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World War II

XRegimes like the Nazis and the Soviet Union or Iraq etc made being a member of the party obligatory anyone with any skill or knowledge was at least a party member either because they were a true believer did it for advancement or had a skill the state needed.
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.
 
This is a great thread on SWW reads... enough to keep me busy for 20 years..



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.
 
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.


 
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.
 
Online exhibition on Polish women and WW2.

Only looked at some of this so far.


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.


Also shows long connection between this country and Poland.
 
Online exhibition on Polish women and WW2.

Only looked at some of this so far.


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.


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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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; 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.

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:


 
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.

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.
 
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.
 
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.
 

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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
 
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.

 
I was not aware of this artist before.



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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.



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.
 
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 :eek:

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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