Macabre Photos Disgrace German Military

Der Spiegel ^ | 2006-10-25

[cartan]

Five photos threaten to stain the German military's reputation just as the country debates its role in international security operations. The images, showing German soldiers posing with a skull near Kabul, have sparked outrage from the government and may increase public reluctance to keep troops abroad.

The photos are unmistakably crass, ranging from a shot of a skull mounted over the headlight of a jeep to a close-up of a soldier holding his penis in his left hand and the skull next to it in his right. These are just two of five photos published Wednesday by the German daily Bild, showing members of German security forces in Afghanistan desecrating human remains evidently found while on patrol near Kabul. Two other photos show the skull affixed to a metal pole—a “cable cutter”—that extends vertically like a flag mast from the jeep's front bumper. Another shows a German soldier holding the skull and grinning.

[ArrogantBustard]

Either he's p!$$!ng on somebody's grave, or he's more than a bit pervy.

[patton]

I got my degree in math, not englisch, thankyouverymuch. LOL.

[Map Kernow]

“What kind of war do civilians suppose we fought anyway? We shot prisoners in cold blood, wiped out hospitals, strafed lifeboats, killed or mistreated enemy civilians, finished off the enemy wounded, tossed the dying into a hole with the dead, and in the Pacific boiled flesh off enemy skulls to make table ornaments for sweethearts, or carved their bones into letter openers.”

---Edgar L. Jones, Atlantic Monthly, February 1946

[wtc911]

And I can't balance a checkbook, thankyouverymuch...

[antiRepublicrat]

Daisy is dead?! OMG, what horrible, front-page worthy news! But then this is Bild.

This is like Paris Hilton dying at middle-age, and then a year after her death her chihuahua's death makes the front page.

[patton]

Neither can I. I SAID I got a degree in math...need to take off my shoes to count above 9.

[synbad600]

Indians collected scalps.

[SpinnerWebb]

You meant...

[SpinnerWebb]

Shakespeare is great.... for me to POOP on!

[OESY]

During the Korean War, the Turks found that a little engineer tape to mark a boundary and a single impaled North Korean displayed for all to see was far more effective than triple concertina barbed wire, guards in towers and minefields at keeping out the unwanted.

[metesky]

I have photos of my late uncle with Merrills Marauders in Burma standing with arms outstretched, holding a Jap head by the hair in each hand.

A killer in war, he came home, went to school on the G.I. Bill and lived a normal peaceful life until he died at 90.

Warm beer in the Burma jungle:

Dat's Mon Onc, middle row, second from left.

[Map Kernow]

Being from balkans, and knowing what SS troops did to my people and rest of Europe, im not surprissed what I saw on that photo from Afghanistan.

Speaking as a supporter of Serbian Kosovo, and an opponent of Clinton's so-called "Kosova Campaign" of 1999, I am not here to defend German atrocities in the Balkans, or the antics of the German soldiers in Afghanistan. My only point is, that use of enemy remains as war trophies is not a German peculiarity---not in the past, or now.

[OESY]

The price of pulling out before victory in Indochina:
The skulls at the monument at the Choeung Ek
killing fields, Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

Liberals claim the dominoes didn't fall after
they cut off the funds for the Vietnam War.

[tx_eggman]

SpinnerWebb,

The GeoCities web site you were trying to view has temporarily exceeded its data transfer limit. Please try again later.

That's what you get for linking your site to FR ...

[Map Kernow]

Because of the racial aspect, and the exploitation by both sides of racist stereotypes of the enemy, the War in the Pacific was in the opinion of many particularly brutal. It goes without saying, even given practices among US soldiers such as "skull souvenirs," that Japanese military personnel in the Pacific were very often consciously savage towards American prisoners---not to mention civilian populations under their control. I recommend John W. Dower's War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War for more info.

[OESY]

These were the future leaders of Cambodia: their doctors, lawyers, bankers, businessmen, housewives....

Is there a lesson here for Iraq and the rest of the Middle East?

Meet Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge

[kronos77]

First, thank you for your support we apriciate it, and secondly, yes Im aware of that there is usage of enemy remains as war trophy all over the world.

I just spoke as Christian that Im not comfortable with that.

[monday]

"What is it about Germans....??"

I assume you also said "What is it about Americans...??" when the photos of Abu Ghraib prison were published?

Soldiers do stupid things sometimes. Posing for stupid photos is pretty normal behavior for all soldiers, not just Germans.

[SpinnerWebb]

LOL I've been FREEPED!

[metesky]

Map, I have all ten volumes of Pictorial History of the Second World War, William H. Wise and Co., Inc.. Old, out of print, cheap now, but my father bought the volumes as they came out, the first in 1944 the year of me. :O)

The last volume came out in 1949 after all the trials were over.

4,000 pages of pictures with captions mixed with a spare factual text. Covers all the theaters, with pictures of Manchuria in the Pacific Theater, Munich, Czechoslovakia, the Blitzkrieg into Poland, right through to the trials of Japanese and Nazi war criminals.

In addition to Pa's younger brother with Merrill in the Pacific, my mother's brother was with the 8th AAF and flew Ploesti and a chit load of other runs. I grew up with this stuff.

I was 9 or 10 years old before the old man would even let me look at some of the pictures, like the eyewitness drawings of a survivor of the Black Hole in a Manila hotel where the Japanese army had a production line POW decapitation thing goin'.

I'll look for that book. Thanks. I'm a sap for history books and one good thing about that, history books are usually the first ones discounted. My wife and I were almost alone in the history section at our public library's annual old book sell-off. Three grocery bags full of history for $20.00!