'Aussie Rick'’s Comments (group member since Jun 12, 2009)

'Aussie Rick'’s comments from the THE WORLD WAR TWO GROUP group.

Mike, this book has been one of the most depressing books I've read for some time!

Marc wrote: "Finished this yesterday:

[book:Black Snow: Curtis LeMay, the Firebombing of Tokyo, and the ..."

Sounds good, hope to read my copy one day soon :)

"The Road to Dien Bien Phu: A History of the First War for Vietnam" - Down in Saigon things went from bad to worse once the allies landed to take the Japanese surrender at the end of WW:

"On 22-3 September, the British commander, General Douglas Gracey, freed Japanese-interned French colonial troops and authorized them to retake Saigon from officials of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. Gracey did this thinking that these troops would help him reestablish order. But things turned immediately ugly when French settlers joined colonial troops to vent months of pent-up frustration and humiliation on the 'natives'. They seized upon the Vietnamese in the streets of Saigon, hauling many off, vigilante-style, to shocked British authorities.

Vietnamese forces immediately retaliated with violent attacks on colonial troops, Allied positions, and the settler community in and around Saigon. Partisans committed a horrible massacre in the Cité Héraud quarter of Saigon, killing around a hundred French settlers and Eurasians and carrying off dozens of others. 'Saigon was in flames,' is how one Dutch war correspondent described the situation as she flew out of the city in late September. Gracey ordered the colonial troops back to their barracks and turned to his Indian Gurkas and Japanese soldiers to help him maintain order in their place."

The Massacre in the Cité Héraud:
https://indochine.uqam.ca/en/historic...

"The Road to Dien Bien Phu: A History of the First War for Vietnam" - The first major battle in the French-Indochina War was the Battle of Hanoi in 1946:

https://e.vnexpress.net/news/news/sav...

"Empire of Destruction: A History of Nazi Mass Killing" - From the Conclusion:

"In deliberate policies of mass murder, Nazi Germany killed approximately 13 million people in the space of less than six years from summer 1939 to late spring 1945. These were not 'casualties of war' resulting from bombing raids, military hostilities and general privation, but victims of premediated mass murder targeted as part of Germany's strategy for winning a global conflict. In the context of seven major killing campaigns, Nazi Germany intentionally killed 300,000 mentally and physically disabled people, up to 100,000 members of the Polish ruling classes and elites, approximately 5.8 million European Jews, 200,000 European Roma, at least 2 million residents of Soviet cities, up to 3.3 million Soviet POWs, around 1 million unarmed civilians in primary rural areas during preventive terror operations and reprisals in occupied territories (even after accounting for actual partisans among the dead) and another 185,000 civilian residents of Warsaw. Starvation, shooting and gassing, in that order, were the preferred killing methods. Substantial numbers of disabled people, Jews, Roma and Soviet POWs fell victim to each of these three methods. This once more illustrates how many of the killing operations worked on parallel lines. In addition to three principal killing methods, numerous other victims were stabbed or beaten to death, drowned, burned alive or given lethal injections.

If we factor in the hundreds of thousands of people who, between 1933 and 1945, were executed following mock trials by Nazi courts, worked, beaten or tortured to death in concentration camps, or shot on German soil during the final months of the war as the net tightened around the perpetrators, then the total number of civilians and other non-combatants who fell victim to premediated murder by Nazi perpetrators approaches 14 million. Over the course of March 1945, for instance, more than 18,000 prisoners lost their lives at Gergen-Belsen. At no point in the history of the concentration camps did so many prisoners die so fast of disease and deprivation as in Bergen-Belsen during this one month."

Empire of Destruction: A History of Nazi Mass Killing by Alex J. Kay

"Empire of Destruction: A History of Nazi Mass Killing" - From the chapter - Suppression of the Warsaw Uprising - the author covers in some detail the events of the Wola Massacres.

The Wola Massacres:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wola_ma...

Witness accounts:
http://www.warsawuprising.com/witness...

"Empire of Destruction: A History of Nazi Mass Killing" - From the chapter - Decentralised 'Euthanasia' in the German Reich:

"Based on the present state of research, at least 196,000 mentally sick and disabled people - predominately patients in psychiatric institutions - were murdered between 1939 and 1945 within the borders of the German Reich, including the annexed territories. If we add the approximately 80,000 killed in institutions in the occupied Polish, French and Soviet territories, as well as the 20,000 concentration-camp inmates murdered in the T4 facilities, the death toll rises to almost 300,000."

Empire of Destruction: A History of Nazi Mass Killing by Alex J. Kay

"Empire of Destruction: A History of Nazi Mass Killing" - From the chapter - Decentralised 'Euthanasia' in the German Reich:

"Based on the present state of research, at least 196,000 mentally sick and disabled people - predominately patients in psychiatric institutions - were murdered between 1939 and 1945 within the borders of the German Reich, including the annexed territories. If we add the approximately 80,000 killed in institutions in the occupied Polish, French and Soviet territories, as well as the 20,000 concentration-camp inmates murdered in the T4 facilities, the death toll rises to almost 300,000."

Empire of Destruction: A History of Nazi Mass Killing by Alex J. Kay

"Empire of Destruction: A History of Nazi Mass Killing" - From the chapter - Decentralised 'Euthanasia' in the German Reich:

"The independence of action displayed by medical personnel during the decentralised 'euthanasia' is perhaps best illustrated by events at Kaufbeuren-Irsee. There, patient killings continued even after Germany's unconditional surrender on 8 May 1945, which ended the Second World War in Europe. On 29 May, fully three weeks after the cessation of hostilities, the staff murdered a child for the last time when Sister Mina Worle, the head nurse of the 'special children's ward', administered a lethal injection to four-year-old Richard Jenne. At 1:10p.m., Director Faltlhauser recorded the death of the child from 'typhus'. Though American troops had entered the town of Kaufbeuren in late April, they were deterred for several weeks from venturing inside the hospital by a large sign warning of an outbreak of the disease there. As a result, the routine killing was able to continue beyond the formal end of the war."

Kaufbeuren-Irsee:
https://www.uvm.edu/~lkaelber/childre...

https://www.normandy1944.info/holocau...

"Empire of Destruction: A History of Nazi Mass Killing" - From the chapter - Decentralised 'Euthanasia' in the German Reich:

"The independence of action displayed by medical personnel during the decentralised 'euthanasia' is perhaps best illustrated by events at Kaufbeuren-Irsee. There, patient killings continued even after Germany's unconditional surrender on 8 May 1945, which ended the Second World War in Europe. On 29 May, fully three weeks after the cessation of hostilities, the staff murdered a child for the last time when Sister Mina Worle, the head nurse of the 'special children's ward', administered a lethal injection to four-year-old Richard Jenne. At 1:10p.m., Director Faltlhauser recorded the death of the child from 'typhus'. Though American troops had entered the town of Kaufbeuren in late April, they were deterred for several weeks from venturing inside the hospital by a large sign warning of an outbreak of the disease there. As a result, the routine killing was able to continue beyond the formal end of the war."

Kaufbeuren-Irsee:
https://www.uvm.edu/~lkaelber/childre...

https://www.normandy1944.info/holocau...

Doubledf99.99 wrote: "Started reading: Confrontation: The War with Indonesia, 1962–1966 Nick Van Der Bijl"

That should be a pretty interesting book, keep us all posted on your progress.

"Empire of Destruction: A History of Nazi Mass Killing" - The author mentioned the German operation; 'Harvest Festival':

" .. the largest mass shooting of Jews during the entire war, surpassing the death toll of 33,771 Jews shot at Babi Yar on 29 and 30 September 1941."

Operation Harvest Festival:
https://www.holocausthistoricalsociet...

"Empire of Destruction: A History of Nazi Mass Killing" - From the chapter - Holocaust by Gas:

"Of the 3 million Jews who were murdered during the course of 1942, more than 2 million of them perished in gas chambers and mass-shooting operations during an 18-week period between late July and mid-November, almost exclusively on Poland's pre-war territory. These three-and-a-half months were the most intense, the deadliest of the entire Holocaust. Neither the mass shootings carried out by the Einsatzgruppen, the police battalions, the SS brigades and the Wehrmacht in the occupied Soviet territories during the second half of 1941 nor the extermination of the Hungarian Jews deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau between May and July 1944 resulted in the death of so many people within such a short space of time. Between July and November 1942, a massacre the size of Babi Yar was committed almost every day. Never before in history had people been killed on an assembly-line basis."

Empire of Destruction: A History of Nazi Mass Killing by Alex J. Kay

I have moved this post by Scott to this thread:

I was going to read "The End" by Ian Kershaw. I also have read "The Fall of Berlin" by Antony Beevor.
Is "The End" as good as Beevor's?

Mike wrote: "Those are some pretty stark numbers AR. Tough reading."

It has been a depressing read at times Mike!

"Empire of Destruction: A History of Nazi Mass Killing" - Some more material from the author on German anti-partisan operations in Russia:

"Looking at the paltry weapons haul from some of the aforementioned operations - 17 machine guns and 11 heavy weapons from Operation Hamburg; 133 weapons from Operation Hornung - compared with the huge death tolls, it is clear that the use of large-scale operations was not the effective way to fight the partisans. Describing an attack on a Soviet village in January 1943, Artur Wilke from the office of the commander of the Security Police in Minsk wrote: 'I have the inner conviction this evening that scarcely any real bandits were killed.' In fact, these operations were actually designed to kill Belarusian civilians rather than partisans as such. With their military fortunes in decline, the Germans resolved to wipe out those people who might conceivably provide aid to the partisan struggle behind German lines. Thus, German units stuck to the roads and targeted adjacent villages (especially those bordering forested areas) during the large-scale operations, and intentionally avoided forger deeper into wooded areas where actual partisans and their bases might be encountered. As the former drive of Einsatzkommando 8, Georg Frentzel, later stated: 'Our objective here was to deprive partisans in the forests of any opportunity to supply themselves with food, clothing, etc. from the villages.' The large-scale operations were a complete failure not only when it came to eliminating partisans, however, but also in their aim of cutting the partisans off from potential support networks. On the contrary: the brutality of German tactics only contributed to the growth of the partisan movement from 30,000 partisans in Belarus at the end of 1941 to 57.700 there in January 1943 and 122,600 in November 1943, which in turn led to even more desperate measures on the part of the Germans. Surprised by the number of bicycles found in partisan camps, the commander of the 1st SS Infantry Brigade, Karl von Treuenfeld, issued orders stating: 'Anyone bicycling must be shot'."

Empire of Destruction: A History of Nazi Mass Killing by Alex J. Kay

"Empire of Destruction: A History of Nazi Mass Killing" - So called anti-partisan operations on the Eastern Front, like Operation Bamberg, were really just extermination drives against the civilian population:

"In the days before the operation began, the divisional commander, Brigadier Baron Gustav von Bechtolsheim, issued orders in which he pointed to the 'decidedly hostile' attitude of the civilian population to the Germans and demanded a 'most ruthless crackdown on men, women and children.' It was on this premise that 'Bamberg' commenced. Over the course of a week, the division surrounded the territory between Glusk, Parichi and Kopatkevichi and gradually tightened the envelopment. This was followed by the destruction of a series of villages within the pocket, the murder of their inhabitants and the plunder of all available foodstuffs. In their final report on the operation, the units involved recorded the shooting of 3,423 partisans and their accomplices (the actual figure was in the range of 5,000 to 6,000) at a cost of only 7 dead, 8 wounded and 3 sick on the German side. They furthermore reported the plunder of 2,454 head of cattle, 2,286 sheep, 312 pigs, 115 tons of grain and 120 tons of potatoes - livestock and food stolen from the civilian population at the end of a severe winter. By contrast, only 47 rifles and sub-machine guns were captured."

Operation Bamberg:
https://codenames.info/operation/bamb...

"The Road to Dien Bien Phu: A History of the First War for Vietnam" - Some interesting details on how the army of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam managed to obtain weapons from Thailand for their fight with the French:

"In fact, between 1945 and 1951, overland and maritime routes originating from there channeled impressive amounts of weapons, radio equipment, paper, printers, chemicals, and medicines to lower parts of the DRV. As elsewhere in the region, the Second World War had left large amounts of arms and supplies scattered across Southeast Asia. Most of the Lend-Lease air the Americans shipped to Chiang Kai-shek's government in southwestern China had in fact gone through British India and Burma via the Indian Ocean, on the western side of mainland Southeast Asia. Much of it, however, did not make it over the Himalayan 'hump' to Chiang Kia-shek's government before the war's end. And at least some of it remained bottlenecked in norther Burma, which, of course, shares a long border with Thailand. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of surrendering Japanese troops in Burma, Thailand, southern Indochina, and Indonesia began turning their weapons over to the British in charge of their surrender and disarmament."

WWII German weapons during the Vietnam War:
https://wwiiafterwwii.wordpress.com/2...

Some of the details in the book; "Empire of Destruction: A History of Nazi Mass Killing", are too graphic to post. Accounts of how some German's killed infants and children in Russia and other areas are sickening. In all fairness the author did make this statement in his Introduction:

"A word of warning: some readers may find this work harrowing to read. This might appear to be a rather banal or unnecessary statement to make about a book with the subtitle 'A History of Nazi Mass Killing'. It is true however, that I have not shied away from presenting the events in graphic detail. My purpose is not to shock or sensationalise. On the contrary: writing a sanitised version of these events would only succeed in making them appear more abstract; realism and accuracy would be sacrificed in favour of palatability. There is a moral obligation to the victims to tell their story as faithfully as possible. My extensive use of testimony from survivors and other victims hopefully goes some small way towards giving them a voice and treating them as individual huma beings rather than statistics. If this book is emotionally hard to read, let us for a moment imagine how infinitely more difficult it must have been for the victims to suffer the events described here."

Empire of Destruction: A History of Nazi Mass Killing by Alex J. Kay

"Empire of Destruction: A History of Nazi Mass Killing" - Chapter 6: Extermination of Captive Red Army Soldiers:

"By the beginning of February 1942, that is, over the space of little more than seven months, 2 million Soviet prisoners of war had died or been murdered in German custody. This was almost 60 per cent of the 3.35 million Red Army soldiers captured during this period, most of them by the end of October 1941. On Reich territory, at least 265,000 Soviet POWs died during these months; this constituted a death rate of around 53 per cent. (By contrast, death rates among Polish and Soviet civilian forced labourers inside Germany were well below 10 per cent.) The fact that this rate of mortality was scarcely lower that the death rate in the POW camps east of the Reich's borders not only sheds an unmistakably clear light on living conditions for captive Soviet soldiers in Germany. It also throws into stark relief the common fate of Soviet POWs in German captivity regardless of their whereabouts, and give the lie to the claim that long transportation routes and the associated problems were to blame for the mass mortality. Over an extended period between October 1941 and February 1942, as many people died in a single large POW camp in the occupied Soviet territories as could be murdered during the same time span by an entire Einsatzgruppe. Indeed, as of winter 1941-42, captured Soviet troops constituted the largest single victim group of Nazi mass-killing policies."

Nazi Treatment of Soviet POW's:
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/conten...

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/conten....