r/europe • u/Heartfeltzero United States of America • 2d ago
Historical WW2 Era First Hand Account Letter Written by German Soldier In Italy “I'm glad I don't have to kill any more of those guys!”. Details in comments.
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u/black650 2d ago
It's a nicd document from the padt times but could probably be written today by many soldiers that are actually fighting in all the wars on this planet. We as humanity should learn from this but we are to stupid. New Hitlers are around and will bring misery, death and shame to many
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u/an_idiot_persists 1d ago
There's a fantastic American Civil War lecture series where historian David Blight makes this point.
He uses a lot of personal letters to capture a sense of the times through the eyes of the people who lived it.
In one of the lectures, he goes back and forth between soldier's letters from the Civil War and from the Iraq War. They're almost interchangeable except for the place names and other nouns.
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u/_sQuare89_ 1d ago
New hitlers? I hope you're not a german, since you could be sued for this. Relativisation of the holocaust is a crime in germany.
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u/black650 1d ago
How is there a relation between what I wrote and what you thought?
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u/_sQuare89_ 1d ago
There are no "new hitlers". Even Nazis are really rare. In germany too.
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u/black650 1d ago
Re you living under a rock? I guess you got that relativitation wrong
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u/_sQuare89_ 1d ago
Well how am i supposed to get a "new hitler"? I mean, look. I don't know if you refer to the AfD by calling them "new hitlers" or if you talk about migrants. In both cases you shouldn't use that term.
Or do i get something totally wrong here?
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u/_sQuare89_ 1d ago
I can imagine that many letters were read by superior officers which means that many of them could've written that to make sure they're not suspected of treason. We all know how traitors were handled in germany back then.
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u/SaphirRose 2d ago
But but whermach didn't believe in Hitler and propaganda, they all opposed how bad he was, its all written in memoirs and acclaimed books of Nazi Generals like Manstein and Guderian that they wrote after Germany lost.. Why would they ever lie and push all the problems and actions that they did on Hitler, dont be ridiculous.
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u/meckez 1d ago
Had a professor that has worked on the Wehrmacht exhibition that has shown the attrocities of the Wehrmacht and initiated debunking the myth of the clean Wehrmacht. He told us how the exhibition has been the target of Neonazi attacks since the 90s and back then often times received huge oposition and critique of the people, media and politics
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u/GlobalFriendship5855 2d ago
While I largely agree, this letter doesn't really prove anything to be fair. Letters were often checked before being sent. So if you wrote something bad about the regime or the war, your letter would just get "lost".
Besides this letter doesn't even say anything positive about the war or the regime!?
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u/Artistic-Bass3477 2d ago
Hurr durr wehrmacht was just yet another army hurr durr there werent SS hurr
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u/Heartfeltzero United States of America 2d ago
This letter was written by a German Soldier named Christof Sigel. He served with the Artillery Regiment 356 within the 356th Infantry Division. He wrote this letter shortly after returning from a short deployment during “Operation Shingle” aka the Battle of Anzio.
The letter does contains Nazi propaganda and antisemitic language, showcasing how insane the indoctrination was at that time, and is shared for historical purposes only.
The letter reads:
“ Italy, 19. 2. 44 My dear Trude!
Thank God, I'm now back to my previous position. The whole thing was just a brief stint on my part, and you can imagine how happy I am about it.
We had already pushed the Americans back quite a bit, and when I returned from a break in the fighting with other comrades, I was handed the special order. So now I'm back here by the beautiful sea, and tomorrow I'll start training the young savages of the Hitler Youth. Apparently, things didn't work out so well with Kramer. Well, that's fine with me!
The Americans and their planes will leave us alone here, as they now have enough to do in central Italy and we'll keep them busy there.
At our section, we captured a few Americans, but also Canadians, and I have to honestly say, they're mostly nice guys. I'm glad I don't have to kill any more of those guys!
Some of our comrades were not friendly towards the Americans because of the bombings of our cities, and that is, of course, somewhat understandable.
Well, these guys are just carrying out the orders given to them by the Jew Roosevelt. Most of them probably don't even know that they're risking their lives for the Jewish plutocrats. But they too will come to this realization when they return home to their families as cripples.
My dear Trude, that's enough for today. I have all my papers together except for the family tree! Many greetings and a thousand kisses.
Heil Hitler! Yours, Christel “