I’m British and would say it’s pretty evenly split. Perhaps I have ‘slightly’ better recognition of the US shot, due to our exposure to US culture.
While we’re on the subject, here’s a question… why on earth was there that much of the Reichstag building left? Wouldn’t it have been target #1 for bombing and artillery for months?
(And as an American I’m familiar with the Reichstag photo, but far moreso with the Iwo Jima shot, not surprisingly. I think the latter is superior purely as a photograph.)
American here. I know I’ve seen the Reichstag picture a number of times before, but it never occured to me that it was iconic. I suspect that many, if not most, Americans have also seen it, but it didn’t have much emotional effect, so they soon forgot it.
Maybe they reused the soundstage for the Apollo shots…
I love how the Russians try to make their contributions great by telling us how many men they sent to their death.* " I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor, dumb bastard die for his country."
*
And that picture should be entitled “raising the* tablecloth* over the Reichstag”
It wasn’t a military target, any more than the Capitol building in Washington would be. In fact, it hadn’t even been repaired after the fire so was not in use as a legislative meeting place.
Same here. I actually felt kinda stupid when I clicked and didn’t recognize the photo. :o
I suppose there is something to be said about Zapp Brannigan’s strategy of throwing waves of your own troops at the enemy until they hit their kill count limit and shut down. Assuming your enemy is killbots with a fixed kill count limit. Or humans with limited supplies, ammunition, or reinforcements, which amounts the same thing.
In other words, it’s one way to win a war of attrition. The best strategy the Soviets (or the Union, or the Syrians) could have had.
Yeah, the detonation of the Nuremberg Swastika is the one that comes to mind, along with a handful of post-battle Berlin pictures showing the destruction that happened as a result of the battle.
The Reichstag flag one isn’t really one that comes immediately to mind.
Not staged, but also not the original smaller flag originally placed at that point.
Yank/Australian. I can’t visualise the Reichstage picture, but I knew immediately what you were talking about. The European war was big, but the Pacific War was much bigger in Aus. So the fact that I’ve even heard of the Reichstag picture indicates how important it is.
These are guys who cleared a mine field by marching troops through it, and strapped bombs on dogs to blow up tanks, and fed said dogs from a tank.
I thought of the Rooskies blowing up the swastika when I read the title of the thread. Perhaps blowing stuff up is easier to remember.
Not going to get into that discussion here in this thread.If it’s in another thread and I’ll join you.
RickJay really hit it.
Japanese were facing the complete destruction of their entire nation. Then the government surrendered and they started climbing out that that huge mess.
However, it’s easy to overlook at how radical the actual change was for Japan. It’s almost impossible overstate the effects on the society.
Imagine what it would have been like for America if the Soviets had managed to conquer us in the 1960s. Going from an American way of live to a communist government; everything you knew would be completely different. Everything you learned as a child and believed was suddenly uprooted.
I first lived in Japan in the early 80s and consequently knew many people who had gone through that era. A friend in Nagasaki lived through the bombing there. I lived with my (now ex-) wife and her family for a year; her parents had been children during the war. I dated a woman whose father was a Zero pilot.
Ordinary Japanese were powerless in the Japanese militaristic society. They didn’t chose the leader which lead them into war and consequently many felt that they were victims as well. This is one reason that the belief that Japan suffered because of the atomic bombing was so easy to accept.
Hence, the reason that the Hiroshima Dome picture is so iconic for Japanese.
McArthur did well as a military governor. However, the Korean War came at a very fortuitous time in that there were growing agitations to move beyond American occupation. Had the war not occurred, then it’s really likely that “America’s Caesar” would have fought to stay on long past his welcome.
:rolleyes:
Oh, for fuck’s sake. Look, I’m no big fan of the Russians, but they didn’t just do the bulk of the dying, thay also did the bulk of the killing.
“Overmans stated that there is not sufficient data to break down the 1,230,045 deaths in the 1945 Final Battles in Germany between the Western Allied invasion of Germany and Eastern Front in 1945, although he estimates that 2/3 of these casualties can be attributed to the Eastern Front. Overall he estimated losses for the entire war on the Eastern front at 4 million and in the West 1 million.[32]”
It was not the first flag-raising on the mountain top. It might not have been “staged,” but it was a re-enactment, which is awfully close to the same thing.
Likewise with the iconic McArthur Returns photo. Initially, Mac had been really pissed because the pilot(?) of the landing craft had stopped offshore and made them wade in. He loved his clean uniforms but afterwards realized the propaganda value and staged the re-enactment.
When I read Ivan’s War, I hope I remember to get back to this thread. At the moment all that comes to mind is an astounding number of rapes.
It wasn’t a re-enactment, either, according to the Wikipedia article (with numerous cites).
The numbers for the Soviets are far less dramatic when you consider the scale of the battle. There were 2 500 000 men in the Battle for Berlin, with 350 000 casualties that’s a loss of just 14% of the total force.
The US losses at Iwo Jima are closer to 25%.
And to get back to the OP. To me, a history buff, both photos are equally recognisable / iconic. For my fellow South Africans they’ve seen the Iwo Jima photo before in US media but couldn’t tell you what it represents. And they wouldn’t recognise the Reichstag pic or have any clue about it.
But a big part of that is people here just don’t learn much about the second world war.
The Iwo Jima photograph is the more memorable in the sense that it is the more dramatic, arresting composition. I was familiar with it as an image, and as an icon celebrating American military qualities, before I knew what it was called. And, when I did learn what it was called, I had only the vaguest idea where Iwo Jima was, and no sense of whether the taking of Iwo Jima was a particularly significant event.
The Berlin image is less visually dramatic, but everybody knows were Berlin is and why the fall of Berlin was such a momentous event.