History Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread VIII

[caketastydelish]

I watched this video:

and it talked about one final battle where the Americans and German regular soldiers fought against the SS together.

This sounds like a stupid question (which it probably is) but I'm trying to picture something.

If you are the SS, and you see American soldiers and German soldiers fighting on the same side, would that not make it incredibly obvious that the war is already over? By that point in time, it should have been common knowledge that the war was over regardless. If the German soldiers and American soldiers were wearing their respective uniforms (I'm guessing they were) then how could the SS not be able to tell just by looking at them what had happened? Literally, the only way the Germans and Americans could be fighting on the same side in the first place is if the war is over, so I don't get it.

 

[Dachs]

I watched this video:

and it talked about one final battle where the Americans and German regular soldiers fought against the SS together.

This sounds like a stupid question (which it probably is) but I'm trying to picture something.

If you are the SS, and you see American soldiers and German soldiers fighting on the same side, would that not make it incredibly obvious that the war is already over? By that point in time, it should have been common knowledge that the war was over regardless. If the German soldiers and American soldiers were wearing their respective uniforms (I'm guessing they were) then how could the SS not be able to tell just by looking at them what had happened? Literally, the only way the Germans and Americans could be fighting on the same side in the first place is if the war is over, so I don't get it.

In the beginning of his book The End, about the final months of the Second World War in Europe, Ian Kershaw describes the fall of Ansbach, in central Franconia.

On 18 April 1945, the Americans were within a few miles of the town. Many Nazi officials had already fled, but Ansbach's defenses, such as they were, remained in the hands of Oberst Dr. Ernst Meyer of the Luftwaffe, who refused to stand down. So, in order to aid the incoming Americans, a nineteen-year-old theology student, Robert Limpert - who had distributed some leaflets calling for the town's surrender earlier in the month - cut some telephone wires. He thought they connected Meyer's base to the Wehrmacht forces outside. They did not. But the act of sabotage was witnessed by some Hitlerjugend members, who informed on him. Limpert was arrested at his home almost immediately, and quickly processed by the civil authorities. Meyer personally oversaw a sham "trial" by tribunal that lasted a few minutes, and then sentenced him to be executed by hanging immediately.

Limpert managed to break free and run for it, but the police gave chase and caught him within a hundred meters. They dragged him back through the crowd to the noose at the gate of the Rathaus. Not a single person lifted a finger in his defense. Quite the opposite: he was beaten bodily by some of the crowd members before his hanging. In one last act of incompetence, the hangman's noose broke, but Meyer's goons fashioned a new one. Robert Limpert was executed in the early afternoon of 18 April, and Meyer ordered his body to hang "until it stinks". It was still hanging there, four hours later, when the Americans showed up. Meyer himself had already fled, along with the rest of the Wehrmacht. The Americans cut his body down and treated it with the respect it deserved.

Not a single person in Ansbach did a single thing to resist this last, most pointless vile act of the Nazi regime in their town. They knew the Americans were at the gates. The policemen might have delayed in arresting Limpert; they did not. The civil authorities might have procrastinated; instead, they cooperated with Meyer. The townsfolk might have hidden Limpert, or not informed on him; instead, they cooperated with the police and beat him half to death before his hanging.

The entirety of the Nazi state and society kept trying to function and resist until the bitter end. And if ordinary Germans were willing to act like good citizens of Hitler's Reich up to the point where the Allied soldiers were physically in their midst, you can imagine how ready the SS diehards were to fight. The unique part about the Battle of Schloß Itter (a relatively brief, if intense and undeniably weird, affair) wasn't that the SS continued to attack long after the war was blatantly, obviously lost. It was that some Wehrmacht troops, in contradistinction to basically the entire rest of the German military, were willing to recognize reality (and a sense of basic human decency) and protect the denizens of the Itter concentration camp and fight alongside the Americans.

 

[HoloDoc]

I watched this video:

and it talked about one final battle where the Americans and German regular soldiers fought against the SS together.

This sounds like a stupid question (which it probably is) but I'm trying to picture something.

If you are the SS, and you see American soldiers and German soldiers fighting on the same side, would that not make it incredibly obvious that the war is already over? By that point in time, it should have been common knowledge that the war was over regardless. If the German soldiers and American soldiers were wearing their respective uniforms (I'm guessing they were) then how could the SS not be able to tell just by looking at them what had happened? Literally, the only way the Germans and Americans could be fighting on the same side in the first place is if the war is over, so I don't get it.

You watched the video, but didn't check the Wiki page for this rather famous battle?

Source.

The French prisoners included former prime ministers, generals and a tennis star.

The prison was established to contain high-profile French prisoners valuable to the Reich.[5][6] Notable prisoners included tennis player Jean Borotra,[7]former prime ministers Édouard Daladier[8] and Paul Reynaud,[9] former commanders-in-chief Maxime Weygand[10] and Maurice Gamelin,[11] Charles de Gaulle's elder sister Marie-Agnès Cailliau,[12] right-wing leader and closet French resistance member François de La Rocque,[13] and trade union leader Léon Jouhaux.[14] Besides the VIP prisoners, the castle held a number of Eastern European prisoners detached from Dachau, who were used for maintenance and other menial work.[15]

He was taken to Major Josef Gangl, commander of the remains of a unit of Wehrmacht soldiers who had defied an order to retreat and instead thrown in with the local resistance, being made its head.

Gangl sought to maintain his unit's position in the town to protect local residents from SS reprisals. Nazi loyalists would shoot at any window displaying either a white- or Austrian flag, and would summarily execute males as possible deserters. Gangl's hopes were pinned on the Americans reaching Wörgl promptly and surrendering to them.[22] Instead, he would now have to approach them under a white flag to ask for their help.

Around the same time, a reconnaissance unit of four Sherman tanks of the 23rd Tank Battalion, 12th Armored Division of the US XXI Corps, under the command of Captain Lee, had reached Kufstein, Austria, 13 km (8 mi) to the north. There, in the town square, it idled while waiting for the 12th to be relieved by the 36th Infantry Division. Asked to provide relief by Gangl, Lee did not hesitate, volunteering to lead the rescue mission and immediately earning permission from his HQ.

Basically, this battle - and a film is supposedly coming out this year, although it seems likely it's been pushed back, unless it's being released over Christmas - was a freak occurrence. The SS commandant abandoned a bunch of high-profile prisoners because he feared for his life; those prisoners then took over the prison, with a few friendly former guards staying on to help. The prisoners also attempted to contact the Americans, but ended up in contact with the Austrian anti-Nazi resistance instead.

The head of the local resistance group was a Wehrmacht officer, Major Josef Gangl. His troops had realised the war was lost, weren't fans in the first place, and had refused to evacuate to Germany. Due to his military experience, the resistance put him in charge, and his main job was to defend Austrian civilians against SS reprisals. As soon as he discovered the existence of a prison full of French elites nearby, he realised it would be a prime target for the SS - mopping up their own mess and eliminating witnesses before the end - and both took off to protect the French and reached out to the Americans for help.

The Americans realised the same thing Gangl had, and also rushed to help. By this point, some of the remaining SS in the area had launched an attack on Castle Itter, and Gangl and his troops fought alongside the French POWs, and even a few remaining SS guards, until the Americans arrived to relieve them.

Gangl died in the defence, and is considered a national hero in Austria. He took a fatal bullet shielding former French Prime Minister Reynaud; the guy who promoted De Gaulle to general and made him a cabinet minister in 1940. Gangl has a street named after him in Worgl, the nearby Austrian town he was defending from the SS. I presume the only reason his corpse wasn't presented with numerous medals was because no one knew what medals to give a German soldier fighting for the Austrian resistance alongside American soldiers who saved a French Prime Minister's life.

As for your question of why the SS a would fight if the war was over...

The battle was fought five days after Adolf Hitler had committed suicide[2] and only two days before the signing of Germany's unconditional surrender.

Germany hadn't surrendered yet. Technically, Gangl was committing treason. Good for him.

 

[r16]

which naturally revolves around the question that still remains unasked . Why the SS themselves left the camps open for perusal , so that the Allies would see them Jews , with all bones sticking out in their totally starved bodies ? Powerful images indeed , Erhard Milch , the Luftwaffe Marshall surrendered to a Lord Roberts , the Brigadier general commanding a 2nd British Commando , possibly a large special operations unit or something and Lord Roberts had just seen Dachau or some other place . The Brit calmly received the Marshall's baton , in strict accordance to the protocols military etiquette . Then broke it on Milch's head . Which naturally gets better as Milch was famous for survival in Nazi Germany despite his enemies "proving" he was a Jew and Goering bombastically declaring , as the head of Luftwaffe , ı think Gestapo at the time and possibly Prussia , that it's Goering who decides who's a Jew and who is not .

as for the camp , it might be related to discreet knowledge of Patton's raid on some camp , to save his son-in-law in early '45 . Raid going good and possibly would go bad only after the American tanks accidentally blew up a truck full of nurses . So , Germans apparently arranged a little thing with their reported super-panzers and the attack on the American task force was the only time the survivors ever saw Germans fighting in the way they were supposed to be fighting . But before that , the tanks had made it to the camp and were forced to stop shelling the Serbian PoWs by an American delegation . Which included Patton's son-in-law . Then some solitary guy rose from the grass in an uniform no one could tell and shot Patton's son-in-law in the groin . Barely survived by attention of the said Serbians with their highly qualified surgeon carrying out a fast operation in American wrecked buildings . Had Patton not been that embrassed , the whole 9th Air Force would napalm the whole region out of existance . And the French were indeed angry in 1945 .

 

[Olleus]

I presume the only reason his corpse wasn't presented with numerous medals was because no one knew what medals to give a German soldier fighting for the Austrian resistance alongside American soldiers who saved a French Prime Minister's life.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

Did German ever reach the same status in the US as Spanish today, i.e. a de facto official language?

 

[Dachs]

Did German ever reach the same status in the US as Spanish today, i.e. a de facto official language?

Yes and no. Mostly no.

There is a persistent myth that German was almost made the official language of the United States in the 1790s but lost by a single vote. A similar myth has been advanced for an official language of Pennsylvania vote. Neither is correct; the United States has no official language, as you know. They both appear to be based on a petition from 1795 from some German-speaking people living in Virginia (of all places), which was made to Congress on behalf of those German-speakers who did not understand English and wished for an official German-language translation of the Constitution. Congress debated the matter but ultimately did not include an official translation in any bill. Hence the no. (An author named Löher apparently made many fanciful exaggerations to the story of the vote, adding in a role for Speaker Muhlenberg, which spawned the official language myth.)

Realistically, the maximum proportion of Germans in any of the Thirteen Colonies was about 30% (Pennsylvania), and in the other colonies the population dropped off rather sharply from there. Although German immigration increased in the nineteenth century, and resulted in the heavily-German-populated Upper Midwest and Dakotas, by then the English-speaking population of the US was even larger and German continued to recede into the distance. Some municipalities maintained German-language media (including the Deitsch Eck, or '[Pennsylvania] German Corner', in the Allentown, PA, newspaper The Morning Call). There are some reports of some state documents being provided in German in places like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, although I myself haven't come across any proof of that. There's a sharp contrast to Spanish in modern America; documents in Spanish are readily available from both federal and state governments in many locations, and dual-sided English/Spanish documents are not uncommon.

The tiny bit of "yes" comes from the fact that it was a minority language with numerous speakers and was often viewed with the same hysteria that many Americans reserve for Spanish now. There are many accounts of WASP hand-wringing from the 1750s and onward about the fantastic number of Dutchmen in nearly every county that would allegedly swamp Pennsylvania with foreigners. Obviously didn't happen.

 

[caketastydelish]

Literally, every single American born person of Latin American decent that I personally know is a native English speaker. Only the immigrants are native Spanish speakers, and in my experience, the majority of them attempt to learn English (and successfully do). The idea that "Spanish will eventually take over English." is laughable IMO. America becoming browner is one thing, but Spanish isn't 'taking over' in the long term.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

Although German immigration increased in the nineteenth century, and resulted in the heavily-German-populated Upper Midwest and Dakotas, by then the English-speaking population of the US was even larger and German continued to recede into the distance.

What factors were ensuring it was becoming less prominent? The proportion of German-speaking immigrants being much lower (compared to the current situation in US Southwest) than the established English-speakers?

 

[PPQ_Purple]

I'd imagine that Germany uniting as a sort of promised land helped stem the tide. And than two world wars made being German highly unpopular. The same thing that happened in parts of Europe.

 

[Dachs]

What factors were ensuring it was becoming less prominent? The proportion of German-speaking immigrants being much lower (compared to the current situation in US Southwest) than the established English-speakers?

I'd imagine that Germany uniting as a sort of promised land helped stem the tide. And than two world wars made being German highly unpopular. The same thing that happened in parts of Europe.

More or less. German immigration dried up between 1800 and 1820, but started to climb again starting in the 1830s to a peak of a third of all immigrants to the US from 1850 to 1869. By then, however, many of the older German communities had lost a lot of members to Anglicization and internal migration. While the wave of the 1850s and 1860s certainly introduced a lot of native German-speakers to the Midwest and Upper Midwest, the Pennsylvania German community had shrunk dramatically. From what I understand, there were a few things that prevented the new German speakers from moving in near the old ones. The first was the American government's system of land appropriation and homestead creation, which drew millions of people west away from the old heartland around York, Lancaster, Reading, and Allentown. A second was the fact that a lot of these Germans came from different places; the OG Pennsylvania Germans were mostly Rhinelanders, but the new wave included South Germans and Prussians. They didn't really have that much affinity with each other.

Immigration from Germany didn't shrink much in absolute terms after 1860, and actually skyrocketed in absolute terms in the 1880s, but it steadily shrank as a proportion of overall immigration to the US over the next several decades. While the immediate aftermath of German unification may have had some effect slowing down German migration, what seems more likely is that it took some decades for Germans in the Kaiserreich to start to enjoy the technological and economic benefits of the Second Industrial Revolution there. Once Germany started to seem like a place worth staying, people mostly stayed there - with hiccups for the First World War and Second World War, a mild increase in the proportion of German immigrants as a whole in the 1930s due to the imposition of quotas on other groups, and a significant increase in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War and extending into the 1950s.

Some historians date the decline in German as a spoken language in America to the First World War, and there's a decent amount of anecdotal evidence for that, but realistically Germans, like most immigrant communities, started to learn English in successive generations as they set down roots in the new country. The American government never felt significant pressure to adopt German as an alternative language. The German immigrant community had some transient political muscle in the 1860s, but it was mostly personality-based (and Civil War-based), it didn't significantly outweigh, say, the Irish immigrant community, and it rapidly disappeared at the end of the war.

 

[Mouthwash]

Anyone know what Holland is referring to here? Google doesn't bring up anything.

 

[Hrothbern]

Anyone know what Holland is referring to here? Google doesn't find anything.

this is that priest
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottschalk_of_Orbais

 

[Mouthwash]

How accurate is this article? It mostly takes aim at Las Casas, but also seems like a general apologia for Spanish colonialism in the New World (or at least the parts the Church was involved in).

 

[schlaufuchs]

seems like a general apologia for Spanish colonialism in the New World (or at least the parts the Church was involved in).

Well, the author is a Robert Novak Journalism fellow, and the article is published in First Things, so, without reading the article itself, this take seems extremely likely.

 

[Masada]

How accurate is this article?

It's slanted. I'll just quickly look at the train wreck that is this sentence: His [Las Casas] disastrous Cumaná venture lasted only a few months, his posting as Bishop of Chiapa, [lasted] a little over a year. The context of the first part of the sentence is that Las Casas had sold the King on establishing a colony in Venezuela. The venture failed. Spanish slaving and a punitive expedition had made the Indians hostile before he arrived. Nobody was particularly surprised when the colony was burned to the ground. Las Casas least of all. This context is only selectively presented. For example, the author has Las Casas blame unnamed "traders and soldiers who had refused to recognize his authority" for the destruction of Cumaná... without mentioning that those traders were also slavers who had practiced their trade extensively in the areas Las Casas wanted to settle in and that the soldiers in question had mounted a punitive expedition into the interior which made relations even worse. Las Casas' Cumaná troubles are also contrasted with Hernán Cortés a "more decisive man" who had just won himself "undisputed mastery of the Aztec empire". What. The sentence itself is used to as part of a paragraph that tries to establish that Las Casas had no idea what he was talking about because he was in the Indies for only a short time. His short tenure as Bishop of Chiapa is presented as evidence of this. The issue is that he was Bishop of Chiapa for such a short time because he had tried to had taken a hard line on slavery. Among other things he threatened to excommunicate people who mistreated Indians and refused absolution to slave owners. The local landowners hated him and in a heated moment fired shots at Las Casas. When a summons to appear in Mexico City appeared, he wisely answered it and never returned to Chiapa.

It mostly takes aim at Las Casas

It's not wrong about Las Casas being unlikable. Most of his contemporaries hated him. His views were totally at odds with how they saw the world and he didn't care. Even his nominal allies usually had little time for him. He just rubbed people the wrong way. This comes up again and again with Las Casas. It was the author of so many of his problems.

also seems like a general apologia for Spanish colonialism in the New World (or at least the parts the Church was involved in).

It's much more interested in making general apologies. It's not that interested in making the Church look good. If you want to do that, you usually put Las Casas front and centre.

 

[caketastydelish]

This is a somewhat silly (stupid?) question but it piques my curiosity:

What did German soldiers in WW2 think of Japanese American soldiers fighting against them? Did they find it demoralizing since the Japanese were "supposed" to be on their side? (serious question). How big a role did the Japanese American soldiers play? I know we deliberately kept their involvement at a minimum in the Pacific for obvious reasons but how much did they do in the European theater? How were they treated, both by our own American government and how did the Axis powers in Europe perceive them?

 

[r16]

sent to 36th Division , formed from mostly Texans , so like automatically fully racist or whatever , because newly built Pentagon had a couple of good guys or whatever that knew the Japanese fighting qualities would soon re-assert themselves in those Americans with not round eyes and they would no longer be embrassed by the camps , so much Nazi like . 36th had a bad start in Italy , massacred by the Germans in the typical ways , but anyhow one day a battalion of good old White boys were cut off by the Germans and Nisei went forward and MG-42s typically butchered them and no good old White boy , at least in that division had anything against them . Made into some Hollywood movie , apart from the Karate Kid's Mr. Miyagi , and of course , Dachs will naturally will provide a fuller answer , in the proper traditions of the Subforum . Am ı the only one who misses the days when there would be 10 new threads every week ?

 

[caketastydelish]

Are you saying the Japanese-american soldiers used Karate and Kung-fu fighting/asian martial arts against the Nazi soldiers?

edit: back to being serious:

I've also heard that a lot of German soldiers/officers were anticipating that America would fight the soviet union next. And that in many cases after surrendering they even offered to defer to help the Americans fight the Russians (only to be disappointed by the apparent answer). How much truth is there to this?

 

[r16]

many of them born in the US , they certainly didn't lack the guts to charge straight on and similar stuff that regularly got you cut in half by machine gun fire , or something similar . Similarly done by good old white boys ; Japanese acceptance into US (especially after Pearl Harbour) was paid in galloons of blood .

entirely true . Quite amazed to discover it wouldn't be the case . Here , you would need to discuss whether the likes of Henry Ford funded the Nazi Party to kill them Commies all .