This is BOUND to irk some, OH well

They decided to use Zyklon B to murder folks more efficiently. seems shooting the poor people was too hard on the ss men assigned to this duty and far too costly. Efficent isnt it...

 

Sorry, I'd forgotten about that angle. Yes, the Nazis were efficient.

 

They lost and thats that.

Better stop before I get carried away.

 

sorry guys but you asked for it .......... you wanted someone to converse with that had feelings as such you mentioned Mort.

in most probability no-one will make a repeat performance unless already shot in the foot, groin or elsewhere

 

I have touched upon this in another thread a while ago, but I'll throw my pennies in the pond here as well.

One aspect of the adulation shown for the German armed forces certainly comes from the plentiful supply of memoirs and recollections that was written by veterans after the war. Many of them do indeed paint a gruesome picture of war and come across as wholly realistic descriptions of all the horrors one might see on a battlefield.

What they often lack is deeper insight into the mind of the enemies of Germany. Most veterans seem to be utterly and completely dumbfounded by the fact that the western allies did not switch allegiances mid-war and joined forces with the Germans in order to fight Communism.

In much the same way they seem lost for clues as to why the allies wanted a complete surrender. To them it seemed ruthless and unnecessary. Very seldom do they reflect upon the reasons why the world seem to hold such a grudge with Germany. As pointed out above, these books mostly focus on how duty bound these German soldiers were.

They ford hard, pledging loyalty only to their friends and their country, which has created even more mysticism and romanticism when it comes to the German fighting man. They have surrounded themselves with a sort of self pity that is quite easy to sympathise with, more so considering the "cool" equipment used and the tactics and organisation the Germans showed during the war. That is only one piece of the puzzle though.

 

I do not agree. I inherited my father's library on WW2, containing books current here published in the 50's and 60's, and except for one translation or two from German into French, all were from American, English and French authors.

In the 70s I bought one translation in Portuguese of Guderians' Panzer Leader, and even that had been published in Brazil.

There is a strong object called the language barrier: from the German western border onwards it's a different universe! I know what I'm talking about as I paint German Zinnfiguren: there is an immense corpus of literature - besides the military - that as it is in German is practically inaccessible to more western parts unless someone takes the trouble to translate and publish. Not to mention what is published in Czech, Polish, Roumanian, etc, obviously!

So whatever memories were published over there simply did not percolate westwards: that definitely was not the cause for the 'admiration' for things nazi, it was something else.

 

Not wishing to split hairs, but there was quite an outpouring of ( mostly self-serving ) German point-of-view memoirs published in English in the 1950s.

Just a quick trawl along my own shelves yields The Rommel Papers ( 1953 ), Westphal's The German Army In The West ( 1951 ), Hitler's Table Talk ( 1953 ), von Mellenthin's Panzer Battles ( 1955 ), Memoirs of Kesselring ( 1953 ) plus collections such as The Other Side Of The Hill ( 1951 ) and The Fatal Decisions ( 1956 ) and so on .....

The main problem for publishers was that there was no 'market' - people didn't want to read about the losers......

 

I think The One That Got Away was one of the first accounts of PoW life from the German viewpoint, and the film was also well received. There was a bit of controversy about The Desert Fox, since it was only made about 5 years after the war's end.

 

I guess the propaganda still works today as it did more then a half century ago. I for one worship one organization more then any other in WW2, that is the US Marines. I served for four years.
One thing I must say for myself is I do respect the Germans not for their Nazi past but for their Prussian past. And they did make great innovations in aviation, tank design and military tactics. But the Japanese contributed a lot in Naval warfare. They mastered the US in night tactics at one point in the war.

I think it has a lot to do with being white and European and some desire to see them dominate the world. Italy was not up to par with the Germans and were just a side show in peoples eyes. Japan, being Asian is not appealing to most on this board, or who follow this subject. I guess young men who never seen war seem to want to conquer and blow stuff up.

 

I also disagree. I bet theyre is a minimum ratio of 10 allied memoirs for every germen memoir printed after ww2.. I think part of it is the younger crowd likes the "BAD BOY" image

 

remember until the popularity of "German" stuff in the early 1970's and this is when the market really opened up in Germany and also the trade/tourist market, there were many many books written through private authorship or small publishing houses (verlags) having dealt with the Landser of the Wehrmacht in all the Military formations. What is the special case is that 3/4's of them - the books never and will never make it to the US due to disinterest

 

Oh i wished they would print them in english... My Highschool germen is just atrocious.. I gotta admit personally they fascinate me.. id also love to see a lot more stuff from the Japanese GIS perspective as well....

 

As I re-read this site, I am comforted that my son and his friend are arguing in the other room because neither wants to be "German army" when they set up their army men.

Of course, now I am also wondering why I have never seen Japanese army men in any of the sets that I have owned or that my kids have owned. Our Revolutionary War set included Hessians but there have never been any Japanese soldiers. I wonder whether they sell Japanese soldiers in Russia as part of Russ-Japanese War sets . . . .

 

Ya know i dont remeber seeing japanese toy soldiers as a kid... Ive seen Unber expensive 1/6 scale Dolls in done up as japanese Soldiers and highly detailed

 

Toy soldiers somthing else that aint the same as it was in the 70's i remember japanese, british, german, russian, australians americans and italians did i miss any?

 

Slip,
Airfix did Japanese soldiers in both 1/72 and 1/32 in Britain in the '60s. They were a yellowish-tan colour too.
Wt,
Until recently, Airfix, Esci, Revell and Heller all did sets of soldiers of every nationality from just about every war that ever was.

 

Gurkhas!

 

Having watched and read this thread for a while plus mention of it elsewhere two questions, what with the cool or pretty uniforms when in the case of certein units etc you know damn well what they have done wearing that uniform makes is neither pretty or cool is it down to age or education? and second do we distinguish between the Waffen ss and the ss that guarded the concentration camps they were low life full stop and that is putting it mildly. In other words were one seen in part as fighting soldiers with honour, paras that surrendered at arnhem were treated well by ss and complimented on their fighting on the other hand orudur sur glane? where das reich commited war crimes It is documented that when allied troops liberated one concentration camp so sickned were they that they started shooting the ss guards on the spot do we blame them!

 

HMMM a little town in belgium comes to mind.. MALMEDY!