And the latest: A 1940s era motorcycle and two skeletons, most likely of Nazi soldiers. The most likely scenario IMHO: They were on the bike, most likely at night, and they were drunk too and went off the road and into the river, later to be declared MIA or AWOL.
It also looks like some people are going to try and restore the bike, which is in surprisingly good condition, and they’re going to see if the soldiers can be fully identified.
Yeah, I know they were Nazis, but it’s just the principle of the thing.
A lot of evil shit happened on the banks of the Danube River in Budapest during WWII. In college, I interviewed a man who was a sergeant in the Hungarian army in 1944 when he witnessed thousands of people tied together, shot, and thrown into the river by members of the pro-Nazi Arrow Cross Party. I guess almost all of the bodies were swept down stream.
50-odd years ago, we played a very simplified version of “Blue Danube” at an elementary school band concert, and the director introduced it by saying, “Nowadays, it would probably be the Brown Danube.” I’ve actually heard that it was polluted even when the song was written.
Given I suspect an above-baseline number of Avalon Hill fans on the SDMB, I can really recommend Smelser’s 2007 The Myth of the Eastern Front: The Nazi-Soviet War in American Popular Culture. That goes into, specifically, how the exigencies of the Cold War led to the rehabilitation of the German Army’s leadership, and how pop culture (especially war games) simultaneously sterilized the army while also lionizing it, fostering today’s culture of “they’re just normal men. They’re just innocent men” weirdos.
Here in Berlin the Spree is not yet shallow enough to reveal anything interesting on my walks, at least, but it has been a very odd summer thus far, so who knows.
What I took @silenus to mean (they can, of course, speak for themselves) was that not everyone in the Wehrmacht was automatically an enthusiastic Nazi, and low-level soldiers were likely just being soldiers, at least mostly. Of course there were Nazis in the service, at all levels, but more so at higher levels. It’s not an endorsement of Nazism to try to identify these two soldiers for the benefit of their families’ feelings.
I’m not following your logic at all. I’m in favor of trying to identify them just because it’s interesting. That has nothing to do with the part of the post that I copied and the reply to it. Did you read the link?
Please point out the section in that article where it says that all Wehrmacht personnel were Nazis. Or even just where it says all Army personnel were Nazis.
nearwildhaven: They were definitely Nazis
silenus: maybe they weren’t Nazis
hajiro: Educate yourself:
scadian: Show me that all army personnel were Nazis
hajiro: I never made that claim
