ARmy Rumour SErvice

**Wordsmith** · 08-05-2012, 20:06

Lest we underestimate the savagery of the fighting on the Eastern front, there is a sobering story in the English version of Der Spiegel.

Germany Tracing Its War Dead from World War II - SPIEGEL ONLINE

Some 3 million German soldiers died in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in World War II, and the fate of hundreds of thousands of them remains unknown to their relatives and descendants...The end of the Cold War over two decades ago enabled the organization to start locating grave sites, identifying bodies and re-interring them in new cemeteries across Russia and the Eastern European countries invaded by the German army. Some 716,000 German war dead have been found and reburied since then, and that number increases by 40,000 each year, the commission said. The database processes some 20,000 searches per month.

Soldiers were often buried hastily where they fell, or near field dressing stations and hospitals where they died of their wounds. Most of the burial sites are unmarked, and some are mass graves, said Kirchmeier. "We have gathered a lot of records from the war and we use them to locate cemeteries. Then our staff travel there to try to pinpoint them.

"We rely on the help of local eyewitnesses, which is a further aspect putting us under time pressure because these people are of course very old and we won't be able to ask them in 10 years' time. We often come too late. Sites have often been plundered by people who searched the graves looking for items they can sell."

Sometimes, the commission's teams get a hostile reception.

"Some people are happy when the dead are taken away from their land but occasionally we still encounter massive resentment by local people," said Kirchmeier. "The memory of the occupation by the Germans and of the war crimes is still very alive." The war claimed 20 million lives in the Soviet Union and 6 million in Poland alone. The forces of Nazi Germany laid waste to vast swaths of the land they conquered in a war of annihilation that targeted civilians from the start.

The war in the West was fought largely according to the Geneva convention and with a lower casualty rate than the East. But 40,000 reburials a year, many unmarked and after all this time - makes you think about the sheer carnage of what went on on the Eastern Front. Add in the Russian dead and the civilians the Nazis (and to a lesser extent the Russians) butchered and the scale gets still greater.

Wordsmith

**sirbhp** · 08-05-2012, 21:11

it makes you think doesn't it ? do you know the percentage of unknown corpses ? it seems so sad that you have graves with no names on them . no matter which army they served in .

**supermatelot** · 08-05-2012, 21:26

Probably not well known because all Germans who died in the war are often wrongly equated to NAZIs. So it's probably been kept quiet due to modern day embarrassment of what people before us got up to.

I never had the thought, or the time to ask my grandad about "his" war. I thought I was living one of my own only a few years after joining up. I remember him once saying though, in response to I can't exactly remember...: "They were sailors, not nazis". I think I asked him if he hated them or something like that. Dunno, I was young and can't remember exactly.

Wish I could ask the fucker a few questions now though...

**Nato Standard123** · 08-05-2012, 21:29

Originally Posted by sirbhp

it makes you think doesn't it ? do you know the percentage of unknown corpses ? it seems so sad that you have graves with no names on them . no matter which army they served in .

Should have made things easier for themselves like they did for their victims......

Technology may reveal missing Holocaust graves | Sci-Tech | Jewish Journal

**supermatelot** · 08-05-2012, 21:34

Should have made things easier for themselves like they did for their victims......

how many of ours who have died in Afg were dyed in the wool New Labour supporters who were born with an inherrent hatred of all things dari?

**DeltaDog** · 08-05-2012, 21:40

Originally Posted by supermatelot

I never had the thought, or the time to ask my grandad about "his" war. I thought I was living one of my own only a few years after joining up. I remember him once saying though, in response to I can't exactly remember...: "They were sailors, not nazis". I think I asked him if he hated them or something like that. Dunno, I was young and can't remember exactly.

My grandad had nothing against the Germans, for more or less the same reason - but despised the French. Absolutely fucking hated them. Not sure why.

**Nato Standard123** · 08-05-2012, 21:43

Originally Posted by supermatelot

how many of ours who have died in Afg were dyed in the wool New Labour supporters who were born with an inherrent hatred of all things dari?

Who knows?...probably not as many who shot and beat to death people who could have been your harmless, kindly white haired grandmother, mother,father,little nephew.

Mate, I know that most of the Germans were probabaly just PBI/young men called up to fight for their country and may have never been involved in anything remotely like genocide/mass murder....just trying to put things into perspective for other people who's relatives have no known grave.

**oldnotbold** · 08-05-2012, 21:56

Originally Posted by sirbhp

it makes you think doesn't it ? do you know the percentage of unknown corpses ? it seems so sad that you have graves with no names on them . no matter which army they served in .

I've just been working through the WW1 names on my local memorial - horrifying number of times the CWGC records Thiepval, Arras, Menin Gate or Tyne Cot memorials, rather than giving a grave number.

**slab** · 08-05-2012, 22:01

Just returned from a British Legion trip to Ypres salient, where we visited many of the Commonwealth War Graves including Tyne Cot, Essex Farm and others. Beautiful, peaceful and poignant are some of the words that come to mind. We also visited the German cemetary at Langemark - much darker and oppressive in nature - no less poignant though and notable that 4/6 bodies were located under each headstone. Just being there in the rain and looking across the bare fields made gave just a tiny glimmer of what it was like. We were lucky to be invited to the re-dedication of 3 WW2 Allied Spitfire pilot graves in Ypres: they had been killed on ops in 1942. Relatives of the Czech and British pilots were there too. Speaking to them afterwards one got an impression of how much it meant to them as families. On a human level, if the German War Graves Commission can achieve a tenth of that closure, it will have been worth it, even 3 or 4 generations on.

**supermatelot** · 08-05-2012, 22:24

My grandad had nothing against the Germans, for more or less the same reason - but despised the French. Absolutely fucking hated them. Not sure why.

Was your Grandad a matelot? Mine was, and he hated the ... fuckers as well! Them & Italians.
My Grandad never really spoke about it much and in the years I knew him - I never thought to ask much.
Anyobody else opened up the box of documents and found out things you never knew and thought: "Why didn't the fucker say something?!"

No - he was not partial to wearing black maskers either. He downplayed a hell of a lot though.
Understated.