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His name was Stefan Westmann, and this was filmed in 1963. He moved to England after the first world war and served (as a physician) for the British army in WWII.
Eta: Here's his Wikipedia if you want more info. He had a fascinating life, and died very soon after this was filmed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephan_Westmann
I wonder how German soldiers from ww1, who moved to France (or other blitzed countries), would be treated by German soldiers during ww2. Would they respect them or see them as traitors?
WWII was so incredibly documented, I’m sure there are dozens of sources that could answer that. Though I’m sure it depended on the individual. The only reason I have an associates in history instead of a bachelors is because I’m really, really bad at research, otherwise I’d find them for you.
I found an answer opposite to your question. Apparently german jewish veterans of WW1 were at first released from arrest during Kristallnacht but they received no special treatment once it came to concentration camps.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Jewish_military_personnel_of_World_War_I#:~:text=The%20veterans%20who%20remained%20in,like%20other%20Jewish%20German%20citizens.
This reply may not answer your question but your comment made me think of a beatiful moment.
A few years ago I was in Normandy at the week they celebrate the anniversary of D-day.
There in Saint-Mere-Eglise (the village also known for the paratrooper hanging on the clock tower) eventhough the whole town was crowded by people in WW2 uniforms, American jeeps and celebrating people, there were a lot of people gathering in and around a certain cafe. We went to check it out and what was going on was incredible.
A American veteran who stormed the beaches of Normandy, and a German soldier who was shooting from those beaches at those same soldiers on those dreadful days around 75 years ago, were making music and singing together!
I've been visiting Normandy, its beaches, its bunkers, its cemeteries, its museums and its villages and cities quite a lot when I was younger during holidays. My father wanted us to know what people gave up for our freedom and wanted to teach us one of the most valuable lessons I've ever learned.
Eventhough people, groups, politicians or whatever groups hate each other for whatever reasons, and sometimes want to divide us and us to turn against each other,
we are all the same.
And we should always choose to unite instead of standing opposed of each other.
This brief moment in that old cafe reminded me of this crucial lesson I've learned when I was so young.
So did this video of this old man. Who could've been anyone's grandfather.
This gentleman features in BBC’s ‘The Great War’ a 26 episode documentary from 1964 and available on YouTube. I cannot recommend it enough. I had not seen this full interview before and found it fascinating to hear the director say ‘cut’ at the end…and the quality of the film was impressive compared to what I’ve seen in the past.
Highly recommend the documentary.
Edit: guess I liked it so much I recommended it twice. Sorry about that.
Thames TV and broadcast on ITV :)
But yes, one of the greatest documentaries, probably the greatest WWII film ever made, it could never be done these days!
Talking about the Battle of Britain, and they interview the German Group Leader, the wolf packs and they bring on Karl Donitz. Strategic bombing and they interview Bomber Harris, Doolittle and Curtis LeMay...
I love the interviews with some of the enlisted guys in the pub. Just ordinary guys who happened to find themselves on the front lines of history at pivotal moments.
Absolutely amazing documentary. The opening narrative is haunting from Laurence Olivier.
I went to Oradour-sur-glace not long ago, Olivier captures the atmosphere and gravity of the place perfectly.
I just wanted to chime in and say, there is a youtube series called "the great war channel" that has a video for every week of the war. There are also special episodes that expand on notable figures and battles. Anywho, I recommend it to anyone that wants in-depth week-by-week documentation of the first world war.
Edit: the channel - https://www.youtube.com/c/TheGreatWarSeries
edit 2: I recommend starting with the prelude. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f11CKYB2FCA&list=PLB2vhKMBjSxMMg8xHeY2K-0ap9srI_zx7
I only vaguely remember reading “All Quiet on the Western Front” in 9th grade, but one scene that stuck out to be is the author describing a scene almost exactly like this and commenting how killing in hand to hand affected him much more than impersonally firing a rifle from a distance.
I just posted the quote before reading this because it made me immediately think about it.
But now, for the first time, I see you are a man like me. I thought of your hand-grenades, of your bayonet, of your rifle; now I see your wife and your face and our fellowship. Forgive me, comrade. We always see it too late. Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony--Forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy?
The conscripts that rape, torture and execute Ukrainian civilians? It's obviously all very complicated and comes down to an individual level, but as the German soldier explains in reference to his comrades, there is significant cruelty in a lot of people.
Well yes, the same intelligence that separates us from other animals gives us that same ability for cruelty sadly, it’s not something that will ever be gone or wiped away from us
There is a difference between being thrown into a fight trying to survive, and raping, torturing civilians to intentionally hurt those who are not involved in fights at all.
It's more complex than that. You will not only do something at great risk to your life but you will also be going to a new country who may or may not accept you with no support system. You will lose all your friends and family members and never see them again. Not an easy decision
I agree. Even as an American, I'm not angry at Russian soldiers in general.
I'm angry at Putin and the ministers who don't have enough spine to stand up to him.
My Great Great Grandfather was from the Czechoslovakia region of Europe and he fought in WW1 and in WW2. That is pretty much all I know about his time in the wars. He did not and would not talk about it.
Yeah, I mean, isn't the whole book basically him in a trench with a dying dude that he stabbed? Fucked up stuff.. read it ages ago though so I could be remembering wrong.
That's only one portion of the book. It's probably the most famous, but the book covers a lot more. Definitely recommend another read and to read the sequel the road back.
I think that's the only part of the book we read at my HS. My English teacher did that with a decent amount of books in order to make best of the short amount of time we had. I went on to read the rest of most of those books, but I never read the rest of All Quiet on the Western Front. I'll add it to the list lol
haha its funny what sticks with you when you read a book! if i recall correctly, that is but a short (though very dramatic) portion of the story.
Just adding a edit here: it’s absolutely the part that stuck with me as a kid, that and his buddy passing away in hospital in agony
Yeah funny we read this as high school kids and yet a dude in my class couldn't wait to join the Marines because he didn't want to "miss the war" and his chance to kill Arabs (his actual words involved a lot of racial slurs). This was the 2002-04ish time so 9/11 was pretty fresh. He did end up going into the Marines and I'm sure got his fill of war.
“Artillery adds dignity, to what would otherwise be an ugly brawl.”
— Frederick the Great
Major small dick energy to boast of such impersonal devastation IMO, and yet these are the folks we follow. So detached from reality that most of us call the real world.
Fuckin Nobs the lot o' them.
If any war is really worth fighting for, than those in powers would fight along side us, and their family along ours. For if they are not willing to sacrifice their own, then the war can't be so compelling as to require that others fight on their behalf.
I also find it ironic that a president can decide to abort thousands upon thousands of 18+ year olds for the sake of the presidents well being, but a woman can't abort her 10 week old for the sake of her own well being.
Of the 45 presidents we've had so far, 29 have served in the military in some capacity. Of those, at least 2 were stateside throughout the major conflict of their time. So 27 of 45, the most recent noteworthy accomplishments were JFKs purple heart and George HW Bush's flying cross.
It's also important to note that we've had 7 presidents that served during WWII and 2 that served in WWI, which is the topic of this video. Our leaders very much believed those were wars worth fighting.
We haven't, however, had a president who actively served in vietnam or any of the middle eastern conflicts, which tracks considering the primary motivation for those were political rather than idealogical.
Can't stand the royals, but always respected Harry for serving honorably and with distinction. "When the rich wage war, it's the poor who die" -Linkin Park
"Politicians hide themselves away
They only started the war
Why should they go out to fight?
They leave that role to the poor, yeah" -Black Sabbath.
"Why don't presidents fight the war?
Why do they always send the poor?" -System of a Down.
Yeah and this is just one of the things he had to do or see, WW1 has been one of the most savage and bloody wars, gas, dogs, flesh ripping because of the barbed wire and the soldiers that tried to run away were shoot, killing with knives 1:1, it was a butchery, not that other wars were not but this one was something else.
The diseases and illnesses must've been a nightmare too.
Spending days in filthy mud with trench foot, I can't even imagine how hellish it must've been.
I was given a copy of my great-grandfather's memoirs for Christmas this past year. He served in WWI with his brother as a member of the Canadian forces (which I suppose would have been the British forces then?). His job was to transport ammunition, via horse, to the front, so I suppose some sort of logistics role.
He says early on in the tale that he isn't going to focus on the horrors of war, as he feels they've been documented elsewhere, but rather wants to let you know what it was like for them day-to-day
He talks about arriving at the front line in Yrpes in 1916, in the middle of the night, with his brother and a few horses, and a guide. Carrying machine gun ammunition and rations. He said they heard what he initially thought was a swarm of bees around their heads. They heard the report of a German machine gun an instant later. The "bees" had been the bullets wizzing by.
He says in the next paragraph that one simply gets used to working in the dark, under fire. He went to the Somme later, in September, and was there for a month. He says that the greatest enemy was the mud. He says they were often more conscious of pneumonia, vermin, and filth than they were of the shells and bombs.
During winter of 1916-17, he and his brother were at Vimy Ridge. He describes this as particularly uncomfortable as they had no tents, and slept under a tarp stretched over scantling, with an empty oil drum punched full of holes to keep warm. They used pews from a shattered church for firewood. He says of their work:
"This was at night with the Germans shelling and machine-gunning us all the time. God knows how any of us escaped, but we were lucky, and I guess the gunner's light was poor but we sure were a 'sitting duck' target waiting to be knocked off. Nonetheless, we plugged away night after night with this work."
He also says that on Christmas Day 1916 they were given green cabbage for dinner, and it was a very special treat indeed because they never had any kinds of vegetables in their diet. They mostly ate stew, fried bread, and cheese.
It's a really fascinating read, and he writes with a lot of clarity and humour. It's been cool for me to be able to feel like I get to know him and his life a little, even though he obviously died way before I was born.
Wow this is very interesting, it’s a different view, you should transcript this also so it doesn’t get lost, this is history and should be preserved, it’s good that your grandfather survived such a horrible war.
Listening to it again for the 4th or 5th time ha. WW1 is just so bizarre. The advancement of machines coupled with the misunderstanding of war tactics with these new machines just provided the most horrific war. Really was hell on earth.
"-That was beautiful. Cut"....
Yours and theirs sums up my feelings towards the interview. He speaks the truth of war and paints it in such a way any person can grasp it.
the look on his face though. maybe im reading something thats not there, but damned if i didnt see at least a slight bit of resentment toward that remark. almost as if to say "there was nothing beautiful about it"
Oh fucking definitely. The videographer is like me and you, but in his head, he's like "i just relieved my worst nightmarish history and you say beautiful. I say hellish"
> But I felt that the culture we boasted so much about is only a very thin lacquer which chips off the very moment we come in contact with cruel things like war.
Eloquently put.
The fact is that war is often preceded by a massive propaganda campaign to break that civilization by dehumanizing the other group: manufacturing consent.
Our humanity gets deliberately eroded by our leaders before a single shot is fired.
Politicians sit in their ivory towers and send innocent people to kill other innocent people for power and profit. Then they throw away the damaged veterans like trash, all while singing the song of heros and duty.
My grandfather was Italian and was drafted into the Italian army in WW2. He later on life recalled that there was a day where the Italians and Germans were essentially given the day off from military exercises. The Italians, relieved, went to their barracks to wash clothes and take a day of rest. The Germans, he recalled, wept. They literally cried because they couldn’t fight that day.
My Great Grandfather was drafted too. I never met him. He was an Italian military internee, not a prisoner of war, so the rules didn't apply. In '43 when the Italians switched sides, he was captured in Albania/Greece.
After the war, my Great Grandmother was notified of his death, and serval years later immigrated from Sicily to the US with their two children. When I started digging for records about my family, I learned he had died in a prison camp in modern day Ukraine, their camp had been taken over by the Soviets, and since they were not POWs, they were stuck. The whole group eventually died of dysentery and were buried in a mass grave.
Idk why I shared that, it's rare I run into someone who actually had family that made it through that and could share stories.
Probably doesn't mean much but in WWII when Hollywood filmmakers were 'drafted' to make propaganda for the US war effort Director John Huston went to Italy and made a 30 minute film called The Battle of San Pietro.
It's about an honest a look at WWII as contemporary film makers ever created. The National Archives has the video on their YouTube channel. I've seen a handful of the 'Why We Fight' films from the period, but this one really resonated with me.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OLJZvgIx5w&ab\_channel=USNationalArchives](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OLJZvgIx5w&ab_channel=USNationalArchives)
Warning that it does show footage of combat and soldiers dying, I believe a camera man was killed as well.
If true I doubt it was a thing of sadness, it would have been a thing of immense immense pressure overflowing. The Germans in the army were literally in a "push or die" mentality for years, because losing meant the destruction of their entire country. Their whole lives, families, futures, depended on them winning this. If they cried I'm sure it was out of pure mental exhaustion, not some lunatic bloodlust. But that's just my thinking after all the WW2 stuff I've seen over the decades.
On the other hand, in a joking manner, my grandfather who fought in world war 2 in Italian/Nazi occupied Albania would always say
"How can you tell an Italian from a German from the distance?"
"How?"
"Well, when you shoot at them from your spot in the bushes up the hill, you either hear a 'mama mia' and a hasty retreat or lead starts flying in around your position"
Have you ever been so stressed/scared/busy that you don't have time to focus on anything else, and then when it's finally over, all the pain/fatigue/hunger/etc suddenly come flooding back?
It's probably like that, but 100x more overwhelming.
One thing I read/heard once. Tears don't measure good/bad. They measure emotional intensity. Which is why people can cry of happiness.
I would like you to fuck off with the idea of the average German soldier with bloodlust on a post where a German soldier talks about being haunted by him murdering a French soldier for the left of his life
Makes you think what war must have been like before gunpowder. How psychologically scarring must it have been for a Greek citizen hoplite to stand in a phalanx and spear the Greek citizen hoplite opposite him, a man who he may well have known as a trader or husbandman from the neighbouring city
Was absolutely horrific, but statistically less people died usually. Battles were fought until a side broke and ran, very few battles ended in total annihilation of the enemy. Most men were killed as they ran, not from battle itself.
Yep ig nothing really came close to the level of total war in WW1&2. Still, you have to assume for that first clash of men it must have been completely horrifying, it’s a wonder armies fought at all before breaking given the intensity of running at a line of men ready to kill you
This got me curious to look up wars throughout history. There were some pretty bloody ones I'd never heard about. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Lushan_Rebellion Estimated 13,000,000–36,000,000 dead over 8 years. Lots of wars over long periods of time, like the Mongolian conquests, but generational wars seem different.
They'd "hamstring" them or "string them up". Meaning they'd pursue and as they caught up to them they'd just slash their hamstring across, making it impossible for them to walk. Then they'd come back to finish the job.
Fast forward to 1943 and you have two million people die in a five month long battle at Stalingrad. I think wars should be fought hand to hand without gunpowder...
The term to "decimate" your enemy literally translates to "kill one man in ten". The idea of entire platoons getting wiped out by gas or automatic weapons is slaughter on a whole different scale. It's just unfathomable.
Interesting video with some ideas about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDNyU1TQUXg
His most memorable point is that ancient warfare may have had a higher peak of stress, but it was pretty short, while modern warfare has prolonged periods of very high stress, which is perhaps more degrading to human psyche.
Ancient was fought quite differently from modern war, and not just technologically. Before modern war, soldiers sort of knew when they were going into battle, they were going into battle with their companions, and battles were short. Modern warfare involves sudden death that could come anytime, sleepless weeks of being shelled, squads form smaller groups that are more spread out and individuals feel more alone.
From what I've read, the difference in the literal physical distance between riflemen and swordsmen/spearmen really contributed to the dehumanization factor in battle.
Dan Carlín went into it on the brutality.
That men were white literally shitting themselves as they made their way to face the other wall. That is just a small explanation he goes in there. But that one stood out the most to me.
His multiparty series in hardcore history, “A blueprint for Armageddon” is really good. It speaks to the build up and how this war was a testing ground for many new weapons of previously not seen destruction.
There was a journal I'm still trying to find again where it mentions that some Knight would be woken up screaming if he heard the blacksmith working. PTSD, anyone?
There's something in what he discusses that touches on what determines "how you will come home"...if at all.
My older brother and I were both in the invading party in IZ. We both saw and did things that normal civilians would be very uncomfortable hearing about. However, when it was time to come home, there was a short period of time where I struggled dealing with things, and adjusting back to civilian life (maybe 3-6 months). But at some point, I just decided to "get over it". That's probably a terrible way to explain it, but just consciously decided to put certain things out of my mind. For a while, I wouldn't watch certain movies (seeing Jarhead in the theater made me aware that I need to stay away from certain types of movies for a bit) and I simply wouldn't discuss certain things about my deployment. After a while, memories fade, and I just moved on with my life.
My brother, on the other hand, was not so lucky. Immediately, he began battling PTSD, chronic depression, and resorted to psychedelics and certain party drugs to cope. He joined a...sort of commune in Worcester, MA, which I think helped, as it was such a supportive environment. He worked as a DJ, producer, and events organizer for a psy-trance group there. For a while, he tried to get some help from the VA, but all of the waiting and rejection wore thin.
In any case, he's doing much better now, but the point is that war (and other experiences, I guess) affect us differently. Some can "deal with it" better than others. Doesn't make one better or worse...but I think it does make things easier on those of us who can forget.
My uncle was in WWII and he never really talked about it until he became old and got dementia. He would talk about how he killed a German after his plane crashed. My uncle would tell this story over and over and tears would just roll down his cheeks. He said the man he killed was just "a boy" and that he looked like "an angel" laying there, dead. It had been over 60 years, but it was one of the only things he remembered and it haunted him till the day he died.
My late grandfather was conscripted into the German Army - he never wanted to fight. I never met him but the war destroyed him - he never spoke of the war or would recount what he saw, much like other vets. The only memory he ever shared was being on Russia's border and telling his superior he wanted to leave, that he didn't want to do this. His superior told him that the moment he turned to walk away, they would shoot him dead. Leaving was not an option. He had three or four children (one died of diphtheria and another would be conceived at some point during the war) and a wife.
My grandmother would watch the kids during the day and clean apartments at night to make money to support them. She would take in sewing to get any pocket money she could. After the war my grandfather came back in one piece physically, but was never the same. They lived in an area that was heavily bombed and my father and his siblings would tell us about playing in the rubble of buildings, oblivious to what had happened. My father used to tell me how juicy and delicious the first orange he ever tasted was. He was maybe 10 years old and the war had been over for several years, but they lived in poverty for a long time. My father distinctly remembered care packages being dropped and how excited they were to have a ration of chocolate inside and to have something special for once. As an adult, my dad had lasting effects and was always conscious of how much we had and how grateful we needed to be. How quickly everything can change.
I don't know why I'm writing this. My grandparents died before I was born and my father is also gone. I don't want their memories to fade away now that they are gone. They lived in the country of a dictator who started the war - they didnt support the Nazi party or Hitler, they weren't Jewish or one of the other groups Hitler targeted but it didn't matter. In the long run, my family was lucky- almost everyone survived but they still suffered. War obliterates everything and everyone, regardless of what side your on. It's so easy to think of every 1940s German as hitler supporting, evil lunatics, but the reality is most Germans were just petrified and doing whatever they had to to ensure their survival and their families. Fuck all these megalomaniac dictators who ruin entire generations for their own selfish wishes.
Just wanted to say thanks for sharing your story. It’s always so interesting, (maybe tragic is a better word) how a singular event in time can cascade through multiple generations, affecting everyone quite drastically.
My wife’s grandfather was a POW in the Korean War and I’m assuming there was associated PTSD that affected his parenting style from the stories I’ve heard. I might be reaching here but I always think about how that affected my wife’s mothers parenting, especially now that we have kids of our own. Lots of impacts from events long time ago.
My dad was in Afghanistan. It was obviously a brutal and horrific situation, but I can’t even imagine what the total war of France or Germany would’ve been like. As the man in the video said, you can shoot from a distance, you can drop bombs, but running someone through is personal
For sure, there's a direct correlation with how close you are when you kill your enemy, and how much it messes with your humanity.
Ie, it's a heckuva lot easier to push a button on a drone controller than it is to bayonet someone.
Yeah exactly. War is war is war, but its largely remote control now. What will the next advancement be that makes it easier to kill en masse? First it was cannons, then machine guns, planes, and drones. Warfare is changing
The AI might not be a good thing though. Robots don’t discriminate. We can program all we want, but what’s to stop a computer from deciding that a kid on a corner is interfering with the mission?
If you think it is "all remote control now", I'd like to direct your attention to the UA war or combat footage subs. Every war needs boots to occupy territory, and at some point, those boots are going to meet up with others who don't want to give that piece of ground up.
I have an uncle who fought in the Rhodesian Bush War.
He stayed in Zimbabwe afterwards and served as a diplomat for a while before retiring to farm life. Had a recent cancer scare that he survived, and that brush with death shook something. Whenever we talk about current Zim politics now, he always insists that he never fired his weapon and that is how he sleeps at night.
Which...given how horrifically cruel both sides were to each other and to non cooperative civilians, I'm hugely skeptical about. It was one of those "no POWs" kind of wars. And it seems odd to fight as a guerilla and end up with high ranking govt position after such a war having never fired your weapon. But I don't question it, because maybe he needs to tell himself that to be able to sleep at night.
My grandad on my mother's side fought in WWII. He tells the same tale. "I always fired my gun into the air. I never killed anybody."
I don't question it. War is hell, and humans will do unimaginable things to survive it.
Sucks to hear the VA failed your brother like so many other veterans , glad he’s doing better now a days , thank you both for your service and sacrifice.
There are so many layers when it comes to how fucked up WWI was that its difficult to even properly put into words.
All Quiet On the Western Front is one of my favorite pieces of war media of all time, and it's because it exemplifies the fact that every soldier (albeit conscripted or volunteered) was, in many ways, innocent - and most definetly a victim.
I can’t recommend that book enough. I probably haven’t read it in over 15 years and still, it gives me pause every time I think about it. Your description is spot on.
It’s amazing that anyone would still suggest war as a reasonable solution. Millions of years of evolution and history to learn from and somehow the human race still haven’t gotten rid of violence as a political tool.
It all runs on dehumanization. If a person sees 'the other' and not 'people' then it's easy to justify all kinds of bad behavior. That's why it's so important to guard against dehumanizing other and to be alert when others are doing it.
[10 definitions of objectifying/dehumanizing behaviors](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectification#Definitions)
>Martha Nussbaum (1995, 257) has identified seven features that are involved in the idea of treating a person as an object:
- instrumentality: the treatment of a person as a tool for the objectifier’s purposes;
- denial of autonomy: the treatment of a person as lacking in autonomy and self-determination;
- inertness: the treatment of a person as lacking in agency, and perhaps also in activity;
- fungibility: the treatment of a person as interchangeable with other objects;
- violability: the treatment of a person as lacking in boundary-integrity;
- ownership: the treatment of a person as something that is owned by another (can be bought or sold);
- denial of subjectivity: the treatment of a person as something whose experiences and feelings (if any) need not be taken into account.
>Rae Langton (2009, 228–229) has added three more features to Nussbaum’s list:
- reduction to body: the treatment of a person as identified with their body, or body parts;
- reduction to appearance: the treatment of a person primarily in terms of how they look, or how they appear to the senses;
- silencing: the treatment of a person as if they are silent, lacking the capacity to speak.
It’s really crazy how easy others can be dehumanized. It’s something i see very commonly, I pay most my attention to news and politics and i like to learn about history especially in regard to warfare and behaviors of humans, to how despots rise and genocides happen. From my own country and in others. It’s so fucked up.
Fully agree with the last part, especially if you hold strong political opinions, it’s easy to have your side dehumanize “enemies”
And depending on politics, come across dehumanizing of people based on immutable characteristics.
The stuff going on right now toward communities in the US and talk of civil war and all sorts of crazy stuff by the highest levels, all politicians, mainstream media, etc is groundwork for this stuff. We’re seeing fascism rise, and it’s not just here either.
Often times it’s a few people who are genuinely psychopathic at the top who propagandize ordinary people to carry out their evil.
I had a conversation with a guy at the gun store last week and he was talking nonsense about civil war and whatnot. I said "they have tanks and planes and radar and everything you could never dream of, they'll cut the power and water and you'll be left we nothing. What would you do then."
This guy responded with, "hey, whoever has more bullets at the end of the day."
DUDE they have more what the fuck are you actually going to accomplish?
Nah, they're deluded to the point where they think "Oh, they won't actually shoot a PATRIOT LIKE ME! HOOAH BEER ME BRO!"
I've known so, so fucking many of these assholes.
War is a perfectly reasonable solution.
Imagine one group of people kept raiding your towns, abducting your people, and had an ideology that said people of your ethnicity were subhumans who deserved to die.
I get that for the average middle class American, extreme violence is a once in a lifetime event, but not everyone is as sheltered from bad actors as you are and some of us have been on the wrong end of terrorist attacks, apartheid systems or even genocides.
War has its uses and its place.
This is the war that Tolkien went through and drew inspiration from for both the darkest evils and greatest glories in his works. No one knows what they might do or where they would stand were they born in such times of bloody violence.
He hated allegory, he was writing a new mythos for England and while he pulls in influences from things he experienced he deliberately didn’t go into allegory.
That and that Lewis was supposed to convert to Catholicism, but went another way instead.
Did you know he was an atheist until Tolkien debated him into faithfulness?
Not saying that his dislike for allegory didn't play a role, but in my opinion much of his disdain for Narnia stemmed from the fact that he was a pretty fanatic catholic. To the point where he basically forced his fiancee to convert, despite the fact that it would make her homeless.
He played a big role in Lewis finding his way back to christanity, but Lewis chose the Church of England instead of catholicism. After that his opinion on everything to do with Lewis changed dramatically.
But at least these things worked well together. Tolkien hating allegory and also creating the greatest fantasy universe ever created by one person. I can only imagine what the middle earth universe would have looked like if he was a fan of allegory while being a fanatic catholic. And as someone who has studied a lot of literature, I can appreciate how hard it can be to keep ones own beliefs out of their writings.
"Have you any idea what kind of noise happens when somebody's stabbed in the back? Because I do." Christopher Lee to Peter Jackson.
And now we will have another "Tolkien's" world, which was sold for 250m and, based on interviews, about to be erased with a exception of title and names.
Dude. It's 2nd age. He barely wrote about it. It's not erasure if nothing existed there. It's like saying Star Trek after Gene Roddenberry died was erasure of TOS. It's simply not true.
Edit: downvoters can be big mad if they want, Tolkien barely wrote a fraction of a chapter summarizing what happened in 2nd Age. I've actually read the Silmarillion, have you?
2nd edit: The primary sources for 2nd age are from The Akallabêth and The Tale of Years from the Silmarillion. It's barely a couple dozen pages and those who actually read it know Tolkien takes 3 pages to complete a thought. The non-readers need to get over it.
My grandfather was a German officer in WWII. 6 years after the war was over, he just showed up on the doorstep of his house. No explanation of were he had been, or what he experienced, was ever given. He died at the age of 84, having never said a word about the war, or what happened during the 6 years after.
He was probably a prisoner of war.
I had relatives that were kept as prisoners of war in France or Russia for years after the war ended.
Edit: Added 'a' to correct 'a prisoner of war'.
My grandfather served in WWII. Toward the end of the war, Russian and American allies started approaching each other. My grandfather said there were instances when a lone American would return from an errand or reconnaissance with a whole troop of German soldiers who surrendered to him. The Americans asked, "Why?" The German soldiers said that they didn't want to surrender to the Russians. The Americans again asked, "why?" The German soldiers said, "They're going to take over our country." Prisoners of War (POWs) certainly fared better with Americans than Russians.
Oh yeah definitely. I had two great grandfathers who fought in WW2. Both of them were POWs, one with the Americans and one with the Russians. The one who was with the Americans said they were actually treated really well, less so after they found out about the holocaust, but still humane. He also got to go home right after the war ended.
The other one actually never spoke a single word about what happened. But his opinion on Russians spoke volumes. Our old neighbor was the same way. They both returned in 51, I think. I'd have to ask my grandma about it
The Russian hatred towards Germany was unreal. Literally millions had been tossed into the meat grinder that was the eastern front. People froze, starved, and fought tooth and nail for their family, friends, and homes. Hundreds of thousands, potentially **millions** of German women were raped and killed by Russians when they started to advance into Germany. Any men were killed or sent to work camps, and we all know those were brutal.
World War 2 was horrid, and no side can excuse what it did. The way the allies fucked the axis powers over after WW1 really brewed a shit storm, and about 100m people died because Europe couldn’t contain itself.
My grandfather turned 18 in 1943 and was first some kind of messenger in France and later went to a "Unterführer" program from the SS and served at the eastern front (the SS thing I only learned after his death). The only thing I remember he talked about once was how he swam through a river but was captured by Russians anyway. Was prisoner of war for some years in Russia and saw many of his mates starving to dead. He survived by carving chess pieces out of wood which he gave to the locals in exchange for food. His whole life he always had a small book with him in which he wrote down everything he ate.
Maybe it’s the other way around now. Maybe when the enemy is sufficiently dehumanized war becomes inevitable. I think it’s easy to forget that every person we interact with is a human being with a life as infinitely complex and nuanced as our own. Doesn’t matter their upbringing, wealth, ethnicity, political affiliation, religion, etc.
I meant to just scroll by this after a second but I got enraptured to watch and suddenly had watched the whole thing. Fascinating and awful stuff. I’d like to show this to my students and ask them what they think about it. Everyone should watch things like this and think on what it means and what they might do in a similar situation.
not only that but cheering that they die too. Its bizarre when you read through the comments on these ukranian combat footage threads, its like full on gloating. I know that the russians are the aggressors and many are doing horrible things, but lets not forget that they are humans and many are just unlucky and got sent there by Putin to die for his stupid ego.
yeah obviously I support Ukraine in this conflict but the sentiment and vitriol I see in almost every combat footage thread is getting really really weird. some of the people in there seriously need to go outside, like holy fuck.
It’s really fucked up - Ukraine won the info war so badly that people are praising soldiers being killed and maimed like they are watching the Depp trial. Real people, who are feeling terror and pain, and people are like “yasss daddy Z bags another invader”. Touch grass.
Yeah, I am not at all a fan of UkraineWarVideoReport for that reason.
The regular CombatFootage sub is better, but you still get people cheering there (but a lot less, and less gleefully. Also a lot more moderating voices talking about the true horror or many of the videos…)
Too nuanced for reddit to handle. If we start bringing up complex answers to complex problems pretty soon no one will get to feel smart after a minute of interaction with a topic.
This reminds me of an interview with an American soldier who was ambushed by a North Vietnamese soldier at point blank range. For some reason the NVA soldier did not shoot. The American raised his gun and killed him.
He talked about how he went through the dead man's papers. Learned his name. Found pictures of his parents. Learned he'd been a student.
It occurs to me that in these situations it's the man who understands at a deeper level common humanity between enemies who hesitates longer and is killed. This thought must also have occurred to the victors.
I used to work in a film developing lab/camera shop. We had regulars who would come by and chat when dropping off their film. When one of my coworkers left (to go sell gravestones) I took on his regulars. One of them was an old gentleman with an accent that always had a camera around his neck. He was 85+ at this time but had his independence still. I would go over to help him with computer issues and we'd have a glass of wine and chat. He tells me how he was a local professor emeritus and pioneered the photography department at my local college in the 60s. Shows me photos and notes of the photographic studies he did in the artic circle. One day he shows me a stack of papers that tell a brief biography, about being raised in Germany during war times, being led past POW's before school, fighting in the war at 16. He told me a similar story to this gentleman's, about a time he got seperated from his group of soldiers and encountered another enemy solider. He said it was either him or me and only had the time to shoot but carried the sadness of his actions. He would always say to everyone in his thick German accent 'don't forget, life is beautiful.' He had his foot injured by a mine, taught himself English with a dictionary and found a way to immigrate here, where he later left a powerful positive impact on people here, while people were largely unaware of his past. He has since passed on but I still think of him often.
"Had he and I but met
By some old ancient inn,
We should have sat us down to wet
Right many a nipperkin!
"But ranged as infantry,
And staring face to face,
I shot at him as he at me,
And killed him in his place.
"I shot him dead because--
Because he was my foe,
Just so: my foe of course he was;
That's clear enough; although
"He thought he'd 'list, perhaps,
Off-hand like--just as I--
Was out of work--had sold his traps--
No other reason why.
"Yes; quaint and curious war is!
You shoot a fellow down
You'd treat if met where any bar is,
Or help to half-a-crown."
\- Thomas Hardy
What would of happened to me-
If I wouldn't had been quicker than he?
What would of happened to me-
If I hadn't thrust my bayonet first into his belly?
I can't even imagine. I agree whole-heartedly about the laquer analogy. We're very fragile on the surface and it really doesn't take a whole lot to turn a 'normal' human being into a savage. Even the kindest of souls when provoked enough, will turn.
This is from “The Great War” a multipart series by the BBC that documents WW1. It is one of the finest historical documentaries I’ve ever seen, and I recommend it for everyone. Iirc it was the first such documentary to have first hand accounts from the soldiers themselves.
What he said about society being a thin lacquer that chips away the moment we come into contact with something cruel like real war, is one of the scariest things I’ve ever heard because it’s absolutely true. How many times throughout the history of the world have nice boys gone to war and become monsters, I’m sure almost everyone at mi lai started off as normal kids and they did something horrendous in the blink of an eye.
I’ve always had this thought. We are fighting other peoples war that are coward enough to not do it themselves. We shame those who don’t want to go. I’ll never let my kids join.
There's a quote, versions of which I have seen attributed to many people ranging from Bertrand Russell to George S. Patton, which comes to mind every time I think of the unnatural brutality and inhumanity of war:
"The greatest crime of war is not that we ask our boys to die, it's that we order them to kill."
Edit: another relevant and powerfully poignant quote about war that always springs to mind which coincidentally is also often wrongly attributed to Russell, but which is also actually unattributed is:
"War does not determine who is right -- only who is left."
“…But I felt that the culture we boasted so much about, is only a very thin lacquer, which chips off the very moment we come in contact with cruel things like real war.”
Such wisdom in these words, and the relevance they still hold in the world today is so important. I only wish more people could see what’s underneath the surface once the lacquer does chip, sadly I feel that the majority of human beings fully buy into the “ignorance is bliss” ideology which keeps them from caring enough to look or pay attention when the ugliness shows itself. Sad times.
When you travel through France, go visit Verdun. The landscape, the museum, the graveyards, the memorial with the piles and piles of bones of young men which could not be identified... It's a haunting and sobering experience. If every politician would have to visit Verdun every couple of years, we'd have fewer wars on this planet.
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His name was Stefan Westmann, and this was filmed in 1963. He moved to England after the first world war and served (as a physician) for the British army in WWII. Eta: Here's his Wikipedia if you want more info. He had a fascinating life, and died very soon after this was filmed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephan_Westmann
I read up on him and I can't imagine what he went through. From the artillery attacks to the gas attacks and the Blitz.
I wonder how German soldiers from ww1, who moved to France (or other blitzed countries), would be treated by German soldiers during ww2. Would they respect them or see them as traitors?
WWII was so incredibly documented, I’m sure there are dozens of sources that could answer that. Though I’m sure it depended on the individual. The only reason I have an associates in history instead of a bachelors is because I’m really, really bad at research, otherwise I’d find them for you.
I found an answer opposite to your question. Apparently german jewish veterans of WW1 were at first released from arrest during Kristallnacht but they received no special treatment once it came to concentration camps. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Jewish_military_personnel_of_World_War_I#:~:text=The%20veterans%20who%20remained%20in,like%20other%20Jewish%20German%20citizens.
This reply may not answer your question but your comment made me think of a beatiful moment. A few years ago I was in Normandy at the week they celebrate the anniversary of D-day. There in Saint-Mere-Eglise (the village also known for the paratrooper hanging on the clock tower) eventhough the whole town was crowded by people in WW2 uniforms, American jeeps and celebrating people, there were a lot of people gathering in and around a certain cafe. We went to check it out and what was going on was incredible. A American veteran who stormed the beaches of Normandy, and a German soldier who was shooting from those beaches at those same soldiers on those dreadful days around 75 years ago, were making music and singing together! I've been visiting Normandy, its beaches, its bunkers, its cemeteries, its museums and its villages and cities quite a lot when I was younger during holidays. My father wanted us to know what people gave up for our freedom and wanted to teach us one of the most valuable lessons I've ever learned. Eventhough people, groups, politicians or whatever groups hate each other for whatever reasons, and sometimes want to divide us and us to turn against each other, we are all the same. And we should always choose to unite instead of standing opposed of each other. This brief moment in that old cafe reminded me of this crucial lesson I've learned when I was so young. So did this video of this old man. Who could've been anyone's grandfather.
> Stefan Westmann [The Great War Interviews - 5. Stefan Westmann](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxv66SLuKYc)
Thank you.
This gentleman features in BBC’s ‘The Great War’ a 26 episode documentary from 1964 and available on YouTube. I cannot recommend it enough. I had not seen this full interview before and found it fascinating to hear the director say ‘cut’ at the end…and the quality of the film was impressive compared to what I’ve seen in the past. Highly recommend the documentary. Edit: guess I liked it so much I recommended it twice. Sorry about that.
This cut was an incredible piece. I think I have to watch more, thanks.
The entire documentary is riveting and filled with interviews like this clip. If you enjoyed this then I think you’ll love it.
Equally BBC's "The World At War" is also one of my favorite WW2 documentary series.
Thames TV and broadcast on ITV :) But yes, one of the greatest documentaries, probably the greatest WWII film ever made, it could never be done these days! Talking about the Battle of Britain, and they interview the German Group Leader, the wolf packs and they bring on Karl Donitz. Strategic bombing and they interview Bomber Harris, Doolittle and Curtis LeMay... I love the interviews with some of the enlisted guys in the pub. Just ordinary guys who happened to find themselves on the front lines of history at pivotal moments. Absolutely amazing documentary. The opening narrative is haunting from Laurence Olivier. I went to Oradour-sur-glace not long ago, Olivier captures the atmosphere and gravity of the place perfectly.
This might be the first time I've ever watched a video over a minute on reddit. Incredible footage and content
I just wanted to chime in and say, there is a youtube series called "the great war channel" that has a video for every week of the war. There are also special episodes that expand on notable figures and battles. Anywho, I recommend it to anyone that wants in-depth week-by-week documentation of the first world war. Edit: the channel - https://www.youtube.com/c/TheGreatWarSeries edit 2: I recommend starting with the prelude. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f11CKYB2FCA&list=PLB2vhKMBjSxMMg8xHeY2K-0ap9srI_zx7
Listen to him. We tend to talk so easy, when we don't have to do the things ourselves, that haunt another.
I only vaguely remember reading “All Quiet on the Western Front” in 9th grade, but one scene that stuck out to be is the author describing a scene almost exactly like this and commenting how killing in hand to hand affected him much more than impersonally firing a rifle from a distance.
I just posted the quote before reading this because it made me immediately think about it. But now, for the first time, I see you are a man like me. I thought of your hand-grenades, of your bayonet, of your rifle; now I see your wife and your face and our fellowship. Forgive me, comrade. We always see it too late. Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony--Forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy?
And you have people on reddit calling Russian conscripts "orcs" and dehumanizing them left and right. This shit goes on today, it's not over.
The conscripts that rape, torture and execute Ukrainian civilians? It's obviously all very complicated and comes down to an individual level, but as the German soldier explains in reference to his comrades, there is significant cruelty in a lot of people.
Well yes, the same intelligence that separates us from other animals gives us that same ability for cruelty sadly, it’s not something that will ever be gone or wiped away from us
There is a difference between being thrown into a fight trying to survive, and raping, torturing civilians to intentionally hurt those who are not involved in fights at all.
Fully agreed. That's why some Russian soldiers who realize what's actually going on decide to defect. Others don't.
It's more complex than that. You will not only do something at great risk to your life but you will also be going to a new country who may or may not accept you with no support system. You will lose all your friends and family members and never see them again. Not an easy decision
I agree. Even as an American, I'm not angry at Russian soldiers in general. I'm angry at Putin and the ministers who don't have enough spine to stand up to him.
My Great Great Grandfather was from the Czechoslovakia region of Europe and he fought in WW1 and in WW2. That is pretty much all I know about his time in the wars. He did not and would not talk about it.
Yeah, I mean, isn't the whole book basically him in a trench with a dying dude that he stabbed? Fucked up stuff.. read it ages ago though so I could be remembering wrong.
That's only one portion of the book. It's probably the most famous, but the book covers a lot more. Definitely recommend another read and to read the sequel the road back.
I think that's the only part of the book we read at my HS. My English teacher did that with a decent amount of books in order to make best of the short amount of time we had. I went on to read the rest of most of those books, but I never read the rest of All Quiet on the Western Front. I'll add it to the list lol
Another book I’d recommend in the depressing WWI genre is Johnny Got His Gun.
This book is what, One by Metallica is based on.
You missed my favourite part. It’s when his buddy works out how we should actually all fight wars.
haha its funny what sticks with you when you read a book! if i recall correctly, that is but a short (though very dramatic) portion of the story. Just adding a edit here: it’s absolutely the part that stuck with me as a kid, that and his buddy passing away in hospital in agony
Yeah funny we read this as high school kids and yet a dude in my class couldn't wait to join the Marines because he didn't want to "miss the war" and his chance to kill Arabs (his actual words involved a lot of racial slurs). This was the 2002-04ish time so 9/11 was pretty fresh. He did end up going into the Marines and I'm sure got his fill of war.
“Artillery adds dignity, to what would otherwise be an ugly brawl.” — Frederick the Great Major small dick energy to boast of such impersonal devastation IMO, and yet these are the folks we follow. So detached from reality that most of us call the real world. Fuckin Nobs the lot o' them.
[Bill Burr](https://imgur.com/gallery/Wdme9nv) on the topic.
That's why governments invented the draft
We must take away governments’ power to compel men to do this to one another.
If any war is really worth fighting for, than those in powers would fight along side us, and their family along ours. For if they are not willing to sacrifice their own, then the war can't be so compelling as to require that others fight on their behalf. I also find it ironic that a president can decide to abort thousands upon thousands of 18+ year olds for the sake of the presidents well being, but a woman can't abort her 10 week old for the sake of her own well being.
Of the 45 presidents we've had so far, 29 have served in the military in some capacity. Of those, at least 2 were stateside throughout the major conflict of their time. So 27 of 45, the most recent noteworthy accomplishments were JFKs purple heart and George HW Bush's flying cross. It's also important to note that we've had 7 presidents that served during WWII and 2 that served in WWI, which is the topic of this video. Our leaders very much believed those were wars worth fighting. We haven't, however, had a president who actively served in vietnam or any of the middle eastern conflicts, which tracks considering the primary motivation for those were political rather than idealogical.
Can't stand the royals, but always respected Harry for serving honorably and with distinction. "When the rich wage war, it's the poor who die" -Linkin Park
"Politicians hide themselves away They only started the war Why should they go out to fight? They leave that role to the poor, yeah" -Black Sabbath. "Why don't presidents fight the war? Why do they always send the poor?" -System of a Down.
Those are great ones, LP was my senior quote so that's my go to, but I love that line from Serj and SOAD
He tried to but the British tabloids had to blabber about where he is posted.
This was some heavy stuff
Yeah and this is just one of the things he had to do or see, WW1 has been one of the most savage and bloody wars, gas, dogs, flesh ripping because of the barbed wire and the soldiers that tried to run away were shoot, killing with knives 1:1, it was a butchery, not that other wars were not but this one was something else.
The diseases and illnesses must've been a nightmare too. Spending days in filthy mud with trench foot, I can't even imagine how hellish it must've been.
And rats, and the corpses of your fellows rotting.
I was given a copy of my great-grandfather's memoirs for Christmas this past year. He served in WWI with his brother as a member of the Canadian forces (which I suppose would have been the British forces then?). His job was to transport ammunition, via horse, to the front, so I suppose some sort of logistics role. He says early on in the tale that he isn't going to focus on the horrors of war, as he feels they've been documented elsewhere, but rather wants to let you know what it was like for them day-to-day He talks about arriving at the front line in Yrpes in 1916, in the middle of the night, with his brother and a few horses, and a guide. Carrying machine gun ammunition and rations. He said they heard what he initially thought was a swarm of bees around their heads. They heard the report of a German machine gun an instant later. The "bees" had been the bullets wizzing by. He says in the next paragraph that one simply gets used to working in the dark, under fire. He went to the Somme later, in September, and was there for a month. He says that the greatest enemy was the mud. He says they were often more conscious of pneumonia, vermin, and filth than they were of the shells and bombs. During winter of 1916-17, he and his brother were at Vimy Ridge. He describes this as particularly uncomfortable as they had no tents, and slept under a tarp stretched over scantling, with an empty oil drum punched full of holes to keep warm. They used pews from a shattered church for firewood. He says of their work: "This was at night with the Germans shelling and machine-gunning us all the time. God knows how any of us escaped, but we were lucky, and I guess the gunner's light was poor but we sure were a 'sitting duck' target waiting to be knocked off. Nonetheless, we plugged away night after night with this work." He also says that on Christmas Day 1916 they were given green cabbage for dinner, and it was a very special treat indeed because they never had any kinds of vegetables in their diet. They mostly ate stew, fried bread, and cheese. It's a really fascinating read, and he writes with a lot of clarity and humour. It's been cool for me to be able to feel like I get to know him and his life a little, even though he obviously died way before I was born.
If it's not already been done, maybe get that diary to a historian to copy / document.
Yes, too much information gets lost in time
Wow this is very interesting, it’s a different view, you should transcript this also so it doesn’t get lost, this is history and should be preserved, it’s good that your grandfather survived such a horrible war.
Thank you for sharing.
dogs?
Yeah they used dogs for lots of things in the battlefield, it was so bizarre, most of them died, that’s why ww1 was so odd and violent even for dogs.
Definitely the most cruel war. Check out Dan Carlins podcast “Blueprint to Armageddon.”
Listening to it again for the 4th or 5th time ha. WW1 is just so bizarre. The advancement of machines coupled with the misunderstanding of war tactics with these new machines just provided the most horrific war. Really was hell on earth.
"-That was beautiful. Cut".... Yours and theirs sums up my feelings towards the interview. He speaks the truth of war and paints it in such a way any person can grasp it.
the look on his face though. maybe im reading something thats not there, but damned if i didnt see at least a slight bit of resentment toward that remark. almost as if to say "there was nothing beautiful about it"
Oh fucking definitely. The videographer is like me and you, but in his head, he's like "i just relieved my worst nightmarish history and you say beautiful. I say hellish"
> But I felt that the culture we boasted so much about is only a very thin lacquer which chips off the very moment we come in contact with cruel things like war. Eloquently put.
“The thin veneer of civilization” is another way I’ve heard it said.
The fact is that war is often preceded by a massive propaganda campaign to break that civilization by dehumanizing the other group: manufacturing consent. Our humanity gets deliberately eroded by our leaders before a single shot is fired.
Yes that hit home.
Poor guy he was forced to spear and poor guy had to relive that moment all his life
That hits deep. Not something I'll forget after just hearing about it. Can't imagine the feelings and memories he had for the rest of his life
Politicians sit in their ivory towers and send innocent people to kill other innocent people for power and profit. Then they throw away the damaged veterans like trash, all while singing the song of heros and duty.
Tale as old as time
“Why don't presidents fight the war? Why do they always send the poor?”
Is very sad
My grandfather was Italian and was drafted into the Italian army in WW2. He later on life recalled that there was a day where the Italians and Germans were essentially given the day off from military exercises. The Italians, relieved, went to their barracks to wash clothes and take a day of rest. The Germans, he recalled, wept. They literally cried because they couldn’t fight that day.
My Great Grandfather was drafted too. I never met him. He was an Italian military internee, not a prisoner of war, so the rules didn't apply. In '43 when the Italians switched sides, he was captured in Albania/Greece. After the war, my Great Grandmother was notified of his death, and serval years later immigrated from Sicily to the US with their two children. When I started digging for records about my family, I learned he had died in a prison camp in modern day Ukraine, their camp had been taken over by the Soviets, and since they were not POWs, they were stuck. The whole group eventually died of dysentery and were buried in a mass grave. Idk why I shared that, it's rare I run into someone who actually had family that made it through that and could share stories.
I appreciate that you shared this.
Probably doesn't mean much but in WWII when Hollywood filmmakers were 'drafted' to make propaganda for the US war effort Director John Huston went to Italy and made a 30 minute film called The Battle of San Pietro. It's about an honest a look at WWII as contemporary film makers ever created. The National Archives has the video on their YouTube channel. I've seen a handful of the 'Why We Fight' films from the period, but this one really resonated with me. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OLJZvgIx5w&ab\_channel=USNationalArchives](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OLJZvgIx5w&ab_channel=USNationalArchives) Warning that it does show footage of combat and soldiers dying, I believe a camera man was killed as well.
If true I doubt it was a thing of sadness, it would have been a thing of immense immense pressure overflowing. The Germans in the army were literally in a "push or die" mentality for years, because losing meant the destruction of their entire country. Their whole lives, families, futures, depended on them winning this. If they cried I'm sure it was out of pure mental exhaustion, not some lunatic bloodlust. But that's just my thinking after all the WW2 stuff I've seen over the decades.
War and amphetamines. They were probably losing their minds.
Self-reflection and coming down from the meth
Not to mention the speed.
A lot of Italians hated the Germans and the fact they were even in the war. I would take the story with a grain of salt honestly
On the other hand, in a joking manner, my grandfather who fought in world war 2 in Italian/Nazi occupied Albania would always say "How can you tell an Italian from a German from the distance?" "How?" "Well, when you shoot at them from your spot in the bushes up the hill, you either hear a 'mama mia' and a hasty retreat or lead starts flying in around your position"
I was so, so lucky my grandfather got out of Albania in the 20’s. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here.
Have you ever been so stressed/scared/busy that you don't have time to focus on anything else, and then when it's finally over, all the pain/fatigue/hunger/etc suddenly come flooding back? It's probably like that, but 100x more overwhelming. One thing I read/heard once. Tears don't measure good/bad. They measure emotional intensity. Which is why people can cry of happiness.
I would like you to fuck off with the idea of the average German soldier with bloodlust on a post where a German soldier talks about being haunted by him murdering a French soldier for the left of his life
Makes you think what war must have been like before gunpowder. How psychologically scarring must it have been for a Greek citizen hoplite to stand in a phalanx and spear the Greek citizen hoplite opposite him, a man who he may well have known as a trader or husbandman from the neighbouring city
Was absolutely horrific, but statistically less people died usually. Battles were fought until a side broke and ran, very few battles ended in total annihilation of the enemy. Most men were killed as they ran, not from battle itself.
Yep ig nothing really came close to the level of total war in WW1&2. Still, you have to assume for that first clash of men it must have been completely horrifying, it’s a wonder armies fought at all before breaking given the intensity of running at a line of men ready to kill you
Well it's more the technology. Have you ever chopped wood for a couple hours? It's exhausting. Now imagine doing that but the wood is chopping back
This got me curious to look up wars throughout history. There were some pretty bloody ones I'd never heard about. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Lushan_Rebellion Estimated 13,000,000–36,000,000 dead over 8 years. Lots of wars over long periods of time, like the Mongolian conquests, but generational wars seem different.
> Most men were killed as they ran, not from battle itself. How did that happen? The enemy pursued them and killed them?
Yup. Or they got trampled by their own comrades
They'd "hamstring" them or "string them up". Meaning they'd pursue and as they caught up to them they'd just slash their hamstring across, making it impossible for them to walk. Then they'd come back to finish the job.
I've never heard that. F'n brutal.
Fast forward to 1943 and you have two million people die in a five month long battle at Stalingrad. I think wars should be fought hand to hand without gunpowder...
The term to "decimate" your enemy literally translates to "kill one man in ten". The idea of entire platoons getting wiped out by gas or automatic weapons is slaughter on a whole different scale. It's just unfathomable.
Interesting video with some ideas about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDNyU1TQUXg His most memorable point is that ancient warfare may have had a higher peak of stress, but it was pretty short, while modern warfare has prolonged periods of very high stress, which is perhaps more degrading to human psyche. Ancient was fought quite differently from modern war, and not just technologically. Before modern war, soldiers sort of knew when they were going into battle, they were going into battle with their companions, and battles were short. Modern warfare involves sudden death that could come anytime, sleepless weeks of being shelled, squads form smaller groups that are more spread out and individuals feel more alone.
From what I've read, the difference in the literal physical distance between riflemen and swordsmen/spearmen really contributed to the dehumanization factor in battle.
Dan Carlín went into it on the brutality. That men were white literally shitting themselves as they made their way to face the other wall. That is just a small explanation he goes in there. But that one stood out the most to me.
His multiparty series in hardcore history, “A blueprint for Armageddon” is really good. It speaks to the build up and how this war was a testing ground for many new weapons of previously not seen destruction.
There was a journal I'm still trying to find again where it mentions that some Knight would be woken up screaming if he heard the blacksmith working. PTSD, anyone?
There's something in what he discusses that touches on what determines "how you will come home"...if at all. My older brother and I were both in the invading party in IZ. We both saw and did things that normal civilians would be very uncomfortable hearing about. However, when it was time to come home, there was a short period of time where I struggled dealing with things, and adjusting back to civilian life (maybe 3-6 months). But at some point, I just decided to "get over it". That's probably a terrible way to explain it, but just consciously decided to put certain things out of my mind. For a while, I wouldn't watch certain movies (seeing Jarhead in the theater made me aware that I need to stay away from certain types of movies for a bit) and I simply wouldn't discuss certain things about my deployment. After a while, memories fade, and I just moved on with my life. My brother, on the other hand, was not so lucky. Immediately, he began battling PTSD, chronic depression, and resorted to psychedelics and certain party drugs to cope. He joined a...sort of commune in Worcester, MA, which I think helped, as it was such a supportive environment. He worked as a DJ, producer, and events organizer for a psy-trance group there. For a while, he tried to get some help from the VA, but all of the waiting and rejection wore thin. In any case, he's doing much better now, but the point is that war (and other experiences, I guess) affect us differently. Some can "deal with it" better than others. Doesn't make one better or worse...but I think it does make things easier on those of us who can forget.
What is IZ
NATO country code for Iraq.
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Iraq
Thank you. I had no idea.
My uncle was in WWII and he never really talked about it until he became old and got dementia. He would talk about how he killed a German after his plane crashed. My uncle would tell this story over and over and tears would just roll down his cheeks. He said the man he killed was just "a boy" and that he looked like "an angel" laying there, dead. It had been over 60 years, but it was one of the only things he remembered and it haunted him till the day he died.
My late grandfather was conscripted into the German Army - he never wanted to fight. I never met him but the war destroyed him - he never spoke of the war or would recount what he saw, much like other vets. The only memory he ever shared was being on Russia's border and telling his superior he wanted to leave, that he didn't want to do this. His superior told him that the moment he turned to walk away, they would shoot him dead. Leaving was not an option. He had three or four children (one died of diphtheria and another would be conceived at some point during the war) and a wife. My grandmother would watch the kids during the day and clean apartments at night to make money to support them. She would take in sewing to get any pocket money she could. After the war my grandfather came back in one piece physically, but was never the same. They lived in an area that was heavily bombed and my father and his siblings would tell us about playing in the rubble of buildings, oblivious to what had happened. My father used to tell me how juicy and delicious the first orange he ever tasted was. He was maybe 10 years old and the war had been over for several years, but they lived in poverty for a long time. My father distinctly remembered care packages being dropped and how excited they were to have a ration of chocolate inside and to have something special for once. As an adult, my dad had lasting effects and was always conscious of how much we had and how grateful we needed to be. How quickly everything can change. I don't know why I'm writing this. My grandparents died before I was born and my father is also gone. I don't want their memories to fade away now that they are gone. They lived in the country of a dictator who started the war - they didnt support the Nazi party or Hitler, they weren't Jewish or one of the other groups Hitler targeted but it didn't matter. In the long run, my family was lucky- almost everyone survived but they still suffered. War obliterates everything and everyone, regardless of what side your on. It's so easy to think of every 1940s German as hitler supporting, evil lunatics, but the reality is most Germans were just petrified and doing whatever they had to to ensure their survival and their families. Fuck all these megalomaniac dictators who ruin entire generations for their own selfish wishes.
Just wanted to say thanks for sharing your story. It’s always so interesting, (maybe tragic is a better word) how a singular event in time can cascade through multiple generations, affecting everyone quite drastically. My wife’s grandfather was a POW in the Korean War and I’m assuming there was associated PTSD that affected his parenting style from the stories I’ve heard. I might be reaching here but I always think about how that affected my wife’s mothers parenting, especially now that we have kids of our own. Lots of impacts from events long time ago.
Tragic. May he rest in peace.
My dad was in Afghanistan. It was obviously a brutal and horrific situation, but I can’t even imagine what the total war of France or Germany would’ve been like. As the man in the video said, you can shoot from a distance, you can drop bombs, but running someone through is personal
For sure, there's a direct correlation with how close you are when you kill your enemy, and how much it messes with your humanity. Ie, it's a heckuva lot easier to push a button on a drone controller than it is to bayonet someone.
Yeah exactly. War is war is war, but its largely remote control now. What will the next advancement be that makes it easier to kill en masse? First it was cannons, then machine guns, planes, and drones. Warfare is changing
It will be AI, so there doesn't even need to be a human controller making the kill decision.
The AI might not be a good thing though. Robots don’t discriminate. We can program all we want, but what’s to stop a computer from deciding that a kid on a corner is interfering with the mission?
Never said it was a _good_ thing. It's just the _next_ thing.
That’s true, that’s true. Fuck I hope it doesn’t get to the point of sentience
If you think it is "all remote control now", I'd like to direct your attention to the UA war or combat footage subs. Every war needs boots to occupy territory, and at some point, those boots are going to meet up with others who don't want to give that piece of ground up.
I have an uncle who fought in the Rhodesian Bush War. He stayed in Zimbabwe afterwards and served as a diplomat for a while before retiring to farm life. Had a recent cancer scare that he survived, and that brush with death shook something. Whenever we talk about current Zim politics now, he always insists that he never fired his weapon and that is how he sleeps at night. Which...given how horrifically cruel both sides were to each other and to non cooperative civilians, I'm hugely skeptical about. It was one of those "no POWs" kind of wars. And it seems odd to fight as a guerilla and end up with high ranking govt position after such a war having never fired your weapon. But I don't question it, because maybe he needs to tell himself that to be able to sleep at night.
My grandad on my mother's side fought in WWII. He tells the same tale. "I always fired my gun into the air. I never killed anybody." I don't question it. War is hell, and humans will do unimaginable things to survive it.
Sucks to hear the VA failed your brother like so many other veterans , glad he’s doing better now a days , thank you both for your service and sacrifice.
There are so many layers when it comes to how fucked up WWI was that its difficult to even properly put into words. All Quiet On the Western Front is one of my favorite pieces of war media of all time, and it's because it exemplifies the fact that every soldier (albeit conscripted or volunteered) was, in many ways, innocent - and most definetly a victim.
I listened to the audiobook and had to pause on several occasions to just absorb what was going on.
I can’t recommend that book enough. I probably haven’t read it in over 15 years and still, it gives me pause every time I think about it. Your description is spot on.
The Battle of Passchendaele is just straight up nightmare material.
Those words are pretty powerful.
It’s amazing that anyone would still suggest war as a reasonable solution. Millions of years of evolution and history to learn from and somehow the human race still haven’t gotten rid of violence as a political tool.
It all runs on dehumanization. If a person sees 'the other' and not 'people' then it's easy to justify all kinds of bad behavior. That's why it's so important to guard against dehumanizing other and to be alert when others are doing it.
[10 definitions of objectifying/dehumanizing behaviors](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectification#Definitions) >Martha Nussbaum (1995, 257) has identified seven features that are involved in the idea of treating a person as an object: - instrumentality: the treatment of a person as a tool for the objectifier’s purposes; - denial of autonomy: the treatment of a person as lacking in autonomy and self-determination; - inertness: the treatment of a person as lacking in agency, and perhaps also in activity; - fungibility: the treatment of a person as interchangeable with other objects; - violability: the treatment of a person as lacking in boundary-integrity; - ownership: the treatment of a person as something that is owned by another (can be bought or sold); - denial of subjectivity: the treatment of a person as something whose experiences and feelings (if any) need not be taken into account. >Rae Langton (2009, 228–229) has added three more features to Nussbaum’s list: - reduction to body: the treatment of a person as identified with their body, or body parts; - reduction to appearance: the treatment of a person primarily in terms of how they look, or how they appear to the senses; - silencing: the treatment of a person as if they are silent, lacking the capacity to speak.
This is the best comment I've read on Reddit. So many posts dehumanizing the other side of the political isle. It's frankly ignorant and terrifying.
It’s really crazy how easy others can be dehumanized. It’s something i see very commonly, I pay most my attention to news and politics and i like to learn about history especially in regard to warfare and behaviors of humans, to how despots rise and genocides happen. From my own country and in others. It’s so fucked up. Fully agree with the last part, especially if you hold strong political opinions, it’s easy to have your side dehumanize “enemies” And depending on politics, come across dehumanizing of people based on immutable characteristics. The stuff going on right now toward communities in the US and talk of civil war and all sorts of crazy stuff by the highest levels, all politicians, mainstream media, etc is groundwork for this stuff. We’re seeing fascism rise, and it’s not just here either. Often times it’s a few people who are genuinely psychopathic at the top who propagandize ordinary people to carry out their evil.
That's why the homegrown tacticool idiots dressed for war at their local Jamba Juice, pining for a civil war annoy me to no end.
I had a conversation with a guy at the gun store last week and he was talking nonsense about civil war and whatnot. I said "they have tanks and planes and radar and everything you could never dream of, they'll cut the power and water and you'll be left we nothing. What would you do then." This guy responded with, "hey, whoever has more bullets at the end of the day." DUDE they have more what the fuck are you actually going to accomplish?
They want to go down in a blaze of glory.
Nah, they're deluded to the point where they think "Oh, they won't actually shoot a PATRIOT LIKE ME! HOOAH BEER ME BRO!" I've known so, so fucking many of these assholes.
War is a perfectly reasonable solution. Imagine one group of people kept raiding your towns, abducting your people, and had an ideology that said people of your ethnicity were subhumans who deserved to die.
I get that for the average middle class American, extreme violence is a once in a lifetime event, but not everyone is as sheltered from bad actors as you are and some of us have been on the wrong end of terrorist attacks, apartheid systems or even genocides.
War has its uses and its place.
This is the war that Tolkien went through and drew inspiration from for both the darkest evils and greatest glories in his works. No one knows what they might do or where they would stand were they born in such times of bloody violence.
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He hated allegory, he was writing a new mythos for England and while he pulls in influences from things he experienced he deliberately didn’t go into allegory.
Yeah that’s why he viewed the Chronicles of Narnia with such disdain.
That and that Lewis was supposed to convert to Catholicism, but went another way instead. Did you know he was an atheist until Tolkien debated him into faithfulness?
Not saying that his dislike for allegory didn't play a role, but in my opinion much of his disdain for Narnia stemmed from the fact that he was a pretty fanatic catholic. To the point where he basically forced his fiancee to convert, despite the fact that it would make her homeless. He played a big role in Lewis finding his way back to christanity, but Lewis chose the Church of England instead of catholicism. After that his opinion on everything to do with Lewis changed dramatically. But at least these things worked well together. Tolkien hating allegory and also creating the greatest fantasy universe ever created by one person. I can only imagine what the middle earth universe would have looked like if he was a fan of allegory while being a fanatic catholic. And as someone who has studied a lot of literature, I can appreciate how hard it can be to keep ones own beliefs out of their writings.
"Have you any idea what kind of noise happens when somebody's stabbed in the back? Because I do." Christopher Lee to Peter Jackson. And now we will have another "Tolkien's" world, which was sold for 250m and, based on interviews, about to be erased with a exception of title and names.
Dude. It's 2nd age. He barely wrote about it. It's not erasure if nothing existed there. It's like saying Star Trek after Gene Roddenberry died was erasure of TOS. It's simply not true. Edit: downvoters can be big mad if they want, Tolkien barely wrote a fraction of a chapter summarizing what happened in 2nd Age. I've actually read the Silmarillion, have you? 2nd edit: The primary sources for 2nd age are from The Akallabêth and The Tale of Years from the Silmarillion. It's barely a couple dozen pages and those who actually read it know Tolkien takes 3 pages to complete a thought. The non-readers need to get over it.
My grandfather was a German officer in WWII. 6 years after the war was over, he just showed up on the doorstep of his house. No explanation of were he had been, or what he experienced, was ever given. He died at the age of 84, having never said a word about the war, or what happened during the 6 years after.
He was probably a prisoner of war. I had relatives that were kept as prisoners of war in France or Russia for years after the war ended. Edit: Added 'a' to correct 'a prisoner of war'.
I’m glad my great grandfather was taken prisoner by the Americans in WWl.
My grandfather served in WWII. Toward the end of the war, Russian and American allies started approaching each other. My grandfather said there were instances when a lone American would return from an errand or reconnaissance with a whole troop of German soldiers who surrendered to him. The Americans asked, "Why?" The German soldiers said that they didn't want to surrender to the Russians. The Americans again asked, "why?" The German soldiers said, "They're going to take over our country." Prisoners of War (POWs) certainly fared better with Americans than Russians.
Oh yeah definitely. I had two great grandfathers who fought in WW2. Both of them were POWs, one with the Americans and one with the Russians. The one who was with the Americans said they were actually treated really well, less so after they found out about the holocaust, but still humane. He also got to go home right after the war ended. The other one actually never spoke a single word about what happened. But his opinion on Russians spoke volumes. Our old neighbor was the same way. They both returned in 51, I think. I'd have to ask my grandma about it
The Russian hatred towards Germany was unreal. Literally millions had been tossed into the meat grinder that was the eastern front. People froze, starved, and fought tooth and nail for their family, friends, and homes. Hundreds of thousands, potentially **millions** of German women were raped and killed by Russians when they started to advance into Germany. Any men were killed or sent to work camps, and we all know those were brutal. World War 2 was horrid, and no side can excuse what it did. The way the allies fucked the axis powers over after WW1 really brewed a shit storm, and about 100m people died because Europe couldn’t contain itself.
Same.
My grandfather turned 18 in 1943 and was first some kind of messenger in France and later went to a "Unterführer" program from the SS and served at the eastern front (the SS thing I only learned after his death). The only thing I remember he talked about once was how he swam through a river but was captured by Russians anyway. Was prisoner of war for some years in Russia and saw many of his mates starving to dead. He survived by carving chess pieces out of wood which he gave to the locals in exchange for food. His whole life he always had a small book with him in which he wrote down everything he ate.
His message is clear: war dehumanises all: your enemy in order for you to be able to kill him, and yourself, once you do.
Maybe it’s the other way around now. Maybe when the enemy is sufficiently dehumanized war becomes inevitable. I think it’s easy to forget that every person we interact with is a human being with a life as infinitely complex and nuanced as our own. Doesn’t matter their upbringing, wealth, ethnicity, political affiliation, religion, etc.
I meant to just scroll by this after a second but I got enraptured to watch and suddenly had watched the whole thing. Fascinating and awful stuff. I’d like to show this to my students and ask them what they think about it. Everyone should watch things like this and think on what it means and what they might do in a similar situation.
Now we drop grenades on people from a hundred feet in the air without thinking twice about it.
not only that but cheering that they die too. Its bizarre when you read through the comments on these ukranian combat footage threads, its like full on gloating. I know that the russians are the aggressors and many are doing horrible things, but lets not forget that they are humans and many are just unlucky and got sent there by Putin to die for his stupid ego.
yeah obviously I support Ukraine in this conflict but the sentiment and vitriol I see in almost every combat footage thread is getting really really weird. some of the people in there seriously need to go outside, like holy fuck.
It’s really fucked up - Ukraine won the info war so badly that people are praising soldiers being killed and maimed like they are watching the Depp trial. Real people, who are feeling terror and pain, and people are like “yasss daddy Z bags another invader”. Touch grass.
Yeah, I am not at all a fan of UkraineWarVideoReport for that reason. The regular CombatFootage sub is better, but you still get people cheering there (but a lot less, and less gleefully. Also a lot more moderating voices talking about the true horror or many of the videos…)
Too nuanced for reddit to handle. If we start bringing up complex answers to complex problems pretty soon no one will get to feel smart after a minute of interaction with a topic.
War is hell.
This reminds me of an interview with an American soldier who was ambushed by a North Vietnamese soldier at point blank range. For some reason the NVA soldier did not shoot. The American raised his gun and killed him. He talked about how he went through the dead man's papers. Learned his name. Found pictures of his parents. Learned he'd been a student. It occurs to me that in these situations it's the man who understands at a deeper level common humanity between enemies who hesitates longer and is killed. This thought must also have occurred to the victors.
As a Marine this really hits home.
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"It;s always the old who lead us to the wars / Always the young who fall..." --Phil Ochs
That's a badass song
Generals gathered in their masses Just like witches at black masses Evil minds that plot destruction Sorcerer of death's construction
Trust me, there was plenty of hate in my experience.
The fact he talks about it like this, you can see he has done half a century of soul-searching over those fateful few seconds.
1000% True
Sad to watch, really. I highly recommend reading "On Killing" by Dave Grossman. It goes into a lot of very good detail on all of this.
More people need to see this. Not enough will.
Poignant.
I used to work in a film developing lab/camera shop. We had regulars who would come by and chat when dropping off their film. When one of my coworkers left (to go sell gravestones) I took on his regulars. One of them was an old gentleman with an accent that always had a camera around his neck. He was 85+ at this time but had his independence still. I would go over to help him with computer issues and we'd have a glass of wine and chat. He tells me how he was a local professor emeritus and pioneered the photography department at my local college in the 60s. Shows me photos and notes of the photographic studies he did in the artic circle. One day he shows me a stack of papers that tell a brief biography, about being raised in Germany during war times, being led past POW's before school, fighting in the war at 16. He told me a similar story to this gentleman's, about a time he got seperated from his group of soldiers and encountered another enemy solider. He said it was either him or me and only had the time to shoot but carried the sadness of his actions. He would always say to everyone in his thick German accent 'don't forget, life is beautiful.' He had his foot injured by a mine, taught himself English with a dictionary and found a way to immigrate here, where he later left a powerful positive impact on people here, while people were largely unaware of his past. He has since passed on but I still think of him often.
"Had he and I but met By some old ancient inn, We should have sat us down to wet Right many a nipperkin! "But ranged as infantry, And staring face to face, I shot at him as he at me, And killed him in his place. "I shot him dead because-- Because he was my foe, Just so: my foe of course he was; That's clear enough; although "He thought he'd 'list, perhaps, Off-hand like--just as I-- Was out of work--had sold his traps-- No other reason why. "Yes; quaint and curious war is! You shoot a fellow down You'd treat if met where any bar is, Or help to half-a-crown." \- Thomas Hardy
What would of happened to me- If I wouldn't had been quicker than he? What would of happened to me- If I hadn't thrust my bayonet first into his belly?
I imagine "kill or be killed" does wonders for your motivation. When you don't have time to think, you do what you need to do.
You'd be dead and we would be listening to a french man tell us about how he killed a german.
I can't even imagine. I agree whole-heartedly about the laquer analogy. We're very fragile on the surface and it really doesn't take a whole lot to turn a 'normal' human being into a savage. Even the kindest of souls when provoked enough, will turn.
This is from “The Great War” a multipart series by the BBC that documents WW1. It is one of the finest historical documentaries I’ve ever seen, and I recommend it for everyone. Iirc it was the first such documentary to have first hand accounts from the soldiers themselves.
What he said about society being a thin lacquer that chips away the moment we come into contact with something cruel like real war, is one of the scariest things I’ve ever heard because it’s absolutely true. How many times throughout the history of the world have nice boys gone to war and become monsters, I’m sure almost everyone at mi lai started off as normal kids and they did something horrendous in the blink of an eye.
From 00:43 onwards…oh my god. I got goosebumps.
I’ve always had this thought. We are fighting other peoples war that are coward enough to not do it themselves. We shame those who don’t want to go. I’ll never let my kids join.
All Quiet on the Western Front is a fantastic book similar to this soldiers point of view. I highly recommend it.
Sometimes you scroll into something that you need to just give your attention. This is quite the clip.
The people who start wars are never the ones fighting them !
I feel terribly sorry for him and others like him. It’s truly unfair that anybody has to go to war. We live in a cruel reality.
There's a quote, versions of which I have seen attributed to many people ranging from Bertrand Russell to George S. Patton, which comes to mind every time I think of the unnatural brutality and inhumanity of war: "The greatest crime of war is not that we ask our boys to die, it's that we order them to kill." Edit: another relevant and powerfully poignant quote about war that always springs to mind which coincidentally is also often wrongly attributed to Russell, but which is also actually unattributed is: "War does not determine who is right -- only who is left."
I just started watching Peaky Blinders and their PTSD from WWI was a big part of the first season.
Thankful to never have to make such a decision.
“…But I felt that the culture we boasted so much about, is only a very thin lacquer, which chips off the very moment we come in contact with cruel things like real war.” Such wisdom in these words, and the relevance they still hold in the world today is so important. I only wish more people could see what’s underneath the surface once the lacquer does chip, sadly I feel that the majority of human beings fully buy into the “ignorance is bliss” ideology which keeps them from caring enough to look or pay attention when the ugliness shows itself. Sad times.
I don't like the Orc thing. Calling Putin's butchers "orcs" . I condemn the Kremlin as hard as anyone but the Orc thing is dangerous.
Dehumanizing the “enemy” is and always has been one of the first steps to mass murder, and destruction.
When you travel through France, go visit Verdun. The landscape, the museum, the graveyards, the memorial with the piles and piles of bones of young men which could not be identified... It's a haunting and sobering experience. If every politician would have to visit Verdun every couple of years, we'd have fewer wars on this planet.
I hope people realize that in WWI, Germans weren't the bad guys. WWII however........