another , staged photo or not who knows.













killing civilians,


Finnish children shot by Soviet Partisans Seitajärvi, July 1942

more experimentation than battlefield use.  unit 731

they also put fleas with bubonic plague into bombs and other nasty diseases.

There was no Jewish division. It is thought that a lot of Jews joined the Army though. Better to take your chances at the front than the camps.  Persecution of Jews was frowned on in the Navy. Don't know about the other services.. Probably a don't ask don't tell don't get caught kind if thing.

In Italy the Germans bombed one if the American transports that carried gas.  Isolated incident so to speak.

The Japanese had a bio warfare unit and tested it in China. According to the History Channel show I watched . They were given amnesty for the info and we got ripped off big time as the program wasn't all that advanced.

I've always felt that this may have been a partisan. Yes, it was taken by a good photographer, in a well lit, well composed space. It seems like while it was contrived, it was taken under duress. It's a striking photograph.

 

WTF? GD is nothing but broken image links today. Am I the only one seeing this?

But he has his war face on.



 

I fixed my photos back on page 1. Fucking imgur shit the bed.

I think it might have something to do with the way arfcom uses links, there was another  thread about it. seems to be in the last few days. As I had many pics I could view suddenly cant. others think its imgur and another hosting site. The truth i dunno.

Wow, you really suck at weapons ID.



 

My mom's brother, who was in the Czechoslovakian Labor Corps, was forcibly drafted into the German army and sent to the Russian front. He never returned.

Ten years after the war, a soldier in his unit, whom the Russians released from a POW camp, tracked down my mom and told her that her brother was gutshot by a Russian machine gun, and they had to leave him behind.

So every time I see a picture like this, it makes me wonder if he's in it.

I used postimage.org and now the photos show up just fine.

My Opa fought on the ostfront for the majority of his war. He was in from the begenning (Late 1938) to 1945. he was a volunteer. RAD before that (early 38)


And I am a reenactor myself- I portray German for obvious reasons. We have also been in a couple films and documentaries.

FYI -
My opa moved here in 1947. He spoke English and assisted the Americans after the war.  He loathed the Soviets. He really had no grief with the Americans. At the end, the coal was to surrender to the Americans. Soviets would execute anyone with a ost front ribbon. They were mostly discarded. He befriended an American US Army captain, whom he was helping after the war. He suggested / helped him come to the US. Him and my Oma moved here. All their brothers and sisters were dead or missing after the war.

When he died, myself, and five other members of his local VFW carried him. Two were US WW2 vets able to bear some of the load and ASKED to carry him. His casket was draped with the imperial colors (Black white red striped flag)

The one take away I would leave here - and this was the discussion from his US vet friends, Himself, etc - Is that without being there, you could not understand the brutality of the war between the soviets and germans in the east. No american vet ever experienced such harsh brutality, with the exception of maybe select marine battles in the pacific.

The image of men slashing at each other with sharpened E-tools, and even hammers from vehicle tool kits in hand to hand combat - starved, frozen, and nearly mad is something most can't beholden the reality of. There are many, many stories, and the History channel is frankly full of shit.

One blurb - The Germans had retreated across a field, then mined it. A large open area. The soviets had to cross this. They knew it was mined. Just after sunrise, the following morning - they noticed people wandering half naked, across the field. Many hit mines. The Germans watched in disbelief. The soviets had emptied what was some sort of asylum, or hospice type facility and marched the patients across the field to clear the mines ahead of their assault.

Correct..............however, there was one Jew who hid himself in the SS...........Eleke Scherwitz, as well as one who had mixed Jewish/German ancestry.........Emil Maurice

It may be. I only have Netflix and Amazon for TV, so it was new to me. I've enjoyed it.

Although my mother's brother was sent to the Eastern Front (mentioned in earlier post above), my Opa (her father) was an officer on the Western Front. He was captured and put in a POW camp for the rest of the war.

My mom, who was eighteen, and my Oma fled their home in the Sudetanland as the Russian army advanced, trying to get to the American lines in the west. The Russian troops caught up with them and thousands of others. Both my mother and grandmother were gang raped by the Russians. My mom gave birth to twin boys as a result. One died at birth and the other died the next day.

They finally rejoined with my Opa in the west and settled in a little mountain village called Lenggries, in Oberammergau, Bavaria.

The US Army had a Quartermaster School there called Camp Flint. My mom managed to get a job there as a translator since she was fluent in German, English, and Russian. That's where she met -- and later married -- an American CWO stationed at the Flint Kaserne.

While my Mom was pregnant, her and my dad were sent to Fort Carson, Colorado, where I got squirted out. Two weeks later, he was sent back to Germany, so I lived in Germany with my mom and Oma and Opa for the next five years, while my dad got moved around Germany from one base to another.

The German citizens in Bavaria loved the Americans. They loved them mostly for not being Russians.

Biker - I know the story well.

My Omas sister did not survive her 'encounter' with the soviets. She was simply deemed 'missing'. We all know what that meant.

They are quite close to the next cleansing in Europe.

 

Thousands and thousands of similar stories. A man in my town just wrote a Pretty lengthy book his dad's time on the eastern front. In his case his dad grew up in Romania, which was then sold/taken by the Hungarians, then conscripted in their army and fought with a foreign SS division through 1945. Somehow he made it.

A local Romanian family has become friendly with me when he found out my family came here from Austria after WWII.

On my fathers side:

#1 -Luftwaffe pilot with 7 kills. - Claimed 12 - stories mostly included getting drunk with the locals and trying to fly the next day.  Passed away in 1991.  

#2 - Luftwaffe - engine repair.  Missing in Russia in 1943.

#3  Geberg.  Fought at Trondheim  and Narvik. Damn near died at Narvik.  Spent most of the war skiing and drinking with the locals until sent to fight the western allies.  Promptly surrendered  because they weren't stupid. Passed away in 1988 from lung cancer from smoking. Coolest guy you ever met

#4 -  Rifleman in the Army - No one alive remembers what division and all records have been lost due to allied bombing.  Recorded KIA in 1941 in Russia.  That much has been passed down.

#5 - Austrian heavy construction regimental commander taken into the German Army.  Supposedly VERY good at his job.  Supposedly such an F'ing arse that he  was demoted to bomb crater filler inner in Russia.  (If you are awesome at your job but are so much an ass that a losing Army won't put up with you  that says a lot.)
Late war he claimed to be a member of O5 and got safe passage to the U.S.  Died in 1982 in Columbus Ohio from lung cancer from smoking.
The locals in Graz claim he got a lot of medals but there is no proof left after the war.  Possible fraud, possible hero, too much of an arse to look into.

As a child he came across as a total f'ing arse in the early 1970's

#6 - Forest ranger from the late 1930's until the war was over.  Came to the U.S. after the war and was a "Forest Ranger".  Cool guy.  Gentleman farmer in Ohio and loved the wilderness.  Passed away in 1992.  Likely from lung cancer from smoking. His name was Forest.  Irony was huge in that.  Cool guy, tough guy, no B.S. guy.  I still miss him.



Mothers side:

#1 - Trained as a medic. Shipped to San Diego.  Japan was nuked.   Japan surrendered. He was sent home.  On his death bed now.  Member of the KKK. Child abusing SOB.
I gave up on him in 1992 when he took my cousins side after he raped a girl and I stood up for her.  Sad to say I hope his impending passing is slow and dreadful.

#2 - USN. No one knows what he did or where he served.  Never once spoke about it.  He had a degree in Nuclear Physics.  Likely had something to do with his service.  He passed away 3 years ago.  Calmest man you ever met. Reading between the lines, he helped lay down the shit on Japan.  Just a guess though.  We can not look up his records through.gov..
He was a college prof. in Physics until he got too old to teach.  Hated his younger brother (#1)



Not all war stories are heroic.

I must have missed the episode when easy company was parachuted into battle on the eastern front.

No, you missed the part where entire divisions Entire Armies,  Entire Army Groups were erased from the map on each side on an hourly basis - Germany and the Soviets didn't fuck around.

The US got off easy in that war.  I am not putting down U.S . accomplishments or suffering, but the war for the big boys was in the East.  Those who put that down are stupid, morons or uneducated / thread.

Forgot to post when I saw this pic, looks like their boots and other clothing was stripped from them.

ESL?

That is not the Spanish Div.  It is a well known photo from the 4th SS, somebody doctored the photograph by scratching out the helmet decals and removing the arm eagles.

Soviet dropped helmets all these years later.

If it were not for the material support provided primarily by the US, the Soviets would have folded.

The ONLY way the pursuit of the German Army from 1943 onward happened was with US supplies and equipment.

Not putting down the Soviet sacrifices in lives, just stating fact.

If anyone has any more they'd like to add to the original post, post em here or message em to me, would love to get it beyond 200.

More Germans died in Stalingrad during its tenure than the US lost during the entire war.

Let that one sink in

That's a sobering thought. I have read a lot about the ost front. The scope of the battles are mind boggling. Some say the battle for Kursk was the biggest land battle ever fought. 100 mile fronts...just staggering.

Pics of tapestries not loading.

I know it's been discussed on here a few times so  if you have read Tigers in the Mud,the action that takes place in Estonia where Carius is  discussing the Ostsack and Westsack and so forth is the exact same location in Sinimäe where the Battle of Tannenberg Line depicted in 1944 takes place,albeit 5 months earlier. The "Rollbahn" is actually the Tallinn-Narva highway.

Carius and his Tiger in Estonia


 502nd Tiger with infantry February,1944



There's footage of them appx 35 seconds in

Too bad the same groups won't get together in the fight against the muslims.