Indeed- just look at pax Americana today. Makes Dresden look like just another Middle Eastern city.
Indeed- just look at pax Americana today. Makes Dresden look like just another Middle Eastern city.
whilst the Russians had had just one front only, how easy for them: 22 June 1941 - 9 May 1945
BTW, "the European theater": enlighten me please with the dates, was it any fighting on UK island after Dunkirk May 1940 - up to Day D, 6 June 1944?
Or only the "real Europe": 6 June 1944 - 8 May 1945?
Klondyke there was a reason many Germans fled from the Russians towards the British and American forces.
Don't worry harry, when it comes to crimes on humanity Great Britain is right up there. I can not list all the wars that the Brits started. Need an extra forum for that.
What amazes me is that the Nazis had so many supporters. I'm talking about non Germans like Hungarians, Bulgarians, Latvia etc. Or for just simply looking the other way like Great Britain, the church, or many so called allies.
The Brits of course also mastered the art of extermination but in a different way. Floating Concentration Camps or what would you call them? I guess Guineamen sounds not so harsh
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Olaudah Equiano gave the first eyewitness account of life on a ship from a slave's point of view.
"I was soon put down under the decks, and there I received such a salutation in my nostrils as I had never experienced in my life: so that, with the loathsomeness of the stench, and crying together, I became so sick and low that I was not able to eat, nor had I the least desire to taste anything. I now wished for the last friend, death, to relieve me; but soon, to my grief, two of the white men offered me eatables; and on my refusing to eat, one of them held me fast by the hands and laid me across I think the windlass, and tied my feet, while the other flogged me severely.
I had never seen among any people such instances of brutal cruelty; and this not only shewn towards us blacks, but also some of the white themselves. One white man in particular I saw, when we were permitted to be on deck, flogged so unmercifully with a large rope near the foremast, that he died in consequence of it."
If sea was rough portholes had to be closed. This often left them gasping for breath and prone to disease.
"... the excessive heat was not the only thing that rendered their situation intolerable. The deck, that is the floor of their rooms, was so covered with the blood and mucus which had proceeded from them in consequence of the flux, that it resembled a slaughterhouse." - Alexander Falconbridge, a surgeon aboard slave ships and later the governor of a British colony for freed slaves in Sierra Leone.
Women and men were kept separately. Men were chained together. In some ships there was a place in the bilges for defecating and urinating over the edge of the ship, in others there were brimming buckets.
It was very difficult to get to the right place at the right time manacled to other slaves, especially if a slave had diarrhea. After forty or fifty days at sea, the slave ship would stink of urine, faeces, and vomit. As it came into port people could smell it almost before they could see it.
Women
Women were allowed more freedom than men, being considered less of a threat, and often went out on deck and helped with the cooking. But they paid a price for this in some ships by being the object of constant sexual harassment and even rape, either at the hands of the crew or the captain.
Food
Food was plentiful although not always of good quality. Daily rations might include yam, biscuits, rice, beans, plantain, and occasionally meat, but the way it was served - one bucket among ten men - induced quarrels and infection. Water was part of daily rations but could be in short supply and unpleasant to drink. The records of one Liverpool slave ship show it carried rather generously a massive 34,000 gallons of water for crew and slaves.
Treatment
Unless slaves proved rebellious the captain and crew were at pains not to ill treat them. This was not out of kindness but for commercial reasons. If a slave died, money was lost. However, some captains were notoriously brutal to slaves and crew alike. A ship's surgeon was employed to oversee eating and exercise. Male slaves might be allowed out twice a week on deck and dancing and drumming was encouraged sometimes with words, sometimes with a whip.
"Exercise being deemed necessary for the preservation of their health they are sometimes obliged to dance when the weather will permit their coming on deck. If they go about it reluctantly or do not move with agility, they are flogged; a person standing by them all the time with a cat-o'-nine-tails in his hands for the purpose." - Taken from Alexander Falconbridge, An Account of the Slave Trade on the Coast of Africa.
There are accounts of rebellious slaves being tortured by having hands, arms and legs cut off, on order of the captain as a lesson to the rest of the slaves, and of women being attacked and disfigured.
Causes of death
The chief causes of death on ship were dysentery, followed by small pox. A third cause was sheer misery; sometimes slaves willed themselves to die out of sheer depression and hopelessness. They would refuse to eat, and the crew would resort to force feeding, or they would jump over the edge and drown in the sea.
Losses were recorded but most of these documents have disappeared. It's estimated that an average of twenty percent of slaves were lost in transit, and as many as half the slaves have been known to die in one journey. The worst moment for crew and slaves alike was leaving the African coast.
"From the moment that the slaves are embarked, one must put the sails up. The reason is that these slaves have so great a love for their country that they despair when they see that they are leaving it for ever; that makes them die of grief, and I have heard merchants?say that they died more often before leaving the port than during the voyage.
Some throw themselves into the sea, others hit their heads against the ship, others hold their breath to try and smother themselves, others still try to die of hunger from not eating." - Jacques Savary, businessman, writing at the end of the 18th century.
Or . . .
The creation of the 'first' concentration camps in South Africa where hundreds of thousands died and were killed . . .
....and after World War II got involved in over 30 more wars. You would think they have learned their lessons those "cry me a river Brits".
Or maybe still in pain for loosing "The Royal African Company" and not being so GREAT anymore ?
We are all humans and masters in destruction! When we don't kill each other we kill our planet.
So fuck off you miserable crying little wanker!
Of course the fucking hun came into have a whinge, being on the losing side twice is a matter of national disgrace innit.
Yes, there was a reason to run away from the Russians, after that what they did to the civilians in Russia. However, not that the poor Germans were afraid of the rape, were they?
In fact, during the war days, it was always the harshest fear of the German soldiers to be sent (often as a punishment) on the Eastern Front. Quite different expectations than to be stay and "fight" in the "European theater", (London and Paris bars, sabai, sabai...)
BTW, the famous general Patton was in charge of managing the German POW after the war in Bavaria. However, his main task was to care for the millions of the miserable KZ discharged prisoners.
Who do you think that he cared better for, for those or those? (After all, he was reprimanded because of that...)
BTW2, never heard of the Churchill's plan "Operation Unthinkable"? finally abandoned in the last minute? (perhaps, that all should have matched together...)
Don't get your damn history from Hogans Heroes- most of the war was the Eastern Front. There were far more German soldiers there than in western Europe, or the Nth African desert. Or even Germany, for that matter.
To be sent there was not as damn punishment, it was most of the war effort. Sure, I'd have preferred to have been bonking local courtesans and scoffing wine in occupied France, but that's just the luck of the draw when you're a soldier.
Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir Arthur Travers Harris, 1st Baronet, GCB, OBE, AFC (13 April 1892 – 5 April 1984), commonly known as "Bomber" Harris by the press and often within the RAF as "Butcher" Harris,[a] was Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief (AOC-in-C) RAF Bomber Command during the height of the Anglo-American strategic bombing campaign against Nazi Germany in the Second World War. In 1942, the British Cabinet agreed to the "area bombing" of German cities. Harris was given the task of implementing Churchill's policy and supported the development of tactics and technology to perform the task more effectively. Harris assisted British Chief of the Air Staff Marshal of the Royal Air Force Charles Portal in carrying out the United Kingdom's most devastating attacks against the German infrastructure and population, including the Bombing of Dresden.
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In 1989, five years after Harris's death, a one-off feature-length drama about Harris's tenure as AOC-in-C of Bomber Command was broadcast under the title Bomber Harris on BBC Television, with John Thaw in the title role.[86]
Statue of Harris outside St. Clement Danes
Sir Arthur Harris, 1st Baronet - WikipediaDespite protests from Germany as well as some in Britain,[87] the Bomber Harris Trust (an RAF veterans' organisation formed to defend the good name of their commander) erected a statue of him outside the RAF Church of St. Clement Danes, London, in 1992. It was unveiled by Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother who looked surprised when she was jeered by protesters, one of whom shouted, "Harris was a war criminal". An inscription on the statue reads: "The Nation owes them all an immense debt." The statue had to be kept under 24-hour guard for a period of months as it was often damaged by protesters and vandals
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