"i told her that apart from the pain and suffering germany was responsible for, we won! "
Well, that, and it was the last bright spark followed by forty years of declining power and economic mismanagement.
@ JulianA..... you will find lots of people willing to talk, especially tour guides who are showing you around the city.
when you were in munich did you notice how 'old' everything looks? it's not really all that old. so much of it was rebuilt by the allies after the war. many germans do not realise how much is 'new'.
was listening to the (almost) mother-in-law telling me about her growing up as a kid in post war germany. at family get togethers all the men used to dissappear into another room and share war stories. it was never spoken about infront of wives or children.
it's quite a dark spell to have cast over you. it is strange walking around old towns and seeing pock marks on buildings. or, for me, old people. i can't help myself from wondering "what did you get up to 60 years ago????"
infact much of germany's history is ****ed. it had only been germany for 70 years and in that time it had started and lost the two biggest wars in history.
where i am now is only 20km away from the old east/west border. they call it the green corridor now as the wildlife was able to get on with living due to the exclusion zone either side of the fence. the roads are in a much better condition 'over the border' too....
@alpin - the guy doing our tour was actually one of the people we were staying with in Welden, not a professional guide, bu that hardly makes a difference to your point.
Yes, everything did look 'old': hadn't occurred to me that it had been rebuilt - which was stupid of me as I have been to Ypres loads of times and know full well that it has been rebuilt!
It sounds as though you have been in a position to hear some interesting stuff and live in an interesting part of the world.
Interesting how this thread has progressed: for such an emotive subject there have been some good posts! (And obviously the only-to-be-expected jokey ones...)
yeah, tis not bad here. surrounded by [s]nazis[/s] germans though.
to be fair all germans have had the whole war -'we're bad old nazi children'- shoved down their throats that they are a bit fatigued by it all.
younger generation (<30) will talk about it but not on such a personal level. just don't start making jokes about them/their grand-pa.
was on the train a while back with a mate. just making comments and laughing about the war. this german guy turned round to us an said that there really is no pleasure to be gained in boasting about winning two World Wars.
how would he know?
I really enjoyed the article. I'm now banned.
{Goodbye! Mod}
now thats proper non-sequitur spambot-tastic stuff right there.
SPAMming about toy story lamps on a year old Nazi thread is genius!
LOL at the Mod's edit!
Presents an occasion to post my second favorite pic of all time though
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Vey interesting subject.
One thing I can't get my head round is the mass executions. 6 million people. Where did they put them all!? That's mental.
Serious question
In the Freezer. That's why the Germans lost the war........they spent more time building freezers than they did on armaments.
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One thing I can't get my head round is the mass executions. 6 million people. Where did they put them all!? That's mental.
Eh? Not sure I really get that you're asking that question, but on the basis that you honestly don't know (and if not then you need to), they burnt them in specially built ovens that had minature rail tracks leading up to them from the gas chambers so they could move the corpses more efficiently.
maccruiskean what's your favourite?
Zedsdead - there was a logistical problem getting rid of the bodies and also a psychological problem with the mass killing of people at close quaters by the Einsatzgruppen - the extermination camps were designed to counter this by automating the killing and burning the bodies.
See also [url= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Reinhard ]Operation Reinhard[/url]