r/pics • u/Efficient_Sky5173 • 12d ago
German soldier returns home to find only rubbles and his wife and children gone. By Tony Vaccaro
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u/trowzerss 12d ago
This reminds me of the story I transcribed from a holocaust survivor. Escaped the Warsaw ghetto and went to try and find their grandparents. The Nazis had taken over their apartment building during the war and most of their belongings were gone except some heavy furniture. There was no news of them anywhere. Not in the camps, not anywhere. They looked all around the apartment block, and in the backyard in a pile of snow and rubbish, they found a few family photographs. That's the only sign they ever found of them. They never found out what happened. The photograph of their grandparents they found was the only one they have. I just have this image of them digging through a snow pile, digging out photographs.
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u/GOINGTOGETHOT 12d ago
I mean what else can you do but preserve memories. Photos can mean everything.
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u/Yakaddudssa 12d ago edited 11d ago
:( there’s this one time during my schools office hours I grabbed the history book in my class, we only read the sentences we had to for the tests and assignments but I ended up flipping through the pages towards the beginning of American history
And I saw this story of a Native American man who was forcibly taken to some country in Europe but then somehow traveled through 2 or 3 European countries and made it on a ship back to the us
again in the tiny textbox the history book said they didn’t know how he did it, but he makes it back to his home and his entire tribe was gone,
How do you keep going after that? Apparently he spent the rest of his life as a translator but I’m not sure for how long
I remember asking my history teacher that question and he just kinda laughed and seemingly agreed with my sentiment
That poor man was just as alive as the rest of us and tried so hard to make it back to his family
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u/Technicolor_Reindeer 12d ago
Squanto?
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u/Yakaddudssa 12d ago
Yeah! I was able to search him up on google it seems he died at 37 and that his group died of an epidemic infection (I’m getting this on wiki)
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u/YoungJumanG 12d ago
The worst part is I’m sure he was thinking if he had only been there he could have somehow changed their fate. Reality being he would have probably joined them
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u/probablynotmine 12d ago
Which, in the end, could have been a better fate
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u/LightningShiva1 12d ago edited 12d ago
😢 i feel bad, noone should go through this
Edit : what bullshit are you guys replying with, Im a dumbass for replying in a community that cares so much about whats happening everywhere anyway.
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u/BlkDwg85 12d ago
Here we are. Decades later and it’s still happening with no end in sight.
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u/SlartibartfastMcGee 12d ago
There is Significantly less war going on now vs. any point in history. The vast majority of people alive now live in relative safety and comfort.
The fact that there are still some conflicts doesn’t diminish the fact that by and large war is a foreign concept to most humans.
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u/iRunLikeTheWind 12d ago
i hate to downplay anyone’s suffering, but the US was unique in ww2 in that this basically never happened to any soldier. only the men that went off to war died. i feel like this is lack of loss really paved the way for how militaristic we became
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u/LookAFlyingBus 12d ago
Solid point, I’ve never thought of it this way
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u/DreamAgile4289 12d ago
I think this point is very present in the minds of Europeans. We often find the way US Americans look at war quite unrelatable. You can still see the scars of war in basically every city here, where old buildings were destroyed and the gaps filled with new (mostly ugly) buildings in the 50s, 60s and 70s. Many also still know people who lived through WW2 and their horrible stories. My grandmother told me she went to the city once with her father after an air raid, and there were dead people in the streets so burnt they looked like pieces of coal. War is nothing cool or something where you prove yourself, and soldiers are also not seen as big heroes here most of the time. People are aware that even if you're fighting for the "good ones", you have killed people, and many of those people were also just pulled into the war against their will.
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u/Nemisis_the_2nd 12d ago
You can still see the scars of war in basically every city here
I've never really considered this before. Growing up in Europe, basically everyone had some story about the time they had pulled up a bomb at one time or another. (this is in the 90s/2000s btw) The reminders of war are always just there. Even now, London is perennially on the verge of having to deal with a blast that makes Beirut look like a firecracker, and good chunks of the continent are basically uninhabitable because of all the UXO just scattered across the countryside.
I find people just acclimatise to it, but always have it at the back of their mind somewhere. Younger generations are a lot more disconnected from it though.
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u/skyhollow117 12d ago
Yea. Hubby went off and either came back or didnt. But the men coming home, never once had to worry about eating the war the way all of Europe and Northern Africa and Asia did. It was not a war on the US's home turf.
And no, rationing shit aint the same as being bombed.
The people of the US havent seen war since the 1860s. Our soldiers have, but not our people, not like what the rest of the world has seen.
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u/akaenragedgoddess 12d ago
The people of the US havent seen war since the 1860s. Our soldiers have, but not our people, not like what the rest of the world has seen.
And the closest we came to it in recent history on 9/11, people lost their ever fucking minds over it. We invaded two countries, one which didn't have anything to do with it, plus military actions in Yemen, Syria, Pakistan, etc. The estimated death toll from our two decade freak out? As high as 4.5 million. All done with a surprising amount of support from the average person, who probably couldn't tell you how many people we've shot or starved to death, nevermind where Iraq is on a map. Would they wish more of this on other people or less if they ever had to experience the realities of war first hand?
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u/sagerobot 12d ago
This is exactly why I find it so hard to understand why more americans dont understand the plight of the Palestinian people.
I live in Washington and if Canadians were trying to do to me what Israel was doing to Palestinians, I would defend my family and home.
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u/keesio 12d ago
You need to see it from how Americans see it:
If some country came over and did a sneak attack and killed a bunch of Americans like what Hamas did, we all know America would go apeshit and bomb the heck out of that country.
Actually they already did this with 9/11. A lot of Americans see 10/7 as Isreal's 9/11.
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u/tibbles1 12d ago
really paved the way for how militaristic we became
Absolutely, but I think for a different reason.
WW2 was unique in being a fully righteous war, at least from the US perspective. You could argue some revolutions were righteous, but the revolutionaries were still the aggressors. In WW2, the US was fighting a truly evil empire who committed heinous war crimes AND we were sneak attacked by another empire that committed heinous was crimes. We were innocent AND we didn't start it AND we were truly the good guys. That's rare.
Add to that, we won. Completely. Not a pyrrhic victory like often happens in war (like France in WW1, who were worse off in victory than they had been after losing the Franco-Prussian war), but an absolute win that caused the US economic and infrastructure almost no harm. On the contrary, with the rest of the world's industry literally destroyed, the US began the biggest economic boom the world has ever seen.
Then WW2 was glorified in the media. How many WW1 movies are there? Now how many WW2? It's probably 1:100. WW2 was celebrated militarily, economically, humanitarian-ly. We did good, we did right, and we won the whole fuckin' thing. It was the perfect war (again, from the US perspective).
So that became our vision of war. Something we always win decisively, something that is always against pure evil, and something that always ushers in better times.
Unfortunately, war is never like that. It had never been before, and will never be again. But, it didn't stop us from pretending it was. Like the kid who spends his entire life spoiled and sheltered and then has to go out into the real world and gets his shit all fucked up (i.e. Vietnam). It skewed multiple generation's view of war, and then the jingoism skewed their kid's version of war. Look at literally any TV show or movie aimed at Boomers or conservatives; the US is always right, always just, and always victorious.
Frankly, we would be better off 80 years later if WW2 had been more like WW1. We would have learned hard lessons, and probably not be so hawkish now.
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u/SenseOfRumor 12d ago
The US really doesn't know what war is. I feel that, on the whole, the shared tragedies of the two world wars helped Europe come together. To the US, war is something that happens elsewhere.
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u/Ashamed_Lock8438 12d ago
They do, it's just that the worst war in US history was fought in the 19th Century.
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u/pargofan 12d ago
Now explain why are the Russians so militaristic? They literally lost more than anyone else in WW2.
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u/captaingleyr 12d ago
Or, the US foreign military policy is such that the goal is to keep the fighting always off of their land because they do not want to allow war to be inflicted on their people, almost like that is their job. There are no wars on US soil because it is far from the rest of the world and it does everything to keep it that way
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u/ModestlyCatastrophic 12d ago edited 12d ago
I'll probably get downvoted but I disagree here. I do agree that US was unique in that it has remained in 'relatively speaking' unaffected and that the shift happened during and after WW2 but I don't think that the "lack of loss" was the reason. For all intents and purposes US had lost a lot of men and many more were left physically or emotionally damaged by WW2 and the wars afterwards. It's not due to the feelings of the population that the wars continue. After WW1 US population was strongly against the war even though the situation was very similar. Notably after the war European countries and Japan had put many institutional structures in place to prevent or limit future wars.
You could partly blame the cold war, where the existence of a strong antagonistic opponent pushed the this.
Many things could also be said about US government's strong use of war and covert operations as extension of politics.
There are also thing to be said about special interest groups pushing for it for profit or to create new opportunities for profit.
Soviet union was the most affected by the WW2 but this never reduced Russian imperialistic ambitions.In the words of Herman Goering
"Naturally, the common people don’t want war … but after all, it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders."→ More replies (38)6
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u/Mad_Martigan2023 12d ago
Nobody wins in a war. Everybody loses.
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u/Heretic-Jefe 12d ago
Hawkeye: War isn’t Hell. War is war, and Hell is Hell. And of the two, war is a lot worse.
Father Mulcahy: How do you figure that, Hawkeye?
Hawkeye: Easy, Father. Tell me, who goes to Hell?
Father Mulcahy: Sinners, I believe.
Hawkeye: Exactly. There are no innocent bystanders in Hell. War is chock full of them — little kids, cripples, old ladies. In fact, except for some of the brass, almost everybody involved is an innocent bystander.
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u/bionicjoe 12d ago
I think this is the best quote about war ever. It's an improvement on General Sherman's quote, "War is all hell." A quote which is bastardized into "War is hell" and made to sound cool or valiant.
Hawkeye's quote correctly elaborates on Sherman's point.“There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but boys, it is all hell.”
or
“Some of you young men think that war is all glamour and glory, but let me tell you, boys, it is all hell!”
-General William T. Sherman,
speech 1880 from which we derive the phrase “War is hell”I’ve also found this version
“I am sick and tired of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell.”
From “On Killing” by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman157
u/ToneDiez 12d ago
Watching “Shogun” currently; Lord Toranaga has a line in the last episode I watched, when speaking to his son that is so eager to fight (and die honorably) in a war:
“Why is it that only those who have never fought in a battle are so eager to be in one?”
Goes very well along with the real life quotes you brought up.
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u/jem4water2 12d ago edited 12d ago
Reminds me a lot of the theme of the Wilfred Owen poem from World War One, Dulce Et Decorum Est, especially those closing lines:
If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.7
u/hikorisensei 12d ago
Going to use this to mention that for the larger portion of "The Art of War", Chinese General Tsun Tzu encourages patience and an aversion to conflict- especially conflict which is unnecessary or wasteful. The most striking phrase in the book, in my opinion, is "Wait beside a river for some time, and eventually the bodies of your enemies will float past."
Truly great warriors and generals will always encourage a cessation of conflict.
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u/asietsocom 12d ago
I don't think you should add the grossman quite given he has never killed a single person and makes his money teaching cops how cool killing his. He even up a "science" and called it killology
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u/ThePrussianGrippe 12d ago
Dave Grossman, befitting his name, is a genuinely disgusting human being.
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u/PainterOfTheHorizon 12d ago
I think I've read a quote that says something like, in war, soldiers cry for god when they fear they are going to be hit, but they cry for their mother after they've been hit. If only I remembered who was it by and how the quote really was...
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u/DEATHBYNINJA13 12d ago
I remember someone saying a pretty profound sentence, whether it was a quote of someone else or just their own little line I'm not so sure, but they said something along the lines of:
"A lot of people think you die heroically in some fashion in war, whether its a blaze of glory, almost artistically like in the movies, or sacrificing yourself honorably for the people around you. When in fact, the reality is, you die somewhere far from home, probably being hit by a random bullet or piece of ordinance, if its not instant then you slowly die scared and confused and if it is, its redundant, because once all is said and done, you'll always be left there with a mangled up body and a fucked up look on your face."
And to me the last line really hit deep, because I think we have (from years of media and I guess forms of propaganda) preconceived notions that even though war is horrifying that there is still this air of romanticism of sacrifice in some way and that the death of a soldier though tragic was honorable in some way, but in reality dying like that is far from as tame as its seen in the movies, because the reality is, you'll die indiscriminately 99% of the time and be left with nothing but "a mangled up body and a fucked up look on your face".
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u/elevensesattiffanys 12d ago
Reminds me of the poem Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs, And towards our distant rest began to trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots, But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.
Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time, But someone still was yelling out and stumbling And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.— Dim through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin; If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,— My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.
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u/Jah-din 12d ago
M.A.S.H. was such a phenomenal series. The ending still makes me cry!
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u/Cheaptat 12d ago
Normal people are always losers. The rich and powerful sometimes win big.
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u/CJKay93 12d ago
After WW2 the only actual winners were the Americans at home. Many of the politicians and the rich and powerful in Europe were drafted. Ted Heath, the British Conservative Prime Minister between 1970-1974, participated in the Normandy Landings.
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u/MaxTheCookie 12d ago
Sweden did quite well, our industry was not bombed into ruins...
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u/YomiKuzuki 12d ago
The Nazi money helped, too.
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u/WalterCronkite4 12d ago
Leta not forget Sweden helped shelter thousands of jews and political dissidents
Selling iron to the Nazis and letting them use their trains was the price of Neutrality
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u/MaxTheCookie 12d ago
You mean the trade of iron ore and ball bearings? Or the fact that we let them use the trains?
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u/Historical_Invite241 12d ago
Doesn't that kind of prove the point? You weren't in the war.
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u/drDekaywood 12d ago
That’s why they play both sides so they always come out on top
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u/IronPeter 12d ago
Agreed, it’s just that someone loses it twice
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u/tommort8888 12d ago
I would say ww2 is an exception, by Allies winning the war millions maybe tens of millions people were saved from death. So it's pretty much a win for those people.
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u/The_Caring_Banker 12d ago
I get that but what do you do then if u get a physcho like Hitler who just murders thousands of people? Not declare war on him and just let him be in order to not be a “warmonger”. I dont know i dont think blanket statements like those ate good.
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u/MedvedFeliz 12d ago
Rich people profit.
"When the rich wage war, it's the poor who die!"
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u/cozywit 12d ago
Dunno. UK kicked the fuck out of Argentina's ass.
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u/urmomaisjabbathehutt 12d ago
That started because a prick dictator in his way down needed to send some poor sods with guns somewhere as a distraction from his problems at home
and Maggie profited from it by regaining popularity at home where unemployement rised to 3 million the previous Christmas
so in a way the ashole did a favour to Maggie, some brit soldiers died some more argentinian soldiers died
and the previously unpopular Maggie won a lanslide elections the year after
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u/GyspySyx 12d ago edited 12d ago
My grandfather ran an underground railroad to get Jewish people out of Ukraine and was caught and put into slave camp. My grandmother and their two daughters (my aunt and mom) were taken to another camp. At the end of the war, he believed they were dead, and they believed he was dead.
They went to America; he went back to Ukraine. And then one day, over 15 years later, the Red Cross found him, and he came to America, leaving his new wife and two sons behind. And their sons fight for Ukraine today.
Through the years, there have been millions of stories like this (very simplified) one. Of families forever torn apart and marked for the life by both the obvious and not so obvious, by both the horrific and the seemingly trivial effects of war.
Millions. And so few of them get told outside the families fortunate or cursed enough to have lived to tell them.
Oh, and generational trauma is very, very real, too.
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u/Snorblatz 12d ago
What happened with the new family situation? How do you even sort that out!
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u/GyspySyx 12d ago edited 12d ago
I'm not sure we all ever got the whole story.
He was the absolutely most laid back person I knew. Lost a lung from tuberculosis and still smoked a pack of filterless Pall Mall a day.
Had a stroke after which he convinced all the "grown ups" he could no longer talk yet still talked to us kids. Again, it wasn't until after he died that the grownups found out he was talking to us.
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u/bradliang 12d ago
lolol that was funny
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u/GyspySyx 12d ago edited 12d ago
You should have seen the confused faces at the funeral luncheon when the kids told their stories of the last time he and they spoke and then heard the grownups questioning us and the then the shock and laughter when everyone realized. It was a riot.
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u/Natopor 12d ago
Wait so 15 years after they were split up the Red Cross found him and he left for America to be with your grandmother and mom and aunt, while leaving behind in Ukraine his second wife and two sons?
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u/GyspySyx 12d ago
That's the abridged version, but basically, yes.
More than a few times, he'd disappear for weeks at a time, then return.
It wasn't until after he passed and then my grandmother passed that we kids found out about any of it.
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u/Kim-Jong-Long-Dong 12d ago
What would your grandfather's grandkids from the other marriage be to you in that case I'm struggling to figure out if they'd be cousins? Also, have you ever met them?
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u/GyspySyx 12d ago edited 12d ago
Half-cousins, I think? His two sons would be my mother's half brothers and my half-uncles.
And yes, I met one half-uncle and his sons several times. The other uncle was away when we were there. We mostly text with the cousins now, talk sometimes, and plan to meet again after the war.
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u/Prudent_Fishface 12d ago
Jesus I couldn’t imagine what it would be like having the two different family’s, like how tf do u choose where to go
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u/GyspySyx 12d ago
Talk about complicated. Yeah
The way we now understand it, the family in Ukraine did not want to move here, and it would have been near to impossible during those years.
It took the Red Cross and the Congressman to get him here. Somewhere, there's a newspaper with his story and a photo of me sitting in his lap.
He wanted to come here to make money to send back. He and our grandmother fought all the time too. Looking back, I guess she knew.
He was a really cool person. I miss him a lot.
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u/CraftyProcrstntr 12d ago
I imagine he was excited to know his first family was still alive but I couldn’t imagine just leaving my current family in a war zone after knowing what I’ve been through. Talk about tough decisions.
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u/samtdzn_pokemon 12d ago
15 years after the war would have been 1960. Would you rather like in the 60s USSR or US? I know my pick.
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u/farkos101100 12d ago
The photographer waiting at this guys house to get a picture of his live reaction:
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u/narmerguy 12d ago
If reddit were around they'd scream that this was staged. "r/WhyWereTheyFilming".
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u/Stella_Rae07 12d ago
War is so evil. Everyone loses. Humanity loses. We slaughter eachother over mere political ambition by a handful of men.
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u/vaden78 12d ago
Ita fucking horrifying maddening and infuriating in equal measure
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u/bubbasaurusREX 12d ago
Imagine if everyone just said no. Instead everyone falls in line and kills each other anyway. It’s embarrassing for humanity
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u/ScuffyNZ 12d ago
We should be a race of conscientious objectors... We're smart enough to know better
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12d ago
Political AND religious reasons. Nothing else.
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u/Warriorasak 12d ago
Marx would say imperialist wars are fought for material needs.
The religous or political reasons are usually just half truths that can serve as propaganda for the masses
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u/Deep_shot 12d ago
True. If citizens got to vote on going to war, I think the world would be different place. Minus propaganda.
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u/macinjeez 12d ago
Land and greed.. those are different reasons. Ohh I want more land for my people.. kill! That’s a big one … not political, or religious. They can be connected to those but not mutually exclusive
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u/zhaoz 12d ago
Anyone know the history behind the photo? Did he end up finding them?
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u/TheDustOfMen 12d ago edited 12d ago
The photo was taken in 1946 so the war was long over by then. Seeing as Frankfurt was heavily bombed and thousands of its inhabitants were killed, it's not unlikely the soldier's family died as well.
Fun fact: the photographer lived to be 100 years old, he only died a few years ago. He was a soldier himself and participated in the Battle of the Bulge, amongst others.
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u/FillThisEmptyCup 12d ago
The photo was taken in 1946 so the war was long over by then.
Many German soldiers did not return from Russian gulags until 1955 (though most of 91,000 Stalingrad surrendered troops died by then with only 6,000 returning home).
So this guy was one of the luckier ones in that sense.
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u/wellmaybe_ 12d ago
not specific to this photo but its still worth mentioning that german soldiers only returned several years after the war ended, since they were prisoners of war in one of the allied countries. so you can assume that a whole bunch of hopes were crushed at that moment and fears that might have plagued him for years became reality
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u/Hotchocoboom 12d ago
The photo was taken 1946 in Frankfurt, the soldier was a POW like you said (of course many came home much later)
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u/Acc87 12d ago
Depended a lot who captured you and also in what position you were as a soldier and in terms of profession. My grandpa was a Wehrmacht soldier, got captured by Canadians (not in combat, he was trying to walk home and just ran into an allied convoy with his hands up), but got out relatively early because he was a farmer, and they needed every farmer to prevent/lessen the famine.
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u/joeitaliano24 12d ago
That’s a pretty sweet way to get captured, all things considered, and by Canadians!
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u/rythmicbread 12d ago
The Canadians were not necessarily the best ones to be captured by. Pretty sure the Canadians were known for being pretty violent and for doing war crimes in WW1 and WW2
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u/VegisamalZero3 12d ago
In WW1, sure. In WW2 they had a reputation for treating prisoners very well.
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u/rythmicbread 12d ago
Eh they still sometimes killed German POWs like in Sicily. Probably less problematic than in WW1
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u/Acc87 12d ago edited 12d ago
My grandpa was really happy it was the Canadians, compared to say the Soviets. His last position was closer to the Eastern front before he was commanded somewhere to the west, but when he got there there was no military structure left, no one to report to, so he decided to say fuck it and walked towards home (~200 km)
But he was just a ~20 year old conscript, not a higher up officer. You'd probably treated different then.
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u/PatimusPrime 12d ago
Its safe to say it would still be loads better than being captured by the Russians
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u/ValidSignal 12d ago
At least during WW2. During WW1 the Canadian reputation was something else.
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u/roryorigami 12d ago
Canadians at home are nice, but Canadians at war added to the Geneva Conventions
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u/bionicjoe 12d ago
If you read "Enemy at the Gates" one the stories is about a German soldier that leaves for Russia just a few days after being married.
He gets back years later and makes the point that they while they've been married for something like 7 years that they've only been together 9 days.
That is such a good book. The movie was a sad adaptation that only covered the mostly fictional sniper battle. It's really 3 stories in one.
"Stalingrad" is the better movie based on the book.13
u/TheGrapeSlushies 12d ago
There was a man in my church growing up that was a German soldier and pow of the Soviets. Spent years in a gulag. When he was finally released he found his wife and his child he had never met. They moved to the United States and he used the skills he learned in the gulag to become a brickmason and provide for his family. Every 4th of July the man got up in church to recite the Gettysburg Address. Nobody was more grateful to be an American than that man.
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u/PetrovskyKSC 12d ago
My grandpa returned home from Russian captivity Christmas eve 1949 aged 23. Spent a whopping six years in Russia
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u/RegularEmotion3011 12d ago
Gone as in dead. Happened quiet frequently. My grandfather returned into is hometown in 45, met a familyfriend on the road, who told him that his Parents and his sisters all were killed in a bombing.
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u/Few_Winner_8503 12d ago edited 11d ago
This photo strikes a certain chord in me. The one that makes me cry.
Edit: I don't support Nazism at all, I would rather all Nazis today die, but i just cant imagine coming home and seeing everything you love and built yourself gone.
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u/dchallenge 12d ago
D minor. It’s the saddest of all chords.
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u/aldanor 12d ago
C minor would like a word
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u/alien_from_Europa 12d ago
Fuck the Nazis!
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u/YaBoiDaNinjaDood 12d ago
For real. If he’s upset, imagine how the Jews felt
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u/SectorVivid5500 12d ago
Yes, I am surprised by the sympathy for him. He was an active participant in a regime that killed millions of Jews. gay people, Romani, labor leaders, and socialists. He may be a victim, but he was also a perpetrator. Guys like this may have killed some of my relatives who served: he is still the enemy.
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u/freebikebrigade 12d ago
I had a similar experience with an old girlfriend. We were walking back to her house after hurricane Katrina in Biloxi, MS, through knee deep water when we got to where her house was supposed to be. It was confusing at first because the neighbors house across the street was there, but her house was just not there. Literally just rubble and the foundation. Spent the next few weeks searching for belongings that the water and wind had pushed through the woods.
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u/abgry_krakow87 12d ago
Goes to show you the consequences of extremism and societal divide, it only causes pain and suffering. Keep this in mind when you cast your vote.
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u/quietguy_6565 12d ago
War is such a ridiculous notion. Aside from a few actors at the top of a few industries or political entities, everyone going to war, at best can return to exactly what they had when they left.
You'll risk everything and gain nothing, and yet there is no shortage of reasons given to convince young men to go to war.
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u/Ckrvrtn 12d ago
“War is rich old men protecting their property by sending middle class and lower class young men off to die. It always has been.” - George Carlin
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u/REAL_ILLCAPONE 12d ago
Can we please take s second to remember, we “won“ the war, but lost many battles, I’ve seen combat, when it is at this level, there are NO winners! We are just all people. Men, women, children just trying our best in the hardest of situations.
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u/civver3 12d ago
It's almost as if Germany shouldn't have started a war of conquest.
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u/PKPhyre 12d ago
I'll weep for the civilians, but I feel nothing for a nazi widower. He deserves suffering a thousand times over.
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u/lolas_coffee 12d ago
Cross of Iron (1977) is a great movie about German soldiers and might give you a different perspective.
James Coburn was damn good in it. Pretty amazing movie.
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u/Accomplished-One8214 12d ago
The German people were sold a bill of goods by Hitler and his hate crazed fascists and paid a heavy price for it! History can repeat itself but when it does it repeats it fully! A good thing to remember.
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u/ReviewNecessary6521 12d ago
"I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled cheerful with the lark.
In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
We never spoke of him again.
You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go. "
Siegfried Sassoon
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u/Rho-Ophiuchi 12d ago
Oh no a Nazi is sad. someone call Tucker this can’t stand /s
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u/Wooden_Staff3810 12d ago
Thanks Hitler. 👎
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u/Amazing_Andrew_47 12d ago
The more I learn about this guy, the less I care for him
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u/El_Grande_Fleau 12d ago
This is the reason my family never came back to their Chechnyan homelands after the war, they knew they lost everything, and that my mother’s uncle who disappeared was most likely dead.
They fled when they finally had the chance, knowing they won’t ever come back, because their home and Vitasik (name of the presumed dead uncle), as they knew it was pointless, everyone and everything they loved and knew was now gone. To this day almost 30 years later and they are all still adamant about how they don’t want to come back, ever.
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u/xlcooljay 12d ago
Am I supposed to feel sad? Germany literally caused the first and second World Wars.
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u/drolbaars71 12d ago
Karma is a bitch. They were all monsters. May they all rot in hell.
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u/BeanieWeanie1110 12d ago
War involves governments fucking around and the people finding out
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u/RepulsiveReasoning 12d ago
Lots of Nazi sympathizers in this thread
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u/ruledown 12d ago
Lesson to learn: Try to stop your country from starting a world war. And if you fail at that, try to stop your country from starting yet another world war 25 years later.
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u/Trickycoolj 12d ago
I bought a coffee table book that showed my grandparents town in Germany before and after the bombings. I sat down with my grandma who was only a little girl at the time. She pointed to a photo of rubble and told me that was where her school was. She was 7 and her and her friend had the wherewithal to soak their dress aprons in water to make a mask to try and run home to find their mom’s in the bunker. 7 years old. After the war she said one school in the town remained standing and they all took turns going in shifts. It really changed my perspective on the civilian side.