What Germans Really Thought of Their Allies and Enemies

Comments · 2.2K

• HI

  @historyatwar · 1 year ago · pinned

  Just quick message I know I didn’t include Canada, Japan or France. I actually have an entire video on Japan itself.<br><br>Canada is an interesting one I’m looking to cover, the Canadians and Germans had an unparalleled fighting tenacity against each other, I’m actually still trying to find the best accounts and resources for a Canadian video on this.

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• TH

  @TheWeppe · 1 year ago

  Finland: &quot;Never thought i would fight side by fascist&quot;.<br>Germany: &quot;How about side by &apos;anti-communist&apos;?&quot;<br>Finland: &quot;That i can do&quot;.

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• TE

  @tepesvoda464 · 1 year ago (edited)

  Romanian here. My grandfather (born 1911) fought on the &nbsp;Eastern Front, &nbsp;with the Romanian 4th Army, 30th inf regiment. In 1941 he was 30 years old, had 3 kids home. An old man for front line duty, by any standards. He went through the battles of Bessarabia, &nbsp;the siege of Odessa, Sebastopol, Rostov and Stalingrad, at the river Don&apos;s bend. At Stalingrad, out of a regiment of 3.200 nominal strength there were only 185 survivors that made it back to their own lines, retreating only when they &nbsp;had nothing left to throw at the soviets but snowballs and insults. He &nbsp;walked more than 200 km, in the Russian winter. All the rest became POW&apos;s, KIA or MIA. Walking at night, hiding by day from the prowling Russians, scavenging what they could. He managed to reach friendly lines in mid march 1943, and was sent straight home, as unfit for front duty. Weighed just 50 kg, was 1.65 m tall. He was 33 years old.<br>In august 1944, after Romania left the Axis and joined the Allies, he was recalled (he had 4 children home now) and sent westwards, to fight the Germans and the Hungarians. He went through the liberation of Transylvania and the siege of Budapest, VE Day found him in the Banska Bistriza area, present day in Slovakia.<br>He arrived back home, to his &nbsp;village outside Bucharest in late September 1945, after WALKING all the way from Slovakia ( 1.100 km, as the Russians didn&apos;t allow them to use the trains and have confiscated their vehicles, because they were of German make and considered war spoils!). &nbsp;He tried to get back to his farming, only to see his land and wares confiscated by the communists, who forced him to work in a collective farm. He died in 1991, delighted to see the fall of the communist regime in Romania. <br>From his scant stories, ( he would only talk after a couple of glasses of plum brandy) I got the details above and from the regiment&apos;s archives I tried retracing his steps and came up with the mindboggling distance of some 5.000 km, on foot, with countless engagements and fights against the Russian and the Germans.<br><br>Here is one story, from so many untold ones.<br>R.I.P Grandpa.

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• JO

  @jokodihaynes419 · 1 year ago

  The greatest irony of WW2 is that former waffen SS volunteers fought in Korea and Indochina against communism

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• TH

  @thedoge2575 · 1 year ago

  Its also good to remember that a couple hundred portuguese men fought with the Blue Division.

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• ST

  @Stevensimmons-c1b · 1 year ago

  My dad (Royal Marines) had a saying from WW2. &apos;If we fired the Germans ducked if they fired we ducked if the Americans fired EVERYONE ducked !..

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• DV

  @DvdLtch · 1 year ago

  My great grandad was born in 1900. Lied he was 18 and went to the western front in 1914 with the Royal Artillery.<br>He reenlisted in 1939, fought Rommel in the desert and came back wounded and manned defences in Belfast (as they were).<br>He respected the Germans. Hated the Japanese and had a deep distrust of Arabs.<br>War really messed him up

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• FA

  @fasteddyuk · 1 year ago

  This video would benefit a lot from some first hand quotes from German soldiers to bring it to life.

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• IN

  @indianastan · 1 year ago

  My dad said he and his army buddies didn&apos;t at first wanted to fight. But when one of their buddies got killed. That all changed.

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• HH

  @HHL-qt2xb · 1 year ago

  The Spanish history was interesting. Got the sense the German Generals/Officers had truly wanted Spain to come in for real after what they saw from the Blue Division. Did not really know that...

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• DO

  @DominatorLegend · 1 year ago (edited)

  I think most people don&apos;t really understand the reasoning behind the Blue Division and spanish volunteers. Most of them didn&apos;t really care that much about Hitler and its cause, rather it simply was sheer hatred for communism and socialism, the ideologies that had ravaged Spain so much during the Civil War and the years leading up to it. For these volunteers it was almost like a religious struggle (which is quite poignant considering what the republicans were doing to churches and priests back in the peninsula), a bloody but necessary pushback against the communist &quot;demon&quot;. In a way, one could equate this personal confluct to the crusades of old: Christianity against the anti-Christ.<br>None of my grandparents fought during any of the wars, as they were too young, but they spoke very favourably about the volunteers. They were deeply catholic and suffered greatly during the war because of it (my paternal grandma even developing a bad case of PTSD that she never recovered from).

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• JO

  @jokodihaynes419 · 1 year ago

  Moral of the story be careful on how you treat people because they might be the last person to help you

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