The World at War
Discussion
I've been following the series on Yesterday. Tonight's episode was unbelievably moving. It was about the German concentration camps.
The whole series is available on Yesterday replay but if you see only one, pick tonight's.
It should be compulsory viewing for all at the age of 16, not to be anti German but as a warning that extremists should be fought as soon as they show their colours.
Really shocking. Racism written large.
Watch it if only for the sake of the 6 million.
The whole series is available on Yesterday replay but if you see only one, pick tonight's.
It should be compulsory viewing for all at the age of 16, not to be anti German but as a warning that extremists should be fought as soon as they show their colours.
Really shocking. Racism written large.
Watch it if only for the sake of the 6 million.
My father joined up in late 1938 to rid the world of the nazi scourge but he said that he did not believe the rumours of death camps then.
When my parents moved I helped my Dad clear his garage and I found a copy of the Sketch, browned with age, and it showed pictures of a death camp - can't remember which apart from it being liberated by the Americans - and my father realised he was wrong. He could not believe people could be that evil, but the evidence was there.
The various numbers quoted on this thread of other deaths in the war are not really relevant to the situation in the death camps and previously. There were, according to the programme, 2m deaths by shooting and 4m by the gas chambers, that's not solely of Jews but others as well whose life was seen as likely to compromise the Aryan race.
There are arguments as to the number being greater but I think this misses the important point; the deaths were deliberate. People whom you might have sat next to on a bus were those who organised and assisted with the slaughter. They looked the same as us yet were such men and women.
The episode got to me. I wondered how my father felt to have refused to believe that anyone could be that cruel and then be confronted by his error. No blame could be attached to him.
It seems clear that this could happen again in western Europe. Let's face it, similar situations have continued across the world since the end of the war.
My father-in-law was a prisoner in Malaya, taken into custody by the Japanese with his unit and handed over to the Koreans who were every bit as evil. He was the only survivor. Yet, as my father said, the Germans who were taken as prisoners in WWI were treated as honoured guests. Many, the majority in fact, stayed in Japan after the armistice because they felt part of the Japanese society. There were a number of German pubs in Japan that my uncles, the majority in the merchant navy, went to.
Yet 20 years later they were guilty of the Rape of Nanking. That was ghastly.
The deaths in the camps were horrific of themselves, real nightmare stuff. What is also shocking is that these were committed by Germans. I knew lots of Germans, and had a German girlfriend: they are just like us. The implication is that the death camps could have been run by us.
War is hell because of us.
When my parents moved I helped my Dad clear his garage and I found a copy of the Sketch, browned with age, and it showed pictures of a death camp - can't remember which apart from it being liberated by the Americans - and my father realised he was wrong. He could not believe people could be that evil, but the evidence was there.
The various numbers quoted on this thread of other deaths in the war are not really relevant to the situation in the death camps and previously. There were, according to the programme, 2m deaths by shooting and 4m by the gas chambers, that's not solely of Jews but others as well whose life was seen as likely to compromise the Aryan race.
There are arguments as to the number being greater but I think this misses the important point; the deaths were deliberate. People whom you might have sat next to on a bus were those who organised and assisted with the slaughter. They looked the same as us yet were such men and women.
The episode got to me. I wondered how my father felt to have refused to believe that anyone could be that cruel and then be confronted by his error. No blame could be attached to him.
It seems clear that this could happen again in western Europe. Let's face it, similar situations have continued across the world since the end of the war.
My father-in-law was a prisoner in Malaya, taken into custody by the Japanese with his unit and handed over to the Koreans who were every bit as evil. He was the only survivor. Yet, as my father said, the Germans who were taken as prisoners in WWI were treated as honoured guests. Many, the majority in fact, stayed in Japan after the armistice because they felt part of the Japanese society. There were a number of German pubs in Japan that my uncles, the majority in the merchant navy, went to.
Yet 20 years later they were guilty of the Rape of Nanking. That was ghastly.
The deaths in the camps were horrific of themselves, real nightmare stuff. What is also shocking is that these were committed by Germans. I knew lots of Germans, and had a German girlfriend: they are just like us. The implication is that the death camps could have been run by us.
War is hell because of us.
AndrewCrown said:
I remember being glued to this as a kid.. later on often watching re-runs and related content on Sky etc...
Now in my mid forties, having travelled the world and seen other world views... I would recommend, if anyone is interested, to supplement The World at War with two terrific books:
All Hell Let Loose: Max Hastings
Fatefull Choices: Ian Kershaw (suggested to me by the son of German General)
These books turned everything I thought to be true on its head..
All history is one-sided. That's the nature of it. It doesn't make any side wrong. It is always worth the effort to read about British history from the point of view of others. It can be equally revealing to read about history from the pov of those from 'our' side who see things differently, for whatever reason. Slaughterhouse-Five anyone? There was someone on PH who justified the Kingsmill massacre. Now in my mid forties, having travelled the world and seen other world views... I would recommend, if anyone is interested, to supplement The World at War with two terrific books:
All Hell Let Loose: Max Hastings
Fatefull Choices: Ian Kershaw (suggested to me by the son of German General)
These books turned everything I thought to be true on its head..
That said, there are some things that transcend points of view. I fail to see another side to the death camps.
There is little that's true in history beyond dates and possibly names; there are just different voices.
There's argument about the numbers killed in the death camps and on forced labour. 15-20 million seems to have something of a consensus but I think such arguments miss the point. One million? Six million? Would either of these figures take anything away from the horror?
Slaughterhouse-Five has been criticised for suggesting there were 135,000 deaths from the firebombing, used as a reason to ban the book in the god-forsaken middle America - that plus the mention of gay soldiers and its anti, or perhaps negative, religion aspect. The 'true' number has been put at around 50,000. The question 'So?' springs to mind. And so it goes I suppose.
I'd advise everyone to read Slaughterhouse-Five. It's not easy to fathom, at least it wasn't for me, and took three goes to get a grip on it. I didn't change my view on carpet bombing as I'd been told about it from my rather pacifist-leaning father, but it certainly gives a reader something to think about.
The thing is, though, that we will do it all again, next time with bigger weapons.
Rumblestripe said:
Also the diversion of German resources from "the war effort" was significant as was the intellectual losses of Jewish Scientists and Engineers.
This is an aspect that has not, to my knowledge, received the coverage it deserves. The extra manpower aspect alone is enough to make a substantial difference to the process of the war. The intellectual loss, not only of Jews of course, might have changed the rate of development of, for instance, the heavy water experiments.RDMcG said:
I think that it was evident fro 1934 when the Nürnberg Laws were passed that the Nazis wanted to eliminate the Jews from German soil and from any further conquests. A series of ever more onerous laws were passed long before the Wansee conference in 1941 that set the Final Solution in motion.
Progressively from 1934 on Jews were progressively disenfranchised, banned from the professions, forbidden driving licences, and even forbidden typewriters.
Many of the German Jews could see it coming and made early escapes before Krystallnacht in 1938.
This has generally had little documentation, but a fascinating diary surfaced in Leipzig about 15 years ago by Victor Klemperer, a WW.! veteran who was married to a gentile and had a sort of shadow status...no rights but no concentration. He chronicles daily life under the Reich for a Jew and it is simply terrifying reading, the thoroughness and endless privation for which the Jews were singled out. It is called I Will Bear Witness, and gives a crystal clear report of what life was like form him from 1933 to 1945. I highly recommend it..it is NOT about the camps, but about the way the socieaty worked every day.
As someone who has held senior positions in a railroad, I am very clear that the degree of organization to carry out the Holocaust was vast in scope, the number of people involved to make it happened was huge, and the target was very clear. By and large, it succeeded. There are endless towns in Poland, Austria and Hungary which had large Jewish populations,.,they are all gone.
I used to have tea with a Jewish woman in Petticoat Towers, Petticoat Lane (Middlesex St), who was sent from Germany by relatives around 1936. Her stories as a woman in her middle/late 20s in Germany were quite horrible. Daily inhumane treatment, and this before the roundups, was encouraged. None of the balance of her immediate family escaped. Progressively from 1934 on Jews were progressively disenfranchised, banned from the professions, forbidden driving licences, and even forbidden typewriters.
Many of the German Jews could see it coming and made early escapes before Krystallnacht in 1938.
This has generally had little documentation, but a fascinating diary surfaced in Leipzig about 15 years ago by Victor Klemperer, a WW.! veteran who was married to a gentile and had a sort of shadow status...no rights but no concentration. He chronicles daily life under the Reich for a Jew and it is simply terrifying reading, the thoroughness and endless privation for which the Jews were singled out. It is called I Will Bear Witness, and gives a crystal clear report of what life was like form him from 1933 to 1945. I highly recommend it..it is NOT about the camps, but about the way the socieaty worked every day.
As someone who has held senior positions in a railroad, I am very clear that the degree of organization to carry out the Holocaust was vast in scope, the number of people involved to make it happened was huge, and the target was very clear. By and large, it succeeded. There are endless towns in Poland, Austria and Hungary which had large Jewish populations,.,they are all gone.
One thing which stuck in my mind was a time she mentioned the limits put on immigration of Jews by 'the West'. She asked me if I knew what the UK had done. My ignorance infuriated her and she sent me away to discover the answer. It seemed that many countries actively restricted Jewish immigration. There was an agreed 'quota' system which some countries preferred not to honour. When the treatment of Jews, and others, was admitted by the West there was an attempt to up the quotas but this was rejected. Some countries, some which were called civilised, and still are, actively blocked all refugees. The UK doubled its quota, although it never reached this number, the start of the war curtailing the ability to do so.
The final episode of the series was on tonight. It was the most sobering of all I think as it was about those who died and were injured both physically and mentally. It started, as did the first episode, with the massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane:
Down this road, on a summer day in 1944 ... The soldiers came. Nobody lives here now. They stayed only a few hours. When they had gone, a community which had lived for a thousand years ... was dead.
This is Oradour-sur-Glane, in France. The day the soldiers came, the people were gathered together. The men were taken to garages and barns, the women and children were led down this road ... and they were driven ... into this church. Here, they heard the firing as their men were shot. Then . . . they were killed too. A few weeks later, many of those who had done the killing were themselves dead, in battle.
They never rebuilt Oradour. Its ruins are a memorial. Its martyrdom stands for thousand upon thousand of other martyrdoms in Poland, in Russia, in Burma, China, in a World at War ...
The only difference was that in the final episode they added the word Remember.
One really awful, terrible, scene in this episode was old men being separated from their women and children, the men being led away to be killed.
Down this road, on a summer day in 1944 ... The soldiers came. Nobody lives here now. They stayed only a few hours. When they had gone, a community which had lived for a thousand years ... was dead.
This is Oradour-sur-Glane, in France. The day the soldiers came, the people were gathered together. The men were taken to garages and barns, the women and children were led down this road ... and they were driven ... into this church. Here, they heard the firing as their men were shot. Then . . . they were killed too. A few weeks later, many of those who had done the killing were themselves dead, in battle.
They never rebuilt Oradour. Its ruins are a memorial. Its martyrdom stands for thousand upon thousand of other martyrdoms in Poland, in Russia, in Burma, China, in a World at War ...
The only difference was that in the final episode they added the word Remember.
One really awful, terrible, scene in this episode was old men being separated from their women and children, the men being led away to be killed.
Wacky Racer said:
I think the series is on UK TV Play.The final episode is here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ky3kagIwppk
ClaphamGT3 said:
As happened almost exactly 51 years later at Srebrinica. The series ended with the word "remember" but not enough of us did or do. Man's capacity for inhumanity to fellow man is undiminished. Only the willingness of society to check and challenge that capacity can change. I am not confident that it has.
There seems to be bugger all we can do about it. What an epitaph for the millions of dead in the war.Gassing Station | TV, Film, Video Streaming & Radio | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff