Posted on 03/03/2013 6:43:24 AM PST by the scotsman
'Immortalised in the film The Great Escape, the mass breakout from PoW camp Stalag Luft III on March 24-25, 1944, was swiftly followed by terrible retribution – the cold-blooded murder of 50 recaptured prisoners, on Hitler’s direct orders.'
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
He also lets the devil prowl around seeking to destroy. Why?
Bolling was the D-mark for the war in Europe.
I recall sort of missing the roar later on, but at night my mother would take me outside to watch for a certain plane ~ she'd say "There's your daddy's plane and he'll be home soon" ~ and there'd be a signature waggle.
More recently I discovered that I'm living at the end of a WWII temporary runway out in Fairfax county where planes were lashed together for those flights, and yet others checked them out before the trip to Europe.
Born on a battlefield ~ next to Freeman Field in Southern Indiana, brought up under the roar of the D-Day aerial armada, and in the end i"m still living on sacred ground.
The U.S. bent over backwards to adhere to the Geneva protocols so as not to give the Germans any pretext to harm American POWs. In one interesting case six German prisoners killed a fellow prisoner who made disparaging remarks about Hitler and said Germany deserved to lose the War. They were court-martialed and convicted, but their sentences were stayed until about month after the War, when Truman ordered them all executed. There were over 500,000 Germans interred in America, mostly in rural areas in the South. All but two were accounted for at the end of the War. None were allowed to remain in America, though thousands of them later returned after immigrating from Germany.
A modest satanic quote? Who knew....
as the other comment states, the devil won the 20 Century, why?
Anyone interested in The Great Escape should also read The Wooden Horse, about an escape that took place from a different compound at the same prison camp. The phrase “Where there’s a will, there’s a way” certainly comes to mind in thinking about how ingenious these POWs were in coming up with ways to escape.
Note at the end of the story that the men were hanging 8 months after the beginning of their trial.
Even in Texas it’s still 15 years, if not more.
bookmark
Once it became known that Kurt Meyer and the 12th SS Panzer Division murdered Canadian prisoners-of-war at the Abbey Ardenne Canadian soldiers seldom took prisoners from the 12th.
Ever hear of the Chenogne massacre ?
The Great Escape, the Wooden Horse, how about the The Colditz Cock?
It was a glider built by British prisoners of war that were being held in Colditz Castle . It was constructed and hidden in an attic and had a 32 foot wing span. The war ended just before it was to have been flown off the roof.
Why everyone focuses on what the Germans did during WWII while ignoring what the Japs did, I will never understand.
Or why it’s never even mentioned that the commies in China and Russia killed 10 times the number of people that the Germans did.
It seems to me that someone has a adgenda to push that demonizing the Germans advances.
My Father was in Stalag Luft III during the tunneling, but as an American, was moved out of the camp prior to the escape - actually left Jan 28, 1945 for another camp in Nurnberg. I still have his POW log book that the Red Cross provided the men in camps back then - and it’s a fascinating thing to read. He was quite an artist and there’s even a drawing he made of the memorial built in Mar 1944 in an RAF cemetary and dedicated to 50 men killed in the escape from Stalag Luft III in Sagan, Germany. When I was younger, I remember him telling me he participated in the dirt dumping so I believe the portrayal in the movie was accurate as to how it was accomplished.
Boy, you got that right. The Japs were literally burying people alive in Asia.
I hope those facts are being taught to our kids in the schools. The kids should see photographs of the Chinese people being buried alive by Japs.
The pro-Jap, anti-German biases may be due to the fact that Germans are white.
Excellent point!!
I hadn’t heard of Chenogne, but I did know one World War II vet who told me that they did not take SS prisoners and did not accept the surrender of German snipers who ran out of ammunition. Surrendering with a full clip was a German soldier’s best life insurance policy.
A Ramagen, after the American crossing of the Rhine, a group of German civilians were hiding in a railroad tunnel. They realized that they were in a tunnel with a bunch railcars containing flammable materials. They decided to surrender to the Americans, and a German railroad worker left the tunnel waving a white flag. The Americans shot him. After they managed to surrender, they asked the Americans why they shot him. The Americans thought he was SS because the railroad uniforms were black, like the SS.
In the final order for Unternehmen Wacht am Rein, Hitler more or less ordered the Wehrmacht not to take prisoners. He wanted the Americans to retaliate by killing German prisoners. Many, if not most, German soldiers realized that the War was lost and they would fair far better surrendering to the Americans than the Russians, and had a better chance of surviving the War in American custody than fighting in the Wehrmacht. Hitler wanted to change this perception. Killing German prisoners served Hitler’s ends. The Germans most inclined to surrender were the least ideological and least inclined to kill American prisoners.
American soldiers have a duty to escape if possible
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.