WWII German Prisoners Return Home (1955) | British Pathé
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- Опубліковано 12 кві 2014
- The WWII prisoners are released from the Soviet Union, a country which cannot forget their crimes, back to Germany, a country which cannot forgive their captivity. Ten years after the war ended and families are still hoping the half-forgotten faces will be among the among the returning thousands. 9,000 war criminals become 9,000 heroes. The price is paid, but is the lesson learned?
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(Lavender.) (Orig "G")
Friedland Camp, Lower Saxony, West Germany (Federal Republic of Germany).
Under the Adenauer-Bulganin agreement Soviet Union agrees to return German POW's to Germany. GV. Line of Prisoners of War (POW) transport coaches arriving at Friedland Camp. STV. Coach driving through lane of cheering crowds. GV. Coaches arriving at camp with crowds cheering. SV. Man tolling bell. CU. Bell tolling. SV. POW's stepping out of coach. SV. Group of German women holding up name boards. CU. German woman holding up picture of Nazi soldier. SV. More POW's stepping down from coach, some still in Wehrmacht coats. SV. POW's carrying bouquets walking past crowds. SV. Group of women holding name boards (one mentions Stalingrad). SV. POW's being greeted by relatives. CU. Woman holding a large name board. SV. Smiling parents greeting POW. SV. Smiling POW with arm around relatives, looking happy. SV. POW walking with three very happy women. GV. Pan Mass of P.O. W's all lined up being greeted by West Germany's Vice-Chancellor Dr Bluecher in place of Dr Adenauer who was ill. CU. POW with scared face. SV. Dr Bluecher addressing crowds. CU. People listening. SCU. Old woman crying behind name board while another woman in front looks around with stern face. CU. Ex-prisoner with bard. CU. POW with sad face. GV. Mass of people. CU. Man being embraced by relative.
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Fighting on the Eastern Front, and then 10 years in Soviet captivity. Their PTSD must be off the charts.
Merde la touff. These war criminal pieces of scheiss deserved to be treated the way Hitler's forces treated Soviet civilians and captured soldiers. USSR would have been justified with a "final solution" of their own instead of mass pardons.
they were strong
You could see it in their faces throughout this video. Those men have suffered horribly. And for what?
@@jerryczech953 my grandfather lost his leg few days before war ends.. like most of the veterans he drowned his memories in alcohol..poor souls, they all never spoke about the war with me.. only some short stories. eastern front was a meatgrinder.
alot of POWs came back, seeing their wife had a new man, their children 12 years or older didnt recognize them.. the whole life was throwing away.
Is that Putin at the end?
My grandmother told me, when her brother came home from russian captivity his mother didn't recognized him. His belly was swollen of water because of starvation. His face became old and grey. Only when her youngest sister suddenly cried: "Oh, my GOD! Reinhold is back!"...his mother and the whole family recognized him, too.
Anyway, it is better than becoming a piece of soap.
@@t.on.y Shut up.
Well..he was lucky to be returned alive instead of being shot like a filthy dog for his actions!
@@OOOUZ Stupid comment of a premature child.
@@t.on.y Didn’t even happen but ok
If you were captured at 18 years old in the last year of the war, you would be almost 30 when you were freed.
Yes, you would be about 30 years old at that point. Ten years is a long time and they were not treated well. Can’t expect the Russians to be too kind to those who invaded their country and killed many of its citizens, and committed atrocities that are beyond belief. However, a lot of young men grew up and matured in that Russian prison. Its a hell of a place to receive an education. I hope they all found their families and lived a good, productive life.
@@penelopelopez8296 Many of the einsheitsgruppe who carried out the murders were not even German. Police recruited from occupied countries as well as Germans were not uncommon. Some were evan Russian(Ostruppe). Stalin had a lot of enemies,probably having as much blood on his hands in Russsia as Hitler.
Yes, you would. Time flies real fast, darling.
Man... Math is crazy
@@philiprufus4427 "If the Germans did not flood the world with blood, then the Germans will flood it with their tears" .. (from myself I will add "and with my lies")
Man those people waiting and hoping to see their loved ones get off the bus gets me right in the feels
This happened long before I was born. However, one of my father's aunts had a son who disappeared in the war and was never found. What a terrible thing to endure.
@@Ellecram Feel sorry to him 😔
10 uking years after!!
@@Ellecram
Yeah, pretty tragic 😥
my family still has 3 men lost in action in russia
My grand uncle, my Opa's oldest brother, survived the fighting in Poland, France and then countless skirmishes and battles across Russia en route to Stalingrad but was captured there. He spent 7 plus years in captivity and showed up out of the blue at his mother's home while they were sitting down for dinner around Christmas 1950. My Opa was 15 years old and said it was like seeing a ghost because the family had been living with the thought that he was dead and they would never see or hear from him again. My great grandmother was in such a state of shock that all she could do was set another plate at the table for him. My Opa was only like 5 years old the last time he had seen his oldest brother so he was speechless and didn't know what to say to him while his sisters were all overwhelmed with joy, crying and hugging him as tight as they could. My grand uncle married within a year and then emigrated to the US where two of his sisters had been living since 1949-50. He went on to have two sons but died from brain tumors in 1956 at the age of 36. We have absolutely no history of cancer in our family so I have always assumed that during his time in the gulags that he must have spent time working in a uranium mine. That's just my guess. He is my mother's and my Guardian Angel, this I know for sure.
My Mother’s father (i.e. my actual Grandfather) was one of those who returned in 1945. He went MIA on the Eastern Front in 1942…presumed killed.
My Mother was born in 1940 and was too young to remember him.
In the meantime, my Grandmother re-married and had another girl….only for my real Grandfather to return unexpected from Soviet captivity 1955.
They kept it secret and my Mother knew that her ‘Father’ was not her real Father until the man she/I believed was her Father died in 1979 when I was 16 years old and she was 39 years old.
Wars are terrible things.
How did your grandmother & grandfather reconcile the situation, with him coming home to find he had been replaced ?
Well it was kept a secret when the real father returned from commie enslavement in 1955 and the new father died in 1979. So did the mother get to know her real daddy after 1979??
@@Resistculturaldecline I would like to know this too
Your grandmother probably told your little mother that "daddy will bring her Russian slaves"...
@@user-ld9hx7eh8b nah,,,,just bring home RUSKIE eye balls and tongues and ears....why keep & feed smelly commie PIGs.......LMAO
0:30 that poor man, i can't imagine his mother's pain wondering what happened to him, hopefully he made it back
do you mean "Heinz Kruger?” nope he died in 1945 in Polen.
@@Pavellushow did you find that out? It's a fairly common name in Germany.
“The stomach problem was above all; soul and body were sold for a plate of soup or a piece of bread. Hunger spoiled people corrupted them and turned them into animals. The theft of products from their own comrades has become common.”
-Reinchold Braun, a German POW.
I believe it, look how starved they are! War is Hell for everyone.
“Your belly is a cruel master. It doesn’t remember how well you treated it yesterday - it’ll cry out for more tomorrow.” Alexander Solzhenitsyn
@@wilsonking1617don’t bring up that clown soshenytsyn
@@Frogs2005 ok troll
@@wilsonking1617 I’m serious. Don’t bring him up. He is just as idiotic as your decision to bring up that comment.
Think about the soldiers who know there is nobody who wait for him ☹️
And the family who waited but their family prisoner didn't return home😢
They were Nazis, what do you expect? Let´s have a Nazi party for our Nazi relative?
@@AntonioTorres-mo8bp at the end of the day everyone is human love their loved ones and have tendency to love and be loved
@@AntonioTorres-mo8bpImagine hating people without even knowing them
@@AntonioTorres-mo8bpnot every soldier was a nazi
My 4 Polish relatives were in the Polish army. Captured the Russians, spent the rest of the war in Siberia. Only 2 returned.Tomaz Lulek and his brother Anthony. God bless them! Tom Filipiak
As if they were war criminals and they were attacked by the Soviets. My grandpa had to join Hungarian army at the end of 1944 and got killed immediately before my mom was born. My parents families lost most people in 20th century. In Central Europe there was no way out.
I wish the narrator of this video heard your story. He would need to admit but not everybody coming back from Soviet captivity was a war criminal. In the case of your relatives it was the Soviets who were the war criminals.
Let's be honest, ANYONE that the Soviets captured, they considered a "War Criminal".
@@tedmccarron There are war criminals on all sides in wars, but only those on the losing side get punished.
@@tedmccarron Don't blame every soldier, blame Lavrentiy Beria.
The distress of the poor woman hoping to see or know something of her missing son at 1.13 is harrowing. A parents pain. She would never have got over it. Nor anyone else who loses a child.
So many mothers in all nations were hoping that their sons would walk through the doors of their home again.
Millions of Soviet civilians felt that way after the Germans tortured and gassed their children.
So sad! When my grandma died I found so many letters her family had written in search of her brother who had been forced into the Volkssturm as a child soldier. It was years till they found out he died during the very first night on the eastern front.
The good news for you is that her son came back home. His grand daughter later published a book about him and the 58 letters he sent home to his family.
Truly the worst thing that can happen, pure hell.
90 000 were captured at Stalingrad. Fewer than 6 000 came back.
By all accounts, a majority of the captured were wounded already, wracked with typhus and other ailments, and starved because of the prolonged fighting on minimal provisions. Hitler had sent them all to die for the fatherland, and he got that.
@psilobom that makes it better . P.O.W wars over return them home . Not 10 years later
Based
@@psilobom Not really, 57,000 german soldiers that were the most fit were paraded in Moscow.
@@TurinStark56th army was destroyed at Stalingrad in feb 1943 and those 57,000 that were paraded in Moscow was captured in byelorussia between june-oct 1944 in operation bagration, so check your fact before you talk.
1:07 That man's face is haunting...whatever he's been through, he deserves respect.
He also probably fought WW1 and WW2
It's a miracle he's still alive after the way Soviets treated them.
No sympathy for a Nazi
How many innocent people this old criminal soldier has killed...
@@marcospark2803 None.
You never hear anything about the approx. ten thousand soldiers who never surrendered at Stalingrad when Paulus did. They fought on for almost two months until they were all systematically eliminated. Only Mark Felton mentions it.
Rubbish, the vast majority of Felton's material is plagiarised with many of his video's scripts being read straight from other people's material or Wikipedia without any attribution whatsoever. His videos are otherwise riddled with inaccuracies, myths and anglo-centric garbage. Felton is a notorious and deeply despised plagiarist within historic research circles, why do you think he's otherwise unheard of apart from on UA-cam? Dr Felton = Dr Fraud.
I presume they thought it better to die fighting than be starved or beaten to death as prisoners of the Soviets.
Mark is one of them...
When my grandfather returned home to the Soviet occupation zone of Germany, he immediately took his family (his wife, my mother and her sister) and fled into the US controlled zone. This decision turned out to be brilliant, considering what happened later. It is better to start from zero, than be walled in for 40 years. 😉
Your grandfather knew very well what Soviet Union aka Putins Russia now is all about !
Pretty sure it was 30 years
@@kennethlee2278 GDR existed for 40 years. At their 40th Jubilee party the whole thing collapsed in 1989. The wall was constructed 1961. But the communist tried everything they could to stop people from leaving way before the wall was built. But of course a lot escaped at this time. But you better left no family behind, otherwise they could face a hard time within the socialist system.
@@jerryczech953 Everything Czech Republic isn't a Banana Republic 😄😄👍🇷🇺🤎🇷🇺God bless Russia and President Putin
@@nebojisatomic1681 mayby you shoudl leave Jugoslavija and move to Novosibirsk Russia ,to live like ordinary Russians do .....I love all Slavic people,but I hate Satanic Luciferian Bol;hsevik Putin and his form of communism
Odd that so many of these men have the same look of empty despair as they did when they got captured 10 years before .
Hitler had promised them land and money in Russia but they got nothing!
When the Spanish Civil War ended, my mother's grandfather went to the Delicias station to wait for one of his sons to return. They spent hours in front of each other without recognizing each other until they were left alone due to the ravages of the war. It's a memory that always comes to mind.
It's such a heartbreaking video to see the mothers, children and wives holding pictures of their lost loved ones hoping that some of the returning men might have some news of their loved ones. It brings tears to my eyes everytime.
Unfortunately, the majority of the prisoners did not return
Incredibly sad to see the mothers holding up the posters for their sons
My grandfather died in Stalingrad /Russia at the age of 38J.we don`t know where he is buried that`s very sad because my grandmother was now all alone with her small children it was a very difficult time for my grandmother like so many other women whose husbands died in the war the sister of my other grandfather lost three sons in the age of 20-31 in the war it is broken her mother`s heart she died at age of 52 on broken heart`s because she lost their sons in the war like all soldiers know matter what nation rest in peace.😪💞🙏
Fallen or missing? Which date officially?
@@aka99 My grandfather died/fallen in the Battle of Stalingrad my grandma was also notified but they don`t know the Date when he was fallen but you don `t know where he is buried probably in a mass grave the sons of my other grandpa´s sister went missing on 10.3.1941 and in January 1943 and January 1945. That`s war it`s so sad.🙏
Then he shouldn't have gone there to kill Russians, I don't feel sorry for it.
The criminals who were allowed to go home after 10 years can be happy.
@@hanszorba9438 Such an answer is not acceptable my grandfather was not a nazi he previously had a good job as an office clerk and was forced to fight in the war because hitler`s dictatorship there was conscription and if he had refused he would have been shot as a desateur he would also rather have been with his stayed with little sons instead of fighting pointlessly and stalin was just a much a great war criminal as hitlerthey were both just as fanatical in their sick heads.
Who started this war?
My Uncle Bill was killed 22 days before Nazi's surrendered. My grandparents never really recovered. I inherited the family farm, sleep in his bedroom. Old times have told me they expected great things from this young man's life.
Will you please say his name out loud, anyone who reads this? Bill Lorenz
imagine 10 years away from your home
Germans like travels
@@jacquesmalite2612 they found the Moscow overrated.
Hitler promised them parade in the Moscow.
Stalin delivered, they did parade in 1944.
@@jacquesmalite2612 dtfu
@@janantoni3604 at least they're not losing a war today.
Imagine 27 mln. killed
in my city, captured Germans built a whole district and a school that my father, my daughter and I went to.
My grandmother was evacuated from bombed new school. New School was built before war (1- 4 years)
Wow, where is that?
In Azerbaijan, in my mother's hometown called "Imishli", captured german soldiers also built school and my mom attended this school. She has always been thankful for them.
As youngsters in Glasgow we met many former prisoners who had never gone back home. WIth Glasgows massive industrial base work then was abundant. Most of the Germans were good guys and funny when you got to know them. They were also awesome engineers and very practical men. It also amused us how many of the older generation of Brits got on with them. These men had spent the best years of their lives trying to kill each other and here they were as freinds. Ironic.
God bless them for doing something honorable and productive. And then we have putin and trump, and the despots who enabled them... POWER TO THE PEOPLE. DEATH TO FASCISM.
imagine what these men went through..
Yup, it all started with goosestepping across Eastern Europe.
That women crying for her lost kin made me feel really sad 😪
A German crying doesn't make me sad at all. Wind, whirlwind.
@@patriciabrenner9974 my Grandpa told me when he used to fly over Stalingrad that he wished he carried MORE bombs in his Heinkel.
@@geemeffthe good old Time is over for thé first race
@@geemeff Well he was a criminal I guess.
You don’t know what you are talking about
My great-grandfather was one of them. He threw himself in front of a train in the 80s.
Büyük bir trajedi ve açmaz.. Hitler'e ve Stalin'e, dünyadaki bütün savaş lordlarına lanet olsun..
Some soldiers came home but their families weren't there anymore
Same here in Russia. Many Soviet soldiers came home after the war and found nobody as the Nazis had killed their families and bombed their houses
I hope they found peace and were able to live out the rest of their lives in happiness.
No. This generation of the "master race" left the world as schizophrenics. With wild eyes bulging with fear, the "gentlemen conquerors of the Russians" jumped up in the middle of the night and, sweating all over, shouted: "Russians!" ....
@@dice234 🤡
What peace? They should be found guilty for all crimes they committed
@@annaziganshina8937 have served their sentences, is that what the video is about, or are you missing something?
There could and shouldn't be peace for those who took part in the crimes against humanity,if there is no peace for those whose crimes have been committed against, what responsibility do this soldiers have you may ask, they were force to serve? They choose to keep serving a evil organization and possible die for it when they could have rebel against and possible die for it.
What's terrible is that nobody differentiates war criminals from regular honest, decent soldiers, not every soldier committed war crimes
Yes, a book which depicts very well what you are saying is "The forgotten soldier" by Guy Sajer.
We disagree completely in GREECE
In practice there is no way to differentiate because it can't be proven.
Soviets needed revenge for what they suffered at the hands of Germans in their own land. Russia is still paranoid about Germany's remilitarization and the 2+4 treaty was signed with respect to Moscow which why Russians left Germany after the fall of the SU and German reunification. Gorbachev and Soviet admin asked Germany to agree to their conditions for reunification. The treaty still exists and Germany is still following the rules imposed by victor powers. Germany increasing its troops to 500k would be considered a violation of the treaty and Russia can take this to the UN and demand answers from Germany. The whole of Europe and victor powers are still paranoid about Germany having its own foreign policy and a large military upto 1 million despite the war ended 77 years ago. UN charter enemy state clause still exist against former axis nations.
All the germain soldier on the eastern front have to spoil the food of the local population to survive, and the local population suffer from famine so yes, they are all warcriminel but they have to do it to survive
The other story is how Germans rebuilt handing brick at a time down the line. Great nation.
Bricks the USA bought them.
@@johncooper7663 - I'll buy that. That is why they submitted to the Brits or Yanks. The 2 with the heart.
@@johncooper7663 I'd love to name one famous German quote: "The USA is the kind of guy, who jumps around at night, smashing in windows with bricks, just to offer his help the next morning to fix the damage." (not word to word, but you get the idea.)
Please explain this 'Greatness" - how could anyone be worse than the Germans with their warmongering, and ethnic cleansing?
@@hopfinatorischerkuchenkrieger "Germans are really a stupid people. They always do the wrong thing” Woodrow Wilson.
Feel sympathy for the families waiting for their loved one. Sad.
Wow, held for 10 yrs, feel bad for everyone who was mis treated or wrongfully executed in that war. Peaceful solutions can always be worked out but people at the top fight for money and greed, don’t want solutions.
As a British soldier on manoeuvres in Germany, returning to my tent, I was given a lift by a kind German man, he said the Russians kept him prisoner until 1948,
Shocking stuff! Ten bloody years after the war ended.
These returning soldiers are the luckiest ones who survived......their chances of surviving were less than the Europeans who survived black plague in the dark ages..
1:07 the face of a man who saw everything
In two wars probably too
whenever this film documentary came on TV, my grandpa had tears in his eyes and had to change programs or leave.. even if he was lucky enough to end up in US captivity. To this day, seeing my grandfather cry makes my eyes water
I feel appalled by words 9000 prisoners become 9000 heroes, we lost over 20,000,000 people in this war. I am from Central Asia, my grandfather was the only one who survived among all his male relatives (considering that they used to have 6-12 children in the family during those times) . After WW2 he become alcoholic trying to suppress all those horrible memories he had about the war. Our women stood up to support country and worked in all fields, my grandmother lost her health, my father and his 5 siblings suffered alcoholic father. He was a good father but when he got drunk he used to kick them out from the house , even during the winter. When I was born he quit drinking and was the best grandfather for all his 16 grandchildren. He passed away when he was 94 years old. When war was over he was 29 years old, he lived remaining 65 years in pain. When I was a child, on May 9 his front-line friend used to come to visit him every year from another region , he used to come by bus which took him days to reach, he was from remote village where they didn’t have landline phones and each year when he arrives it was a sign that he is still alive. Since May 9, 1995 he never showed up. My grandfather was devastate and he got drunk that day. We are the third generation after WW2 we felt the huge impact of war on our grandparents , we felt miserable childhood of our parents, my grandmother was a strong woman who raised her 6 children and helped them to get brilliant education. Her children became successful engineers , doctors , teachers. This war should be a lesson for humanity and should never be forgotten or glorified !
You had your revenge. Soviet also killed 3-4 million Germans post WW2 between 1945-1950, of course with the help of other allies. Ethnic cleansing of ethnic Germans living in various parts of Europe! Hell, you even deported the Volga Germans to Siberia. Over 6-7 millions Germans died post war. And those who surrendered in Stalingrad, out of 90000 only 5000 returned home. So, it's not like you didn't get your revenge. You even fed cabbage soups to German pows during prisoner march in Moscow, which was similar to Bataan march. Berlin the day after the war was over and what your soldiers did on German women for a whole year, East Germany and its industries, resources, railway lines and factories etc., imposing communism on East Germans, imposing treaties as well as the 2+4 during reunification in 1990 and putting restrictions on Germany which still exist.
Stalin killed more russians than Hitler and his nazi cronies. That man was as pure evil as Hitler, hope they rot and burn together...
You are correct, of course. War is a terrible thing. But now we have that tyrant Putin waging a war against the good people of Ukraine. For what possible motive?
@@erich2432 nobody is responsible for the deaths other than those who started the War.
Who might have that been and why?
There's your answer .
His grandfather had nothing to do with it but had the USSR not signed the Ribbentropp-Molotov agreement, maybe Hitler wouldn't have invaded Poland and Western Europe.
What a momentous video. It is always so important to look back into the past and draw some lessons to our present.
When I was in the U.S. Army in Germany in 1975 I became friends with a German my age. One day he showed me a picture of his father. The man looked sallow and hollowed out and his smile looked painful. My friend said he had spent ten years in a Soviet prison camp. He died from his physical deprivations when my friend was still just a toddler. It's hard to think about that man and then hear this British announcer's snarky comments.
Yes, but the "snarky" announcer might have served himself, lost family and friends, in combat or bombing. He will have seen pictures at least of the liberation of the concentration camps. Easy for us to forgive, not so easy just a decade after the war . Britain was left in a he'll of a mess, and rationing didn't end til 1954
@@olwens1368 As an American Loyalist Monarchist whose namesake ancestors owe their lives to Queen Anne rescuing us from Catholic persecution, I'm a "Britain first" kind of person. Still, Mr. Announcer didn't have to live through a Nazi dictatorship where the slightest wrong word would have had him in a camp or worse. I think _Das Boot_ does a decent job of depicting the men just doing their duty to country rather than being rabid Nazis. War is hell -- for everyone except the guilty. Example: Does anyone hate Russians and want to see them all suffer for what Putin is doing? Even the gullible ones that think they support him? Not me.
Because he was a war criminal. Those who were not war criminals returned in 1946-1949. In the 1950s, pardoned, not rehabilitated war criminals returned home
Don't sympathise with nazis
Exactly, the snobby commentator pre-judging all these men, who has no idea what any went through. The Soviet Union sent everyone to the camps.
It’s crazy it took ten years. Should have been released within two years not 10.
BULLSHITT.. They got off lite german soldiers hangin young girls n boys by piano wire/no other country did that kind of thing
@@tomortale2333 not all of them did that. you realize the majority of an army are support troops driving trucks and carrying supplies or cooking, for example only 17% of US Marine Corps are combat troops. So, obviously most german soldiers were not killing and torturing people. sure punish the ones that did. as some regular soldiers did. but primarily it was the SS.
@@tomortale2333 toidI (right/left) !
Paul, you have no clue what you are talking about.
@@mynameis3568 i do, i guarantee you don’t.
Look how happy they are when they return home
never again war
@@nrw64 It's back.
Sorry.
0:44 the sadness in her face, even 10 years after the war, looking out for a beloved one is really sad and heartbreaking 😐
My grandfather could very well be one of those men. But I never knew him or was told anything about him. I k ow he survived the war and lived in Austria.
Is he still alive? He very well could be.
Hes a hero
@@centerice No. He passed many years ago. My father gave me a copy of the obit. My father did not know him. The only thing I know about him is in my early 20s My grandmother walked up to me and said, "You're looking like your grandfather. Don't act like him."
@@ricashbringer9866 maybe your father knew him but he doesn't like to talk about it. Maybe it's a sensitive issue for your father?
How Many babies had killed you're opa dirty Fritz
Surprised that any German POW's ever came back alive from Russia. Stalin vowed that all such soldiers would die.
Stalin died 2 years before this. Peace was possible at this time. But Eisenhower was lied to by his advisors, assuming Khrushchev to be more menacing than he actually was. Ike was told the arms race was much closer than it actually was. By 1963, the USA had about a 10:1 total force advantage. The biggest gap we ever achieved.
Почему вы решили , в чем поклялся Сталин. Это ваши фантазии
My Grandfather was a pow returning to Berlin. Am having great problems tracing family Schwindt.
Each should have a tag on how many innocent men women and children they killed.... Rest in peace the innocents who died at their hands.
Lesson is not learned, mistakes are being repeated
"A frontier is crossed and 9'000 criminals become 9'000 heroes. Strange things, frontiers"! Such an apt comment, applicable even to this day.
the russians were the war criminals. The Wehrmacht soldiers were treated worse than animals during their captivity.
@@willemventer3935 I was merely quoting a comment in the clip, not seeking your validation. This is the tragedy that is war.
That's my view, not seeking a debate or argument. You're however entitled to your opinion.
@@scatmann5839 you are welcome
They were NOT criminals!
@@willemventer3935 they behaved like animals in Russia, killing million of people, destroying every village they crosses, for Lebensraüm, murdering the Uentermenschen, .... and 3.4 million Russian POW were murdered by starvation .... in german hands ...
imagine if they had a 2 year old before they left for war for them to come back when they are like 18
Breaks my heart.
Most of the men were just soldiers, not war criminals. Most of the real war criminals ended up at the end of a rope or against a wall.
They massacred 27 millions Russian civilians and they were not criminals, my goodness.
Or argentina
Most of the true war criminals survived .... allied and axis
More like cannon fodder who survived.
The real war criminals won the war. So they write the history.
How many medics captured in Stalingrad are there in this bunch of 'war criminals'? I don't doubt that some of these men are war criminals, but labeling them all as such is, at the very best, misleading.
It isn't6. The whole of the Wehmacht of the Eastern front were war criminals.
@@patriciabrenner9974 they where not, you have no idea of the regular Wehrmacht Soldier.
@@falseidentity656 The myth of the celan handed Wehamacht has been thoroughgly debunked. They were murderous monsters.
@@patriciabrenner9974 no your soviet idols where pedophiles, murderers and monsters
Well it was made in 1955
“War criminals”. Impossible to determine that. All German POWs captured by the Soviets (regardless of what they actually did) received this treatment. Simply being a German captured by the Soviets made you a “war criminal” in their eyes. I can see why they preferred to be captured by the Western allies. Those guys went home soon after the war ended.
@Anne Woodward
U really don't know 💩 about it!
What they did in the west vs what they did in the east cannot be compared, they knew and that's why they preferred to be captured by the west.
Germans were cowards- only cowards torture and kill children. After they committed all their atrocities- torturing and killing 27 million Russian civilians, babies, children, gays, handicapped.....- they don't want to confront the Russians but rather wave a white flag to the Americans. They were brave enough to torture children why not face the Russians.
That is not true. There were different camps for captured German soldiers in USSR - most were in work camps (unless officer), some were sentenced by soviet courts as war criminals and above film shows these returning to Germany. Regular prisoner soldiers were returned prior to 1949.
You know that the americans also tried to starve to death many german POW's in open air concentration camps after the war.
How can you say so straight on, that a 18-years-old teenie is war criminal for sure?
Propaganda
I felt so sad that the mother of Walter Hamann,holding up a picture of him never had her son returned.
It upsets me seeing the mother of Walter Hamann expecting his return..I am moved for tears when I watch this.
Their train stopped in Warsaw and the Poles said “ when are you coming back?”
What?
@@sunnyinfinite the nazy muldeles turn home
@@venom6885 bof bof
He's got a French SS volunteer shoulder patch as his profile pic, disregard his opinion accordingly.
@@retro2103 no one put you in charge especially a kosher pro communist British cigarette.
What gets me most is the arrogance of a narrator of a nation that had held the world hostage for centuries with wars, genocide, resettlement and colonization. The Victor always gets to write history.
Yeah right mate.. because a world dominated by Germans would have been SO much better 🤦♂️. Do one mate
@@mashbury they didn't even get a real Shot at it. You think the world es better off speaking English because that's what you're used to :)
@@VCRider Nope .. I think the world is better off dominated by English because I’m not a box head
@@mashbury you're a box head for thinking that.
@@VCRider 🤣😂😅. Jawohl.
My mom's family got involved in smuggling food into a pow/concentration camp. As punishment, all the adult and teenage males were aent to dangerous area mostly on the russian front. One 16 year old was on the Bismarck when it was sunk, and 7 went to Russia. My grandfather was the only one over the age of 11 to survive, and that was because he found out where the British navy was and smuggled himself across enemy lines to surrender to them. I think he did more yo help the British than anyone else.
After reading commnet section I feel that I have to clarify the logic of Stalin and his regime. More than 27 millions of soviet people were killed during war. Some areas were literally in ruins and there were no human power to restore or rebuilt economy. Therefore Germans and its allies PoW were a source of labour force. For example, after WWII german PoW worked on restoration and buildings in Minsk, Belarus. Some homes are still exist and people live there. Some coal mines were restored by PoW in Donbass region and so on.
As for high mortality rates among PoW I'd like to tell Russian proverb that can be translated in English like "Hit your own people to make fear aliens". Stalin didn't care his own people, therefore there were no reasons to care about Germans.
P.s. "Death of a human is tragedy, death of millions is statistics." J. Stalin.
The guys probably have been through stuff we could never even imagine
Was hat mein Land durchgemacht? Meine Familie? Diese Deutschen müssen nicht mit der UdSSR in den Krieg ziehen. Haben Sie darüber nachgedacht, welche Gräueltaten „diese Kerle“ begangen haben? Wie viel Kummer haben sie über mein Land gebracht! Sie dachten??
Die Verluste der Sowjetunion beliefen sich auf 26,6 Millionen Menschen, einschließlich der Verluste der Streitkräfte auf 8.668.400 Militärangehörige.
Take a close look into the returning POW eyes, nothing ! They appear mortal, beyond any hope of rehabilitation, if your soul is killed, then ur dead, only difference is breathing !
I remember seeing the photo of a man who returned to his family home in Frankfurt only to find everything was lost.
that has to be awful just never knowing if your loved one was killed in battle or their whereabouts.. just waiting your whole life in hope they would come back home but it never happens
Absolutely amazing. I do wish you would open comments, would be amazing to discuss this.
isn't your country about to invade Ukraine?
@@nrw64 I wish not to speak with you
@@Eireann. you must discuss! For ignorance is a fools drink 🍷
@@hiddensquid42069 I agree but to bring a different subject to a topic is more ignorant.
@@hiddensquid42069 drink up.
My dad went through the war.He said the Russians were far worse than the Germans.He is still with us going on 91❤
Never- An American soldier entered a concentration camp and he said that he saw thousands and thousands of baby and children shoes. Then he realized that the owners of those shoes were gassed by Germans. Germans back then were monsters- pure evil. I'm glad Russia won and by the way I am not even Russian. Oh, as a matter of fact my great-grandfather was German.
Please explain how anyone could be worse than the Germans with their warmongering, and ethnic cleansing?
Well Russians did not start the war
Germany did
@lupitheyorkie lol
Educativo.
THE POOR FAMILIES LOOK SO DEPRESSED BECAUSE THEIR LOVED ONES WERE NOT ON THE BUS!!!
The newsreel actually states the case accurately. The POWs that were repatriated in this film were sentenced for war crimes by the USSR.
However they were a small fraction of the German POWs captured by the Soviets.
The total was 2.4 million. 360,000 died in captivity. The number of confirmed deaths is agreed to by both Soviet/Russian and German sources. German sources claim without evidence that about 600,000 missing were also POWs who died. OTOH, that number tallies pretty well with the number of German remains recovered from Eastern battlefields since 1991.
By the end of 1949 almost 2 million had been repatriated from the USSR, with about 80,000 serving sentences for war crimes the last of whom were released in 1956. That's about 3% of the total. IMHO, considering what is documented about the behavior of German forces in the USSR, that percentage is pretty low.
Your numbers are wrong. 3,2 - 3,6 million german soldiers were POW in the Soviet Union. 1,1 million died. That means ca 33%.
@@boddenkieker1061 Your numbers are wrong. 2.4 million were documented POWs. On this Krivosheev, WASt and Rüdiger Overmans agree. WASt and Overmans claim without evidence (which they both admit) that a further 700,000 MIA were also POWs. Interestingly, that matches the number of remains recovered from battlefields in the former USSR and returned to Germany for burial since 1991.
@@kovesp1 No bodies from German soldiers had returned to Germany. After 1990 a lot new cemeteries for German soldiers were built in the former Soviet Union, for example 1999 Rossoschka (Russia) with 62.000 graves, 2013 Duchowschtschina (Russia) with 70.000, 1998 Charkiw (Ukraine) 48.000. There are many more.
@@boddenkieker1061 Not what I read in Spiegel Online about the number of bodies being returned (but it could have also been in local cemeteries) several years ago.
@@boddenkieker1061 even in estonia each city has german soldiers burial states
They appear bewildered, look into their eyes, no soul ! Most are as good as dead, that’s right dead if your soul is killed, you’re mortal, only breathing !
@kissa ja koira
Need to differentiate between ss and conscript 19 year old boy from the countryside. The latter didn’t start nor desired war, learn it.
@kissa ja koira
They were forced into joining the army else their family would be tortured
At least these men have survived the war AND the prison camps in the USSR.
Good film to watch In Transit
Most died in captivity.pitiful that we(the U.S.)played a part in turning prisoners over to the soviets.Where was our humanity then?
De tout cœur avec le peuple Allemands❤
Mein ganzes Herz und meine ganze Seele gehören meinem geliebten Rossi!
It must have been really weird for them to return home as they were probably raised in Fascism and returned home in a split country with different economic systems
Not to mention their once beautiful cities were all rubble, they didn't know if their families survived the Allied bombings or the Soviet scourge or the home that they and their ancestors had been living in for hundreds of years was now part of a different country and they were not allowed to return. It's terrible to think about everything that happened to them.
They left home as young boys and returned as elderly men. That must have been a hard 10 years.
Excellent commentary. Very balanced.
A well trained warrior, fight for what they thought was right.
Even when it's an evil cause? Poor you!
@@toyinayetigbo4570 that doesn't take away from the fact they fought impressively.
@@toyinayetigbo4570 the only "poor" thing here is ur comment. Imagine how much ur brain is brainwashed
fighting for a dictator, against "Uentermenschen", to take their land, .... great ... thanks God they lost!
@@DejanShadow et vous? Poor you!
Look at those faces. Marched off as young men, returned much aged and weathered. They'd been through hell.
Whilst I can understand the hatred of the Soviet Union to their Nazi German prisoners after some 25 million+ of their people had died in what they called "The Great Patriotic War", still having them held in captivity 10 years after the war's end was appalling. 😠
real human suffering occurred during these times
"Safe spaces" had a different meaning then than it does now.
God, they look so tired.
Poor criminals!
screw them lmfao
Not as criminal as tony Blair. Yet he's still free.
Poor blokes
Most people are tired when they return from an 18/30 holiday...!
@@morgs456 You forgot the architect of the crimes committed by Blair: GW Bush.
10% of German POWs taken by Russia (SU), eventually returned home only.
powerful images. The decision to go to war was when everyone was alive, well, and full of pride and envy. Look at them at the end. Lets not forget!
All we need is look at newsreels of the German volk during the early 40s and the liberated concentration camps, and any feelings of sympathy for them will evaporate.
10 years later and their clothes still fit !!!
Not American then...
1) Look carefully, almost none of them wears any army clothing except one guy who has a coat. Most of them wear their cap which isn't that hard to keep fitting, and which they could have gotten new before arrival as the german army after the war used the same caps.
2) their clothing looks more like someone gave them new clothes before so they look somewhat presentable.
(remember back then people still wore their best clothes when going to something official or on sundays, so to not embarrass them further they will have gotten "new clothes")
3) they look better fed than most POW's when they came home from Russia. (Either they were selcted for the TV camera, or before release fed better by the Soviets to show in how "good" condition they kept them.
I don't remember when my grandfather came back from russia, but i remember the only story i ever heard about his experiences in the war: Both the prisoners and their guards were so starved, that a few of the guards and prisoners *together* rowed a boat across a lake the camp was close to, one night and stole a pig. They then processed it in the camp and it got eaten almost entirely. No waste, no evidence and both parties kept absolute silence about it to prevent punishment.
Und was bewundern Sie??
I wonder what their opinion on Hitler was at this point
They’re price will NEVER EVER be repaid
They look about 50-60 but can only be in the 30’s and early 40’s
RIP heiliges Deutschland ❤
They weren't all criminals,they were Germans who fought for Germany,they did there duty,rightly or wrongly.
You're wrong. So if you're told to do great evil to so many other races just to protect your own country, you would do so?
correct !
Lwow-pogrom-Lviv 30 V1 1941
English subtitles
Most conscripted against their will, to fight a war nobody wanted, that was started by their dictator.
They fought on the losing side. That was the "crime".
the Brits never fail to comment correctly...they go with the time
One could only imagine the horrors that these poor men experienced and witnessed for being nothing more than men born at that particular time in German history and conscripted and driven to the Russian Front to fight a fanatical Dictators war for living space for Germany so he could go down in German history as the greatest German that ever lived.
you can see the life was sucked out of them they went through hell by looks on there face no meat on there bones and these were lucky ones 90 thousands didnt make it
Excellent. The only bad thing is that these criminals stayed alive.
Yeah, they almost look a lot like the civilian population during the siege of Leningrad.
@@duquedecaxias9266 yep
@@patriciabrenner9974 Shut up Patricia Brenner! do you think you are a better person? I see something very ugly!
I actually expected them to be a little leaner then they were they’re actually pretty stout compared to prisoners the Japanese held. I suspect that once the Soviets decided not to work & starve them to death and realized they would be released they increased their rations in their last year or so of captivity to appear somewhat humane. I’m just guessing about that though.
Recent events are evidence that they were heroes !
Really ???Please explain
@@tomdunn7710 toidI (read right/left) !
And it wasn’t recognised then. They had no help to overcome the trauma.
There were two kind of camps at that time in the Soviet Union - Prison Camps and Gulags (“Chief Administration of Corrective Labor Camps”).
Prisoners of war, including German prisoners, were not sent to Gulags unless they were sentenced as war criminals.
Camps where "normal" prisoners were sent to work camps from which they were released by the end of 1948 (over 2 mil). Remaining 1.5 mil Germans in the USSR captivity were considered war criminals (sentenced for war crimes). Here we can see these people being set free by effort of Konrad Adenauer
9k war criminals become 9k heroes. What of the criminals who firebombed Dresden and Hamburg in April 1945 when Germany was already well beat. Not to mention Hiroshima and Nagasaki, mostly civilians. Them soldiers were good men like any man who fights for his country. Never call a soldier a criminal because his side lost. Old Irish man
Not every German was a war criminal. Calling them all war criminals is the equivalent labelling all American soldiers in Vietnam war criminals too.
All of the men getting off the buses in this video were considered to be war criminals by the USSR. No one said that every German is a war criminal, listen harder
1:11 must be Till Lindeman's grandfather
They didn't question what their government was doing, and it had dreadful consequences. Nowadays, folk don't question what their governments are doing, and the consequences will be dreadful.😮😮😮😮😮