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ww2

Picture of the Day

Simo Hayha, The White Death in his winter camouflage, 1940

Simo Häyhä, also known as “The White Death,” was a Finnish sniper who is credited with killing 505 enemy troops within 100 days during the Winter War against the Soviet Union from 1939 to 1940.

Simo Häyhä’s involvement in the Winter War was very extraordinary. With his Mosin-Nagant M91 rifle, he would dress in white winter camouflage, and carry with him only a day’s worth of supplies and ammunition. While hiding out in the snow, he would then take out any Russian who entered his killing zone.

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How Were Pilots Chosen To Become Kamizakes?

how were kamikaze pilots chosen

Because the tokkōtai operation was a guarantee of death, the top military officers, quite hypocritically, decided not to make this operation an official part of the imperial navy or army, where orders were issued in the name of the emperor. They preferred to make it appear that the corps was formed voluntarily and that men volunteered to be pilots.

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I’m a German soldier in 1939. What are my chances to survive until 1945?

By the end of the war the Germans had 12.5 million men under arms. Over 4 million died during the war.

Survival depended upon where you were stationed.

If you were in the East there was a much higher chance of being killed and wounded than if you were in the West or in Denmark or Norway.

At the edges of the most vicious battles, such as the fighting near Vienna near the end of the war, or in Silesia, or in Czechoslovakia (where the Germans won major victories til the very last day) the chances of dying were very high.

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Picture of the Day

Lost German Girl

The Lost German Girl, 1945. V-Day in Europe/

This is Lore Bauer. Born in Kollerschlag, Austria 1921. She was assigned to the Prague anti-aircraft department in late 1944 as a technical assistant, or Helferin.

Raped and beaten by Czech Partisans, Lore was caught fleeing the Red Army into West Czechoslovakia, which had just been declared a demarcated American military zone.

Lore survived the Allied internment camp system, then went on to build a new life, working for an Airlines company after the war.

She died in 94′, at the age of 73… The film footage was taken on May 8, 45′, near Plzeň, along the old Prague Highway, by Oren Haglund of the United States Army Air Corps.

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How Did Germany Defeat France So Easily In WW2?

how did germany defeat france so easily in ww2

It was a combination of factors.

One thing that’s very overplayed is the Maginot Line; the line of fortifications that France built along its border with Germany. In the popular imagination people often say that the French sat behind the Maginot Line and the Germans went around it through Belgium, but that’s just completely false. The French in fact built the Maginot Line to force the Germans to go through Belgium. The French sent their best forces and tanks to Belgium when the Germans attacked.

But what happened is that the Germans took a big gamble that paid off. Belgium can be roughly divided into two parts:

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Picture of the Day

Hans-Georg Henke

Hans-Georg Henke, a 16 year old German soldier, after a long battle he was captured by the American’s and taken as a POW. He burst into tears as a combination of shell shock and fear

A sixteen-year-old German anti-aircraft soldier of the Hitler Youth, Hans-Georg Henke, taken prisoner in the state of Hessen, Germany. He was a member of the Luftwaffe anti-air squad who burst into tears as his world crumbled around him.

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Picture of the Day

germany invades soviet union

June 22, 1941, Germany invades the Soviet Union

Why did they invade the Soviet Union?

Operation Barbarossa was an operation created out of necessity as much as anything else. The previous successful campaigns against Poland and France were successful, but were costly to the German economy. Germany lacked key resources, particularly oil. Germany’s attempts to produce synthetic oil in any great quantity had been unsuccessful. Russia offered Germany a huge supply of oil, plentiful supplies of labor for German industry and to a more ideological degree, lebensraum, the notion of living space for the German people.

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How Is World War 2 Taught In German Schools

ww2 german schools

When you grow up here and you are still rather young, you get the sense that you (as in Germans) fucked up in the past and its a lingering feeling but you are too young to understand or make sense of it.

As in you might wave to someone with your right arm and hold it up to long and someone scolds you for it or a parent quickly tells you to lower your arm and they try to tell you why.

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