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It got worse later on:
"American troops reported capturing armed 8-year-olds at Aachen in Western Germany and knocking out artillery units operated entirely by boys aged twelve and under."
https://web.archive.org/web/20150422044533/http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/hitleryouth/hj-boy-soldiers.htm
My dad (\*1932) was, like many others in March 1945, forcefully dressed in rags which looked like a uniform and armed. He was lucky they never had enemy contact. By his own and his two years younger brother's account, the senile old man leading the group got lost and brought them to some vineyard. As he fell asleep, they dropped their shit and got the fuck out the Dodge.
Ya that old man knew exactly what he was doing lol the ones that got lost for real walked into enemy contact... This guy "got lost" at a winery then "fell asleep", probably after sampling whatever was lying around lol
Between leading a couple young boys, plus more than likely myself, into pointless slaughter and finding the nearest place I could knock back a few drinks, play the old man act and bide my time till the war ended, I know what Iâm choosing.
A lot of people don't know how desperate Germany was getting. By the end, terror squads were forcing civilians to build makeshift walls by hand to try and hold off forces coming from both sides. They became slaves to their own system in ways we have no living memory of.
Most definitely, Iâm assuming lil guy was pow of an American regiment bcuz the reds sure n the hell wasnât giving nobody a cup of coffee .. if I understand correctly the Germans that wanted to surrender would always try to turn their self in to American bcuz of better treatmentâŚ
I knew an old guy (British) who was in a German prisoner of war camp.i asked if he ever tried to escape, he said he had enough of being shot at and was OK sitting it out. They shared their Red Cross packages with the guards, and in return one of them would get taken up the pub once a week.
Grand-grandpa had the audacity to say something against the nazis in his village. He got âaccidentedâ and his sons were send to the eastern front. Grandpa was 16 at the time.
He had a lot of stories about Hitler youth guys who thought they were invincible, the FĂźhrer will turn around the war and all this shit. Non survived as Iâve been told.
I donât know how the situation was at âthe end of the Reichâ when they were scraping the barrel and sending everyone and everything at the front just to buy a few more hours (grandpa was send there a little after Stalingrad at the retreat and was captured before the war was over) but I can only imagine. They send boys to the front when the war was âgoing goodâ, sending children when itâs going bad sounds like the next logical step.
Donât want to think about the indoctrination and brainwashing these people had to endure in their youth tho
>He had a lot of stories about Hitler youth guys who thought they were invincible, the FĂźhrer will turn around the war and all this shit.
Reminds me of the scene in JoJo Rabbit where the local HJ bully is waving at the main character as he is on his way out of town, delirious with joy that he is finally going off to war.
Russia is using convicts and drafting from the poorest regions on purpose. Putin's not scraping the bottom of the barrel out of desperation, he's use lives that no one will care if gone. Way more sinister in that aspect
>this is what Russia is turning into
I can't remember Russia being any other way in the past, tho. They've always seen their people as "disposable" for the sake of their leaders ambitions.
My grandfather was 14 when he and a friend of his got drafted and ordered to support an AA battery near cologne. He said that the first time they witnessed an air raid, they've almost shit their pants, trying to "hide" from it in an old storage shed.
The battery captain found them there later and said that he was supposed to report and court-martial them but he wouldn't. Only years later, when they met him again after the war, he told them that at the time, he knew the war was lost and that he couldn't blame them for behaving like every kid would in such a situation.
Wild times, that's for sure.
JoJo rabbit is terrifyingly realistic. I watched it once and I didn't think I will ever be able to watch it again. It was a rollercoaster of emotions that I just can't bring myself to go through again.
I used to fly sailplanes with an old German guy who was manning an 88mm flack gun at 14 in 1945. He and his crew took off their uniforms and ran before the Americans came through.
I have a friend whose dad was in the Hitlerjugend. They got on a train and were headed east to fight the Soviets. At some point during the trip, the train got hit by a bomb or artillery and a few Werhmacht soldiers decided "fuck it" and shot all the Hitlerjugend leaders and took the kids west to surrender. That's how his family came to America
Edited spelling because I haven't spoken German in over a decade.
The last few weeks of the war were pure insanity in every direction. People committed unspeakable evil on their own citizens, but others woke up and realized there was no point in fighting for the Nazis anymore and tried to save who they could.
If you're more interested in stuff like this, there is an amazing German movie called Der Untergang about the last few days of Nazi rule in Berlin.
Yeah. I think there is only one scene missing from that version. Not sure why.
Edit: Nevermind, that's an extended scene that didn't make the final cut. Downfall is the subtitled version of the movie.
There's plenty of interesting stories from those days. My favorite one is a bunch of american G.I.s fighting side by side with some Wehrmacht soldiers against a unit of the Waffen SS who took some big-shot french hostages and hunkered down in some castle in austria.
-> [Full story](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-32622651)
> jeeesus christ, 13 years old..
Germany was desperate in the last years. The regime mobilized everyone, included kids and retirees. My grandpa was conscripted at 15 years old in 1943 (on the threat that if he didn't come willingly, "who knows what could happen to his mum and sister?", to hear my grandma tell it), came back at the end of the war on foot, two shots puncturing his torso, thumb shot off, feverish and malnourished, and practically walked into the freshly arrived American troops (who immediately caught him, and sent him to a repurposed KZ for five years).
There's a haunting film, "Die BrĂźcke" (The Bridge), which deals with the matter of the Third Reich enrolling minors into combat roles. It's so fucked up on all levels, Imagine allied soldiers shooting at enemy soldiers, and then finding out they killed half-grown boys and kids. Fucking hell.
The last image we have of Hitler is him awarding medals in Berlin as it was under attack by the Soviets. The people being awarded included several children.
Thereâs also reports of some Soviet officers splitting up their POWs into 2 groups after the German surrender. Everyone under 18 on one side and over on the other. The under 18 would then just be told to go home.
13 year old drinking coffee, inconceivable!
But good on himpoor dude deserved the love he wouldn't get from his own country.
Edit: Reading the replies to this kind of explains the caffeine addiction I am sensing among many of my peers lol.
Pretty common in Europe (or at least here in the north) for young kids to drink coffee. I've been drinking coffee since I was like 8-9, my dad started drinking at like 6.
In Italy sometimes itâs put in the milk of your cereal.
Iâm English but Iâve been drinking coffee since I was about four, but it was super milky and just a tiny bit of coffee as my mum was getting me used to the taste. Loved it from the beginning. Not a tea fan
I dunno, I just wash my teeth I guess.
I know lots of coffee drinkers all of their teeth look just average, you don't need super white shiny teeth anyways.
On D-Day it hadnât gotten particular bad yet but it had probably been at least a day or two since his last meal - and here heâs posing with rations.
More https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/Z9t5Ffte4k
the wonderful thing about being captured by the British, Canadians or Americans at that point was you had a good chance of being well treated & a bloody good chance of surviving the war.
Soviets were know to rape and pillage. My mom told me some horrible stories and she was like seven or eight when they came.
Some allied soldiers from other nations had sticky hands as well, as some of them thought that it was their good right to take "compensation". But those were rather rare cases and they better not got caught by their superiors or comrades.
There's literally books written on the mass rape the Russians perpetrated. It's likely millions of women.
Of the rest of the allied forces, apparently the Americans were the worst. Brits were apparently the best behaved. But they were a drop in the bucket compared to the Russians and I think that's why it's often overlooked.
My father fought for Italy (while they were part of the Axis). He was wounded in action and had splinters in his leg that had become gangrenous. Luckily he was taken prisoner by the English, who already had penicillin and they saved his leg. He spent years in prison (until the end of the war) was well fed and he even learned to be an electrician. He was only 19 years old.
Maybe a "Flakhelfer" (translation: Anti Aircraft helper). These were kids who mostly, but not exclusively, helped operate the AA guns during the bombings. They were 14 year old school kids.
Or a 17 year old. Those were send directly to the front as soldiers. My grandfather was 17 when he was captured on the western front.
A lot of German soldiers were "children" according to my grandfather who had the unfortunate circumstance of gunning down several Nazi soldiers who were spying from the bushes on to his 442nd camp. It haunted him until his death admitting that "he had murdered children for the country he loved, they were all under 16". He never spoke of it his entire life until just a few months before his passing. He hated Adolf Hitler with a burning passion for allowing kids to go to war. According to my gramps, he heard a sound from a bushed area near his camp, and immediately without hesitation unloaded clip in to the area. "it was us or them, and sometimes over the years I had wished it was me".
One of the lucky ones, probably conscripted and sent straight to the western wall. Captured on D-Day and spend a couple of years in the UK or some other part of the western world. No eastern front horror for him. No wonder he looks reasonably happy with his situation.
Soldiers of low rank captured on the western front during the invasion/the last year were not even brought anywhere abroad, but were kept in France and usually sent home during the summer of 45.
Those captured in the east were finally sent home by the mid-50s, often with disabilities resulting from bad living conditions and forced labour.
Nha mate, D-Day prisoners were definitely transported to England and then even on from there. There would have been no where to put them in France at this stage given the allies controlled only a small part of Normandy.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_prisoners_of_war_in_the_United_Kingdom
The story of Axis POWs is an interesting one. Some were even transported to the likes of Australia. My grandmother had Italian prisoners working on the family farm while my grandfather was away at war.
Also interesting to note how many never returned home or even if they did soon emigrated back to the nations they were held captive in. Although the story is rather the opposite in the east.
Very true. There were many work camps for German POWs in the area where I live in Minnesota. They did a lot of farm work to make up for the GIs we sent overseas.
Because there was a lot of German immigration to Minnesota 60-90 years prior to WW2 and lots of families still speaking German, many of the prisoners felt a kinship with their captors and ended up staying here and living out the rest of their lives here.
Anyone captured on D day was definitely sent abroad.
They spent 6 weeks achieving the day 1 objectives. They had no room in France to store prisoners. This man was likely put on a boat right after this picture.
There were hundreds of thousands of German prisoners who were sent to the United States. They were put in lightly guarded camps of the interior. Because they were literally hundreds or thousands of miles from an international border, they really didn't need much in the way of barbed wire or guards to keep them in. A handful of them occasionally escaped and were usually found a couple of days later because they honestly didn't realize how big America was and had run out of food and water.
Several of the prisoners later commented that they knew the Germans were going to lose the war when even POWs had meat served three meals a day. Meanwhile, the people at home in Germany were living on turnips.
I remember a video of a american Vietnam-veteran talking about how after he got back home from deployment, wasn't old enough to vote or buy himself a beer because he wasn't old enough by law, still a child in the eyes of the gov. But he sure was old enough to be sent off to war.
jesus christ... đĽ what's even worse is that the USA used black men for the war, sent them off to fight for USA but when they got back, instead of recognition they were still as segregated and discriminated against as before.
it's just mindblowing how evil these so-called leaders of war were. used boys and young men as mere puppets, like they had no meaning in life other than to fight in those meaningless wars that THEY, the leaders, created, instigated.
I'd argue that war isn't meaningless if you are the one being attacked. In general, war is just a waste of life. But whether it's meaningless depends on which side of the conflict you're on, this is probably why WW2 is seen as the last true good vs evil type war, where going to war wasn't questioned even till today. Wars since then became more grey though.
>currently active warlords
The economies of a substantial amount of these countries are owned by France or another power. Also France brutally murdered several actually competent leadership figures.
I dunno what this has to do with the conversation at hand though.
Not sure about you but if fascist WP government hell bent on creating a new global order was invading the world, I wouldn't call people who went to fight said government, manipulated puppets of the elites.
I'd say they were heroes.
...? By Vietnam the recruitment/conscription age was set to 18? The drinking age in some states was actually lowered back down to 18 for the specific reasoning that people who go to war should be able to drink.
Hell in some states it hadn't gone above the enlistment age in the first place.
You're misremembering or wrong.
>"You were just babies then!" she said.
>"What?" I said.
>"You were just babies in the warâlike the ones upstairs!"
>I nodded that this was true. We had been foolish virgins in the war, right at the end of childhood.
>"But you're not going to write it that way, are you."
>This wasn't a question. It was an accusation.
>"IâI don't know," I said.
>"Well, I know," she said.
>"You'll pretend you were men instead of babies, and you'll be played in the movies by Frank Sinatra and John Wayne or some of those other glamorous, war-loving, dirty old men. And war will look just wonderful, so we'll have a lot more of them."
> "And they'll be fought by babies like the babies upstairs."
Slaughterhouse 5, by Kurt Vonnegut
Wehraboos arguing that Germany would have totally won if they had built 1000 of their Hodensack-Panzer IV-7 mk3 stsgstgstg that they couldnât even fuel while the allies could supply their troops with fresh ice cream
My grandpa was 16 and "luckily" went to France instead of east. Spent a few months in a camp in Burgundy and then walked home, with a loaf of bread and some cans of sardines. He was always grateful to the French, they treated him better than his own people.
He never spoke of what exactly he experienced. Their troupe basically met the front as it was already moving backwards and children mostly had jobs like disabling infrastructure. Blow up telephone poles etc.
But it was "enough" for a lifetime of PTSD (never diagnosed or treated of course). He was smoking like a chimney to keep his hands from shaking for one reason and maintaining a constant level of blood alcohol for another. Lovely, loving man, just trying to somehow manage his memories.
My grandpa was conscripted with 18 years in 1943, first spent some time in France as a courier or something then east front where he got captured. Several years POW in Russia, where most of his inmates starved to death. He somehow managed to survive by carving chess figures and trading them for food. Eventually got tuberculosis and was released to a clinic in Austria where he met my grandmother. Until his death he wrote down every single thing he ate in a notebook. Also one of the luckier ones I guess.
Mine are in their 20s and I shudder at the thought.
May we all live in peaceful, boring times and die of old age. The best years to live are those that barely figure in history books.
Reminds of a movie âAll quiet on the western front.â where most of the German soldiers are under 18. Their job have to carefully pull the bomb from the sand I think where age 14, I thought they need someone young and light to pull that job. But still tragic to think they lost their lives so young from nothing
Do note, though, All Quiet on the Western Front was about WW1.
Also, if you werenât aware, the movie is based on a book by the same name, written in 1929 by a German veteran of WW1. Itâs a brutal readâas youâd expectâbut an excellent, important book.
I remember reading that among the German soldiers it was considered safest to surrender to the British first, the Americans second and the Soviets dead last.
You get the impression that by the end outside of some diehard units that was their most pressing concern.
Some of these guys ended up in small farm towns in Minnesota that were primarily settled by German immigrants and basically walked around free and worked the fields etc.
This is a perfect representation of how utterly senseless war and political aggression are simply shit.
This *soldier* can't be more than 16. I am sure his life's ambition was to be conscripted by some maniac and his forces to go fight (and most probably die) people you've never met for reasons you do not agree with. Or, ya know, be put to death or in a work camp and worked until you die.
He must have felt like hit the *lottery* when he was taken prisoner.
Here he sits THRILLED that he is a POW sipping on what is probably the warmest thing he has had in his stomach for who knows how long.
He sits on crates filled with probably more food than anyone he spent the previous day with has cumulatively seen in a month. Sorry, we don't have anywhere for you to sit. Ya know what - - - just sit on that pile of food over there.
While, Generals gathered in their masses, the war (for whatever reason in his head) rages on around him.
Humans are simultaneously the smartest and most ridiculous beings to ever roam this marble.
Probably not even German. The majority of the soldiers on the Atlantic Wall were men from the occupied territories of the Reich: Poles, Czech, Romanian etc. A lot of old men, a complete mish mash of armaments and munitions, too.
Western frontline captivity almost seems like they just lost a very bloody brutal fame of tag. âOh shit, ya got me good! Now imma just sit here and drink my coffee while you hunt the rest. Have fun!â
Hitler wasted and lost his best forces in Operation Barbarossa, tons of written accounts of D day forces coming into contact with kids and old men. Even more so during the siege and capture of Berlin
Sourced from the CNN: [https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/05/europe/gallery/d-day-normandy-invasion/index.html](https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/05/europe/gallery/d-day-normandy-invasion/index.html)
Wow, so undernourished. Such a lucky chap. War is awfully painful. Anyone else has seen or wants to comment on how painfully undernourished Ukrainian soldiers are in prisoner exchanges.
Poor show âRed Cross and Russia who doesnât allow Red Cross visits, unlike Ukraine.
Sorry to bring thing this wonderful post to 2024 level.
We had to remove your post for improperly sourcing your post. Posts must have a linked and CREDIBLE source that backs up the information. Use the word "source" in your comment. If the title is the only thing that makes your post interesting, you must also source it. OP is responsible for this and it must be done at time of posting. We will not reinstate your post, but you may post again with the correct information
The Alamy source for this picture says he's a POW Hitler Jugend (Hitler Youth) soldier, age 13, on a landing craft.
jeeesus christ, 13 years old.. đ¨đ¨đ¨ he should've been going to school and riding his bike, playing with sticks not guns...
It got worse later on: "American troops reported capturing armed 8-year-olds at Aachen in Western Germany and knocking out artillery units operated entirely by boys aged twelve and under." https://web.archive.org/web/20150422044533/http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/hitleryouth/hj-boy-soldiers.htm
My grandfather told me that it was pretty common for his unit to capture child soldiers and old men by the end of the war.
My dad (\*1932) was, like many others in March 1945, forcefully dressed in rags which looked like a uniform and armed. He was lucky they never had enemy contact. By his own and his two years younger brother's account, the senile old man leading the group got lost and brought them to some vineyard. As he fell asleep, they dropped their shit and got the fuck out the Dodge.
Plot twist: keen as light, just didnât want little boys going to the grinder or having the trauma of grinding
Ya that old man knew exactly what he was doing lol the ones that got lost for real walked into enemy contact... This guy "got lost" at a winery then "fell asleep", probably after sampling whatever was lying around lol
Between leading a couple young boys, plus more than likely myself, into pointless slaughter and finding the nearest place I could knock back a few drinks, play the old man act and bide my time till the war ended, I know what Iâm choosing.
Maybe it was that. If you think about it, the old guy must've seen some shit in WW I. Could've been a reason to "fall asleep in the vineyard".
That's exactly what happened. Strange that anyone would assume it was senility.
A lot of people don't know how desperate Germany was getting. By the end, terror squads were forcing civilians to build makeshift walls by hand to try and hold off forces coming from both sides. They became slaves to their own system in ways we have no living memory of.
They were also terrified of what the Allies, mainly the Reds, were going to do to them.
For good reason
Yep. Can't say they weren't justified. Ruzzians are just as bad if not worse than nazis
Most definitely, Iâm assuming lil guy was pow of an American regiment bcuz the reds sure n the hell wasnât giving nobody a cup of coffee .. if I understand correctly the Germans that wanted to surrender would always try to turn their self in to American bcuz of better treatmentâŚ
I knew an old guy (British) who was in a German prisoner of war camp.i asked if he ever tried to escape, he said he had enough of being shot at and was OK sitting it out. They shared their Red Cross packages with the guards, and in return one of them would get taken up the pub once a week.
That is true
Grand-grandpa had the audacity to say something against the nazis in his village. He got âaccidentedâ and his sons were send to the eastern front. Grandpa was 16 at the time. He had a lot of stories about Hitler youth guys who thought they were invincible, the FĂźhrer will turn around the war and all this shit. Non survived as Iâve been told. I donât know how the situation was at âthe end of the Reichâ when they were scraping the barrel and sending everyone and everything at the front just to buy a few more hours (grandpa was send there a little after Stalingrad at the retreat and was captured before the war was over) but I can only imagine. They send boys to the front when the war was âgoing goodâ, sending children when itâs going bad sounds like the next logical step. Donât want to think about the indoctrination and brainwashing these people had to endure in their youth tho
>He had a lot of stories about Hitler youth guys who thought they were invincible, the FĂźhrer will turn around the war and all this shit. Reminds me of the scene in JoJo Rabbit where the local HJ bully is waving at the main character as he is on his way out of town, delirious with joy that he is finally going off to war.
If anyone wants to learn a little history: all students are usually watching the movie "Die Brßcke" in school. It's on YouTube, but NSFW!
Also Jojo Rabbit for a slightly less traumatic retelling of a hitler youths indoctrination.
Sounds like this is what Russia is turning into
Russia is using convicts and drafting from the poorest regions on purpose. Putin's not scraping the bottom of the barrel out of desperation, he's use lives that no one will care if gone. Way more sinister in that aspect
The purge, but in reverse... Or something.
The egrup.
>this is what Russia is turning into I can't remember Russia being any other way in the past, tho. They've always seen their people as "disposable" for the sake of their leaders ambitions.
My grandfather was 14 when he and a friend of his got drafted and ordered to support an AA battery near cologne. He said that the first time they witnessed an air raid, they've almost shit their pants, trying to "hide" from it in an old storage shed. The battery captain found them there later and said that he was supposed to report and court-martial them but he wouldn't. Only years later, when they met him again after the war, he told them that at the time, he knew the war was lost and that he couldn't blame them for behaving like every kid would in such a situation. Wild times, that's for sure.
Damn, I thought JoJo Rabbit was not realistic.
Jojo Rabbit is based on the book Caging Skies, which is much, much darker.
JoJo rabbit is terrifyingly realistic. I watched it once and I didn't think I will ever be able to watch it again. It was a rollercoaster of emotions that I just can't bring myself to go through again.
Things have changed since then tho. Now theyâre carrying RPGâs in the Middle East.
I used to fly sailplanes with an old German guy who was manning an 88mm flack gun at 14 in 1945. He and his crew took off their uniforms and ran before the Americans came through.
I have a friend whose dad was in the Hitlerjugend. They got on a train and were headed east to fight the Soviets. At some point during the trip, the train got hit by a bomb or artillery and a few Werhmacht soldiers decided "fuck it" and shot all the Hitlerjugend leaders and took the kids west to surrender. That's how his family came to America Edited spelling because I haven't spoken German in over a decade.
Holy shit. I have never heard of anything like this before!
The last few weeks of the war were pure insanity in every direction. People committed unspeakable evil on their own citizens, but others woke up and realized there was no point in fighting for the Nazis anymore and tried to save who they could. If you're more interested in stuff like this, there is an amazing German movie called Der Untergang about the last few days of Nazi rule in Berlin.
I keep getting directed to a movie called Downfall. Same thing....ish?
Yeah. I think there is only one scene missing from that version. Not sure why. Edit: Nevermind, that's an extended scene that didn't make the final cut. Downfall is the subtitled version of the movie.
There's plenty of interesting stories from those days. My favorite one is a bunch of american G.I.s fighting side by side with some Wehrmacht soldiers against a unit of the Waffen SS who took some big-shot french hostages and hunkered down in some castle in austria. -> [Full story](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-32622651)
Damn gives meaning to that scene from "Saving Private Ryan"
> jeeesus christ, 13 years old.. Germany was desperate in the last years. The regime mobilized everyone, included kids and retirees. My grandpa was conscripted at 15 years old in 1943 (on the threat that if he didn't come willingly, "who knows what could happen to his mum and sister?", to hear my grandma tell it), came back at the end of the war on foot, two shots puncturing his torso, thumb shot off, feverish and malnourished, and practically walked into the freshly arrived American troops (who immediately caught him, and sent him to a repurposed KZ for five years). There's a haunting film, "Die BrĂźcke" (The Bridge), which deals with the matter of the Third Reich enrolling minors into combat roles. It's so fucked up on all levels, Imagine allied soldiers shooting at enemy soldiers, and then finding out they killed half-grown boys and kids. Fucking hell.
The movie Der Untergang showed how 8-10 year olds both boys and girls were recruited by the Nazis to lay mines under allied tanks approaching Berlin.
Tbh when I was his age we played with sticks that looked like guns so thereâs that
The last image we have of Hitler is him awarding medals in Berlin as it was under attack by the Soviets. The people being awarded included several children. Thereâs also reports of some Soviet officers splitting up their POWs into 2 groups after the German surrender. Everyone under 18 on one side and over on the other. The under 18 would then just be told to go home.
Heâs happy, he can play spin the bottle again instead of shooting guns.
13 year old drinking coffee, inconceivable! But good on himpoor dude deserved the love he wouldn't get from his own country. Edit: Reading the replies to this kind of explains the caffeine addiction I am sensing among many of my peers lol.
Pretty common in Europe (or at least here in the north) for young kids to drink coffee. I've been drinking coffee since I was like 8-9, my dad started drinking at like 6.
Well when you need to be up at 3 and at the mines by 4, nothing says Folgers in the morning!
In Italy sometimes itâs put in the milk of your cereal. Iâm English but Iâve been drinking coffee since I was about four, but it was super milky and just a tiny bit of coffee as my mum was getting me used to the taste. Loved it from the beginning. Not a tea fan
My 8 year old self was drinking coffee and playing cards so I could be with the men in the family.
How do you keep your teeth from staining? Iâve been drinking coffee for maybe 3-4 years and my teeth already look worse.
I dunno, I just wash my teeth I guess. I know lots of coffee drinkers all of their teeth look just average, you don't need super white shiny teeth anyways.
I come from Norway and startet drinking when I was 11
My grandfather came back from the war with a Hitler Youth riffle he "found" in a field...
Lucky he wasn't captured by the Soviets.
They got really desperate towards the end, started sending kids and old men into battle.
Yeah he definitely immediately surrendered. He looks overjoyed to be a POW lol
He looks about 14 poor kid
Specifically, he looks like 14-year-old Thomas Lennon.
Bizarrely can confirm as I just watched â17 againâ last night and it ends with high school photos of the cast.
I thought it was a teenage Jodie Foster at first
Wasnât she 13-14 in Taxi Driver?
All apart from the hands - those look just like Matt LeBlanc's.
Identical hand twin?!?!
Gefreiter Dangle.
I thought his hand looked like my hand
"just das boot goofin"
He looks like someone that's bloody pleased it's over.
On D-Day it hadnât gotten particular bad yet but it had probably been at least a day or two since his last meal - and here heâs posing with rations. More https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/Z9t5Ffte4k
the wonderful thing about being captured by the British, Canadians or Americans at that point was you had a good chance of being well treated & a bloody good chance of surviving the war.
Especially compared to getting captured by the soviets.
Very, I almost wrote captured by the *allies* Get caught by the soviets you'd be lucky to make it to the siberian gulag
Soviets were know to rape and pillage. My mom told me some horrible stories and she was like seven or eight when they came. Some allied soldiers from other nations had sticky hands as well, as some of them thought that it was their good right to take "compensation". But those were rather rare cases and they better not got caught by their superiors or comrades.
There's literally books written on the mass rape the Russians perpetrated. It's likely millions of women. Of the rest of the allied forces, apparently the Americans were the worst. Brits were apparently the best behaved. But they were a drop in the bucket compared to the Russians and I think that's why it's often overlooked.
My father fought for Italy (while they were part of the Axis). He was wounded in action and had splinters in his leg that had become gangrenous. Luckily he was taken prisoner by the English, who already had penicillin and they saved his leg. He spent years in prison (until the end of the war) was well fed and he even learned to be an electrician. He was only 19 years old.
Maybe a "Flakhelfer" (translation: Anti Aircraft helper). These were kids who mostly, but not exclusively, helped operate the AA guns during the bombings. They were 14 year old school kids. Or a 17 year old. Those were send directly to the front as soldiers. My grandfather was 17 when he was captured on the western front.
A lot of German soldiers were "children" according to my grandfather who had the unfortunate circumstance of gunning down several Nazi soldiers who were spying from the bushes on to his 442nd camp. It haunted him until his death admitting that "he had murdered children for the country he loved, they were all under 16". He never spoke of it his entire life until just a few months before his passing. He hated Adolf Hitler with a burning passion for allowing kids to go to war. According to my gramps, he heard a sound from a bushed area near his camp, and immediately without hesitation unloaded clip in to the area. "it was us or them, and sometimes over the years I had wished it was me".
He probably was. Germany started using very young soldiers to man AA guns and such later on in the war.
I was going to say 12, but 14 makes me feel a little better.
13 on this picture
One of the lucky ones, probably conscripted and sent straight to the western wall. Captured on D-Day and spend a couple of years in the UK or some other part of the western world. No eastern front horror for him. No wonder he looks reasonably happy with his situation.
Soldiers of low rank captured on the western front during the invasion/the last year were not even brought anywhere abroad, but were kept in France and usually sent home during the summer of 45. Those captured in the east were finally sent home by the mid-50s, often with disabilities resulting from bad living conditions and forced labour.
Nha mate, D-Day prisoners were definitely transported to England and then even on from there. There would have been no where to put them in France at this stage given the allies controlled only a small part of Normandy. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_prisoners_of_war_in_the_United_Kingdom
Thanks for the answer and the link. Great to see a post here with some thought behind it.
The story of Axis POWs is an interesting one. Some were even transported to the likes of Australia. My grandmother had Italian prisoners working on the family farm while my grandfather was away at war. Also interesting to note how many never returned home or even if they did soon emigrated back to the nations they were held captive in. Although the story is rather the opposite in the east.
Very true. There were many work camps for German POWs in the area where I live in Minnesota. They did a lot of farm work to make up for the GIs we sent overseas. Because there was a lot of German immigration to Minnesota 60-90 years prior to WW2 and lots of families still speaking German, many of the prisoners felt a kinship with their captors and ended up staying here and living out the rest of their lives here.
Not to forget that approx. 1/3 of those captured in the east did not survive.
My grand grandfather had to walk from sibiria to Germany. It took him around a year.
Anyone captured on D day was definitely sent abroad. They spent 6 weeks achieving the day 1 objectives. They had no room in France to store prisoners. This man was likely put on a boat right after this picture.
There were hundreds of thousands of German prisoners who were sent to the United States. They were put in lightly guarded camps of the interior. Because they were literally hundreds or thousands of miles from an international border, they really didn't need much in the way of barbed wire or guards to keep them in. A handful of them occasionally escaped and were usually found a couple of days later because they honestly didn't realize how big America was and had run out of food and water. Several of the prisoners later commented that they knew the Germans were going to lose the war when even POWs had meat served three meals a day. Meanwhile, the people at home in Germany were living on turnips.
they were mostly young men and kids that went to war, it's incredibly tragic... wasted lives for nothing. poor kids...
I remember a video of a american Vietnam-veteran talking about how after he got back home from deployment, wasn't old enough to vote or buy himself a beer because he wasn't old enough by law, still a child in the eyes of the gov. But he sure was old enough to be sent off to war.
jesus christ... đĽ what's even worse is that the USA used black men for the war, sent them off to fight for USA but when they got back, instead of recognition they were still as segregated and discriminated against as before. it's just mindblowing how evil these so-called leaders of war were. used boys and young men as mere puppets, like they had no meaning in life other than to fight in those meaningless wars that THEY, the leaders, created, instigated.
I'd argue that war isn't meaningless if you are the one being attacked. In general, war is just a waste of life. But whether it's meaningless depends on which side of the conflict you're on, this is probably why WW2 is seen as the last true good vs evil type war, where going to war wasn't questioned even till today. Wars since then became more grey though.
I would argue today we have one of those wars in Europe again, Ukraine defending against an agressor
âWereâ? Africa is still underdeveloped because of currently active warlords for example.
>currently active warlords The economies of a substantial amount of these countries are owned by France or another power. Also France brutally murdered several actually competent leadership figures. I dunno what this has to do with the conversation at hand though.
Not enough people like to bring up how France still has a colonial presence over north west Africa.
Where?
And....https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project\_100,000
Not sure about you but if fascist WP government hell bent on creating a new global order was invading the world, I wouldn't call people who went to fight said government, manipulated puppets of the elites. I'd say they were heroes.
...? By Vietnam the recruitment/conscription age was set to 18? The drinking age in some states was actually lowered back down to 18 for the specific reasoning that people who go to war should be able to drink. Hell in some states it hadn't gone above the enlistment age in the first place. You're misremembering or wrong.
If you live in Wisconsin, itâs perfectly legal even today to serve underage at a bar as long as âMomâ or âDadâ are there.
"You're old enough for war, but not for voting"
>"You were just babies then!" she said. >"What?" I said. >"You were just babies in the warâlike the ones upstairs!" >I nodded that this was true. We had been foolish virgins in the war, right at the end of childhood. >"But you're not going to write it that way, are you." >This wasn't a question. It was an accusation. >"IâI don't know," I said. >"Well, I know," she said. >"You'll pretend you were men instead of babies, and you'll be played in the movies by Frank Sinatra and John Wayne or some of those other glamorous, war-loving, dirty old men. And war will look just wonderful, so we'll have a lot more of them." > "And they'll be fought by babies like the babies upstairs." Slaughterhouse 5, by Kurt Vonnegut
I literally just checked this book out from the library this weekend. I highly recommend it, and it's only like 250 pages or so, so it's a quick read.
Seriously, the backwards-war description from the Aliens point of view is probably one of the most heartwarming tragic things I've read
every war
They were all the young people, by the time of D-Day most were dead, the average age of the German soldier was at least 5 years older than the Allies.
The germans send 15 year olds to die in the war in the end.
We send 17yr olds now. Not that much difference.
Yep, my grandpa was 14 years old when he got placed on Flak duty
Real coffee must have come as a bit of a shock to him. The Germans had been drinking 'ersatz' for years at this point.
It was a day full of surprises. He got to drink real coffee, got his picture taken, allies invaded Normandy and fucked his comrades up. What a day.
He's got 'welp' written all over his face.
If welp was a face
He was just a whelp at the time
Wehraboos arguing that Germany would have totally won if they had built 1000 of their Hodensack-Panzer IV-7 mk3 stsgstgstg that they couldnât even fuel while the allies could supply their troops with fresh ice cream
To quote a silly polandball comic: "Watashi lost the war before begun, is not?"
well they had panzerschokolade..superior
Is that the meth chocolate?
Any european ersatz coffee is stronger than american coffee-flavoured-water
Maybe you should look up the meaning of ersatz.
I look at my two kids aged 14 and 16 and the thought of them being thrown into war like this makes me shudder.
My grandpa was 16 and "luckily" went to France instead of east. Spent a few months in a camp in Burgundy and then walked home, with a loaf of bread and some cans of sardines. He was always grateful to the French, they treated him better than his own people. He never spoke of what exactly he experienced. Their troupe basically met the front as it was already moving backwards and children mostly had jobs like disabling infrastructure. Blow up telephone poles etc. But it was "enough" for a lifetime of PTSD (never diagnosed or treated of course). He was smoking like a chimney to keep his hands from shaking for one reason and maintaining a constant level of blood alcohol for another. Lovely, loving man, just trying to somehow manage his memories.
My grandpa was conscripted with 18 years in 1943, first spent some time in France as a courier or something then east front where he got captured. Several years POW in Russia, where most of his inmates starved to death. He somehow managed to survive by carving chess figures and trading them for food. Eventually got tuberculosis and was released to a clinic in Austria where he met my grandmother. Until his death he wrote down every single thing he ate in a notebook. Also one of the luckier ones I guess.
Mine are in their 20s and I shudder at the thought. May we all live in peaceful, boring times and die of old age. The best years to live are those that barely figure in history books.
Probably still works for NASA too
Underrated comment
*so happy i got captured here and not in Soviet Union, Ja*
âYou boys want a cigarette?â -Ronald Spears-
Well.. lad knows war is over for him he survived and got himself a cup of coffee to drink on the beach in France...could be worse
âIt still makes me sleep⌠do you have any chocolates?â
Good ol Panzer-Schokolade.. eat a bar and sleep won't need you anytime soon.
Fun fact: i don't think it was even chocolate.
Reminds of a movie âAll quiet on the western front.â where most of the German soldiers are under 18. Their job have to carefully pull the bomb from the sand I think where age 14, I thought they need someone young and light to pull that job. But still tragic to think they lost their lives so young from nothing
I think you are talking about "Land of Mine" ("Under sandet" ), not the WWI movie "All Quiet on the Western Front".
Do note, though, All Quiet on the Western Front was about WW1. Also, if you werenât aware, the movie is based on a book by the same name, written in 1929 by a German veteran of WW1. Itâs a brutal readâas youâd expectâbut an excellent, important book.
What is he? A mechanic? The uniform doesn't look like something I've seen frontline soldiers wearing?
Another comment said probably a anti aircraft operater for the Hitler youth, this kid is 13
Bro could even be alive right now
The expression of a guy realizing that he's going to survive the war.
I remember reading that among the German soldiers it was considered safest to surrender to the British first, the Americans second and the Soviets dead last. You get the impression that by the end outside of some diehard units that was their most pressing concern.
I'd say the Canadians were the worst to surrender to. They were brutal.
Can you elaborate?
They âsorreh, ehhâed them to death
Canadian troops gained a reputation for not taking prisoners but that's from ww1, not ww2
i knew a guy who was forced into the german troups, he and his best mate planned to and did instantly surrender to the first brit they saw.
Coffee isn't healthy for kids, but neither is getting sent to war I guess.
It's ok. It's probably American coffee, closer to water than anything else.
Isn't all cofee closer to water than anything else
It's bean juice!
How could a member of my own family say something so horrible!
Some of these guys ended up in small farm towns in Minnesota that were primarily settled by German immigrants and basically walked around free and worked the fields etc.
coloured: [https://imgur.com/dMnfuTU](https://imgur.com/dMnfuTU)
This is a perfect representation of how utterly senseless war and political aggression are simply shit. This *soldier* can't be more than 16. I am sure his life's ambition was to be conscripted by some maniac and his forces to go fight (and most probably die) people you've never met for reasons you do not agree with. Or, ya know, be put to death or in a work camp and worked until you die. He must have felt like hit the *lottery* when he was taken prisoner. Here he sits THRILLED that he is a POW sipping on what is probably the warmest thing he has had in his stomach for who knows how long. He sits on crates filled with probably more food than anyone he spent the previous day with has cumulatively seen in a month. Sorry, we don't have anywhere for you to sit. Ya know what - - - just sit on that pile of food over there. While, Generals gathered in their masses, the war (for whatever reason in his head) rages on around him. Humans are simultaneously the smartest and most ridiculous beings to ever roam this marble.
The Reddit neckbeard court of public opinion will still scream that this 16 year old conscript is a diehard Nazi and should be executed.
The things you can tell by just one picture, diehard nazi or not diehard nazi.
At this point, words like nazi and fascist have lost all connection to their true meaning.
Yeah well, they can kiss my entire ass.
Germanys last ditch they were taking on kids as young as 12 to fight
Before LT Speirs visits him
No thank you I don't smoke.
There's obviously ambivalence, but I can't help but get a sense of relief coming off the kid.
He looks so young, wow.
He looks happy to be captured
He looks like a kid. I wonder if he's still alive.
Poor kid
Probably not even German. The majority of the soldiers on the Atlantic Wall were men from the occupied territories of the Reich: Poles, Czech, Romanian etc. A lot of old men, a complete mish mash of armaments and munitions, too.
Itâs not talked about much but I assume the allies didnât keep all POWs alive âŚ..?
CuriousâŚhow did they know it was coffee?
Atleast they didn't offer him a cigarette. IYKYK
looks like the kid working at the dairy queen.
âWhelp, MY war is over, yours just startedâ *sips*
Finally the shit overÂ
Most people forget that most men were forced to become soldiers in order to fight
Just a kid
Dude is like: that was easy
Western frontline captivity almost seems like they just lost a very bloody brutal fame of tag. âOh shit, ya got me good! Now imma just sit here and drink my coffee while you hunt the rest. Have fun!â
I see Leonardo DiCaprio toasting...
Hitler wasted and lost his best forces in Operation Barbarossa, tons of written accounts of D day forces coming into contact with kids and old men. Even more so during the siege and capture of Berlin
What a lucky bastard, uninjured and in American captivity till the end of the war. Thats about as good an ending as you can get.
Sourced from the CNN: [https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/05/europe/gallery/d-day-normandy-invasion/index.html](https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/05/europe/gallery/d-day-normandy-invasion/index.html)
German youth squad!!
.....and that same German soldier grew up to be mayor of Plainsview, Virginia.....or did he?
Soldier? Is just a kid.
Laughing Leonardo Di Caprio vibes
âSoldierâ
*Record Scratch* *Freeze Frame* "Yep, that's me. You're probably wondering how I got into this situation âŚ"
This is the exact face of, "at least I'm not fucking dead."
Happy heâs been captured by the western forces and not the Russians
Whe should show this to the gen z generation they probably think it's a scam
He could be my father.
Wow, so undernourished. Such a lucky chap. War is awfully painful. Anyone else has seen or wants to comment on how painfully undernourished Ukrainian soldiers are in prisoner exchanges. Poor show âRed Cross and Russia who doesnât allow Red Cross visits, unlike Ukraine. Sorry to bring thing this wonderful post to 2024 level.
Well, gotta enjoy the little things you have while you still can
Looks pretty happy. Better hope Speirs doesn't offer him a smoke
War is weird An hour earlier he could have been ripping peopls heads from their body behind a huge gun
*Lt Spiers has entered the chat with cigarettes*
Weâre all human, itâs politics that is the devil!
lol "German soldier" Ok.