Timeline for WW2, in respect of our WW2 Veterans

Bob110
Bob I just wanted to mention a few lines and thank you for taking the time to post all these photo galleries.

My dad was in the 6th Airborne and was one of the blokes that entered and liberated Bergen Belsen camp.
The photos you presented much followed what he described to me as a kid.

Also as a 5 or 6 year old growing up in Gloucester post war we lived in what was called a two berth caravan with my younger brother Raymond who now lives Down Under. In this orchard were a lot of similar static caravans (trailers or trailer park they call it here) were housed a lot of demobbed servicemen, and refugees from all parts.
Next to one Scots family & the boy I went to school with, was a Polish Jewish family who had come from Warsaw. They took in laundry and did tailoring work, using old irons in the fire to press the finished product.

The grand father used to sit outside playing a fiddle (violin) in a very melancholy way. I still associate this sound with orthodox Eastern European Jewish people and black Homburg hats:eek:
Their daughter was about 18 at the time and was the only member of the family who spoke English. During a summer school break we got talking to her, only to find out that her three brothers and sisters had been taken away and exterminated while they worked. I remember her relating the wailing and weeping that befell the ghetto at night when they had come back to their quarters from forced labour.
I have never forgotten the story even to this day how it was told to me at a tender age by this Polish teenager.
Very sad!
Cheers Dennis

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by zedcars

Bob110
Bob I just wanted to mention a few lines and thank you for taking the time to post all these photo galleries.

My dad was in the 6th Airborne and was one of the blokes that entered and liberated Bergen Belsen camp.
The photos you presented much followed what he described to me as a kid
I have never forgotten the story even to this day how it was told to me at a tender age by this Polish teenager.
Very sad!
Cheers Dennis

---

There are still some who deny the Holocaust happened. I believe the memory must be kept alive, if only to prevent it happening again. During the War, there were many atrocities committed, The Japanese death marches, [ Bataan, Thailand, Sandakan , the massacre of Australian nurses at Banka Banka Island , and more] The German SS massacres of prisoners, but the Death camps stand above all else.

Humans can strive and achieve wonderful things, for the betterment of mankind, but deep within all of us there seems to be a darkness, that can manifest itself in the most horrible of ways, in times of war. There is too much glorification of War, in movies especially. The reality of War is in those photos, as confronting as they are. Lest We Forget, Bob

World War II: The Fall of Imperial Japan - In Focus - The Atlantic

G'day Bob10

Are you going down to the dedication ceremony at New Farm for the Submariners memorial at 1.30 pm. I was going to go but I have a rotten head cold,the wife is in bed with the Flu so that puts me out.


Cheers

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by UncleHo

G'day Bob10

Are you going down to the dedication ceremony at New Farm for the Submariners memorial at 1.30 pm. I was going to go but I have a rotten head cold,the wife is in bed with the Flu so that puts me out.


Cheers

---

Mate, I didn't know it was on, or I would definitely be there, bit late now, I'm up to my elbows in gardening, trying to tame the jungle growing here. Bob

I think it was the British forces who made a film of the various atrocities they came across. It was on TV years ago and I taped it, not because I wanted to see it more than once, but because otherwise it's too easy to forget. My brother had a girlfriend who saw some concentration camp footage once and asked him what it was. He told her and she said, "Were they on our side or the other side?" How do you answer that one?

I've got a copy of Journal, by Helene Berr, which is simply a diary of daily life in Paris as the Nazis, including French Nazis, rounded up her friends and family, and the various stories of other people she heard about. It's so awful I've only been able to read a few pages at a time.

Considering that much of this was repeated in the remnants of Yugoslavia in the 90s, it's important not to forget.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Davo

Considering that much of this was repeated in the remnants of Yugoslavia in the 90s, it's important not to forget.

---

Too right, mate. No one likes looking at , or reading about, this sort of stuff. But it is a necessary evil, to educate the politicians who make the decisions to send young people to War, the potential consequences of that action. Just as important, the potential consequences of no action. As per Neville Chamberlain's " peace in our time " , Bob

And when dreams of World conquest fall apart, most get their just deserts, Bob

World War II: After the War - In Focus - The Atlantic

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by bob10

Too right, mate. No one likes looking at , or reading about, this sort of stuff. But it is a necessary evil, to educate the politicians who make the decisions to send young people to War, the potential consequences of that action. Just as important, the potential consequences of no action. As per Neville Chamberlain's " peace in our time " , Bob

---

Bob & Gentlemen of this ALRU

As a boy growing up in England and going to a grammar school in the 60's we almost universally concluded that when reading the Classics, the Greeks were all good, and the Persians were all bad!
However in my adult life I worked in Iran and saw and studied something quite different.

Why you might ask, Well to summarise its easy, the victors write the history books!

Again at school we read the tales of heroism of the 1st World's War and rightly so, but what about the peace! And the statement "A war to end all wars"!

What of the the politicians that carved out the reasons to go to war with Germany in the first place? A flimsy argument if you take the time to read & study it
A very like minded nation are Germans with common values in 1914 to those in our British Isles and Commonwealth countries. Indeed the Kaiser and the Royal families of Europe were all related from their Sax Cohburg roots. Nevertheless a very competitive country (still is) & one that prompted a Cold War of sorts enacted by Britain ten years or so before the outbreak of war in 1914.

The Treaty of Versailles was really the precursor of conditions to the events leading up to outbreak of war in 1939 amid Nazi Germany's expansion east into what was then Poland & the Danzig Gap, but was formerly a part of Germany cut up as a result of this disastrous treaty. Which incidentally was written up by the victor powers of France, Britain, and the new found power in the making the USA!

What about the distrust the UK Gov had of France in 1918 and its feared sequestration of the Ruhr at the time leading up to the treaty's enactment and the scenarios that played out between these two wily old foxes David Lloyd George , Georges Clemenceau, and the somewhat passive Woodrow Wilson of the USA. This unhappy compromise was in many ways the reason the masses voted for Adolf Hitler and his socialist party which incidentally was a popular political movement even in Britain with Oswald Mosley and his British National party.
Having read his (A Hitler) address at his first conference 1934, he might have been a good appealing orator today amid Europe's and Britain for that matter's, financial/economic woes!

Had this treaty had be more equitable with defeated Germany, and the members of the former Austro Hungarian empire as treaty participants, it might have looked quite differently it can be argued. Indeed the Austrian corporal (a war time messenger boy) might have simply gone back to painting small pieces of art in Munich, which he did before the 1st World War!

Without going into great depth the history books and the politics of the 1920/30's are difficult at best extract the real facts and truth about the power-plays going on within the three victor countries.
From what is available by great research it is possible to credibly argue that the USA set the two leading empirical powers up at the time to take the path to eventual war and economic & Empire dissolution leaving it (USA ) and Russia the ONLY two real World Powers in 1945.
Certainly the conferences of Yalta and Tehran show Churchill of the UK and his French counterpart in a much more servant like position and vassals to the conference outcomes.

In Britain we have to ask what prompted the use of amendment 18B to be implemented against some members of the British parliament. No credible arguments can be given by the UK Gov (secrets) apart from those expounded by the late A J P Taylor.
Why did Laurence of Arabia shortly before he was killed send a communique to Germany from his RAF base? Witnesses stated quite clearly that a black van was involved in that fatal motorcycle accident, but that evidence was omitted from the inquest testimony.

In my youth I discovered a lot about this by research at school, reference libraries etc . At he time I questioned both my parents who had less of a grasp of worlds politics as working class people. But my school masters had not only fought in the second world war but were university academics before 1939.
Questioning them led only to mis-information or simply wouldn't be drawn into specifics. Leading one teacher to state that I was asking about things that were tantamount treasonous or I was questioning my betters about things a no concern to a boy like me!
Fortunate with the laconic eye of age and the internet, there is much to read from German news media at the time and press archives from the Library of Congress.
There is much yet to know what really went one behind the scenes in this terrible era of Western modern history.
Cheers Dennis
zedcars

It was truly a barbaric century and I can only hope future generations look back at it and don't try and repeat it.

So far, the best book I've read about it is "Blood, Tears, and Folly" by Len Deighton, which is full of strange and interesting details about, basically, all the stupid things each side did.