not-bono-ever
meh
Raspberry reich
World War II
- Thread starter Hollis
- Start date
From what I've read that is a massive oversimplification. There were large purges in both Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia to remove the people your talking about. At other times there was recruitment of them.
spitfire
Walty McWaltface
DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
Dowding insisted on bulletproof glass for the spitfires according to the book I'm reading, makes sense doesn't it.
Artaxerxes
Look out, he's got a gnu!
I think it was SBS an illustrated history I enjoyed but it's been a while and it maybe a different one I'm thinking of.
Hobarts 79th: invention innovation & inspiration was also quite good.
Ooh, and Spitfire Women but it's about the ATA and not just Spitfires.
not-bono-ever
meh
Forgotten bastards of the eastern front
Sir Belchalot
arenicola marina
Bizarre tale of a female Luftwaffe pilot who flew into encircled Berlin at the end of the war to rescue her son & ended up opening the world's first sex shop:
Idris2002
Christmas Eve, you know?
The cask of amontillado, WW2 Gibraltar style:
en.m.wikipedia.org
(Genuinely mental story about plans to build a secret observation post for stay-behind British ship spotters, should Gibraltar fall to the Axis - they would have been sealed in their underground observation chamber with provisions for up to seven years).
Operation Tracer - Wikipedia
(Genuinely mental story about plans to build a secret observation post for stay-behind British ship spotters, should Gibraltar fall to the Axis - they would have been sealed in their underground observation chamber with provisions for up to seven years).
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
Surprised there weren't sex shops before
spitfire
Walty McWaltface
I read this book last year and it was very good. Bit different from the usual soldier memoir, an odd angle as he was much more embedded in the local population than typical infantry/combat soldier would be.
Benedict Cumberbatch is fronting a BBC4 version of it tonight which could be worth a watch.
www.theguardian.com
www.bbc.co.uk
Benedict Cumberbatch is fronting a BBC4 version of it tonight which could be worth a watch.
Rereading: Naples '44 by Norman Lewis
Norman Lewis's travel book Naples '44 is justly celebrated for its portrait of a war-torn city and its desperate people. It also contains, argues Gillian Darley, the best account of the eruption of Vesuvius
BBC Four - Naples '44
Norman Lewis's memoir is brought to life with archive and clips from films set in Naples.
goldenecitrone
post tenebras lux
The local Italian women in the square in Naples with a small pile of tinned food next to them. The allied soldiers would give them a tin from their rations and then fuck them in the square. The women's faces would remain impassive.
Gramsci
Well-Known Member
Online exhibition on Polish women and WW2.
Only looked at some of this so far.
artandmemory.uk
Part oral history part artist working with these Polish women.
They ended up living in UK Post war. Some had been sent to gulags or forced Labour by the Soviets when they invaded Poland.
Others had escaped from Germans.
Look at how for Poles WW2 was a complicated history.
www.thefirstnews.com
Also shows long connection between this country and Poland.
Only looked at some of this so far.
Forgotten Force: Art & Memory
artandmemory.uk
Part oral history part artist working with these Polish women.
They ended up living in UK Post war. Some had been sent to gulags or forced Labour by the Soviets when they invaded Poland.
Others had escaped from Germans.
Look at how for Poles WW2 was a complicated history.
Powerful ‘Art and Memory’ exhibition brings Polish women’s stories of WWII and deportation to life
A unique mixed media art exhibition focusing on visualising the forgotten stories of Polish women during WWII who later settled in the UK has opened in London.
www.thefirstnews.com
Also shows long connection between this country and Poland.
DaveCinzano
WATCH OUT, GEORGE, HE'S GOT A SCREWDRIVER!
Not least anyone who ever visited the Berlin Erotik-Museum, also founded by the aforementioned Beate Uhse, which featured many historic exhibits demonstrating earlier copulatory commercialism.
steeplejack
trapped lbw for a duck
Online exhibition on Polish women and WW2.
Only looked at some of this so far.
Forgotten Force: Art & Memory
Part oral history part artist working with these Polish women.
They ended up living in UK Post war. Some had been sent to gulags or forced Labour by the Soviets when they invaded Poland.
Others had escaped from Germans.
Look at how for Poles WW2 was a complicated history.
Powerful ‘Art and Memory’ exhibition brings Polish women’s stories of WWII and deportation to life
A unique mixed media art exhibition focusing on visualising the forgotten stories of Polish women during WWII who later settled in the UK has opened in London.
Also shows long connection between this country and Poland.
People forget that post WW2 Poland shifted westwards by quite a bit. The Western half of present day Belarus was the Soviet spoils from the Nazi -Soviet pact and the Soviet advance of September 1939; it was part of Poland after the Polish-Soviet skirmish of 1920/1 (see Isaac Babel's Red Cavalry short stories). Present day western Poland was Germany up to 1945. We know a lot about the unbearably tragic fate of Poland during 1939-45; very little of Belarus which, although it seems hard to believe, had it worse; one in four of Belarus' pre-war population died during the second world war.
I would recommend Elen Klimov's Come and See from 1985 (Soviet film about the WW2 experience in Belarus, based on Ales Adamovich's I Come from the Fiery Village). But, don't watch it if you feel at all bad or unhappy. It's borderline unwatchable / unbearable.
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spitfire
Walty McWaltface
Yeah that’s some film. Harrowing stuff.
According to my Mum, her Dad (who served in the British army during the war) was at the liberation of Bergen-Belsen. He was born in Ireland and died in the mid 1990's:
www.heraldscotland.com
bagpipe.news
Bergen-Belsen liberation: Scots tank operator recalls horrors
“It was like going into a zoo – they were staring out at us, wondering whether we were Russian, American, British, Polish... Nobody said a…
Tribute to the pipers of Bergen-Belsen - Bagpipe News
Regular readers may recall our story last July about Branko Lustig. As a 10-year-old boy, Branko, a Croatian Jew, had been imprisoned at Auschwitz and later at Bergen-Belsen during the Second World War. Branko went on to have a successful career in the movie industry and, in fact, in 1994 […]
bagpipe.news
Gramsci
Well-Known Member
I've seen that film. It is good film.
Not sure if saying they had it worse helps.
Borders changed a lot over a short period of two wars and revolution.
What is now Western Ukraine was part of the Polish state for example
During WW2 Ukrainian nationalists fought a war of ethnic cleansing of Poles from what they considered Ukraine. Many were re resettled in the new Western border of Poland after the war. The conflict continued after WW2 ended.
I had Polish friend whose Grandmother barely escaped from being murdered by Ukrainian nationalists in WW2. His family relocated to the new Western area of Poland ( previously German) after the war. He had not time for Ukrainians. He told me there were Ukrainian villages and Polish ones in same areas. A lot of Poles were relocated to the new Western area of Poland after the war at behest of Soviet authorities who wanted a resolution of the conflict.
Postwar Poland was more Polish than pre war Poland. In fact most of that area of Eastern Europe was mixed. Germans, Poles , Ukrainians and Jews living in same area pre WW2.
Another good little known film is of the Polish Schindler.
Lviv was a Polish city. He was a petty thief who fed the Cities Jews who hid in the sewers. First only because it was money. When they ran out of money and things to give him he found he couldn't abandon them, True moving story of an ordinary not respectable person who in extreme circumstance showed themselves to be a hero.
Film shows the difference between the Ukrainian and Polish population of the City. With Ukrainians collaborating.
Elpenor
a clown’s heart and a mandolin
Wasn’t a lot of the Eastern part of pre 1939 Poland marshland, IIRC Stalin wanted it as a buffer between Germany and the USSR. I recall reading the memoirs of Adrian de la Cart (sp?) who mentions spending the interwar years pigsticking and shooting snipe in the marshes.
steeplejack
trapped lbw for a duck
That’s the Polesie Marshes. Plenty more than swampland in what was Eastern Poland & is nowadays Western Belarus. Big cities in Brest & Grodno, lots of farmland, the unofficial “summer capital” in Pinsk. Parts of it in Ukraine / Poland too
Was a bit of a killing field for retreating German motorised columns in 43/44.
Was a bit of a killing field for retreating German motorised columns in 43/44.
Attachments
spitfire
Walty McWaltface
Here's a bit of vaguely sourced fluff.
www.irishtimes.com
Pubs and Subs: rumour and reality of German U-boats in wartime Ireland
An Irishman's Diary
Hollis
bloody furious
This is all locked down.. but interesting how many historians are wrting about second world war myth-making and Covid-19!
Covid-19, the Second World War, and the Idea of Britishness
Covid-19, the Second World War, and the Idea of Britishness
Ming
I shot a man in Reno...
This is the story of a very brave member of the French resistance who helped over 250 members of the Allied escape. She was captured and horribly tortured by the Nazis. Her husband was killed. She survived the war and then had to fight for a pension from France and Britain 
"The woman who saved 250 airmen: The story of Lucille Hollingdale, member of the French Resistance – Women's stories" The woman who saved 250 airmen: The story of Lucille Hollingdale, member of the French Resistance
"The woman who saved 250 airmen: The story of Lucille Hollingdale, member of the French Resistance – Women's stories" The woman who saved 250 airmen: The story of Lucille Hollingdale, member of the French Resistance
Hollis
bloody furious
Really good thread this on the V1 and V2s and impact on morale. Must admit I've always imagined the random nature of the V campaign might make them more terrifying then the blitz.. it seems that was the case with the V1s having a massive impact on morale..
Average 28 hitting London a day between June and September 1944... there's a couple sites near me up in North London.
Average 28 hitting London a day between June and September 1944... there's a couple sites near me up in North London.
spitfire
Walty McWaltface
I was not aware of this artist before.
www.theguardian.com
The life less ordinary of artist Laura Knight
From painting nudes at a time when it was forbidden to sleeping among the troops in both world wars, the vitality of her work makes her still strikingly relevant
Yeah the V1s were generally the more terrifying, partly because of the distinctive sound as they approached and then the way they would suddenly cut out as the engine stopped, and then there'd be this long whistling delay as it fell to earth, and the not knowing where it was going to hit. Honestly sounds frightening af. At least the V2s were so quick you'd have no idea.
A V1 hit my Nan's house while their family was in it, but fortunately was one of the many to have been sabotaged by the slave labourers forced to build them in German factories and didn't blow up.
scalyboy
They’re taking the piss now
Can't remember whether it was the V1s or V2s, but I recall reading somewhere that by a cunning piece of disinformation fed to the Nazis, maybe fiddling with radar data, a lot of them fell short of the capital in Kent somewhere. Mind you, I saw a signboard the other day in Russell Square saying that a direct hit from a V-weapon had destroyed a bandstand right in the middle of the square 
My mum used to tell a story of walking in Hyde Park with her friend (they'd met on the farm they'd both been evacuated to, earlier in the War), hearing a V1 engine cut out and then, as per official advice, falling flat on the ground, but - in her words - feeling "self-conscious" at doing so! She would've been around 17. She also spoke of the morning after a raid and seeing rows of houses obliterated
My mum used to tell a story of walking in Hyde Park with her friend (they'd met on the farm they'd both been evacuated to, earlier in the War), hearing a V1 engine cut out and then, as per official advice, falling flat on the ground, but - in her words - feeling "self-conscious" at doing so! She would've been around 17. She also spoke of the morning after a raid and seeing rows of houses obliterated
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