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June 6, 1944

don't remember much of the Eastern front being taught in history class but then our troops were not fighting there.

wonder what is taught in the history classes in places such as Japan and Germany.
 
AttilatheHoo said:
don't remember much of the Eastern front being taught in history class but then our troops were not fighting there.

wonder what is taught in the history classes in places such as Japan and Germany.
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I don't know much about Japan, but I'm fairly familiar with how WW2 is taught in Germany/Austria.

Much of the focus is on the political conditions, failures and other things that led to the rise of the National Socialist Party and Hitler. The war is seen as a disaster which was inevitable once the country went down a terrible path. In terms of the actual conflict itself, most of the books and material you see focuses on either Blitzkrieg and the rapid conquest of Western Europe, the Battle of the Atlantic or on the Eastern Front (which receives the vast majority of the attention). German movies about the war are inevitably set in the east (with a few exceptions).

Nearly everyone my age in Austria has multiple great grandfathers (or grandfathers) who fought in the war. It's not like it's a friend here or there like in the USA, it's literally everyone who had multiple direct relatives. The horrors of the conflict in the east are just something that everyone grew up hearing tales of.
 
BTW - after the end of the Cold War, Russian historians worked to piece together a lot of stuff that had been hidden, etc ... the result was a bunch of new scholarship, including a documentary series called "Soviet Storm: WW2 in the East". The entire thing is up in an English version on YouTube. If you're interested in WW2, it's definitely an interesting watch - especially from a Russian viewpoint.

Here's the episode on the the Ryzhev "Meatgrinder" for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Su67gOzFPQM
 
vadimivich said:
I don't know much about Japan, but I'm fairly familiar with how WW2 is taught in Germany/Austria.

Much of the focus is on the political conditions, failures and other things that led to the rise of the National Socialist Party and Hitler. The war is seen as a disaster which was inevitable once the country went down a terrible path. In terms of the actual conflict itself, most of the books and material you see focuses on either Blitzkrieg and the rapid conquest of Western Europe, the Battle of the Atlantic or on the Eastern Front (which receives the vast majority of the attention). German movies about the war are inevitably set in the east (with a few exceptions).

Nearly everyone my age in Austria has multiple great grandfathers (or grandfathers) who fought in the war. It's not like it's a friend here or there like in the USA, it's literally everyone who had multiple direct relatives. The horrors of the conflict in the east are just something that everyone grew up hearing tales of.
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Is there anyone here who doesn't have multiple, direct relatives that served in WWII?
 
jhmd2000 said:
Is there anyone here who doesn't have multiple, direct relatives that served in WWII?
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One grandfather and great uncle fought in the Pacific. Another great uncle was killed on Okinawa. Another died the day prior to deployment. Granted, I'm from a tiny county in NC.
 
Yeah, both of my grandfathers fought in Europe in WWII along with their brothers. Had another great uncle who defended the Galápagos Islands or something and another who was killed by the Japs. I'm really not sure what vad's talking about.
 
vad is talking about how fundamentally different the war was on the east, and he's right.
 
BiffTannen said:
Yeah, both of my grandfathers fought in Europe in WWII along with their brothers. Had another great uncle who defended the Galápagos Islands or something and another who was killed by the Japs. I'm really not sure what vad's talking about.
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Anecdotally that might be the case (especially from a largely rural state like NC) - but statistically it's not really even close.

0.32% of the USA population died in WW2, and about 9% of the 1939 population served in the military in one form or the other (many in non-combat roles). Austria had 5% of it's population die in combat and close to 30% of the total population served by the end of the war (boys as young as 15 through men over 40).

So take the impact WW2 had in the United States (and it was a massive impact) and multiply it dramatically. It touched literally everyone in central and eastern Europe, and that dramatically changes the way the war is talked about and taught.
 
jhmd2000 said:
Is there anyone here who doesn't have multiple, direct relatives that served in WWII?
Click to expand...

My grandfather was an infantryman who fought on Okinawa and would have been in one of the initial waves in the invasion of Japan had Truman not made the decision to drop the bomb. His older brother was a petty officer on the destroyer USS Mullany and was killed by a kamikaze in March 1945. His younger brother was a cook on the submarine USS Scamp. Following a particularly harrowing war patrol in which they were nearly sunk by air attack, my great uncle was suffering from PTSD. The skipper told him to sit out the next war patrol and recoup at Pearl Harbor. The USS Scamp then went out and was lost with all hands off the coast of Japan. My great-uncle served out the remainder of the war on another sub. I cannot imagine the survivor's guilt he carried with him for the rest of his life. My grandmother's only brother was a Gunner's Mate on board the destroyer escort USS John C. Butler and was credited with shooting down two Japanese planes. His ship was part of the famed Taffy 3 which won a Presidential Unit Citation at the Battle of Leyte Gulf/Samar Island.

Edited to add: They were all from rural Surry County, NC.
 
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Nobody in my family served in WW2 to my knowledge, only Korea
 
tsywake said:
One grandfather and great uncle fought in the Pacific. Another great uncle was killed on Okinawa. Another died the day prior to deployment. Granted, I'm from a tiny county in NC.
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My grandfather (Purple Heart) was one of multiple brothers who fought. My Great Uncle (Purple Heart) put his boots onto Normandy's shores. I don't get where Vad is coming from, and I'm guessing neither does the town of Bedford, Virginia.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Bedford-Boys-American-Sacrifice/dp/0306813556

June 6, 1944: Nineteen boys from Bedford, Virginia--population just 3,000 in 1944--died in the first bloody minutes of D-Day. They were part of Company A of the 116th Regiment of the 29th Division, and the first wave of American soldiers to hit the beaches in Normandy. Later in the campaign, three more boys from this small Virginia town died of gunshot wounds. Twenty-two sons of Bedford lost--it is a story one cannot easily forget and one that the families of Bedford will never forget. The Bedford Boys is the true and intimate story of these men and the friends and families they left behind.Based on extensive interviews with survivors and relatives, as well as diaries and letters, Kershaw's book focuses on several remarkable individuals and families to tell one of the most poignant stories of World War II--the story of one small American town that went to war and died on Omaha Beach.
 
vadimivich said:
Anecdotally that might be the case (especially from a largely rural state like NC) - but statistically it's not really even close.

0.32% of the USA population died in WW2, and about 9% of the 1939 population served in the military in one form or the other (many in non-combat roles). Austria had 5% of it's population die in combat and close to 30% of the total population served by the end of the war (boys as young as 15 through men over 40).
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So you're taking the population percentage of a very small and outdated military 2 years before involvement as your base point? From 41 to 45 (so not including occupation forces) there were over 16 million U.S. Servicemen. Most everyone I know (not just from NC) had a relative involved.

I get the point you're trying to make but it's equivalent to discussing how the Civil War is taught/talked about in the South. More people were involved/touched/affected because the war was fought there.
 
One grandfather served in the Army in New Guinea and my other grandfather was on the 5 inch gun crew of the USS Joseph Auman. His ship was supposed to deliver the Underwater Demolition team to clear the beaches for the invasion of Japan. They still did that clearing the beach for the occupation army to come ashore.

One of my great uncles was on the USS Bush. He fought at Leyte Gulf and was in the water for 12 hours after his ship was sunk by a kamikaze at Okinawa.
 
AttilatheHoo said:
don't remember much of the Eastern front being taught in history class but then our troops were not fighting there.

wonder what is taught in the history classes in places such as Japan and Germany.
Click to expand...

I wonder if it's anything like taking a course on the Civil War in the South. (FWIW, I never took any courses from Smiley, so I dunno.)

FWIW, I have very few direct relatives who served in any war. I only have 2 uncles, and 1 was pretty much disabled - neither nor my dad served. Neither grandfather did, but they both came from large families, and I think 1 brother between them served in WW2. So yeah, no real impact on either side of my family.
 
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