WWII History According to Americans: How I Learned about Germany, Japan & the Atomic Bomb
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- Опубліковано 30 чер 2024
- A fellow UA-cam friend of ours, @FelifromGermany recently asked the questions: "Do Germans talk about the Holocaust? What do they teach about World War II in school? And is it okay to make a Hitler joke around a German?" And her experience as a German living in the USA, had me thinking a lot about my mirrored experience as an American now living in Germany. Do Americans talk about the atomic bomb and the impact on Hiroshima & Nagasaki? What do they teach American children about World War II in school? How differently do we remember and commemorate our fallen? Let's take a look.
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Feli's (@FelifromGermany ) Do Germans Talk About World War II? What Do They Teach About the Holocaust? • Do Germans Talk About ...
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Episode 115 | #germany #usa #family #ww2 #wwii #worldwar3 #worldwar2 #war #americanmilitary #military #detusch #luftwaffe #americanhistory #history #atomic #ushistory #historyfacts #europe #expatlife #movingabroad #americaningermany #america #livingabroad | Filmed July 28th, 2023
Jump to Your Favorite Topic 🙌 :
00:00 Intro
01:44 American Public School Education on WWII
09:13 Hollywood & World War 2 Storytelling
14:29 How the US National World War II Memorial is Different
📝 Sources from this Video:
Pew Research Survey, fewer than half of Americans (43%) know that Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany through a democratic political process: www.pewresearch.org/religion/...
Common Core Survey (2008), that 20% of American 17 year olds don’t even know who our enemy even was in WW2 www.nytimes.com/2008/02/27/us...
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I am a historian born in Amsterdam in 1946 and I think that Americans romanticize their role in the war in Europe too much. My parents and family suffered from a 5-year occupation and killings and deportation. America was not occupied ever and for them it is probably hard to understand what the experience of occupation by a fascist state is. Living in Amsterdam I see a lot of Americans have a huge fascination for Anne Frank and visit her room but that seems the only interest in WWII and they often don't know that 90% jews of Amsterdam were deported and killed. War is not the heroisme of soldiers only. There was the heroisme of common people everyday during the occupation being part of the resistance and often with the danger of getting tortured and killed
When I lived in Amsterdam, I often heard stories about how the Dutch sold information about hidden Jews to the Gestapo in order to take their property. Knowing the Dutch, it doesn't seem impossible to me, and I believe that's why the story of Anne Frank is important.
Well, don't we need romanticizing war? I guess it's not just the Americans. I certainly remember what impact just learning about the horrors of war had on me as a child. I am a Norwegian born in 1960. I still appreciate movies like James Bond, LOTR, Das Boot, Pearl Harbor, Star Wars, etc. We need to tell new generations about war, and even THE war, and I think romanticizing war can be a way to cope with that. But I very much respect what you've written.
The British saved Europe
@@lewissparkes 🤣🤣They wanted the war badly ... First and second WW.
@@lewissparkes Not only the British, also the Americans and in the Netherlands it was the Cannadians. They liberated a big part of the Netherlands and people are still grateful for that
I was born in Cologne, Germany 1961 (today living in the US). By the end of WW II my Father was 18, my Mother 21. My Grandfather had survived WW I and WW II. So, the teaching about Nazi Germany and WW II started (and continued) at home. In school, they made as watch documentaries about the Holocaust starting in 5th grade and it was repeated every year up to 9th grade. What we also learned (and what was very important) was what happened in Germany between 1918 and 1932 because the raise of Hitler began after WW I and our Teacher wanted to make sure we understood how Hitler came to power. We learned in detail about the book burning, the night of the long knives (Nacht der langen Messer) and of course Kristallnacht. My Father often told me how he was brainwashed in school and then when he turned 17 he wanted to become a Soldier. He was sent to the east front but shortly after he and some friends deserted and were hiding at a Farm until the war was over. My mother was in Cologne during the war and experienced the extensive bombing of the City special in the last year of the war. American war planes tended to drop incendiary bombs which always caused fear and panic. In our house, were I grew up, we had a marble floor in the hall and there was a big piece missing. My Mother told me the story that a incendiary bombs fell through the roof on the marble floor but didn't explode and that is how the marble floor was broken. The education about WW II is important but it is even more important to teach what happened prior to WW II. It is the only way to truly learn about history and making sure it doesn't happen again.
Danke - man kann den WK2 ohne WK1 nicht verstehen
So true.
Did they also teach you what type of books the nazis burned? They didn't? Imagine my shock.
@@MrJohansen They did teach us what books were burned. That was the most important part of the story. You might want to get a book about German history and read about it.
My great grandfather was born in Odessa 1928 to a family of Jews out of the Austrian Hungarian Empire (of course they moved into the Soviet Union when the Bolsheviks took over) in Europe youre considered a Fascist if you try to tell this to someone. He said and says to this day that the Soviet Union was from beginning to the end a Jewish institution. Jews were considered first class citizens, Synagogues were built, Churches were burned (in the biggest country on the planet with the majority being Orthodox Christians). My family personally knew several anti-Communist Jews who have distanced themselves from the fanatical Jews terrible atrocities in the Soviet Union, since those crimes have discredited all other Jews. The Germans were very polite to 'reactionary Jews' how they were considered by the Soviets, the Germans called them civilized or germanized Jews, and later took them with them from the ukraine and shipped them to south america in 1943. My family refused to stay in the Soviet Union and since 1943 never returned back to Europe. My great grandfather married a Christian women (Thanks God) and thanks to the brave Germans for stopping the Bolshevik genocide on the European population.
As a german, I remember our teachers not only telling us about WWII as a sequence of historical events, but as an opportunity to understand the psychological "blind spots" that made this possible. They showed us how this can totally happen again, any time, anywhere, if people are unaware of the mechanisms. One of our school reads was "The Wave" ("Die Welle"), and we discussed the Milgram experiment. I like to think fascists would have a much harder time gaining followers if this was commonplace knowledge taught all over the world.
Not just fascists in Germany, the German Royal family had a habit of starting world wars before Hitler started one.
That, exactly! That book should be mandatory everywhere!
The issue today in europe is that people are fed up whit the current political parties that they vote for the far left/right.
More as a protest then anything else.
The "normal" parties say they will do somthing but in the end everything stayes the same + more taxes every year
Endless hordes of muslim refugees/childeren of said refugees that can do whatever they want since the police has been neutered and may only write tickets.
Sending "aid" too africa ,while they are only aiding the local warlord6
Endless drivel about global warming while the same minster aproves building more fossil fuel power plant and at the same time basicly makes farming illigal
All while letting the countries infrastructure fall into ruin
And to make surd nothing gets done wd have morevthen 7 goverments
Same. They made us read this, or watch the movie, I forgot, with the whole class, near the end of the WW2 chapters
the victor makes the history.....dont believe everything....
Your discussion of the events that led to the USA finally entering the war reminded me of Churchhill's famous quote in response: "You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else."
Churchill never knew about the succession of tragedies that is contemporary U.S. history, starting with, oh, say, the Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, and on, and on, and on ...
@@wordsmithgmxch Also Churchhill was a war criminal.
@@cyber_habanero ever single nation has committed war crimes. literally EVERY one. They continue to be committed frequently to this day.
Yep. Pretty much. America only ever finally does the right thing after it’s tried everything else.
@@danielwhyatt3278was saving the british empire at the expense of americas freedom really worth it germany would of made a more reliable stronger and closer ally
Had a great history teacher, who taught me the perhaps most important thing about wars: cause and reason are two different things. Like, World War 1 was triggered (cause) by the murder in Serajevo, but was brought about (reason) by enormous shifts in power or economy in Europe.
There was an industrial and ideological arms raise years before WW1. Youths were indoctrinated in schools that war was a just and heroic endeavour.
we had at german school also a very encouraged History Teacher, who organized in his free time visits to diverse places for every school classes... not only Auschwitz or Dachau but also Teutoburger Wald, Limes, or the then still Closed German/German Border between West and East... He showed us not only the History, but also the impact of it... and how to avoid the dark paths...
We had shitty History teachers in my high school. We were never really taught about WWI or WWII (although they did make sure to cover the Great Depression and the Holocaust). The problem was we never had time at the end of the year and maybe it was always assumed we would learn about it somewhere else. We instead spent an ungodly amount of time on the Reconstruction period. Like in what world does it make sense to spend so much time on the Reconstruction period that you can't make it to modern American history to cover stuff like the Civil Rights movement.
I also had a really good history teacher in Senior year of high school. We spent 4 months talking about world war 2. The curriculum started with late 19th century imperialism, industrialism, and Spanish American war. Then we did the run up to world war 1 and at least a month on world war 1 itself and it's aftermath and the treaty of Versailles. Then came the inter war years with a focus on the great depression and new deal. Of course we learned about the rise of Nazism which emphasized the failures of treaty of Versailles, the hyperinflationary period in the Wiemar republic. The Nazis arose out of desperation and deplorable conditions that existed during the Wiemar period. So after WW2 was over we determined not to make the same mistakes. Germany and Japan were rebuilt with the Marshal plan. The ultimate lesson being that it is just important to win the Peace as much as it is to war.
I've been to the USA several times and having learned about the country's culture my entire life, I didn't think there was anything that could surprise me anymore. But when you said "WW2 should be seen as one of the darkest times in history" ... I had to sit down. As a European, it has never occurred to me that that was a concept that needed pointing out.
Thank you for delivering this cultural difference without judgement, and thank you for yet another incredibly well researched and nuanced video!
You would be surprised to know that Americans know very, very little that is true about their own history.
@@Conn30Mtenor for sure, my country had to submit to the nazis because russians were invading... caught between two murderous lunatics. we like other eastern countries had to then pay reparations to the invading russian for "liberating us". they took the payment straight out of the museums and treasuries and decades later too in payments.
when I went to the US I met deluded old ppl that bragged about how they saved us and how much they respected my grandfather for being a vet.
when I tell them they almost killed my grandmother in the bombings at Constanta, and that my grandfather fought the russians, they think it's because russians were the enemies of US and feel sorry for my grandma at least. To be fair Ploiesti, Pitesti and Constanta were under nazis control at some points supplying petrol and other iirc, but russians carpet bombed the shit out of us. US bombed some but not as much, mostly failed at bombing Bucharest.
So yeah americans and turks are viewed as good guys but only in opposition to russians. Churchill gave us to Stalin because Greece was of more value. A good trade for them, we understand, but business has no room for love, americans here are not loved, just viewed as a self interested super power that is the lesser evil. Today Germany gives us a lot of EU funds so sort of all's well that ends well, they aren't loved either. Russians killed more ppl than the nazis ever managed to in jews, gypsies and gays, they didn't discriminate so they got a larger body count, not to mention the famines. Ours weren't as bad as Holomodor but still.
It was an utter shit show, I'm still surprised we got out of it with just loosing a part of the country. It's not as bad as norther Ireland or North Korea. Moldova is a disaster but not as bad as the previously mentioned.
@Conn30Mtenor Explain? We arrived, fought Indians and won, used poor immigrant and slave labor to break the land, and build an industrial empire; that we are now losing because young people do not see those events as success. If it makes your country stronger and more economically powerful, it was the right decision.
Just like Europeans.
@@Conn30Mtenor
I hope that was not meant@@diggernash1
I’m British and 72 years old. My memories of learning about WWII at school are Zero. My adolescence and early adulthood were peppered, as you remarked, with the heroic actions of British and American Soldiers through the cinema of the 50s and 60s. I then, as I grew older, decided to learn for myself about the history of the world including WWII and have been doing so ever since. I find it sad that with the arrival of the Internet the world seems to have polarized itself into two groups that will not listen to each other; those for and those against. There is today so much great and unbiased information about WWII that the youth of today should experience in order to make informed judgements about how they should lead their lives in the future in order to avoid, dare I say it, WWIII. That the modern education system is failing in its duty to “educate” in this respect, leaves me not very optimistic; one can but pray. Really enjoyed your video. Please continue in the same vein. With love and peace.
sad thing is, its never the youth starting wars. They just have to bear the brunt.
Here in Britain the perception is that the Americans came into the war, half way through. For the first two years of the war Britain was the only country fighting Germany. France had surrendered and all of Europe was occupied. I am sure you know this. Also we were bombed nightly and our cities smashed to pieces. British people do not take kindly to Americans giving the impression that they won the war. I was born just before the war and remember what it was like hearing German planes going over. I will never forget it.
Great content on a heavy subject. Along Felis video to address Dark history in a grown up way. Of course as German pupils it came out of our ears, oh no Not again, at any class. This includes all sides, notable what sacrifice east Europeans people, but also what russians endure. But they stressed their point of view "Großer Vaterländischer Krieg", Great patriotic war, now again as their narrative as their attack war on Ukraine. All references to even other war crimes, atrocities, colonization wasn't to diminish German guilt on our past. So right wing AfD Höcke shouted we're the only one that build the Holocaust memorial as "monument of shame" in Berlin. Yes, because this, in German "Denkmal", is literally "think again" shall educate the youth now. My parents we're born after WW2 so why it's necessary to teach that at school. Because it's the right thing to do.
Our history teacher at that time (1960s) refused to teach WWII . Because our parents had experienced it first hand, PTSD and all.
@@valeriedavidson2785I agree but the reality is that for the first 3 or 4 years after Britain declared war on Germany, Britain did not engage with Germany on the battlefield in Europe. Britain was too weak. Instead Churchill had his eyes set on protecting the empire by focusing on North Africa and ultimately protection of the Mediterranean theatre and the Suez canal, gateway to India. Britain declared war due to promises to Poland but Poland was left to Russia. Russian involvement in defeating Nazism was much more significant in fact.
Small nitpick: "Im Westen nichts Neues" is set in WWI, not WWII.
I am German, my husband is US American. One of the first questions his family asked me was where my grandfathers fought in WWII to figure out whether one of them could have encountered their relatives. For me, that was a weird question. I also encountered the attitude that "something like that" (fascism rising to political power) could never happen in the US which I find ludicrous and frankly, dangerous. Our kids have those divided souls: US pride of winning WWII and German shame. It is an interesting combination, to say the least.
Apologies for the error. I should have caught that (although I still highly recommend watching!)
And I 100% agree that there is a very odd attitude that what occurred in Europe could not happen in the US. I worry that our own hubris will lead to disastrous consequences.
In the same vein: Wonder Woman also plays in WWI
Which I think actually underlines your point on education: WWI and II seem to be easily conflated in US history class. "The one in Europe" :D @@TypeAshton
@@TypeAshtonStill your overall point of how the world wars are usually depicted in German media is valid.
@@TypeAshtonI guess most Europeans interested in international politics share that worry.
While we cannot foresee the future it is very worrying how divided the US is and how things seem to develop towards a situation where there are not only almost none agreements between the sides, but also no trust between them that they want good for their country.
Do not ever stop talking politics. The damage if that trust that disagreement is only about how to get to a better future is lost might be beyond repair.
You might replace "Im Westen nichts neues" by "Das Boot". This movie is a bit older (1981), but it is an important milestone in the history of German WWII movies. If you haven't seen it yet, make sure to watch the director's cut or the TV version. Both are over 5 hours long, but worth it.
“You have to know the past to understand the present.”
― Carl Sagan
The meaning of commemoration in the Netherlands has changed about every 10 years, but what remains is the impressive two minutes of silence on May 4. Sometimes silence is the best way to remember that horrific time.
And just to clarify, TOTAL, nationwide silence.
A few days ago, as every year, on August 1, at 17:00, sirens sounded in every corner of Poland, stopping every resident, every car, every job, every city. All of Poland, stopped for a minute to honor and remember the heroes.
i was once standing there with a german friend on the dam its impressive until the moment someone screamed and people started to run because they felt a terror attack was happening. only found my german friend back after 15min both helping people i guess it shows how quickly things can change.
As a Dutchman I always forgets about it
What a great video! My grandpa, before he died, told me a lot about the war.
He was forced to fight shortly before the war ended just when he turned 16. I mapped his units path. They walked 20-40km each day until they reached their destination in south-east Germany.
Each night the other young German "soldiers" fled into the dark of the night.
My grandpa's officers met with an US American troop. The officers sat together, drank wine and had a good night. All of the soldiers ate and drank, the German unit surrendered.
My grandpa sad he only survived because he became a US prisoner of war.
They fenced them in, kept them together on a potato field. After 3-4 days of no food, the young Germans dug for raw potatoes.
My grandpa made friends with a US soldier who guarded them.
He therefore was allowed to leave sooner. He tighed the pants at the bottom down with 2 pieces of string and filled his pants with sugar. That was the only thing he would eat for a couple of days.
Reaching the trains, the Americans provided passage to a few areas around Germany und US control. They had to pass through French terretory and French soldiers stopped the train. German prionsers were free labor for the French mines. They were used until death. Going into French war prisons was a death sentence.
The US soldiers got out of the trains, he vividly remembers that part, the got their automatic guns out and shot above the heads of the French's soldiers until those retreated and the train could carry on and bring the ex prisoners of war back into the homeland.
He had a far stretch to walk and he was with someone from a neighboring village.
They almost didn't make it.
They simply gave up under a tree and decided their fate was death by starvation. An old woman from a house nearby saw them and she asked what they were doing out in the sun at this young age in the middle of nowhere. They couldn't really answer.
The woman came back with a loaf of bread. This is the part my grandpa almost couldn't finish telling. Every time he talks about the loaf of bread he cried for minutes straight.
They made it back home. Others weren't so lucky. French and Russian war prisons were notorious for cruelty.
Basically I'm only here today because my grandpa got surrendered to the US troops.
And that's what he said as well until he died as he reached 93 years of age
One of my greatgrandfathers ended up as prisoner of war of the Russians. He lost part of his lung due to the cold on his way back when he and others were released and would not have made it back alive without a comrade from a neighbouring village.
His health was too bad for physical labour the rest of his life.
Our country summoned horrors on others that should never have been, but the cost that some people had to bear as consequence could also be out of proportion with their guilt.
Thank you for sharing the story about your grandpa.
If french were so cruel with their German KG, why so many KGvereins french and German meet after war and build associations with vet to avoid an other war ?
I'm french, took part of youth exchange organised by french and German vet and KG. We meet a lot of German KG, none spoke of the cruelty of the french, some used to spend their holidays near the place they were detent !
One of my grandfather was KG from 1940 til 1944-5. He was in Hannover and choose to work in a farm instead as staying in the camp as his officer status allowed him. Didn't talk to us about the camps but prefer to speak about the old women whose he was working for, whose men and boys were on the Russian front, that her anxiety was the same as the one of his mother and his wife, he spoke to us of the old Bayern Camp tenant who was wounded in WW1 and was so tired of wars. He never spoke of the detention conditions, we never ask as it seams to be something he prefer to forget.
@@brigittelacour5055
Read about Allied war cruelty. An extract:
On the 12th September 1944 at least 300 German prisoners of war were executed at Andelot (Haute Marne) by the French soldiers of the 2nd DB. During the earlier fighting for the village the French lost 5 soldiers and when the Germans surrendered they were killed to avenge the deaths of the French soldiers. (Phillipe Gautier, Le racisme anti allemand, Deterna, Paris, 2002, p. 192
On the 27th of August 1944 during the surrender of the Le Bourget airport approximately 800 German soldiers were killed by troops of the 12. Armored regiment of the 2nd DB under General Gaudet. (Source: Phillipe Gautier, Deutschenangst-Deutschenhass, Grabert, Tuebingen 1999)
On the 2nd of December 1944 about 800 German troops surrendered to the French army near Herbstheim (Alsace). 200 of them were executed, because they were members of the Waffen-SS. (Daniel Guerlain, L'envers de la Legende, Bonneville, 2002)
There were several less documented cases of War crimes in Ecouche (German soldiers willing to surrender having been killed by French tanks rolling over them) and near the Orne river a suspected SS member was burned alive by French troops. (Daniel Guerlain, L'envers de la Legende, Bonneville, 2002)
I'm Finnish, and our WW2 history classes were understandably a bit more focused on the Winter and Continuation wars between Finland and the Soviet Union than on the western front. In fact, in Finland the term "world war 2" is often used for the war in continental Europe specifically, while the part of the war affecting Finland is treated as separate wars altogether. I remember we did talk about the outbreak of WW2, Hitler's motivations and how he came to power, but it wasn't a big focus.
In the context of Finland, I often felt like the class wasn't just trying to teach us what happened and why, but also had another motive, to make us proud of our country. I do think the Finnish army pulled off a hell of a feat holding off the Soviet union, don't get me wrong, but this was emphasized a looot. It was also really emphasized that, while Finland and Germany were fighting the same enemy, we weren't allies. And this is something I've realized only later isn't such a black and white issue. It was clear that the Soviet union declared war on us in the Winter War and we had no choice but to defend ourselves. I get that. But the outbreak of the Continuation war, when we joined the German operation Barbarossa and declared war on the Soviet union again, was almost overlooked as far as I can remember. I think we went over the facts and the reasons for the war briefly, but there was no ethical discussion about if we should have done it. It was very recently that I learned and really realized that we actually were the ones to invade Russia the second time, because it looked like Germany would win so we wanted to join their advance. I think that definitely needs to be discussed more critically.
Also the fact that we had a sort of concentration camps of our own in the occupied Karelian territories, where we put a lot of Russian civilians, is really barely even mentioned. It may have been mentioned briefly or not at all, but I don't remember anything about it from history class. Hopefully it's my memory giving up on me and not the school system.
There are some holes in your current view of the continuation war as well. It's true we did align rather closely with Germany and always intended to take part in the war, at least to the point of retaking our lost territories. However we did not invade first, the Soviets bombed us before we joined operation Barbarossa. They did so for good reason (the Germans were using Finnish airfields to bomb the Soviets) but it gave us the excuse we were looking for to not be the aggressors.
More importantly though, the Soviets were always planning to invade Finland again. The pressure didn't cease after the end of the winter war and Stalin approached Hitler asking for permission to "finish the job". A second war was always coming and we knew it. The allies wouldn't support us and the country was exhausted, only Germany could offer the help we needed in order to survive and for that reason we aligned with a demon to fight the devil. In my opinion, we really didn't have a choice, but of course that could be debated.
As a fellow Finn (since moving here from the US in 1969), I had a similar but not identical experience in school in the 1970s and early 1980s. I happened to have a middle school history teacher whose mother was Estonian, and he had a pretty nuanced way of talking about the Continuation War.
He basically summed things up with that two wrongs do not make a right. Even though the Soviet Union faked a "Finnish attack" in Mainila to get an excuse to start the Winter War, that wrong did not justify the Finnish troops crossing the old border into Soviet Karelia during the Continuation War.
The best part was that he never said outright that breaching the border was wrong - he asked us what we thought. Now, afterwards, I am astounded with the memories of how mature and thoughtful discussions he managed to cultivate with 13-16 year olds, also about other topics.
The finns are very nationalistic. In todays germany unthinkable. They are very proud of fighting the Soviets but they often forget their dark ally: Hitler and about 250.000 combat approved Wehrmacht Soldiers.
@@minimax9452 Finland would not exist today if it wasn't for Hitler. Finland was completely exhausted after the Winter War, and would be unable to repel another Russian attack. Russians had plans to attack again, there was nothing Finland could do to persuade them not to. When Finland allied with Hitler, Hitler gave huge numbers of weapons and equipment to Finland. That same equipment was used to repel the Russian invasion in 1944, after Russians lost 3 decisive battles. Russians were never the good guys, they allied with Hitler and invaded and enslaved Poland, they attacked Finland, invaded and enslaved the Baltic states, killed millions of civilians, instigated famines, and enslaved half of Europe after the war. The worst people to ever exist. Finns, please don't be ashamed of using Hitler to literally survive. Yes, Hitler was a blood thirsty maniac, and an idiot, but Stalin was much worse.
You are the first Finns here who say something similar to the truth.
The winter war ended with the signing of a peace treaty, so the next conflict is another story. What the Soviet or Finnish elites wanted, we can guess or invent.
The biggest sin of the Finns is the camps for civilians and the blockade of Leningrad.
*I SENT MY AMERICAN FRIEND* some pictures of the bombed-out houses I played in as a child in the 1970's [Britain] - She asked with American innocence "Why were they not rebuilt?"
"Because no one in the family survived the bomb" - It struck me that only someone from a nation that has never experienced civilian bombardment would now know that? If every member if the family is killed, how do you rebuild the house? You cant just go TAKE the house, it does not belong to you and the neighbours would linch you, so they stay there - a ruin for decades.
I am sorry, that is nonsense. Someone HAS to inherit the grounds and the house. If there are absolutely no heirs, even distant relatives, the property goes back to the state / community. So either someone inherited this house but did not have any use for it / funds to rebuild it. Or the community owned it and did not manage to sell it to anyone.
i don't think you understand her question. in America the home would have been torn down the land re sold and somebody would have built on it.
@@ronik24 AND you think its easy to locate distant relatives after a global war do you...??? And what about the feelings of the community, the neighbours who knew the people who died, might be waiting for distant relatives to come and claim it, you think its just a simple case of selling the land off to a developer???
In the mid-1970s we used to get told off for playing in the ruins cos it was disrespectful, it was the sight of a family's DEATH.
"Or the community owned it and did not manage to sell it to anyone." It would have been regarded as grave robbing.
@@ronik24 Yeah someone HAS to inherit it ... but it was very often not a simple question to answer who actually did. Between millions of dead, millions of houses (and documents) destroyed, the Holocaust and the (by modern law) unlawfull re-distribution of formerly jewish owned property it took DECADES to sort those things out.
@@piccalillipit9211I'm interested: in which German city, east or west, did you play in bombed ruins in the mid 1970's? Born in 1970 I can't remember any ruins (except for the memorials like Gedächtniskirche in Berlin) that were still left untouched or not rebuilt. So I am curious. No, this isn't sarcasm or irony.
My dad was born just a few weeks after WW2 ended (and two full months too early). He still remembers vividly how he went to school each day through the ashes and rubble of his home town of Zerbst in what's today Saxony-Anhalt. How they were living with friends of the family since his own house was completely in ruins. About 80% of the town were leveled by US-american artillery and it burned for like half a week nonstop. His dad (my grandpa) actually witnessed the moment his own house was hit, but he never talked about his experiences to us (his grandkids). It was only in the mid-90s, afer all my grandparents were gone, that my parents slowly started to loosen up on this topic and to drop little snippets of information about what happened back then, but still only after quite a bit of soft pressuring from our side.
My dad's birthday each year at least for me is a constant little reminder, how long ago all of this was and simultaneously how recent and alive it still is in a lot of minds.
Thank you for never shying away from sensitive topics.
As an American who loves reading history, your graphic showing deaths by country was still eye opening!
Yes, Hitler was democratically elected and obviously today's Americans have forgotten this. Hence the phrase, "history repeats itself."
Yes, Hitler was democratically elected but he then abolished democracy in Germany. That is _very_ different than what has typically been the case in English speaking countries. If a prime minister or president tried that there would almost certainly be an armed overthrow of their government and a restructuring of the political system to prevent that happening again. Hopefully. What we see right now in English speaking countries is a chipping away of free speech until mostly the left side of the political spectrum has all the power and they can "cancel" anyone who disagrees with them. This is totalitarianism by stealth. And it is evil.
I recommend watching the video "fallen of ww2" it is only showing statistics/graphs, it is brutal and emotional, worth watching!
He was not elected democratically. The President had refused to put him as Recihchacellor. The NSAPD did attack voters and their political opponets with acts of terrors. The terror attack were made by the unleashing the NSAPD Sturmabteilung.
Hitler was never democratically elected. Even in 1932 he lost the presidential election by 15% to Hindenburg, but was made chancellor anyway by Hindenburg, a crotchety old monarch who desperately wanted a "shift to the right" and despised the social-democratic SPD with all his heart.
Then in 1933, even as freedom of the press was suspended, Hitler had been given absolute power by the man who had promised to "defend the constitution" and the SA ran a massive campaign of terror against political opponents, the Nazis didn't get a majority in parliament: they had to form a coalition with the DNVP to form a very narrow majority, though that was enough to pass the Enabling Act to suspend the Reichstag.
So in short, Hitler never got democratically elected to power, never managing to get the neccesary majority to rule alone even when resorting to base methods like arresting party leaders and violent voter suppression. Hitler was never as popular as post-war sources like to claim. Of course, it's easier to pretend that his ideas were just SO good, the masses chose to elect him to power and follow him into war, than admit that Hitler would never have been able to take power if not for a small army of right-wing enablers, whose fear and disdain of communism and social democracy lead them to enthousiastically help the man with genocide in his eyes. Indeed, history repeats itself.
By the time Hitler came to power, the democratic institutions of the Weimar republic had already been heavily eroded amongst a climate of violence and intimidation. Adolf Hitler himself had been sentenced to five years in prison in 1923 for treason as one of the leaders of the Munich Putsch, and attempted coup by the Nazis. He ended up serving less than 9 months, having had a sympathetic hearing from some senior judges. The Nazis then used a system of propaganda and intimidation by their quasi-military wing, the Sturmabteilung (SA or storm troopers). This was with the active support of much of the German officer class and strong middle class support.
Hitler was appointed vice-Chancellor in 1932, albeit without a majority in the Reichstag, but was subsequently able to manipulate and intimidate the institutions and achieved legal dictatorial powers in 1933 with the Enabling Act (after an emergency directive issues by the the president Paul Von Hindenberg after the Reichstag fire allowed such things as arbitrary arrest). The act had been passed with the Reichstag surrounded by the Nazi Sturmabeilung and many political opponents imprisoned or murdered.
If the Wiemar republic was a democracy in 1932, it was already a deeply flawed one.
Should have waited for your final question ❤ I’m from Rotterdam, and the Netherlands capitulated immediately after the devastating bombardment of our city. I’m from 1953, so we learned the history not only at school, but also at home (both my parents were from 1919. Miraculously the whole family survived, but my mom just barely made it through the horrendous hunger-winter of 1944-‘45 in the northwestern Netherlands.
Rebuilding, redesigning and revitalising the city took over 60 years (the how/why is too complicated to explain here).
There had always been a memorial for Rotterdam’ Jews, but only 25 years ago a monument was added for the children: all their names etched at children’s height, to be read.
As life and history do not stand still, the national remembrance is slowly but steadily developing into remembering Dutch victims (citizens and military) of wars.
Don't forget about the German tourists asking where the old city center is ("Wo ist dann die Altstadt?").
@@apveening Witnessed that when I was very young; my mom and I were in the tram, crossing the then still barren Weena. This elder German (which my mom deduced by his fat physique (it was only 20 years after 1945, no room for détente yet…) pointed around, talking to his wife.
Die Niederländer waren super Freunde, wie immer, und haben uns bei allem geholfen in all den Jahren. Wäre alles gut gegangen, wären die Niederländer als gleichberechtigte Nation auf dem absoluten Höhepunkt ihrer Macht angelangt. Es tut mir leid, dass wir versagt haben und die lieben germanischen Nachbarn dadurch beschädigt wurden. Ich frage mich, welche Absprachen es wohl gegeben haben muss, aber vermutlich standen deutsche Diplomaten in den Niederlanden die ganze Zeit in der Tür, denn dass nur rund 2300 niederländische Soldaten gestorben sind, wäre andernfalls absolut unmöglich gewesen. Das würde nicht mal heute mit modernsten Präzisionswaffen gehen. In Rotterdam ist irgendwas schief gelaufen. Dass die Niederländer hier Widerstand geleistet haben, ist nicht nachvollziehbar.❤❤❤❤
As someone from Poland, this is a loaded topic. I can say we learn A LOT what happened to our country particularly. What I mean is the invasion itself (from BOTH Germany and USSR), the Holocaust but also the Underground State and its work, the things I don't think many people outside of here even heard about. We can't escape that information because it "haunts" us at every step while living here. Not far from where I live there was a secret printing house for the Underground and the Nazis found the members and massacred them on the grounds of my primary school. Memorials are everywhere, even in small towns. My middle school had a mandatory visit to Auschwitz since we live quite close. Depending on where you live, your school would visit the closest camp I reckon. My school also visited the Schindler's Factory Museum. During Polish language lessons we would read books relating to WW2. That being said, with years I have realised it's still not enough. I don't remembered learning much of what happened on the fronts beside few famous battles. I didn't know almost anything about the African or Pacific theatres until I read about it myself. I don't want to blame my history teachers, because I had great ones but I think we had so much emphasis on the earlier parts on the history we never really had time to properly go through 20th century in detail. There's also another thing: I started going to school only after 13 years since the collapse of Communism. Since then more and more information came to light about events during WW2 because all the information was CENSORED to public during Communism. I learned a lot more during history lessons than my parents most likely or at least showed in completely new light. That's probably why we had such an emphasis on the occupation itself.
Reading comments from others also made me realise that we don't really celebrate any "victory/liberation" day related to WW2. It's because even tho we were technically "allies" and the war started with an attack on our country, we were arguably one of the biggest losers in this war. In many people's eyes here, we were truly free after 1989. We only commemorate 1st of September as the start of WW2 and it became the Day of Polish Air Defense Army and the 1st of August which was the start of Warsaw Uprising in 1944 (although that one is the biggest event in Warsaw itself, some other cities also carry out the minute of silence at 5 pm just on smaller scale).
When it comes to memorials, they can be grand and/or thought provoking. The ones of the victims are more solemn but the ones to the resistance fighters show more heroism.
Sorry for the lenghty comment.
The war began in 1938, when Poland and Hitler were dealing with Czechoslovakia.
The Second World War began when France and England declared war on Germany.
Resistance to Hitler was in Belarus, every 3-4 inhabitants died there. And what about Poland?
What did Poland do to liberate itself from Hitler?
You don't need to tell me about the Home Army or about the Polish forces under the control of England.
What should have been the alternative to the events after 1945?
@@BibEvgen "What did Poland do to liberate itself from Hitler?" Does contributing the first work on Enigma count? Why don't you need to be told about the Home Army uprising? Wikipedia has an article titled, Polish resistance movement in World War II.
@@quintrankid8045 For some, it is a feat to spit a fascist into the soup, for others to derail train trains.
I read your wikipedia, such a huge mass of people (Kraeva) sat through the whole war, did not really do anything.
Look at how they resisted in Belarus, Ukraine, Greece....Look at the repressions against civilians there, because of the resistance.
I watched the Polish film as a child “Four tankmen and a dog”, I really liked it, but as an adult I understood the essence, we and you fought for different values.
Just in case, you, I'm not talking about all Poles, a lot of Poles are real heroes, they fought.
My grandfather, a Pole, he fought in the Red Army, did not sit like yours from the (Kraeva) .
@@BibEvgen I think lots of people did what they could. I wouldn't condemn them too harshly without walking a bit in their shoes.
"spit a fascist into the soup" I'm not quite sure what this means. Can you please tell me what language that's from and what it means. TIA.
"we and you fought for different values." I'm not sure who the "we" and "you" are and I don't know what the different values are.
@@quintrankid8045 Spit in the soup, the French resistance to Hitler. We are talking about the fact that the war was different, in Europe there was one, in the Soviet Union it was completely different. In England, they were choking on boring carrot cake, and at that time hundreds of thousands of people were dying of hunger in besieged Leningrad.
The Czech Republic did nothing to get rid of Hitler, in fact helped Hitler kill my fellow citizens. Then the Czechs are offended after the war that they are told how they should live after 1945.
You and us. We are from the Soviet Union, you are Poles, French, British, ....., so-called allies.
As a 4th grade public school teacher in America, I would like to add the following: yes, education depends upon the district but also depends upon the teacher and their personal background and understanding of history. It is common in many curricula to integrate picture books about historical perspectives within ELA due to time constraints. We do a project based unit around WWII childhood perspectives. I included the dark history of Japanese Internment Camps but my colleagues did not…because one didn’t know about it and the other didn’t want to overwhelm her students. You’re right on with everything said in this video. There is a push to introduce heavier topics through picture books across America (Fountas and Pinnell), but it depends on what the teachers know and the “feelings “ of the community sadly…
Living in the Netherlands on a 10 km distance from the German border I remember a German TV documentary about the Nazi and WW2 period. It was in in the times of analogue black/white TV with reception through the air. It was a documentary in weekly episodes and it I has been one of the best documentaries, I have ever ever seen. Being 78, born in May 1945, I still remember that brutally honest German documentary from my teenage years.
For modern Americans: It was a very woke documentary, hurting the souls of many German kids, but it improved Germany!
Danke!
BS.
@@SchmulKrieger Schmollender Nazi Krieger?
MY MOTHER - Born April 1937, and over 8 yrs by war's end on 5 May '45 in Holland - tought me first-hand memories and stories. Notably, Her Father was in the Dutch underground resistance, got caught by the Nazis, Put on a Cattle-train to an Extermination Camp, but Miraculously succeeded in Jumping Out of the Moving Train, making his way Back thru Germany, to Holland, and Surviving in hidance.
As a german, i learned about the rise and fall of nazi germany not just once, but at least 4-5 times in school. 2 times history class, but also german class, ethics class, religion class and probably more, e.g. english class. Even though, we only shortly talked about WWII and quite long about concentration camps and the persecution of the jews, the idiotic race theory and so on. I am not sure if it's on the teachers or the curriculum. I always had the feeling that the teachers wanted to show us the cruelty of war and what the nazis did and not tell us great war strategies and campaigns. So we( or at least me )had also blind spots in our education. Not sure how good this is in america but the european colonial history was almost only about america, Africa only mentioned in slave trade.
I always had the feeling they would hjave crammed the Third Reich into math class if there was a classy way to do it. Besides physical education, that was the only class not mentioning it.
I remember being annoyed, that we missed out on the important stuff like the Vietnam and Korean war, that were much more recent in my teenage opinion.
Now I see the US slipping into a state of mind I associate with 1939 Germany and I am worried. Very worried.
Not that our AFD is better. we need to learn from our past and it needs to be tought. In detail.
"I am not sure if it's on the teachers or the curriculum. I always had the feeling that the teachers wanted to show us the cruelty of war and what the NAZIs did and not tell us great war strategies and campaigns."
It's the curriculum, and it's deliberate. It's also the right thing to do. It's disappointing that the reasoning wasn't explained to you. I will try to explain...
Learning about military strategy and specific battles is exciting. In particular to young boys. It's dramatic. It's action packed. It's also barely relevant, because none of it teaches you:
- WHY WW2 was fought.
- HOW germen society was dragged into the war thinking it was a noble cause.
- HOW it was possible for Germans to invade other countries while thinking they were fighting a defensive war (similar to Russians today)
- HOW to identify authoritarianism.
- HOW to avoid such tragedies in the future.
These are the sorts of things you, a German living in a democracy, must understand to become a responsible voter. This is infinitely more important than any specific campaign.
However, I do understand you of course. Young people tend NOT to be as interested in society on a macro level, in terms of economics and mass psychology. These are things people tend to become more interested in with age and experience. That makes it all the more important to confront young adults with this material though. It's just not always taught well, sometimes because the teachers themselves lack the understanding and the enthusiasm.
Anyway, the things you were taught are exactly what's missing from the US curriculum. We teach our students nothing about how authoritarianism comes to power. Adults in the US think Germans knew nothing about the NAZI party's goals and were tricked into supporting them (it's the only explanation that makes sense to us), but that is of course wrong. This lack of understanding is also why today, the US is starting to look ever more like 1930's Germany.
How do you feel being the bad guy? (cuz people said, so... must be true.)
Really, for you, even knowing the true, personally there was a moment that you bought it?
Younger, idk, that 'Maybe?'
In another words, we f up your mind somehow? Antropoligically speaking.
('''''we''''')
@@fluffydruid3082 Oh, the Vietnam I figure out, I think. Was soo shameful for the US, they have their ass kicked hard in battles that was unfair(to say the least) so... "We just dont talk about that". (this was the intended comment at first, from here... Extreme Irony alert?)
I wonder why theres no much records about US Military that loves soo much that border, u know... Crossing it, accidentally of course, all the time.
Unlucky that often they do not return. Theres tribes, animals(its a f jungle), maybe some faction that... Even getting lost, its huge.
Theres a couple videos on youtube... mostly from 1993.(That's weird 'cuz, something like... US troops crossing borders and... all too well, I do remember? Felt like. idk.)
So... FAB and some special forces just misunderstood. Yeah.
No, dude.
Military US, they runned like real pu**ies when FAB and whoknows got there. Tho, no fight at all.
They lost some man there, to the forest, only.
'Cuz someone gived the order to get there, to stay, to go across the border. They did.
Baiden denyes.
...And I love his face, god, everytime that somone asked about that.
Btw, 'We' dont talk about that.
Awesome video! I wish more American’s would look outside their world and view life from the prospective of other countries. I retired from the US Air Force over 20 years ago. My wife and I had the fortunate opportunity to travel the world. We tried to learn about the various cultures in which we lived and respected their points of view. We Americans are very short sighted. We think the world revolves around us. It revolves around our money and resources! At 60, I’m looking to retire again next year and for the last couple of years have been viewing a lot of videos on American’s living abroad…we’re getting “Itchy Boots” (Sorry Noraly for borrowing that!) and want to see more of Europe than we saw while stationed in England..which was beautiful! We aren’t considering moving outside the US, just want to experience even more of the world. Anyway, love your well-thought out videos about Germany and other topics. We visited Germany and loved it! My grandfather immigrated from Vienna so, strangely enough, I felt at home there. To all reading this…get out and see the world…stay active…stay safe!!! Don’t believe the media entirely. The world isn’t that scary!!!
I deeply respect how Germans teach their children about WWII. They own it, take responsibility, and feel a duty to try and prevent this from happening anywhere else on the world.
Meanwhile, here in the United States, many states are making it ILLEGAL to teach about core elements of slavery or the forced discrimination or black people after the Civil War because (I'm not making this up) it hurts the feelings of some students and makes them feel bad.
German history education is only shallow. Many of them learnt nothing, Nazism always were popular until today. Ask they about reparation in order to see their real morality and responsibilities. XD
Ironically enough the right wing parties are getting extreme support in Germany again. That has plenty of recent reasons it's still mind-boggling to see. Divide and conquer works out perfectly fine
Shame is unhealthy
@@supermaximglitchy1 History has to be connected with negative emotions otherwise it will just repeat itself over and over again, which is ironically currently somewhat the case. Probably because we never really learn and Hhstory keeps on repeating itself
@@supermaximglitchy1 Totally 100% agree. And there are so many ways to teach this without shaming.
One key thing I say is that if you learn something you are doing or saying is racist but didn't know it - there's no reason to feel shame - you didn't know. But now that you know, be better.
Congratulations. A terrific video as usual. Living here in Switzerland since 1977, having emigrated from the US, it pushed all the "right" buttons. What the emphasis in the US is, the differences in presentation of history elsewhere. And while the Spielberg movies are less "romantic" in nature and more realistic, they still reinforce an American perspective of that history. The only possible exception to a certain extent would be Schindler's list, which was more centred on the victims of the Nazis than on the war efforts specifically of either side.
What is generally missing in the presentation of history is the eagle-eyed perspective that takes into account, all aspects of the before during and after, as you also stated. Maybe I'm wrong, but I see no possibility of this being presented in US schools in general. It seems to only in the last 10-15 years be coming out, how incredibly unpopular the idea of a WWII before Pearl Harbor was, the US Nazi movement with it's "Night at the Garden", the congress members who actively worked to promote Hitler's Nazi-ism in the US. I can't imagine the proportional sacrifice the UdSSR paid in winning the war - I have however seen it written, that without that eastern War, Hitler would have had all those resources to throw at the troops in the west, that it was the intenseness of the fighting in the east that made an allied "victory" in the west possible. What is pretty much the popular opinion was expressed in the classic US war film "Patton", where Gen. Patton very clearly said, he expected to be fighting the russians in the future so it would be better to do it now, while the US resources were already in Europe. Basically, the US even then only had contempt for the Russians and no understanding for their sacrifices. Not to say, they weren't mountrous themselves, both with the German POWS, the civilians in the lands they captured and with their own civilians. But that so colored the "history" as taught in US schools, with Russia being the big, bad enemy in the east, that it would be counter US interests to even advantagously mention them in US school history books.
I agree on almost your comment - just would add that Russia also was the aggressor in the beginning. They only changed sides when Germany attacked them (against previous treaties deviding eastern europe)
This is a good point. Seeing a time line of events and how everything unfolded on a global scale you can see that so many gears were turning and levers were being pushed.
It is hard to isolate a single countries efforts.
Even within Germany. 2 unsuccessful attempts against Hitler and people hiding Jews and the oppressed, show that there is no black and white.
You should also mentioned: The BUND, which was a Nazi American organization that tried to push a fascist agenda into the US political world. Many American industrialists of that era were quite sympathetic to this ideology. People like Ford (cars), Watson (IBM) and many others, who did not see any issues in anti-jewish policies, which were actually pretty active in the US itself, with Jew quotas in Ivy leagues universities or laws that prohibited marriages between white Americans with Jewish people (the so-called anti-miscegenation state laws)...
It is quite telling that the Nazi party can still demonstrate in the streets in the US, but the communist party has been outlawed.
And this just illustrates the complexity of war. The Russians weren't just the bad guys/good guys.It was way more complex than that. We Americans tend to see things in black and white. And I guess that is supported by our educational system and our culture. And this flaw has now reverberated to present day when people do not recognize nationalism and the threat of dictatorship. It's maddening and frightening.
I'm assuming, that the American public was divided on this similarly, as it is today about the war in Ukraine. Within American politics (not only there, think 'Mourir pour Danzig?'), there was always a certain tendency towards isolationism, the pinnacle of which was the Monroe-Doctrine. The Americans were still a bit tiered from their efforts during WW I. Still there were prominent figures like Charly Chaplin, who relentlessly propagated, that the US should enter the war to stop Hitler.
At the same time, you can see, how history repeats, and how we are not able to learn, by looking at the most blatant example described in "Voyage of the Damned", in Germany better known as "Irrfahrt der St. Louis".
This ship has been chartered, to evacuate 973 mostly German Jews. Cuba, the US, and Canada all denied mooring in their ports, the St. Louis was finally forced to return to Europe. Of the passengers, that had to disembark in Antwerp, Belgium, approximately half managed to escape the Gestapo, but many were deported and murdered in German death camps.
President Roosevelt wanted to allow _some_ of them into the US, but he caved to pressure of his foreign minster Hull and the Democratic Party, which threatened to withdraw support for his reelection.
The discussion in the US about whether to allow the refugees to enter the US is eerily similar to the discussions you hear today from various right-wingers all over the world about refugees on the Mexican border or at the gates of the EU and the UK.
I have been following your channel for quite some time. I am thankful for your explanations and courage to tackle even such subjects as WWII. I was born in Colombia but my father sent us to a German school in Colombia that was financed to a large extent by the German government. Three quarters of the teachers were German civil servants (Beamte) working there for three to a maximum of six years. We had excellent history teachers as well as some rotten old Nazi apples. The curriculum was oriented towards German history but we had a separate class for Colombian history. We had a very good introduction to the development of the idiocincracity of the Germans that led to the war.
Up to now my impression of the school system in the states is that it is more oriented to prepare students for technical and practical aspects of life rather than preparing them to be conscious, responsible and knowledgeable.
I wonder how you found your way to be a critical, observing and unprejudiced person because the states are not the best place to develop these traits?
We have millions of critical thinkers in the US--fighting hard to change the anti-science, lack of questioning, provincial attitudes of so many. Despite our educational system there are plenty of us who read, study and research beyond high school and college. Here's a good article I just read in The Nation, "Who Voted for Hitler," by Dan Simon. You have fallen into the trap of making too wide of a generalization.
@@pamelaroberts3004 Thank you, I wish so much to know how adult human beings can develop in such an adverse environment that I apologise for generalising so much. I wish there would be 200 million of you. The whole world is afraid of someone like Trump getting back to power and we don't hear or see you. The effect of Trump's fake reality has crossed the ocean and we have similar psychopaths roaming European political hunting grounds. This is why I want to understand how freely thinking people can develop under adverse conditions.
@@humbertochaves4099 "The whole world is afraid of someone like Trump getting back to power and we don't hear or see you." I wonder why. Was it the lack of the US not starting any new wars? Lower food and gas prices? A few more peace treaties in the Middle East? What in particular?
I am 42 and I remember from my history lessons back in school, that we talked a lot about the kingdoms and changes in countries in europe throughout history and the middle ages for many years and also a lot about WW2. We didnt visit a concentration camp, that is not something that is manadatory or anything, like some comments on the internet claim here and there occationally. But we watched movies in class about war and documentaries with pictures of concentration camps and all that. I remember we watched "Platoon" and "All Quiet on the Western Front". So the horrors of war are deeply embedded in our conciousnes from early on and I find that good. We also learned a lot about why and how WW2 came to be. WW2 truly began with the defeat in WW1 and the conditions that were dictated on germany which prepared the ground for a man like Adolf Hitler. The conditions and how people lived at the time that made them listen to guys like hitler which then eventually ended in him even being elected. This shall never repeat. Maybe this is something the US still needs to experience themselves. I see this currently with Trump and the republican party and we can live see democrazy being taken apart. History repeats itself.
I find it interesting that after the brief flurry of Vietnam movies in the 70s and 80s Hollywood largely reverted back to films about WW2. I think maybe it is easier to paint an uncomplicated story of valor and victory with WW2 - at a time when the US is very much grappling with its cultural identity
What's funny is that Vietnam has one of the most positive views of the US of any country in the world - around 90% of Vietnamese view the USA positively. Despite what many Americans think, the Vietnam war was in reality far more like the Korean war (with the US siding with the democratic south) than it was like Iraq.
@@jeffmorris5802 Like the french view Americans
I'm from Romania and USA participation in the war is a foot note, they gave money, they came, signed some papers left. Bombed the shit out of this far away country that makes anime. I later found out they tried to bomb Bucharest. Churchill and the US president guy gave us to Stalin because Greece was more useful to them, the end.
Most of our courses focused on the nazis fighting the russian on our lands and how my country flipped 3 times and barerly made it out, only lost 1/3 of the country. 👍😐
Later found out we paid the russian for "liberating us" after they carpet bombed the major cities and industrial centers. 🙄
@@HisameArtwork just think if the allies did not fight the nazis You would be speaking German And, over 400000 would be in the concentration camps maybe 1 million
I'm a 70 year old American. In history class I would ask questions, but they had no answers, because they put no effort into these classes. Everything Americans know about history is from movies. So I went to the library. I wanted to know why and how wars started, I looked for perspective. Most books start with the war, not how people got dragged into them or what happened to the people before, during and after. It takes a lot of reading. Thank you for this video.
If you are interested in European history please look at A J P Taylor. For example, "The Struggle For Mastery In Europe: 1848-1918" or "The Origins of the Second World War". With greetings from Germany from a 63 year old.
i am glad that someone over the ocean had the same questions like me in germany 9 years younger. My history teacher, he was a german solodier win the age of 17, answerd: that is the masterpeace ofg all questions. He let me try to read Hannah Arendt in the agew of 15.
Thanks for a great video. Again 😊
What we were taught about WWII did fill a whole history book for almost a year of history class.
But what stuck in my brain the most...every year a survivor of the Dachauer Todesmarsch (death march of Dachau...something akin to the US trail of tears) came and she talked about it and how she survived it. That march had passed our village and here she escaped it.
It made quite an impression, lets say.
The feeling of "never again" was ingrained by her accounts the most I think.
Ashton, thank you so much for your relentless curiosity and for taking that deep dive into German and European culture. As a German myself I have learned a whole lotta stuff from your fabulous stream. As high school kids in Hamburg, we were taught about the Weimarer Republic, the Machtergreifung in '33, and how this deepest scar in German history came about and is still affecting us today. From 7th to 10th grade this was part of our history curriculums including the Shoah and the thousands of barbaric chapters. It wasn't annoying at all to me. Awareness was meant to prevent. Many of the older (WW2)generation were either silent or denied any personal wrongdoing claiming "it was Hitler who seduced us", "there was nothing we could do" or "let's not look back". One day a Jewish concentration camp survivor was invited to our school to speak to us. It was Ester Bejerano who sadly passed away recently. I remember her soft smile and infatuating voice. She was well into her 70s. Her words were earth-shattering to me. "Guys, you don't have any guilt on your shoulders. Live the best life you can but you have a responsibility to be watchful." It was like a silent promise, a silent oath I gave her. It was the day I was born again as a lifelong anti-fascist. My grandparents almost never spoke about it. I think it was too painful for them. In East Germany (the GDR) there was no reprocessing of WW2. Neither in society nor in schools. They defined themselves as new socialists untethered to anything that occurred before 1945. That unawareness of history may be a contributing factor to the rise of xenophobia and right-wing political groups in the former GDR after our reunification. To me, that our former enemies forgave and became partners and friends (well, most of them) with us is a special kind of miracle...
"To me, that our former enemies forgave and became partners and friends (well, most of them) with us is a special kind of miracle..." Ah no, historically it is the total Norm. Normally after every peace there was an mutual amnesty clause. WW1 and Versailles was the first break of this immortal law of diplomacy and WW2 was its total enhancement with reeducation an occupation
As a Czech, I did not learn almost anything about WW2 in school. Our history teacher was so obsessed with ancient civilizations and medieval era that we had very little time left for learning about modern history. We swiftly completed learning about WW1 and the creation of Czechoslovakia, WW2 and its prelude was basically just homework and the communist regime, the Velvet revolution and the split of Czechoslovakia was entirely skipped. At least my parents are very fond of history so I learned a lot of at home.
Thank you for your interesting vlog. Being Dutch and living in Germany it was an intetesting compairison.
One remark though: Im Westen nichts neues/ all quiet on the western front tells about WW1 not WW2
Keep up the good work!
Oh goodness that's an embarrassing mistake on my part (although I'd still recommend everyone see that film. It was one of the best examples of cinematography in recent times. Stunning yet sobering).
Wonder Woman also plays in WW1, yet you mentioned it in this video as WW2. Is it possible that both WW are presented as nearly the same setting with the same evil to fight (Ger) and the same hero to save the day (US) in american education? Because then it is easy to understand why you confuse them so easily.
@@TypeAshton But you had the year of the book right, ten years before the start of WW2.
Nobody seemed to take to heart the lessons from The Great War, ending in an even more devastating sequel. Wars happen because not all conflicts lend themselves to be resolved by peaceful means and as has been pointed out, in the human experience, peace is the exception and war is the rule.
@@NormanF62 just given our 100000 year long history, i would easily be drawn to say that no, war was not the rule, since most of the time there weren't even enough people around to fight one.
Also, most fossil records from that time actually tell a story of crazy feats to stay connected with people, rather than bash their heads in.
All that war stuff happened in the last buncha thousand years after we can say patriarchy got into all crannies and nooks of our cultures and hierarchical societies used their physical advantage to obliterate or enslave everyone else.
WW2 wasn't a standalone topic, we also went into great detail about the years leading up to those events. The power structure before WW1 and how that one was concluded, the treaties after and their significance to societies.
And much more than I care to list just now.
The war didn't just start one day in a vacuum.
So thanks for your effort on shining a light on the different approaches.
WW2 still influences international politics today, no doubt about that. The permanent members of the UN security council are mainly the victors of WW2. This arrangement was a big mistake. If you classify the adversaries of WW2 into the "good guys" and the "bad guys", like so many do, you overlook they're put in a position of having become "the forever good" or "forever bad". And that does not reflect developments of the past 80 years. Societies rise and fall and they can turn from good to bad in one generation or from bad and defeated into fair and just. The design of the post WW2 political landscape created the current situation of rising arrogance, nationalism and tendencies towards autocracy with the WW2 victors and their willingness for self-reflection is very low, because they won "the war", they're the "forever good" nations.
And this mindset mirrors of course how the war and the country's role in it is taught to younger generations. There are lessons to learn not only for the defeated, but also for the victors.
An incomprehensible event that still has an impact today happened right at the beginning of World War II: Poland, England and France had reached a mutual assistance agreement: if one is attacked, the other two will help! Germany and the Soviet Union invaded Poland, but only Germany was declared war by the other two. The Soviet Union also invaded Poland, but was never sanctioned for it, on the contrary, it was given the right of veto in the UN! That continues to this day!
@@user-kt9je5fc3s Maybe if you put yourself in the shoes of someone who is responsible when doing diplomacy, or just put in the shoes of someone who would have his sons, family and neighbours go to die senselessly in the battlefield, you would think a little before making such comments.
Why? Just having Germany as an enemy was not enough for you? You also wanted to fight the soviets allied to Germany?
Oh wait. To most people it doesn't matter what would happen. It is just a cheap morality game. Because they weren't there and probably never would be there.
its not about winning ww2 it about power china has a seat to now guess why nukes best way to control them is make them feel important
They are all the bad guys to one degree or another and the old comparison that one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter holds true at international level.
That's because the UN was conceived and developed by the countries at war with the Axis powers to ensure that nothing like that happens again. So of course they'd be the initial permanent members of the Security Council.
The first time I learned to critically re-think the history I learned was when I read this quote: "May I give you a word of advice? Next time you invade Italy, do not start at the bottom." -Wehrmacht General Fridolin von Senger, father of Bundeswehr, 10 years after the war). It had never occurred to me that any major allied plan was anything but the best available option.
Hannibal of carthage famously went over the alps with elephants and the Romans had not thought this option was possible
Great video! It is of vital importance to teach kids and grown-ups around the world not only what happened but also how it did happen. Greetings from Bochum ✌️
Commendable video! pleasantly surprised that you would take on this subject.
Just this week I went to see the film Oppenheimer and had a discussion about this with my husband.
We have seen many of the WW2 films and series produced by European countries and of course they are in great contrast to what USA based films and TV series concentrate on, as you pointed out.
I must have been extremely lucky to have had several history teachers in a NYC high school who did indeed discuss why WW1 AND WW2 started, also what the allied forces did.
My Austrian husband's history education was awkward: his history teacher stopped at WW1. Only in retrospect did he find out why: the reason was probably because his teacher or his family were directly involved.
But my husband taught himself in order to fill in the gaps as did many of his classmates, and he heard family stories as to how life was during and immediately after.
So well put; I hope the people who need to hear this the most will hear it.
A very considerate tribute to history and how it is told and taught. Very much appreciated!
I'm German and 42 years old. From school, I remember that we were the generation that slowly got fed up with the great focus on WWII in history class and the weight of the national guilt imposed on us. I never felt quite that way (I actually had a huge phase of being fascinated with WWII, particularly the perspective of the victims, and read everything the municipal library had to offer on the topic) but I can see where some of my peers were coming from. Overall, I would mostly criticize that we learned way too little about the war outside of Europe, especially in Africa and Asia, beyond Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And even then, we never learned that much about Italy's involvement, either, it was all very focused on Germany itself and the Holocaust.
My granddad died when I was still very young, so I only know a little about his experiences - he was a radio operator (he worked for the Deutsche Post as a telecommunication engineer before and after the war), he lost some toes to frostbite in the fight at the East European front and was a Soviet POW for some time, I believe. My grandma was born the same year as Sophie Scholl (1921). For some reason, I never talked to her about the topic, which I greatly regret by now. (I didn't know the family on my dad's side, he doesn't even know who his father was. My dad was born in 11/1945, you do the math what had most likely happened to his father ...)
As a German of similar age, I never get the "shame" part. None of my history teachers ever told me that I or any of my class mates should feel ashamed, only to shoulder the responsibility to do my tiny part of trying to prevent such barbarism to ever happen again.
In Germany we were taught WWII history in order to prevent anything similar during our lifetime. "Never Again!" was the teacher's slogan. Never again naziism, dictatorship, holocaust or war! Under no circumstances!
"NEver again" was not only the Teachers slogan, it was the slogan under all world powers came together and wanted to abolish War forever. Sadly, as you see, this was just another Slogan. We German stick to it, the americans not really.
@@DaveXYZ369 germans are defensless ,the german government has paid more than $1 billion for stationing of U.S. troops in germany🤣
@@inka87871 $1 billion over the last ten years, correct.
In the same time Germany generated an economic power of 2.347 billion dollars - 1.123 billion in salaries that remain in the region; 400 million dollars in construction, services, materials and equipment; and 824 million in value added through indirectly-created jobs from the presence of US troops in Germany.
> Never again naziism, dictatorship, holocaust
Well, that's unnecessary now, is it ? You guys succeeded in exterminating the Jews (in Germany and Eastern Europe at least), so what would be the point in repeating the Holocaust ?
@@DaveXYZ369 Germany is a NATO member and has contributed some nice equipment to Ukraine. May I humbly suggest that fighting against an illegal war of aggression may sometimes be necessary.
Nicely done, congratulations on a well presented and well thought through video.
My experience of learning about WWII is vastly different than other Americans. I am a military brat and spent 10 of my first 18 years overseas (Philippines, Germany. And Japan). In 6th grade (while living in Germany) we studied WWII in a similar way to how it is taught in German schools. We spent a full semester and read additional books and travelled to Dachau. My family also spent time in Chiemsee at the General Walker hotel (now demolished) and spent time in the bunker tunnels and at the Eagle’s Nest. These experiences gave a more human perspective on the war that most American students will never have. In 10th grade (we were stationed inJapan) we studied the pacific theater of the including a trip to Hiroshima which was as haunting as Dachau. Because the US is pretty much isolated from actual war (except the revolutionary war and the civil war) there is no real reference to what happens and how people are effected. To many it’s like watching a movie and not real.
What a pity that this video is only around 20 minutes long and what a shame that I can give only one "thumb up" for this video. I had already watched Feli's excellent video before and I think your work is a great addition to what she did.
Having been a student in Germany with History as one of my "Leistungskurse" (=major subject for the "Abitur" exam), my experience was probably rather similar to the one Feli had. I have been to several Concentration camp sites (3 or 4 times to Dachau, once to Auschwitz and once to Hersbruck, a minor site in Bavaria). WW2 and the Third Reich in general had never been a topic reserved to History class but we had come across it in other subjects, too, like German, Arts, etc... Although we at times kinda got annoyed by repeating it over and over again, today I think that this approach is more than adequate as this conflict has affected the lives of people on all kinds of levels.
This is also one of the reasons, why the way WW2 is taught is so different in the US from how it is in Germany. Despite all the talk of "the Good War" or "the Best Generation", WW2 was, for the US, just another (though decisive) stepstone to the summit. More Americans lost their lives in the Civil War than in WW2. For Germany, these 12 years basically had changed everything.
I like your videos much. You put a lot of research in your videos, very fact based and well presented. Educational. Keep on going so.
Thank you so much!
As usual a very high quality video, well prepared and informative.
This was a fantastic documentary video! Cheers!
Very well done, This probably has cost some time to decide and put forward, but the tone, level of honesty and viewpoint is perfectly chosen. History (I hated it during my entire education) is arguably the most important thing to learn. You can catch up as an adult though. Thanks for this
ive long held the belief that when you teach history without focusing on the why and how things happened, what they mean and how those things work in general... you are not teaching history - just a list of dates for someone to memorize and then forget about
Wait. You mean the context for the thing happening is intrinsic to the understanding of the thing?!
Sadly, the American education system cares little for nuance or context. Only gingoism and propaganda. Even now we have people actively fighting to make sure we don't teach history outside of the "we, good. Them, bad", narrative.
It's even worse when you look at the state of politics today. There are echoes of what has come before the fall of democracy and descent into authoritarian rule, but no one wants to talk about that. Just kind of quietly hope that the "other side" figures out they've got it wrong and change themselves.
Your essays are always of high standard, but you've really outdone yourself on this one. The difference of living through war rather than sending some people to fight a war elsewhere in particular is something that US Americans often find difficult to understand. I was born 25 years after the war, but my grandmother had lived through 2 world wars and spoke about it often and so it was ever present for me growing up. Her husband did not come back from the war, they had only been married less than a year before he was recruited, she had to give her daughter to stay with relatives who lived in the countryside as she herself lived and worked in Dresden which was bombed regulary. And then she ended up 'behind the iron curtain' when the Russians occupied Eastern Germany and she and her daughter had to flee and leave all their belonging behind.
Your videos belong to the best youtube has to offer. You deserve a much greater publicity. Thank you for all this effort !
Wow, thank you! ❤️
My family is Chinese. I grew up in the US, and I distinctly remember having an extensive class debate on the morality of the atomic bombs. A few years later, I found out about the Nanjing Massacre. And a few years after that, I found out about the Unit 731 coverup, Stilwell's propaganda, the barring of China from the Treaty of San Francisco, and how all of this relates to the ongoing issues today between the US and China. It is hard not to think that this was all censored specifically for strategic reasons.
However incomplete the American understanding of Europe in WWII is, the European understanding of what happened in Asia is almost non-existence. Even in this video, she laments the loss of 24 million Soviets and other people but does not even mention the 20 million Chinese deaths. Similarly, everyone here will say the war started in 1939 when Germany invaded Poland without even a second thought to Japan's invasion of China two years earlier.
@@gunkulator1 In the netherlands the atrocious situation in east asia is covered, though not as extensively. This might have something to do with the Dutch Indies conflict with Japan, requiring some elaboration on what Japan what doing in WW2. China/korea/japan is hard to skip over.
I assume Ashton didn't go into WW2 asia because this video is from a german perspective, and limited time. Adding a third continent might dilute the message she was trying to convey, though it is somewhat ironic.
@@Tinky1rsThere is some merit to what you say but the entire thesis of the video is how the American perspective is incomplete. Adding more from only the German and European perspective still leaves a very large hole in understanding the war. There was a massive Asian theater in WWII where millions upon millions suffered and died. The war started in Asia before it did in Europe and continued on there after the fighting was over in Europe but you'd never know this by listening to European histories of the war.
again a wow video from the TBFF, thank you Ashton for showing another different point of view between our cultures...
I enjoy most of your videos, but this is the type of thoughtful, well researched video for which I was happy to join your new Patreon. Thanks!
Thank you for your well researched videos
Some small corrections needed here about the mentioned movies:
"All Quiet on the Western Front" is about WW1, not WW2. I think the book was even banned in Germany during WW2
The english title of "Der Untergang" is "The Downfall"
And Indiana Jones stole the Ark of the Covenant in Egypt in the first movie, the Holy Grail was in Alexandretta (actually Petra, Jordan) in the third.
Wonder Woman also was set during WWI.
i am dutch in my 50's and would comment probably what many others will do here. i am happy to see most of our generations after me still know and learn more its hard after such a long time. what happened before but also after ww1 and ww2 is a lesson we will need in the next few years when the current war is over in europe and we need to rebuild a country for the common good of europe like after ww2. Things like the The Marshall Plan should be part of what we teach to lay the groundwork on why it has to be done and why even more bills have to be paid. germany doesn't have a great history of being on the right side but they have earned a lot of respect by how they recovered and paid their due i doubt for example any country would be able to reunify like they did and the continued open views to helping war victims now.
I knew a Dutch gentleman, friend of the family, who was enslaved by the Germans during the war, and was liberated when the Allies got to Haarlem (not sure when that was, exactly). He found the first American officer he could, and said that he wanted to join the US Army. Since he spoke Dutch, German, French, and English, he was made an interpreter and immediately promoted to sergeant. He was on the front lines from that day until the end of the war, and after he was mustered out of the US Army, he joined the British Army and served in the occupation forces.
History was my main subject in my final school years. I'm still grateful to my teacher Friedrich Krüger, for inspiring us, bringing us closer to the events of the 19th and 20th century and taking us to the places where it all happened. RIP.
Very cool new Intro! Keep up the amazing work👍🏼
So glad other Dutch have already chimmed in and talked about how we view the war as it allows me to go a bit on a tangent..
In your video their were a couple of points you raised which i think where under "appreciated" (for lack of a better word).
The first is the USA's history of rewriting history to fit their views (like the southern socialites or most history around the native Americans) so it should not be surprising that American movies/culture reflect this (we see something similar now happening around CRT).
Another point you made which i found very interesting was that after Pearl Harbour people wanted revenge not liberation and this somehow made me think of the American justice system which seems to be about revenge/punishment and not reparations/rehabilitation..
Loved the video and how honest you were about your own feelings/background from an education stance.
Have a great sunday and see you next weekend!
I've recently tried to take some time to read/learn more about the time immediately before the US entrance into the war. Between the speeches of Charles Lindbergh and the events surrounding the German ocean liner St. Louis and the plight of the Jewish refugees.... there's a lot of our own history as Americans that we have seem to have conveniently "forgotten" from the main narrative.
@@TypeAshton while it would be impossible to know "everything" around a subject (without becoming a history professor!?) it does beg the question "which bits do you leave in/out" and this to some extend very much lines up with what you said at the end of the video about focusing on the victory and not the cost (and vice versa).
The revenge motive would could explain why a higher percentage of German soldiers died after surrendering to the US troops than British or French.
I mean, what sounds better: America is the product of sacrifice and dedication, championing the cause of freedom and equality for all!
Or
The world is a dark and brutal place where might makes right and we sent millions of young men directly into the meat grinder so generations later people can criticize the dead for not being noble enough.
I don’t know about you, but I like to think America earned a little treat of nationalism for shoveling human lives into the furnace of Europe’s inexhaustible hunger for war, and maybe a cookie and pat on the back for fighting through literal hell in the Pacific against an enemy that wanted us dead so badly they were tying bioweapons to weather balloons while we burned their crummy island to ash.
@@drewgon13 Thank fucking god, sick of seeing the primary (sole) benefactors of America's war efforts scorning America for 'romanticizing' it's role in the war, any Euro who has anything other than 'thank you' to say is free to withhold it.
Have they stopped to consider that such romanticization was necessary for the American public to even support getting involved in someone else's shit to begin with. All plausible possibilities regarding WW2 end the same for America, Japan loses gets occupied, Germany loses (what many Euros like to think happens) anyway queue Cold War East vs West, (Soviet Russia & America) 'winner' America. Germany wins (only plausible without lend lease), Japan still loses and gets occupied queue cold war East vs West, (Germany & America) 'winner' probably America with an antagonistic German/Chinese relationship moving the border further west probably doesn't help much & the new 'German Empire's position is even shakier than the USSR's was.
From what I have seen, Americans care about the war, the battles, that sort of stuff. It's not just a popular wargaming setup, but even American SciFi games tend to quote WW2 generals as if they were comparable to the Laconian "if" or the Spartan "Molōn labé". (If you have no idea what those are, that's part of my point)
The only reason I ever had an actual lesson on the war was because we had a substitute one day in history class that opened a map and gave a general overview. That was probably 11th grade, and I think he even mentioned the pacific theater (I think the Rape of Nanjing and John Rabe were mentioned at some point, though?).
The only reason I know individual battles besides interaction with people from allied nations is remarks to the side about where my grandfathers were captured.
In contrast, we learned all about Weimar, the Third Reich and Holocaust as well as postwar things like rationing, Trümmerfrauen, currency reform... And then a speedrun to 1990 to reach "today" before we graduated.
I think the only war they told us about individual battles was WW1 with lessons about how pointless Verdun and the Somme were.
For context, I took an advanced class (LK) in history for my 2002 Abitur. In the Ruhr Area.
Admittedly, my LK teacher mentioned she would have taught us about the French Revolution for 3 years if onlyshe had been allowed to, but there were still six years of middle school history before her.
As an aside, I was already evacuated once and almost evacuated twice (close enogugh toi get a "stay awayfrom windows", too far away to get a "get TF out of there") this year because WW2 bombers couldn't hit and they found a few unexploded bombs from their attempts to hit Krupp on construction sites. Business as usual, but no reason to teach about the *war*.
Meanwhile, the US was untouchable until the Kuba crisis and has no living memory of actual war *on US soil*. Obviously actual soldiers have living memory of war, but society at large hasn't experienced that since the US civil war. (Another thing I only know about because US entertainment rubs it into people's faces)
Molon labe is the motto of the 1st Greek tank division
they use Leopards
btw
Sparta is located in Lakonia
Thank you for your video - as always very informed and informative.
In high school (Virginia, 1961-'65), we learned a LOT about the Civil War (which, okay, WAS having a centennial then); about WWII there was zilch, as far as I can remember. Thank goodness for Walter Cronkite!! His TV program, "The Twentieth Century" was a wonderful, multi-year history course that gave me the essential background for understanding the world that birthed our own. Thank you, Uncle Walter!
Thank you so much about this comprehensive view of history-telling in America.
The oscar-winning movie "Im Westen nichts Neues" is a great film. But it is about WW1.
I had the great pleasure having a history Teacher who was held captive in Siberia after WWII. It was always somewhat amazing and yet pretty sobering to learn first hand how it was back then. Also we learned a lot deeper, how all this happend (i.e. that Hitler was democraticly elected, or the famous Franz v. Papens words "in 2 weeks we have Hitler in a Corner so far, that he squeeks).
And yet, as a German, i see how Americans learn about their past, never really go into to much detail. What scares me the most with the actual political atmosphere over there, is the fact that to much people think it could and will never happen at home. It takes onle ONE Election to be in the middle of a Dictatorship like we had in the 1930's.
I am in Florida and most people I meet are unthinking consumers who seem to believe that watching one corporate news show makes them informed.
I see how some big-talking con man can undermine democracy.
I don't know about other regions in Germany and Europe but living in the Ruhrgebiet, we get reminded of the war pretty regularly when once again there is an unexploded bomb in the ground at a construction site. This means the people in this area need to be evacuated, train stations and sometimes a near autobahn gets closed and a special team needs to come and defuse the bomb. It's pretty common around here and I'm glad and yet surprised, that there are basically no tragic events in connection to that, as far as I know at least.
Thank you for a great video!
I'm a 45 year old German and I don't really remember being taught about WW2 in school.
But what I remember are the stories being told by m Grandma. She worded as an acrobat in Circus Sarrasani in Dresden. During the bombing of Dresden the circus was hit and she telling me about that night.... the pure horror in her face when the told about one of the lions running around in panic while his mane was burning. I guess that will stay with me for the rest of my life.
After that she walked with some of her colleagues from Dresden to Prague because there was no way for her to get back to Frankfurt alone. And then, as the Red Army was approaching Prague she had to flee again this time from Prague to Frankfurt again to a war torn country.
What I really wanted to say is probably: The war stories told by European grandparents are likely very different ones from the ones American grandparents tell. And you hear a lot less of those in Germany than in the rest of Europe.
From the British perspective, I guess the main thing that we are taught about WW2 is that 'we hung on' against Nazi Germany, to provide a base close to Europe that allowed a safe place for refugees from Europe and soldiers from France/Holland/Belgium etc to come to, while they were trained and re-equipped to fight again. Obviously we provided the space to build up the military forces to land in Normandy in 1944.
Other key areas of WW2 was winning the Battle of Britain in the summer of 1940, to allow the UK to continue to fight. Invasion of the UK was a very genuine concern at the time, although actual study of WW2 history and the German preparations to invade the UK meant it would probably have been a failure for Germany.
Another major concern was the Battle of the Atlantic and the threat of cutting off supplies from the US. Again reducing the U-boat threat allowed the US production of weapons/supplies to get to Europe which allowed the invasion to take place.
The bombing of German cities by both the RAF and USAF remains a controversial issue, but given the weapons technology at the time, was the only way of hindering German weapons production. The RAF lost around 55000 men attacking Germany in this way.
My lasting hope and as a former member of the RAF (1980/90s), that the UK as a current NATO member nation we have learned from our history that war solves nothing, but we must be prepared to stand up for our modern (imperfect?) freedom and democratic principles. Sadly the man in the Kremlin hasn't learned this lesson.
As for the bombing and total destruction of many German cities, one of the main reasons for the German economic miracle after the war was that 80% of the German industry was completely intact or only slightly damaged after the war.
Sometimes I have the impression that the British see themselves as victims of the Nazis and bravely held out.
What would have happened if the UK and France hadn't declared war on Germany?
Would the Germans have invaded Holland? Belgium?France? Denmark? Norway?
All that is known about Hitler's plans is that he wanted to restore the borders of 1918 and, for whatever stupid reason, wanted to conquer habitat in the East...
That is true. The British DID bravely hang on and they were the last stronghold in Europe. The war would have been lost early on, 1940, if it were not for the British.
@@raka522 For the UK, WW2 started for us in 1939 with the German invasion of Poland, so the invasion of France/Belgium etc doesn't really matter as war had already been declared.
The invasion of France simply expanded the war and continued it.
If Germany had stopped invading other countries after France surrendered, then I think Germany might still occupy western Europe.
We were too weak in 1940 to effectively counterattack. America and Russia didn't become involved until mid to late 1941.
As with many Empires the German Nazi regime tried it on too often, once America and Russia became involved they were always going to get out produced in weapons and have less manpower available. But Hitler failed to see this, being so deluded.
@@jjsmallpiece9234 " Russia didn't become involved until mid to late 1941." Aside from dividing Poland with Germany in 39.
@@quintrankid8045 The Russian / German fighting each other didn't start until 1941
Hi. I'm an American (from Long Island, New York) and I've been living in various European countries (Finland 1 year in High School), Italy (1 year after HS), Ireland (a summer break from college), England (a summer break from grad school), Russia (2 years (during undergrad and then grad school), and now for the past 24 years mostly in Belgium (where I got citizenship) and also France, Holland, Germany and Spain. I've been working for the past 15 years as a tour guide for American tourists mostly in Germany, the low countries, Central Europe and France. I say all this to give you context about my background and to say all the stuff you talk about on your channel and the differences between American and European perceptions are things I deal with everyday in both my personal and professional life... and let me say... You do an excellent job! Keep up the good work!
I don't have much memory of talking about WWII in history class in the mid 80ies. I think we got stuck with Bismarck...
But we talked a lot about it in German class and social class. Me German teacher had been a Flakhelfer. He had to defend against air raids in Frankfurt at seventeen years old. His class had to leave school altogether. He wrote a booklet about it 'Von der Schulbank ans Geschütz'. He read us many poems of Paul Celan and made us read Alfred Andersch's 'Sansibar oder der letzte Grund'. We visited Dachau and Fuhlsbüttel.
Thank you for another great video with an exciting topic and clever questions. I would like to tell a story from my family to demonstrate how strange and weird wars are: I found members of my family in the USA as part of my genealogy research 25 years ago. And the Buwen couple from the USA also visited us one day in Germany. My relative, whose first name was Peter, like me, told me that his father - my grand cousin - was an American fighter pilot during World War II and flew missions with a P-51 over Germany. I then told him in return that a mutual relative of both of us at the end of the war as an old man in Frankfurt, sitting in his rocking chair on the terrace of his house, was hit by an American aircraft machine gun and killed. So it wouldn't be unthinkable that the American pilot killed his own cousin. And basically it's always like this: we're actually all just cousins. War is strange.
Fratricide, the most frightening aspect of war.
History is written by the victors, this saying is as true as it is both a blessing and a curse.
It is a blessing because every nation needs it's sucessful historical events to be proud of, it will forever bind it's people together in spirit which we also call Patriotism. However it also makes you gloss over a lot of things.
I am German and in school we learn in great detail about why the Weimar republic failed and talk about the World War however only about the attrocities we commited whether it was in the occupation of countries like France and the Netherlands, the horrible killings of Slavs as well as the Holocaust. And rightfully so I believe because this teaches us how to avoid this from ever happening again.
The development of the War is never talked about, if at all we will talk about the failure of the battle of Stalingrad, I believe to avoid any romanticising of the german triumphs in the beginning of WWII like the Ardennes offensive. Also german history would never romanticise a figure of war like the US did with their generals such as Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant and of course the greatest of them all the almighty George B. McClellan (little joke for those US americans who know him). I couldn't imagine a history teacher talking about the story of Helmuth von Moltke (the elder), Heinz Guderian or Erwin Rommel, the outrage would be incredible.
Speaking in general the only german success story we ever are taught about would either date back to the days before the holy roman empire or be about the first attempt of unification discussing events like the Hambach Festival.
Now here is my controversial point. I believe the US glorifies most of it's history to an unheard of amount.
The period of manifestating destiny where multiple indiginous clans were massacred and their offspring discriminated (I think most US citizens would not know that the country was officially at war with the Apaches until the 20th century when the Apaches had to surrender). The US Mexican war. Also the betrayal of the northern people of Mexico (now Texas) in their attempted succession to just integrated them into their country against their will afterwards.
And lastly the role of the US in WWII. On the one hand nobody can deny the role the US played in it however most historians will agree that the war against russia played the biggest part in defeating the Axis Powers. When I see movies like Pearl Harbor that dramatize the death of 2403 US citizens and compare them to the battles on the Eastern fron where countless german and russian soldiers lost their lives it is difficult to understand. While these events are glorified the usage of the Atom Bomb is rarely discussed to my knowledge. Now I want to be honest the usage of the first bomb in my opinion was justified given the radicalness of the japanese regime but the 2nd atom bomb is at least worth discussing about given the state Japan was in at the time.
If I were to glorify anything about the US regarding WWII it would be the financial help Europe and especially Germany received after the war ended. The Marshall plan really helped my country develop into what it is today, prevented another turmoil and I will forever be greatful for it.
I'll be quite honest to a certain amount I envy the US americans a bit because I think that it should be possible to learn about especially Prussian History in school as a german and be proud of my history. I think that certain personalities like Frederick the Great are worth being proud of as one of the first enlightened monarchs in europe and sometimes I'd like to have a bit more patriotism myself.
But nowadays I think the disavantages outweigh the benefits because Patriotism blinds the people.
Losses especially in WWII allowed for us to learn a lot regarding what kind of society we want to be, how do we want to live with our neighbors, what is more important patriotism or working together with other nations in cooperation? Also how can we rebuild our states to be less likely to fall to radicalism.
I believe the Europe we have today has only been possible because of our joint experiences in WWII and I for one am a proud european.
When I look at russian society, english society as well as US society, I see soceties and political parties that are stuck in their ways because they have no experiences to learn from. They substitute this with Patriotism but at a certain point in time every country needs to face it's demons. A lack of learning means a lack of societal progress.
Brilliant contribution to a uniting discussion on our joined history.
A very impressive video, thank you very much for your very good research. Many thanks from Switzerland
Danke für den tollen Beitrag! Ich sehe viele Mängel in unserem Bildungssystem in Deutschland. Aber wenn ich das Ergebnis mit Amerika vergleiche, stehen wir sehr gut da. ;-)
Danke danke danke! Wir freuen uns sehr über die Unterstützung unseres Kanals und die netten Worte.
The bringing of democracy to Europe idea seems a bit of a stretch. You could say they helped return some parts of Europe to Democracy, because otherwise it is suggesting that America invented democracy, introduced the idea to the entirety of Europe and did so on their own.
Well thought out and presented. Accurate reflection of the differences among educational experiences across nations. I'm an American living in Central Europe and I share your perspective.
Great Series! I really think comparing the Europe/Germany vs USA approach to WW2 is not just interesting, but incredibly important. I didn't understand your comment on "nostalgic" - perhaps your definition of that is not what I understand. But, that aside, excellent video and series! Well done!
Thanks guys a lot for another great video. Not sure from where to start because we have a big background of learning history about World War 2. I was born in Belarus (SSSR) and my family is Jewish they were living in East Poland on the border of Germany where during 1939-1944 34 members of my family were descended during that time and the rest of the family ran away or fight during that time. In Belarus during World War 2 every 3 person were killed, history starts in a 4 grade and continues all away till the end of your high school if I remember right classes were 3 times a week. Now I am leaving a long time in US and was most shocking for me couple years ago when my 8-grade daughter comes to me and say do you know that in our history classes, they are saying that America wins World War 2, I was like ohhhh really, I was ask her if she can do presentation about her family during World War 2 time and what we know and how her dads family side was doing in that time. After that presentation her classmates stop making fun about that she has Soviet Union parents, and they don't know a lot about that time)
It's about Soviet citizens, no one is interested.
My history teachers focused mostly on Canadian mobilization and the major battles Canadian soldiers fought in. As well as a lot of British events. I think we actually skipped a lot of other history just to go in more depth on the world wars. Although Canadian history is probably not that hard to summarize considering how short it is. We even went through early English history just to cover bases. We also had a world history class because our history can't fill two semesters of classes. Learned about the French and soviet revolutions and more about ww1 and ww2. We had a book report that needed to be non Canadian literature. So we got a more rounded view of what different people thought about it.
The Canadians played a huge part in the wars. Glory to your heroes.
My experience was that I was taught only the most basic of WW2 history when I was in school in the late 70s- early 80s. Pretty much all I learned I did so on my own. Military history is a passion that has never left me.
When my daughter was in high school some ten years ago and in Advanced Placement (college prep) history, I was amazed that the curriculum was even less informative then as it was when I was in the equivalent of AP History some 35 years earlier! Fortunately, the teacher made it a practice of going more in-depth than required, and my daughter volunteered my library as a source of books beyond the handful that the school library had. I was more than happy to help out, but the lack of resources gave me pause.
My great uncle was a machinist for the Luftwaffe during the war. Towards the end he was stationed at the airfield at Fassberg. When the british army arrived, they took over the airfield and employed him because of his skillset. In 1949, during the Berlin Airlift, the USAF took over the airfield and extended the runway inorder that Berlin could be supplied via larger transport aircraft. They too employed him machining spare parts for aircraft. He worked for the Luftwaffe, the RAF and the USAF in the same workshop, without moving his tools. Everyone likes someone who can do stuff.
I am half American/half German, and even though I don’t feel proud of this darkest part of German history, I am proud of the way WW2 is usually taught in Germany and I am truly glad I was able to receive a German or European influenced education on this subject while attending German Gymnasium. I can full heartedly attest to how Feli from Germany presented the education system provided over here. In my case, history on WW2 encompassed a range of subjects such as French class (studying the resistance movement under Vichy France as a Nazi collaborator through movies such as “Monsieur Batignole” or “Strange Gardens”), religion class (where we studied the churches role in Nazi Germany, the long history of antisemitism in Europe and the origins of eugenics and scientific racism), art class (what Nazis deemed “degenerate art”), German class (reading books such as “Als Hitler das Rosa Kaninchen Stahl” in 6th grade or “Der Untertan” aka “the Loyal subject” by Heinrich Mann about the time leading up to WW1) and of course years repeatedly going over the period leading up to WW2 in history class and how imperialistic, populist and nationalistic movements ultimately led to the rise of fascism in Germany. At times I have to say it did feel like it almost overshadowed other parts of my history learning, as we never had the time to tackle any part of the Cold War for example, so that I was ultimately forced to learn these parts of history on my own. What was interesting at that time, though, was for me to see that one of my mom’s US college textbooks on World history was less detailed than what I was learning at a much earlier age at school. Despite providing less time for other topics, I think studying a part of history in such an in-depth manner teaches us more about the importance of history itself. For instance, not only are you critically analyzing excerpts of a Nazi school textbook, Nazi rhetoric and poster propaganda, but also learning how to recognize similar mechanisms of propaganda in our society today.
Once I was older traveling to other countries, every time I became engaged in a conversation about the war, I was asked about specific details of the war and and machinery (“You’re German and don’t know tiger tanks?” ) and realized that specific battles were simply left out for the simple reason that these are not important for understanding the necessary aspects of ww2.
In Europe, like you said, the aftermath and long-lasting effects are much more noticeable. My grandfather fought in the war and barely talked about it. He was a POW in France for years and actually ended up forming a long-lasting friendship with the family he was staying with, as they shared a similar background as farmers. This always seemed to underline the sheer pointlessness of the war to me, as these two sides who shared so much to become friends, had fought against each other as enemies. Besides that, I remember East Germany as a child in the late 90s and how buildings were still in ruin.
Even in university, while studying medicine, covering Nazi medical experiments on prisoners in its concentration camps was part of the curriculum. Shockingly, for example, some of the data and information we are familiar with today, about the effects of the human body towards freezing, were obtained as a result of inhumane experiments.
All in all, an awareness is so ingrained in society that I continue to hope that we will make sure to never repeat this part of history here ever again.
I had the same experience that the cold war and recent history was completely skipped in school, which shocked me even back then as a teenager. Like, thats the part of history that leads to the current day, how are these kids coming out of school going to understand politics?
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CORRECTIONS TO THE VIDEO:
Sorry about the revisions - but All Quiet on the Western Front and parts of the Wonder Woman Series are relative to the efforts of WW1 not WW2.
Here's the big irony of the US perception of fighting for democracy in the World Wars: It's not true at all. The reason the USA joined the Allies in WW1 where purely economical - there was much more trade between the US and the British Empire than between the USA and the Central Powers. That's the reason why they decided to join the two colonial empires (the British and French Empires) and the absolutistic Russian Empire - the least democratic power of all involved - in the war. Democracy really didn't play a role in all of this.
WW2 was just a consequence of this former alliance.
Another problem is that the USA in general - to this day - glorify war. Even many police forces in the USA are taught that they a warriors fighting in a war. US soldiers serving in wars are labelled as "heroes" for "saving lives" if they safe one or two US comrades even if they massacre 5 "enemies" and 30 totally innocent bystanders in the process (that's not saving lives btw - that's destroying lives).
It is also very important to understand the context of why extremist powers like the Nazis came to power in the first place. It's extremely important to understand what led to the outbreak of WW1 and the aftermath of WW1 to understand WW2.
Totaling $11.3 billion, or $180 billion in today’s currency, the Lend-Lease Act of the United States supplied needed goods to the Soviet Union from 1941 to 1945 in support of what Stalin described to Roosevelt as the “enormous and difficult fight against the common enemy - bloodthirsty Hitlerism.”
As an American in the Midwest, I remember thinking about how Desert Storm and the aftermath played out. I kept thinking that although it can make sense to have sanctions on a country, it seemed to me that we could see a replaying of Germany between the world wars. In the late 1990s, I expected we would be back in Iraq in a full-blown war within just a few years; I just didn't know what would trigger it.
I greatly value two atlases I have. One is a World Atlas from 1920, which includes the text of the Treaty of Versailles in the back. The other is a travel atlas of Germany, 1936. The last entry in the latter book has a chronology, including the rise of Hitler to power, and the last entry was that Germany reenters the Rhineland. One just had to look in the other atlas to see the specific term of the treaty that was violated in that action.
I really do wish more was taught about how wars come to be, and ways things are handled well or badly following war. The conditions in Germany made it ripe for a second war. I know in American politics, people often attributed traits of Hitler to a recent President, even though many of those same and worse traits were evident in others who opposed him.
I think Holocaust Museums and going to Concentration Camps can provide quite a bit of context. They focus on what led up to what allowed the holocaust to happen, though. They still tend to lack some of the other background that's important to know.
Granted, anyone who focuses on the religious timeline would expect WWII. In Fatima, Portugal, in 1917, before the end of The War to End All Wars, we were warned that if certain things were not done, there would be an even worse war. A prediction was made of something that would be seen in the sky beforehand. The message was not heeded, and the sign in the sky occurred and is still not understood as to the true origin of it. WWII broke out right after that, and it was indeed much worse than WWI.
Wow wow what a great Video ❤ Ashton, thank you!
💯 agree with your thoughts. 👏👏
Thanks Arno! Glad you enjoyed this episode ❤️
What a complicated topic you picked, Ashton! Thanks so much for your effort to clarify.
It is difficult to describe the relationship Germans have to WWII. I realise that when I hear that foreigners visiting a concentration camp were approached by police for playing ball on the site and they did not understand what the big deal was. To them, it's just "another attraction" to visit and therefore just had a little bit of fun, for us it is a sombre reminder of our recent past, and playing ball on that site is perceived as being a lack of respect.
In German highschool, 5 years of my history classes were solely on WWII, so if you count that a year has 40 school weeks approximately (don't shoot me if it is a bit more or less) in my neck of the woods and that I had 1 hour of history every week, we are up to a total of about 200 hours of WWII history, so go figure the details. Also, there are many documentaries in Germany about more of WWII which are constantly on on some TV channel, and naturally, you can also find them on UA-cam and so on. So Germans in general really know a lot about WWII and are very aware about details.
What I find a bit scary is how little some Americans really know about history and especially WWII. I find it absolutely shocking to see that there are Nazi groups in America with hispanic people, people of color and so on. It makes me shiver, because due to their lack of knowledge, they aren't aware what would have happened to them in Nazi Germany.
And to end it all: I do not understand what good a history class is when you only hear about the core data. Is it to memorise any dates? Because such class definitely doesn't help to learn why things have happened (and will happen) in this world.
> It is difficult to describe the relationship Germans have to WWII
No, it's actually very easy: Germans are ashamed of the WWII, namely because they lost it. That's it.
@@stewartgriffin6907 I don't have anything to be ashamed. Even my father was too young to participate actively in the war, so it would be ridiculous to be ashamed of something that people two generations back did. Are you ashamed of Korea? Or Vietnam?
@@ElinT13 You should read more carefully, I was talking about being ashamed of losing the war, not of the atrocities Germans committed. As for the Korea and Vietnam, why would I be ashamed of it ? America fought for the right cause in both of those wars, just like they did in Nazi Germany: to destroy an inhumane ideology, communism in Asia, nazism in Germany. Where would you rather be today, North or South Korea ?
@@stewartgriffin6907 Oh, the heroism excuse. Forget that, nobody outside the US believes that there is a "right cause" for wars. And no, I am still not ashamed, because I am (still) not responsible. Maybe you should be contemplating if idealising war is really such a good thing.
I spent a year as a high school student in Ohio and I was really surprised that the focus in US history classes is the war itself. Be it the Civil War or World War 2, the general framework of the class was going through the battles instead of the reasons, different positions and the effects afterwards. Mind you this was also part of it, but it was a side note to discussing in detail how the battles were fought, who fought, where and what the battle strategies were.
It was interesting coming from Germany where individual battles were not topic of history classes. Maybe Stalingrad and otherwise more general concepts like the western or eastern front. Here the focus was on the socio economic situation, how it started, what came after and everything around the actual battles, except for talking in details about battles themselves.
Of course this is in part as the US was mostly sending troops and supplies and wasn’t affected themselves from battles at home, but as I mentioned this structure was the same when talking about the American Civil War like the Battle of Gettysburg.
Interestingly the assassination of Kennedy was also an extensive topic covering all the theories, who shot, where they shot from, how many bullet casings where found in the library I think it was and generally the theories like the Umbrella man and someone shooting through that wood fence/wall etc. which was also kinda focused on the killing part lol same with the Lincoln assassination in the theater or Roosevelt being saved by his speech notes in the suit pocket i think it was haha
Maybe if reasons for war's would be a subject in school the US wouldn't be constantly fighting them over and over again.
Great video. In the UK we had 1/2 yr on WWII in 4th year junior school (age 10-11yrs).. mainly focusing on facts and life in the UK sortly before, during and just after the war. We watched an eductional series called "How we used to live" to help us understand the hardships, worries and horror of war. However, the more "horrific" eg Jewish suffering, etc was first taught in senior school age 14-16yrs.
I was out walking with my American friend here in Norway some years ago.
What's that over there, she said. I replied: Oh, just a bomb shelter from the war. We used to play there when we were kids. Imagining all sorts of ghosts of German soldiers getting us. It's closed now, it's not the 70s anymore, it's all about health and safety these days.
She went quiet for a bit. "Oh, you guys were actually occupied". Yep. And what happened to us was nothing compared to other nations.
yes, technically Norway was occupied, but it was a very vanilla occupation, compared to Poland or Yugoslavia
@@stewartgriffin6907 Yes and no. Can't be compared at all, of course, you are right. But try to tell that to the people in the North who were bombed to smithereens (scorched Earth), or to all the people who were tortured, often to death, by the Gestapo. We got off easy, sure, comparatively. Not trying to take anything away from anyone. You guys got it way, way worse, and we are very much aware of that.
WW2 certainly was a just war from the American perspective. But it was not necessarily fought with just means, thinking of the nukes dropped on Hiroshima and especially Nagasaki or bomb carpets on German cities like Dresden. Glorifying any war is very foreign to Germans as we are taught relentlessly in school that any war is morally wrong and even fighting against an aggressor is only a necessary evil.
Dropping nuclear bombs on Japan was justified. The Japanese had no intention of surrendering, it would have cost thousands of Allied soldiers lives (and arguably more Japanese casualties) to have invaded Japan and prolonged the war War isn't nice,
Dresden bombing was also justified, area bombing was the only method in WW2 to attack areas of transport and production because the weapons of WW2 were simply not accurate enough to do anything different. Dresden was still a major transport hub.
And it took them long enough to accept that latter.
@@jjsmallpiece9234 These very two points have been invoked to justify these acts for ages.
The reason for the atomic bombing and for the bombardment of Dresden in the last days of the war was the same: to demonstrate Stalin their own military strength and superiority.
Americans, and British, were aware that their strength would not necessarily be sufficient to prevent the Russians from advancing to the English Channel.
Churchil himself arranged for a complete intact German army to be interned in northern Germany, all still armed with light weapons and the heavy ones under British control, only to be used against the Russians in a pinch.
@@jjsmallpiece9234 Have you ever had your parents or grandparents place bombed? If so, did id feel justified to you?
@@wora1111 Silly comment. No war is good. Yes my family members were in UK cities when they were bombed by the WW2 Luftwaffe.
How else were we to fight back against Germany? Do nothing and let Germany continue to build weapons unhindered? The British army had retreated from mainland Europe after the German invasion of France.
To be fair it is sensible that germany as the perpetrator would have more focus on it with such a close relation. In Germany we do not learn about the atrocities from Belgium to the congo (or at least i didn't) and american history or wars like vietnam or irak were kept rather short too. Slavery is probably a really big topic in the US, right? I think that also serves fighting racism from a different perspective that maybe students feel they can relate to more (when it happened right in their country).
But first of all calling it the "good war" definitely is disgusting as someone else here said and also i think the whole world should learn from it looking at nationalism rising in many countries.
Denmark and Congo??? Congo was a Belgian colony under direct control of the Belgian king.
@@apveening I noticed too and edited it. See, that was how badly my information on it was lmao
"Slavery is probably a really big topic in the US, right?" - I heard in some Sunshine State middle school students learn now that black slaves could benefit from slavery by learning new skills.
@@Henning_Rech And when would those enslaved have use for those new skills? Most of them died as slaves.
@@apveening I just cite what Florida's Board of Education under the sitting Governor and presidential candidate Ron de Santis enforces to be taught from now on.
Excellent video!
I'm Polish, so you can imagine our school education about WW2 is quite different.
What's interesting for me though is that we learn A LOT about the WW2 *before and outside of* the school lessons, or even books and films.
The abandoned stadium near my home stands in the place of the first concentration camp in Poland. My grandma's dad spent 2 years in Dachau. Warsaw's city centre is weirdly modern - and so is Szczecin 's, since bricks from there were used to rebuild the capitol. Every few years we hear about stolen/lost art being found on someone's attic. When I was a scout, I sang a lot of songs about young people dying in forests.
In Poland, we don't really celebrate "winning" WW2. We celebrate its ending.
Granted, it probably has to do with falling right into other country's pocket.
But I do think the US can treat the WW2 as simple and "good", because it has the privilege of not living with the reminders of how truly evil and destructive it was.
Here in the UK the legacy of Aerial bombing and navel warfare are a common event as regards unexploded bombs or sea mines washing up on the shores. Sea mines have become rare as time has moved on but buried bombs are still quite common with a few every month still being discovered. It’s the same in France, Poland and much more common in Germany. I guess these are still active reminders of the war and just as deadly. Where as in the US it’s solely just history found in museums, old film footage and ever shrinking numbers of old veterans memory’s.
In Germany, there are roughly 5000 unexploded bombs found each year.
Not sure how many it is in Poland but my dad is a supervisor of counstruction works and let me tell you anytime there is some street renovation in bigger cities, ESPECIALLY in Warsaw the works get halted cause they find a WW2 bomb. Also civilians randomly find them around the forests sometimes.
@@thiloreichelt4199 Must be more than that. It is estimated that there are still about 2,900 unexploded bombs in the ground in Hamburg alone. What my parents told me about the nights of bombing here is terrible. They were children and have never been able to forget many of the pictures.
@@annafirnen4815 It’s quiet shocking how much of this stuff is still undiscovered for 80 years waiting to go off all over Europe.
There is a munitions ship The SS RICHARD MONTGOMERY that hit a sand bank in the Thames estuary UK just a few miles from London. It broke in half and cannot be raised, unfortunately it has one thousand four hundred tons of TNT on board packed into various bombs and artillery shells ready for shipment to Europe after D-Day. Nobody knows how to salvage the explosives as the wreck is to close to London and the ordinance has become to unstable to remove. It’s been on a 24 hour watch by our coast guard for 80 years now.
One day the ship will rust away and the cargo will shift about, hopefully it won’t go off.
As always, I love how you break these things down and bring a more human face to them.
I was born and raised in the Netherlands, and as such, have received a distinct European view on the war.
The one thing that really struck me though was the plaque of Harry S Truman's quote at 18:02 as entirely too self-serving. I agree that it is undeniable that US involvement in material and necessary items, especially in the Battle for Britain were essential in sustaining the war and securing eventual victory. But it was not until May of 1943 that the US joined major action in Northern Africa, and not until D-Day, June 6th of 1944, after nearly 2 years of begging from Stalin to open a Western Front.
It is undeniable that the US troops who fought in the Western Theater did so with real heroism. But then the quote should have been the other way around.
"After seeing the armed forces of other nations who we fought beside fight with heroism every single day for years, our troops were inspired and fought likewise, sharing with them the burden of blood, of which they had shed so much, so that we would not stand alone against a united fascist front."
It is often believed that the isolationist policies that had dominated US politics for so long had died with entering WW2 in full. However, especially with recent political events, it seems to me they never truly did. Since then they have been tinged with a decidedly supremacist nature. It is incredibly sad to see how the US is repeating the same mistakes that Germany made in the years leading up to WWII, and with far less cause to do so.
I am german and when I had my exchange year in the US I told my foster parents about how my school in Germany is called Geschwister Scholl Schule and they've never heard of them so we watched Die Letzten tage (The last Days) and they really liked it and it opened up a whole new conversation about the teachings in Germany/US.
Great vlog as usual. Nice and unbiased