Good presentations, found the description of his POW experience very interesting.

Link is to the last of 11 presentations of a German officer's diary which follows his experiences in WW2.In comments it lists all the links to the previous videos. I have not listened to all yet but they are very good. They are not really videos in that only one picture is displayed.
Edit, they are longish listens.


Link

Here's the complete playlist of all 11 videos, in order: https://www.youtube.com/playli...lEW4p1-QNfVNvpYKFqGq


If you enjoyed this, there are several other well-known written memoirs of German Army officers from WW2, including:

Soldat by Siegfried Knappe (artillery officer): https://www.amazon.com/Soldat-...6-1949/dp/0440215269

Panzer Commander by Hans von Luck (tank officer): https://www.amazon.com/Panzer-...ibrary/dp/0440208025

Tigers in the Mud by Otto Carius (tank officer): https://www.amazon.com/Tigers-...litary/dp/0811729117

Panzer Leader by Heinz Guderian (tank general): https://www.amazon.com/Panzer-...derian/dp/0306811014

Cool, thanks.

A great book is 'A Higher Call'

Franz Stigler is a Messerschmitt pilot and escorts a badly shot up American Bomber over the German AA guns to the English Channel so the plane would not be shot down.

Stigler was doing all he could to shoot down planes but had a revelation and realized killing wasn't what it was cracked up to be. He went on to move to the U.S. and lived a giving back lifestyle.

Very good read.

I’ve watched a few videos on that channel, and I must say they have been very enlightening.

The ones that really get me are those that include whiny descriptions of being POWs in the hands of the Americans, including their experiences after being transferred to the U.S. Yes, I understand it wasn’t all sunshine and roses even for them, but I can only wonder what they would have thought if they’d ever been held by the Soviets. Or if they’d even seen what happened to Russians and some others captured by their own side, the Germans.

I also wonder about how much some of the accounts were written at the time of their experiences. I wouldn’t think that there would have been much time or opportunity to set down one’s thoughts as they were trying to evade capture on foot, plus some of the comments bitterly complain about having all their possessions taken away from them, sometimes more than once, after they were captured. Some of it must have been recorded long after the fact, and I therefore wonder about how accurately it reflected what was experienced and thought at the actual time of the events.

But although the ones I’ve listened to can become somewhat tedious at times, it definitely is an interesting series.

quote:

Originally posted by sigfreund:
The ones that really get me are those that include whiny descriptions of being POWs in the hands of the Americans, including their experiences after being transferred to the U.S. Yes, I understand it wasn’t all sunshine and roses even for them, but I can only wonder what they would have thought if they’d ever been held by the Soviets.

I lived in West Germany in the 1980s. We lived in a small village with no other Americans. My German landlord was a POW in one of the Texas camps at the end of WW2. He never told me any details of how he was treated other than he loved Americans and was very happy he wasn't captured by the Soviets.

Growing up my neighbor across the street was a German POW sent stateside. He was sent back to Germany after the war and immigrated back to the US and became a citizen some time later.

Something I would loved to have heard, learned more about, but they moved away not long after I graduated High School. I learned a few months ago he passed in 2020 at the age of 92. He was a good man.

If you’re ever in the area, stop at this place.

https://nebraskaprairiemuseum.com/about/

The website doesn’t even touch the quality of the exhibits. There is a very large area, including a recreation, of the Atlanta POW camp near there in Phelps NE. It was absolutely fascinating. One of the volunteers there was the daughter of a POW who returned after the war.

As an aside, we’ve spent a lot of time traveling away from interstates. There’s a surprising number of museums like this one tucked away in the hinterlands. This one had quite a car collection, old farm equipment, vignettes of frontier living all of which were restored or preserved. Amazing actually

Interesting how he describes how his treatment in an Arkansas POW camp declined when the war ended. He surmised the incentive of treating the German POWs well during the war to hopefully get reciprocal decent treatment for US POWs, had ended with surrender. I suspect treatment also worsened when the full extent of atrocities was learned.

It was also interesting to hear how the Americans systematically convinced the POWs to work, hanging out the carrot of returning to Germany sooner. Ultimately, you went home earlier if you didn't work because you were a drain.

I was surprised when he visited his parents and fiancé in Soviet controlled part of Austria, that the Soviets respected British sector orders and let him return there.

The South is peppered with the ruins of German POW camps. They were treated well and often socialized with the local girls. The hard core Nazis were separated from the draftee. Certainly better accomodations than the Jews had.

quote:

Originally posted by urbanwarrior238:
A great book is 'A Higher Call'

Franz Stigler is a Messerschmitt pilot and escorts a badly shot up American Bomber over the German AA guns to the English Channel so the plane would not be shot down.

Stigler was doing all he could to shoot down planes but had a revelation and realized killing wasn't what it was cracked up to be. He went on to move to the U.S. and lived a giving back lifestyle.

Very good read.

My uncle was the bombardier on that flight.

Stigler started the war in the African desert and ended the war in the 262 squadrons. His brother was shot down in his Dornier the month before this encounter, and he didn't want that to happen to this crew, whose plane was already so badly damaged he didn't think that it could make the crossing.

He moved to CANADA, and died in Vancouver, having lived in a nursing home at the end of his life.