My Grandad in ww1

[4String.]

I would argue very strongly that not every German was a Nazi, and not every nazi was a German. The Nazi party moved in on the back of ww1, and became truly insidious by the 30s. Do you fight to spare your family, or do you refuse and watch them become prisoners in a concentration camp, or shot for cowardice? It’s a lot more complex than all Germans being bad

Indeed.

After the end of the Great War, the German nation was brought to its knees by the economic reparations placed upon it by the Allies. Arguably, they were blamed completely and utterly for the conflict. Hitler fought and was wounded in the same trenches that many of our relatives fought and died in and left the army determined to right what he saw as wrongs that had been imposed on his country. Yes, he got "carried away" with his actions, (and I don't know how to describe it any better, I'm not that articulate), but in the beginning he felt justifiably bitter and humiliated at the conditions imposed upon Germany by the Treaty of Versailles.

 

[Anguz]

Yes dig it out. Have you read 'Goodbye to All That' by the English poet, Robert Graves? He was an officer in the Royal Welch Fusiliers in Flanders until he was shot. Great book.

no not seen that
have dug out the paperwork the museum sent me
more of it than i remember!

will take a while to sort out and photo

 

[Rannsachair]

My dad just called in so i asked him what he remembered about the family in WW1, he said his maternal grandgather was killed at Gallipoli.

 

[RichardM]

One was in the Somerset Light Infantry,
One was in the Royal Engineers (Signals), my Gran did write in his autograph book before he went overseas, "Fate may frown, death may sever, but love for an hour is love for ever." They were married when he returned.

Neither spoke about the war.

 

[KemppiFrog]

I would argue very strongly that not every German was a Nazi, and not every nazi was a German. The Nazi party moved in on the back of ww1, and became truly insidious by the 30s. Do you fight to spare your family, or do you refuse and watch them become prisoners in a concentration camp, or shot for cowardice? It’s a lot more complex than all Germans being bad

One of my close neighbours was Erwald Von Kleist and we used to chat a bit. His family were classic old Junkers and hated Hitler. His father was executed for the attempted to blow up Hitler and he was sent to the Russian front as under suspicion. In fact just earlier, he had been asked to wear an explosive vest when he was chosen to model a new army uniform for the Fuhrer and prob would have done it, but the RAF bombed the factory and he was let off the hook. He talked it over with his father, who said he could not tell him to do it, but the country had to get rid of him and make peace.
A sailing friends's father was in the Luftwaffe in Me109s and likely was in the same skys as my father. He was four when the war ended and remembered coming out of a bunker when the US forces overran his town and seeing his first black man and first bannana (as he put it)

 

[KemppiFrog]

Thought about including this, but here goes:
Incident at Le Mans - June 1940

Jumped by a one-o-nine at fifty yards
thought he was one of our flight
looked back at his spinner through green fire
how he could miss - his shower of shells
just clearing my perspex
panicky, yanked the stick to my guts, kicked
full right rudder, a hundred feet over the trees.

The Hurricane flicked upwards - he was still there
closer - another dizzying flick roll
with the speed dropping right away
fell into a spin at seven hundred
they said - curtains, less than a thousand
the ground rushed up incredibly, a clearing -
knew I was dead in five seconds, thought coldly,
you bloody fool, you’ve done it now
the air gripped the wings again, levelled
out of the dive, below the trees, frozen
saw the German beside me, going faster
now I had him, fumbled the sight switch on
gun button off safe
he turned his head, did nothing
flew into my three second burst -
a shiver of wings, then slowly, slowly
half-rolled, falling inverted
down to a cornfield, dissolved in flames

Etched deep, the film plays
over and over, after forty-eight years
the green-starred terror, the whirling sky
ground rushing up, the cold thought without fear
the boy’s head, so close, the fire in the corn -
a short film, thirty seconds, that’s all.

As he had started well before war broke out, he was well experienced in aerobatics in the Hurricane. The flic roll was actually not allowed in that aircraft, but was a desperate way of trying to slow down quickly, so the enemy would go past. It worked the second time, but only just...

I think he took to writing poetry as a way of exorcising some of the demons, there are other bits I have. He died in 1990, after a second carreer in designing small sailing boats.

 

[Anguz]

think this is in the right order

 

[Anguz]

pt 2

 

[Anguz]

his medals

 

[Tinbasherdan]

hisView attachment 250678 medals

Never seems enough does it?

 

[Tinbasherdan]

Our mother just sent me this, turns out a healthy disregard for authority runs in the family

He was also fined 15 shillings for using obscene language later that year, and his brother got a month in jail for nicking a chicken

 

[minimutly]

I would argue very strongly that not every German was a Nazi, and not every nazi was a German. The Nazi party moved in on the back of ww1, and became truly insidious by the 30s. Do you fight to spare your family, or do you refuse and watch them become prisoners in a concentration camp, or shot for cowardice? It’s a lot more complex than all Germans being bad

Don't disagree with that at all, but to pretend that they came from somewhere else I found a bit much.

 

[ronan]

One of my close neighbours was Erwald Von Kleist and we used to chat a bit. His family were classic old Junkers and hated Hitler. His father was executed for the attempted to blow up Hitler and he was sent to the Russian front as under suspicion. In fact just earlier, he had been asked to wear an explosive vest when he was chosen to model a new army uniform for the Fuhrer and prob would have done it, but the RAF bombed the factory and he was let off the hook. He talked it over with his father, who said he could not tell him to do it, but the country had to get rid of him and make peace.
A sailing friends's father was in the Luftwaffe in Me109s and likely was in the same skys as my father. He was four when the war ended and remembered coming out of a bunker when the US forces overran his town and seeing his first black man and first bannana (as he put it)

Hitler was making such a town-halls of the war that the allies didn't want to kill him, as he would have been replaced with someone far more professional and efficient. Attacking Russian in the run up to winter was an act of sheer stupidity.

 

[minimutly]

Hitler was making such a town-halls of the war that the allies didn't want to kill him, as he would have been replaced with someone far more professional and efficient. Attacking Russian in the run up to winter was an act of sheer stupidity.

I think we "won" the war because of Hitler being so incompetent, in many different facets - well that and the American war machine...

 

[Popcorn]

To be fair the Russians won the war, we just helped them a bit.

 

[ronan]

To be fair the Russians won the war, we just helped them a bit.

God alone knows how. Stalin spent as much time having his own officers and men shot as he did the Germans. He did likewise with the armies in any country he went through. Poland for example.

 

[mrsbruce]

Indeed.

After the end of the Great War, the German nation was brought to its knees by the economic reparations placed upon it by the Allies. Arguably, they were blamed completely and utterly for the conflict. Hitler fought and was wounded in the same trenches that many of our relatives fought and died in and left the army determined to right what he saw as wrongs that had been imposed on his country. Yes, he got "carried away" with his actions, (and I don't know how to describe it any better, I'm not that articulate), but in the beginning he felt justifiably bitter and humiliated at the conditions imposed upon Germany by the Treaty of Versailles.

When you see the devastation in (especially) France, you can understand the reparations/revenge demanded. Unfortunately, because the German army were still very effective up until the end, many soldiers felt that their own government had betrayed them. It was the blockades that brought the peace, more so than the Americans entering the war.

It was this feeling of betrayal which helped bring the Nazi party to power, that, and other countries not supporting Germany’s young democracy. After all, many Germans, and other nations saw Hitler in the 30’s as a good strong leader, willing to break a few rules to get the job done.

Keep in mind the story of the frog in the pan of water. Pop it in a cold pan of water, then turn on the hob, story goes that it will still swim about until cooked. Well, we are pretty much the same, and any country can sleep walk into bad stuff. That is why we should never take our democracy for granted.

(Mods, apologies if I got a bit political there, feel free to edit).

Don't disagree with that at all, but to pretend that they came from somewhere else I found a bit much.

Sins of thy fathers?

I can understand why they said that, after all, I’m sure any reasonable person would want to disassociate themselves with such a terrible period in their history.