The Fallen of World War 2 - A Historian Reacts

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#History #Reaction #WW2

[philipleese]

I really appreciate you differentiating between Nazis and Germans several times

[xanatar]

And here I am, sitting in my dark room, looking at a rolling screen of hundreds of red dots, feeling so very, very small.

[Skarloc]

German history/philosophy teacher here, I appreciate ur insights and the way you comment. My great-grandfather was one of the very few german soldiers who died in the early western campain in Belgium. He wrote many letters to the my great-grandmother in a style of handwriting that was common back then but almost nobody can read anymore. We got those letters translated a couple years ago by an expert from swizzerland. Those documents give a really interesting insight starting with "the belief in Hitler and being part of something special" to war experiences. The last letter to my great-grandmother is not from her husband but his closest comrade after he had fallen. Sometimes I use them in my history lessons.

[Daemetry]

Mathematics can be astonishing.
If we had a minute of silence for each one who died during WW2 and had them start right after the war ended...
The world would still have been quiet with more than 50 years yet to come.

Nothing's to be forgotten. No one's to be forgotten.

[makslenir]

I'm Russian and I just want to say thank you for remembering how many people we lost at this war.

[michaeledmunds]

Jesus, I knew the Soviets took many losses, but that visualization is staggering.

[zafrel]

Seeing the Soviet numbers going up and up....really send chills

[thalamay]

My Grandpa was a German soldier on the Eastern front, basically from day one until the last day. He was the only one of his friends to return.

Initially, he was gunner on a sidecar of a motorcycle. While on the offensive, they’d ride into enemy towns on their own, drive around town square and spray some buildings with a few bursts from the machine gun. If nobody shot back, the town was deemed safe and the army would march through. If fire was returned, depending on how much fire the army would either storm the house from which the return fire came and kill everyone in there or the artillery would just level the entire place. He actually was shot in the head once, but survived, it only scraped him.

He had street smarts. He once told me, that in every situation, he always looked for a way out in case of nasty surprises.

For example, he was once instructed to man a listening post, basically a hole in the ground near Soviet lines. He didn’t like the look of it and hid in a bush near the hole. So when the Russians came and checked the holes, he was safely watching.

While he survived, he was scarred for life. Every Christmas when we sang Christmas songs he cried, as it reminded him of a terrible Christmas he had in Russia. That day, every German soldier received a whole goose from the home front as a special treat. They were all starving so every one of them ate their entire goose. Of course they all fell sick. That night the Russians launched a major attack, and my Grandpa and his comrades were shitting their pants while mowing down the Russians. He said that it was terrible, the Russians had no chance, they were charging the German machine guns and were easily mowed down, yet they kept on coming. He wished that they‘d stop as they’d surely all die. But they kept coming. At some point that night, he said they started to hear strange screams from the Russian soldiers they were killing. When they examined the battlefield the next day, he saw that eventually the Russians sent women, they were the origins of those strange screams. He was devastated by how many good Russians died that night in a completely pointless encounter.

He also said that the more ideologically driven the German soldiers were, the quicker they died. Whenever a proper Nazi joint their ranks, he gave him two weeks. That’s how long they’d last on average. They were too determined to play the brave hero, doing pointless stupid shit.

At the end he was relatively high in rank for a regular soldier by virtue of surviving for so long. He was actually in Dresden during the famous fire bombing raid. There he was ordered to organise the “Volkssturm“, the last ditch defensive force comprised of kids and old people. When he saw them, he told them all to go home and then went underground, there he survived the bombing. He said the railroad tracks were glowing red hot from all the heat of the bombs, even underground.
He then tried to make his way home through the Czech republic. There two partisans found him. First they told him to hand over his medals, which he did, then they told him to strip. He knew they’d kill him, but he had a gun hidden on himself all the time, so he killed them first and took off. That’s how he lost all his medals.
He eventually made it to American lines and surrendered there. While on the way to a POW camp, the truck he was on went through his home town by chance. So he jumped off and ran home. The Americans apparently had bigger fish to fry and didn’t try to catch or shoot him.

Unfortunately, I only know a fraction of his stories. His experience would have made for a great anti-war movie. I know that it was horrific for him and that he saw a lot of messed up shit. He really was a broken man for the rest of his life. He saw all his friends die and he himself had to kill many times. Still, he was one of the few lucky ones, particularly since he got into trouble several times, like when he refused to execute a Russian girl which apparently shot at them from her home, or when he was careless enough to doubt that Germany would win the war in front of the wrong people. He worked on his farm for the rest of his life, never spoke much, but every Christmas, he had to talk about his experiences.

[Theturtleowl]

In Russia, the effects of WWII can still be seen in the population growth today. There are two big gaps in the graphics that depict the amount of people in every generation when you look at them. These gaps are the generations of the children and grandchildren of those killed in WWII would have been born at that time, had their (grand)parents lived.

[adeleg]

The creator corrected himself in the comments about the nazi/german algamation

[montetanktankkiller]

I am from the former Yugoslavia and very happy that someone is finally talking about our losses. Half a million still seems too little to me - the partisan struggle may have resulted in up to a million deaths. But we tied up an enormous number of German soldiers who were urgently needed in Russia. The Second World War was not only won in Normandy. Thank you for this good video.
PS: subscribed

[dandshooter]

As an ethic Russian living in the US who has a Victory Banner hanging in my apartment that often draws ire from my friends, that visualization is why. I don’t have the banner to commemorate communism or any other political ideology, I have it to remember those who died defeating the Third Reich in the Great Patriotic War. Nothing more needs to be said.

[gingerlicious]

The last bit, I think, is the most important part. There's good reason to think that WWII kind of shocked the developed world into realizing we can't keep doing this to ourselves. However, as WWII fades from living memory we run the risk of forgetting that lesson that has led to the era of unprecedented "peace" that we currently live in.

EDIT: God, I hate being right.

[joeldykman]

I feel like the war crimes of the Japanese Empire were mostly forgotten because it was somewhat overshadowed by the nuclear bombings, almost like they were given a free pass for their atrocities.

[len]

"I don't know what weapon would be used in WWIII. But in world war 4 we will use stones"- A. Einstein

[luckyqualmi]

9:22 Very important comment!
My grandfather was a hardcore christian and forced to go to Stalingrad as a scout. He told me a story, where he was hiding at night in a bush to spy on the enemy when a russian soldier came straight to him and took a piss just 2m away. He laid there, his gun aimed at the russian soldier and he prayed to god to not have to shoot him. It was against his beliefs and he did not want to harm anybody.
Luckily the soldier didn't noticed him and went away soon.
My grandfather got to leave the eastern front soon later, right before the 6th took Stalingrad. He went on to smuggle his wife and daugher out of Germany to Ghana and became a missionary doctor there.

[EVERTONION]

I studied history at a level here in the uk and we were NEVER told about what happened in Yugoslavia so that’s came as a big shock to me

[jagsdomain]

The pic of the mother holding the child.
As a kid and adult i said wow that sad.
As a dad it was a weeping experance.

[thepoet]

An interesting fact I heard. There was a building in Stalingrad which was of significant strategic importance that the Germans and Soviets were fighting over. The Germans lost more soldiers fighting for that single building than they lost in their entire conquest of France.

[Draganism]

That one is six Poles died in the Second World War, unbelievable. I'm so glad that these figures are shown like this, it makes the truth transparent.