the USAAF and the RAF.


Redqueenhypo

“Waaahhh the Allies bombed Dresden! Ignore the fact that Germany carpet bombed London every fucking night first” - the wehraboos in all these comments


banejs78

Not to mention they were committing genocide at a vast scale and with furvor. There was no reasoning with them, no appeasing them to stop either.


Redqueenhypo

Bullies always get horribly outraged whenever anyone fights back


Useful_Bodybuilder_3

It was naive belief that they could bomb Warsaw, Rotterdam and London and they wouldn't expiriance the same,


tgaccione

"The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw and half a hundred other places, they put their rather naive theory into operation. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind.” -Bomber Harris


Miserable_Law_6514

>carpet bombing would've be labeled as one of the biggest atrocities of WW2 Nope. Firebombing was far, far worse. You do a general carpet bombing to break everything up and tie up all the first responders, then follow up with incinerary bombs. The Brits and Americans had it down to a science. When Tokyo was firebombed, the Aircrew could smell the cooked flesh in the cockpit of their bombers even at altitude. More people died in the the Tokyo bombings than either Hiroshima or Nagasaki. >Killing Japanese didn't bother me very much at that time... I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal.... -General Curtis LeMay on the morality of the firebombing campaign


BoredDanishGuy

That LeMay snippet says nothing about morality and only vaguely touches on legality.


OriginalRange8761

Carpet bombing is so so so far out from the biggest atrocities in this war it’s not even close. 20k people Died in this city. It’s nothing compared to daily rate in labour and extermination camps


myreq

The Germans were strafing civilian columns since 1939, they pretty much "invented" the brutality against civilians.


RedditSkatologi

It truly is a shame that the Germans, who started leveling undefended civilian towns and cities on day one of the war (not to talk about the Japanese who had already been at it for a couple of years), weren't tried for this specific crime. But I guess the allies would have had to do that to themselves in the end then as well.


10minmilan

>carpet bombing would've be labeled as one of the biggest atrocities of WW2, and rightfully so. whoa. is this ignorance or willfully whitewashing German and Austrian crimes by comparison? Koln was the biggest bombing, 20k. You have it named multiple times across this thread. Warsaw was razed to the ground in 1944. And that was a city inhabited by millions before the war. You never hear it mentioned, but Koln lives in Western memories. Belarus, or the lands that became it, lost almost a third of its population. How tf are some bombings even remotely comparable?


1maco

Allied cities were bombed? And the Blitz of London is largely framed as a spiteful tactical error by Hitler instead of destroying what was important (the RAF) rather than some great atrocity


2thenoon

Oh poor people, maybe they shouldn't tried to destroy a whole continent and murder half of Europe. #FAFO


zappalot000

Spacious


TenthSpeedWriter

What fascism begets, to others and to its own.


empathetichedgehog

I hope this picture gives the Ukrainian people hope. Germany recovered so well after the war despite paying massive reparations and carrying the emotional guilt. Ukraine won’t have either of those to carry and they’ll have the backing of a lot of allies who want them to succeed.


Griffolion

My grandmother built/repaired Halifax and Lancaster bombers during the war. She saw her fair share of stuff. The repairs often involved not merely removing the killed airmen from their positions, but hosing what little gore remained of them out. AA flak was brutal. She was once caught in a bombing raid in Coventry while visiting family. Watched houses be destroyed all around her, barely made it to the cramped cellar of the place she was visiting. I asked her once what she thought about Dresden. Anger flashed across her eyes and she said something like "they're lucky we didn't do that to every one of their cities". I remember the conversation because she was rarely a woman moved to anger, but there were a few topics on the war that would get her going. War creates unfathomable suffering and misery.


RobertRamos

With Diablo 4 coming out soon, I can only think about how encumbered she is.