A sad article to share with you all.

[Guest]

No idea where to post articles worth sharing, so sticking it here as there is a Leica M involved.
How evil to murder innocent children, I hope the pilot came to a nice long painful ending after this atrocious act.
It’s a hard read but I am still sharing it for the photographic content.

https://www.dw.com/en/world-war-ii-the-photo-that-shocked-the-world/a-55440876

 

[charjohncarter]

Very painful.

 

[css9450]

Sad article.... But where did they mention the M?

 

[mpaniagua]

Probably my comment is out of place but M cameras didn't exist till after the war, so not precise.

Sad article. We shouldn't forget what a blind hate and discrimination create (or destroy).

 

[Guest]

Yep, I wrote the M comment incorrectly, typing without thinking. Anyhow he is holding what looks like a Leica in one of the images.

 

[sooner]

Thanks for sharing, I didn't know about Julien Bryan or his pictures and film. Very moving, and sad. Hard to imagine losing your life from aerial machine gun fire while picking potatoes. I wonder what the pilots were thinking at the time.

 

[Ronald M]

As I age and study history and remember what I learned in school, it seems there are always groups of people or single people ( dictators ) whose mission in life is to exploit others. It seems to never stop. Just recently there were two world wars, Korea, Viet Nam, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, ISIS. The ones who profit don’t participate in the fighting and slaughter.
The blood and money sacrificed should be spent on better things, but unfortunately the free world needs to keep up defenses or we will be slaves to someone who does.
The League of Nations and now United Nations were supposed to stop this. Does not seem to be working. Free world is vastly outnumbered in UN.
Any ideas?

 

[Calzone]

I had a free trip to Amsterdam, Germany, France and Switzerland. One of the cities we visited was Cologne which was pretty much destroyed except for the Gothic cathedral.

As I learned more about history and history from a German POV, what I learned and became instilled in me is how wars are hard to justify and the loss is senseless.

In essence we kill ourselves and destroy our own humanity.

BTW I did not click the link. If you can understand I have suffered in my life grave loss. I thought I worked though all the grief, but at a point it is all just coping.

When September 11th happened combined with and compounded that I was working in Manhattan that day I realize that I am like a bucket that is already full, and all the losses I thought I processed just got shuffled all over again.

My bucket remains full.

Cal

 

[Ko.Fe.]

This is why I don't want war Leica equipment in my house.
M is fine. It was originated in reborn Germany. Entire nation had their dignity back.

 

[VictorM.]

(I should have read the entire link before posting) War is always a sad business, even for those old enough to understand what is going on. The photographer's name seemed familiar: Julien Bryan wrote a chapter on "Traveling With A Leica" published in the 1951 version of the Leica manual.

 

[Guest]

Leaders order the citizens into war, the generals are paid to orchestrate the battle plan. Considering the stupidity and carnage of WW1, it’s amazing that citizens continue to lay down their lives for politicians who survive the conflicts. At least treaties are no longer the norm. And as was said earlier, the UN is a busted flush as long as the big boys have a veto vote.
At least russia and China have not produced a camera that I would want to buy, I refuse to have anything russian in my house, unfortunately Chinese items are difficult to avoid.
I wonder where that Leica camera from the image is now, did his son keep it or was it sold years before his death.
I have only ever sold three of my cameras, I regret selling only one of them. All I have now will remain with me until the end.

 

[Calzone]

Leaders order the citizens into war, the generals are paid to orchestrate the battle plan. Considering the stupidity and carnage of WW1, it’s amazing that citizens continue to lay down their lives for politicians who survive the conflicts. At least treaties are no longer the norm. And as was said earlier, the UN is a busted flush as long as the big boys have a veto vote.
At least russia and China have not produced a camera that I would want to buy, I refuse to have anything russian in my house, unfortunately Chinese items are difficult to avoid.
I wonder where that Leica camera from the image is now, did his son keep it or was it sold years before his death.
I have only ever sold three of my cameras, I regret selling only one of them. All I have now will remain with me until the end.

J,

I am Chinese descent, I take no offense to your post, but I would like to point out that our country has performed some evil also. We are not free of war crimes, atrocity, or genocide.

Cal

 

[kshapero]

This is why I don't want war Leica equipment in my house.
M is fine. It was originated in reborn Germany. Entire nation had their dignity back.

You are so wrong. The owners of Leica risked their lives to save over a thousand Jews from death. Some of them paid dearly for their courage and moral truth.

 

[kshapero]

War is Hell. Avoid it at all costs.

 

[Rayt]

J,

I am Chinese descent, I take no offense to your post, but I would like to point out that our country has performed some evil also. We are not free of war crimes, atrocity, or genocide.

Cal

Me too. The lesson to be learned is this. China had over 200 years of peace until the era of European colonisation in the 19th century. Until that pivotal moment China became complacent, didn’t care what went on outside its limited sphere of influence, didn’t have a military to speak of, and worse of all with low deaths tolls from no conflicts and relatively advanced sanitary standards (they bathed unlike other cultures), a functioning health care infrastructure, their population grew exponentially until they could not feed themselves. Then came the invaders and the country in ruins with successive wars and civil wars. Don’t be the dove. Be the hawk.

 

[Papercut]

Me too. The lesson to be learned is this. China had over 200 years of peace until the era of European colonisation in the 19th century. Until that pivotal moment China became complacent, didn’t care what went on outside its limited sphere of influence, didn’t have a military to speak of, and worse of all with low deaths tolls from no conflicts and relatively advanced sanitary standards (they bathed unlike other cultures), a functioning health care infrastructure, their population grew exponentially until they could not feed themselves. Then came the invaders and the country in ruins with successive wars and civil wars. Don’t be the dove. Be the hawk.

Ummm, no offense, but as a professor of Chinese history, I have to say that the image of Qing China as peaceful and innocent is long, long outdated. There was no "200 years of peace". I encourage some reading on the wars the Qing fought to (basically) end the Mongol empire in the northwest. Very long, very bloody campaigns to extend the empire into Mongol territory. I highly recommend Peter Perdue's China Marches West, among many other monographs on the Qing conquest of Xinjiang. The Qing more than doubled the territorial expanse of the Ming, almost all through militarily offensives and imperialist policies. Then there are the imperialist policies in the southwest frontiers too (the policies of the Qing emperors to the Hmong and other people were nakedly imperialist, in many of the same ways the West was toward China and other places: cultural imperialism, domination, extraction of resources, political interference, promotion of violence between natives in order to justify greater central control). I teach college courses on these topics, so happy to send bibliographic references if requested. It's interesting, eye-opening reading. Then there are also the internal rebellions in the 1700s that killed hundreds of thousands of people. All that is to say, please don't romanticize the Chinese, nor the Qing. It was a successful and prosperous empire until the mid-19th century and the West's imperialist pressure, but Qing China was hardly "peaceful", particularly if you were in those areas of expansion. There is a widespread belief (in China too) that China never fought an offensive war -- it's a fabulous myth, but a myth nonetheless. (A myth that the PRC is anxious to maintain since any acknowledgement that the Qing was an imperial power threatens to undermine contemporary claims of sovereignty over very resource-rich areas like Xinjiang that the Qing conquered.)