I took a trip today to Dukla. Here is a video I found, looks a lot different now.

https://youtu.be/H6Z5uTVrmzo

nice pictures !

Thank you.

Very nice pics!!

I've read quite a bit onWW2, but nearly all of it as it applies to the Western Front. Very little about the Soviet War, other than a couple German Soldier's accounts of it. Most all very brutal.

Battle of Dukla Pass for those like me, who know very little about the Eastern Front.
7mm

Nice pics. Heading to Krakow for 10 days in June. This would be close enough to drive to from there. Anything else you've seen you'd recommend hitting? Going to do the main things around Krakow (Auschwitz 1&2, Schindler factory, salt mines, etc.), but we will be renting a car for the duration and looking to branch out and see more of the country as well.

Big WW2 history buff. If my memory was worth a chit, I'd probably know far more than most. But despite lack of recall ability, still love seeing and reading about it all. The wife, not so much, but she is still interested. Looking to get some WW2 time in as well as other touristy type things.

very nice pics and interesting subject... as said, most of us know little of the Eastern Front.

thanks for posting.

Nice, thanks for posting. Looks like beautiful countryside now. That wedge shaped building looks amazing. Is that a recent build to honor the grounds/soldiers, or is it by chance something old?

It is a relatively new Memorial, I am not sure when it was built.

Fascinating stuff - thanks!

Not sure, I explore a little at a time when the weather in the mountains isn't good. But there is so much History to see here. I usually google places of interest to me, read up a little on them and take a drive to see them. Dukla would be will worth the drive in my opinion. It is a lot of walking. I suppose you could drive to each site but I just walked the old road. I'll let you know if I find any other cool WWII sites.

Are there good books on the eastern front war.

Dukla Memorial

I am sure there probably is. I read most stuff online trying to find cool places around Slovakia to see while I am here working.

Very cool. Thanks for sharing.

Wow! great pictures

Yes. I used to have a couple. Wish I could remember the names.

Fascinating...... Thanks for posting that. The Eastern Front is the side of WW2 history I know the least about, but stuff like that ignites my interest.

CZ and Slovakia united as Czechoslovakia was aligned with Germany in ww2. At the end of the war, the one time united Slovakia and the Czech republic (Czechoslovakia) rebelled against Germany. Russia was to support them, but they allowed the Czechoslovakia soldiers to fight Germany without the promised support. This helped destroy the CZ-SL forces and German forces, and made for an easier russian/soviet post war occupation. Same thing was done in Poland.
It is interesting because loyalties were split. Naturally at the time corruption decided a good amount of the loyalty. Lot of suffering to go around.
As far as the Dukia pass, it has been in many wars for hundreds of years due to the importance as a trade route.

Yes. Look at the series written for Osprey by Prit Buttar, a Brit. They are very readable. I've read Between Giants, Battleground Prussia and Splintered Empires (ww1).
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/prit%20buttar/_/N-8q8

Stalin was very well known for playing his enemies off against one another. Or even allies if it suited his purpose. I can see that he'd "accidentally" fail to help the Slovs so as to weaken any resistance to himself later on.
He was a ruthless SOB, every bit as bad as Hitler.
Truman, when he was a senator, said of supporting the Soviets vs the Germans that we should support whichever side was losing.
I've read a few bios of German soldiers and their service on the Eastern Front. As I said, the little I know of it comes from these or Anthony Begor's Stalingrad".
I know enough to know that it was brutal and bloody.
I've always thought that Hitler's biggest mistake was his treatment of civilian Poles and Russians on the eastern front. Had he treated them better, they'd have been happy to support him over the murderous Stalin.
With less troops tied down in the east, he'd have been a lot tougher nut for the U.S. And Britian.
Montana, it's an interesting story, but I'm curious as to what are you doing over I. That part of the world.
Care to share details, or is it a "nunya"?
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The battle was another masterful defense conducted by Heinrici.

Just a slight correction for those trying to find the book mentioned--It's actually Antony Beevor. I'm currently reading his work on the Spanish Civil War, which both sides deserved to lose.
You're right about that being Hitler's mistake, but it couldn't be any other way. The whole war was about expanding Germany eastward for Lebensraum (living room). He thought of Slavs as subhuman and only a small step above the Jews and gypsies. He just wanted them for slave labor. He couldn't wrap his mind around them maybe being potential allies.

Damn auto correct.
You put in something, and it thinks you want something else.
Gotta proof read everything 3 or 4 times, and I still miss it!
And I used to bitch about a speel chacker!
Good catch. "Stalingrad" is a good book. I love American History, and it's a little outside my realm, but I got it on a friend's recommendation.
7mm

This is the definitive book about the Eastern Front by which all others are measured:

https://www.amazon.com/Barbarossa-Russian-German-Conflict-Alan-Clark/dp/0688042686

The distances, the numbers involved, and the casualties on the Eastern Front were unimaginable. There were dozens of battles on the Eastern Front bigger than the battle of the Bulge.

Hitler made plenty of mistakes but one thing he did right was in that first winter when the attack stalled and the Russians counterattacked, he forbid any sort of retreat and made his troops stand. His generals wanted to pull back and retreat, but Hitler understood that any sort of retreat in that weather under pressure from the Russians would have instantly devolved into a rout and a repeat of the destruction of Napoleon’s Grand Armee.

I worked with an Austrian gentleman who had been conscripted into the German army and saw service on the Russian front during the brutal winter offensive. He told stories of how he knew he would die one way or the other if he had fought or if they had retreated. This led him to the decision to desert, he told of walking for days in sub-zero temperatures constantly trying to evade capture, sleeping only when exhaustion overtook them awaking with their hair frozen and their clothing so frozen it took tremendous effort to get moving again.

I always recommend The Chief Culprit by Viktor Suvorov.

dukla was a battle that was suppose to last for maybe a week, but turned into a bloodbath. I am a history buff, and fairly well acquainted with dukla pass that being in eastern slovakia, and not very far from my grandmother's village of novot, slovakia.
There are still t34 tanks parked around some of the villages in that area, where they got holed.
my understanding is a a lot of forest in that area is off limited due to left over ordance still laying around.
auschwitz is also not far from there.
if you are in krackow, check out the wedel chocolate factory, which was started by a family member in the 1800's. ethnic german, but migrated to poland. plant was bombed out during the war, rebuilt, and confiscated by the communists, when they got kicked out it was sold to cadbery and now owned by south koreans.
famous chocolate in europe.
that area in north eastern slovakia in the carpathians is ski country these days. Interesting enough to me just outside of novot, are some quarterhorse ranches where they do typical western stuff such as roping, cutting cows out of a herd etc.
The borders have changed hands in that area many times, sometimes poland, sometimes austro hungarian, sometimes czech, now slovakian. Right next to the Ukraine too.

For Anyone with an interest more in Stalingrad.

however, Mr. Beevor does explain all the different German Army group roles, North ,South and Centre,

I won't give my remarks on the book, Enough to say that after Stalingrad it urged me to read
Ardennes 1944 , Berlin: the downfall 1945, etc

best you just scan through some of the 500 + online reviews of Stalingrad.
The author had rare special access to Soviet archives at the time , which the Russian gov. then closed off.
because they were expressly not happy with the content of the book.

https://www.amazon.com/Stalingrad-Fateful-1942-1943-Antony-Beevor/dp/0140284583

I suggest reading Ardennes 1944 as well as Stalingrad, to give one a better overall perspective of the
war in Europe waged between the eastern and western front.

...and you could throw in Beevors 'D-DAY' as well ..which covers Normandy right up to the liberation of Paris.

there are a number of video's on youtube on dukla

I work here for a company that owns a Blackhawk, I am their TI.

one of the interesting things to me, is the number of those countries formerly under the thumb of the soviets now part of N.A.T.O.: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Member_states_of_NATO

there is a youtube video floating around of a arms manufacturer in the eastern part of the Ukraine. Using 3d technology among other things to make rifles and sniper systems. They showed some dillon equipment in the plant. I know it's not far from slovakia.

Yeah, that's one of the things that got the Russkies all riled up. They wanted them as independent buffer nations against the West after they withdrew but they all wanted to join NATO for protection. When Ukraine wanted in, they finally decided that they had to do something.

bullshit

Well, you had the republicans who were a bunch of communists and you had the nationalists, who were the rich, oppressing landlords, their church lackies and fascist generals. They killed neighbors as efficiently as they do in the Balkans. Neither group deserved to win.

You sound like a democrat or a commie....

No kidding. WTF koolaid is that?

Nice rebuttal...I gave facts, you call names. Maybe you should try an adult conversation sometime? The problem is that there wasn't any centrist or moderate party in Spain.

Facts you say? "rich oppressing landlords and church lackies (sic) your idea of "facts"? (ergo, the democrat/commie comment).

OF COURSE General Franco was a "fascist", but let's look at the FACTS. Spain was being taken over by Soviet financed and inspired communists, not only intimidating the population, but murdering priests, burning churches and terrorizing citizens, not to mention bleeding the country dry by among other things sending all Spanish Gold Reserves to Moscow (ostensibly destroying what was left of their financial infrastructure). Franco destroyed communism in Spain and protected the church. When WWII broke out, Hitler asked him if he could attack Gibraltar through Spain (which would have been catastrophic for the Brits) and pretty much turned a blind eye to Allied operations in his AOR. After WWII ended, he became a STAUNCH ally, opening up Spain to us for bases and continued to be a staunch enemy of communism. He protected the Monarchy and when the time was right, like Pinochet in Chile, VOLUNTARILY gave up power and turned the country into a democracy. Now tell me again why they were the bad guys? do yourself a favor and read Un Millon De Muertos (One Million Dead) about the Spanish Civil War then get back to me.

I didn't say they were the bad guys, just that both sides sucked. The Church in Spain was as crooked as the one in Ireland. They meddled in politics and were supported by the state.

That is YOUR opinion. Personally, I hold both Generals Franco and Pinochet in higher esteem than just about ANY politician. Bottom line is in the end, Franco saved his country, so if that is SUCKING, we have different measures of effectiveness.

At almost the exact time (Oct '44) the Americans were engaged in a bogged-down and equally bloody slugfest in the Huertgen Forest just west of Duren, Germany. Densely-forested, hilly terrain, mired in mud, with the Germans mounting a fierce defense. In that battle, though, armor was of little use.

downloaded and have half read that book mentioned on stalingrad, inexpensive on kindle, and quite good. also there is a movie out there on stalingrad, called stalingrad 1993, on you tube, watched it this morning. The movie was done by germans, english subtitles. Quite good.
I am a fan of the battlefield digups on the eastern front, and several on digs around stalingrad, something to see.
they are still finding and will continue to find the skeleton's of combatants around the area. Mass graves.
I don't know who has seen the pictures of the stacks of german frozen soldiers above ground mainly because of not being able to bury them.
there was an area that for years after the war near stalingrad just full of skeletons laying on the ground.
It mentioned after the surrender only about 6000 of the 100k plus men sent to siberia came back.
My ex son in law's father was a machine gunner in the central command.
he was taken prisoner later in the war and was in a cattle car aimed at siberia, when they came to a crossing. Him and a few others jumped off the train thinking it was better to be shot than a slower death in siberia. The 18 year old guard did not shoot them, and he made his way back to austria.
He had a phot album too. One picture i have always kept in my mind. A bunch of his ten year old school mates, sitting on a fence prior to the war. He named them by name, and the place they were killed in russia. The movie stalingrad 1993 brings out the inhumanity on both sides, and both sides executing their own soldiers. In the book, it references the soviets shooting about 15000 of their own troops. No wonder they didn't like the book.

i might mention another WWII story, a k98 mauser i could not buy. A german soldier was home on leave, due to be shipped to africa. Forgot his rifle at his mothers house, got on the troop ship and remembered he left the gun at home. He could have been shot for that. Anyway they hit the beach were immediately hit by the british, and he picked up a rifle, and then captured by the british. He was sent to the german pow camp in phoenix where he spent the war. later he went back to germany, but eventually moved back to arizona because he liked it so much.
he gave the rifle to a younger man, who had a yard full of german military vehicles. I was there to see him as i am into american military vehicles. He wouldn't sell the rifle of course, but i tried.
I have several k98's one of which was manufactured at konisberg. That's important to me given a german general born there, with my last name, and killed during the retreat out of the baltics.
There is a you tube video of that long straight road through the forest from the east going to berlin. I have seen pictures of the bombed out equipment on it. Battlefield diggers finding little piles of stuff, military I.D, etc. that had been buried. If you were in the S.S. you ditched your stuff. To get caught with it, was an automatic execution.

Ever see an old western where the bad guy is getting it about to get his ass kicked by one protagonist and another dude walks in the back door and stands in front of it so that the bad guy can’t get away? That was the role of the US in Europe. Russia did all the heavy lifting but the war in the west was important because the distances were so short and it also put pressure on Hitler from that side.

Hitler couldn’t ignore the west because a breakthrough there could see Americans in Berlin in a couple of weeks, but all the while after Operation Bagration, the Russians were pummeling them.

another story, we were shooting a m.g.42 on a tripod mount, with a hensolt optic on it, when a kid in the shooting area came over reconizing what he thought it was from the sound. He was an exchange student from germany. Wanted to shoot it, which he was allowed to do.
Seems he had one. His grampa had been in russia, walked back to germany with the mg42. it was greased up along with ammo, and buried in a barn. Still there it seemed.
not practical to disturb it these days, but they did know where it was. I am sure there are guns buried all over europe, for a rainy day.

Nice, pic & thanks for posting.

I've been to Poland a couple of times & Czech Republic a lot since we have a plant there near Prague, going again next month.

Really a lot of interesting history & things to see there.

MM

When I think of the Czech Republic I often think of another famous general in an earlier war. The battle of Grunwald when the Jan Zizka defended against the Teutonic Order. Jan Zizka is also famous for the Hussite rebellion against the pope. Many say he was one of the top military minds of all time. I think that many would say he had a huge impact on the Czech people to this day. Certainly he steered the religious tone. A very famous man for many reasons. On of the largest equestrian statues in the world that depicts Jan is on Vitkov Hill in Prague. Military Slav brigades were named after him in WW2, so a lot of linkage after 500 years.

Ron, a couple of years ago I read and article about a contractor in Germany was making alterations in home when he pulled out a wall and found a MP40 fully loaded and in as new condition. Said probably every house in Germany had similar weapons hidden away.

For anyone interested in the MG42 there's a good article on it in the current issue of Dillon's "Blue Press." The article says it was a heckuva lot better than allied machine guns. The rate of fire was higher and you could quick change out the barrels. Later machine guns, including the US M60, copied some of its features.

Well, it’s still in use in some countries and in use as the lightly modified MG-3 in a lot more.

Here's all you need to know about U.S. vs Nazi automatic weapons.

The world would be a better place if the krauts took care of the Soviets.

They could have sued for piece with the US and stopped communism cold. We sold our soul to the devil himself by sideing with the reds


We are still fighting that fight today

No one wants to admit it, but Hitler saved western civilization. The official communist doctrine of the time was still to export the revolution militarily. Stalin was going to attack Western Europe. They had already tried it once in 1922 and were beaten back in Poland. Stalin was going to do it again. And though Hitler didn’t win, at the end of the war the Soviets were exhausted and facing another superpower in the west. If Hitler hadn’t attacked the Russians when he did, Stalin would have undoubtedly taken the entirety of Europe with a few years.

The German guns were way better. From the p38 to the mp40 to the mg42 to the stg44.

We had better grub

Truth

The waffen SS was essentially the first version of the NATO army

Awesome pictures, thanks.

German grub was the wurst.

John

Drum roll - glad that someone with the same first name beat me to it. (And - it could never compare to potato bologna!)

Once again, I urge everyone to read The Chief Culprit.

Good thread. Tag. To finiah reading

We seem to share the same (warped?) sense of humour -- you have beaten me to the PUNch a number of times!

John

I haven't made it to Prague yet. It is on my list.

How is Bratislava these days? I spent several months there back in 95. It was a little grim then but I’ve heard they’ve done quite well since.

That is one of the most uninformed posts I've ever read.

"Hitler saved western civilizatin." Rubbish!

Churchill saved western civilization (with a lot of help from many others).

No, just no. Churchill bankrupted the empire.

Indy is right. The Empire was already going down. India was on the road to independence. There were problems in the Far and Middle East. Better to be bankrupt and free then be taken over by Hitler.

Hitler has no designs on England. There would have been no war with England had they not declared war on Germany over Poland.

I like Churchill a lot...but your post is ridiculous. ‘‘Twas the Germans that confronted communism...no one else

People very often forget that France and England declared war...not Germany.

Great photos!!!! Thanks!!!!

Prague for me would be pivo and dining. Then the old Prague Opera House (I believe it’s under a big renovation project!) For either a performance of "Die Zauberflote" or "Don Govanni"! Prague loved Wolfie!

If I had to visit a battlefied it would be Leuthen, Hohenfriedberg, or Zorndorf.

from the time i could barely walk as a kid, i remember the use of the word pivo. I don't think i ever saw my grandparents drink water.
generally it was room temperature beer. Or beer stored in a cellar where they kept the bootleg stuff. That cellar stick reakes of the alcohol when
it gets a little wet.

i have loved opera since a kid. it drives my wife nuts. i could go to sleep every night listening to it. Her, on the other hand, wakes her up like the turks are invading.

you had two madmen, hitler, and stalin, duking it out over who would be top dog, with both having repressive forms of top down government.
unfortunately, my people lived in the crossroads in croatia and slovakia, where they were duking it out. the russians were stopped in the polish war of 1922, and probably would have tried later. And i do think a lot of germans fighting on the eastern front, if not most of them, felt it was a fight against communism. But hitler's insane policies defeated them. There were so many times if he would have stayed out of it, the world would be a different place today. There were a lot of bad decisions based upon his insane decisions.

This idea that Churchill was some sort of genius who recongnized the danger of Hitler by himself is largely an invention of Mr. Churchill himself. What he was, even if he was rather eccentric personally, was a traditional British statesman in a rather conventional mold. As such, he followed the traditional English foreign policy all the way back to the late Middle Ages.

England/Britain always opposed the strongest continental power and usually painted the rulers of these powers as threats to all things decent. They did it with the Kaiser. They did it with Napoleon. They did it with Louis XIV and various other French kings. They did it with the Dutch. And they did it with Spain. England always tries to pull down the top dog on the continent if that power looks to be gaining too much influence. It is how they keep the balance of power.

And what’s more, as US influence wanes and the Cold War era recedes, you see them returning to it. Brexit is an example. A big part of the opposition to it is that the real English see it as a Franco/German racket to control Europe and that, of course, to the traditional English mind threatens England.

Whatever the reasons or what if's or could'a been's, I'm very glad that the US Army and Air Corps did not have to face 100% of the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe. Due to our logistic advantage the eventual outcome would have been the same (maybe*) but the casualty lists would have been orders of magnitude higher.



* given the hugely increased number of casualties it's possible that the US may have settled on a negotiated peace with Germany instead of insisting on unconditional surrender but that's under the "could'a been" subheading of the Pure Speculation column. The greatly increased number of dead American boys would have been a certainty.

During WW2 Germany was trying to build an empire within Europe while at the same time stop the Bolshevik influence which was flowing out of Russia into Europe.

FDR aligned with the Bolsheviks and the Bolsheviks won.

Now they're here.

And it worked. It was called the "Pax Britannica", but it took a certain level of competence that for example, was lacking in August of 1914. All the rulers you mention started crap forcing the Brit's hands....but more importantly their national interests. ALL OF THEM had plans to invade the British Isles. EVERY SINGLE ONE.

I agree Churchill wasn't the only one who recognized the danger of Hitler but he was the only one with balls to talk about it. Churchill didn't "ruin' the empire, wars outside his control did it. To suggest Hitler was going to stop at the Channel (even though he publicly sold this) is at best incredibly naive. Totalitarians HAVE to continuously expand in order to survive, PERIOD.

Churchill was an unabashed monarchist as well, and really despised the great unwashed.

Yep!

That's why we have the Bolsheviks in America.

By the end of the war, Patton realized that America had been fighting the wrong enemy and realized what the victory of the Bolsheviks would mean to the world.

75 years later it's becoming apparent that Patton was correct in that regard.

Of course, they had plans to invade England. England declared war on them and sent armies to the continent to fight them. See how that works.

Churchill was so jealous of any European country other than Britain having an imperial influence that he fought to allow the Bolsheviks to kill Europe other than to allow any other Western European power to flourish.

Now just look at the Western European nations.

The most ironic part of it all is,..Russia has pretty much expelled its Bolshevik influence. Western Europe and America has been left to deal with it.

Smart assed retort notwithstanding (not to mention glossing over the other moments in history), the German General Staff had those plans in the works WAY before war was declared(very nicely color coded too). War was declared because Hitler reneged on the deal to stop with the whole Sudetenland deal and knew the line was drawn in Poland, yet he did it anyway. Last I checked the Germans came across into France, See how that works...

Only after the nazis were destroyed, so you are half right..

HORSESHIT...

You may want to read up on Patton's opinion of the Germans people. He considered them to be far superior to the Russians.

Read The Unnecessary War by Patrick Buchanan. The British had long been jealous of the Germans,..dating back to the 19th century. In fact, it was a family feud. The royal families of both Britain and Germany were cousins.

The British royal family of today has German ancestry.

Look, a discussion can be enjoined to discuss the different approaches on how best to deal with the Nazis and the commies. Suffice it to say BOTH philosophies needed to be exterminated, but to suggest Churchill and the Brits WANTED to save the Soviets is absurd. As far as the Germans were concerned, my OPINION had the Brits and French not declared war on Germany after Poland, they would have probably turned EAST (as they planned to do anyway) and expand. So let's say they would have crushed and eliminated the Soviets, do you think they would not have eventually turned west? GMAFB, both the Nazis and Soviets needed to expand or die. A war would have been inevitable. But just think,had the west done what Churchill wanted to do back in 1919, that is invade Russia, crush the commies and reinstate the Romanovs, who is to say? lots of variables but coexistence with either the Soviets OR the Nazis is just not in the cards.

let's just say I hold Buchanan's opinion on WWII in low esteem... Of course they were family. Saxe-Coburg Gotha. WWI was a total WASTE, perpetrated by the great unwashed and a war mongering Kaiser and a General Staff eager to play soldier. When Victoria reigned (the Pax Britannica), there were no issues or at least not enough to go to war on a global scale

The "right" in America is now considered to be Nazis by the left. Trump is "literally Hitler",..and all that. Haven't you heard?

It should be becoming obvious how the narrative was developed during WW2.

Not to mention that the UK and France had a treaty with Poland and Germany knew it. You don't renege on defense treaties.

In 1939, Germany was more of an immediate threat than the Soviets. The old saying "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" came into play here. Deal with the immediate threat and deal with the other one later. That's also why the Allies took a "Germany first" strategy and left Japan for after Germany was defeated.

An immediate threat to who?

No one can say if things would be better in Europe if WW2 had turned out differently.

But it's obvious that Europe is ruined today.

Patton seems to have had at least an abstract understanding of what was to occur as a result of how the war in Europe played out.

I doubt that he understood that it would also come to America, however.

Oh,...and jorge,...no Russian victory in WW2,...no Castro.

What do general staffs do? Do you think that the plans contained in the Pentagon for an invasion and occupation of Outer Mongolia indicate an instruction by the political powers of the United States to prepare for that eventuality and an intention to do so, or rather are indicative of an obsessive compulsive desire to plan and prepare for any possible contingency by staff officers with nothing better to do?

Actually you should know your history better. France and England invaded Germany in WW II before Germany invaded them.

Well, they certainly did because they let Russia invade Poland at the same time Germany did with no repercussions.

“If grandmother were still alive, this war would have never happened”!

Kaiser Wilhelm II

I do not feel the Kaiser was as much a war monger as was perhaps his general staff, and he also stated that going to war with the Hapsburgs as allies was akin to being tethered to a corpse.

But colonialism makes for strange bedfellows.

I also do not feel that the great war was solely perpetrated by the great unwashed. But they certainly paid the price.

The Soviet strategy was to let Germany defeat all of the armies to the west of the Soviet Union, then attack and defeat a German army depleted by their conquests, thereby gaining control over all of Europe having to defeat only one opponent that had already expended a great deal of resources. This plan was set back when Germany launched Barbarossa and gained the initial advantage and momentum before the Soviets attacked. Again, I suggest reading [uThe Chief Culprit][/u].

i was watching another youtube yesterday on stalingrad, and the food ration for the german soldier. towards the end it amounted to about two slices of bread a day, and some fat once a week.
about 700 calories all in all. keep in mind the stress of combat and the cold.

this reminded me of a conversation with that german in law that served in russia. he was talking about living on erzatz bread made with sawdust and a spoonful of lard per week.

That conversation started from me telling him one day of my grandparents spooning concealed lard out of a pot with a cooked ham, and smearing the lard on black bread. They ate that before the meat.
Times were hard in the old country.

Dad, born 1908, Pocahontas County, Iowa, always told of taking lard sandwiches to school for dinner. His father had come over from Germany, alone, as a teenager.

i am connected to a facebook page for novot, slovakia. they have been posting pictures of the village and surrounding area given the heavy snows. choppers were flying low over the trees next to the roads to knock snow off, to prevent the trees from cracking and falling into the roads.
i am talking a LOT of snow. I cannot imagine trying to move mechanicized equipment in those conditions.
One of the local competitions they have this time of year is moving heavy timber in races with horses that are the size of clydsdales.
And to think hitler stopped issuance of winter clothing to his troops. idiot.

I asked my croat stepgrandfather one time why he came to this country circa 1902. He said he didn't really know what the United States was, but maybe he would have a chance. He said it was routine every winter in his village in croatia for people to die of the cold and starvation.
It took me a lot of my life being stupid, to realize how much those people taught me about how to lead your life and what was important.
my wife was born in texas to sharecropper parents. she was still a young girl in the late 40's living in morristown, outside of wickenburg, arizona in the desert. And couldn't start school in the fall as she didn't have any shoes. To think of not having shoes in the arizona desert?
I have a picture of my mother in the 20's having a so called picnic in the desert by buckeye, az. She had dark circles under her eyes, and was a scarecrow. Think of those pictures of the camps during WWII. Each generation here it got easier, but my mama who was a .75/hr waitress always made sure i got fed. Those memories and stories of the old country are probably what gives me little patience with the next couple of generations you see hollering on the evening news.

You are correct, it just turned over the reins of power to them and that is the mess we have today...

JB: If you think Hitler had no designs on France and or England, we'll just have to agree to disagree.

Definitely France,...maybe England out of necessity,..but so what?

Would they be worse off today?

Today:

Germany under the control of a Communist female.

France under the control of a homosexual, Communist male,..riots ongoing.

England under the control of a female muppet that's trying to overturn the Brexit vote and return control of the country to the Bolsheviks in Brussels.

,...Muslims running roughshod over all of them.

Concur, absolutely!

The Kaiser, in his dotage from the Netherlands sends Hitler a telegram congratulating him on the armistice with France in 1940. He states that now would be a good time to reinstall the monarchy. Hitler sent him no reply. But read the telegram and stated to those around him, "what an idiot!"

Additional edit

Neither Wilhelm the I or II heeded Bismarck’s words.

"The secret of politics? Make a good treaty with Russia!"

“The entire Balkans are not worth the bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier!"

I am on the other side of Slovakia in Kosice. I haven't made it to Bratislava yet. I hear it is nice. I am not much for the cities. I love the Tatras and have spent a lot of time snowboarding, hiking and climbing there. As soon as the fishing opens I am hoping to get some time on the rivers for Hucho hucho, Brown and Rainbow Trout, and Grayling. My next big trip is to Slovenia for Marble Trout. Maybe next weekend if the weather isn't great I'll take a drive over to Bratislava.

England, France and Germany have certainly squandered their freedom and if Germany had successfully conquered England as well as France in 1941 - then all of the other countries they occupied - things would obviously be very different, although no one can say with certainty how. But I doubt 78 years under the Third Reich would have been a picnic, either. Folks forget just how repressive, totally controlled and brutal it really was. Listening to the wrong radio station was punishable by imprisonment. "Ihre Papieren, bitte" when traveling inside one's own country isn't a made up expression. There is a reason Nazi Germany is considered the modern archetype of the repressive police state.

Although, the next time we get a Democrat controlled Senate, HR and President at the same time we might get to experience that again...

The CNN and MSNBC of 40's Germany, no doubt.

Definitely!

Germany understood the result of having the population's minds filled up with Bolshevik bullshit, no doubt.

As far as I'm concerned, the American government can lock up everybody who listens to Rachel Maddow today.

It would just mean less antifa out on the streets beating patriots over the head with blunt objects.

One can only speculate how many additional “night of the long knives” might have occurred and seen the reestablishment of a new Prussian aristocracy equal to that of Frederick the I!

Nah, never have happened.

Before someone says that I’m taking up for Hitler, I most assuredly am not. He did lots of stupid and evil things. But that said, in the spectrum of western civilization he was a lot more within the range of normal than Stalin and the commies. And though it isn’t really politically correct for them to say it now, you can still find historians who said that if you weren’t a Jew or a Gypsy or something like that, living under Hitler wasn’t much different than things now.

Ponder this. Ask yourself what happened to Nina von Stauffenberg under Hitler. Now ask yourself what would have happened to her had she been Russian and her husband tried to blow up Stalin. For that matter, go see what happened to her mother while Nina was in fairly comfortable detention in Italy near the end of the war.

I would put a paycheck on the Slovak's wishing the Gypsy's were wiped out. They are such a burden on the economy here. They are disgusting, lazy, filthy, worthless people. One of these days I'll swing by their housing projects and snap some pictures. Or you can google Kosice Gypsy village.

It's true that life for the average Christian German in Nazi Germany pretty much went along as usual. If the war had ended in 1941 no bombers would have appeared overhead to conduct mass urban renewal programs. National pride was high and the economy was strong. As long as you went along with everybody else, did what the central government told you to do and didn't criticize it you were fine. Pretty much what life is like in modern China today, and they're going great guns.


Assuming Hitler died of natural causes in 1965 at age 76, a new aristocracy probably would have arisen during his reign, ready to take over. Not an aristocracy of titled nobility but one of rich industrialists, bankers (who would take over that role if there were no Jews?) and loyal party flunkies who would have eagerly tossed their integrity and morality aside to enjoy the fruits available only at the top. Just like America and Europe today.

So this has been out there a long time. Some claim that it is fiction, but it is certainly plausible and it certainly seems to fit what has happened.

Red House Report

Or a Slav. Hitler thought of them as subhuman slaves. He didn't realize that they originally considered the Germans as liberators and would have fought the Russians alongside them. Instead, they enslaved and exterminated them for "lebensraum".

It would be interesting to be able to go back and see where things would stand now if, throughout history, everyone would have just stayed "home".

I think Hitler was a paranoid schizophrenic willing to murder anyone he perceived a threat. He proved it too many times. He was surrounded by the same type personalities so whomever managed to take over would have been just or at least nearly as bad as Hitler himself. Angela Merkle the current chancellor of Germany was a member in good standing of the Marxist-Leninist Socialist Unity Party. The whole EU is Socialist-Marxist.

At some point I expect Europe to fall back into the warring mode they suffered from during the twentieth century. The way things are shaking out with the EU's open border policies the Islamists are sprinkling their particular brand of mayhem over the entire EU. Sooner or later things are going to boil.

From what I understand, the various assassination attempts on the Fuhrer, were not necessarily because they wanted the position
and glory of continuing to carry out what the top man and his inner circle had planned.

some of the great German combat commanders were indeed loyal to Hitler, but likely would not have been too disappointed had
he been 'rremoved' and another more rational leader allow them to command German forces to their best potential, rather than
Hitlers crazy delusional ideals of tactics and strategies that proved so wasteful and fruitless..Hitler ,Goering and some of the big brass
around them, were in near total denial of the actual depleted state of the German military across Europe.

Some great on the ground battle commanders like Guderian and others went to Berlin to try and it explain reality to them , but he was
shouted down and ridiculed...He tried to argue his points but he left in frustration to carry out the standing orders he was given.

Cant argue with any of that/

"At some point I expect Europe to fall back into the warring mode they suffered from during the twentieth century."

Warring mode???? Why punk on the 20th century??????? Just pick any century!!!!

Germany had the best Generals. Unfortunately for Hitler he refused to listen to them.

so he buried the MG-42 and surrendered himself? ... I thought one might want to fight off the soviet hoards at the German border
and the ones pouring over it ... right down to the last round of 7.92 mm in the link.

But as I've said before, the Eastern front hardened some Germans beyond belief, but also wore - broke many down that they just wanted
the war to be over, ..and laying ones arms down would certainly hasten that process.

I certainly won't condemn the man, ..cause the Eastern Front was the biggest most miserable hell hole imaginable in modern warfare, in fact,
the reality of it was unimaginable to most people who didn't experience it.

To say that fresh 18 yr old German recruits injected into Stalingrad had got the 'shock of their lives' would be a gross understatement.

The difference is that Europe isn't as relevant in this century. I'm not saying it's a sideshow, but with the rise of economic powers like China, Japan and South Korea, the earth doesn't revolve around Europe.

Two world wars in 30 years will do that to a place.

Your lack of knowledge of history is unfortunate. Japan and China were just as badly, if not more, ravaged by World War 2.

UPhiker Bristoe said two World Wars, not WWII

Neither was under Russian occupation after WW2.

From Patrick Buchanan in 1999:

https://buchanan.org/blog/pjb-an-unnecessary-war-328

Had Britain not declared war, Hitler would have attacked an unprepared Stalin in 1940. The result might well have been the liberation of the Gulag and its 12 million souls, the eradication of Bolshevism in Russia and China, no Cold War, no Korea, and no Vietnam. Instead of six years of World War II bloodletting, we may have seen six months of a Hitler-Stalin war, ending with one dead and the other crippled.

Neither was most of Europe.

Pat Buchanan is an ass. Hitler wouldn't have stopped. To think that all would have been fine is naïve. Without our supplying the Russians and with no Western Front, Germany would have still been relatively strong and then would have turned west. He wanted it all.

That's the typical justification. But as history has aptly shown, enabling Communism was a very bad deal for America and the world in general.

That much is established.

It's impossible to say how the world would have progressed otherwise.

If Hitler had wanted it all and had always intended to attack France, he would have attacked France first before he attacked Poland and not have left his ass hanging out in the wind when he did invade Poland.

France actually invaded Germany while the Germans were in Poland. The Germans had very few troops to oppose them. The French just stopped. After the war German generals said that if the French had pressed the attack the war would have been over in a few weeks in 1939.

Hitler has no intention of fighting in the west and didn’t think France and England would declare war over Poland. If he had actually possessed definite intentions of war in the west he would have attacked his stronger opponents first. By attacking east he took a huge risk that could very easily have lost the war before it even started good.

Maybe you should read some books written by historians. Enabling Nazism would have had the same result.

Liberation???.....Hitler was putting several million into harsh imprisoned slave labor camps, why would he release another 12 million
that were already in such soviet type camps and able to be put to use [exploited] like the others?

the huge logistics of rounding them up, sorting them out, transporting them and containing them
was already largely done for the Germans.....for the Nazis to then just let them all go free?

Apparently I simply mis-interpreted your statement. My comment was directed at the fact that europe has, historically always been in a warring mode. Least until 1945. And that it was nothing particular to the 20th century. My bad! 😊

Edit. My bad again. Several countries did try to maintain their colonial holding post 1945, by force of arms. But that’s another story for another time.

My mother and father inlaw met while working at one. It wasn't a picnic, but by all accounts conditions there were far superior to the gulags of Russia. People were literally worked to death in the Russian gulags. The were essentially prisons. The German work farm where my inlaws met was owned by a civilian couple and the people housed there just did farm work. It wasn't a punitive institution like the gulags were.

He was a POW from Poland. She was taken from Belarus and transferred to the work farm. After the war both of them had seen enough of Europe/Russia and made their way to Canada.

Buchanan [as you quote] said the 12 million in the Gulag would be liberated by the Nazis, . you really believe that?

I guess Poland also felt 'Liberated 'when the Allies fought off the Nazis just to leave the Poles under the Soviets...

The difference between the NAZIS and the Commies on the camps is that in Germany in order to get into a camp you needed to be a criminal, a member of a outlawed political group, or a member of a persecuted group. In Russia they would sometimes literally go around rounding random people up to shoot or send to Siberia. They have notes from both Lenin and Stalin on the pages of reports from local communist committees of arrest and executions that say things like “Kill another 2,000...doesn’t matter who.” Or stuff like, “Send a thousand more to Siberia.”

In fact, my mother and father in law stayed at the work farm for several months after the war ended because conditions at the work farm were much better than at the displaced persons camps.

Not necessarily. Many Polish POWs were placed in the work camps. My father in law was in a POW camp first. The POW camp was pretty bad,..as most of them are. Mostly because of the lack of food. The work farm was a huge step up from the POW camp. They got adequate food, clothing and shelter at the work farm. They got nothing at the POW camp except barely enough food to keep them alive.

Well, I thought POWS were kind of a given.

It's impossible to say what would have been the result, otherwise.

I wish my old Polish in laws were still alive. They lived through the entire event and it was interesting to hear their perspective of it.

The war in Europe was far from being as "black and white" as history portrays it.

Buchanan suggested The Nazis would have found a heart and liberated 12 million from the Gulag.

after my extensive reading of how the Nazis [unrelentingly] behaved in their systematic brutal push East,
I find that very hard to believe.

The Russians were pushing west pretty damn brutally, also.

I’ll bet they hated Russians a lot more than the Germans.

Indeed and nobody said they weren't ,
but for Buchanan to suggest the Nazis machine would find a heart and liberate 12 million from the Gulag ...

My mother in law *was* a Russian. Neither of them were fond of Germans as a group. But they had no hard feelings for the couple who owned the work farm where they met.

My mother in law refused to go back to Russia after the war. Both of them figured out some way to live in England until they could make their way to Canada. My brother in law was born in England.

If she had gone back, she would have been sent to Siberia and/or killed. Stalin had every POW who was returned shot or sent to the gulags.

Many Americans don't realize that there were thousands of Russians who were were aligned with the Germans. There were also Frenchmen aligned with Germany. Some were even in the Waffen SS.

That was what she was afraid of, although she wasn't a POW proper.

My father and his parents were Polish , they were in Europe all through the war, my Grandpa was a POW.
my mother and her parents were also in Europe all through the war ,(but not from Poland.)
As a boy I would go with my parents to visit the welcoming family home of a German veteran from the Eastern front.
we didn't associate with any Soviets. ..

My Polish Grandpa served in the German Imperial navy prior to WW1, and during WW1.

however he served for Poland during WW2....maybe he and his family got some preferential treatment
because of his past military service to Germany...To the best of my knowledge, there was no hate expressed
by my surving widowed grandmother or my own father, toward Germany after WW2.

Add:::post war,....my Polish aunty even married a German blondie Aryan appearance veteran pilot and they settled
in West Germany....she nursed him and his combat injuries till his premature death.
I never met the man but , I did see his photo in uniform she still had on the wall of her flat, when I visited her
in the later half of the 70s....she still had that photo hanging up even through she had remarried.

Unfortunately, 25 years from now no one will be alive to have these discussions.

kwg

There is not a great deal written about the men from defeated countries who then fought for the Germans.

excellent book,...multiple interviews of German soldiers who were on the receiving end of the D-day invasion.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B071NTXK2H/ref=series_rw_dp_sw

Some 50,000 Russians IIRC, fought for the Germans on the eastern front.

When things were really dire and the Germans were packing out , German NCOs would ask their commanders;
'what shalll we do with these Russians?...shall we just shoot them?

...I don't know how many they did shoot, but a number were released to fend for themselves and try and make
their way back through to behind the Soviet lines.... how many successfully blended back into soviet territory
and how many were discovered and punished by the Soviets is anyones guess.

AS far foreign SS servicemen, it may interest some to know that Middle East recruits into the SS
actually fought for the last stand defence of BERLIN....post war some of those Arabs got involved
in the western ntelligence services for the Cold War... some actually became advisers to Yasser Arafat..
.. and also provided intelligence to Mossad.

It was x-SS servicemen still in network- contact and trained by German intel chief Reinhard Gehlen and working
together with Otto Skorzeny (who was once Hitlers close right hand man SS Commando.-Obersturmbannführer )
that Helped Israel will intel to find and destroy stashes of equipment that Egypt had prepared for the 1967 Six Day War.
such assistance was instrumental in giving Israel a substantial advantage in achieving victory.
That post war Nazi network of henchmen and intelligence providers, also did other vitally important things for Israel-Mossad,
as well as number of other countries that required their highly valuable clandestine services.

By the end of 1941 German Generals were already complaining about the lower quality of replacements it was receiving from Germany. Non the less German was already desperate for bodies the replace the fallen. They recruited throughout the conquered nations for additional replacements and visited POW camps for more.

Germans considered non-German replacements as inferior and placed them in behind the lines units to free more Germans to front line service though some replacements were formed into units to fight partizans, especially in the Balkans.

Aside: When Italy surrendered in 1943, Germans did shot many of their Italian "allies".

Italian Communists were a much larger problem for the Italians who had followed Mussolini. In fact it was Italian Communists who killed Mussolini and his mistress and hung them up to be viewed.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/33rd_Waffen_Grenadier_Division_of_the_SS_Charlemagne_(1st_French).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/5th_SS_Panzer_Division_Wiking

About 500,000 men from countries around Europe served in the Waffen SS during the war and some like the. Joint Division were among the best troops the Germans had.

"communism and jewry"...enjoy...

Woody - thanks for that. I have read that before, along with a few other things. What I have never seen covered in depth was what became of these men after the war. Best, John

Thanks for the film, Jorge. The common thread in all of the foreign legions of the SS was “to combat Bolshevism”.

Whether propaganda or not? Seemed to work.

Funny that after the "tactical retrograde" of the British 8th army from the gazala line ( Libya) back toward Egypt that they left the First Free French brigade on their far right flank to cover their retreat. The FFL brigade was a hodgepodge of colonial forces ( Tahitian, Senegalese, Ubangi-Shari, etc) and one foreign legion demi-brigade. The 13eme. They actually stopped Rommel in his tracks and destroyed several Italian reenforced armored units at Bir Hachiem. Ok I digress, a number of the legionnaires were captured after the pull out. The official report to Berlin was the 13eme was basically composed of “Jews and Red Spaniards”. Which was pretty much spot on.

There were more misplaced German and Polish Jewish university professors and staff in the 13eme that any other allied combat unit. They were jokingly refered to as the academic brigade. And a large number of those former Republican soldiers from Spain seeking asylum in France found a home in La Legion Étrangere.

Unfortunately that book has largely been exposed to be fake. It's a bummer, because the excerpts look excellent.

I've not seen any evidence that they've been exposed as a fake. Do you have any?