i don’t find the exact branch of service. can someone tell me more about my great grandfather. that he’s from the ss is the only thing i really identified. thanks for ur help

I was just reading how near the end of 1944 and early 1945, the very tiny reinforcement sent to the Pacific by the Royal Navy to aid the American war effort against Japan consisting of no more than three fleets.............. And despite their tiny numbers, one of these fleets were able to demolish Japanese air carriers in multiple battles despite the Imperial Japan's Navy still having a surprisingly big number of ships during this time period..... Led to me to digging into a rabbit hole......

And I learned that not only did the Nazis never have a modern navy other than submarines, they never built a single aircraft carrier. And the Royal Navy would be scoring an unending streaks of destroying large numbers of German vessels..... Because they had aircraft carriers to send planes to bomb them during the exchange of heavy bombings between ships. Not just that, the Royal Navy even stopped the Nazi advancements because they destroyed newly Luftwaffe bases across Europe especially in the Mediterranean sea with their air carrier raids.......

This all leads me to the question. What was Ella Van Heemstra thinking when she believed Audrey would be safe in Netherlands as opposed to being in the Britain because she believed that the Luftwaffe would destroy all of England's cities to complete rubble? Even without the benefit of hindsight about the Royal Airforce handily beating the Luftwaffe despite being outnumbered and at so big a loss that it took at least a full year for Nazi Germany to build planes and train pilots to replace those lost from the Battle of Britain thus hampering their movements across Europe, one would just have to compare the state of the Kriegsmarine before the war prior to losses at Norway and the Royal Navy to see that somethings amiss..... The lack of aircraft carriers at all in the German armed forces while the British military already had several modern aircraft carriers in 1939 before war was declared and production suddenly ramped last minute. To see that just by their Navy alone, the UK was already strong enough to fend off the Luftwaffe. And remember in the Battle of Britain it was pretty much the Royal Airforce doing the bulk of the fighting and very little planes from the Royal Navy and the British army was involved in the main dogfighting space of the battle. Which should give you an idea of how much planes already pre-built the UK had before the Battle of France (plus the Brits actually lost plenty of planes in France because they bombed them to prevent them from falling to German hands!).

So why? Why did Heemstra think a nation so powerful as the UK would be a pushover that'd only take a few bombed cities to surrender? How can she sincerely believed the Nazi war machine could casually destroy all traces of London with a few bombing runs and ignore the Royal Navy on top of the Royal Airforce and British Army which had some of the most advanced aviation technology in the world along with some very high quality pilots? Wsa she not paying attention in Poland, Norway, and France of the relative underperformance the Luftwaff was doing and how even stuff like simple weather prevented German air support from helping through much of the operations in some of these fronts such as Norway? Didn't she see the production rates of planes in London and France VS Germany in the months before the war which didn't have a landslide disparity (with France even outproducing Germany during some intervals and in some areas)?

Really what was Audrey's mother thinking in taking her to Netherlands and in seeing London and other major cities guaranteed to be demolished out of existence and even the notion that UK was doomed to lose the war?!

Meet my great uncle. Sadly he passed away before I was born. I would have loved to talk to him.

Today 79 years ago on the 2nd of May 1945 the city of Berlin fell into Soviet hands. The end of World War II was near! View the video with original clips from the battle. These were the clips first shown to the public after the battle. With exception of the clip from 'Downfall' ofcourse.

I like to show original content as much as possible, but YT rules force me to edit some information in it. Hope this adds value.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yK-IUfGd5c8

Hello all,

A friend of mine is looking for technical drawnings of a Sturmboot. I don't know if such a thing is even available still, but I can try.

https://preview.redd.it/ek07g51248xc1.jpg?width=11396&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1281f4db73b08ef89cc4c79435f83866d82e4602

As the title says I'm genuinely curious on how you roll the sleeves on the feldbluse. I've been into the reenactment scene in my country for a year now but due to his tropical climate I wish to roll the sleeves up like what you see on the Eastern front.

Saw this.

And US Navy is not very important on the European Theater as the British Islands are a very good giant aircraft carrier... So these allied ressources are not very important in Europe...

I know that the whole reason why aircraft carriers didn't become a thing in the Europe during World War 2 was precisely because how close countries were. Germany can just build air bases and camps across various countries and transfer planes there or refuel them in a prolonged air campaign from there. Russia could easily do the same. And the UK was close enough to Germany that sending air bombers en mass wasn't an issue and any flight force they send could easily return back to bases in England in a day after bombing Berlin and other spots. They could even reach as far as the around Greece with careful planning and fuel estimates and sit either in nearby neutral or allied countries or land temporarily in uninhabited sports and refuel using stocks on the plane. If not even return back home directly after an operation (albeit very risky and difficulty).

Its very telling that almost all significant British navy victories using aircraft carrier doctrine was in the Pacific........ And the fact almost no American aircraft carrier was stationed in Europe.

So in a supposed scenario where UK gets conquered or surrenders and prevents America from using airbases........ If America still gets into war anyway with Germany or assuming its past 1942 they still continue fighting on alone.... Would that mean aircraft carrier would essentially play a most important role in the European Theater? That rather than countattacks against submarines and the famed nonstop barrages against military fortresses from naval cannons that the US Navy is so associated with in Europe, aircraft carrier would take up the imaginations of people as what they picture when they think of American naval action in the European theater?

In turn with a much safer position and assuming everything else goes as in real life regarding Soviet Union at least at the point of the victory at Stalingrad and mass retreat of German forces and destruction of the very large force in USSR sent in 1942, but POD afterwards...... Whether Russia advances at the quick pace as OTL or ends up getting bogged down with much slower progress since Germany is now free from the UK front, would the Kriegsmarine focus on developing large numbers of aircraft carriers to counteract American naval action before they could come close to hitting bases in Europe with the cliche American naval bombardment? So much more known ship to ship battles between America and Germany but with carriers in combined action with destroyers, submarines, and other existing ships? On top of finally carrying out the wishes that some German admirals wanted of advancing the navy into aircraft carriers, would a lot of canceled naval plans for planes specializing for fighting over waters such as the experimental Blohm & Voss BV 222 end up not only being OK'D into production and German factories churning out planes specifically for the Kriegsmarine?

Does the war last longer and gets bloodier on the naval front alone (and disregarding the army and luftwaffe operations)? How does the Luftwaffe gets utliized when America sends a crap ton of aircraft carrier in their European flees with more reinforcements coming over pretty soon?coming over pretty soon?

In a German learning Discord room I visited, a new member started discussions about World War 2 and the native German members including a few mods asked the person not to discuss the war at all on the server because its still so much a sensitive and controversial subject. While every other things related to Germany (and Austria along with Switzerland) unrelated to learning the language was allowed including other wars and time periods such as the Napoleonic era and the Thirty Years wars but the World Wars esp the second was a subject to be avoided on the server.

But this does remind me of something I see at the nearest college and university that the overwhelming majority of students who chose German for the degree language requirement were 9 out of ten times also history major and often ranging from 70% to 90% of these German-learning history majors chose to specialize in the World Wars. I witnessed at least 5 classes across semesters were 100% of the students in the German courses chose WWII as their focus and in the same WW2 courses practically everyone had taken some German language curriculum as an elective throughout their whole time during college.

So this does make me wonder if someone else sees these pattern? And not just with America (yes I go to school in the USA even though I don't qualify as American and I'm not white), but I note a lot of Australian and Canadian students who took German had a or great grandfather or someone else from those generation in the family who served in the war int he European theater.

So I'm wondering if I'm the only one who noticed this pattern? Admittedly the nearest university to me is a military academy (though I don't plan on enrolling in it for my long-term bachelors), but I also notice even in the community colleges almost a half of students to half who enrolled in German courses do so out of interest in WWII. In other civilian universities I toured, 25% to over a 3rd of students I met in language who decided to stick to German repeat this pattern of learning the language out of association with WW2 be it being people who watched Saving Private Ryan and other war movies to death or (again) having a relative who served in WW2 or having been stationed in Germany as part of the military before going to college and getting interested from the monuments and museums they saw.. Especially rife among Amerians.

On another note I notice practically all the Brit exchange students I met did not take German because of their fascination with WWII. Event he foreign exchange students who had relatives who lived though the 1940s were not interested at all int he War and often treat the war as something not to be proud of to boast about. Instead almost every British exchange student I met are learning German because they plan to do investments in Germany and are majoring in business related fields or had visited the country multiple times before starting tertiary education or have a relative who's German or living in the country.

Why is there a big dissonance between the motives of British learners and people from other countries of the Anglo-sphere? On top of the far lower amount of interests in the World Wars among Brits learning German?

It perplexes me because after all UK is so associated with WW2 as the country that stood alone against the 3rd Reich. Yet it seems not only are most exchange students I met who are taking Germans not doing it because of history but for other reasons like business and tourism, but I even notice a tendency for a lot of British exchange students to avoid talking about the war with subtle non-vocal gesture like its an uncomfortable topic.

But to the main question have anyone noticed this too well at least for American learners?

I recently been to Germany. When I visited the Bavarian Army museum, a lot of blonde blue-eyed gorgeous women on the posters in the World War 1 section of the museum for war recruitment and same with postal mailing cards. Both colored illustrations and black and white photography.

When I visit Museum Wiesbaden a lot of ads before 1930s shown as posters were of beautiful blonde-blue eyed women. A lot of movie stars in the Film Museum in Frankfurt were also blonde blue-eyed stunning women. Even the palaces of Frederick II Hohenzollern you can find portraits of women who the tour guides emphasized were known for their appealing faces during their lifetimes.

So I now got to ask. Did Hitler and the Nazi party really originate the belief that blonde hair and blue eyes as ideal for the German people? It seems like the amount of how blonde blue-eyed women with the looks of a beauty pageant queen and Golden Age Hollywood standard were so common in authentic World War 1 paraphernalia that tons of civilian commercial advertisement between the first and second world wars esp during the 1920s tended to choose flaxen hair with light eyes combo. Even outside of museums the amount of vintage posters people had in restaurants or stores and on the streets even in personal homes featured a staggering amount of blondes+blue eyes as I toured the country.

So did Nazi Germany really create this image for their racial theories? Or was it something that was already within German culture?

Hallo.

Ich habe erfahren, dass mein Urgroßvater im 2.Weltkrieg als Arzt an der Ostfront eingesetzt war und möchte mich nun intensiver mit ihm auseinander setzen.

Ich weiß, dass er mit anderen Wehrmachtsangehörigen (unspezifizierter Ausdruck, da ich nicht weiß wie viele und in welchem Rang etc.) in russische Kriegsgefangenschaft gekommen ist und als Vertreter der Gefangenen (wahrscheinlich weil Ranghöchster nehme ich an) die Verhandlungen über die Freilassung mit ihnen geführt hat.

Was mich vor allem interessiert sind die Voraussetzungen um als Arzt an die Ostfront geschickt zu werden. Welchen Grad von Freiwilligkeit impliziert das zum Beispiel?

Kann man davon ausgehen, dass er auch einfach an der Heimatfront hätte praktizieren können, wenn er gewollt hätte?

Oder kann man eine Verwendung als Arzt an der Ostfront vielleicht eher als "Strafe" für Regime-Untreue verstehen?

Ich weiß dass er vor und nach dem Krieg eine radiologische Praxis in Hamburg betrieben hat.

Welche Quellen kann man heranziehen um mehr über ihn und seine Taten an der Ostfront zu erfahren?

What day did the Wehrmacht suffer the highest casualties during WW2? If I had to guess it would be Jan 12th 1945 the first day of the Vistula Oder Offensive. Konevs forces obliterated the 4th panzer army in the first day of the offensive.

Hallo, kann mir jemand sagen was er für ein Abzeichen trägt und eventuell auch den Rang? War mein Grossvater, er hat den Krieg überlebt.

Hallo,

ich habe die Karteikarte meines Großvaters aus dem Bundesarchiv bezüglich seiner Verwendung bei der wehrmacht. Leider sagen mir die ganzen Abkürzungen etc. nicht viel. Kann mir hier jemand weiter helfen? Wo war mein Großvater stationiert? War seine Einheit evtl. kann Verbrechen beteiligt? Gab es dort besondere Vorfälle?

Danke!

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Hallo Reddit-Fam,

ich habe ein Haus gekauft und auf dem Dachboden ein Foto gefunden. Kann aber über Google die Lösung nicht finden. Vllt. wisst ihr etwas.

Es handelt sich um einen jungen Soldaten in einer schwarzen Uniform mit einer Schwarzen Schildmütze mit Totenkopf Symbol.

Die Kragenspiegel sind allerdings beide schwarz. Weder auf dem rechten, noch auf dem linken Kragenspiegel ist ein Symbol.

Kann es sein, dass die leeren Kragenspiegel heißen, dass das Foto im Heimaturlaub entstanden sind, oder so?

Zu welcher Gruppe könnte der Mann gehört haben und gibt es eine Möglichkeit mehr über den Werdegang zu erfahren? Name vorhanden. Es ist auch noch eine Box mit Briefen vorhanden. Gefallen 1940 in Frankreich.

Da bin ich mal gespannt, was man noch herausfinden kann.

Hello, i am looking for information about my great grandfather. What rank he had and what else you could possibly say. Thank you very much.

My great grandfather Martin Sievers was an Unteroffizier (Sergeant) in the 110th infantry division which served in Army Group center. He took part in Operation Barbarossa, Moscow and Rzhev. He was killed in action in late 1942 in Operation Mars holding the front against the Red Army. I was wondering if anyone has more information that I could find on the 110th infantry or soildier stories down people in that division.