Mad Joe : Another Poppy Trap Tomorrow.

[JFK-1 1,693]

Interesting little aside regarding WW1. Most football fans may have heard that on the first Xmas day of WW1 an unplanned, unofficial, and entirely unauthorised truce broke out across the lines with the troops of both sides coming out of their trenches to wish each other a merry Xmas and have a kick-about. A statue was designed to commemorate this spontaneous and unusual happening. The truce statue.

 

 

When the generals and politicians got to hear about this they were livid. There were worries that they may struggle to get the war up and running again because after all, who wants to be shooting at his new friend out there Hans or Tommy? That's just one reason it never happened again. No making friends with the 'enemy' no matter what the time of year.

 

WW2 was an entirely different ball game excuse the pun. The Nazis truly were demons from hell and everybody knew it.

[der Berliner 3,744]

Interesting little aside regarding WW1. Most football fans may have heard that on the first Xmas day of WW1 an unplanned, unofficial, and entirely unauthorised truce broke out across the lines with the troops of both sides coming out of their trenches to wish each other a merry Xmas and have a kick-about. A statue was designed to commemorate this spontaneous and unusual happening. The truce statue.

 

 

When the generals and politicians got to hear about this they were livid. There were worries that they may struggle to get the war up and running again because after all, who wants to be shooting at his new friend out there Hans or Tommy? That's just one reason it never happened again. No making friends with the 'enemy' no matter what the time of year.

 

WW2 was an entirely different ball game excuse the pun. The Nazis truly were demons from hell and everybody knew it.

 

Not wanting to diminish anything "the Nazis" did, but on the field of battle, much like in WWI, most soldiers who met one another in combat were but that, soldiers. It's not like the Wehrmacht was made up of hardcore SS units, killer squads and the like. And I'm not saying that all the Wehrmacht soldiers were angels either. But neither were they 100% "demons from hell" or anything alike.

 

And then there's this, of course ...

 

[JFK-1 1,693]

Not wanting to diminish anything "the Nazis" did, but on the field of battle, much like in WWI, most soldiers who met one another in combat were but that, soldiers. It's not like the Wehrmacht was made up of hardcore SS units, killer squads and the like. And I'm not saying that all the Wehrmacht soldiers were angels either. But neither were they 100% "demons from hell" or anything alike.

 

I would agree with you on that, the Wermacht in general were no Nazi lovers and in fact it was they who tried to whack Hitler more than once. The SS were demons from hell and that's what I and many first think of when speaking of Nazi Germany. Most Germans were not Nazis, Hitler got I believe something less than one third of the votes cast in the last election before he declared dictatorship.

 

And I would doubt that even many of those who voted for him were actually Nazis. They were simply desperate people looking for a way out of a dire situation and he promised them he could do that. And despite all he had said in Mein Kampf etc most people still saw him as 'just another politician' Say anything to get votes when out of power and do something entirely different when in power.

 

The same thing that can be said of the Wermacht might also be true for the pilots of the Luftwaffe. There's a memorial somewhere in England for a fallen Luftwaffe pilot who had been hit and was going down. He could have bailed out but he didn't because the plane was going to fall on a village and probably right on top of a primary school. He stayed in there and struggled to get it just barely clear of the village before it crashed killing him but saving the civilians on the ground in the village.

Edited November 10, 2017 by JFK-1

[ian1964 10,724]