Posted on 09/26/2010 6:17:37 PM PDT by naturalman1975
I believe I read that one somewhere over the years, it happens.
Not so remarkable, given that his own Royal Family's roots were German and up until WW One most of them spoke only German. Those who spoke English did so with an accent.
I do not doubt the accuracy of your account. What I had tried to say was that initially the treatment was in recognition of the Geneva Convention.
When the Germans became aware of the terrible efficiency of the Allied Airforces and the inability of the Luftwaffe to defend, they realised what was happening. Then things broke down. The allied airmen were labeled as "murder fliers". This is what the British airmen who escaped from the POW camp at the end of the war were called. Some of the Germans that shot them out of hand, were hanged after the war. I do not doubt for one minute, that at the end, things got out of hand.
The Geneva Convention made it a war crime to deliberately terror bomb civilians. As Churchill said "There are no war criminals amongst the victors" .
Churchill was right.
And the Royal Family’s language skills translate to an army captain exactly how?
Sorry, you don’t, from scratch, learn enough of any language by osmosis in two weeks to understand an overheard snatch of conversation about a bomb about to go off.
Perhaps the story is inaccurate. Perhaps the German said it out loud to the British officer’s face. But if indeed the captain only overheard it when the German was talking not to the captain but to his comrades, then it would most likely have been said in fairly colloquial fashion. If the story is accurate, then to have heard it and understood it and acted immeiately on it is quite remarkable. What’s so tough about agreeing with that? Why do you have to make a fuss?
The captain had to have had a pretty decent knowledge of the language. Sure, that’s not out of the realm of the plausible for an officer. It is, however, serendipitous: you have a small unit quartered in a sleepy village and the captain has a fairly sophisticated mastery of German.
I applaud him. But don’t try to make out as if it’s just par for the course, nothing unusual. It’s a pretty darn unusual conjunction of circumstances in a story that was already pretty darn unusual.
Besides, with the romance languages, it's all Latin with a funny accent.
My point was that some brits did understand german back in the day because they spent time there. Especially, well travelled, well educated people like orficers.
/johnny
Yeah, there is a word, “bombe”—but would you refer to an explosive charge under a wing as a bomb? More likely you’d say, “Well, it’s going to blow any minute now” or “it’ll go off any second.” Or, knowing you might be overheard, you’d very likely use a colloquial euphemism. What you would not say is “Well, any minute now there’s a bombe going to explode under the wing.”
You don’t learn to hear and understand jokes and cryptic, coded language spoken by those who don’t want you to understand you if your total exposure is casual and tourist.
You just don’t.
Again, the story may be inaccurate. Perhaps it was not merely overheard but was directly spoken in formal German to the officer. But why would the German do that?
Of course some Brits understood German. I know that. Yes, officers are more likely to have had foreign language skills. But some would have had French or Italian, not necessarily German. The fact that this officer not only heard but understood instantly and reacted immediately is, I repeat, unusual—assuming the acount is accurate.
What’s your problem with letting the event be even more unusual that you may have realized? Are you just contrary by nature?
Have you ever been a GI dealing with bar-girls in a foreign country? And I wouldn't call the exposure casual.
/johnny
Not necessarily. Any reasonably well-educated Briton would have had some sort of foreign language, and if the guy had been around for (and before) the last war, German would have been a reasonable choice.
I believe in American an British exceptionalism. I expect it. I've seen and experienced a lot of it first-hand.
I just don't have a very narrow and sheltered world-view.
/johnny
And the more I think about it.... I was just an NCO, but I can get by in French, Spanish, Italian (all the romance languages) and can do ok with German, especially technical German. No so good with the Slavic languages (except some Russian phrases learned during the cold war), and completely inept with the oriental languages because of my hearing loss, but I can read enough Korean to get around following signs. And I can sound out written Hebrew and Greek.
And I didn't study that much. I'm not special. My last job with the military was as a cook.
I think your expectations are low. Lots of the guys I served with had a multitude of talents.
I would expect a British officer to do something like what occured during the '40s, when education was better, there was no TV, and it was his business.
And body language probably had as much to do with it as German.
/johnny
Tough day at work??? Other posters have provided the likely source of his skills - travel. I was merely pointing out an historical fact that illustrates another facet of the cross-cultural nature of Western Europe.
Hope you have a better day today...
I have done some reading and although this might not proven as to the case, the Germans may have starved. Clement Attlee was the new Prime Minister. The man detested inhuman treatment of the downtrodden and helpless. I understand that four million pounds per day was allocated for the Germans.
I know myself that the British Communists would have provoked riots, if this got out. For when Sir Oswald Mosley, the former British Union of Fascists was released from prison, there were riots by the Communists. 1944 and no threat. He had served three years imprisonment and had disavowed Hitler in 1939.
Just a little ramble here and a few memories, of a now old man, (in remarkable health) "-'oo remembered the 'ole bloomin' war".
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