They survived the Russian hordes, life went on... somehow. I see you are from Russia, Mr. First. What is it you want to say with this thread? Are you happy your country conquered the German Reich? I know you had a big parade in Moscow this year, 70 years after Zukov hoisted the Russian flag over the Reichstag or was it the Brandenburger Gate? And now? Angela Merkel is slapping sanctions on your country! Ha ha....
Russian hordes have to take European capitals from time to time... To clean it from next European genius like Napoleon or Hitler...
I saw the footage before. If memory serves me right it was shot on 16mm by the US military. I think even us who were conquered by Russia are happy that we got conquered by Russia and we got rid of the crazies. I talked to a senior quite a few years back who was a protestant priest. He was born in the early 30s in Berlin (and considered Arian back then) and obviously had to join the Hitler Youth. As a teenager he was even recruited into the Germany army and he had to shot at bombers in 1945. He said he lived through 12 years of Nazis and 45 years of communism and the 12 years Nazis were infinitely worse. That always stuck with me! And I have heard this view multiple times since from all kinds of people.
Could your Priest be exaggerating? The war was over in May 1945. He could not possible have understood what National-Socialism actually was. Naturally, the war years were hard, due to food shortages and the incessant bombing of Germany's cities and industrial centers. By saying 45 years of Communism was infinitely better he forgets that 6 of the 12 years were during wartime.
As I stated before: it is not an isolated comment I heard, but rather a reoccurring theme among people who lived through that time. He was the first to tell me though, and it happen to stick out in my mind. Back then I was in the first or second year of college doing my history degree, and maybe that's why this story stands out in my mind more, but I also worked with live stories for my thesis and got that view confirmed again. I have yet to find people who consider communism worse than the 12 years prior in Germany.
I've talked with dozens of Poles, Hungarians and other Eastern Europeans who lived under German occupation and Soviet occupation and every one of them said the Soviets were barbarians, animals. But I suppose if you were forced to watch your mother, sisters and grandmother being gang raped by Soviet soldiers you might have a prejudice.
From what I understand both German and Soviet occupations were both extremely bad, so I'm not here to dispute that, however that also wasn't my intention. The OP shows the situation in Berlin, so naturally I assumed we were talking about primarily Germans (or German territories) here, and it definitely depends where somebody is from. The people I talked to so far lived through the war and the time before primarily in rural areas and didn't have to go through constant bombings during the war. The mentioned priest left Germany to work on a farm when he wasn't even 10 years old.
Only people who actually lived in East Germany after the war can make that comparison. Hard to believe any of those oldies would still be alive to tell you. One would have had to be at least 20 - 25 years old in 1933 to qualify for a serious opinion. That would make your priest about 77 in 1990. Let's say you met him in 2010. He would be at least 97years old. Perhaps he was a Jewish priest; they usually get quite old. Of course he wouldn't have enjoyed the 12 years of Nazism. Maybe he was incarcerated? Anyway, good for you that you met him and could learn something about history.
Unfortunately I have not met people who were old enough in 1933 to have been elegable to vote. However I have met people who were born in the late 20s and did remember the Nazi era and the communist time after. Its rare that you meat people from the mid 20s though because they had to serve most if not all of the duration of the war. And even if they survived could have ended in Russian prision camps until 1955. So you had to be quite lucky to be alive and mentally stable enough to live all through that death and report about it. My grand-mother was born 1918. I think it is more a question of being mentally fit enough to go through all that... Maybe if you were lucky enough you did not even see too much death. None of the people I talked to were incarcerated. The people who got incarcerated by the Germans or the Russians tend to have biographies and are well documented.
I remember from my youth, that all relatives, born from 1914 to 1925 had a real inhibition to speak about those 12 years. They didn't deny things happened, didn't argue for or against it, didn't relativate - they simply didn't take the theme and didn't want to speak with me about it. They were no party members, not actively part of the cruelties, but i think they felt, that swimming with the stream was something wrong. So I got very small stories about 1933-1945 (although my grandfather must have served in a lot of battles), but lots of stories of the (west German) time after 1945, beginning with their release as POW on the one family side and the expulsion from Sudetenland on the other. Speaking with east Germans you have a total different situation - people who argue pro and contra DDR, people who take themselves as opostional heroes, people who relativate, people who still find it o.k. how it was - but all of them talk about that time.
Yeah, how nice, we got some fresh meat here!!! What is significant about 2050? Will you be 50 years old then?? Or is that the year when the last German bites the dust? I hear, they are dying out. The war ended 70 years ago and most people who experienced the wartime are old, some senile, or dead. Besides, in Germany you are not allowed to speak your mind freely, they have something like #130 degree punishment. A lot of Germans sit in jail. Anything to do with Nazi is forbidden. I found a funny website... "Zey will charge zem in Mannheim with anti-Semitism" Director General Efraim Zuroff of the Wiesenthal Center has sworn to revenge sugar packets made in Croatia bearing the likeness of Adolf Hitler. ''Zis is a crime'' shouted Rupert Murdoch aka Murdocai when he heard of it. ''How can somebody do zis to us,'' 78 years old Rupert added. '' I shall tell zis to ze Germans. Zey will charge zem in Mannheim with anti-Semitism. There in Mannheim, every second judge is a Jew.'' http://globalfire.tv/nj/07en/persecution/german_world_terror.htm ------------------- See? Just an imagined image of Hitler gets you in jail! Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill were all angels. Now we are told Putin is as bad as Hitler!! He surely does look like a killer, don't you think?
