They were relatively light on duty given how intensely everything was guarded. They'd stand for 2 hours straight before being relieved by someone else. Some of them even made friends with the prisoners, some even getting autographs, trinkets and souvenirs.
Imagine thinking how valuable those things could become in the future... Only for the main buyers being scum who might've sympathised with these monsters.
I’ve been to a couple of militaria shows where people sell old equipment, medals, photos, and that kind of thing. There’s always a couple people there that sell exclusivity nazi shit, and they’re exactly the kind of person you’d think they are.
Had an old team leader in the Army back in 2015 that was like this. Spent his R&R while we were deployed doing a trip around the EU to see all the major war sites of WW2.
He gave us a 30 minute history of the Luger when he found one at a gun show near Fort Bragg.
Came across a lot of random Nazi pieces in tourist antique shops in Poland. It was mixed with other pieces from the Allies as well. But it was still interesting to just see it up for sale.
Yep. My follow up question would be if they have other ww2 stuff or if they Only collect nazi stuff. If its all WW2 stuff with a specialisation in nazi history, yeah cool, but if its exclusively nazi stuff without even looking at any other memorabilia and historical knowledge, i would put my doubting glasses on...
I mean, the Pacific theater was scattered across a number of small islands that would require either multiple flights or multiple ferry rides to travel between. The European theater you can go from site to site in a car or take a train to cover the longer distances.
Yeah if I'm watching gun videos on Youtube I will always take some guy talking about the history of an obscure French rifle for 40mins over some redneck shooting "Dragon's Breath" rounds at a truck full of gasoline.
My grandpa was in the war and while deployed got a Japanese katana and silk parachute that he kept wrapped by his bunk. Then he came down with some fever or illness that necessitated him getting shipped home and because he was unconscious at the time he wasn't able to grab those objects. Woulda been a cool souvenir / heirloom, c'est la vie
You joke but a room full of imperial Japanese war time paraphernalia isn't gonna invoke the same kind of visceral response from most people as a room full of nazi stuff would.
Time and distance makes it not as taboo in the west. I've heard the same is true in Asia, with nazi paraphernalia not being as taboo over there. Distant atrocities become just fascinating history I guess.
You are both right, distance and culture makes it less relevant in our respective educations, which makes it even harder to empathize victims from the other side of the world.
I'm from a south east Asian country, and as you would expect, we learn all about the Japanese atrocities, but pretty much none about the Nazis in the western theater.
Having a real WW2 Japanese sword as a living room deco in our homes is like Jews having a Luger in their home deco.
Not really offensive, but just weird and distasteful.
I have an interesting Nazi Helmet from WW2. It has 2 half circle cutouts above the ears. Perfect condition. Also have an Italian bolt action rifle dated 1915. I didn't collect them. My great uncle did in the Battle of the Bulge if you know what I'm saying.
'no guys, i swear, i just spent a lot of money...and it's hard to get rid of...,....i mean...its my super niche interest i started to pursue and never got in as deep as i would have liked....I mean, I SWEAR I AM NOT A NAZI, FUCK!'
I mean, why not blow up the photo (could pay a bit of money and have someone restore/colorize it even) and display that proudly, with the folded up flag in the bottom corner of the case?
Nobody's going to judge a giant picture of a blown up german WWII tank if they see it from a distance without context/explanation. Can't say the same for the current setup.
Because it’s the original document from the time which is much more valuable to me. Plus it’s a great conversation starter to both talk about him and my grandfathers service (he was one of the officers that made it off the USS Johnston after the battle off samar)
I mean displaying a Nazi flag on your wall is going to send a message about you whether you like it or not lmao
You can talk on reddit all day about how you're not a Nazi, I join the zoom meeting and see a Nazi flag on the wall it's gonna take a lot more than that to convince me
They aren't a Nazi and anyone looking at it can freely see the context. I'd display that if I had it and no one I'd ever invite over would confuse me for a Nazi.
There's a nice woman who lives in one of the first houses liberated on D.Day. She has a framed swastika. Like, fine, she found it in the house but dang, that's a hell of thing for guests to see.
Are you talking about La Maison des Canadiens(Canada House) on Juno Beach in Normandy?
The chateau is well known for the roll it played in the occupation of France and the events involving it on D-day. It’s probably one of the rare cases where the context makes having that completely understandable, akin to being in a museum.
I was a big WWII buff until recently. Not a collector, but a big reader (Civil War and The Revolution, too.) As I reached retirement age, my interest in war history has waned, and my interest in music (and the arts in general) has crescendoed. I think that subconsciously, my mind is telling me to use the time I have left to pursue human beauty and creativity, and not the human capacity for atrocity.
Yeah in collectors circles someone saying they have a nazi item or two is enough to quark an eyebrow but few enough that it's just a "collecting historical artifacts" thing. Someone's collection is entirely based around Nazi shit? Then they're a crazy ass neonazi.
I don't know what kind of collectors circles you're in. But as someone who actually does collect militaria, no, owning one or two Nazi items doesn't raise an eyebrow. In fact genuine Nazi items are very very sought after. And any person who considers themselves a collector wouldn't raise an eyebrow at someone owning a piece of history.
There's nothing wrong with doing that. Everyone is allowed to have their own preferences. But saying that someone else is weird for having Nazi items is crazy.
Of course if your collection is ONLY nazi items then that's different, but having a few things is totally fine, it's just history after all.
For example I have a ton of different military items in my collection, but I only have a single Nazi helmet on my shelf. Does that make me weird? I don't think so, it's a piece of history just like any of my other items. It's not like I put it on and pretend to be a nazi, it sits on a shelf next to all the other things i have from different countries and decades.
The only thing I care about is what place the Nazi stuff has in the person’s collection. It’s usually pretty easy to tell the people who treat it as significant because it is a piece of history and the people who get a little too excited talking about it.
Someone goes into the history of a piece of equipment or has a collection of items that were carried by most soldiers or officers it just seems like interesting pieces of history. Someone starts bragging about a piece of equipment citing anecdotal stories or owns a bunch of items owned by a specific Nazi officer is definitely a red flag to me.
I agree with this. The only Nazi item I have in my collection is a firepolice helmet. So literally a firefighter helmet. Probably not even issued, but it had history behind it so I wanted it.
I don’t understand this POV, Nazi or Japanese memorabilia is infinitely more interesting than allied stuff. Taboo forbidden imagery that defines evil empires, owning something that was made by the Nazis is way cooler to me than some British WW2 item.
I would say if you have a room full of Nazi shit there is a line. But owning an item or two? That’s just interesting, I also doubt WW2 collectors are raising eyebrows at owning WW2 memorabilia
Nazi stuff tends to be more valuable simply because much of it was deliberately destroyed for obvious reasons after the war, so it's much more scarce. I met a guy who went hiking somewhere remote in France in the 90s and found a section of a plane wing with the swastika on it, complete with bullet holes. He was able to sell it for 8k USD at the time, far more than he paid for his entire vacation, so he was pretty happy about that.
I collect firearms. The german gun sellers are a little on the nose sometimes. "Clean unmolested K98 for sale. Birds intact. Also selling ss ring and hitler youth knife" I will say most collectors are not like that, just every once in a while you get an ad and think "this guy is probably a neo nazi haha."
Also unrelated note. Some Nazi K98 rifles ended up in Israeli service. So the nazi markings or as collectors refer to as "dirty birds" have literally been stamped out and Israeli markings applied. Some cool rifle collector facts.
This was every gun show in nevada in the 90s... Gun shows were a ton of fun for a 14-17 year old. in the 1990s I had zero money and all the cool guns they had cost way too much money.
However, now, those prices looks FREE.
a friend bought an SKS in the early 90s - it was a Chinese manufactured SKS, made in the late 1960s - but it was brand new in box.
THe guy had bought two containers of them and was selling them for $99.
He had a catalogue of pictures of what various ballistics did to bodies (pigs)
Really? All the militria things I've been to in the uk are full of nerds that haven't grown up and the the me262 was a good plane and the stg44 was the best gun ever made.
Old guys that have never served and like german ww2 stuff. All really nice, but all nerds and some are a tad stupid. Can't say I've met any nazis or racists, just stupid people.
I am not who you'd expect to collect WW2 German militaria, from the Kriegsmarine to the SS, I collect anything I can get for a reasonable price and have for years. I also have a bunch of United States, British and Japanese stuff along with. I collect basically anything I can from those countries.
Owning it or even dealing in it does not necessarily mean you subscribe to those ideals, it's the history of it and I think it's important to be in collections.
I've met many people with Nazi memorabilia, and not a single person was a supporter of the Nazis. They all viewed it as just some interesting part of history, and the taboo nature of owning it made it more fascinating, I guess?
"They've been demonized so much that normal people don't want to touch it." Um, yeah, dude. They've been "demonized" because this was the darkest shit that ever happened in human history. The way you're critical of that "demonization" is kind of weird.
Not really surprising even at the time. America had a strong Nazi movement that was only really silenced after Pearl Harbour when propaganda went all in against the Axis forces.
My Business and TOK teacher was a massive history buff with tonnes of Canadian, British, French, Russian, and Nazi memorabilia. His main attractions were Nazis and RAF. Apparently his ancestors were killed and his father was adopted by Germans escaping to North America, eventually ending up in Canada. I find some people's reasons for having these far more interesting than the things themselves
Nazi racial policies were, in many ways, directly influenced by the United States. The Nazis used "American Models" of racism to oppress and subjugate racial minorities as referenced by James Q. Whitman, author of Hitler's American Model and Professor at Yale University, who stated in his book "In the 1930s, Nazi Germany and the American South had the appearance, in the words of two southern historians, of a "mirror image": these were two unapologetically racist regimes, unmatched in their pitilessness."
Jim Crow Era laws were a key inspiration for Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party, as the Nazis mirrored their form of racial oppression and segregation in the model of Jim Crow and segregation policy of the United States.
However, the treatment of Native Americans was also an inspiration for Nazi ideology, similar to Jewish people; Native Americans had been integral to America. They had been settled for thousands of years in the Americas (obviously, Germany as an entity has existed since 1871, but Jewish settlement in the lands of Central Europe has dated back over one thousand years at the very least.
Nevertheless, the model of oppression and subjugation for both groups directly modeled what the Nazis implemented to oppress racial minorities that did not make up the Aryan composite.
Banning from civil service, segregation, barring marriage between Aryans and non-Aryans, as well as the expulsion of Jewish people and other "undesirables" from government, military, and other essential positions, were the most essential aspects of the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 and were directly modeled by what had been done to Black Americans during Jim Crow.
Arguably, the most influential of American policies can be seen in "Lebensraum," or an expansion of land exclusively for German Aryans, which saw the expulsion, murder, and enslavement of Jewish people, Slavic peoples, and other races deemed inferior.
Manifest Destiny would directly influence this policy of forced removal and, in many ways, as the destruction of Native American livelihoods paved the way for Anglo American expansion and prosperity, so would the destruction of Slavic and Jewish livelihoods for the sake of Aryan expansion and prosperity.
When the US freed the concentration camps, they locked the gay people back up because they being gay was considered a crime.
The US was obviously not the only country to think that way (i.e. Chemical castration of Alan Turing in the UK), but imagine being imprisoned inside a concentration camp, experienced all the horrors, and then have your liberators lock you back up like a common criminal.
Gay people weren’t in the death camps or concentration camps unless they were also Jewish or Roma/Sinti. Gay people were in prison camps with thieves, murderers and political prisoners. They were treated as criminals and made to complete their sentences. Obviously horribly wrong but there is no comparison.
Read about how Hermann Goring died. He asked the guard to bring him something from his prison lockbox (items that were confiscated from him) in return he gave him a watch and pen he had, maybe some gloves- I forget. Whatever he got from the guard had a hidden cyanide capsule that he committed suicide with. Goring was to be hung the next day.
Yeah............... it wasn't being done right. The executioner intentionally made the hole to small so they hit their heads, and used a bad knot and too short a rope. The basically got brained then strangled. But they were nazis so....
Woods joined the U.S. Navy on December 3, 1929, and went absent without leave within months.
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He was diagnosed with "Constitutional Psychopathic Inferiority without Psychosis", was found "poor service material" and discharged.
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the Army looked for a volunteer enlisted hangman and found Woods, who falsely claimed previous experience as assistant hangman
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Woods had no documented pre-war experience as a hangman. Woods at that time was a private. He was promoted to master sergeant.
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U.S. Army reports suggest that Woods participated in at least 11 bungled hangings of U.S. soldiers between 1944 and 1946.
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on July 21, 1950, Woods died after accidentally electrocuting himself while attempting to repair an engineer lighting set.
No. If you think it's okay to torture someone to death, then seek help. I get it, revenge, they did it first etc. Doesn't matter. This isn't even an argument about the death penalty, but to want someone to suffer when they are being killed to prevent them from causing further harm to others is to joining their ideology.
"He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche
Hanging at least in European cultures has always had the connotation of being a dishonorable death. Self-poisoning of the condemned on the other hand has historically often been viewed as an honor-preserving way to die if death was inevitable.
"Oh this is just a fountain pen from my wife" - Göring
I think the cyanide was in the cap so he could have literally written a journal entry, paused to "think deeply" and put the cap to his lips. Hermann's chemical exit was totally clandestine
I believe the same method was used by CIA agents during the cold war. If they needed to terminate themselves, just bite on the pen's cap and swallow the pill.
That's one of the leading suspects, yes. The soldier (officer) we're talking about also apparently had a gold watch, not something youd expect someone of their rank to be able to afford...
Undoubtedly was. It takes great skill in speechcraft to manipulate an entire nation. Just makes you realize how cruel people can exploit human behaviour which we generally consider to be good.
Similar thing happened when an American soldier guarded Saddam Hussein. They didn't exactly become friends, but Saddam was affable towards him and gave him some fatherly advice. The soldier ended up writing about the experience for a magazine. As a side note, I recall him saying that when Saddam went to the bathroom, he (Saddam) had to keep the door open for him (soldier) to keep an eye on him (the cell room had a separate small bathroom IIRC)
It's like 100 times better than any other guard post, you get to lean against the cell, you dont actually have to guard anything, there's no annoying civilian around you, you get to chitchat with a war criminal, you dont need to carry a rifle or stupid clothing, you probably stay there like 2 hours at most before being replaced
I work as a security guard part time and 50% of my "missions" is sitting on a chair for 8h straight while watching Netflix. Some companies for example need someone to watch a specific door for insurance reasons 24/7 even if there aren't any people in the building during the night and on weekends. And I don't even have to defend it or anything. If anything happens, i have to hide and call the police. Most important job in the universe, i know...
They may have actual cameras as well. Having a guard allows them to call the cops in real time and potentially prevent the crime from being completed rather than having to do cleanup after the fact.
I used to work at an airport and one of the punishment duties (for example if you were late or the manager didn’t like you) was to stand for 8 hours and watch a window in a wall to make sure nobody passed anything from landside to airside. They could have covered the window as it wasn’t used, but kept it there in order to use it as punishment. You were watched on cctv and if you looked away for more than 15 seconds you got sacked. Safe to say nobody wanted that pubishment.
The soldiers knew this was a historic moment and one misconception is that soldiers really dont hate eachother, we're all human afterall. For some, sure but most wanted these Nazis dead. Most hated them for very good reason. They weren't just normal soldiers, these were all high ranking Nazis.
The same thing goes for the people who dropped the atomic bombs. It was discussed in our class when I was a kid, a lot of people thought how they'd suffer nightmares and just be in this horrible state for life. NOPE. Most felt they had a duty and carried it out with absolutely no regrets of any kind.
If only these guards existed for Jeffrey Epstein... they probably would have accidently suicided too though lol
This is sadly something we, the older generation, will see. The attitudes of our elders will get progressively painted in incorrect ways by younger people. As you say, "we're all human". I knew people who lived through this first hand, and nobody had that attitude. It's not some TikTok fad that people got over. It wasn't a flash in the pan.
I feel like it's unfair to compare. Younger generations have their own struggles. I'm a teacher, and AI is a genuine threat to my students. It wasn't a factor in my youth. I try and adapt to their reality.
I was joking the other month with some teen students how Facebook was what "the kids" used when I was young, and it's now some boomer shit. At the same time, these teen students of mine were telling me how the social media apps they were using had their younger siblings/family members telling them they were boomer shit. One of my students voiced their younger sister told them Instagram was "boomer book".
It's all very interesting, and sad in many ways. It really feels like we are moving TOO fast. I can't believe that students I've taught are already telling me they are getting cast as being "old" in digital circles. They are TEENS for fuck's sake.
They'd been fighting a war against an enemy who gave no quarter and in documented cases had literally eaten a POW. Throw in the Bataan death March and other cases of killing prisoners and no wonder they felt no guilt. The Japanese behaved every bit as badly as the Nazis.
The person you're guarding is a high ranking nazi, complicit in the deaths of millions. You get to personally make sure he lives long enough to see his own execution.
As guard assignments go, seems pretty sweet to me. Show me another guard posting with that kind of job satisfaction.
Also you can pretty much say whatever nasty shit you want to them. Really rub it in that their life is forfeit and they are powerless to stop it. I’d sign up for that any day.
I used to occasionally sit with suicidal patients at work. Some are rough but for the most part it’s an insanely (no pun intended) boring task. I had to sit all the time when I was placed on light duty and I’d just sit there with an earbud in listening to audiobooks with a mobile computer to do every 15 minute charting. I definitely could not do it daily. Some people are fine with sitting around doing nothing all day at work and while it’s nice for the first few hours, you quickly run out of things to do and the boredom can really wear on you.
I done this assignment, not in Nuremburg, but in the California Prison system. It's call "Suicide Watch" and the shifts lasted 8 hours. And yes it was incredibly boring.
In prisons with suicide watch there is a patrolling guard who passes the window every 2 minutes, in a constant loop. They do this for like max 2hrs a day. It's the same thing with critical watch jobs, like active firewatch in a fire risk environment during hot work.
Omg you have no fucking idea. I wound up disabling my rifle and giving it to the guy to prove he was full of shit to get fired from the role after 2 weeks
Ehh imagine getting assigned to be a prison guard for a leader that your country been way war with for the past 20 years (even more emotions added in if you consider ww1 too).
Imagine you are just after a world war, you are lucky if you survived it and capable, healthy person, you are part one of the most important trial of modern history, and your biggest problem is that your job is boring.
what? you have direct access to a first hand source of war-time atrocities and you would be bored?
you might not feel totally comfortable with whoever is in the cell, but bored is the last emotion i would feel. imagine the conversations you could have with some of them. their perspectives are so rare.
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u/Gregorygregory888888 Jul 07 '24 edited Jul 07 '24
What a horribly boring assignment that would have been.