Thank you so much for coming up with this! It was really great and interesting to read, and makes a lot of sense (as much as something like this can anyway). I agreed with most of the conclusions you reached.
The worst of the worst
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Being a WW2 geek I have read/heard my share of horrible things that happened during the war. That being said, what is the worst story you have ever heard? I am not talking The Holocaust or Bataan Death march, I think we all know the numbers (unless you know a personal story). But what is the most horrific thing you have read/heard?
For me the biggest villain in WW2 was a Jew in a concentration camp. Let me explain.
I found out about this story on the History Channel. It was an interview with an old (Jewish) guy who survived the Holocaust as a child. He woke up one night to a man on top of him ripping off his pants. He shoved some bread in his mouth and did what you would expect. In the morning ‘it’ felt ashamed for what it had done and took the boy’s cap. The boy knew showing up w/o your cap meant a death sentence from the Nazis. Out of desperation he stole another boy’s cap. He had to watch as that boy was executed by the guards.
We all know Nazis are evil, but some times evil kills evil - I hope the Nazis made that SOB suffer.
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Unit 731
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Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS.
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SS-Brigade Dirlewanger
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Nanking
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Nanking is probably one of the worst things. Along with both sides bombing civilian targets is pretty bad
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I read a book that was a chronological breakdown of the war, instead of the typical theater breakdown you normally get. It talked alot about the holocaust. The stories in that book were very very hard to read. I wish I remembered the name of the book. It was a real eye opening in how Nazi German treated conquered people. Poland was horribly bad. Warsaw ghetto stories were chilling. The book to this day is the only WW2 material I felt I had to just put my nose down and power through reading it because after starting it I didn’t feel right stopping.
I will also say the firebombing of Japanese cities also qualifies as “the worst of the worst”
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Dresden 1945, „Wilhelm Gustloff“ and the Refugees of Eastprussia.
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How the SS einsatzgruppen handled Children is particularily terrible.
At first, the SS used to throw children into the air to shoot them, because shooting them near the ground would cause deadly richochets on occassion.
But that’s only when they were “willing” to kill them. A common problem was that even SS Idealists had a hard time doing the dirty work, and had high suicide ratesa.
To avoid more of the “hands-on” approach, the SS tried a number of other tactics. Including locking children in schools/churches and lighting them on fire. Or, locking the kids in cellars and letting them starve to death.
But these were also problematic, as the bodies would sometimes be discovered by regular Wehrmacht forces or the allies later.
All this, then led to the development and application of gas later…
An aside note… I also think drowning on-board a submarine would also be one of the worst things that happend to alot of sailors. Or those trapped inside pearl harbour wreckage for days until they ran out of air.
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This isn’t as bad as some of the other things that have been mentioned already, but it’s still pretty awful: During the firestorm that destroyed either Hamburg or Dresden (I can’t remember which; it may have been both firestorms), the heat was so intense that it partially melted the paved streets, with the result that some of the people who were trying to flee got stuck when their feet (and hands, if they tried to free themselves) sank into the hot semi-liquid asphalt. There were also individuals who took refuge in cellars and who ended up being baked alive by the heat, even if the flames didn’t reach them directly.
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You know what could be considered the WORST of the worst?
OPERATION PAPERCLIP.
Where scientists, in particular, Japanase Scientists ,who had mountains of data gathered on thousands of human experiments (chemical/biological weapon research), traded the data they gathered FOR THEIR FREEDOM. Spending the rest of their lives in comfort.
Just saying…
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You know what could be considered the WORST of the worst?
OPERATION PAPERCLIP.
Where scientists, in particular, Japanase Scientists ,who had mountains of data gathered on thousands of human experiments (chemical/biological weapon research), traded the data they gathered FOR THEIR FREEDOM. Spending the rest of their lives in comfort.
Just saying…
+1
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My grandfather who was an LT in the US territorial Philippine army became a guerrilla after McArthur abandoned his troops. The Japanese troops captured one of his fellow guerillas and skinned
him to draw them into a trap. They couldn’t rescue him but they saw the results. The Japanese would also burn houses and wait for the occupants to jump out while they were waiting with bayonets to impale them. Apparently, Some of my relatives died this way in an attempt to flush out the guerrillas. Unfortunately they knew of my grandfather from his service record from the surrender. -
You know what could be considered the WORST of the worst?
OPERATION PAPERCLIP.
Where scientists, in particular, Japanase Scientists ,who had mountains of data gathered on thousands of human experiments (chemical/biological weapon research), traded the data they gathered FOR THEIR FREEDOM. Spending the rest of their lives in comfort.
Just saying…
+1
+2, especially considering the scientific value from this data and future scientific discoveries from these “scientists” was quite minimal. (with perhaps a few minor exceptions such as rocket scientist Werner Von Braun, though even this can be debated) There might have been a case made for this had the scientists actually been necessary for the cold war effort, but in hindsight I do not believe so.
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If I’m not mistaken, the majority of the German scientists targeted by Paperclip were in the field of missiles and rocketry, Werner von Braun being the prime example. But the operation did pick up some folks in other areas of activity too. (The movie Ice Station Zebra includes a humourous reference to this when the Patrick McGoohan character says that (in the movie’s plot) “the Russians put our camera made by our German scientists and your film made by your German scientists into their satellite made by their German scientists.”)
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Cannot post links but google
Repatriation of Cossacks after World War II
and
Operation KeelhaulThis is so horrible to me because it was committed by the “good guys” after the war was over.
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