Posted on 02/01/2015 2:57:53 AM PST by Paid_Russian_Troll
Over 9,000 people died in the Baltic Sea on January 30, 1945, in an attempt to evade the Red Army. The Wilhelm Gustloff was the largest shipwreck in history, but little is known about the catastrophe seven decades on.
At around 9 p.m. on January 30, 1945, Adolf Hitler was speaking to the German people. In the packed dining hall of the luxury liner "Wilhelm Gustloff," as in most of the rest of the country, a radio was broadcasting Hitler's address, but the thousands of refugees from Pomerania and East and West Prussia who had struggled onto the ship weren't listening to the Führer now.
They wanted one thing - to be rescued. Only very few, 1,252 to be precise, made it off the steamer alive, of the well over 10,000 - mostly women and children, but also navy sailors. The ship had been hit by three Soviet torpedoes within an hour; the temperature outside was minus 18 degrees Celsius.
The solace offered by the Wilhelm Gustloff was enormous for the passengers who boarded the ship at Gotenhafen. Hundreds of thousands of German civilians had wanted to embark on ship in the port near Gdansk, in what is today Poland. The Red Army was on their heels and their thoughts were of Nemmersdorf. It was the first village in German territory reached by the Soviets and there were already rumors circulating of the draconic revenge on the part of the Soviets for German war crimes. Only the navy could rescue them now.
(Excerpt) Read more at dw.de ...
After watching Schindler’s List last week I did some digging and found that some of the survivors said that many of the the Nazis guarding Schindler’s factories tended to treat the Jews fairly well.
Granted it was partly because Schindler was bribing the guards but it was just as much Schindler’s example they were following.
“We are not uncivilized, immoral muslims. “
Did you ever consider the Civil War, whereby we were not so kind to POWs? How about carpet bombing entire cities or using nuclear weapons on cities in WWII? We killed millions of non-combatants in WWII. Try that today and the lawyers would call it a war crime.
I’ll say it again: War is Hell and it needs to be to help prevent wars by making them so undesirable by everyone.
Since we have made war a kinder-gentler civil procedure we seem to be having “wars” all over the place and for years and years. The US has become one of the world’s policemen. 1984: “We have always been at war with Eurasia.”
I’m just glad that ISIS is observing the rules of jihad...
IMHO it was you who brought Stalin’s atrocities at post #46 as if a number of his victims made any excuse for Nazi crimes.
It wasn’t odds who started with that reference or looking for fight.
Nice tribute, thanks.
It was a necessity, particularly in Japan.
In the accounts by many people (one of them Louis Zamperini) who walked through the destroyed neighborhoods as a prisoner, he saw, the only upright objects poking through the ashes, industrial machinery.
War industry was a cottage industry in Japan, it was distributed throughout the civilian community even into their homes. I believe it was much the same in Germany.
Even apart from that, the Axis set the tone in the Thirties into the Forties with Rotterdam and Nanking. That was the treatment we could expect if we lost, so Queensbury Rules were not followed.
It was unrestricted war.
“We are not barbarians. We are not uncivilized, immoral muslims. They act with deliberate, anti-Christian evil. We do not. . .and Christianity wrote the rules, not the enemy.”
Cherokee Trail of Tears.
Thousands of Cherokee Indians died in 1838 when the US government force marched 16,543 Indians hundreds of miles, and that death march resulted in about 4,000 deaths.
Don’t say we the US doesn’t do those things, we have, and with the Indians we even had a treaty we violated.
“It was unrestricted war.”
And I totally agree with that. War should never be restricted in any way. Why would a belligerent refrain from war if it thinks it might get away with it somehow?
“It was a necessity, particularly in Japan.”
I agree with that, too. War must be won by whatever means necessary. There is no such thing as a “fair fight” when it comes to war. You must fight to win and I don’t care if that means slaughtering every man, woman, and child the enemy has and leveling his entire country.
“We are not barbarians. We are not uncivilized, immoral muslims. “
P.S. SIOP 1. I think you might know what that means.
It was unrestricted war.
It is an unfortunate fact of life; The aggressor sets the rules.
I will say, we do seem bound and determined to ignore the message sent to us by militant Islam, though.
While the genocide against Christians in the mideast isn’t being conducted as an assembly line like the nazis, the genocide is no different in its result.
Agreed. Isn’t it “interesting” that what is happening to them is unknown to most American, if not people around the world?
“I will say, we do seem bound and determined to ignore the message sent to us by militant Islam, though.”
Just had a thought about that: We know Obama is muslim and that he supports islam, but by ignoring the threat islam is our government officials are subjecting us to Islamic savagery. We are victims of savagery by our own government’s refusal to use our resources to protect us.
It's most likely the same crowd that didn't mention the bombing of Holland (a neutral country)and the bombing of London.
"The most dramatic sinking in Florida waters took place the night of April 10, 1942, when U-123 torpedoed the tanker Gulfamerica off Jacksonville Beach. The resulting fiery explosion was clearly seen onshore and curious crowds gathered to view the ship's destruction and looked on in shock as the German submarine surfaced and fired its deck gun at the tanker. In response to the Gulfamerica sinking, in which nineteen crew members were lost, Governor Spessard Holland ordered a blackout of lights that could be seen at sea and might silhouette passing ships."
Thanks; I didn’t realize it was at night. Imagine seeing that off the beach?
Here in NJ (before my time) we had the burned hull of the “Morro Castle” beached off Asbury Park; I’ve seen a framed newspaper front page from the next day - absolutely bizarre!
You are right. And we would be justified in returning the disfavor and ignoring the Geneva Convention when our enemies do not abide by it — especially when then neither abide by it nor are signatories to it.
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