'11' ?
d;^) (and thanks for the clip)
Neat! Thanks.
What a terrific film. The American troops are from the 16th Armored Division, can’t tell about the Germans but it’s a mixed bunch.
Note that the Germans are practicing good march order discipline, are still under control of unit leaders and are following instructions from the Americans. Many are still armed. Also note that the tires of the German vehicles are worn to the core, no tread in sight. Very common at this stage of the war.
für Sie ist der Krieg vorbei
Can only laugh at 5:30, where the German commander doesn’t even seem remotely bothered that they lost.
Not really, they were not treacherous, duplicitous Muslims.
Absolutely fascinating. The quality is surprisingly good too.
The Germans seem awfully happy to be surrendering to Americans. I wonder if they got to remain in American captivity?
My father related his experience interrogating German POWs in North Africa and Italy during WWII. He said the Germans would often have their side arms and he would be unarmed. We asked him if that wasn't rather dangerous. His priceless reply, in an indignant tone, was "They were German Officers, they were quite correct."
Beautiful film. Thanks!
You really do wonder, though, what happened to these folks.
Thanks for posting!
First quick takes: Look for the guy in semi-dress uniform with a leg missing moving smartly up the road with crutches while being passed by vehicles full of seemingly healthy countrymen sitting on their asses.
One of the half tracks seems to have a severely bent spindle causing the front left wheel to wobble badly.
Glad we have a week of crappy weather coming-I want to categorize all of those German vehicles and it’ll take at least that long!
“Isn’t strange that some Germans still carry weapons when surrendering plus a few shots from Prague.”
It served several purposes. The American forces accepting the surrenders were often grossly outnumbered by those German forces who were surrendering. The Americans could not handle that much surrendered weaponry until the German forces reached their POW collecting points, where they were finally disarmed. The american and German forces did not want the German weaponry to fall into unauthorized hands. The surrenderd German forces needed their weapons to protect against retaliatory attacks from vengeful partisans and civilians, until they reached their protected POW collecting points in these convoy columns.
Notice that some of the vehicles carried several young women. I suspect they were Czech who collaborated with the Germans for food and niceties in return for sex. If they stayed in their villages after the Germans left, they would be attacked, beaten and maybe killed for their acts of collaboration.