WW II in Europe

I just took a quick look, but those are neat. I read the whole article a little later.

 

Amazing photographic manipulation. It actually made me feel so very sad. The emotion of the times, of a world at war, with today's images showing that all things fade into a half forgotten memory.

I wonder if there is a square foot of Europe that has not been fertilised with blood.:flower:

 

Amazing photos...they have a ghostly quality, don't you think?

 

Im curious, what language is your signature & what does it say?

 

Arbo, thanks for posting. Those were fascinating. Recently saw some travel show where they revisited some of the sites throughout Europe where major battles or damage had occured.

 

It looks Finnish to me.....you know Finland?

 

I googled it, and found that "Åh, att fler människor var som sina hundar ..." is used as a signature by someone called "Swede" on a forum for owners of golden retrievers, so I guessed it is Swedish. An on-line translation site tells me that it means: "Oh, that more people were like their dogs....."

Could our "Arbo" be "Swede" on the golden retriever forum? :laugh:

 

So is it Swedish then.....I hate being wrong:laugh:

 

It is Swedish, Melanie,,,,,,,,,,,O, fod mwy o bobl i fel eu cŵn.........and the same in Welsh,,,,,,,,,,lol

Cheers,

Jim

 

I liked um----thought the jesture was cool----Was there any photos from the Western front???

 

Very amazing photos! My photoshop skills are nowhere near that good. It's amazing to see the buildings and landscapes then and now.

 

Does anyone know how long it took the Allies to rebuild the German city of Dresden after the war??

I have read where the city was obliverated---reduced to a pulp---but that the destruction of the city really served no purpose at all

 

Blackbird, there was a lot of useless damage in WWII. I saw much of it in East London where we were bombed for 7 months day and night. My family lost three homes in that time period.

Certainly there was devastation in Germany out of revenge. My most vivid pictures of the war are in my head, and not from my camera.

I remember my father relating how they took no prisoners after witnessing babies on the end of bayonetes in the Netherlands. I am not saying they were right, but understandable.

On the other hand, when a German plane crashed in London, we ran to see if the pilot was alive. We would have rescued him, despite the fact we were being bombed by him.

Our bridesmaid was a German Citizen. Try to grasp that! After the war, Brits were better friends of Germans than we were of the French or even Irish. Hard to comprehend, innit!! That is war.

Cheers,

Jim

 

If you were to ask the Allied leaders who were ordering the bombing campaigns, I would suspect that they would probably tell you that the bombing of the cities and civilians served to demoralize the enemy so that they might give up the war and sue for peace.

My mother and her family suffered under the deadly rain of Allied bombing up until close to the end of the war. Hitler first bombed their home city on April 6, 1940 (Easter Sunday), a few weeks later, shipped them off to Poland to slave labor camps for nearly four years until the Red Army liberated them, then they fled to Austria to stay with a relative, trying to stay ahead of the more vicious elements of the Red Army while the Germans were retreating so they wouldn't be tortured, raped and murdered by the Russian troops wanting revenge. When they arrived in Austria, they had to endure the Allied bombing campaign.

My mother has a photo of family standing in the street the city in Austria where they found themselves at the end of the war. Behind them is block after block of rubble and building fragments. The streets are clear of debris for military traffic, but there's not much else left.

 

Revisionist history is fun. The Allies should not have destroyed this or that (Dresden or Hiroshima), finding fault with the imperfect defense of our lives.

But consider this, the boys flying those airplanes over Dresden were flying mission after mission with less than great impact on war, and the odds were that if they flew using those same tactics, before they reached 25 missions, they would be dead. So other tactics were used, some even less effective as we searched for how to end the war with the fewest losses. Yeah, lets denigrate the folks that literally died for us.

 

AMEN, AMEN
and
AMEN!!!
:thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:
​

 

I haven't noticed anyone denigrating ANY WWII vet or the Allies (except for perhaps my reference to the Red Army irregulars raping, torturing and murdering innocent civilians in revenge for what the Nazis did in the Soviet Union).

My mother's family suffered from both the Axis and Allied efforts, but there was no mistaking which side was the one fighting for the right things. Obviously, the Soviets did not uphold the ideals of the rest of the Allies and the Allied forces did not always make the best choices, but that's the way reality works.