My father fought in WWII, in the Asian Theatre. He helped take back the Bataan peninsula, for example. He said that when they trapped the "Japs" (the term at that time) for example in a cave, the Lieutenant would tell them "Come out!". They never came out. Dad and his company then had to incinerate them with flamethrowers.
Dad was Catholic; he went to the chaplain, saying "I don't think this is right." The chaplain replied "This is your duty." Dad said "I still don't think it's right."
At the end of dad's life, he died due to an overdose of radiation therapy. It took 18 excruciating months of internal burn pain, before he did die. He told me "I hope that I never hurt any of those men as bad as I'm hurting."
On my mom's side of the family, in occupied Poland, my cousins were young boys and one time threw rocks at German soldiers passing by on motorcycles. Their dad (my uncle or actually half-uncle) beat them (his sons, my cousins) pretty bad. Like spanking but worse. He told them that they could get the whole family killed, which was true. None of my immediate family were killed but a more distant "great uncle" of mine was one of the officer corps killed by the Russians at Katyn. For those who don't know the incident, the Russians (or the USSR) intentionally decapitated both the Polish intelligentsia and the officer corps. Their plan was to keep Poles under servitude, squelch resistance.
That period of the Katyn massacre was interesting from an historical and "totalitarian propaganda" point of view. It was the Germans during WWII who unearthed (literally) the Katyn massacre and correctly pointed out that the Russians had committed the massacre. But the Russians blamed it on the Germans. It was an odd situation of the detested German beast actually telling the truth during wartime.
In fact the USSR/Russians/communists kept up the lie until the fall of communism. Poles knew who was guilty but all official sources claimed that the Germans/Nazis/Hitlerites (terms varied) did it.
I never did like the Woke folk but they did have one point - there's a relationship between lies/propaganda/PR, and violence.
My Oma told me that in the Netherlands they had regularly fed German soldiers. I doubt it’s because they wanted to, but she said it wasn’t extremely adversarial. One story she shared is that one German soldier during dinner time misfired his gun while showing her father. He almost shot her sister in a high chair. The German left crying and apologizing.
My maternal grandfather Werner Busch fought for the Wehrmacht as a paratrooper and combat medic.
In October 1943 my mother was born, along with a twin (who only lived a few days). My grandfather had two weeks of leave because of this, but ended up just staying for a couple more weeks.
He was arrested for being AWOL, or rather desertion (I don't know that the Nazis made any distinction between these two things, especially by 1943...). He then tried to argue that, since two children had been born, he was actually entitled to four weeks of leave.
As one might imagine, the officer was not buying that argument and he was immediately hauled off. He then faced a presumed death sentence, but as luck would have it the officer who was supposed to testify against him was shipped off to Italy before the trial, and so they just sent him back to the front. I expect that this snafu was more or less intentional on someone's part; the Germans were not that interested in executing an experienced soldier in such a case.
He later avoided actually surrendering at the end of the war by impersonating a Red Cross worker and instead just made his way home.
Some time in 1946 he was arrested by Allied occupation forces for trying to smuggle 80 kilos of butter in to Hamburg, but luckily for him they just confiscated the butter and let him go a day later.
My family history is from the Netherlands. Father a post war immigrant to the USA. Things were not much different, but not as happy an ending. In those days, the SS recruited divisions from every nation in Europe to help fight the Bolsheviks. Family lost as near as I can tell at least one of my uncles in that endeavor. Father only talked once about such and showed pictures of brother in “uniform”. Upon my father’s death, I could find no evidence of the “black sheep” in my father’s paperwork so I suspect he destroyed such as he thought better of such an inheritance to be passed down.
In the Netherlands, the Nazi-created Groene Politie (Green Police) from the native population were their instrument of rule during occupation. During the final evacuation, many of the Green Police were assembled (they assumed for evacuation) and executed. The NAZI’s at that time were attempting to eliminate all witnesses who might testify in the “war crime trials” sure to come.
It was a rarity for my father to discuss much of the occupation situation during the war, albeit he was a young soldier in the Dutch army. His total discussion of the conflict was that he was in his barracks when a Dutch and German officer came in and sent them all home after the surrender. His combat action was therefore nonexistent—but he did look good in uniform. Likewise, my birth cohort here in the USA allowed me to avoid the draft in any of our many postwar conflicts. Some went to Vietnam, I went to university.
My Dad was English. They lived in London through the war. He told a story about the flying bombs (doodle bugs?) during the Blitz. As long as you could hear them you knew you were safe. Then one day he heard the engine of one stop so looked up and swore it was coming directly for him, though it hit some houses away. He finished school in 1944 and apprenticed to be a civil engineer, but was conscripted into the Army then served in Palestine prior to partition.
My grandfather served in the Navy during WWII (American). He served on Destroyers guarding merchant marine ships carrying supplies to Britain, India, and later Russia. He once told me and my brother about the first time he ever set out to sea. He was 17, and most of the men on board were young, had never seen any combat, and most of them scared shitless. He manned one of the guns, and as they were crossing the Atlantic, two fighter planes emerged nearby. They turned their guns on them but they couldn't hit anything he said. (Later he told me he became a much better shot. He said it was like hunting birds and that you had to fire in front of them.) The planes flew off, and the ships made it to port at Southampton. When they docked, the captain ordered the entire crew to meet on the deck. When my grandfather and the rest of the men came on deck, they found two British fighter pilots along side the captain. The planes they had fired at belonged to the two pilots. Then, one of the two pilots addressed the crew, holding up a photograph of a British Spitfire. "You see these planes here mates," he said, "don't shoot at these planes. We're you're allies, mates."
He laughed so hard when he told that story. I only wished I had recorded him telling it before he passed away.
in a world where germans won (i.e. hegemony over europe per Fatherland of some sort, say moscow falls 1941, then cold war with brits/us). Would Denmark and median dane now be better off or worse off, in some Germanic Aryan EU?
My grandfathers were both too young to fight in WW1, and too old for WW2 - and at least one of them a miner (a reserved profession). My wife's maternal grandfather, though, being Czech, had a very different war - though too young to fight, he became involved with Czech resistance after all the men in his village were rounded up and shot - possibly part of the Heinrich retributions. He (my grandfather-in-law) only avoided that fate because he'd been sent on an errand to another local village. After the war, he was blackballed by the Communist Party, but that's another story.
He's like 5% Jewish genetically but yes, female descent. My sneaky Jewish plan is to find a woke rabbi and convince him my father is a woman, thus giving me maternal descent.
My father fought in WWII, in the Asian Theatre. He helped take back the Bataan peninsula, for example. He said that when they trapped the "Japs" (the term at that time) for example in a cave, the Lieutenant would tell them "Come out!". They never came out. Dad and his company then had to incinerate them with flamethrowers.
Dad was Catholic; he went to the chaplain, saying "I don't think this is right." The chaplain replied "This is your duty." Dad said "I still don't think it's right."
At the end of dad's life, he died due to an overdose of radiation therapy. It took 18 excruciating months of internal burn pain, before he did die. He told me "I hope that I never hurt any of those men as bad as I'm hurting."
On my mom's side of the family, in occupied Poland, my cousins were young boys and one time threw rocks at German soldiers passing by on motorcycles. Their dad (my uncle or actually half-uncle) beat them (his sons, my cousins) pretty bad. Like spanking but worse. He told them that they could get the whole family killed, which was true. None of my immediate family were killed but a more distant "great uncle" of mine was one of the officer corps killed by the Russians at Katyn. For those who don't know the incident, the Russians (or the USSR) intentionally decapitated both the Polish intelligentsia and the officer corps. Their plan was to keep Poles under servitude, squelch resistance.
That period of the Katyn massacre was interesting from an historical and "totalitarian propaganda" point of view. It was the Germans during WWII who unearthed (literally) the Katyn massacre and correctly pointed out that the Russians had committed the massacre. But the Russians blamed it on the Germans. It was an odd situation of the detested German beast actually telling the truth during wartime.
In fact the USSR/Russians/communists kept up the lie until the fall of communism. Poles knew who was guilty but all official sources claimed that the Germans/Nazis/Hitlerites (terms varied) did it.
I never did like the Woke folk but they did have one point - there's a relationship between lies/propaganda/PR, and violence.
My Oma told me that in the Netherlands they had regularly fed German soldiers. I doubt it’s because they wanted to, but she said it wasn’t extremely adversarial. One story she shared is that one German soldier during dinner time misfired his gun while showing her father. He almost shot her sister in a high chair. The German left crying and apologizing.
My maternal grandfather Werner Busch fought for the Wehrmacht as a paratrooper and combat medic.
In October 1943 my mother was born, along with a twin (who only lived a few days). My grandfather had two weeks of leave because of this, but ended up just staying for a couple more weeks.
He was arrested for being AWOL, or rather desertion (I don't know that the Nazis made any distinction between these two things, especially by 1943...). He then tried to argue that, since two children had been born, he was actually entitled to four weeks of leave.
As one might imagine, the officer was not buying that argument and he was immediately hauled off. He then faced a presumed death sentence, but as luck would have it the officer who was supposed to testify against him was shipped off to Italy before the trial, and so they just sent him back to the front. I expect that this snafu was more or less intentional on someone's part; the Germans were not that interested in executing an experienced soldier in such a case.
He later avoided actually surrendering at the end of the war by impersonating a Red Cross worker and instead just made his way home.
Some time in 1946 he was arrested by Allied occupation forces for trying to smuggle 80 kilos of butter in to Hamburg, but luckily for him they just confiscated the butter and let him go a day later.
My family history is from the Netherlands. Father a post war immigrant to the USA. Things were not much different, but not as happy an ending. In those days, the SS recruited divisions from every nation in Europe to help fight the Bolsheviks. Family lost as near as I can tell at least one of my uncles in that endeavor. Father only talked once about such and showed pictures of brother in “uniform”. Upon my father’s death, I could find no evidence of the “black sheep” in my father’s paperwork so I suspect he destroyed such as he thought better of such an inheritance to be passed down.
In the Netherlands, the Nazi-created Groene Politie (Green Police) from the native population were their instrument of rule during occupation. During the final evacuation, many of the Green Police were assembled (they assumed for evacuation) and executed. The NAZI’s at that time were attempting to eliminate all witnesses who might testify in the “war crime trials” sure to come.
It was a rarity for my father to discuss much of the occupation situation during the war, albeit he was a young soldier in the Dutch army. His total discussion of the conflict was that he was in his barracks when a Dutch and German officer came in and sent them all home after the surrender. His combat action was therefore nonexistent—but he did look good in uniform. Likewise, my birth cohort here in the USA allowed me to avoid the draft in any of our many postwar conflicts. Some went to Vietnam, I went to university.
My Dad was English. They lived in London through the war. He told a story about the flying bombs (doodle bugs?) during the Blitz. As long as you could hear them you knew you were safe. Then one day he heard the engine of one stop so looked up and swore it was coming directly for him, though it hit some houses away. He finished school in 1944 and apprenticed to be a civil engineer, but was conscripted into the Army then served in Palestine prior to partition.
My grandfather served in the Navy during WWII (American). He served on Destroyers guarding merchant marine ships carrying supplies to Britain, India, and later Russia. He once told me and my brother about the first time he ever set out to sea. He was 17, and most of the men on board were young, had never seen any combat, and most of them scared shitless. He manned one of the guns, and as they were crossing the Atlantic, two fighter planes emerged nearby. They turned their guns on them but they couldn't hit anything he said. (Later he told me he became a much better shot. He said it was like hunting birds and that you had to fire in front of them.) The planes flew off, and the ships made it to port at Southampton. When they docked, the captain ordered the entire crew to meet on the deck. When my grandfather and the rest of the men came on deck, they found two British fighter pilots along side the captain. The planes they had fired at belonged to the two pilots. Then, one of the two pilots addressed the crew, holding up a photograph of a British Spitfire. "You see these planes here mates," he said, "don't shoot at these planes. We're you're allies, mates."
He laughed so hard when he told that story. I only wished I had recorded him telling it before he passed away.
in a world where germans won (i.e. hegemony over europe per Fatherland of some sort, say moscow falls 1941, then cold war with brits/us). Would Denmark and median dane now be better off or worse off, in some Germanic Aryan EU?
First off we would have to speak the awful German language.
None of the Scandinavian countries had a chance of resisting the Wehrmacht.
My grandfathers were both too young to fight in WW1, and too old for WW2 - and at least one of them a miner (a reserved profession). My wife's maternal grandfather, though, being Czech, had a very different war - though too young to fight, he became involved with Czech resistance after all the men in his village were rounded up and shot - possibly part of the Heinrich retributions. He (my grandfather-in-law) only avoided that fate because he'd been sent on an errand to another local village. After the war, he was blackballed by the Communist Party, but that's another story.
Denmark was the only country not to betray its Jews. Be proud.
You mentioned before that you also have Jewish roots on one side of your family. Was that a problem at the time?
It says right in the article (Lise).
Oh wow. So your father is a kosher Jew.
He's like 5% Jewish genetically but yes, female descent. My sneaky Jewish plan is to find a woke rabbi and convince him my father is a woman, thus giving me maternal descent.
LOL
Prestigious!