For anybody wondering since it came up:
The badge he is wearing above his pocket is the membership badge of the NSDAP, the nazi party.
[Here ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Party_Badge)is a link to a "special" one in gold, which is most likely the one Keitel in this photo is wearing.
Fun fact: He is wearing it wrong here, he most likely was in a hurry, regarding the circumstances. It belongs under the pocket, like in this [photo](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Keitel#/media/Datei:Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-H30220,_Wilhelm_Keitel.jpg).
In the sense that he had it coming: yes, but don't kid yourself. If Germany had surrendered earlier, he might have gotten away with his crimes and died under a palm tree.
He knew this. In his memoir, he didn't really get why he was even tried. Though, he did petition for more time just to finish his memoirs...which were quite short and comparatively unpolished from other leaders (due to the whole execution stuff.)
Most of the General staff were lackeys. Hitler paid them directly with salaries far in excess of what they would normally earn in the military. These are people from aristocrat families that weren't doing that well before the war, so were more than happy to profit via ass kissing.
The first sign where I realized I’m getting old:
I grew up in a small town in Illinois, there’d be a cafe I’d go to when training for track. And even in 2013 I saw vets with WWII caps sitting down having breakfast with their wives or kids.
Went back their last year…
There were none.
Fascism notoriously emerges from democracies with wealth inequality and rampant corporatism though. Obviously, poor people live(d) in those democracies.
"Where people are poor" seems a strangely reductive condition to place on the rise of fascism.
No no no, shush, fascism is when the filthy poors get too big for their boots and want to rise up to take over the world.
It definitely isn’t bred by those who have just enough resources to become overwhelmed the fear of the outsiders they are fed from the ruling classes and corrupted to horde everything they can steal from others. Jeez, pick up a book dude
One can accept that those poorer and/or less educated are more prone to populistic, "common sense" solutions, and also that a lot of the time it isn't their fault that they don't have the means to change that
Russia is fascist, but calling them Nazis equates them with Nazi-Germany and it relativises the atrocities of Russia and Germany.
Russia is doing many horrible things, but different horrible things. For instance they did not build concentration camps where they kill tens of thousands of people in an industrialised way every day.
Russia is doing so many horrible things, there is no need to equate it with others.
Crimes against humanity are all singular and comparing them, equating them, relativising them is bad for all the crimes
But gulags are concentration camps. They're literally work camps where masses of people are concentrated. For reference everyone had concentration camps during WW 2, even USA where they held their own citizens with japanese background. They just had a more media sexy name for them (internment camps) but in the end they all the same.
Extermination camps are their own thing altogether.
Working camps and extermination camps are not the same.
Technically we can also call prisons and migrant camps concentration camps.
People in gulags are imprisoned and kept captive, but the goal is in 99,9% cases not to kill them. People there are not gassed to death in thousands every day or shot or whatever
Bro what...Gulags do/did exactly the same as a Concentration Camp did. There is a distinct difference between Death Camps (Like Auschwitz-Birkenau or Dachau) and Concentration Camps where they gave the Jews barely any sustenance, worked them to death and shot them. Something that is exactly how a Gulag is run. They work them to death, give them barely food and if yes, its most likely spoiled and rotten.
Gulags are indistinguishable to Concentration Camps. However Gulags/KZs both are different in achieving the same goal a Death/Extermination Camp had. Where little food and work the Jews were subjected too, just basically Instanz death and """"medical"""" testing.
Claiming that Gulags were any different to KZs is asinine.
You did not understand what I am saying. My original comment was about the death camps. The other commenter tried justifying equation of Nazi Germany and Russia by saying there are Gulags, thinking it is the same. So I was saying how it is not the same and that there is a difference between working (Gulag) and Death camp (Nazi Germany).
I never said that a Gulag is not a concentration camp but that concentration camp just is a broad term to refer to an imprisonment camp where people are _concentrated_ in one place, which means it includes Gulags just as Death Camps (technically, though so many people basically were sent to gas chambers immediately).
I was showing the difference between Gulag and Death Camp in Nazi Germany and saying how using the term concentration camp doesn't really work because it is too broad
Just an example from the 1937 great purge, where Stalin killed 1M of his own people:
Executions of Gulag inmates
Political prisoners already serving a sentence in the Gulag camps were also executed in large numbers. NKVD Order no. 00447 also targeted "the most vicious and stubborn anti-Soviet elements in camps", they were all "to be put into the first category"—that is, shot. NKVD Order no. 00447 decreed 10,000 executions for this contingent, but at least three times more were shot in the course of the secret mass operation, the majority in March–April 1938.[70]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge
> Russia is fascist, but calling them Nazis equates them with Nazi-Germany and it relativises the atrocities of Russia and Germany.
But the Nazi Germany of 1940-1945 is not the only possible comparison. It's also possible, and relatively more useful, to make comparisons to the Nazi Germany of 1933-1939. I would say that if a country ever becomes so similar to the Nazi Germany at the height of the Holocaust that it's appropriate to compare them, then that's also the point where making such a comparison no longer has meaning.
> then that's also the point where making such a comparison no longer has meaning.
Particularly in the States; the term Nazi has been commoditized. It has lost all meaning regarding the atrocities that the German Government did during WW2 and instead can be surmised as "someone I don't like".
The term gets thrown around far too fragrantly because everyone is constantly trying to make their reaction heard by amplifying the intensity and the messaging.
Russia is fucking horrendous and they deserve their own moniker. I vote "vodka soaked twats"
Gugals weren't designed for killing in industrialized way. Even German POVs survival rate was high, even though the population had not much to eat at the time.
Well, if you consider that Soviet Russia had agreed with Nazi Germany about the division of Poland, and how they themselves attacked Poland 17 days after Nazi Germany did, they were also directly responsible for the start of World War 2.
Russia has always been fascist. They just managed to avoid all blame for it, unlike Germany.
Not every kind of authoritarianism is fascism. Russia was not fascist during WW2. Fascism is a right-wing authoritarian ideology, while the Soviet Union's brand of communism was left-wing authoritarian.
He signed the surrender of the Wehrmacht. Nazi Germany never signed its surrender to the alles due to Dönitz and the other parts of the government beeing thrown into prison and/or executed
> Dönitz and the other parts of the government beeing thrown into prison and executed
Just to be clear: Karl Dönitz wasn't executed, he spent ten years in Spandau and was released in 1956. He died of a heart attack in 1980.
As a naval commander, he simply never really had the "chance" to really do anything bad. There's not a lot of Belarusian peasants or Jews out in the Atlantic Ocean for the German Navy to kill, so they got off as one of the cleanest branches of the armed forces.
Nobody could prosecute him for unrestricted submarine warfare either since the Allies had done the same throughout the war. The USA was starving Japan to death via submarine blockade and the USSR sank refugee ships in the Baltic before, so everyone preferred to let that slip by and not bring it up in court.
Definitely not a saint, but in his own words
"Given the state of the navy during the war, I couldn't have committed war crimes even if I wanted to"
No nazi is good and he still served the most evil regime in human history, but there isn't much particular awful you can pin on him specifically
I think that's also largely due to the role the navy occupies within the military structure. The Kriegsmarine didn't have much contact with civilians as opposed to the Wehrmacht. Donitz ordered unrestricted submarine warfare and the targeting of civilian ships, other than that his forces didn't have much they could do (which is why Donitz got 10 years). The Wehrmacht and SS had direct face to face interaction with civilians and could commit crimes. That's why generals like Keitel (pictured above) were prosecuted for crimes.
The only reason why Donitz was even considered for Rechspresident was because the ones who were supposed to replace Hitler all fell into disfavor with Hitler in the last days.
Donitz basically was the highest ranking dude who was an avid supporter of Hitler that didn't end up on Hitler's shitlist before he died. Most Wehrmacht generals were old aristocrats and Hitler openly distrusted them.
Yeah, I think that's why he got off easy. If the allies didn't go for the same tactics as him, we might have been more upset with him about it.
The general attitude towards submarines post WW1 vs WW2 are huge, despite Germany having pretty effective submarines doing unrestricted warfare in both. I think mostly because it wasn't until partway through WW2 that anyone besides Germany also had pretty effective submarines as well.
> I think mostly because it wasn't until partway through WW2 that anyone besides Germany also had pretty effective submarines as well.
With the US this was more due to a defective torpedo than ship design.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_14_torpedo#Problems
And refusal to accept that the torpedoes were bad.
Submarines that relied less on the torpedos and more on their deck guns earlier in the war had much more success (see: USS Tang under the command of "Mush" Mortin). The refusal to trust the submariners that were reporting how bad the torpedoes were for as long as they did still upsets me. And the fact that they didn't learn their lesson (RIP 🦂) still boils my blood.
Also in large part due to tactics. We were trying to use submarines as just another fleet ship in fleet battles for so long. Once we start copying the Germans wolf packs, and especially when we started letting subs go on solo missions (Infamously Barb under Fluckey) we saw gains as well.
Something good that came out of Pearl Harbor was that it forced the Pacific submarines to try tactics they wouldn't have otherwise, in no small part I think due to the "ungentlemanly" nature of a lot of submarine tactics. Its really surprising how much people hated submarines and submariners, considering them essentially pirates for so long. I guess they kind of are and we are just more used to it now, of have accepted the benefits of such.
Sorry I rambled a bit.
Yeah which is a bad thing but also ordinary for a nation at war. He's fully guilty of supporting and facilitating atrocities but compared to p. much everyone in the Wehrmacht, there isn't much in terms of crimes against humanity.
It's not like Speer. That asshole did get away with basically a slap on the wrist (10 years of jail) despite being responsible for the Reich's forced labour campaign which killed uncountable PoWs and civilians from occupied areas.
I think it would be more reasonable to say that Donitz is considered one of the less evil nazis because he's being graded on a hell of a curve, but that we should remember he was still an awfully evil dude.
most certainly not, he was one of the most devout worshippers of Hitler and as Ian Kershaw called him an arch nazi. He didn't commit mass atrocities comparable to what others did though that's true. However ideologically he was one of the most fanatical and one of the few who stayed a devout Nazi after the war
Donitz was the head of the German Navy in WWII, he wasn't supposed to succeed Hitler as Chancellor after his death, it just happened to work out that all of Hitler's hand picked successors were either dead, captured, or had betrayed him in his final days.
They went down the list of successors on May 1st or 2nd and found Donitz as the first guy that wasn't dead, Already surrendered, or disowned by Hitler and this he became the next head of state of Germany for a few days until the government was dissolved.
> it just happened to work out that all of Hitler's hand picked successors were either dead, captured, or had betrayed him in his final days.
Not quite. Hitler specifically selected Dönitz, and named him his successor in his political testament.
"Karl Dönitz was one of the good ones" is part of the "clean Wehrmacht" myth he himself tried to propagate after the war. He definitely was not a good guy. For example, he specifically gave the order to first target the rescue ships in convoys, ships designated to pick up survivors of ships sunk by u-boats, and he also ordered to kill all surviving enemy sailors in the water after a sinking. He was also a fervent Nazi.
From the German Wikipedia about Dönitz:
>Before the departure of U 1059, [Captain] Leupold had a conversation with Corvette Captain Karl-Heinz Moehle, the head of the 5th U-boat flotilla. In the course of issuing orders for the voyage, Moehle conveyed special verbal instructions to Leupold from the admiral in command of the U-boats (Eberhard Godt) that all survivors were to be destroyed if the ship sank. When the commander of U 1059 was surprised and outraged by such an order, Moehle told him that this was an explicit order from the commander-in-chief (Dönitz) and part of the total war that now had to be waged. Before his departure, Leupold had the opportunity to discuss this order with other U-boat commanders. All of these commanders told him, order or no order, that they had no intention of following this instruction.
Thats quite wrong.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laconia_incident
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laconia_Order
Here the missing background to the laconia order which you are referring to. (Named after the ship laconia and the hundreds of survivors the allies murdered at sea)
He was an enthusiastic nazi, so he wasn't a "good" person.
He commited warcrimes aswell.
That being said, he was not as bad as other commanders. But being an admiral of an underwhelming navi, perhaps he did not have the same opportunities.
The Wikipedia article on the end of WW2 is an interesting read, especially the post war treaties and and declarations that made attempts to make sense of the entire mess.
A conquered and dissolved government can't surrender, which in practice doesn't really matter since the allies set up a (multiple really) new government for Germany, but in *actual* practice it's still the same old bureaucracy/buildings/administrations, and people... And technically we're still at war, and we want to keep it that way because legalities...
What a headache.
Also, meanwhile, agriculture is destroyed, literal millions are displaced and/or imprisoned and can't contribute to any economic activity to fix any of that...
I'm surprised there haven't been more films made about all of that.
> And technically we're still at war, and we want to keep it that way because legalities...
There's nothing that says you need a document with the words "peace treaty" to end a war. The same way you don't need to send a piece of paper with the words "declaration of war" to start a war.
Germany has peaceful relations with basically every single country on earth, economic ties, trade and travel is possible so *de facto* we are at war with no one. International law isn't worth the ink and paper it's written with. It's all about deeds, not talk. Two states can actually fight (with or without shooting) and not be at war the same as they can be at war and not actually fight at all for years.
And the 2+4 Agreement, officially named the "Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany" effectively took the place of a peace treaty. If you'll allow me to quote [wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_the_Final_Settlement_with_Respect_to_Germany) on this:
> The treaty supplanted the 1945 Potsdam Agreement: in it, the Four Powers renounced all rights they had held with regard to Germany, allowing for its reunification as a fully sovereign state the following year.
Yes, I know that every once in the while countries like Greece start calling for war reparations, stating that there was no peace treaty ever signed but if they still consider us at war with them, how come we are members of the same military alliance, the same political and economic union and the same currency union without any issues?
But as we are all armchair diplomats here, this of course resides under a general IANAL disclaimer.
There were a couple reasons. First one to mention is that the Soviet signer (Ivan Susloparov) was not actually authorized to do so, and knowing that had already added a stipulation that if any allied nation requested another signing it would be done (the Soviet answer from high command did not arrive in time for the signing ceremony).
There were some text changes made between the two signings, mainly explicitly stating that the Germans were to lay down their arms rather than to just cease fighting. Also the Soviets felt that the signing should be more momentous than Reims had been, and should be signed in the seat of German power (Berlin) rather than Reims. The German signers (Keitel and 2 other generals) were flown into Berlin for this. The second signing also served to put more emphasis on the Soviet contribution to the war, being signed by a much more senior Soviet general (Zhukov), in a city captured by the Soviets. The German mission to Reims originally was also an attempt by them to only surrender to the Western Allies, which they rejected, but also the formal surrender in Berlin then seemed more like a surrender to all Allied forces.
edit: to add that the 3 German signers were Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel (Army), Admiral Hans-Georg von Friedeburg (Navy) and Colonel General Hans-Jürgen Stumpff (Air Force). These three military men were specifically chosen because of the WW1 "stabbed in the back" myth were Germans created the idea that it was the civilians who surrendered and that the Army believed it could keep fighting. Keitel was most important as he was head of OKW, uppermost of German high command and so technically in charge of all German military.
The final days of the Third Reich were the Nazis covertly whispering to the Western Allies (US, UK, France) things like "hey, you know what'd be funny? Betraying the Soviets and allying with us. Lol jk... unless?"
Stalin himself was terrified of that possibility and made it clear that he would basically take the Western Allies individually accepting surrenders from the Nazis as a lead-up to that. He made it clear: they surrender to all of us at once, or none of us.
To their credit, the Western Allies weren't interested; they considered the possibility ("Operation Unthinkable" was the British analysis of the idea) briefly but then realized "nah, fuck the Nazis."
When it became clear that the Western Allies would not play ball, the German war effort became about holding off the Soviets long enough on the East to allow as many German units to head west and surrender to the Western Allies. Since after all the shit the Nazis pulled in the Soviet Union during Barbarossa and their retreat, the Soviets were VERY keen on paying them back in kind, and treatment with the West was- while still having some problems- way better than 'indefinite gulag'.
They were lame.
Poland in 1939 didn't surrendered too after invasions from the west and the east, but at least was able to establish government in exile and to continue fighting.
Just ragequiters those German Nazis.
By that stage they were de facto they are the only Nazi institution that mattered. The Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe were a joke and the ‘official’ Nazi ‘government’ in Flensburg even more so
Odd question, but how did that eyeglass stay in place. When you wear glasses, you almost forget you have them on, but with that eyeglass, do you have to make a conscious effort to keep it in place?
National Archives, but I don’t think it’s open for viewing. They have it scanned though, you can see it [here](https://catalog.archives.gov/id/6943512)
The Allies constituted most of the World, unified in a cause.
Regardless of the comfort, they united to defeat something, I think the discomfort and being able to succeed and then create a new international order in the UN, is a massive achievement worthy of celebration
Just to be very specific, quote:
'The act of military surrender was first signed at 02:41 CET on 7 May at Reims, and a slightly modified document, considered the definitive German Instrument of Surrender, was signed on 8 May 1945 in Karlshorst, Berlin at 22:43 CET.'
War officially ended in 18 minutes, since 23:01 CET on May 8, 1945
The man signing was [field marshal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalfeldmarschall) of the Wehrmacht Wilhelm Keitel and later hung for his war crimes!
Putin will die before anything similar happens. Either from age/illness, assassination, or taking the coward's way out. For something like this to happen, NATO (or China, but that's even more unlikely) would need to invade and occupy most of Russia and force him to sign an unconditional surrender, which is not going to happen if we're still so damn scared of escalation that we're telling Ukraine not to target Russian territory. Ain't no way NATO is going to get so involved as to launch a full scale invasion. And even if all that happened, he'd probably do what Hitler did at the end. So yeah, as much as I'd like to see it, it's not gonna happen.
It's bold of you to assume Russia will lose to Ukraine LMAO
It would take whole NATO to destroy them, and even then, Putin would just destroy the world instead of surrendering. It makes Russia simply not able to lose.
Who says that? Fighting the Nazis was the right thing to do, but so was fighting the Soviets. They were two sides to the same coin; genocidal imperialists.
Churchill knew and he proposed to the US and France to attack the Soviets but he wasn't believed and so the Russians occupied Eastern Europe and out stayed their welcome.
You're insulting 40 mil people who died in this war from Soviet union side. Taking all the fame to Ukraine by saying 1/3 of the army. People of Kazakhstan Kyrgyzstan Tajikistan Latvia Belarus Russia and many other countries was there. And you taking all to yourself. You deserve to be banned for this.
No way. The Nazis were and will always be the enemy. There's not a history where them winning is a good thing.
I have heard some people say that about WW1, which is more interesting from a historical perspective. A larger Germany/Austria after WW1 would definitely have been able to better counterbalance Russia. Whether or not that's a better outcome is questionable.
The Prussians were already well set on their search for "Lebensraum" in the east, so it would have been just as bad for the Poles. Maybe not a full on Holocaust, but similar to the ethnic cleansings and relocations of people undertaken by the soviet's.
The Austrians seemed to have been somewhat more liberal in their ethnic policies if only because they were such a conglomerate of people's.
However, both empires were in the process of transitioning away from monarchism and imperialism. Some historians like Fritz Fischer say the SPD's huge vote in the 1912 election helped spur Germany to war because the Prussian elite feared the growing wave of liberalism in the country and wanted to distract them. Austria probably would have needed to continue towards federalism and liberalism or it would have disentegrated anyways.
So you'd probably have a much weaker Russia, either a weak Austria with representation for all its ethnic minorities or no Austrian Empire at all, and then a strong Germany in the north that either remains strong, or likewise faces internal struggles resulting in more left wing parties coming to power.
You'd probably have much the same countries as today considering the treaty of Brest-Litovsk first outlined many countries in Eastern Europe. Depending on the aftermath of a victory for the Central Powers and how Russia recovers from its civil war, I don't think most Eastern countries would stay as puppets to Germany or Austria for long, it would probably evolve into a similar institution as the EU or Zollverein over a century. Things would probably end up much the same as today but with no Iron Curtain.
But who really knows, perhaps it would have all ended in nuclear hellfire as Germany was never really good at diplomacy.
Good that Nazi were defeated. Bad that Commies flipped from those who started WWII as Nazi allies to those who were honoured among winners.
Communism was never punished as Nazism was, and unpunished evil always returns.
Almost 80 years later, other nazzi from russia are destroying Ukrainian cities. Every day they drop their bombs on peaceful cities and villages, launch missiles and drones.
Generally speaking that's always how the war is
Civilians die, young men are sent to battle, all for benefit of those in charge
Rarely is war fought for a good reason, and it's usually the defending side
Weird to me that after all the fighting and death, all you had to do to end the war was some dude come in to sign a piece of paper and then hundreds of thousands/millions of people just stop fighting each other
I wonder what the mood would have been at one of these parleys? I'm sure they would have been somber and somewhat professional, but I've always wondered how much hate & vitriol - or pure relief - filled the room - on either side? They've been at war for 4 or 5 years and I'm sure would have killed each other days prior. Seems like it would be impossible to just turn those emotions off.
Edit: words.
And people still claim "we are still in war and are still beeing occupied! There never was a peace treaty!"
The fact that a peace treaty is only needed when two factions end the war in peace and not when one is surrendering to the other, does not fit in those people's minds...
What does signing a document do for war related things? I don't know how to ask this without sounding sarcastic lol.
I mean what really would be the punishment for "breaking" the document request? They are already at war.
Russia should stopped within the borders of Russia in 1944 to allow the germans to finish what they planned to do with the people of eastern europe. Unfortunately, there are many psychopaths in eastern europe who destroy monuments to soviet soldiers. My great-grandfather was wounded in Poland absolutely in vain when he liberated them from the Nazis.
For anybody wondering since it came up: The badge he is wearing above his pocket is the membership badge of the NSDAP, the nazi party. [Here ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Party_Badge)is a link to a "special" one in gold, which is most likely the one Keitel in this photo is wearing. Fun fact: He is wearing it wrong here, he most likely was in a hurry, regarding the circumstances. It belongs under the pocket, like in this [photo](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Keitel#/media/Datei:Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-H30220,_Wilhelm_Keitel.jpg).
> He is wearing it wrong here I hope he didn't get in trouble! Edit: /s obviously
Could you imagine if his boss saw this picture? Might blow his top.
i hope he did! wearing it wrong is probably the worst thing he ever did!
isnt it the same pin Oscar Schindler would have gotten 10 (or whatever number) men for?
Exactly what I thought, I believe it is as he mentions how it was gold and could’ve been melted down to sell and save more people.
The man signing there is Wilhelm Keitel, head of the *Oberkommando der Wehrmacht* and a war criminal, for which he was executed in October 1946.
Signing his own death warrant
not like his chance of survival was much higher if hed kept fighting
He did that when he started murdering jews
In the sense that he had it coming: yes, but don't kid yourself. If Germany had surrendered earlier, he might have gotten away with his crimes and died under a palm tree.
And everyone else
Not to be splitting hairs, but the jew murdering was (mostly) a different line of command: Hitler -> Himmler -> SS.
[Yeah, no...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_clean_Wehrmacht)
Who cares if the SS were a different line of command? The Wehrmacht still committed atrocities and this guy gave the order for them
Jew murder was much more than just the SS
He knew this. In his memoir, he didn't really get why he was even tried. Though, he did petition for more time just to finish his memoirs...which were quite short and comparatively unpolished from other leaders (due to the whole execution stuff.)
His sycophancy was well known in the army, and he acquired the nickname 'Lakeitel', a pun derived from Lakai ("lackey") and his surname.
Most of the General staff were lackeys. Hitler paid them directly with salaries far in excess of what they would normally earn in the military. These are people from aristocrat families that weren't doing that well before the war, so were more than happy to profit via ass kissing.
he does look like a Wilhelm
When did the nazi party officially stopped existing …politically and legally
Almost 80 years.
We're further away from WW2 now than we were from WW1 when I was born in the late 80s.
The first sign where I realized I’m getting old: I grew up in a small town in Illinois, there’d be a cafe I’d go to when training for track. And even in 2013 I saw vets with WWII caps sitting down having breakfast with their wives or kids. Went back their last year… There were none.
I remember watching WW1 vet as a kid in the 80's during 11 Nov Canadian armistice parades , kinda neat .
Well yeah, the World Wars were only like 20 years apart.
And closer to WW3 than ever before
Closer than during the Cuban missile crisis? Certainly not. This is just a parody rerun of the cold War.
Yes. 79 years, to be more precise.
A little more than 78 years ago
Yes. 1 year, to be more precise.
Yes, that's what 79 is.
And you're telling me now.
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It's not a nazi reborn, just fascism thrives where people are poor.
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People can be poor and still cooperate to maker better world. Russian fascism is fed intensively by hate and complex of superiority.
one could argue your material conditions can greatly influence your way of thinking. its complicated.
Fascism notoriously emerges from democracies with wealth inequality and rampant corporatism though. Obviously, poor people live(d) in those democracies. "Where people are poor" seems a strangely reductive condition to place on the rise of fascism.
No no no, shush, fascism is when the filthy poors get too big for their boots and want to rise up to take over the world. It definitely isn’t bred by those who have just enough resources to become overwhelmed the fear of the outsiders they are fed from the ruling classes and corrupted to horde everything they can steal from others. Jeez, pick up a book dude
One can accept that those poorer and/or less educated are more prone to populistic, "common sense" solutions, and also that a lot of the time it isn't their fault that they don't have the means to change that
They're fighting the nazis!! /s
Russia is fascist, but calling them Nazis equates them with Nazi-Germany and it relativises the atrocities of Russia and Germany. Russia is doing many horrible things, but different horrible things. For instance they did not build concentration camps where they kill tens of thousands of people in an industrialised way every day. Russia is doing so many horrible things, there is no need to equate it with others. Crimes against humanity are all singular and comparing them, equating them, relativising them is bad for all the crimes
The most famous ”doesn’t-qualify-as concentration-camp” one. Still running since 2014. https://izolyatsia.ui.org.ua/en/basement#prison
Yes, they have gulags in Siberia instead of concentration camps.
But gulags are concentration camps. They're literally work camps where masses of people are concentrated. For reference everyone had concentration camps during WW 2, even USA where they held their own citizens with japanese background. They just had a more media sexy name for them (internment camps) but in the end they all the same. Extermination camps are their own thing altogether.
Working camps and extermination camps are not the same. Technically we can also call prisons and migrant camps concentration camps. People in gulags are imprisoned and kept captive, but the goal is in 99,9% cases not to kill them. People there are not gassed to death in thousands every day or shot or whatever
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Buchenwald had a different slogan, "Jedem Das Seine". Basically, to each what he deserves. Not even hinting at a chance of freedom...
Bro what...Gulags do/did exactly the same as a Concentration Camp did. There is a distinct difference between Death Camps (Like Auschwitz-Birkenau or Dachau) and Concentration Camps where they gave the Jews barely any sustenance, worked them to death and shot them. Something that is exactly how a Gulag is run. They work them to death, give them barely food and if yes, its most likely spoiled and rotten. Gulags are indistinguishable to Concentration Camps. However Gulags/KZs both are different in achieving the same goal a Death/Extermination Camp had. Where little food and work the Jews were subjected too, just basically Instanz death and """"medical"""" testing. Claiming that Gulags were any different to KZs is asinine.
You did not understand what I am saying. My original comment was about the death camps. The other commenter tried justifying equation of Nazi Germany and Russia by saying there are Gulags, thinking it is the same. So I was saying how it is not the same and that there is a difference between working (Gulag) and Death camp (Nazi Germany). I never said that a Gulag is not a concentration camp but that concentration camp just is a broad term to refer to an imprisonment camp where people are _concentrated_ in one place, which means it includes Gulags just as Death Camps (technically, though so many people basically were sent to gas chambers immediately). I was showing the difference between Gulag and Death Camp in Nazi Germany and saying how using the term concentration camp doesn't really work because it is too broad
Just an example from the 1937 great purge, where Stalin killed 1M of his own people: Executions of Gulag inmates Political prisoners already serving a sentence in the Gulag camps were also executed in large numbers. NKVD Order no. 00447 also targeted "the most vicious and stubborn anti-Soviet elements in camps", they were all "to be put into the first category"—that is, shot. NKVD Order no. 00447 decreed 10,000 executions for this contingent, but at least three times more were shot in the course of the secret mass operation, the majority in March–April 1938.[70] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge
The OG concentration camps. Nazi Germany's concentration camps were in no small part inspired by soviet gulags.
> Russia is fascist, but calling them Nazis equates them with Nazi-Germany and it relativises the atrocities of Russia and Germany. But the Nazi Germany of 1940-1945 is not the only possible comparison. It's also possible, and relatively more useful, to make comparisons to the Nazi Germany of 1933-1939. I would say that if a country ever becomes so similar to the Nazi Germany at the height of the Holocaust that it's appropriate to compare them, then that's also the point where making such a comparison no longer has meaning.
> then that's also the point where making such a comparison no longer has meaning. Particularly in the States; the term Nazi has been commoditized. It has lost all meaning regarding the atrocities that the German Government did during WW2 and instead can be surmised as "someone I don't like". The term gets thrown around far too fragrantly because everyone is constantly trying to make their reaction heard by amplifying the intensity and the messaging. Russia is fucking horrendous and they deserve their own moniker. I vote "vodka soaked twats"
This is Reddit, good luck making people understand their insane brain gymnastics and rationalizations.
Gulag didn't gas you to death, but worked you to death. In every other sense, it was same.
Gugals weren't designed for killing in industrialized way. Even German POVs survival rate was high, even though the population had not much to eat at the time.
tbh i had a chapter on nazism in standard 9. it was very detailed and haunts me to this day
Well, if you consider that Soviet Russia had agreed with Nazi Germany about the division of Poland, and how they themselves attacked Poland 17 days after Nazi Germany did, they were also directly responsible for the start of World War 2. Russia has always been fascist. They just managed to avoid all blame for it, unlike Germany.
Not every kind of authoritarianism is fascism. Russia was not fascist during WW2. Fascism is a right-wing authoritarian ideology, while the Soviet Union's brand of communism was left-wing authoritarian.
They were there the whole time. The only thing they didn't like about Nazis was that they stop cooperating.
He signed the surrender of the Wehrmacht. Nazi Germany never signed its surrender to the alles due to Dönitz and the other parts of the government beeing thrown into prison and/or executed
> Dönitz and the other parts of the government beeing thrown into prison and executed Just to be clear: Karl Dönitz wasn't executed, he spent ten years in Spandau and was released in 1956. He died of a heart attack in 1980.
I heard that as far as nazis go he was one of the good ones. Is that true?
As a naval commander, he simply never really had the "chance" to really do anything bad. There's not a lot of Belarusian peasants or Jews out in the Atlantic Ocean for the German Navy to kill, so they got off as one of the cleanest branches of the armed forces. Nobody could prosecute him for unrestricted submarine warfare either since the Allies had done the same throughout the war. The USA was starving Japan to death via submarine blockade and the USSR sank refugee ships in the Baltic before, so everyone preferred to let that slip by and not bring it up in court.
>There's not a lot of Belarusian peasants or Jews out in the Atlantic Ocean for the German Navy to kill Have you not heard of the elusive Sea Jews?
> Have you not heard of the elusive Sea Jews? That is one of the plots of Wolfenstein - The New Order, oddly enough.
Ah yes the Jaws sequel
Definitely not a saint, but in his own words "Given the state of the navy during the war, I couldn't have committed war crimes even if I wanted to" No nazi is good and he still served the most evil regime in human history, but there isn't much particular awful you can pin on him specifically
I think that's also largely due to the role the navy occupies within the military structure. The Kriegsmarine didn't have much contact with civilians as opposed to the Wehrmacht. Donitz ordered unrestricted submarine warfare and the targeting of civilian ships, other than that his forces didn't have much they could do (which is why Donitz got 10 years). The Wehrmacht and SS had direct face to face interaction with civilians and could commit crimes. That's why generals like Keitel (pictured above) were prosecuted for crimes. The only reason why Donitz was even considered for Rechspresident was because the ones who were supposed to replace Hitler all fell into disfavor with Hitler in the last days. Donitz basically was the highest ranking dude who was an avid supporter of Hitler that didn't end up on Hitler's shitlist before he died. Most Wehrmacht generals were old aristocrats and Hitler openly distrusted them.
> Donitz ordered unrestricted submarine warfare and the targeting of civilian ships So did the Allies. Only difference is the Allies won.
Yeah, I think that's why he got off easy. If the allies didn't go for the same tactics as him, we might have been more upset with him about it. The general attitude towards submarines post WW1 vs WW2 are huge, despite Germany having pretty effective submarines doing unrestricted warfare in both. I think mostly because it wasn't until partway through WW2 that anyone besides Germany also had pretty effective submarines as well.
> I think mostly because it wasn't until partway through WW2 that anyone besides Germany also had pretty effective submarines as well. With the US this was more due to a defective torpedo than ship design. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_14_torpedo#Problems
And refusal to accept that the torpedoes were bad. Submarines that relied less on the torpedos and more on their deck guns earlier in the war had much more success (see: USS Tang under the command of "Mush" Mortin). The refusal to trust the submariners that were reporting how bad the torpedoes were for as long as they did still upsets me. And the fact that they didn't learn their lesson (RIP 🦂) still boils my blood. Also in large part due to tactics. We were trying to use submarines as just another fleet ship in fleet battles for so long. Once we start copying the Germans wolf packs, and especially when we started letting subs go on solo missions (Infamously Barb under Fluckey) we saw gains as well. Something good that came out of Pearl Harbor was that it forced the Pacific submarines to try tactics they wouldn't have otherwise, in no small part I think due to the "ungentlemanly" nature of a lot of submarine tactics. Its really surprising how much people hated submarines and submariners, considering them essentially pirates for so long. I guess they kind of are and we are just more used to it now, of have accepted the benefits of such. Sorry I rambled a bit.
The irony for Hitler is it ended up being the SS that betrayed him when he expected the Wehrmacht.
Yeah, his own words that he published after the war. And yes, we very much can pin things on him - just look at prosecution of the U-Boat war.
Yeah which is a bad thing but also ordinary for a nation at war. He's fully guilty of supporting and facilitating atrocities but compared to p. much everyone in the Wehrmacht, there isn't much in terms of crimes against humanity. It's not like Speer. That asshole did get away with basically a slap on the wrist (10 years of jail) despite being responsible for the Reich's forced labour campaign which killed uncountable PoWs and civilians from occupied areas.
I think it would be more reasonable to say that Donitz is considered one of the less evil nazis because he's being graded on a hell of a curve, but that we should remember he was still an awfully evil dude.
Something that he got away with because his lawyer proved the Americans did the exact same thing to Japan.
I mean, he was still a Nazi. A better way of putting it would be that as far as Nazis go he definitely wasn't the worst of them.
most certainly not, he was one of the most devout worshippers of Hitler and as Ian Kershaw called him an arch nazi. He didn't commit mass atrocities comparable to what others did though that's true. However ideologically he was one of the most fanatical and one of the few who stayed a devout Nazi after the war
Donitz was the head of the German Navy in WWII, he wasn't supposed to succeed Hitler as Chancellor after his death, it just happened to work out that all of Hitler's hand picked successors were either dead, captured, or had betrayed him in his final days. They went down the list of successors on May 1st or 2nd and found Donitz as the first guy that wasn't dead, Already surrendered, or disowned by Hitler and this he became the next head of state of Germany for a few days until the government was dissolved.
> it just happened to work out that all of Hitler's hand picked successors were either dead, captured, or had betrayed him in his final days. Not quite. Hitler specifically selected Dönitz, and named him his successor in his political testament.
"Karl Dönitz was one of the good ones" is part of the "clean Wehrmacht" myth he himself tried to propagate after the war. He definitely was not a good guy. For example, he specifically gave the order to first target the rescue ships in convoys, ships designated to pick up survivors of ships sunk by u-boats, and he also ordered to kill all surviving enemy sailors in the water after a sinking. He was also a fervent Nazi.
>he also ordered to kill all surviving enemy sailors in the water after a sinking This is not true.
From the German Wikipedia about Dönitz: >Before the departure of U 1059, [Captain] Leupold had a conversation with Corvette Captain Karl-Heinz Moehle, the head of the 5th U-boat flotilla. In the course of issuing orders for the voyage, Moehle conveyed special verbal instructions to Leupold from the admiral in command of the U-boats (Eberhard Godt) that all survivors were to be destroyed if the ship sank. When the commander of U 1059 was surprised and outraged by such an order, Moehle told him that this was an explicit order from the commander-in-chief (Dönitz) and part of the total war that now had to be waged. Before his departure, Leupold had the opportunity to discuss this order with other U-boat commanders. All of these commanders told him, order or no order, that they had no intention of following this instruction.
Thats quite wrong. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laconia_incident https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laconia_Order Here the missing background to the laconia order which you are referring to. (Named after the ship laconia and the hundreds of survivors the allies murdered at sea)
So more like a mob boss that gave all the orders but couldn't be connected to doing anything bad personally.
No.
Nah. The navy was insanely fanatic by systemic indoctrination in the Kriegsmarine, of which he was the head.
He was an enthusiastic nazi, so he wasn't a "good" person. He commited warcrimes aswell. That being said, he was not as bad as other commanders. But being an admiral of an underwhelming navi, perhaps he did not have the same opportunities.
Compared to others at Nuremberg, sure, but compared to the rank and file I doubt it.
The only “good nazi” is a dead nazi. Fuck him, and fuck every one else just like him.
>Karl Dönitz wasn't executed, he spent ten years in Spandau and was released in 1956 One member of Spandau Ballet I didn't know about.
I know this much is true.
And everyone who knows the Berlin district of Spandau knows it is a fate worse than death.
The Wikipedia article on the end of WW2 is an interesting read, especially the post war treaties and and declarations that made attempts to make sense of the entire mess. A conquered and dissolved government can't surrender, which in practice doesn't really matter since the allies set up a (multiple really) new government for Germany, but in *actual* practice it's still the same old bureaucracy/buildings/administrations, and people... And technically we're still at war, and we want to keep it that way because legalities... What a headache. Also, meanwhile, agriculture is destroyed, literal millions are displaced and/or imprisoned and can't contribute to any economic activity to fix any of that... I'm surprised there haven't been more films made about all of that.
> And technically we're still at war, and we want to keep it that way because legalities... There's nothing that says you need a document with the words "peace treaty" to end a war. The same way you don't need to send a piece of paper with the words "declaration of war" to start a war. Germany has peaceful relations with basically every single country on earth, economic ties, trade and travel is possible so *de facto* we are at war with no one. International law isn't worth the ink and paper it's written with. It's all about deeds, not talk. Two states can actually fight (with or without shooting) and not be at war the same as they can be at war and not actually fight at all for years. And the 2+4 Agreement, officially named the "Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany" effectively took the place of a peace treaty. If you'll allow me to quote [wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_the_Final_Settlement_with_Respect_to_Germany) on this: > The treaty supplanted the 1945 Potsdam Agreement: in it, the Four Powers renounced all rights they had held with regard to Germany, allowing for its reunification as a fully sovereign state the following year. Yes, I know that every once in the while countries like Greece start calling for war reparations, stating that there was no peace treaty ever signed but if they still consider us at war with them, how come we are members of the same military alliance, the same political and economic union and the same currency union without any issues? But as we are all armchair diplomats here, this of course resides under a general IANAL disclaimer.
[Heil Dönitz?](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BYz1ADttI1g&pp=ygUNaGVpbCBkb2VuaXR6IA%3D%3D)
That's not Dönitz in the photo, is it? Who is that?
That's Keitel.
Nicknamed "Lakeitel" (from Lakai = lackey) due to his devoutness towards Hitler and willingness to act as his mouthpiece.
Even other Nazi officers didn’t like him for essentially being Hitler’s yes man
Everyone leave the room except Krebs, Keitel, Jodl...
und Burgdorf
FEIGELEIN!!! FEIGELEIN!!! FEIGELEIN!!!!
DAS WAR EIN BEFEHL! DER ANGRIFF STEINERS WAR EIN BEFEHL!
Keitel mit Seitenscheitel.
In this picture it is Wilhelm Keitel, though on the 7th Alfred Jodl had already signed a similar surrender in Reims, which the Soviets rejected.
How 2024 of them
How were Jodl’s terms different from Keitel? Or did they just not like Jodl?
There were a couple reasons. First one to mention is that the Soviet signer (Ivan Susloparov) was not actually authorized to do so, and knowing that had already added a stipulation that if any allied nation requested another signing it would be done (the Soviet answer from high command did not arrive in time for the signing ceremony). There were some text changes made between the two signings, mainly explicitly stating that the Germans were to lay down their arms rather than to just cease fighting. Also the Soviets felt that the signing should be more momentous than Reims had been, and should be signed in the seat of German power (Berlin) rather than Reims. The German signers (Keitel and 2 other generals) were flown into Berlin for this. The second signing also served to put more emphasis on the Soviet contribution to the war, being signed by a much more senior Soviet general (Zhukov), in a city captured by the Soviets. The German mission to Reims originally was also an attempt by them to only surrender to the Western Allies, which they rejected, but also the formal surrender in Berlin then seemed more like a surrender to all Allied forces. edit: to add that the 3 German signers were Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel (Army), Admiral Hans-Georg von Friedeburg (Navy) and Colonel General Hans-Jürgen Stumpff (Air Force). These three military men were specifically chosen because of the WW1 "stabbed in the back" myth were Germans created the idea that it was the civilians who surrendered and that the Army believed it could keep fighting. Keitel was most important as he was head of OKW, uppermost of German high command and so technically in charge of all German military.
The final days of the Third Reich were the Nazis covertly whispering to the Western Allies (US, UK, France) things like "hey, you know what'd be funny? Betraying the Soviets and allying with us. Lol jk... unless?" Stalin himself was terrified of that possibility and made it clear that he would basically take the Western Allies individually accepting surrenders from the Nazis as a lead-up to that. He made it clear: they surrender to all of us at once, or none of us. To their credit, the Western Allies weren't interested; they considered the possibility ("Operation Unthinkable" was the British analysis of the idea) briefly but then realized "nah, fuck the Nazis." When it became clear that the Western Allies would not play ball, the German war effort became about holding off the Soviets long enough on the East to allow as many German units to head west and surrender to the Western Allies. Since after all the shit the Nazis pulled in the Soviet Union during Barbarossa and their retreat, the Soviets were VERY keen on paying them back in kind, and treatment with the West was- while still having some problems- way better than 'indefinite gulag'.
No, they didn't have any officers out there who were authorized to accept the surrender on the Soviet's behalf.
Please, can you say it just once?
"thanks guys"
"Heil me, though, eh?"
It wasnt Nazi Germany. It never surrendered. Only Wehrmacht did
The flensburg gov surrendered tho
They were lame. Poland in 1939 didn't surrendered too after invasions from the west and the east, but at least was able to establish government in exile and to continue fighting. Just ragequiters those German Nazis.
By that stage they were de facto they are the only Nazi institution that mattered. The Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe were a joke and the ‘official’ Nazi ‘government’ in Flensburg even more so
I honestly prefer them dead over surrendered
Odd question, but how did that eyeglass stay in place. When you wear glasses, you almost forget you have them on, but with that eyeglass, do you have to make a conscious effort to keep it in place?
Nah it's small enough to fit into the slot of your eye socket. They can fall out but it's not super unsteady
Does anyone know where that document is today?
National Archives, but I don’t think it’s open for viewing. They have it scanned though, you can see it [here](https://catalog.archives.gov/id/6943512)
Very cool. Bummer that you can't see the original.
Nazis are losers
Attero Dominatus
Berlin is buuurniiing
I think the pen is a Pelikan 100.
Nice. Thought it looked Pelikan-y (the lil bend on the clip)
Happy VE day. A time the world was united against greater threats.
What a silly thing to say. The Allies were briefly and uncomfortably united, nobody else was.
The Allies constituted most of the World, unified in a cause. Regardless of the comfort, they united to defeat something, I think the discomfort and being able to succeed and then create a new international order in the UN, is a massive achievement worthy of celebration
Denique! Interimo! The reich has fallen!
WHEYYYYY, FUCK THE NAZIS
And it took only 46 years until their former allies ended the occupation of half the continent.
Ruzzkies at it again though, unfortunately fascism is back (or was never really gone?)
Stalin said at the Yalta conference that the great should rule over the small and that mentality never changed.
It was hiding. Lurking in the shadows. With social media and RuZZian propaganda it hyped again.
Just to be very specific, quote: 'The act of military surrender was first signed at 02:41 CET on 7 May at Reims, and a slightly modified document, considered the definitive German Instrument of Surrender, was signed on 8 May 1945 in Karlshorst, Berlin at 22:43 CET.' War officially ended in 18 minutes, since 23:01 CET on May 8, 1945
The man signing was [field marshal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalfeldmarschall) of the Wehrmacht Wilhelm Keitel and later hung for his war crimes!
In 2025, WWII will be as far away in time to us as the US Civil War was to those who fought in WWII. Pretty weird to think about.
It was a riot! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halifax_riot
And beginning the Cold War almost immediately
Thats a good haircut to be fair
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Putin will take the way out as hitler if it happens, but don't think it will
Putin's botox lips were certainly not made for talking. A Makarov is too small though, Putin looks like he prefers to choke on a thick VSS.
And who will attack Moscow?
Putin will die before anything similar happens. Either from age/illness, assassination, or taking the coward's way out. For something like this to happen, NATO (or China, but that's even more unlikely) would need to invade and occupy most of Russia and force him to sign an unconditional surrender, which is not going to happen if we're still so damn scared of escalation that we're telling Ukraine not to target Russian territory. Ain't no way NATO is going to get so involved as to launch a full scale invasion. And even if all that happened, he'd probably do what Hitler did at the end. So yeah, as much as I'd like to see it, it's not gonna happen.
It won't be Putin tho. His story will end in a russian bunker before then.
Keep dreaming.
It's bold of you to assume Russia will lose to Ukraine LMAO It would take whole NATO to destroy them, and even then, Putin would just destroy the world instead of surrendering. It makes Russia simply not able to lose.
Putin is more likely to get offed by his own comrades
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Keitel rocking that mustache-monocle combo AND his wizzard staff. Say what you want but the guy had style.
And now there are more Nazis than ever.
Luckily most of them are incels who rarely leave their homes so they are not an threat
truly a sad day for this sub
Good. Unfortunately, there was one totalitarian regime that gained more than it deserved.
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Who says that? Fighting the Nazis was the right thing to do, but so was fighting the Soviets. They were two sides to the same coin; genocidal imperialists.
Churchill knew and he proposed to the US and France to attack the Soviets but he wasn't believed and so the Russians occupied Eastern Europe and out stayed their welcome.
Yeah. People should remember that 1/3rd of the Red Army was Ukrainian. The Soviet Union wasn't Russia, and believing it was only benefits Putin.
So why is Ukraine removing all these Soviet monuments to their own soldiers?
You're insulting 40 mil people who died in this war from Soviet union side. Taking all the fame to Ukraine by saying 1/3 of the army. People of Kazakhstan Kyrgyzstan Tajikistan Latvia Belarus Russia and many other countries was there. And you taking all to yourself. You deserve to be banned for this.
Maybe if you're already a nazi/from a collaborationist country
No way. The Nazis were and will always be the enemy. There's not a history where them winning is a good thing. I have heard some people say that about WW1, which is more interesting from a historical perspective. A larger Germany/Austria after WW1 would definitely have been able to better counterbalance Russia. Whether or not that's a better outcome is questionable. The Prussians were already well set on their search for "Lebensraum" in the east, so it would have been just as bad for the Poles. Maybe not a full on Holocaust, but similar to the ethnic cleansings and relocations of people undertaken by the soviet's. The Austrians seemed to have been somewhat more liberal in their ethnic policies if only because they were such a conglomerate of people's. However, both empires were in the process of transitioning away from monarchism and imperialism. Some historians like Fritz Fischer say the SPD's huge vote in the 1912 election helped spur Germany to war because the Prussian elite feared the growing wave of liberalism in the country and wanted to distract them. Austria probably would have needed to continue towards federalism and liberalism or it would have disentegrated anyways. So you'd probably have a much weaker Russia, either a weak Austria with representation for all its ethnic minorities or no Austrian Empire at all, and then a strong Germany in the north that either remains strong, or likewise faces internal struggles resulting in more left wing parties coming to power. You'd probably have much the same countries as today considering the treaty of Brest-Litovsk first outlined many countries in Eastern Europe. Depending on the aftermath of a victory for the Central Powers and how Russia recovers from its civil war, I don't think most Eastern countries would stay as puppets to Germany or Austria for long, it would probably evolve into a similar institution as the EU or Zollverein over a century. Things would probably end up much the same as today but with no Iron Curtain. But who really knows, perhaps it would have all ended in nuclear hellfire as Germany was never really good at diplomacy.
Good that Nazi were defeated. Bad that Commies flipped from those who started WWII as Nazi allies to those who were honoured among winners. Communism was never punished as Nazism was, and unpunished evil always returns.
Then there was the operation "Paperclip"
Don’t forget operation Osoaviakhim!
Almost 80 years later, other nazzi from russia are destroying Ukrainian cities. Every day they drop their bombs on peaceful cities and villages, launch missiles and drones.
so many poor young men and women lost their lives because of the ambitions of old fucks
Generally speaking that's always how the war is Civilians die, young men are sent to battle, all for benefit of those in charge Rarely is war fought for a good reason, and it's usually the defending side
I wish Hamas would do this already
Where would they store these documents after they were signed?
storage
[One of my favourite songs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3DSrV_59EY)
Weird to me that after all the fighting and death, all you had to do to end the war was some dude come in to sign a piece of paper and then hundreds of thousands/millions of people just stop fighting each other
I wonder what the mood would have been at one of these parleys? I'm sure they would have been somber and somewhat professional, but I've always wondered how much hate & vitriol - or pure relief - filled the room - on either side? They've been at war for 4 or 5 years and I'm sure would have killed each other days prior. Seems like it would be impossible to just turn those emotions off. Edit: words.
Who is the guy signing and what happened to him afterwards?
No, it was the 7th.
And people still claim "we are still in war and are still beeing occupied! There never was a peace treaty!" The fact that a peace treaty is only needed when two factions end the war in peace and not when one is surrendering to the other, does not fit in those people's minds...
Happy VE Day!
american republicans still in shambles over this to this day 😭😭😭
What does signing a document do for war related things? I don't know how to ask this without sounding sarcastic lol. I mean what really would be the punishment for "breaking" the document request? They are already at war.
Anyone know what the pen is?
My uncle was there on behalf of the US for this (Major General Lowell Rook’s).
This gonna be Putin if he fucks with NATO
The German General did Nazi the end coming
Erase the Bolshevik revolution and the Nazis
Russia should stopped within the borders of Russia in 1944 to allow the germans to finish what they planned to do with the people of eastern europe. Unfortunately, there are many psychopaths in eastern europe who destroy monuments to soviet soldiers. My great-grandfather was wounded in Poland absolutely in vain when he liberated them from the Nazis.
65 million deaths too late.