Views of Berlin during WW2 & present day.

Rowley Birkin QC

Some interesting views of Berlin then and now.

Something I would love to do is to go and view WW2 sites for myself, especially the Normandy beaches, the Obersalzburg and whatever remains of the Maginot line. But anyway thats for another day.


Click here.

Latchy

I remember reading about when the russians entered Berlin and it's said that roughly, over a million german women of all ages were raped during the coming days and weeks .Retribution for previous german atrocities in Russia . Many german womon commited sucide .The mind boggles at the price paid by civilians on all sides .

ojewriej

latchyco wrote: »

I remember reading about when the russians entered Berlin and it's said that roughly, over a million german women of all ages were raped during the coming days and weeks .Retribution for previous german atrocities in Russia . Many german womon commited sucide .The mind boggles at the price paid by civilians on all sides .

Retributions were just an excuse. Red Army raped civilians on a mass scale everywhere they went , including Soviet Union itself. They also robbed whatever they could, particularly watches and bicycles.

Cusiously enough, it was the second lines doingf that, not the frontline soldiers who didn't have time to do that because they were actually fighting.

Americans weren't blameless either - Ambrose says that after most of the fighting stopped, and US Army was waiting in Germany to see whether they'll go to pacific or not, on average, GI raped 500 german women every week. And that's just the reported cases.

FiSe

There's very good series of publications called After The Battle. On one page you have photograph taken during the war and on the other is a picture from present days. Impressive:

http://www.afterthebattle.com

sprinkles

Some great shots. Thanks

ojewriej

FiSe wrote: »

There's very good series of publications called After The Battle. On one page you have photograph taken during the war and on the other is a picture from present days. Impressive:

http://www.afterthebattle.com

That looks good, I'll have a closer look at it later.

And it reminds me of another website I already posted in the "Images of the second world war" thread:

This is a website with the pictures from the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. It has pretty cool feature - you can see the pictures taken in 1944 and with one click see what the place looks like now. It's in polish I'm afraid, but it doesn't really matter, as it's just pictures really. Just click on one of the links (they are names of the streets on which the picture was taken), and than using a control underneath the picture (which says "zamien") you can see what did the place look like in 1944. See what urban combat can do to the city.

http://www.pw44.pl/album.htm

Actually, I just realised we are probably creating a duplicate thread here :eek:

Latchy

ojewriej wrote: »

Retributions were just an excuse.

without a doubt

Red Army raped civilians on a mass scale everywhere they went , including Soviet Union itself.

Somewere along the german gene pool are a lot of people with russian /american, fathers and grandfathers ?

Cusiously enough, it was the second lines doingf that, not the frontline soldiers who didn't have time to do that because they were actually fighting.

Americans weren't blameless either - Ambrose says that after most of the fighting stopped, and US Army was waiting in Germany to see whether they'll go to pacific or not, on average, GI raped 500 german women every week. And that's just the reported cases.

But nothing compared to what the japanese did at Nanking .

There is a website about the unspeakable savagery and atrocities inflicted on the chinese population which sounds like somthing out of the dark ages .It can be found on google and not for the squmish

Nanking Massacre -- one of the most inhuman and horrifying crimes ever committed in the whole human civilization history.

There was also several books published on the subject http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.historywiz.com/images/nanjing/behead.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.historywiz.com/nanjing-mm.htm&h=437&w=325&sz=29&tbnid=IDox56GpztgJ::&tbnh=126&tbnw=94&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dnanking%2Bmassacre&hl=en&sa=X&oi=image_result&resnum=2&ct=image&cd=1

Heisenberg.

This post has been deleted.

FiSe

bigkev49 wrote: »

Some interesting views of Berlin then and now.

Something I would love to do is to go and view WW2 sites for myself, especially the Normandy beaches, the Obersalzburg and whatever remains of the Maginot line. But anyway thats for another day.


Click here.

Link doesn't work for me, no matter how many times am trying

Prefabsprouter

There are some excellent books on the Fall of the Reich once of which is call "With our backs to Berlin" by Tony le tissier. Great read. I have visited Berlin in 2006, stood on the Seelow Heights, visited Zhukov's command bunker and also the village of Halbe (centre of 9th Army's attempted link up with the 12th Army) and if you have an interest in WW2 then its a place worth visiting.

Cool_CM

The Scientist wrote: »

Cool website.
I saw a program recently on the History Channel about Berlins Bunkers and they were on about that 'Flakturm 1 in the Tiergarten' (cant link the pics, but its towards the end of the page).
After the War they just wrapped in explosives and demolished it, instead of removing the tons & tons of rubble they just planted trees/grass and turned it into a hill! Very cool google earth image on that page.

The Hotel Adlon pics are great aswell...

Tis 5 minutes away from me, Berlin is great, every single place you go there is history.

TerrorFirmer

I have a few books on the fall of Berlin (Beevor's Berlin is the best), and a particularly good photo book called 'Descent into Nightmare' about late 44-45 on both fronts, can any recommend any other good photo collections? I'm particularly interested in the eastern front for those dates....

Prefabsprouter

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

I have a few books on the fall of Berlin (Beevor's Berlin is the best), and a particularly good photo book called 'Descent into Nightmare' about late 44-45 on both fronts, can any recommend any other good photo collections? I'm particularly interested in the eastern front for those dates....

Not so much photos but a book "Red Storm on the Reich" by christopher Duffy is a must for any serious student of the fall of the Reich in the East. Beevor's book is good, but if you want to make an enemy of a Russian then mention it in his presence. They hate him!

Morlar

bigkev49 wrote: »

Some interesting views of Berlin then and now.


Click here.

Thats an excellent website, not sure why they left out the book burning square though. I would recommend the 'third reich tours' a walking tour of the city if you go there that costs about 10 euro and lasts several hours. They take in most of the major sites of interest ending up at the bunker site and then the new jewish memorial which is not far from there. Its also interesting to see the Cold war sites too. The Munich one looks interesting too;

http://www.thirdreichruins.com/munich.htm

Grizzly 45

If any of you want to go on Hols in Berlin and check out some of the underground bunkers of ww2 and cold war.I suggest www.berlinunterwelten.de

Brilliant and unique tours.:D

Leadership

bigkev49 wrote: »

I would love to do is to go and view WW2 sites for myself, especially the Normandy beaches,

I highly recommend a visit to the Normandy beaches, loads to see and certain parts are very emotional especially Arromanches the beaches and the old German artillery position full of bunkers that you can freely roam around and crawl through.

Plenty to do for a week in the summer.

Lockstep

Leadership wrote: »

I highly recommend a visit to the Normandy beaches, loads to see and certain parts are very emotional especially Arromanches the beaches and the old German artillery position full of bunkers that you can freely roam around and crawl through.

Plenty to do for a week in the summer.

Seconded.

Great place to be sure.

I seen all these site in June, really really impressive stuff.

FiSe

You should go to Ukraine and Russia. Normandy is nice, but nothing in comparsion to this...