Unsere Mütter, Unsere Väter... the german band of brothers?

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kiler
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Re: Unsere Mütter, Unsere Väter... the german band of brothe

Post by kiler »

Well, for a long time I was thinking whether to write in this topic or not.

At first I thought I will watch it just like you did: as a normal TV series, nice for reenactors because of uniforms etc., etc. . However, just as it started I found so many stupid, unreal and deceitful things in it that I am not able to watch it without strong emotions, even though it really had some nice battle scenes.

Let me start from the beginning. First scene: two German soldiers (one is an officer) having a party with a Jew in the summer of 1941. Really? You actually believe it? Have you read Stauffenberg`s (yes, THIS Stauffenberg) letters to his wife that he wrote from Poland in 1939? A short quote:
The inhabitants are an unbelievable rabble, very many Jews and very much mixed population. A people which surely is only comfortable under the knout.
( http://books.google.pl/books?id=2k7vugC ... &q&f=false p.115 )

I don`t think he was a Nazi - after all he tried to assassinate Hitler. You think that he would party with this "rabble"?

Second thing: German soldiers in Russia paying for food to peasants. Have you ever heard about something called 'kontyngent'? The farmers from eastern Europe were obliged to provide food products to Germans for free. If they didn't, they were killed:

http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plik:Germa ... d_1941.jpg
http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plik:Polis ... ,_1943.jpg

As for military aspects: SS-Standartenfuhrer riding into a forest in Poland with only one motor as an escort in the summer of 1944? ...
If you read memoirs from that time you will find that at that time Germans didn't enter Polish forests in the strength lower than a battalion. The high Police Officers were not safe even in big cities ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Kutschera ) let alone in the forest, where you could find partisan units of a divisional strength.

But the biggest amount of nonsense is to be found in the part showing Viktor`s story in occupied Poland.

In the first scene in Poland he is shot at by a Polish farmer. If a weapon was found by Germans - the Pole was instantly shot to death or sent to KL for that. I think that the series script writer read to much of Karl May - Hitler`s favourite writer and he mistook a Polish farmer under German occupation with American farmer fighting with Indians.

In this series Armia Krajowa (AK) - the partisan unit is shown as anti-Semitic organisation. It is strange, because it was only underground organisation in Europe that created a special unit to help Jews under German occupation called 'Żegota' ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zegota ) and it were AK soldiers, that liberated Gęsiówka KL - it was only Konzentrazionslager liberated by resistance in Europe ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gesiowka ). Most of Jewish survivors from that camp joined the AK unit that liberated them. Would they fight along with anti-Semits?

Before war there were almost 3 millions of Jews in Poland. The relations with them were sometimes good and sometimes worse, just as you have them with people from Muslim countries or India living in UK. However nobody in Poland ever thought of murdering them. That's nonsense!

These are my thoughts about this TV series. I hope that people will not learn history from it and read some books before stating any personal opinions.
kiler
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Re: Unsere Mütter, Unsere Väter... the german band of brothe

Post by kiler »

As for
Ungar wrote:Corporal punishment was unknown in the Wehrmacht, if not prohibited (which i have read somewhere, but I cannot support at the moment).
Really :?:

http://www.executedtoday.com/images/Han ... rter_2.jpg

Read about 'Blutiger Ferdinand' Schorner deeds before stating things like that :wink:
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LHistorian
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Re: Unsere Mütter, Unsere Väter... the german band of brothe

Post by LHistorian »

I for one could definitely see how we could get a war film from the German side of things, show the side a lot of people (a.k.a general public) don't get to see! also the link is down for the Unsere Mütter, Unsere Väter on youtubes, anyone have a new link for it? danke! :D
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Re: Unsere Mütter, Unsere Väter... the german band of brothe

Post by Oberleutnant Ulrich »

I'm glad they're keeping it in German...it's hard to dub the emotion.

However further down from the link, there was this sad story....come on Germany, grow up! It happened, move on!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22384143
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Re: Unsere Mütter, Unsere Väter... the german band of brothe

Post by fallschirmjaeger »

The videos have been removed....gutted... :cry:
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Re: Unsere Mütter, Unsere Väter... the german band of brothe

Post by Steiner »

Version with English subtitles to be released in May - check out Amazon. 8)
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kiler
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Re: Unsere Mütter, Unsere Väter... the german band of brothe

Post by kiler »

Thank God British Airways has noticed the real nature of that "piece of art":

http://www.thenews.pl/1/11/Artykul/1635 ... WWII-drama
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Re: Unsere Mütter, Unsere Väter... the german band of brothe

Post by carvillan »

kiler wrote:Thank God British Airways has noticed the real nature of that "piece of art":

http://www.thenews.pl/1/11/Artykul/1635 ... WWII-drama

Have you watched Schindler's List? I could have sworn there are Polish children throwing s**t and saying "Good bye Jews!" as they walk by into the ghetto. Is this the "real nature" of that Oscar winning piece of art?
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kiler
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Re: Unsere Mütter, Unsere Väter... the german band of brothe

Post by kiler »

Believe me, Polish children had better things to do than "throwing s**t and saying "Good bye Jews!". Mostly they were concerned about staying alive under German and Soviet occupation.
My Grandmother was a witness of a column of Jews marching from Ostrów to ghetto in Lubartów and she said that people were told to stay in their houses not to be shot by German Polizei and Hiwis from Trawniki Camp ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trawniki_c ... ation_camp ), that were escorting this column. Apparently, Germans were more concerned with the fact that Poles could give food to their former neighbours than throwing stones and saying "goodbye".
You can believe in the reality of that scene from Schindler`s List as well as that the Crimea was taken by strange guys in green uniforms that surely are not Russian soldiers. Good luck with that.
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Re: Unsere Mütter, Unsere Väter... the german band of brothe

Post by carvillan »

Your ignorance of human nature is quite funny. You obviously believe that all Poles were totally innocent of any negative behaviour during WW2. I'm sure there were Poles who were anti-semetic just as there were anti-semetic British. FFS many members of the SS were 'freiwilligen' from all over Europe including Poland. Or do you disbelieve this too?

Anyway, ignorance is bliss eh?
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kiler
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Re: Unsere Mütter, Unsere Väter... the german band of brothe

Post by kiler »

carvillan wrote:Your ignorance of human nature is quite funny. You obviously believe that all Poles were totally innocent of any negative behaviour during WW2.
Of course not. There were Poles who acted in a horrible way, i.e.: ones we called "szmalcownicy" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Szmalcownik ) but they were minority, not majority and were consistently chased and sentenced to death by the Special Courts of the Polish Underground (this "anti-semitic AK" ) for crimes against Polish citizens (Jews were also Polish citizens with full personal and voting rights).
carvillan wrote:I'm sure there were Poles who were anti-semetic just as there were anti-semetic British.
Every nation has it scums, even Jews had their Jüdischer Ordnungsdienst ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Ghetto_Police ). Tell me: does this mean that Jews are anti-Semitic?
As for Jüdischer Ordnungsdienst I`ll give you a story told me by my Grandfather (RIP). When I asked him about ghetto in Lubartów ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lubartow_Ghetto ) he told me that it had no walls. When a Jew run from it he was hunted by Jewish Police (not German and not Polish one). The Jews themselves took care that nobody left that place - no walls were needed.

carvillan wrote:FFS many members of the SS were 'freiwilligen' from all over Europe including Poland. Or do you disbelieve this too?
Anyway, ignorance is bliss eh?
Stating thing like this you omit one important fact (I think that THIS is what you call "ignorance"):
Poles at that time were not considered by Germans as equal human beings. Jews were to be annihilated and Poles were to be slave labour, not comrades in arms. There was no "Polish Legion" in Waffen SS like "Charlemagne", "Britisches Freikorps" or "Frikorps Danmark". Only men of Polish nationality that served in German armed forces were ones that were given German nationality: voluntarily by declaring German nationality and signing Volksliste ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksliste ) and they were also traitors chased by Polish Underground State or forced ones from category III and IV - where refusal to join this list often lead to deportation to a concentration camp. Moreover, the latter usually deserted at first possibility to join Polish Armed Forces in the West ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Arm ... n_the_West ).

To Mods: as You asked: just facts from history, no politics :wink:
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Re: Unsere Mütter, Unsere Väter... the german band of brothe

Post by carvillan »

Dear oh dear oh dear :D :D :D :D

Where did I say there was a Polish SS division???

I said there were volunteers for the SS from all over Europe including Poland of which there were - FACT!!

Have a read! http://www.stormfront.org/forum/t88380/

I'll leave it there as I have said enough!! Keep your head in the sand and pretend it never happened!
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Re: Unsere Mütter, Unsere Väter... the german band of brothe

Post by kiler »

You STILL don`t get it: Poles were treated as "sub-humans" and as such could not join voluntarily Waffen SS. Poles as "sub-humans" didn`t have any collaborating government - they had a German governor, Hans Frank. Poles as "sub-humans" could not enter "Nur fur Deutsche" tram compartments, shops and restaurants, they could not even sit on "Nur fur Deutsche" benches in parks. If a Pole would go to SS recruiting centre and said: "I`m am a Pole and I want to join Waffen SS" he would end up in a concentration camp at best.

YES, there were about 225,000 ethnic Poles (mainly from Pomerania and Silesia) in Wehrmacht, but they were conscripted there as German citizens from III and IV Volksliste categories (you can read in wikipedia definition I attached in earlier post what this meant). I don`t know if this "white power forum" of yours is a good source but I found there a very nice quote from "Nothing less than victory" - the oral history of D-day by Russell Miller:
Private Aloysius Damski, age 21, 352nd Artillery Regiment:
I am a Pole. I was impressed into the German Army in February 1943. I was working in the office of a munitions factory in Blomberg when the manager called me in and said I could either go into the German forces or be declared "politically undesirable," which almost certainly meant a concentration camp. I was only twenty years old and I loved life, so I chose the army.
[...]
I used to listen to the BBC on the radio. The lieutenant in charge of our section listened too, but he would always vigorously deny the claims made by the British, saying they were "rubbish," but it didn't stop him listening. One day he called me into his office and said, "I am speaking to you not as an officer, but as a man. How German do you feel now?" I replied, "Well, since we are talking like this, I will tell you the truth. I was born in Poland, I was educated in Poland, both my parents are Polish and still live in Poland. How can I feel anything but Polish?" The lieutenant said nothing, but was always a little "reserved" with me after that.


This were your "volunteers". Many of them (about 90,000 - almost HALF of ones serving in WH!!!) later was captured or deserted and joined Polish Armed Forces in the West (they were making up 35% of this army). Rest either didn`t have the possibility to do so (i.e. were sent to eastern front) or was afraid of victimizing their families that stayed under German occupation (that is why most of WH deserters that served in Polish Army in the West did it under changed names).
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Re: Unsere Mütter, Unsere Väter... the german band of brothe

Post by mario33 »

carvillan wrote:I said there were volunteers for the SS from all over Europe including Poland of which there were - FACT!!

Have a read! http://www.stormfront.org/forum/t88380/
Sorry to say, but your 'quote' is a dubious one. No facts confirming the story and the quoted forum itself is far from being really objective...

Facts are:
- around 300.000 'Poles' were conscripted by the Germans to WH; gathered evidence says 90% of them not really voluntarily; lots of them, after being captured in Africa, in Italy or in the West, were transferred to the Polish Army in the West and served well.
- there were 'Poles' of Polish nationality, in the Waffen SS, as that formation stopped being really voluntary come late 1942; 'Poles' from the volksliste were conscripted to Waffen-SS as well; # of known reports can be counted on two hands; there are 1-2 of them reported really voluntary; there might have been more, but no evidence that was significant number (as for most other nations there is at least some evidence left);
- there was some number of former Polish citizens of Ukrainian nationality that joined various German units, including Waffen-SS; UPA was a separate story...
- there were attempts to organise Polish freiwillige but either failed or resulted in very limited number of volunteers (eg. via so called Polish Legion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polnische_ ... ld_War_II) or Goralenvolk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goralenvolk); you may count as much as 100-120 of them;
- there were former Polish citizens of Polish nationality involved in 'Einsatzgruppen' in the East or in collaboration within the area of Poland, mostly mixed with Ukrainians or Byelorussians (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polnisches ... aillon_202).

Mind you, Polish courts treated treason and war crimes accordingly, both underground and after the war. Eg. about 600 member of the 'Blue Police' were sentenced for crimes, including death sentences. Leaders of the Goralenvolk didnt even live long enough to see that (very clear reports about what their 'mountain' comrades did to them after 'liberation').
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