INCREDIBLE WAR IMAGES

This one is from the Second World War. The American plane had a lousy landing

These German soldiers had a bad end too

US soldiers go boom in Afghanistan

Some dramatic images from Second World War

German soldiers do a house-to-house search in Ukraine in the earlier days of the war in Russia

French 370-mm howitzer M1915, manufactured by Schneider and used by the Germans as a coastal artillery, captured by the Americans.

The German soldiers sprang a surprise on the Americans in Ardennes in 1944

American soldiers move with tank support in the German city of Wernberg

Russian people leave their city as Germans begin bombarding it

Soviet soldiers flush out German resistance from the Berlin Underground in April 1945

Harsh war in Russia: Part 1

The Eastern Front during the Second World war was no garden party for soldiers of both sides. Both sides showed little mercy. Geneva conventions was thrown out of the window. Below is shown the harsh reality of the war.

A massacred Soviet POW lies as a German soldier goes through his pockets.

Germans get hold of a Russian crew-member of a Captured tank.

A German soldier looks dispassionately at the remains of Russian soldiers

German soldiers finish off a Soviet sniper

Germans hang a Soviet lady partisan

Trace of humanity - A SS soldier looks on as a Russian soldier tends to a dying comrade.  The wounded man was given first aid. He had damaged his hands and feet.  The next moment the SS soldier leaned over the wounded Russian, and give him water from his flask

Men of Wehrmacht: German soldiers during WW2: Part 2

THE FIGHTING SPIRIT OF THE GERMAN SOLDIER

The War was lost for Germany once it became a War of attrition with the Soviet Union and America--a war with which Germany with its more limited resources could not win. It was the spirit and ability of the German soldier that enabled Germany to continue the War. German veterans complain that in American movies that the Germans are commonly portrayed as stupid. The German soldiers were never stupid. They were highly competent and professional. The Germans were outnumbered and over powered, not defeated through superior battlefield tactics. The strategic decisions that brought defeat were imposed by the political leadership--the German Fuhrer Adolf Hitler. The German soldier continued fighting even against staggering odds. One reason was that after 1942 they were fighting to protect Germany. Many believed in the NAZI cause. Many also realized what Germany had done in the occupied countries and fully expected the Allies to do the same when they reached the borders of the Reich. Another factor was the bond developed in the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS, Luftwaffe, and Kriegsmarine among individual soldiers, airmen, and sailors. Given the odds, the German servicemen knew that their only chance of surviving was to depend on their comrades. There was a community esprit de corps that was more typical of elite formations in the Allied armies. This was a spirit that had been inculcated in the Hitler Youth. Most German soldiers under 28 had been Hitler Youth boys. German soldiers were convince they had a duty to Germany and each other. This in itself ws not unique, but the strength of the bond was the a key factor in the ability of Hitler and the Nazis to continue a dogged resistance in 1944 and early 1945. They fought more for each other than their Fuhrer.

Street fighting on the streets of Nemiroff, Ukraine

NAZIS AND THE WEHRAMCHT

In simple terms the difference between ordinary soldiers and Nazi's was that Nazi's were party members, people who were often fanatically loyal to Hitler. Ordinary soldiers who belonged to the German army during the Second World War may have been loyal to their officers and the Fuhrer, but not all of them were members of the Nazi party. This led to some rather interesting situations towards the end of the war. As the regime crumbled under the weight of defending itself on two fronts, control of the defense of the nation was wrestled between Hitler and those generals who were loyal to him, which included members of the SS and Gestapo, and Generals who simply wanted to avoid mass casualties in a tactically difficult position.

Source

These German para-troopers have landed into a soup, as they are cornered. Russian front.

NAZIS AND THE WEHRMACHT

Many of the German officers in charge of the Army were from the German aristocracy and forged a different path to military service compared to the politically aligned SS. Resentment often arose between the groups due to the nature of the SS's unwillingness to surrender and desire to fight to the death regardless of circumstance. Antony Beever's work Berlin, which examines the fall of the German regime, highlights several incidents in which fanatical SS officers would shoot deserters from their own ranks and most definitely ordinary soldiers who retreated from the invading Russians.

Russia. A German soldier walks over to inspect a destroyed Soviet tank


Rudolf Vittsig - the legend of the German Airborne. Hero of the storming of the Belgian fort Eben-Emal, considered impregnable. Fort garrison with 1200 people and numerous artillery was suddenly attacked by 10 May 1940. The Germans landed into the fort by hang-gliders and took it over. German losses - 6 dead and 15 wounded out of the 85 soldiers and officers involved in the operation.

Wehrmacht men prepare dinner in Russia

The Germans are in a tight corner as Russian shelling makes life difficult for them

A gripping image of the war. Location: Somewhere in Russia. Russian soldiers wait as German soldiers and tanks approach them.

This is what remained of the German army after the battle for Moscow failed

The first day of Operation Barbarossa. German soldiers enter the Polish town of Przemysl, which was occupied then by the Russians. The city was occupied by German troops on June 22, but the next morning was liberated by the Red Army and border guards and held until 27 June.
German soldiers in winter clothing in Russia in 1942. They were better clothed in the second year of the war in Russia.

This Soviet POW seems eager to tell all that he knows.

RELATED....

Men of the Wehrmacht: German soldiers during WW2: Part 1
Wehramcht: Part 3 
Wehrmacht: Part 4

Men of Wehrmacht: German soldiers: Part 1

 THE GERMAN SOLDIER: BEST WW2 FIGHTER

The German soldier was the most effective combat soldiers of the War. Most attention to the German soldier is directed to the Blitzkrieg campaigns of 1939-41 when they faced poorly trained, equipped and led opponents. Actually the most amazing success of the German soldiers was their ability to withstand the onslaught of numerically superior Allied forces during 1943-44 without collapsing. The average Wehrmacht unit could operate effectively with one-third the supplies of a comparable American unit. In may cases the Allied superiority in men, planes, tanks, artillery was astronomical, better than 3 to 1, and often even more lopsided. The great tragedy was that the regime they protected was so diabolically evil. And Hitler for whom they made such enormous sacrifices was completely unmoved by their and their country's plight and sacrifice. His attitude was that if the German people did not win the War, they did not deserve to survive. 

German soldiers examine a Soviet machine gun DP-27 (Dyagtereva infantry sample 1927). They used it later themselves

WEAKNESS OF THE GERMAN WAR MACHINE

"On the home front we had free labor, which always outproduces slave labor--and the NAZIs were relying on slave labor. Hitler's technicians got stuck in ruts. They were ahead of the world in 1937, but in 1944 they were still building 1930s models. Most of all, we were helped by the fact that in the Army our soldiers accepted responsibility and seized the initiative, which are things that the children of democracy are very good at, and the children of totalitarians aren't. Hitler thought that his kids, brought up in the Hitler Youth, would always outfight kids brought up in the Boy Scouts, because his kids would unquestionably obey, and because they were fanatics. The problem with that was that ultimately the orders could only come from Hitler, so it was difficult to impossible for Germans to ever take the initiative. They would always be waiting for orders. They were paralyzed on D-Day. At a time when they had the means and the wherewithal to drive the British back into the sea, and the tank commanders were ready to go do it, they had to wait to get the okay from Hitler, who was a thousand kilometers away. It was just madness to run an army like that. You see the same thing on a smaller scale throughout the whole war. The Germans made great troops until the lieutenant got killed."

Preparing for action: These men are loading their machine-gun belt

The German taken care of , American soldiers look forward. Ardennes, 1944.

Handiwork of a Soviet sniper

Remains of German convoy after the Americans destroyed it. Near Cherbourg, France.

German soldiers with a Jew

March 1945. Just two months before the end. Goebbels congratulates a young recruit. The others are smiling. These folks were amazing. The Russians were at the doorsteps, remember?

The despair. Chief of Staff of the wrecked German Army, General Hans Krebs arrives at the Soviet Army headquarters in Berlin on May 1, 1945. Krebs shot himself later that day.

German POWs walk glumly under escort by a beady-eyed Russian soldier. Later stages of the war in the Eastern Front.

Russian (on horses) and German soldiers socialise in Poland, sometime in 1939.

The men were a hardy, resilient lot. Seen here in a trench in Russia. October 1943.

RELATED....

Men of Wehrmacht: German soldiers during WW2: PART 2
Wehramcht: Part 3 
 Wehrmacht: Part 4 

Unseen pictures of Battle of Stalingrad

The Germans race towards Stalingrad. August 1942. Part of the German 6th Army advancing on Stalingrad.

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THE BATTLE FOR STALINGRAD (Source: BBC)

The tables were turned when Hitler set in motion one of the bitterest conflicts of the 20th century - the Battle of Stalingrad. In the spring of 1942, he launched a two-pronged attack in what he believed would be his final offensive in the East.
One set of troops headed towards Baku and it's rich oil resources, whilst a second group pushed towards Stalingrad and the Volga. After more than a year of bitter defeats, the Soviet army was exhausted and demoralised, but it started to employ a new tactic - the fighting retreat - which put a strain on German supply lines. Soviet soldiers were no longer instructed by their generals to stand their ground at all costs. Instead they retreated - to avoid capture and continue fighting.

The Germans cross the River Volga on their way to Stalingrad. August 23, 1942 German 14 Panzer Corps broke through the front 62 Army in the area Vertyachego and traveled 72 kms per day, and reached the Volga north of Stalingrad.

The Germans moved swiftly forward, reaching the banks of the River Volga. The German soldiers of Army Group B had one last major task - to take the city of Stalingrad on the west bank of the Volga.
And so began the bitter and bloody battle. More than 1,000 tons of bombs were dropped on the city, but Stalin initially forbade any evacuation from the city, even of children. Soviet reinforcements had to cross the Volga from the east and many of them drowned under the weight of their clothing and weapons. The average life-expectancy of a Soviet private soldier during the battle of Stalingrad was just 24 hours.The infamous Penal Units - some of them including political prisoners - took part in suicidal missions as a way of atoning for their 'sins'. By the end of the siege, one million Soviet soldiers had died on the Stalingrad front.
The ferocity of the fighting at Stalingrad shocked the Germans, who were used to the relative ease of their Blitzkrieg tactics. Suddenly they were faced with hand-to-hand combat, often only yards away from the enemy. 'Our principle was to grab hold of the enemy and not let go; to hold him very close - as you'd hold a loved one', says Anatoly Mersko, who served under General Chuikov.
Soviet veteran Suren Mirzoyan remembers the blood lust of the time. 'I was like a beast. I wanted only one thing - to kill. You know how it looks when you squeeze a tomato and juice comes out? Well, it looked like that when I stabbed them. Blood everywhere. Every step in Stalingrad meant death. Death was in our pockets. Death was walking with us.'
As the battle raged, it was also time of terror for ethnic minorities on both sides of the dispute. In Germany, Hitler's 'final solution' reached it's horrific climax in extermination camps such as Auschwitz-Birkenau. Life expectancy for many on arrival could be measured in just hours.
In the USSR, meantime, Stalin's ruthless approach to punishing ethnic collaborators in the Soviet Union meant that whole ethnic nations were forcibly exiled to Siberia as punishment for the small number of collaborators in their midst. One of the ethnic groups who suffered most were the Kalmyks from the steppe south of Stalingrad. Stalin ordered every ethnic Kalmyk, including women and children, to be 'relocated' to even more remote regions of the Soviet Union.
Whole families were crammed onto insanitary transport trains. Many didn't survive the long journey. Officially, 93,000 Kalmyks, 68,000 Karachai people, 500,000 Chechens, 340,000 Balkars and 180,000 Tartars were deported. The figures are almost certainly underestimates.

Street fighting in Stalingrad. Initially the Germans were full of confidence. They felt that the city would fall soon, but the Russians surprised them. A nasty surprise, if I may say so.

THE GERMAN SIXTH ARMY

The German 6th Army was a field army which was created after the Franco-Prussian war and the German unification by the second half of the 19th century. The glorious 6th Army had its baptism of fire during World War I and its nemesis during World War II at the hands of the Russian winter, collapsing at the Battle of Stalingrad, for which it is best known. It was mostly composed of infantry elements. As a field army, the German 6th Army was a formation superior to a corps and beneath an army group. It consisted of a headquarters, which usually controlled at least two corps, and a variable number of divisions.

At the outbreak of World War I, the 6th Army was composed of 10 divisions organized around 5 corps; it was commanded by Prince Rupprecht von Bayern. When the French Plan XVII was launched in August 1914, it was deployed in the Central sector that covered Lorraine. In August 1914, in the Battle of Lorraine, Rupprecht’s 6th Army used a feigned withdrawal to lure the advancing armies onto prepared defensive positions and managed to resist the French fierce attack. When the Western Front got bogged down in a stalemate warfare, with the opposing forces forming lines of trenches, the 6th Army was based in Northern France. On September 24, 1915, the 6th Army was the target of the British Army’s first chlorine gas attack of the war. Despite having suffered horrific casualties, the Germans held the line as the British attacks were kept in check.

During World War II, the German 6th Army was reorganized in October 1939, after the Polish Campaign, using elements of the former 10th Army, under the command of Walther von Reichenau. In May 1940, it took part in the invasion of the Low Countries and linked up with the German paratroopers who destroyed the fortifications at Eben Emael, Liège, and fought in the Battle of Belgium. Then the 6th Army participated in the breakthrough of the Paris defenses on June 12, 1940, before acting as a northern flank for German forces along the Normandy coast during the last stages of the Battle of France.

When Operation Barbarossa was launched on June 22, 1941, the 6th Army was the spearhead of Army Group South in its drive into Soviet territory. In January, 1942, Friedrich Paulus was appointed commander of the 6th Army, replacing von Reichenau, who had suffered a heart attack. The new commander led the 6th Army during the ferocious Second Battle of Kharkov, which took place in the spring of 1942. The victory at Kharkov sealed the 6th Army’s destiny as it was selected later that year by the German High Command for the attack on Stalingrad. As the German 6th Amry could not capture the city fast, the Russian winter came and the Red Army launched Operation Uranus, which was a Soviet counter-attack by Soviet that surrounded the Germans in a pincers movement from November 19 to November 23, 1942. Thus 6th Army was trapped. A relief operation, called Operation Wintergewitter, conducted by Field Marshal Erich von Manstein failed to provide the Germans with adecuate military and food supply. By January 31, 1943, the 6th Army of Friedrich Paulus had been reduced from 800,000 men to 85,000, and on February 2, Friedrich Paulus surrendered.

Then came the fierce winter and the even fiercer Russian opposition. Winter, 1942.

Autumn 1942 saw some very heavy fighting. Building to building. Street to street.

The Germans were running out of supplies. The Luftwaffe tried heroically to keep it going but that too stopped when the last airstrip under German control fell. Above two Germans froze to death.
A Russian soldier uses a flame-thrower.

Russians move on the outskirts of Stalingrad

Russian marines join the action

Neutral Netherlands (Holland) during WW1

Argentina, Chile, Denmark, The Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Venezuela, Sweden and Switzerland.

Only these countries were neutral during the Great War 1914-1918. The rest of the world conducted war with each other.

Following the adage that he who wants peace prepares for war, the small Dutch army exercised continuously. In the East Holland bordered to Germany and in the south to German-occupied Belgium. The heavy gunfire in Flanders was heard in Holland every day. The Belgian battlefields were no more than 40 km's away (about 26 miles).

The Dutch mobile artillery corps crosses a brook in the southern province of Brabant. 1914

When the war broke out more than one million Belgian refugees fled to Holland. Thousands of soldiers, from both sides, followed them. They crossed the border because the enemy had them encircled, like it happened to 2,000 British marines at Antwerp.

Disarmement of German infantry troops who fled across the border to the Netherlands

All foreign soldiers arriving in The Netherlands were disarmed and interned in camps where they were to stay during rest of the war. The German soldiers called this place the graveyard, because of the bayonets that were put into the ground.

The Dutch government had mobilized 500.000 man to reinforce the regular army. They guarded the borders and filled their days with exercising and polishing...

Mobile pigeon station

There were many incidents in which war-countries were involved. England for instance, bombed - by accident - the Dutch port of Zierikzee.

And German U-boats torpedoed and sank many Dutch ships - even one that transported German prisoners-of-war from England to the Netherlands.

In spring 1915 the Germans erected an dreadful electric fence between occupied Belgium and the Netherlands. The 2,000 Volts wire ran almost 200 Km (125 Miles) long through villages, orchards, meadows, woodland, over brooks - even over the river Meuse. The height of the construction was over 3 meters. How many people the fence killed is unknown. Estimates vary from 2,000 to 3,000.

The word neutral comes from ne uter (=none of both), but in the Netherlands making a choice was a near thing: commander-in-chief General C.J. Snijders had a strong liking for the 'invincible' Germany.

Dutch queen Wilhelmina on horseback, observing a military exercise

Because of his attitude the government several times tried to get rid of the general, but Queen Wilhelmina kept on backing her CIC. The queen was fond of the army and often visited the troops and observed exercises.

Dutch navy men defuse mines washed ashore

To maintain neutrality the Netherlands laid mines in coastal waters, to prevent hostile landings.

Three times (in 1916, 1917 and 1918) Germany considered occupying the Netherlands. In that case the allied countries without doubt would have invaded the country from the seaside.

Germany eventually refrained from invading Holland, also because of the food supplies that continuously flowed from this country. This trade made some merchants in Holland very rich. They were called OW'ers, meaning 'oorlogswinst-makers': war-profiteers. Until this very day OW'er is considered a harsh term of abuse in Holland.

In the Netherlands there are some cemeteries where victims of the Great War are buried. Many were sailors who fell at sea. Others are civilians or navy-personnel who died at the beaches where countless mines washed ashore.

Many people still bore a grudge to England because of the Boer War, fifteen years earlier, when thousands of Boers (Dutch descendants) in South-Africa had been killed by British soldiers.