Comments by "David Himmelsbach" (@davidhimmelsbach557) on "The 7 Main Differences between the Eastern Front and the Western Front" video.

BTW, both Soviet and German survivors now feel guilty about what they'd done when so young. One cute Russian lass admitted that NKVD utterly brutalized any captured Germans -- and then executed them -- every time. She admitted that doing so was immoral, but it was just the way things were done. The conflict was so barbarous and cruel, no-one questioned such matters. The Krauts were every bit as ruthless. Don't you doubt that. From the start, Adolf laid out that this, Barbarossa, was to be a battle of extermination. He meant it. I don't know why Jews keep limiting the Holocaust to just themselves. Adolf had a VERY extensive 'kill list.' Partisans Roma Seventh Day Adventists (not so numerous) Mormons (rare) Bolsheviks (Commissars)... AND Slavs -- as many as possible in every circumstance. Jews -- as viciously as possible. Uppity Catholics and Protestants; indeed, ANY anti-Nazi soul. Uppity Junkers, too. Yes, this list is quite incomplete. Nazi treatment of PWs was atrocious -- even so for British, Canadian and American PWs. Adolf had a fixation against young religions. So any religion much younger than 1650AD was on his kill list. And to think Adolf's mother wanted him to enter the priesthood. (!!!) (when he was but a boy.) Stalin's mother wished the same for him. (!!!) (when he was quite young) The true reason that the Krauts wanted to surrender to the West: GUILT. The Ostheer was as guilty as the SS and SD. Postwar German diaries admit to as much.
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There was not a lot of Western looting in France, Belgium... whereas it's on the record that profound looting occurred once the US Army was inside Germany. Treasures are still popping up in 'Grand-father's old war chest.' The big difference is that Bolshevik looting was aimed at the factories as well as museums. (Troy's artifacts ended up in Leningrad -- Berlin is not asking for them back.) Of course, the Americans and British spent no small amount of effort UN-looting the Nazi loot. As for looting, even in France, it happened -- it was made a plot joke in "Kelly's Heroes." (That film was butchered in the editing room, BTW)
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@dietergermann2803 Tommies, Yanks, Krauts -- get over it. You must be Woke.
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An SS Major - raised up through every rank -- wrote that being sent back to the Eastern Front was a blessing compared to fighting Patton. In the 2nd SS, he was the guy who was set by HQ to find out what had happened to an entrenched battalion. Coming in 48-hours after the American artillery shoot, he didn't find a SINGLE surviving SS man, indeed none had even left their trenches. Morale for the entire division soared after they were sent back east.
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@weisthor0815 He wrote a book. I post from memory. I'm too lazy to perform biblio research to 'straighten you out.' (And, yes, I don't have a copy in my own library.) His auto bio is uncommon enough, that I'm sure any search engine will pull it up. You have his rank, his outfit and his narrative. As for the SS fatalities: this was the first time in history that the VT fuse had been used, en masse, against infantry. Patton deemed it to be as 'unfair' as the atomic bomb. (It removed the warrior equation.) Famously, Patton once used 32 battalions of artillery against a single objective. A forest became toothpicks. The dead SS battalion may well have been that target.
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@simonshiels1 Actually, the Luftwaffe was about as indoctrinated as one could possibly imagine. Only true believers were allowed into the cockpit. Tens-of-thousands of pilots, and less than ten ever defected, AFAIK. The pleasure-rape of Slavic girls is openly, and repeatedly, admitted in tell-alls by ancient German soldiers. In their last days, they feel nothing but shame and regret -- and the crimes they tell of are their very own. One confession really sticks in my memory. Two Germans are in a recon vehicle tasked with poking ahead. They run across two 16yo maidens -- and rape them to womenhood -- inside their machine. This took a while as the boys were very randy. Then they dumped the gals off so as to carry on their 'good work.' And this was not their first episode. The writer well remembered this one because the teenagers WERE virgins. That's what made the rapes so special. As a lead element for a panzer division, it was their habit to nail every female that suited their fancy... as an introduction the the Ostheer. Such rapes were actively promoted by the Nazi regime.
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@davidlloyd2583 To be under either one's thumb was to be in Hell. Stalinist USSR/ Nazi Germany.... Everybody wants out. Most stats show Stalin to have murdered even more souls than Adolf -- which is pretty astonishing. Stalin is the only reason that the Nazis even had a shot at Moscow. He was screwing over the Soviet defense every step of the way. Nikita was most bitter about Stalin's Big Decisions. Stalin is the only reason the Nazis got close to Stalingrad, too. Again, read Nikita's accounts.
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@davidlloyd2583 Stalin announced right from the start that the USSR would NOT follow any of the Western rules of war. And, he didn't. BTW, on your statistics, due to Adolf's command, 6th Army surrendered only after starving for weeks. Consequently, after their surrender, German PW fatalities were in orbit. So... on a technical basis, those deaths bump up your 11% calc quite a bit. There is little question that Adolf wanted all Bolshevik soldiers murdered. He flatly stated, even before the invasion, that his intent was the utter elimination of those alive in the east. (ie USSR + Poland + + + +) Soviet PWs were exploited unto death no different than Jews in Adolf's Death Empire. To (barely) survive as a Soviet PW in Nazi Germany you had to be fantastically lucky. Most survivors simply HAD to 'collaborate.' By which I mean: work as drudge labor on a German farm -- replacing the family's draft horse which, naturally, had been sacrificed to the Ostheer, at Berlin's command. (The German army was not losing horses in the west.) (The Nazis burned through horses no different than people.) {ie Worked them to death in the Ostheer, ultimately to be eaten, because food supplies ran low. See: 6th Army, et. al.}
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@obiwaankenobi4460 And what of Stalin's radio address? We're looking at some the two worst tyrants of the 20th Century. Neither had any morality even before Barbarossa.
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@obiwaankenobi4460 Stalin's Big Address occurred after he'd mentally recovered from his depression. (July 1941) He rallied the Bolshevik nation -- and (openly) pledged no mercy to the invaders. Historians have always taken that pledge to be official policy. It soon proved out, too. As for Adolf, no mercy was shown from the outset. Barbarossa was to be a campaign of annihilation -- plain and simple -- slaves and corpses.
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@obiwaankenobi4460 BTW, Stalin actually hated to speak to his nation. (But droning on to the Party faithful was another matter.) Yes, in his time, Stalin made remarkably few big public addresses. (These were always a Big Deal to the proles.) Adolf was the Big Talker. But even he 'shut up' for the most part, during his war. Goebbels took over. He was on the air virtually every day, or so it seemed. (He actually had a broadcast sound booth built into his office.) One German gal related that she couldn't get him out of her ear. BTW, the very idea of national leaders speaking to the entire nation was still a novelty in the 1940s. FDR's fireside chats were a sensation in American. Churchill's stuff was electric. Today, such speeches are routine, expected by all.
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@obiwaankenobi4460 This is not the Oxford Union. But, thanks.
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@davidlloyd2583 They were twins in evil. You name the crime, they both did it. Weirdly, they would express admiration for each other. (!!!) As Yeltsin exposed -- to the shock of the world -- Stalin started WWII in Europe via the Contract for War -- aka the M-R Pact. It was ALL Stalin's idea. Hitler didn't have any input. (!!!!!) The contract for war unleashed both tyrants. Stalin, personally, by his own hand, crayoned the partition of Poland. Adolf merely accepted whatever Stalin set down. Stalin proceeded to carve up Finland, Poland, the Baltics and the eastern edges of Romania and Slovakia. ( The latter was actually grabbed during Adolf's 2nd stage invasion -- much to the distress of Adolf.) Stalin then proceeded to give Adolf LendLease style aid so that Adolf had enough fuel to beat the West -- and bomb Britain. Yeah, the Battle of Britain was flown on Soviet gasoline. (oil, really) Without Stalin, Adolf didn't have enough petrol to bomb London. Yeah, things were THAT tight. So... stop asserting some sort of innocence to that monster. And let's not forget his address to his nation, the world, wherein he declared -- in so many words -- total war upon Nazi Germany. In this, he beat Goebbels to the punch.
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