German Officers being escorted away. The looks on there face I think there time is very limited. It looks like the War might be over when this was taken.
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German Officers being escorted away. The looks on there face I think there time is very limited. It looks like the War might be over when this was taken.
They should be grinning from ear to ear... those are GIs, not Ivans.
I believe that at the end of the war German service personnel did all they could to get captured by the Western Allies and not the Soviets out of fear of what may happen to them.
During the early 1950s my father was going out with an Austrian girl who had come to the U.K. to live with her mother just after the end of the War. My father and this girl were looking through a pile of the girl's family photographs and my father was very surprised when they came across a photo of a German soldier in full uniform. My father, naturally, asked the reason for it being with her family snap-shots and she explained that it was her father who had been killed during the war. She went onto explain that, being Austrian, he didn't have any choice on whether or not to join the German Armed Forces unless he wanted to end up in a Concentration Camp. I believe that after the girl's father had been killed her mother then married a British soldier and that was how she came to the U.K..
Looks like a couple NCOs behind the officers, too.
It looks a mixed bag that. The three in front look like overage staff officers, fourth one back, the younger bloke, appears to have a Luftwaffe eagle on his tunic. He's likely an officer as well since he's smoking and no NCO with half a brain is going to light up and have to share his smokes with officers - even his own.
'He's likely an officer as well since he's smoking and no NCO with half a brain is going to light up and have to share his smokes with officers - even his own.'
Going by what I thought are tresses. Good point, but at that moment I think for them the game is over, so new rules may apply. At a moment like that I'm sure they can see what kind of a leader they are, or were!
https://www.milsurps.com/images/impo...11181161-1.jpg
Original caption: Under the watchful eyes of U.S. troops bearing bayonets, members of the Italo-German armistice commission in Morocco are rounded up to be taken to Fedala, north of Casablanca, on November 18, 1942. Commission members were surprised in American landing move. #
Thank You Mark in Rochester for finding a Caption to the photo I posted. I can always rely on you to find something on just about every picture I do post. Thanks
Frank
Question. Would the length of the bayonets not be a clue as to earlier in the War rather than later?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mark in Rochester
That IS early in the war...for the US.Quote:
Originally Posted by 25-5
Yes, as would that they were carrying M1903 rifles.Quote:
Originally Posted by 25-5
As for that part, there's footage of end war MPs performing firing squad duties with war criminals and they still have M1903s...they never did go completely out of service.Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul S.
Re: the discussion of the bayonets, I was about to mention that the rifle M1903, bayonet M1905, one piece fatigue uniform, and flag arm band suggested North Africa, when the caption on the image was published to confirm this. I only mention this to indicate that careful examination of an image can be very useful to determining the place and time the image was captured, and how useful a caption is to understanding the image.
Traditionally execution firing parties are provided with one rifle pre-loaded at random with a blank round. This ostensibly provides a degree of comfort to the firing members that they may not have fired a bullet that killed a human being. With rifle M1 it would be easy to detect the blank round as there would be no ejection of the cartridge case. With a bolt action rifle supposedly the rifle with the blank round would not be detected, however anyone that has fired live ammunition and experienced the recoil of the rifle M1903 should be able to detect the lack of recoil of the rifle with blank cartridge. I suppose that in the excitement of the moment, with the noise of the discharge of the weapons it might be possible to not notice the lack of recoil. It was the usual practice that the firing party would eject the expended cartridge case before the NCO in charge to demonstrate that the cartridge had been fired, to assure all members of the execution party discharged their weapons, although there was slight chance that a deliberate miss would be noticed.
If you watched the footage you could clearly see a shot fired well above and off to the side of the target. Someone aimed way off each time, and there were more than just the one shot up in the hill too.Quote:
Originally Posted by RT Ellis
Here's the film clip...it states Belgium so it may be 1944 still... Military police execute German spies in Belgium. HD Stock Footage - YouTube
Operation Greif (German: Unternehmen Greif; pronounced [ɡʀaɪ̯f], meaning "Griffin") was a special false flag operation commanded by Waffen-SS commando Otto Skorzeny during the Battle of the Bulge in World War II. The operation was the brainchild of Adolf Hitler, and its purpose was to capture one or more of the bridges over the Meuse river before they could be destroyed. German soldiers, wearing captured British and US Army uniforms and using captured Allied vehicles, were to cause confusion in the rear of the Allied lines. A lack of vehicles, uniforms, and equipment limited the operation and it never achieved its original aim of securing the Meuse bridges.
Manfred Pernass, Günther Billing, and Wilhelm Schmidt were lined and tied up for execution by firing squad after a U.S. military court found them guilty of espionage. They were captured behind U.S. lines in U.S. uniforms during the Battle of the Bulge.
https://www.milsurps.com/images/impo...executed-1.jpg
Comprising Unteroffizier Manfred Pernass, he was the driver of the jeep, Oberfähnrich, Günther Billing, and Gefreiter, Wilhelm Schmidt they were captured when they failed to give the correct password. They had Id cards with the following names ‘Charles W. Lawrence’, ‘Clarence van der Wert’ en ‘George Sensenbach’ but Pernass, Billing, and Schmidt were given a military trial at Henri Chapelle, sentenced to death, and executed by a firing squad on 23-12-1944. Captain J. Eiser (medic) of the 633th Medical Clearing Station pinned the white target patches on their chests, Schmidt’s glasses were taken off before he was shot and fanatic Billing shouted “Long live our Führer Adolf Hitler” at the moment suprime.
My thought as well. Circumstantial evidence any way.Quote:
Originally Posted by 25-5
Great picture of an Springfield 03 in the field during WWII. I noticed the long bayonet. I really appreciate any photo of this rifle in service during WWII.
The Lw guy is an NCO, appears to have 3 gulls on his colar tab = SFC. Must be a rear echelon type as I see no badges on his uniform - unless they had been taken as souviners.
Sarge
I believe all decorations are stripped. If you see the end war trials with Goering and such, they have no decorations on either.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sarge