Morlock
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ICLOK
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14 years ago
Done afew of these under a certain German Factory.... Complete V2 Line in one!!
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh Creeper!!!!!
Morlock
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14 years ago
They certainly did a lot of tunneling!
gt5952
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14 years ago
The German government has tried to erase any history related to the Third Reich up until quite recently.

As a kid over there, there was quite a black market on artifacts, and even on trodel markts (Like boot sales) where militeria was allowed to be sold, anything with a Swaztika would be covered with a sumbol sized label.

When the Allied forces occupied old Kaserne's (Barracks), the local authority had limited access, and quite a few remnants remained.

A place called "Church House Lubbeke", a sort of ministerial retreat and training centre had a wonderful metal grill over the back door fanlight with the letters 'HJ' (Hitler Jugend (Youth) ) on it. It was a Hitler Youth holiday retreat back in the day.

My barracks in Nord Rhein Westfhalen had a underground tank park, supply depot, several air attack bunkers and a series of tunnels adjoining each accomodation block covering the whole camp (About 4 miles in length). Whilst building the new cookhouse in about 2001, a digger fell into yet another bunker.

Sennelager, a large training area in Germany, is littered with these bunkers, and the barracks attached to it (Normandy Barracks) has its own inner barracks closed to the world, within is an subteranian rail network to ammunition bunkers all over (Known as area 62 or something like that). Some nasty stuff in the ground up there....

Totally waffled on here, but, come 2014 I think it is, most these places will be handed back to the stadt and undoubtedly everything related to the war will have concrete poured into it.
'FOR SALE: 1 Kidney and Half a Lung. If the Traffic Warden comes back to my car again, I can get more bits...'
'Instead of Helping, you stand, watch, and criticise, what a great British Achievement!'
Morlock
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14 years ago
Interesting info, thanks. It will be a pity if they destroy these historic sites, whatever the history.
gt5952
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14 years ago
Yes Morlock,

Sadly there is a great deal of embaressment still, not just for WW2, but also WW1, its an odd situation, WW1, they feel they diddnt loose, and WW2, there is a huge proportion in certain areas that feels hard done by, and we are still the bad guys, 66ish yrs on,

When these camps close, theres a period where they are abandoned, thats the time for a road trip.. Detmold, Essen, Dortmund, and several other places have camps that are empty... all quite inviting....
'FOR SALE: 1 Kidney and Half a Lung. If the Traffic Warden comes back to my car again, I can get more bits...'
'Instead of Helping, you stand, watch, and criticise, what a great British Achievement!'
ICLOK
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14 years ago
You are right of course.... the sad thing is I was asked by a good friend Frank in Saltzgitter what my views on WW2 were as a prelude to seeing certain UG features from WW2... he was same age as me at time (39 about 6 yrs ago)... my answer was... "Were you there?"... his answer "No"..... My answer "Odd that, Nor was I, let's go".... He gave me his relieved smile and off we went.. its never been a barrier since. I have done tons of WW2 sites with Germans (Flak towers etc) before and since and seen some incredible feats of engineering.... sadly some will probably have been at the cost of slave labour etc but the past is past and as long as we learn from that past I see no reason personally not to discuss it openly as an engineer and an amateur industrial archaeologist!
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh Creeper!!!!!
gt5952
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14 years ago
Yes, it shouldnt be a barrier.

The British did quite some awful stuff in the name of the empire... but thats not really taught I guess.

Once the first barriers are defeated, the Germans a pretty nice people on the whole with a cracking sense of humour... far from the stereotype....

Berlin Unterwelt is a group thats documented a lot of the historical past... its interesting to see the differences between similar british groups...
'FOR SALE: 1 Kidney and Half a Lung. If the Traffic Warden comes back to my car again, I can get more bits...'
'Instead of Helping, you stand, watch, and criticise, what a great British Achievement!'
Morlock
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14 years ago
WW1 and WW2 were era's of great engineering achievment by all sides.
ICLOK
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14 years ago
100% agree on the people... I go Germany 2 - 4 times a year and thoroughly enjoy myself... my interest in the WW2 Kriegslok has taught me much re value engineering and design, especially efficient use of material. I have been treated with nothing but respect and and the humour has been excellent... so has the beer... gotta be honest tho I still love the East Germany as people are more pragmatic and very down to earth also much more comfortable with the past...
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh Creeper!!!!!
derrickman
14 years ago
I spent most the spring, summer and autumn working in Germany, Finland and Russia and it was an interesting experience.


The Dutch are quite anti-German when it slips out, from experience I've had with them. They don't generally say much about it but it's certainly there. Interestingly enough my late father was quite anti-Dutch, having served there in 1944-5; it's one of the things they don't like to discuss, but Holland had the largest pre-war Nazi party outside Germany and the Germans raised two full divisions of SS troops there ( most volunteer foreign troops raised by the Germans were classed as Waffen-SS units ).


The French are, well, French. I did note on a trip through SW France in 2002 that the French are now finally putting up plaques commemorating Resistance fighters shot or handed over to the Germans by the milice ( Vichy or other collaborationist gendarmes ) or other French nationals ( mainly Jewish ) deported to Germany by other Frenchmen. They have little to be proud of about WW2 and they know it.


West Germans, don't really know the place or the people. However it's true that the legend of the "Dolchstoss" ( stab in the back ) of 1918 is alive and well...

The East Germans tend to be much less fixated on the war generally because they have had the subsequent experience of Soviet conquest, collapse of the Soviet Union and re-unification. Generally speaking they are ok but I tended to find them a bit post-Soviet; they love beaurocracy and have little idea of actually DOING any given thing at times.

I did go to Peenemunde, which frankly is disappointing, there is little to see apart from half-demolished concrete structures, much overgrown. The remains of the huge RAF PoW camp at Barth are clearly visible, although not accessible, and the other camps around Pomerania are largely returned to agriculture.


The Russians can be stridently anti-German at times, especially the older ones. Unlike the Dutch they don't need to pretend they are political allies now, and they don't. Political Correctness is quite unknown in Russia, which is quite amusing up to a point; the Russian-in-the-street is rather like the British working man in the 1960s - they have no real racist sentiment because they rarely meet non-Russians and anyway have other things to concern themselves with.

However there are deep scars from the Soviet Afghan war, the comparison with Viet Nam for the Yanks is quite apt in some ways. The Finns are also regarded askance, the Second World War ended with a land-grab in the Karelian Peninsula which still hasn't been resolved and a DMZ is there to this day. That said, Finnish tourists cross it by the coachload to spend Euros in Vyborg and St Petersburg ( actually I would think that to Finns , London looks cheap 😮 )

Russians are also divided into Soviets and post-Soviets, broadly speaking; especially ex-servicemen, which is most Russians over 40 really. The older ones tend to remember the Soviet period with nostalgia, for understandable reasons. I spent some time working with one of the older chaps and it was thought-provoking; he had, for example, read One day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch in the 1970s and dismissed it as being unrecognisable.

I was in Vyborg for Navy Day, and a lot of older men were wearing caps, medals and in some cases telnyashka, the striped jerseys worn by various branches of the Soviet and Russian forces, especially sailors and marines.


''the stopes soared beyond the range of our caplamps' - David Bick...... How times change .... oh, I don't know, I've still got a lamp like that.
Morlock
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14 years ago
The foundry I did my time at had a few Poles and Germans who stayed after WW2, comparatively hard working bunch. They had no time for the 1960s Trade Union politics.
ICLOK
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14 years ago
When I go to Berlin I stay in the East near Weissensea park... there is an old concrete soviet built cafe run by a local... we often sit watching the flood lit fountain talking about life in general over a few Brandies and many I have met are unhappy post re-unification and that actually life might have been less free but it was much simpler, in many ways life was better than now for many, they had a job, money, medical, a roof over their heads.... non of which is now guaranteed... Many parts of the former east Germany missed out on the miracle German economy..
Back onto tunnels there are some goodens in Berlin, ine in particular connected to a Flak tower.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh Creeper!!!!!
Tamarmole
14 years ago
The German thing is quite interesting. In the Harz I found that some Germans over 50 could get quite arsey when they found out I was English, whilst those under 50 didn't have any issues at all.

I did get the impression that Germany had not really come to terms with the darker aspects of its past. At Rammelsburg (Superb mining museum - highly recommended) museum displays made very limited reference to Russian "guest workers" i.e salve labour used on the mine during the war. Likewise the camp which accomodated them had been levelled and turned into the car park with little if any information about wartime use.

How many generations does it take to cleanse a nation's concience?
ICLOK
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14 years ago
I would agree, in certain circumstances you get a swift change of subject and a few stern looks if the war comes up, usually the generation above mine, most my age (45) seem pretty ok with it and willing to engage but cautious re raising it themselves....
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh Creeper!!!!!
derrickman
14 years ago
that's my impression also. I've never known the subject to be raised by anyone over 50.

When I was at school, I did 1 x 40-minute periods a week on that curious hippogriff, the British Constitution. Since there was no actual syllabus, and no exam for this, it tended to turn into an open forum.

I well remember an eloquent lecture to the effect that the re-arming of the Wehrmacht, under a different name, for the purpose of reinforcing the line against the Soviets had left the Germans feeling that they had been right all along; it having been generally believed since about 1942 that it would be possible to strike a separate peace with the Western Allies for precisely this reason.

It should be remembered that the Western Allies also financed the maintenance of German troops on the Eastern Front well into the 1920s, for much the same reason.

The Germans also came much closer than is generally realised to winning the First World War. It might be argued that failure to realise that they had effectively broken the British line at Gheluvelt in 1914, leaving them an open path to the Channel coast, was a fatal error. More importantly, the initial "Michael" attacks of March 1918 again put them in the position where they had efectively won the war militarily but failed to realise it, electing instead to disperse their limited resources on a series of increasingly ineffective secondary attacks.

The whole offensive was heavily publicised as the Friedensturm ( Peace Offensive ) and many of the troops involved never realised that they had failed; they had advanced, hadn't they? Combine this with the fact that many troops serving on French-held sectors hadn't seen any serious action since 1916, with the winding-down of the Verdun battle and the French mutinies of 1917, and the general view that the army was still a "force in being" is quite understandable

hence the Allied view that nothing short of military invasion of the German homeland followed by unconditional surrender on German soil, would be effective in 1945

The whole German view of both World Wars is very different to ours
''the stopes soared beyond the range of our caplamps' - David Bick...... How times change .... oh, I don't know, I've still got a lamp like that.
Boggy
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14 years ago
watched the programs in the link tonight, regardless of the history of these tunnels/complexes the program was very interesting indeed thanks for putting the link up it is an aspect of the war i was unaware of. :ohmygod:
if its a hole explore it...
Morlock
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