Im helping my girlfriend with a project she is doing for school. All she needs left to do is to make 3 journal entrees that are suppost to be written in a soviet soldier, concentration camp victim, and a US soldier at war perspective during the WW2 era. Would anybody out there be able to give us any ideas on how it was like with any of the perepectives? Maybe you would have first hand experience, Im not asking you to write it for her but to give some ideas on how it was....Thanks for your help everyone..

 

My Late Father was in WWII.
Served in the Army Air Corps., Now known as Air Force.
Drove 6x6 2.5 in the European conflict.
Would this help her?

 

She is wanting to know things were if you were like a Soldier or a concentration camp victim. Like what things happen and all.

 

May I give an idea to her,
Visit a V.F.W. or American Legion Halls,
She could get 1st hand info from the Vets there.
They could also give her some idea of those Camps too.

 

mmm...soviet soldier......"fighting the great patriotic war, the germans attacked sneakily attacked the motherland. i may have had my family sent to the gulag, and i may have been in the gulag myself, but i am going to fight these outsiders.

the orders are no one takes a step back, little food to eat, and 100 grams of vodka.

i am afraid for my family, what these facists will do to them, i have heard stories from ukraine on what they are doing. i will fight with everything i have.

the boss (stalin) will lead this war and lead us to victory over the facists.

my pride and patriotism is overwhelming, gives me so much energy and motivation, i have never felt a feeling like this before, i will be happy to fight the germans. i receive no salary, hardly any food or vodka, but i will fight because i want and need to and must stop the facists."

like that? got that from my wife, her grandfather was a soviet soldier and i have maybe read at least 20 books about it.

 

Excellent reference material, and also excellent movies-
"Band of Brothers" and "Enemy At The Gate(s?)". One drawback- B of B is 11 hours long, but these movies are both fact-based.


Pete

 

Enemy at the gates was an excellent movie. I read somewhere that it was based on factual events. I dont know if thats true or not but its still a great movie.

 

yes, enemy at the gates was based on facts. the guy and the situation with the german sniper was real also, less the drama, i been to the museum where everything is displayed.

but enemy at the gates didn't show anything about life as a soldier, just a drama movie. i think it could have been a lot better.

 

Well I can tell you it wasn't pleasant..that's for sure.

Fighting Soldier's and Russian POW's practically starved and it was very cold when they fought.
The Russians thought it was a good idea to march their troops in dead of winter...literally.

 

After band of brothers, watch "saving private ryan", Again. those are my two favorite european conflict wwii based movies. There was alot of drama in S.P.R. also but the opening scene is one of the greatest war scenes i've ever seen, IMO.

From the american stand point- your cold, exausted, tired of the noise, hungry, and missing your girl/girls. But you will not quit, you'll personally kill all of the ***** yourself if you get the chance. But you have to look at the other side also, when enemy's would meet, outside of shooting at each other, You both just want it to end so you can go HOME. That is the best perspective of the american side- How much home was thought of and longed for.

 

My uncle served on a PT boat in WWII, they use to rescue Japanese sailors as the humane thing to do so they would not drown, eat eaten by sharks, or slowly die of thirst in the middle of nowhere.

They always had to be careful as they were for the most part just as fanatic as their army counterparts and did not want to be taken alive.

One day a rescued Jap sailor was being given food, acting all nice, and came up with a hidden knife and slashed the young (est) kid's throat and he bleed to death on the deck. This really distressed the older members (23 yoa?) of the crew.

They pushed the Japanese into the water and machine gunned them to death. From that moment on, they never took a POW again and would machine gun every survivor in the water they found.

 

I would agree that the VFW or American Legion would probably be the best place to go for information. You could also go to Military.com and they have discussion boards there also that you could get info from.
My Dad went from Africa up to Italy and then Normady and Europe but never talked much about it. Every once in a while he would talk to others and would say some things. I do know that he respected the regular German soldier. He said that you knew fairly quick when you got into a battle with a good German unit as opposed to those that we brought in later. He also didn't like the British soldiers. Got tired of taking a position and handing over to the British only to have to go back and take it back again because they would lose it. Also it didn't help when he was on the ship taking him to Africa that he saw the British taking down their flag and rolling it up and tossing under a bench. Mom would say that she had to be careful at night not to surprise him because sometimes he would wake up swinging. Also sometimes they would be out shopping or the like and a car would backfire and she would look around and he would be in a doorway, behind a car or even laying in the gutter. He told her that you learned not to think about where to look for a place you just did it without thinking and if anything happened you just reacted. If you took the extra time to think about where to go you might end up dead. Also that you could dig a foxhole of sorts in frozen ground if scared enough. Sometimes just plain luck would save you. He was in the forest in the winter and had to go from one post to another to check on them. Did it several times during the night. Come morning and as the sun started warming things up some land mines started going off. They found out that land mines were planted in the forest, but evidently it had gotten cold enough to freeze them and prevent them from going off. Another time they were on a breakout in Normandy and their patrol was in a half track. They came rolling into a village on fumes and found out that the Germans had gone out the other end because they thought that his patrol was the head of a larger group. If they had stayed they could have captured his patrol. As it was they liberated a small camp of civilan prisoners and the population broke out the wine. A day later they front lines caught up with them.

 

the american perspective can be from a US GI holed up in a leaking hold of a ship en-route to the slave factories in Japan and how these seemed to be all swept under the rug? Mitsubishi slave factories where many died!

 

My father remarked to me how funny he must have looked trying to walk with frozen feet. When he was discharged, he had to wear bleached white socks because of the open sores on his feet and often had to soak them in warm water to get the socks off. Yet he never complained. He was from a generation that endured the great depression, fought and won a world war and didn't complain. They are mostly gone now, but I don't have to look far for inspiration.

 

To get an idea of the concentration camp go to www.holocaustcenter.org. I've been there, it's scary.

If you were to go there in person (it's in a northern suburb of Detroit) you could talk to survivors of the concentration camps.