The WW2 Leica buried by a German soldier’s widow

I resolved all of this in the 80's when I spent much time in Europe on business. That included working with the President of our German subsidiary who was in the Hitler Youth.

I spend a long weekend in Hamburg staying with lovely German woman I met. In the process of getting to know each other, she told me about her remembrances of the aerial firebombing of Hamburg which destroyed much of the city plus losing her dad in WWII. I recounted how my dad was a B-24 flight engineer in the European theater but did come home.

She simply said we must have something in common through our parents. No animosity, no defense, no shame, just that was then and now is now. I still have great memories of her and that weekend but that particular part still stands out in my mind.
 
Sometimes its best to let..sleeping dogs lie..
As in..

I'm sure Hitler killed some of my relatives..as I have Hungarian Jews in 1/2 of my family..
And Hirohito probably got some of my Filipino relatives on the other half of my family..
My uncle made it thru the Bataan death march..certainly interesting to read his letters about it..as in...horrible stuff..

My Polish wife's good friend is German..one of the best people we ever met..so gracious and generous..
Her dad was a Nazi..
You would never know it..
She is a wonderful woman who spent time in a Kibbutz in Israel right after high school...then she moved to the US for good...and opened up an art gallery..

A lot of people got swept up in the war..
The father of my best friend was in WW2..and said..he hated it..as some of the US soldiers were...very trigger happy..
Best to take things on a case by case basis..
I use German cams..and Japanese..
And even US made too...
 
Bob Michaels said:
I resolved all of this in the 80's when I spent much time in Europe on business. That included working with the President of our German subsidiary who was in the Hitler Youth.

I spend a long weekend in Hamburg staying with lovely German woman I met. In the process of getting to know each other, she told me about her remembrances of the aerial firebombing of Hamburg which destroyed much of the city plus losing her dad in WWII. I recounted how my dad was a B-24 flight engineer in the European theater but did come home.

She simply said we must have something in common through our parents. No animosity, no defense, no shame, just that was then and now is now. I still have great memories of her and that weekend but that particular part still stands out in my mind.
Click to expand...

Bob you have hit the nail on the head. The only way to behave decently towards other people is not to judge them today for the person they may have been in the dim distant past. Forgive - but maybe not forget. Not completely anyway. The past as they say is a foreign country and everyone needs a chance of redemption. The question is always whether they take it up. If they are decent person today and into the future that's the best any of us can hope for.
An old friend of my mother's (now both are gone) was a very lovely and aristocratic old German gentleman from a very distinguished East Prussian family. A lovely man who was up front about his war experiences though I am sure he held some information back as most do. Not that I have any reason to believe that he did anything untoward. In fact he told me that he was in the army because an old family friend, a General in the Wehrmacht made arrangements for him to be called up as he had come to the attention of the Gestapo for being outspoken about Hitler. A placement in the officer corps somewhere in occupied Norway was designed to take him out of their cross hairs. In any event, no matter what the truth, we got on well and there was a great deal of mutual friendship and respect for each other. That is how it should be.
 
charjohncarter said:
Thanks, but it is time to forget. I do get a little weary of people complaining, but I especially get tired of people who start wars all of a sudden feel like the defenders are overreacting with their response.

So the best to you and your wife, past history isn't our problem. Was Hamburg or Dresden an atrocity (or in my part of the world Hiroshima)?
Click to expand...

Not that this is really the place to discuss it I guess, but I am very torn on the question of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the use of the bombs. On the one hand (for reasons I cannot explain even to myself) I greatly admire Japanese people, I adore Japanese culture, I read a lot about Japanese history, I am fascinated by Japanese art. I am a dyed in the wool Japanophile.

But I never the less think that the dropping of the bombs was justified in the situation in which the allies found themselves when facing an implacable foe which was determined to fight to the end even if it meant the utter destruction of their country (such is the nature of some militarists and such was the nature of those in power in Japan).

I say this for two specific reasons. The first runs to the question of motives and hence moral culpability. I do not believe for a nanosecond that those who decided to use the weapons against Japan did so because they wanted to visit suffering and misery on scores of thousands of ordinary Japanese. They did it because they felt it was the least inhumane way to end the war. And in an all out war that is probably the best you can possibly hope for.

And in this they were 100% right - and that is my second reason. There is no doubt in my mind that these acts, as horrible as they were, saved probably millions more Japanese lives than it cost. Not to mention the lives of probably hundreds of thousands of allied soldiers and the lives of countless citizens in occupied countries who were also being murdered by the regime then in power. When much younger I met Aussies who had been in Japanese POW camps who expected to be slaughtered by the Japanese at any moment because the war had turned decisively against Japan. The orders to do so had already gone out from Tokyo (though in abeyance for the time being) and the word got out to some who knew the score.

It worked - the bombing worked. It ended the war forthwith as the Emperor himself acknowledged in his imperial rescript of surrender (and yes, the opportunistic decision by Russia to declare war was a factor too). But it was a close run thing. Even after the bomb fell on Hiroshima the Japanese War Cabinet wanted to fight on. Even after the second bomb fell, ditto. To be sure they had been looking for a way to end the war and save face because they would not do so without that, for at least 12 - 18 months but they never the less fought on with increasing desperation and ruthlessness. And they would have continued to fight on for at the least several months more had the bombs not fallen. And in that time millions more would have died brutally and needlessly. Japanese, Americans, Australians, British, Russians - you name it. Only the Emperor's intervention was enough to end the war and that would not have come without the shock caused by the bombing. (Despite what some revisionist "historians" now claim - if you doubt me, all you must do is read Hirohito's rescript of surrender which is readily available on the internet. That's it - read the words of the man who made the decision.)

In life, outcomes matter but so do motives. And of course so does the ever present question of who was the aggressor and what will it take to get them to cease their depredations.

There is also no doubt that millions of German civilians suffered horribly in WW2 as well. But I also have no doubt where I would place the lion's share of the culpability for that suffering and it is not on the allies. Especially given (as is too often forgotten) that once the war ended the focus of the western allies at least, was not on extracting more punishment but on rebuilding Germany to become an honorable member of the world's nations (exactly as they also did with Japan). To do so are not the acts of uncivilized or unworthy nations no matter what horrors they had to perpetrate to win the war.
 
Peter: I used to own a camera that was used for surveillance of Japan in WWII. Based on photos taken with my camera, Hiroshima and Nagazaki were chosen as the targets for the A bombs.
 
At the end of the European part of WWII the Soviets declared war on Japan and was already racing to the east to Manchuria for an invasion. Dropping the bombs ultimately made Hirohito surrender thus avoiding Soviet occupation. Japan and the rest of Asia would have turned out worse if not for Enola Gay.

Germany shall always be remembered for the Holocaust. Popular culture ensures its immortality. What is sad is that people no longer remember atrocities committed by Britain, the Dutch and especially the French for hundreds of years of empire building. After the war when those powers knew enough to free their former colonies the French insisted in holding Vietnam in slavery prompting decades of tragedy for my country the USA. Sorry the French didn’t suffer enough but surrendered when convenient to do so.
 
raid said:
Peter: I used to own a camera that was used for surveillance of Japan in WWII. Based on photos taken with my camera, Hiroshima and Nagazaki were chosen as the targets for the A bombs.
Click to expand...

Wow Raid, that is some piece of history. Objects do resonate in time and the camera would probably sit well in a museum that tells the story of this episode in a serious, sober and balanced manner.
 
Rayt said:
After the war when those powers knew enough to free their former colonies the French insisted in holding Vietnam in slavery prompting decades of tragedy for my country the USA.
Click to expand...

Sir, you have a novel interpretation of history.
 
It is past, but it should not be forgotten. For many, still, it is part of their living history and the wounds are still raw. Maybe in another couple centuries it can be remembered the way we remember events of the distant past.

As an example, I have been reading Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror which recounts the events in Europe during the 14th and 15th century preceding and following the Black Death. As grotesque as her descriptions of the plague are, what's even more disturbing is that, even with all of this death, Europeans were still slaughtering each other constantly in wars over petty disputes and religious ideals.

You'd like to think that humanity was able to learn and improve itself over time, but the last century was proof enough that little has changed. It just leads me to wonder if our species thirst for blood will ever truly die.

It's not good to hold grudges over the actions of our ancestors, but it's even worse to pretend that actions don't matter just because they happened a long time ago.
 
charjohncarter said:
Thanks, but it is time to forget. I do get a little weary of people complaining, but I especially get tired of people who start wars all of a sudden feel like the defenders are overreacting with their response.

So the best to you and your wife, past history isn't our problem. Was Hamburg or Dresden an atrocity (or in my part of the world Hiroshima)?
Click to expand...

I understand your point, and I mean you no offence, but please allow me to politely disagree.

If we forget our history then we risk that we sleep walk in to the same mistakes again and allow history to repeat itself.


The UK has had a long standing issue with far right Facist groups and agitators for decades. They call themselves different things; EDL (English Defence League), BNP (British National Party), Britain First, National Action etc etc, but it is the same ideas of hate, their popularity comes and goes, but they are ever present in our society.

Just 2 weeks ago we had large groups of Facist white thugs on our streets outside of our Parliament performing Nazi salutes, shouting “Heil Hitler” and attacking our Police in the name of patriotism.

In the 2019 UK EU national elections the party that polled in the lead with almost a third of the popular vote was fronted by a man that brags about singing Hitler Youth songs and knowing all the words to heart, attends far right extremist group meetings across Europe and stands openly in front of posters showing “streams of foreigners” entering the country; he points the finger at them & blames them for all the ills of his beloved homeland. The same man has just been de-platformed from his national radio talk show for inciting hate speech. Straight out of the National Socialist playbook of the 1930’s.

The UK is not alone in these problems, similar parties and individuals exist all over Europe; Le Pen & National Rally in France, AFD party in Germany, Wilders in Holland, Orban in Hungary, CasaPound & New Force in Italy, Kotelba in Slovakia, Golden Dawn in Greece etc. The US is not immune and seems to be suffering a rise in popularity of similar ideals, Richard B Spencer, Jared Taylor and David Duke to name a few “popular” names at present. Some of the the above names are far from being fringe names or organisations.

We must not forget where we end up when we let people like this in to power. History is a valuable lesson and must not be forgotten or airbrushed.

To answer your question on atrocities; Hamburg, Dresden, Nagasaki & Hiroshima - yes they were atrocities and we should, again, in the case of the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan never forget what happens when we choose to drop nuclear weapons on cities, because if we do, we just might be tempted to do it again. The same in Hamburg & Dresden where entire cities were firebomed to the ground.
 
johnrt said:
I understand your point, and I mean you no offence, but please allow me to politely disagree.
Click to expand...


And please allow me to also disagree, politely. Your summary is inaccurate, sensationalized and uses language that agitates and generates fear.

The counter argument is that pre-WW2 the average German was more fearful of a repeat of a Bolshevik revolution and the subsequent ethnic cleansing or genocide of the Holodomor and purges. And because the leaders and apparatchiks were largely Jewish, along with the long history of genuine concern over their rise to power and influence especially after the failure of the Weimar Republic... they wanted peaceful separation from the Jews. Prior to hostilities there were numerous genuine peaceful efforts to relocate the Jews, all of which were shut down by the "Allies".

Yes, the injury and killing of ALL innocents is to be shunned but please tell the other side of the story that is left out of most narratives. The prevailing narrative is that all the Germans lost their collective minds to hate and engaged in an insane orgy of killing. This doesn't make sense. Nor did a post a while back claiming that WW1 was somehow justified against Germans, etc. This is hateful and threatening rhetoric against a distinct population and if anything should not be allowed in public discourse it should be this, shouldn't it? Or does it only apply to certain populations?

This deliberate mis-remembering of actual historical facts is to what end? To further the sympathy and goals of a chosen people. Who get to write the history and dominate the media and institutions. Further diminishing the civilizing influences of Western culture that we currently enjoy.

I know it's unpopular but I am sympathetic with most of the list of "dangerous" so-called Far Right Extremists (where are the Far Left extremists?... in power!) and have acquaintance and photo stories with many of the leaders. I'm even friends with some of the people you mentioned! And believe it or not, they are nice, kind, intelligent, open-minded and especially non-violent people who have endured slander, threats, censorship and violence at great personal loss.

You may even find essays I've written, none of which advocate any violence of any kind. But they are also censored by the subsidized tech and media monopolies in our supposed "free society".

Granted, I thought such discussions were not allowed on this forum but since I saw that several people were engaging in a one-sided, inaccurate exchange of dogmatic propaganda to demonstrate their very selective and edited "remembrance" and piety.

Perhaps we could find common ground in simple statements like, "War is bad" and "Most Germans are good people"? Mumble it out if you must but to condemn an entire country full of people who were not yet alive when the atrocities took place is quite chilling and a modern example of hatred and prejudice.

Frank Petronio "I'm already doxxed" and "don't expect to ever need a corporate job again" (but I'd like to keep my PayPal account lol).
 
peterm1 said:
Wow Raid, that is some piece of history. Objects do resonate in time and the camera would probably sit well in a museum that tells the story of this episode in a serious, sober and balanced manner.
Click to expand...

I donated the camera to the Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola. It is part of the Atomic Display with the prototype of the A bomb. I wonder who has the images that were shown to the President by the commander of the Enola Gay.
 
History must be studied and preserved for others to understand and learn from.
When I was a teenager living in Baghdad, I sometimes took three buses to reach the Military Museum. My grandfather was honored with a large showcase with photos of him and his children. The Ottoman Empire ruled Iraq, followed by the British Empire. The Iraq Army was a puppet setup by the Brits to cover their occupation of Iraq .

Germans these days seem to have very different views on race and religion from the many Germans in the 1930’s and 1940’s. Antisemitism is not tolerated and while groups of radical political ideas exist, they don’t seem to be the majority.

People change.
 
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