Comments by "vk2ig" (@vk2ig) on "Malmedy & Chenogne - A Tale of Two Ardennes Massacres" video.

In a documentary I saw on TV a long time ago, a British soldier was being interviewed. He said they came across a group of four or five British soldiers whose hands had been tied with barbed wire and had been shot. They were the crew of a Crocodile tank ... the inference was that the Germans soldiers didn't like people who used flamethrowers on them.
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@AtheistOrphan He burns down one village or burns down one hundred ... he crossed the line when he burned down one.
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@archstanton6102 Sledge (or one of his countrymen, possibly Leckie) said it's amazing how an average American teenager can be transformed into a barbarian when faced with the horrors of the Pacific campaign. This is very understandable - those men saw and heard things that for the rest of their lives wished they hadn't.
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@jeffduncan9140 I was going to say the same thing ... as well as being long videos, there would be many of them. And I shudder to think of the "wars" which would break out in the comments on each video ... it's bad enough now without stirring the pot!
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@C De Per the words of the commander of the Albigensian Crusade, prior to the massacre at Béziers in 1209, when asked about how to spare the Christians among the inhabitants: "Kill them all - the Lord knows those that are his own."
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The Forgotten Soldier is one hell of a book, to say the least. After I read it, I couldn't help but wonder what ever happened to ... The young German replacement who was left to his own devices wandering across the snow-covered Russian steppe looking for the unit he was supposed to join. Sajer says he, at least one other soldier joining Sajer's unit, and this replacement were behind German lines walking eastwards in the middle of nowhere trying to find their respective units. As dusk approached, some transport arrived that was heading towards Sajer's unit, so all but the replacement jumped on the vehicle and drove away. Sajer says he remembered seeing this young, lone soldier, looking very scared, trudging off into the dusk into the featureless terrain. One can only wonder if he ever did find his unit - Sajer and the others had difficulty finding his own unit as it had moved many times while he was away from it, and kept being given conflicting information regarding its whereabouts. Paula, the girl Sajer spent leave with in Berlin. The other young (Soviet?) soldier that Sajer saw through the window. Sajer's unit was moving inside a row of houses, and he looked through a window and saw across the way another young face looking through a window at him. They just looked at each other for a while, and might've even waved. The girl in the cellar with whom Sajer made love. Sajer's comrades - they (with Sajer) surrendered to the British and were being held in a POW camp. When Sajer was questioned, the British discovered he was from Alsace so they took him away to another part of the camp. He was treated more as an unfortunate French "draftee" than a former German combatant, so he wasn't able to see his comrades after the interview. (Sajer was repatriated to Alsace, and to "atone" for his crimes had to serve in the French Army for a period, and even had the ironic experience of marching in the victory parade in Paris!) I wonder if Sajer ever reconnected with any of his former comrades?
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@ottovonbismarck2443 War Without Hate: The Desert Campaign of 1940-43 by John Bierman and Colin Smith.
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@pebo8306 Which guys in Afghanistan are you talking about? Guessing the wrong nationality again, by any chance? And the guy's name is "Peiper".
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@SaturatedCat Usually the latter, and if the people try escaping then they were shot. ☹️
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@pebo8306 Lack of attention to detail, e.g. not bothering to get an historical figure's name correct, often indicates a lot about a person's mindset. This is often seen in the writings of conspiracy theorists, people with extreme political views, etc. And it's not the result of poor schooling - it results from the underlying personality aspects of the person making the errors. Edit: PS. Getting someone's name right is not a grammar issue, regardless of the language being used.
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@EnigmaEnginseer It is that, yes.
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@StratMan9009 The war is painted as "good v evil" to justify it to those signing up, and their families. Wars are fought over resources - to acquire the resources, or to prevent loss of the resources. Oil is one resource: Japan entered WW2 because it wanted the oil that was being denied to it, and later the USA went to war in the Middle East to secure the oil reserves (thus preventing oil prices from going through the roof like they did after the Iranian Revolution). The USA and its allies went to war in Korea and Vietnam because an increasing communist sphere of influence would eventually deny resources to the West. One can argue that Germany went to war in WW2 because it had been stripped of resources (The Treaty Of Versailles), and it wanted Lebensraum (more resources).
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@thejamaicanpolak3988 "Is that a cigarette in your pocket, Capt. Speirs, or are you just glad to see me?"
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@mesolithicman164 Dick Winters reckoned he spoke with Speirs when Stephen Ambrose was about to publish - apparently Ambrose was a bit worried about law suits, in particular Speirs regarding the German POW issue. Winters claimed that Speirs admitted that he did it.
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