tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3510117578922408752.post4214866062520707358..comments2024-03-26T20:24:07.900+01:00Comments on Stabswache de Euros - Cerrar el cielo: Looting and Rape during the Normandy CampaignRobert Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10858091160498927131noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3510117578922408752.post-19657259326876682812022-04-23T12:57:21.984+02:002022-04-23T12:57:21.984+02:00I came across this blog entry while reading Charle...I came across this blog entry while reading Charles Whiting's Hemingway Goes To War (recommended but with reservations - he makes a few silly mistakes and just one can shake your faith in an author).<br /><br />In it he describes the looting and rape of Frenchwoman by GIs in Cherbourg in the week after D Day, of which I'd never been aware. So I googled the claim and came across a New York Times review of Mary Louise Roberts 2013 book The Dark Side Of Liberation (https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/21/books/rape-by-american-soldiers-in-world-war-ii-france.html). Sadly what Whiting wrote was not sensationalist hyperbole at all.<br /><br />It occurs to me that such behaviour - OK, it was almost 80 years ago, but GI behaviour in Vietnam was often also not admirable - places the US and the West on rather thinner ice in regards Putin's vicious invasion of Ukraine. It's a dilemma.<br /><br />NB Roberts, a history professor at the University of Wisconsin, could not find a US publisher, apparently. I'm not surprised. The US and the West prefers to subscribe to the 'gallant WWII GIs' myth. That might be the reason why Russians find it difficult to accept reports of what their soldiers have been up to.pfg powellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17407148810847119242noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3510117578922408752.post-76384082587177899972019-02-25T22:45:47.098+01:002019-02-25T22:45:47.098+01:00The soldier in the commanders hatch on the famous ...The soldier in the commanders hatch on the famous French recruiting poster is the highly decorated SS-Ustuf. Joachim-Günther Schöntaube from SS-Div. Das Reich.Panzer DBnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3510117578922408752.post-15071181115819405832018-05-15T20:27:02.454+02:002018-05-15T20:27:02.454+02:00This is a US Navy photo, taken soon after the libe...This is a US Navy photo, taken soon after the liberation of Cherbourg, July 1944, showing German propaganda posters stuck up on a wall. The central one says something like "Assassins always return to the scene of their crimes". This refers to Allied bombing raids on France - it is an attempt to stir up bad feeling against the Allies due to French civilian casualties in these raids.<br /><br />The posters on either side are obviously trying to turn French opinion in favour of the Nazi regime. The one to the right is a recruiting posters to encourage French people to join the Waffen SS. It says "If you want France to live, you will fight in the Waffen-SS against Communism." It's painted from a photo taken by SS Kriegsberichter Duerr.<br /><br />The one on the left is presumably meant to show someone holding back the tides of the Soviets. tonyssnoreply@blogger.com