http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2002...ews.features11

the assault on east prussia
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bz7scck2bXI


We all know the horrible storys abou nazi germany. Millions of jews were killed.

But it were the german women and children who paid a high price for the crimes of the nazis.

when the soviets came in 1945 more than 12 million germans lost there home. 2 million german women were raped by red army soldiers. gangraped infront of their children. thousands of german children died in the winter on the streets.

What the Soviets did to Germans at the end and after the war is pretty well known. Then again, so too is what the Germans did to Soviet citizens and soldiers alike.

But it wasn't just "German women and children" that paid a high price for the crimes of the Nazis (how many of those women loved their Fuhrer btw?), an awful lot of their men were killed in battle or otherwise. So too did the nations of Hungary, Rumania, Poland, Bulgaria and (to a lesser extent) Finland suffer at the hands of the Soviets.

Nazism and Communism: When these two putrid offspring of the wretched hag of Socialism go to war, is it any surprise that they do so with such cruelty and lack of "civility"?

Wow if you're peeved about what the Russian did, under no circumstances google the Rape of Nanking

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Entire Russian villages were wiped out and slaughtered on the way to Stalingrad. It went both ways, with the Russians taking the worst of it. Just look at the numbers dead in the war, Russia had over 20 million killed, while Germany less than half that.

If you want to weep for the state of humanity, just read Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin. The Eastern Front during WWII really was about as close a thing to hell as you could ever get.

wtf, racist ban.

Funny quote dramatizing German disdain for Russians, "The Russian is not a communist, my friend. The Russian does not give a damn who runs things. As long as he has a bottle of Vodka to suck and some form of domestic animal life to ****, then he will happily sit in **** his whole life. That is his politics. I absolve the Jews of that!" --Roland Freisler from Conspiracy 2001

We all know how history is usually retold by the victors so my question is why is it that we never hear of any transgressions caused by the British or American forces? Do people really believe they were pure and righteous in all of this?

I ask this question because I have genuinely never heard of any tales where Americans acted maliciously towards captives or natives at any point during the war. Even the decision to drop the bombs is extolled and rationalized from here to high heaven.

War sucks on all fronts. I'm really not that one side was one-upped by another.

Anthony Burgess - the author of A Clockwork Orange - had a pregnant wife who was raped by 4 G.I.s during a blackout in WW2. She lost the baby.

Slaughterhouse-5 by Kurt Vonnegut

It tells his side of experiencing the Fire-Bombing of Dresden.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing...n_World_War_II

Also War is a horrible thing to begin with, so there is always going to be horrible acts done by both sides.

You are kidding aren't you?

Bomber Harris
The destruction of the French navy
The internement of American-Japanese
The Bengali famine

If none of these seem on the same level as the atrocities of the Germans, Soviets or Japanese, well that's because they weren't.

BTW I hate that trite quote that history is written by the vitors. It's so demonstrably and obviously untrue.

to me it's kinda funny.

just a few years ago there were wars where people got systematically killed / raped / exploited in death camps. You were in the right to kill a black man or a homosexual or a jew.

nowadays if you run a club and dont allow someone in because of race, your club gets shut down. If you place a job offer looking for a female secretary, you end up in a trial for violating the everyone is equal.

as a jewish person, can't say I'm losing any sleep over this

First of all rape, looting, killing of civilians, killing POWs, and not taking prisoners goes on in war, and all of this used to be a lot worse.

There was lots of bad stuff done in WWII. Probably the Axis was the worst, and then the Soviets.

The Nazis treated Soviet civilians badly partly because except in the Baltic states they were considered racially inferior. In the Ukraine the Germans were welcomed as liberators, but treated the population so badly that they changed their mind.

The fighting on the eastern front was particularly vicious in that both sides didn't care much if they suffered heavy casualties. Also, a large proportion of POWs taken by either side didn't survive.

The firebombing of Dresden was done by the British. The US bombed during the day and made some effort to hit military and industrial targets. The British bombed at night and hit cities. It was basically masacres of civilians and most men of military age were not in the cities.

The firebombing of Dresden was horific for a number of reasons. The city was crowded with women fleeing the Soviet army. The center of the city, which had been the capital of Saxony was hit, destroying all sorts of art and architecture. Also, the fireball caused extremely high temperatures incinerating everything.

The US has made war against civilians and property in Indian wars and the Civil War and used similar approaches in WWII.

This is one thing I think historians should do more of. Seems like all you hear about the wars is how bad the germans were, and the only battles you hear about are the ones the allies won. Feels like the history has been one-sided for long enough imo.

I don't get the point you're trying to make. Nazi Germany and 21st century USA are completely different worlds and not even comparable, even more so than USA and Afghanistan today.

Germany had been ruined completely since WW1: there were political murders daily, street violence, starvation, no coherent government, 8 million people without a job, no real support for those with no money, all your savings are worthless, you live daily with the threat of a Communist takeover. Violence and brutality had become a way of life. Not to mention there being totally different cultures.

Your comparison is about as insightful as saying "isn't it ironic that there's loads of food in America but people in Africa have none?" No, not really.

+1, it's such a lazy and meaningless cliche.