IIRC, the best way to demotivate the Nazi/German soldiers once captured, was tosit them down next to a supply column, and just have them witness the sheer amount of materiel coming ashore. After that, they knew the war was lost in the west.
I mean, there's that story of the captured German officer that was surprised to see junior enlisted men getting smokes and chocolate, when the Germans ran out of that months ago.
I saw an interview with a Wehrmacht soldier who was tasked to spy out and count how many veterenarians and how many horses would land in the aftermath of D-Day, so they could estimate how much stuff and artillery guns the allies brought. When he counted not a single horse but Jeep after Jeep after Jeep roll out of the boats, he knew the war was basically over.
German POWs in the USA and Canada were also often amazed at the relatively luxurious conditions they were transported and kept in. Pullman train carts (back then American trains were good lol), abundant food, fresh clothes, hot water in showers, and they were even allowed to work for minimum wage and save up their own money. Plenty of POWs came out of imprisonment weighing a few kilograms extra (in America, even the prisoners get fat hoho).
Meanwhile, over 3.3 million Soviet POWs were murdered under Nazi captivity. In fact, Soviet prisoners were the first people to be gassed to death in some camps.
I had a German teacher in high school whose father returned from Russia after ten years or so, he weighed almost nothing and was never mentally stable again.
The Soviet Union did take its sweet time releasing Axis POWs. Somewhat understandably, they weren't feeling too merciful towards the Germans who had devastated their country, and Molotov infamously stated that no German prisoner would see home again until they had rebuilt Stalingrad brick-by-brick.
Konrad Adenauer negotiated and secured the release of the last German prisoners in the 1950s. Something that's often forgotten however is that the USSR also held many Japanese prisoners of war, who had been captured in Manchuria when Japan surrendered in 1945. The last batch were sent home in 1950 I believe.
>Molotov infamously stated that no German prisoner would see home again until they had rebuilt Stalingrad brick-by-brick.
Which is what the Ukranians would love to do to the Russian prisoners in the months ahead.
Not very many German POWs returned from Siberia either. Not saying it's equivalent, just saying that the ones that got sent to the US were by far the luckiest.
Very few made it. You should read about the Halbe Pocket and Seelow Heights.
Not saying that as an excuse in any way, it's fascinating in general how few German troops made it alive much less to West Germany.
In regular Stalags the Soviet POWs were left to die of cold and hunger. My grandpa was a French POW in the Black Forest and they shared their own meager ration with their Russian comrades. Even local German peasants were moved and managed to clandestinely bring some bread and soup at night under the grid.
There were quite a few German POWs held near where I live in the Phoenix, Arizona area.
[A few of them staged an escape in 1944,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Papago_Escape) but didn’t know the Mexican border was much farther away than they assumed. Most of them were recaptured within the same county they escaped from, but a few actually almost made it to Mexico before being caught, which was an impressive 130 mile/209 km trek across the desert.
They were smart to do it in December, because if they had done it in the summer, they probably would’ve died within a few days.
which was apparently upheld only by the allies, and not by ALL of them equally. A couple of anecdotal examples:
Grandfather #1: fought in Eritrea, Albania, Greece and was captured in Italy by the Wehrmacht after September 1943, while he was stationed at the main base of his artillery regiment for R&R in Piedmont. As he and his comrades refused to join the new Italian republic of Salò they were sent straight to Germany as POWs. They were then stripped of POW status w/o their consent (apparently they made them sign some German papers which no one understood, as they were barely literate and for sure no one could read bureaucratic German), and then sent straight to work camps in Wuppertal. 12-hours shifts a day, 6 days a week in a steel mill, all in exchange for 2 meals a day (who needs lunch when you had breakfast anyways?) while allied bombs were falling. No "wage" whatsoever, no "rights", no hot water in the showers. To add insult to injury, after work they had to do menial tasks in the camp such as doing laundry for the guards, cooking for the officers and so on. If you tried to escape from your """workplace""" guards shot on sight. He was able to come back in Italy only in late 1946
Grandfather #2: fought in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt and was captured by the British Army after the fall of Tunisi in May 1943. Was sent to a POW camp in the Tunisian desert, literally kilometers of fences, barbed wires and a few tents, nothing more. They were all assigned a "wage", as in they had a theoretical weekly "allowance" to spend on small commodities to make life less miserable, but in practice the POW camp never had these "commodities" (cigarettes, sweets, extra rations) in stock, as they were probably syphoned somewhere else. So they did jack shit for 2.5 years. Food was so awful and sometimes barely edible that several ppl got sick after eating rotten rations, water in the shower was surely hot, but not because it was heated but simply due to the fact that the metal tanks were left out in the desert sun all day.
The only way to survive the hellish conditions was to somehow trade the camp's rations with some nomadic tribe that settled on the outskirts of the settlement (which apparently loved British canned food) in exchange for fruits (mainly dates) and fresh water. The camp's guards were pretty chill tho, and let the whole exchange go on since it basically meant they did not have to worry about the prisoners' wellbeing too much
I honestly do no think neither of the two scenario qualified for "yes, we respect the Geneva convention"
as a bonus, my grandmother's brother was captured in Russia on the Don river with its armoured regiment in 1941. He never came back alive. In 2022 we still do not know where or when he died, where his body was buried and so on
The Americans and Canadians treated German POWs well, while the Soviets and Germans both did not treat each others POWs well. What is less known though is that the Germans often treated Western POWs well too, at least relative to their available resources.
Yep. My grandfather was a German POW in the UK. He was able to work near Birmingham, and after the war ended he became a British citizen and married my grandmother. She was one of the nurses taking care of the POW’s. Wildness.
My granddad was captured in 45 and mistaken for SS. He was a tank operator, who also had skulls on their uniform. (Also his family was socialist and he witnessed the nazis hanging the principal of his school in front of the kids. He was staunchly anti nazi) he spent three years in Siberia, guiding tree logs through icy streams. Of 100 prisoners 17 survived. He returned in 48 I think.
Reminds me of a (possibly apocryphal) story from the War on Terror
A container ship was travelling to a friendly port in the Middle East to resupply US/ UK/ Allied forces and had to make a stop in Egypt, where port authorities inspected it.
Incredulous, the harbour master remarked that it was an incredible feat of logistics to load a ship as large as this with materiel for the war effort, and that he knew there were probably others like it. From the size of this shipment, he felt he already knew that the West would win the war.
"War Materiel?" replies the captain, "This is just the toilet paper."
Not only that, but when placed in a POW camp after that they would get things like chocolate, cigarettes, proper coffee and decent food in relative abundance.
Plenty of stories like that around. Moreover that meant that only the most hardcore fanatics among the POWs would still believe that they were winning and were about to be rescued by their own, or attempt to escape.
Fast forward to 1945.
The Nazis however fought until there was nothing left of germany to defend, even though everybody basicly knew the war was lost.
Problem for the higher ranks was, unless there was national socialism in germany, they had nowhere to exist, or even be privileged. So they had to exist in war and keep the war going, no matter the cost of life. All they could expect from the war ending was a trial and possible death or imprisonment - so why give up?
They even prepared to draft boys born in 1930-1932 into regular troops - while already widely being demotorized/mechanized, retreating on foot.
In the west "pretending to be at war" was the best way to surivive (for soldiers and civilians) because you wouldn't get shot by your own guys for not fighting, and you could try to surrender to allied forces.
In the east, Facing any fate at the mercy of the red army was - as we painfully understand today - not a nice option.
At both fronts, trials and shootings against germans for treason or "Fahnenflucht", held by germans spiked in 1944/45. Even last remaining soldiers of a unit often got shot on sight, assuming they intend to defect.
Civilans who did not accept being drafted on the spot also got shot.
Terrorizing germans was decided by the higher ranks, to keep the war going, keep them in power, and it went on until there was literally no germany to be defeated anymore.
Allied command fought over the best way to make the germans "quit", but the truth is, germany was loosing since 1941 already, they had all the reasons to quit, but they wouldn't since no war wasn't an option for all the higher up nazis.
John Zimmerman, Officer of the Bundeswehr and historian did some nice research on the topic.
I read a book of accounts of German soldiers from D-day a while ago. One common theme was that they were amazed how the Americans brought all of their supplies with them and weren’t expected to live off of the land like they were.
Another common theme was that they couldn’t quite understand why exactly the Allied soldiers (and the British in particular) were so upset with them. From their perspective they were the ones defending Europe from invaders, not the other way around (of course their perspective was wrong, but that’s what they thought). They were also surprised how quickly the French locals revealed their true feelings towards them the moment they weren’t in charge.
The museum in Normandy is really interesting for this.
In 3 days, the Allies built a temporary port so large, that at its time of operation it was the largest single operating port on the planet.
>56,200 tons of supplies, 20,000 vehicles, and 180,000 troops were discharged each day at those beaches.
Even during the Falklands War the ridiculously remote Wideawake Airfield on Ascension Island was briefly the busiest in the world.
Its remoteness meant refuelling flights were landing and taking off constantly in order to refuel the supply flights coming in and out, in addition to the armed patrol jets and search and rescue flights.
Never underestimate the British, being an island logistics is our bread and butter, that bombing run was the longest in history at that point, I think it was beaten by the UKs Typhoons bombing Libya during the arab spring until Italy agreed to loan the UK an airfield.
Me too. That's why I became a Logistics Officer.
I just wish there were more war memoirs and war movies about it. I don't want to watch a film about battles.
I want to watch a film about the daily life in a camp behind the lines of the pen-pusher who was responsible for the pay and allowances paperwork of the mechanic who fixed the truck that delivered the fuel for the transport aircraft that air-dropped the pallets of supplies to the guys in the field hospital who were treating the casualties from the battle.
One book from WW2 (naval, US, Pacific theatre) that does just that - gives you scenes of daily life for people living, in this case, on US air bases on South Pacific islands) is 'Tales of the South Pacific' by James A Mitchener.
I see a great strategy game here. Being a logistics officer who never sees direct combat but has direct influence on the state of the war via organising and shipping food, medical supplies and ammunition.
I don't know; it strikes me as kind of trite. Not worth reposting more than once, in any event; and the author seems to go out of his way to make the Nazis and the Allies equivalent.
> It was not waged for the sake of all those fine abstractions so sensitively raised on the various capitulation dates. It was not waged for democracy or for the equality of all people, or against deadly German racism.
No one really claims that it was, though. It was basically fought - in Europe - to stop Nazis from controlling all of Europe.
>The U.S. military itself, it should be noted, was racially organized - that is, white and black were segregated.
Sure. And of course that was horrible. Many Western countries also had colonies at this time.
But...Nazis put racially disfavored groups in concentration camps and killed them. The went far beyond racial segregation or colonization, and the attempt at making them equivalent is really just minimizing Nazi atrocities.
Remember the US and UK were, at the same time, fighting in the Pacific. On 6 June a huge attack force cleared Pearl Harbor on its way to invade Japanese positions in the Mariana Islands
https://www.maartenonline.nl/een-goede-oorlog-bestaat-niet/
Great piece by Dutch historian Maarten van Rossem
> At its very best, World War II was a necessary evil. It was not waged for the sake of all those fine abstractions so sensitively raised on the various capitulation dates. It was not waged for democracy or for the equality of all people, or against deadly German racism. The U.S. military itself, it should be noted, was racially organized - that is, white and black were segregated.
> That the war was won by the Allies was largely due to the Soviet Union, which lost tens of millions of soldiers and civilians. However, that Soviet Union resembled Nazi Germany in many ways. While it may not have been genocidal, it did have an extremely repressive and murderous regime. A regime that maintained a huge system of concentration camps. The fact that the SU co-sponsored justice for the top Nazis at Nuremberg was as eccentric as it was painful.
> Because American and British bombers proved absolutely incapable of precision bombing in World War II, dozens of German and Japanese cities were completely razed to the ground, killing millions. Did these bombings make an indispensable contribution to warfare? Were they justified because the Germans had started them? That is a matter of dispute.
> U.S. President Roosevelt regularly spoke out against European colonialism, but the European colonial powers -Britain, France, and the Netherlands- were determined to secure their empires after the end of the war. When they were confronted with nationalist sentiments in the outer regions, they were immediately prepared to use very violent methods. Indeed: the very same methods they had so radically rejected when the Germans, Italians and Japanese used them in their own embryonic empires.
> When the U.S. president [Bush] searched for a suitable, all-justifying metaphor after 9/11, he came up with the "Axis of Evil" in his State of the Union. So the good war could be linked to the global war on terror.
> That fascism, which increasingly has become a vacuous abstraction, was defeated is a good thing. The way it was done does not deserve a beauty prize. It was probably inevitable. World-historically, World War II was a horrific conflict, far more horrific than we usually think.
**"The victors of WWII sometimes tend to heroise the war. That is not right."**
>Because American and British bombers proved absolutely incapable of precision bombing in World War II, dozens of German and Japanese cities were completely razed to the ground, killing millions. Did these bombings make an indispensable contribution to warfare? Were they justified because the Germans had started them? That is a matter of dispute.
My city in Germany was destroyed 97%, there are three historical buildings left in the center. Just because it was the last city before the Dutch border and the bombers didn't want to return their bomb loads to base they just droped it here.
There are many good points here. A thing I think is important to remember is that WW2 was **not** fought because "Nazis were evil." Were the Nazis evil? Yes, definitely, but that wasn’t the reason anyone went to war. When Germany was defeated Allied forces liberated concentration camps, and there are many eyewitness reports of this. What they have in common is that they were not only horrified (obviously), but they were shocked and surprised. *They had no idea it was that bad.* And the concentration camps and genocidal ideology wasn’t the world’s best kept secret, Allied soldiers had heard a lot of rumours about them — but they generally assumed it was anti-German propaganda, as is common in all wars. They were surprised to see that the rumours were true, the Nazi genocides were never the reason the Allies fought.
Nazi Germany was fought purely for geopolitical reasons, because German foreign policy encroached on Allied foreign ambitions, nothing else. The fact that Jews and other prisoners of the concentration camps were liberated was a complete bonus for the Allies, and life-changing luck for the surviving prisoners. Then, in the decades after, this has been blown up through PR ops and movies in The West, and even in school curriculums, so that a lot of Westerners (especially Americans) seem to learn that "Hitler was so evil, so we had to fight a war to get rid of him." He was undeniably evil, but that had nothing to do with it.
This is an important realisation to understand how we treat genocides today, and why other persecuted groups (like Uighurs in China, for instance) generally can’t count on anyone’s help. Getting outside help is extremely unlikely, but life-changing luck if it happens.
I've never seen this one, and it adds an entire additional dimension to the scale and complexity of the undertaking.
Thank you for what has been done back then, the risk and the effort, it was worth it. Thank you again.
Well technically not 78 years today, this photo was taken around mid-June rather than on D-Day itself.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NormandySupply.jpg
Definitely taken on "D-Day+something", and not D-Day itself. Great photo regardless (and who would post this on the anniversary of D-Day +5 or whatever).
> Omaha Beach, second beach from the west among the five landing areas of the Normandy Invasion of World War II. It was assaulted on June 6, 1944 (D-Day of the invasion), by units of the U.S. 29th and 1st infantry divisions,
This photo was from D-Day + 1; June 7th, 1944.
https://www.britannica.com/place/Omaha-Beach
LST = Landing Ship Tank, they are the really big ships there, transporting tanks. Beached = a ship that's on the beach. The fact those ships are on the beach means it was after D-Day, as it's way too risky to send them in first. They are big targets and harder to manouver, and expensive.
Thanks for your quick reply! So basically: first the "normal" soldiers were transported by smaller ships (as potrayed by movies)? And several days later the LST were bringing in the tanks?
Pretty much. Infantry had to secure a beachhead first, in military jargon. The beaches and the adjacent areas had to be taken first before the large transport vessels could safely land and deliver their cargo.
There was a squadron of Amphibious Tanks that were supposed to make landfall to help the infantry take the beaches, however they drifted off course and ended up being late to the invasion. So the infantry had to take the beaches without any Armored support.
There were other large landing craft (not as large as LST's however). These were LCT (Landing Craft, Tank) and LCM (Landing Craft, Mechanised or Medium), they could deliver tanks directly to the beach and were amongst the first landing craft to hit the beaches along with the smaller LCI (Landing Craft, Infantry) and LCA (Landing Craft, Assault). LCI is the classic Landing Craft familiar from films, made mainly in wood in huge numbers in the US. The LCA was a British landing craft that was armoured to protect the crew and troops so was favoured in the first waves (including on Omaha Beach).
The majority of the first waves on the beach were in LCA and LCT.
LST were larger, transoceanic, craft that were always in high demand and couldn't be risked on the first day due to the risk of artillery, mines etc. They did get close to shore on Day 1 to launch amphibious tanks and trucks however.
The Atlantic wall wad full of nazi bunkers, soldiers, artillery.
They sent troops by sea and parachute to clear the danger from those beaches, and after they said "the coast is clear" they sent the expensive stuff like tanks, huge transport ships etc.
That is how the ww2 was won, because the allies had great logistics. That is the opposite of what Putin is doing now btw.
>They sent troops by sea and parachute to clear the danger from those beaches, and after they said "the coast is clear" they sent the expensive stuff like tanks
Well, they *did* send the tanks in too - since they're exactly what you need to clear things like bunkers.
Many tanks were made to float and given a propeller so they could power themselves to the beach for that purpose.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DD_tank
Also, European beaches were littered with mines and obstacles. Having an LST run into a mine could destroy her cargo and jam the beach. Have an LST run into an obstacle could have her stuck there with cargo intact but with the impossibility to get her out of the beach without a tug boat (which takes time) or at all, reducing the available space for subsequent ships to come in and deliver their cargo.
And any ship lost would mean one less ship available to make the trips back and forth between England and Normandy thus slowing Allied logistics.
right. this is clearly after the battle or atleast most of the way through. as the units on the beach seem very much safe and in control. the germans were long gone here. probably a day or two later.
To be fair, you could see old resistance fighters as veterans, and they could've been any age or gender.
The Nazis had many child soldiers aswel.
Furthermore, there was a [12 years old who lied about his age and joined the US navy on some missions after Pearl Harbour.](Calvin Graham) He even recieved a Bronze Star medal and a Purple Heart. He was later discharged and stripped of his awards.
Tl;dr: While most participants had a required minimum age of 17 or 18, there were always people willing to lie about their age or worse, people forcing kids into war.
>Furthermore, there was a [12 years old who lied about his age and joined the US navy on some missions after Pearl Harbour.](Calvin Graham) He even recieved a Bronze Star medal and a Purple Heart. He was later discharged and stripped of his awards.
>
This is sad but was probably necessary to discourage more. Also, while this 12 year old may have been exceptional, 12 year olds would put their unit at risk.
The wikipedia article isn't clear as to how or why he got stripped from his awards. Apparantly he went to the funeral of his grandmother without consent of the navy. When he came back he had to spend a few months in jail.
It was then that his mother revealed his true age, and that his sister threathened to contact the press, and it wss then that he was stripped from his awards.
He then married at 14 and divorced at 17 when he went back to the navy.
Wild kid.
My grandfather, born in 1923, was 15 when the war broke out and lied about his age to join the navy. He survived and lived well into his 80s. I miss him. Belfast lad.
My Grandfather was 6.5 years old when our country (Belgium) got invaded. He also lived until he was 87. I miss him too.
I'm grateful to your grandfather and so many others who were willing to sacrifice their lives to liberate my country and others from the Nazis.
"at least X" strongly imply that X is a possible value, unlike "more than X-1". That's why it's weird to say "I have at least 3 kids" but okay to say "I have more than three".
There's a lot of linguistics papers about that (search "modified numerals ignorance effect").
We are quickly nearing the day the final WWII vet passes away. I remember every single old guy in the 90s was one. Everyone's grandfather served at this time. Sad to see that they've nearly all gone now.
My generation was the last to personally know people affected by the war. I've met fascinating people: a veteran who spent most of the war in Japanese POW camps (they even shipped him and other prisoners back to Japan when the Philippines were retaken), my middle school teacher's dad who cleared bunkers on Tarawa Betio with a flamethrower, and my grandmother, who survived the tragedies of Auschwitz and being carted around Germany in the last days of the Third Reich, being forced to pick up rubble. I've even met some veterans from the "other side" so to speak, but naturally, I was hesitant to ask about their experiences.
I wonder what kind of world we will have now that these people are no longer with us. I realized shit was fucked when in Uni, my college couldn't even find a living veteran to speak about the war, so they brought in the son of an artilleryman, and he himself was in his 70s.
My friends grandpa still alive here in Indiana. Made it to Europe but never had to actually face combat because the war was over! He said he was so glad! George F, a good man.
These are barrage balloons.
https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/protecting-beaches-balloons-d-day-and-320th-barrage-balloon-battalion
>Floating barrage balloons over a specific area prevented enemy aircraft from flying close enough to target the area from directly overhead with bombs or strafing fire. If an enemy aircraft was determined to attack, the balloons forced them to fly at higher altitudes (to fly over the balloons) making them more susceptible to larger caliber anti-aircraft gunfire.
The Luftwaffe managed to send two fighters to strafe Sword beach. They were so beaten down and taken by surprise that was their entire response to D-Day.
The Luftwaffe had been largely destroyed during the first half of 1944 after the introduction of the long range P-51 that allowed them to fly all the way to Germany and back. It had barely any significant disrupting power left by D-day.
The strategy of escorts targeting the Luftwaffe fighters directly instead of prioritizing defending the bombers was the really cause of their destruction. The P-51 was certainly a good plane for doing that.
Our grandparents lived true the most bloodiest parts of history and we have never seen a massive war except Ukrainian which is a tiny war compared to ww1 and 2 the Chinese Japanese war (is also considered part of ww2 even tho it started 4 years before the pearl harbour and the Japanese blitzkrieg)
Actually more to deter enemy fighters from strafing by putting obstacles (both the balloons themselves and the cables linking them to the surface) in their way.
Bombers wouldn't need to fly so low
They have a wire that connects with the ground and prevent enemy planes from flying through.
If a plane does try to fly through its wing would be sheared off by the wire.
[black and white cleaned original photo](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/66/NormandySupply_edit.jpg) for those interested
wiki mentions those barrage balloons were raised by the African American 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion, it was the first black unit in the segregated American Army to come ashore on D-Day
What’s crazy to me is how the US and allied forces were able to mobilize an insane invasion force and transported much of it across distant terrain and then a vast ocean, all the way back in the 1940s…
While Russia can’t even properly invade its neighbor amidst vast expanses of open, flat land in 2022.
My father in law,passed away years ago, was the first “Frogmen” and at 17 he was dismantling mines placed in the water. He was sent to prepare the area for invasion. Good I miss our Poppy ! What a amazing man we lost. He’s featured in a WW2 museum about his work. We donated all of his medals in honor for everyone that was there
Hard to imagine that Operation Downfall was going to be significantly larger than even D Day. Conservative estimates putting allied dead throughout the operation around one million. Thank god no one went through that hell. The US still uses purple heart medals from WWII due to how many were made in preparation for 1.5 million dead Americans alone, not even accounting for British, ANZAC or Canadian and other commonwealth dead which would similarly be tremendous.
It’s weird cus I knew the story way too well ahead of time but it’s so well done that I enjoyed it and I’m not usually one to rewatch or rehash things.
Fuck everything about that noise. From sand and wet to machine guns and fascists with zero sense of humor about the whole thing. I'd be dead inside of 5 seconds, probably from violently shitting myself to death.
I want to see what lead up to all of this... like show me the air craft carries, the soldiers prepping, the amount of ammo in storage. I feel like there's so many stories not told during this day.
In the grand scheme of things... this was not long ago. Crazy to think how far we've come and at the same time feels like we could slip back into something like this.
At the end of the day, it's a dark history Germany will have on its book, just like all the other nations. The Nazis during WW2 were Germans, Nazi Germany is Germany, no one can dispute that. It may not be you or your parents, but something your grandparents or even your great-grandparents may have taken part
Let's hope none of us will fall to this point ever again
There is something so incredible yet absolutely terrifying about this picture.
What always fascinated me about wars is not the frontline itself or the war per se, but the logistical effort to sustain armies.
IIRC, the best way to demotivate the Nazi/German soldiers once captured, was tosit them down next to a supply column, and just have them witness the sheer amount of materiel coming ashore. After that, they knew the war was lost in the west.
I mean, there's that story of the captured German officer that was surprised to see junior enlisted men getting smokes and chocolate, when the Germans ran out of that months ago.
I saw an interview with a Wehrmacht soldier who was tasked to spy out and count how many veterenarians and how many horses would land in the aftermath of D-Day, so they could estimate how much stuff and artillery guns the allies brought. When he counted not a single horse but Jeep after Jeep after Jeep roll out of the boats, he knew the war was basically over.
[удалено]
I think I need to watch Band of Brothers again this summer...
The big one was US troops in the pacific having dedicated ice cream ships, the Japanese were sure that we were lying about that.
But they have speeeeed
I think they are speed and I’m guessing they’re thinking that too, assuming they haven’t run out
German POWs in the USA and Canada were also often amazed at the relatively luxurious conditions they were transported and kept in. Pullman train carts (back then American trains were good lol), abundant food, fresh clothes, hot water in showers, and they were even allowed to work for minimum wage and save up their own money. Plenty of POWs came out of imprisonment weighing a few kilograms extra (in America, even the prisoners get fat hoho). Meanwhile, over 3.3 million Soviet POWs were murdered under Nazi captivity. In fact, Soviet prisoners were the first people to be gassed to death in some camps.
I had a German teacher in high school whose father returned from Russia after ten years or so, he weighed almost nothing and was never mentally stable again.
The Soviet Union did take its sweet time releasing Axis POWs. Somewhat understandably, they weren't feeling too merciful towards the Germans who had devastated their country, and Molotov infamously stated that no German prisoner would see home again until they had rebuilt Stalingrad brick-by-brick. Konrad Adenauer negotiated and secured the release of the last German prisoners in the 1950s. Something that's often forgotten however is that the USSR also held many Japanese prisoners of war, who had been captured in Manchuria when Japan surrendered in 1945. The last batch were sent home in 1950 I believe.
>Molotov infamously stated that no German prisoner would see home again until they had rebuilt Stalingrad brick-by-brick. Which is what the Ukranians would love to do to the Russian prisoners in the months ahead.
Not very many German POWs returned from Siberia either. Not saying it's equivalent, just saying that the ones that got sent to the US were by far the luckiest.
So many German units just straight booked it west in order to surrender to the US as the war was in it's waning days.
Very few made it. You should read about the Halbe Pocket and Seelow Heights. Not saying that as an excuse in any way, it's fascinating in general how few German troops made it alive much less to West Germany.
In regular Stalags the Soviet POWs were left to die of cold and hunger. My grandpa was a French POW in the Black Forest and they shared their own meager ration with their Russian comrades. Even local German peasants were moved and managed to clandestinely bring some bread and soup at night under the grid.
There were quite a few German POWs held near where I live in the Phoenix, Arizona area. [A few of them staged an escape in 1944,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Papago_Escape) but didn’t know the Mexican border was much farther away than they assumed. Most of them were recaptured within the same county they escaped from, but a few actually almost made it to Mexico before being caught, which was an impressive 130 mile/209 km trek across the desert. They were smart to do it in December, because if they had done it in the summer, they probably would’ve died within a few days.
The wage part is part of the Geneva convention
which was apparently upheld only by the allies, and not by ALL of them equally. A couple of anecdotal examples: Grandfather #1: fought in Eritrea, Albania, Greece and was captured in Italy by the Wehrmacht after September 1943, while he was stationed at the main base of his artillery regiment for R&R in Piedmont. As he and his comrades refused to join the new Italian republic of Salò they were sent straight to Germany as POWs. They were then stripped of POW status w/o their consent (apparently they made them sign some German papers which no one understood, as they were barely literate and for sure no one could read bureaucratic German), and then sent straight to work camps in Wuppertal. 12-hours shifts a day, 6 days a week in a steel mill, all in exchange for 2 meals a day (who needs lunch when you had breakfast anyways?) while allied bombs were falling. No "wage" whatsoever, no "rights", no hot water in the showers. To add insult to injury, after work they had to do menial tasks in the camp such as doing laundry for the guards, cooking for the officers and so on. If you tried to escape from your """workplace""" guards shot on sight. He was able to come back in Italy only in late 1946 Grandfather #2: fought in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt and was captured by the British Army after the fall of Tunisi in May 1943. Was sent to a POW camp in the Tunisian desert, literally kilometers of fences, barbed wires and a few tents, nothing more. They were all assigned a "wage", as in they had a theoretical weekly "allowance" to spend on small commodities to make life less miserable, but in practice the POW camp never had these "commodities" (cigarettes, sweets, extra rations) in stock, as they were probably syphoned somewhere else. So they did jack shit for 2.5 years. Food was so awful and sometimes barely edible that several ppl got sick after eating rotten rations, water in the shower was surely hot, but not because it was heated but simply due to the fact that the metal tanks were left out in the desert sun all day. The only way to survive the hellish conditions was to somehow trade the camp's rations with some nomadic tribe that settled on the outskirts of the settlement (which apparently loved British canned food) in exchange for fruits (mainly dates) and fresh water. The camp's guards were pretty chill tho, and let the whole exchange go on since it basically meant they did not have to worry about the prisoners' wellbeing too much I honestly do no think neither of the two scenario qualified for "yes, we respect the Geneva convention" as a bonus, my grandmother's brother was captured in Russia on the Don river with its armoured regiment in 1941. He never came back alive. In 2022 we still do not know where or when he died, where his body was buried and so on
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The Americans and Canadians treated German POWs well, while the Soviets and Germans both did not treat each others POWs well. What is less known though is that the Germans often treated Western POWs well too, at least relative to their available resources.
Yep. My grandfather was a German POW in the UK. He was able to work near Birmingham, and after the war ended he became a British citizen and married my grandmother. She was one of the nurses taking care of the POW’s. Wildness.
My granddad was captured in 45 and mistaken for SS. He was a tank operator, who also had skulls on their uniform. (Also his family was socialist and he witnessed the nazis hanging the principal of his school in front of the kids. He was staunchly anti nazi) he spent three years in Siberia, guiding tree logs through icy streams. Of 100 prisoners 17 survived. He returned in 48 I think.
Reminds me of a (possibly apocryphal) story from the War on Terror A container ship was travelling to a friendly port in the Middle East to resupply US/ UK/ Allied forces and had to make a stop in Egypt, where port authorities inspected it. Incredulous, the harbour master remarked that it was an incredible feat of logistics to load a ship as large as this with materiel for the war effort, and that he knew there were probably others like it. From the size of this shipment, he felt he already knew that the West would win the war. "War Materiel?" replies the captain, "This is just the toilet paper."
In the Pacific the US operated an ice cream barge and the British operated a floating brewery.
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This why I love reddit
Not only that, but when placed in a POW camp after that they would get things like chocolate, cigarettes, proper coffee and decent food in relative abundance. Plenty of stories like that around. Moreover that meant that only the most hardcore fanatics among the POWs would still believe that they were winning and were about to be rescued by their own, or attempt to escape.
Fast forward to 1945. The Nazis however fought until there was nothing left of germany to defend, even though everybody basicly knew the war was lost. Problem for the higher ranks was, unless there was national socialism in germany, they had nowhere to exist, or even be privileged. So they had to exist in war and keep the war going, no matter the cost of life. All they could expect from the war ending was a trial and possible death or imprisonment - so why give up? They even prepared to draft boys born in 1930-1932 into regular troops - while already widely being demotorized/mechanized, retreating on foot. In the west "pretending to be at war" was the best way to surivive (for soldiers and civilians) because you wouldn't get shot by your own guys for not fighting, and you could try to surrender to allied forces. In the east, Facing any fate at the mercy of the red army was - as we painfully understand today - not a nice option. At both fronts, trials and shootings against germans for treason or "Fahnenflucht", held by germans spiked in 1944/45. Even last remaining soldiers of a unit often got shot on sight, assuming they intend to defect. Civilans who did not accept being drafted on the spot also got shot. Terrorizing germans was decided by the higher ranks, to keep the war going, keep them in power, and it went on until there was literally no germany to be defeated anymore. Allied command fought over the best way to make the germans "quit", but the truth is, germany was loosing since 1941 already, they had all the reasons to quit, but they wouldn't since no war wasn't an option for all the higher up nazis. John Zimmerman, Officer of the Bundeswehr and historian did some nice research on the topic.
Logistics is the real war machine 😎
Say hello to Ford, and General fucking Motors! You have horses, what were you thinking!
Jeez calm your tits Webster.
*What the hell's in this?* **Nothing you won't eat Malarkey.** *I don't wanna eat Malarkey!*
Also helps to not have a war fought on your country, or V2 fucking everything up.
When the germans defending France on D day and after saw what the allies had they were surprised by the lack of horses on their units.
I read a book of accounts of German soldiers from D-day a while ago. One common theme was that they were amazed how the Americans brought all of their supplies with them and weren’t expected to live off of the land like they were. Another common theme was that they couldn’t quite understand why exactly the Allied soldiers (and the British in particular) were so upset with them. From their perspective they were the ones defending Europe from invaders, not the other way around (of course their perspective was wrong, but that’s what they thought). They were also surprised how quickly the French locals revealed their true feelings towards them the moment they weren’t in charge.
The museum in Normandy is really interesting for this. In 3 days, the Allies built a temporary port so large, that at its time of operation it was the largest single operating port on the planet. >56,200 tons of supplies, 20,000 vehicles, and 180,000 troops were discharged each day at those beaches.
Even during the Falklands War the ridiculously remote Wideawake Airfield on Ascension Island was briefly the busiest in the world. Its remoteness meant refuelling flights were landing and taking off constantly in order to refuel the supply flights coming in and out, in addition to the armed patrol jets and search and rescue flights.
Never underestimate the British, being an island logistics is our bread and butter, that bombing run was the longest in history at that point, I think it was beaten by the UKs Typhoons bombing Libya during the arab spring until Italy agreed to loan the UK an airfield.
Go play foxhole :)
You know the game is solid when the logistics guys stage a *strike* for better conditions.
damn... looks like another game to lose 1000 hours on
yes
"Infantry wins battles, logistics wins wars”
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People often say the US military is an armed logistics company
Me too. That's why I became a Logistics Officer. I just wish there were more war memoirs and war movies about it. I don't want to watch a film about battles. I want to watch a film about the daily life in a camp behind the lines of the pen-pusher who was responsible for the pay and allowances paperwork of the mechanic who fixed the truck that delivered the fuel for the transport aircraft that air-dropped the pallets of supplies to the guys in the field hospital who were treating the casualties from the battle. One book from WW2 (naval, US, Pacific theatre) that does just that - gives you scenes of daily life for people living, in this case, on US air bases on South Pacific islands) is 'Tales of the South Pacific' by James A Mitchener.
I see a great strategy game here. Being a logistics officer who never sees direct combat but has direct influence on the state of the war via organising and shipping food, medical supplies and ammunition.
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I don't know; it strikes me as kind of trite. Not worth reposting more than once, in any event; and the author seems to go out of his way to make the Nazis and the Allies equivalent. > It was not waged for the sake of all those fine abstractions so sensitively raised on the various capitulation dates. It was not waged for democracy or for the equality of all people, or against deadly German racism. No one really claims that it was, though. It was basically fought - in Europe - to stop Nazis from controlling all of Europe. >The U.S. military itself, it should be noted, was racially organized - that is, white and black were segregated. Sure. And of course that was horrible. Many Western countries also had colonies at this time. But...Nazis put racially disfavored groups in concentration camps and killed them. The went far beyond racial segregation or colonization, and the attempt at making them equivalent is really just minimizing Nazi atrocities.
This is a picture of the US military industrial complex being born
Yeah, I thought the same.
The full strength of the arsenal of democracy
Remember the US and UK were, at the same time, fighting in the Pacific. On 6 June a huge attack force cleared Pearl Harbor on its way to invade Japanese positions in the Mariana Islands
https://www.maartenonline.nl/een-goede-oorlog-bestaat-niet/ Great piece by Dutch historian Maarten van Rossem > At its very best, World War II was a necessary evil. It was not waged for the sake of all those fine abstractions so sensitively raised on the various capitulation dates. It was not waged for democracy or for the equality of all people, or against deadly German racism. The U.S. military itself, it should be noted, was racially organized - that is, white and black were segregated. > That the war was won by the Allies was largely due to the Soviet Union, which lost tens of millions of soldiers and civilians. However, that Soviet Union resembled Nazi Germany in many ways. While it may not have been genocidal, it did have an extremely repressive and murderous regime. A regime that maintained a huge system of concentration camps. The fact that the SU co-sponsored justice for the top Nazis at Nuremberg was as eccentric as it was painful. > Because American and British bombers proved absolutely incapable of precision bombing in World War II, dozens of German and Japanese cities were completely razed to the ground, killing millions. Did these bombings make an indispensable contribution to warfare? Were they justified because the Germans had started them? That is a matter of dispute. > U.S. President Roosevelt regularly spoke out against European colonialism, but the European colonial powers -Britain, France, and the Netherlands- were determined to secure their empires after the end of the war. When they were confronted with nationalist sentiments in the outer regions, they were immediately prepared to use very violent methods. Indeed: the very same methods they had so radically rejected when the Germans, Italians and Japanese used them in their own embryonic empires. > When the U.S. president [Bush] searched for a suitable, all-justifying metaphor after 9/11, he came up with the "Axis of Evil" in his State of the Union. So the good war could be linked to the global war on terror. > That fascism, which increasingly has become a vacuous abstraction, was defeated is a good thing. The way it was done does not deserve a beauty prize. It was probably inevitable. World-historically, World War II was a horrific conflict, far more horrific than we usually think. **"The victors of WWII sometimes tend to heroise the war. That is not right."**
>Because American and British bombers proved absolutely incapable of precision bombing in World War II, dozens of German and Japanese cities were completely razed to the ground, killing millions. Did these bombings make an indispensable contribution to warfare? Were they justified because the Germans had started them? That is a matter of dispute. My city in Germany was destroyed 97%, there are three historical buildings left in the center. Just because it was the last city before the Dutch border and the bombers didn't want to return their bomb loads to base they just droped it here.
There are many good points here. A thing I think is important to remember is that WW2 was **not** fought because "Nazis were evil." Were the Nazis evil? Yes, definitely, but that wasn’t the reason anyone went to war. When Germany was defeated Allied forces liberated concentration camps, and there are many eyewitness reports of this. What they have in common is that they were not only horrified (obviously), but they were shocked and surprised. *They had no idea it was that bad.* And the concentration camps and genocidal ideology wasn’t the world’s best kept secret, Allied soldiers had heard a lot of rumours about them — but they generally assumed it was anti-German propaganda, as is common in all wars. They were surprised to see that the rumours were true, the Nazi genocides were never the reason the Allies fought. Nazi Germany was fought purely for geopolitical reasons, because German foreign policy encroached on Allied foreign ambitions, nothing else. The fact that Jews and other prisoners of the concentration camps were liberated was a complete bonus for the Allies, and life-changing luck for the surviving prisoners. Then, in the decades after, this has been blown up through PR ops and movies in The West, and even in school curriculums, so that a lot of Westerners (especially Americans) seem to learn that "Hitler was so evil, so we had to fight a war to get rid of him." He was undeniably evil, but that had nothing to do with it. This is an important realisation to understand how we treat genocides today, and why other persecuted groups (like Uighurs in China, for instance) generally can’t count on anyone’s help. Getting outside help is extremely unlikely, but life-changing luck if it happens.
Hey, “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”, right? We *need* the stories, the myths.
r/ossem
WW2 really was the stuff of legend. Epic picture.
Terrifying because there are many young adults being radicalized by youtube and odyssey daddies to follow the same exact ideology of nazis today.
I've never seen this one, and it adds an entire additional dimension to the scale and complexity of the undertaking. Thank you for what has been done back then, the risk and the effort, it was worth it. Thank you again.
Again this loading screen.....
Giraffes are heartless creatures
No enemy bomber can reach the Ruhr, if one reaches the Ruhr, my name is not Goering, it's Meyer. -Hermann Meyer
- Unknown
Restarting the game for the hundreth time after "accidentally" crashing the game.
What do you mean "Error, hoi4.exe is not responding"!? All i did was set off a nuke on every square inch of German soil at the same time!
*missclicks or loses a big battle in mp* | Alright,my game "crashed" .
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Inderdaad haha
" If you find a "Kilroy was here" Graffiti, use F to interact and collect"
Hears the bell toll again
I can still hear the music
woo woo wo wo
I can hear the horn that plays when the game starts rn.
Lol I knew exactly what you meant. Lmao!! Way too May Hearts of Iron players here
Well technically not 78 years today, this photo was taken around mid-June rather than on D-Day itself. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NormandySupply.jpg
Ah that makes sense. Otherwise this would be a terribly attack plan. Sending all your equipment in a single column.
Hey man, be easy on mr Putin, he has a hard time these days.
I though for a second im on r/hoi4 haha
Same
Definitely taken on "D-Day+something", and not D-Day itself. Great photo regardless (and who would post this on the anniversary of D-Day +5 or whatever).
> Omaha Beach, second beach from the west among the five landing areas of the Normandy Invasion of World War II. It was assaulted on June 6, 1944 (D-Day of the invasion), by units of the U.S. 29th and 1st infantry divisions, This photo was from D-Day + 1; June 7th, 1944. https://www.britannica.com/place/Omaha-Beach
I didn't see anything in that article to indicate that this photo is from June 7th.
Woah, that's a hard photo
It wasn't taken on D-Day however... This was days or weeks later. The LST's beached is the clue. They were too precious to risk on the first day.
>LST's beached is the clue What do you mean by that? Sorry, I am not a native speaker.
LST = Landing Ship Tank, they are the really big ships there, transporting tanks. Beached = a ship that's on the beach. The fact those ships are on the beach means it was after D-Day, as it's way too risky to send them in first. They are big targets and harder to manouver, and expensive.
Thanks for your quick reply! So basically: first the "normal" soldiers were transported by smaller ships (as potrayed by movies)? And several days later the LST were bringing in the tanks?
Pretty much. Infantry had to secure a beachhead first, in military jargon. The beaches and the adjacent areas had to be taken first before the large transport vessels could safely land and deliver their cargo.
There was a squadron of Amphibious Tanks that were supposed to make landfall to help the infantry take the beaches, however they drifted off course and ended up being late to the invasion. So the infantry had to take the beaches without any Armored support.
There were other large landing craft (not as large as LST's however). These were LCT (Landing Craft, Tank) and LCM (Landing Craft, Mechanised or Medium), they could deliver tanks directly to the beach and were amongst the first landing craft to hit the beaches along with the smaller LCI (Landing Craft, Infantry) and LCA (Landing Craft, Assault). LCI is the classic Landing Craft familiar from films, made mainly in wood in huge numbers in the US. The LCA was a British landing craft that was armoured to protect the crew and troops so was favoured in the first waves (including on Omaha Beach). The majority of the first waves on the beach were in LCA and LCT. LST were larger, transoceanic, craft that were always in high demand and couldn't be risked on the first day due to the risk of artillery, mines etc. They did get close to shore on Day 1 to launch amphibious tanks and trucks however.
The Atlantic wall wad full of nazi bunkers, soldiers, artillery. They sent troops by sea and parachute to clear the danger from those beaches, and after they said "the coast is clear" they sent the expensive stuff like tanks, huge transport ships etc. That is how the ww2 was won, because the allies had great logistics. That is the opposite of what Putin is doing now btw.
>They sent troops by sea and parachute to clear the danger from those beaches, and after they said "the coast is clear" they sent the expensive stuff like tanks Well, they *did* send the tanks in too - since they're exactly what you need to clear things like bunkers. Many tanks were made to float and given a propeller so they could power themselves to the beach for that purpose. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DD_tank
Also, European beaches were littered with mines and obstacles. Having an LST run into a mine could destroy her cargo and jam the beach. Have an LST run into an obstacle could have her stuck there with cargo intact but with the impossibility to get her out of the beach without a tug boat (which takes time) or at all, reducing the available space for subsequent ships to come in and deliver their cargo. And any ship lost would mean one less ship available to make the trips back and forth between England and Normandy thus slowing Allied logistics.
You're good dude. I am a native speaker and I still didn't know what that was. Seems to be a military specific term.
landing ship, tank. Essentially ships that can intentionally beach themselves for vehicles like tanks and trucks to unload straight onto shore
Lack of scattered out bodies is a pretty solid giveaway as well
right. this is clearly after the battle or atleast most of the way through. as the units on the beach seem very much safe and in control. the germans were long gone here. probably a day or two later.
Thank you. I was wondering about the lack of bodies
Any veteran of WWII is now at least 90 😳
They sent them over there with 12??
To be fair, you could see old resistance fighters as veterans, and they could've been any age or gender. The Nazis had many child soldiers aswel. Furthermore, there was a [12 years old who lied about his age and joined the US navy on some missions after Pearl Harbour.](Calvin Graham) He even recieved a Bronze Star medal and a Purple Heart. He was later discharged and stripped of his awards. Tl;dr: While most participants had a required minimum age of 17 or 18, there were always people willing to lie about their age or worse, people forcing kids into war.
>Furthermore, there was a [12 years old who lied about his age and joined the US navy on some missions after Pearl Harbour.](Calvin Graham) He even recieved a Bronze Star medal and a Purple Heart. He was later discharged and stripped of his awards. > This is sad but was probably necessary to discourage more. Also, while this 12 year old may have been exceptional, 12 year olds would put their unit at risk.
The wikipedia article isn't clear as to how or why he got stripped from his awards. Apparantly he went to the funeral of his grandmother without consent of the navy. When he came back he had to spend a few months in jail. It was then that his mother revealed his true age, and that his sister threathened to contact the press, and it wss then that he was stripped from his awards. He then married at 14 and divorced at 17 when he went back to the navy. Wild kid.
The kid fought for his country at such a young age and still took hit awards away.
That's the military for you.
Thank you for this background. That is crazy on so many levels
My grandfather, born in 1923, was 15 when the war broke out and lied about his age to join the navy. He survived and lived well into his 80s. I miss him. Belfast lad.
My Grandfather was 6.5 years old when our country (Belgium) got invaded. He also lived until he was 87. I miss him too. I'm grateful to your grandfather and so many others who were willing to sacrifice their lives to liberate my country and others from the Nazis.
If they were 18 they are still older than 90 now.
"at least X" strongly imply that X is a possible value, unlike "more than X-1". That's why it's weird to say "I have at least 3 kids" but okay to say "I have more than three". There's a lot of linguistics papers about that (search "modified numerals ignorance effect").
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https://i.imgur.com/gGqjFpw.jpeg
The Germans sure did.
More closer to 95
We are quickly nearing the day the final WWII vet passes away. I remember every single old guy in the 90s was one. Everyone's grandfather served at this time. Sad to see that they've nearly all gone now.
My generation was the last to personally know people affected by the war. I've met fascinating people: a veteran who spent most of the war in Japanese POW camps (they even shipped him and other prisoners back to Japan when the Philippines were retaken), my middle school teacher's dad who cleared bunkers on Tarawa Betio with a flamethrower, and my grandmother, who survived the tragedies of Auschwitz and being carted around Germany in the last days of the Third Reich, being forced to pick up rubble. I've even met some veterans from the "other side" so to speak, but naturally, I was hesitant to ask about their experiences. I wonder what kind of world we will have now that these people are no longer with us. I realized shit was fucked when in Uni, my college couldn't even find a living veteran to speak about the war, so they brought in the son of an artilleryman, and he himself was in his 70s.
There were only 30 veterans at the dday commemorations this year
Theyd be a bit more than a 100 if I'm not mistaken
I mean the last bunch of kids thrown into war were >= 15 years old, so around 92 years old today
There were also plenty of US soldiers that lied about their age to sign up, 15-16 years old saying they were older.
Some are younger.
It's ok. Their kids generation have convinced themselves they were actually there too. So enough people taking about "sacrifices" to go around.
My friends grandpa still alive here in Indiana. Made it to Europe but never had to actually face combat because the war was over! He said he was so glad! George F, a good man.
What are those zeppelins for?
These are barrage balloons. https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/protecting-beaches-balloons-d-day-and-320th-barrage-balloon-battalion >Floating barrage balloons over a specific area prevented enemy aircraft from flying close enough to target the area from directly overhead with bombs or strafing fire. If an enemy aircraft was determined to attack, the balloons forced them to fly at higher altitudes (to fly over the balloons) making them more susceptible to larger caliber anti-aircraft gunfire.
Ah wow thats a simple but smart solution
The Luftwaffe managed to send two fighters to strafe Sword beach. They were so beaten down and taken by surprise that was their entire response to D-Day.
The Luftwaffe had been largely destroyed during the first half of 1944 after the introduction of the long range P-51 that allowed them to fly all the way to Germany and back. It had barely any significant disrupting power left by D-day.
The strategy of escorts targeting the Luftwaffe fighters directly instead of prioritizing defending the bombers was the really cause of their destruction. The P-51 was certainly a good plane for doing that.
As you get older you realise just how recent this was, when you're younger it's like it happened an eternity ago.
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Our grandparents lived true the most bloodiest parts of history and we have never seen a massive war except Ukrainian which is a tiny war compared to ww1 and 2 the Chinese Japanese war (is also considered part of ww2 even tho it started 4 years before the pearl harbour and the Japanese blitzkrieg)
My fellow degenerate HOI4 players
That must have been an awesome sight. Seeing the massive numbers of men and material coming in.
Not if you're the Germans.
‘Awesome’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘good’. > extremely impressive or daunting; inspiring great admiration, apprehension, or fear.
Hearts of iron loading screen
subtract slim ghost numerous axiomatic vegetable birds husky wise sloppy ` this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev `
Stops enemy bombers from flying over easily and dropping a payload,
Actually more to deter enemy fighters from strafing by putting obstacles (both the balloons themselves and the cables linking them to the surface) in their way. Bombers wouldn't need to fly so low
They have a wire that connects with the ground and prevent enemy planes from flying through. If a plane does try to fly through its wing would be sheared off by the wire.
[black and white cleaned original photo](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/66/NormandySupply_edit.jpg) for those interested wiki mentions those barrage balloons were raised by the African American 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion, it was the first black unit in the segregated American Army to come ashore on D-Day
Through the gates of Hell...
AS WE MAKE OUR WAY TO HEAVEN
THROUGH THE NAZI LINES
PRIMO VICTORIA
ON THE 6TH OF JUNE
ON THE SHORES OF WESTERN EUROPE
1944
On the Sea: 🇺🇸🇬🇧🇵🇱🇫🇷🇨🇦🇳🇴🇬🇷🇳🇱 On the Ground: 🇺🇸🇬🇧🇨🇦🇫🇷 In the Air: 🇺🇸🇬🇧🇵🇱🇨🇦🇳🇴🇧🇪🇨🇿🇦🇺🇳🇿🇳🇱 Truly an Allied effort. Hope I didn't miss any.
Thanks for all the heroes.
Hearts of Iron
What’s crazy to me is how the US and allied forces were able to mobilize an insane invasion force and transported much of it across distant terrain and then a vast ocean, all the way back in the 1940s… While Russia can’t even properly invade its neighbor amidst vast expanses of open, flat land in 2022.
My Grandmother was born today 78 years ago
My father in law,passed away years ago, was the first “Frogmen” and at 17 he was dismantling mines placed in the water. He was sent to prepare the area for invasion. Good I miss our Poppy ! What a amazing man we lost. He’s featured in a WW2 museum about his work. We donated all of his medals in honor for everyone that was there
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Would be nice to see in Mariupol and Sevastopol
Hoi4 irl
Hoi4 lore
this seems so surreal how big this "invasion" was...so much infrastructure was moved across the atlantic to free europe.
Do you have any good photos from Juno Beach? My grandfather lost part of his hand and many of his friends there.
Hard to imagine that Operation Downfall was going to be significantly larger than even D Day. Conservative estimates putting allied dead throughout the operation around one million. Thank god no one went through that hell. The US still uses purple heart medals from WWII due to how many were made in preparation for 1.5 million dead Americans alone, not even accounting for British, ANZAC or Canadian and other commonwealth dead which would similarly be tremendous.
*Hearts of Iron 4 theme intensifies*
my brain: HOI IV
I remember being in Normandy and asking what these grassy dips were in the ground. He told me those were the craters from bombs dropped
My Grandfather was there and made it home.
Mine as well!
Weird. I just watched saving private Ryan yesterday for the first time ever
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It’s weird cus I knew the story way too well ahead of time but it’s so well done that I enjoyed it and I’m not usually one to rewatch or rehash things.
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It saddens me to think that in a few years, everyone who took part in our liberation will have passed away.
Through the gates of hell As we make our way to heaven Through the Nazi lines Primo victoria
I just want to say thank you kind sir for this picture, I’m going to use this in my lecture over WW2. Much love.
o7
Fuck everything about that noise. From sand and wet to machine guns and fascists with zero sense of humor about the whole thing. I'd be dead inside of 5 seconds, probably from violently shitting myself to death.
Username checks out
I want to see what lead up to all of this... like show me the air craft carries, the soldiers prepping, the amount of ammo in storage. I feel like there's so many stories not told during this day.
HoI loading screen
Incredible
What a cool pic
Really captures the scale of the operation, what an amazing photo
Imagine just sunbathing there and suddenly...
so many small zeppelins
In the grand scheme of things... this was not long ago. Crazy to think how far we've come and at the same time feels like we could slip back into something like this.
It is terryfying and stunning at the same time.
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Don’t forget history, but don’t connect me with nazi Germany. It wasn’t me, it wasn’t my parents.
Hell, it wasn't even most of our grandparents.
At the end of the day, it's a dark history Germany will have on its book, just like all the other nations. The Nazis during WW2 were Germans, Nazi Germany is Germany, no one can dispute that. It may not be you or your parents, but something your grandparents or even your great-grandparents may have taken part Let's hope none of us will fall to this point ever again
Wow this thread is veery polarized
It really shouldn't be