Why I Don't Have The Stomach For 'Battlefield 1'

Please believe me when I say I believe your story and I am not challenging the experiences of your Grandfather and your remembrances, but there are problems with how you are telling them that I would like to help you out with, or I may be missing something less obvious.

A POW is a prisoner of war, the Jews in the concentration camps were prisoners, but not POWs, unless, perhaps he was a Polish Soldier, captured and later identified as a Jew, and moved from a POW camp to a concentration camp?

I did find an article that would explain how this did happen.
Sachsenhausen



As for your comment about just not playing it if it bothers you ...... here here.

I apologize if I asserted that the other people in the concentration camp were POW's - my grandfather was, not the other prisoners.
 
I've never been interested in these realistic war "games". I find the whole thing bizarre. Like the people who play them have a few screws loose.
 
If you want to hear about World War I, I would greatly suggest listening to the "Blueprint For Armageddon" podcast series from Dan Carlin Hardcore History. This is Part I and it's a 5 part series, each about 3 hours long.

Like most people I thought WW2 was the bad war, and in the sense of total destruction it was. But WW1 was the first mechanized war, it was also first war of it's kind, a global war. You have to think about the fact that there were military leaders who's previous experience was the Spanish-American War, which used horses and canons. And now here we were with the Germans using the Paris Gun that could shoot 80 miles.

The French wore this going into WW1, because this is what they had been wearing for the last 100 years.
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These poor bastards were marching to their deaths wearing bright red and blue?!?!? This is what made WW1 so horrible, is that the humans were not as evolved as the war machinery was. And men died gruesome deaths because the strategies long held sacred and true did not work with the realities of the mechanized battlefield.

He also discusses the amazing plan that Germany had to defeat both the Russians and French. They basically estimated that it would take Russia a certain amount of time to mobilize against Germany. So Germany would divert all of it's forces against France, which France would not be expecting and they would destroy France. They would then come back up to Germany and destroy the Russian forces as they were getting into Germany. It was impressive. But of course did not go as planned.

It's really a fantastic listen, and brought attention to this war that most people have brushed aside because of the limelight that WW2 gets. But going into WW2, we had experience. It was a brutal war, but it wasn't as egregious as WW1.

And if you like that series, then I would next recommend the Hardcore History series Ghosts Of The Ostfront. It focuses on the Eastern front of WW2 between the Russians and Germans. Most Americans aren't told about this, because we weren't the heroes of the Eastern front. But is was a grueling and disturbing war. Here we are complaining D-day and how many lives were lost on an island somewhere. It's nothing compared to what military and civilians were dealing with on the other side of Europe (and the Chinese were in bad shape too). When you think about how the Russians were betrayed by Germany going into WW1, and how much they were used by the Allies during WW2 (we would not have won if wasn't for the sacrifice Russia made against Germany), you can understand why they are a very bitter nation. And then we have been treating them like shit for the last 70 years.

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I've never been interested in these realistic war "games". I find the whole thing bizarre. Like the people who play them have a few screws loose.

If we're going by the status quo, you'd be the one with the screw loose, with a lust for territorial and ideological disputes being in the very nature of humanity.
 
If we're going by the status quo, you'd be the one with the screw loose, with a lust for territorial and ideological disputes being in the very nature of humanity.

Well I always have been quite contrarian.

The world is a shithole after all, and not getting any better from the status quo.
 
Well I always have been quite contrarian.

The world is a shithole after all, and not getting any better from the status quo.

I'd personally say it's just the opposite. The Arab renaissance and its great advances occurred only after a genocide of everyone who thought ideologically differently. As soon as people started thinking differently again (caliphate schism), you get the modern day in-fighting in the Arab world.
 
I'd personally say it's just the opposite. The Arab renaissance and its great advances occurred only after a genocide of everyone who thought ideologically differently. As soon as people started thinking differently again (caliphate schism), you get the modern day in-fighting in the Arab world.

I would say the Allies hold some responsibility with the current Arab situation when we (the victors) dismantled the Ottoman Empire after WW1 and set arbitrary boundaries through what had been long standing states & tribes. It would be like if America got taken over and someone said "California and Arizona and Utah are pretty close, were just gonna call that whole area California" and then the new government wonders why those southern Californians (Arizonians) are always getting so uppity.
 
I would say the Allies hold some responsibility with the current Arab situation when we (the victors) dismantled the Ottoman Empire after WW1 and set arbitrary boundaries through what had been long standing states & tribes. It would be like if America got taken over and someone said "California and Arizona and Utah are pretty close, were just gonna call that whole area California" and then the new government wonders why those southern Californians (Arizonians) are always getting so uppity.

I don't think where they drew the borders really mattered. What mattered most, I think, was that the powerful Ottoman empire was no longer able to keep the Arabic world under its thumb.
 
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