Let Me tell you...THIS IS ALL TRUE ! ! ...this is what my mom and I went through ! Often there was NOTHING to eat ! My dad was killed on the eastern front ( stalingrad) ! I was a baby...I often marveled, how my mother survived it all, with me ...she also had to clean bricks for the rebuild of the city...women like her became the heroes of her time...and unexpected in all this she was introduced to a wonderful man ! They married and lived together for 45 years till he past away...mom lived 20 more years...
Wow! That’s quite a life! I wish women like her were still around today. Could you imagine any of these “influencers” scrubbing bricks to help rebuild a war torn city?
@@Drew791 nope I'm afraid we'd never find anyone willing to do necessary things like those these days... male or female. Everyone wants everything handed to them and nobody wants to work... that's why the Latinos do so well here (in America), they don't mind working.
You need to document your story, library or museum should know of organizations recording German history.I remember my great grand parents,and others rescued,what a scar to carry🙏 Dorothy
Some of the photos are not of German children in Dresden. The photo at 5mins 40 seconds of the little boy in the oversized tweed coat with his large stuffed animal crying in the ruins is a quite famous photo from an anthology of photos of civilians in London during the German blitzkrieg bombings and later V rocket attacks. The English boy's family had just been killed in the bombing. The video producer should not be piece mailing various photos from different settings, ingenuous and disrespectful to the memory of the civilians on both sides of the war.
This is, hands down, the best docu-drama I think I've ever seen. It's extremely well made, and I learned a lot of things I had never known before, about a time I had never thought of, before. I remember my father, who served in thee mid-50's in the Army of Occupation, telling me how the train station in the town he was stationed in had been fixed up on one side for the GI's, but the other side (where Germans were permitted) was still in ruins. A sad time, with some amazingly resilliant people.
this is above average for this kind of docudrama. a good story, well written, well acted. good interviews. interspersed with enough archival imagery to bring it home.
What a powerful video. My Austrian mother was 16 when the war ended. All of this is true. We also lived in Warsaw from 1968-72 and I came back to East Berlin during the summers of 1979-81 while back from university. The scars of war and the effect on the survivors is so sad. I remember the hastily-patched bullet holes around windows and doors. At the time, I felt it was a totally normal way of growing up. Now, 64, I make sense of it through writing about it. May mankind learn from this...
My wife's mother was in the USSR, Belarus as a child during the war. For years they lived in a burned out rail car. Another car doubled as a hospital, another as a school. Half her family died in the war. She remembers being hungry and cold as a child.
I had relatives in post war France and Belgium . I found a letter on a scrap of paper from the husband of one of my cousins. He described how hard things were . Food was very expensive and many people couldn’t get clothing . They made shoes out of wood. My father visited relatives while he was in the army in post war Germany. They butchered a scrawny chicken and dug up wine bottles they hid from the Germans to give him a meal. He felt bad because they had so little.
Brilliant System of loved ones being able to locate missing others by their simplified yet complex filing system. A lot of attention to details were given to these people in order to locate their missing loved ones. The fact it worked so well is amazing and how many people who were reunited by this simplistic process. 😊
This whole "A Day in..." series is so well edited, acted, and the historian commentary peppered thru is excellent. Really brings the time period to life. Please make more and thank you!
Wowww, hats off to the German rubble women,the Trummerfrauen, their contribution to the rebuilding of Germany is all but forgotten..Germany is great again only due to the extraordinary hard work and resilience of its people..Respect.
@@XxxXxx-fm3wo It didn't have to be done. Dresden had little to no military value. This was death and destruction, for its own sake. We need to stop canonizing the WWII allies. A lot of the things they did were wrong.
NO....the allies deliberately chose to obliterate the very heart of German culture....in an attempt to totally destroy the German people. Deliberate and calculated.There was even the Morganthau plan to castrate all German adult males.....thats a fact. In Japan the allies spared Kyoto which was the centre of Japanese culture..... People knew Harris was the architect of the deliberate bombing of civilians in Germany.....which is why the mass murderer was known as "Bomber Harris".....and was disliked by the British public after the war. Germany was by no means innocent of course .....but there is a difference between winning a war and attempting to obliterate a whole nation. General Patton realized this at the end of the war saying "we fought the wrong side".....He was assassinated of course... Unfortunately you can no long express free speech on subjects like this....but you can look for other sources of information.(like the book "Other Losses"....by James Bacque)
My mum, uncle and grandmother lived through this terrible time, luckily in western Germany. My grandfather was killed in 1942 on the Eastern front. The German economic miracle just shows what can be achieved with hard work, good organisation and competent politicians; not the appalling ones in the 1930s and 40s that caused all this misery and suffering on all sides.
@@davidhoward4715With massive American aid, at the expense of the Allies. Britain fed them, provided Security and medical aid...At the expense of its own Citizens...without even a Thank you , or reperation...
This is so beautifully done! Thank you so much. Fascinating story that I have sent on to friends to watch. I am going to Dresden next year and will watch this many times to prepare for my trip.
I do remember, with a friend we explored ruins, at times we spotted a furnished room on the 3rd floor but the staircase was gone, we claimed on water pipes to the 3rd floor, examined cupboards and wardrobes and beds. Sometimes we found something to eat, once we found some cans of beans.
I had a senior German patient who lived though all this. She lived in a small town and due to family issues found herself homeless. She walk all the way to Dresdin, alone. That's a lot of moxie for a 13 year old. She said she slept only in cemeteries so avoid the groups of men who were causing trouble. Thankfully, she was never raped.
Oh wait. Raw!! It’s not working yet. My dad got his dragon suit back. We got it you guys and gals. See you on the dark side …soon I hope. It’s pretty bad here on my planet.
I often think that the resilience and character displayed by the German people after the war was one of the reasons that helped propel them to the position they’re in today. Conversely, as an American, watching my own society, self destruct through drugs, delusional, fantasy, and outright laziness will surely leave us in a bad position, if not in the future now, I say this as a Bay Area residence, whose watched the Bay Area decline dramatically over the last 40 years
How many stupid pills did you swallow. Post Ww2 Germany & western Europe enjoyed the economic plan called Marshall Plan & Berlin Airlift to avoid starvation. On top of that they enjoy the defensive shield under Nato. Besides never having to shoulder the burden of fully functional defense budget courtesy of US Armed forces deployed on the German frontier.
Are you forgetting what German society did to put themselves in this situation? All the men went off to make war on the entire world. But you think homeless people in the Bay area are far more self destructive and Germans are an example of the highest values and perseverance? Interesting.
@@redwater4778 wanna trade? I live in the Bay Area. I’m watching our own people destroy our society over the last 40 years I have watched probably one of the nicest places I’ve seen on the planet turn into a hell hole and out of control crime out of control drug use right on the streets and sidewalks, but hey, what’s the worst that can happen? I’ve been to Germany four times over the last five years. I can honestly say your worst is better than our best to me. Also, you have something that we’ve lost as a country you still have a German a identity Americans have given up on that. I guess we’ll just see how it all plays out.
They flourish once again and produce a madman socialist influencer who influences all the western leaders and governments to restrict farming and citizens and lay the groundwork for another totalitarian government. Great Job allies.
Brilliant video. Something I’ve been interested in for years. Huge effort for Germany to rebuild after WW2 and Versailles. Some vile comments here. Some people have to look a bit deeper than the obvious.
@@daleburrell6273justified? Not until you realize the farce of ww2 history written by the victors. You wouldn’t be prepared though, to realize Germans are modern history’s greatest victims.
This is not perfect, of course, but it is the first production that presents the situation the Germans found themselves in after the war that is accessible and not too dramatic for those who still hate the Germans 80 years after the end of the war even if they or their families did not suffer during the war. The films I know about that period are much more tragic than this so the haters are deadly in their comments and they refuse to even start to get anywhere near considering that the German civilians too suffered a lot and that they were also victims of that war but THIS film is perfect for that and I will use it as such. Thanks for this upload, great idea.
@@renatewest6366 I have stopped voting a long time ago, I just don't like being lied to in my face. If more of us did the same they wouldn't have any choice but to make serious changes to that old, inefficient, costly and corrupt elite club who make a thousand promises when they want your vote and then forget about you for the next five years. And when you ask about their promises they all say the same thing: Well, the situation has changed, we couldn't predict that, first things first, etc, etc... I don't believe in that system. At the last election there was an electoral reform in the promises but the turnout was much better than they expected so they just dropped it, they showed us themselves what will make reforms possible, our move.
Thank you for this superbly produced and colorized documentary. The colorization and scripting brings to life the difficult conditions of Russian-occupied Germany.
В отличие от немцев, русские не сжигали деревни вместе с жителями, не вешали на площадях тех, кто им не нравится. И у русских не было государственной программы по уничтожению местного населения с использованием газовых камер.
@@alansewell7810 За время правления Сталина (1924 - 1954) было репрессировано около 4 000 000 человек. Из них расстреляно около 1 000 000. Это конечно ужасные цифры. Но это гораздо меньше того, что указывает в своих мемуарах предатель Солженицын ( 110 млн) и гораздо меньше, чем погибло в немецкой оккупации. Например, английские, американские и японские интервенты, которые пришли "помогать" россии, убили за один год около 115 000!!!
@@Тёмный_Механик The numbers you mentioned of 4,000,000 (confined in the Gulag) / 1,000,000 (executions) were confirmed by British Journalist Alexander Werth (raised in Leningrad and fluent in Russian) who reported from the Soviet Union to the British press in the 1930s through 1945. HIs book RUSSIA AT WAR gives a balanced account as seen from a British journalist who had no use for communism or Stalin, but was sympathetic with the Russians in getting the Germans off their territory.
I had an employee from Czechoslovakia who was 7 when Germany invaded. Things were good for her family during the war. Afterwards, with father killed in WWII, they were treated like dirt and couldn't get food or work. Much hate targeted towards them due to being German. They escaped Czechoslovakia for East Germany, which was only marginally better apparently. She spoke about her childhood/formative years often. She was deeply scarred by the experience, and this was obvious. Still, truly one of life's memorable characters for her off-center & frequently hilarious perspective. She was much loved at our company. Also, she found true-love & lived a fairly comfortable life in Berkeley, Ca. She even trekked to the Mt. Everest base camp! Typical of H. That was the thought of thing that was an amusing holiday to her...
...I DON'T BLAME THE CZECHS ONE GODDAM BIT FOR THROWING THE SUDETENLAND GERMANS OUT OF CZECHOSLOVAKIA AFTER WW2!!! EVER HEARD OF A PLACE CALLED "LIDICE"?!!
Years ago I found a documentary which covered what happened to Germans who'd moved to occupied areas, specifically Czechoslovakia, and how they were treated at the end of the war. According to the documentary, many were outright assassinated despite their seeming assimilation into the population as farmers, etc--both adults and children. It was shocking. I need to find it again, I could swear I'd watched it on TH-cam.
@@theresavanriessen1269 Germans had been living in modern day Czechslovakia for about nearly a thousand years at that point, specifically in the areas known as the Sudetenland, Bohemia and Moravia.
Thank you for this video. What happened to Dresden was criminal and take my hat off to the women and children left behind especially those who lost their men in the war. Bless them all. So tragically sad.
I HAVE NEWS FOR YOU: 1- THE GERMANS STARTED THAT GODDAM WAR IN EUROPE, AND 2- ALL THAT THE GERMANS GOT WAS A DAM GOOD TASTE OF THEIR OWN MEDICINE!!! WHEN A COUNTRY STARTS A MAJOR WAR- AND THEN LOSES IT- THERE ARE BOUND TO BE UNPLEASANT CONSEQUENCES...(!)
And yet kids today gripe about how “difficult their lives are and how hard it is adulting” if you put them this situation they wouldn’t last 5 minutes thank you for this special and wonderful story and making it into such a great documentary
I think any generation, even the latest ones in the U.S., will find a way to persevere in the worst circumstances. All the nonsense that we dwell on daily disappears and the survival instinct kicks in.
My father (aged 20)was on the Baltic coast at the war’s end (Parachute Regt) he told me soldiers could get as much tobacco as they wanted but were only rationed 200 cigarettes a month. So he rolled his own smokes and used the cigarettes as currency. He did saw what he spent it on.
Some of the photos are not of German children, so a bit ingenuous for the producer to piece together various photos. The photo at 5mins40 seconds is a quite famous photo of a small child in London whose home was just destroyed, family killed by the German blitzkrieg. The boy is in an oversized tweed coat holding a large stuffed animal.
@@155gerard So just a small taste of what the holocaust museum does then? There are 100s of photos just of the victims of Dresden which they pretend represent "victims of concentration camps". There are a great deal more from other sources being equally misleading.. they love using photos of Soviets and partisans killing people on the edge of mass graves as "evidence" of German "atrocities" as well. The list is endless yet you don't seem concerned with that.
My grandma was among those women, my mother and my aunt were small children and my grandpa was MIA, he was drafted and fought in Stalingrad. What they did not know then, is that he was taken prisoner by the Russians and taken to a POW labour camp in Siberia. After 8 yrs he got out and found his wife (my grandma) and daughters with the help of the Red Cross. After the Soviet Communists built the wall (iron curtain) many family members of our family on my mother’s side were cut off. Hard years of bare survival, we grew up hearing all the stories.
I had a friend whose family was expelled from a town south of Breslau. She herself had been drafted and was a telephone operator for the Kriegsmarine, captured by the British and in a DP camp at the end of the war. She and a friend walked out of it, a British soldier let them pass after she said "you aren't going to shoot us now".. they walked from Kiel to Stuttgart and by some miracle found family. This is a true story, and it has haunted me; trying to imagine myself in such a situation is near impossible. So much we take for granted..
@@YoreBeatenPath смешно. Из советского плена вернулось более 65% немецких пленных. А из немецкого плена менее 30%. В советских лагерях очень часто у пленных и охранников была одна и та же норма питания.
I worked with a German. He told me how bad things were during the great inflation. How he remembered eating dandelions till there were more and eating soup seasoned with shoe leather He told me of conditions on the eastern front - so cold that motor oil froze in the crankcase, about cramming as many as possible into a staff car to keep from freezing. He was a chemist and told me that was in a communications unit. The Russians had telegraph lines made of iron. He said it took them a good while to figure out how to reconnect broken lines.
16:30. Imagine fighting in a war and getting killed, only for the women of your country to sleep with the enemy. War is hell, but peace can be a terrible betrayal.
I was 6 when the war ended. I still remember a lot. Yes food was scarce. We got chestnuts in the mountains to eat. My Opa fished from the Neckar River. I gutted and scaled them. Had coffee and a pice of bread for breakfast. School provided 1 ladle hot chocolate and sweet roll.
What a wonderful movie. I have always wondered how the German civilians survived after 1945. I have read "To Destroy a City" and "1945" but this film simply and graphicly with edited real footage woven into a fine film well acted did a good job. I have known some older Germans who survived. Some had class and some did not. We are all the same, are we not?
Germany has sure turned itself around since the end of the Second World War. It is a first class country now and a model country for the world to admire. RS. Canada
Thank you for this video. There's so much we are never taught about civilians during or after wars. The hardships were severe but show what the human spirit can overcome. The innocent pay such a heavy price.
My grandfather went missing in April 1945 on the Eastern Front. My grandmother did everything to find him and got taken by a man who said he knew where he was being held and could get him food. This went on for a week until she had someone follow him, only to find out he was eating the food himself. My father and his brothers at this time were scavenging anything that could be used, including looting the factory that made all fabric items for the Kreigsmarine. In 1990 when my father regained ownership of his father's home, the basement still had canvas body bags in it.
Unfortunately one of the misfortunes of war. Are unscrupulous individuals who take advantage of the post war weary 😩. ( eating food ment for someone else. )
Ich kann mich noch daran erinnern. Mit einem Freund machten wir zusammen Erkundungstouren in Ruinen. Wenn in einem Wohnhaus im 3. Stock ein Zimmer sichtbar war aber das Treppenhaus fehlte sind wir an Wasserrohren bis zum 3. Stock herausgeklettert haben in Schänke und Bett nachgesehen ob es etwas zum Essen gab. Einmal fanden wir einige Dosen Bohnen.
This reminds me of some of the stories my mother told me about growing up in Mannheim during the war. Nobody can say the current German people do not understand what it means to be a refugee.
Utterly fascinating. I’m a museum person and my mum lived through the Blitz in London. She told me many times of her experiences but things in this video, like musical instruments and children’s toys, I never even thought to consider until now. It saddens me to think how many women (and some men too im sure) were taken advantage of in the Black Market.
You are correct except for the number of refugees. Between 1945-1947 some 10-15 MILLION Germans were expelled from their traditional homelands and sent west, to make room for the newly resurrected Poland and Czechoslovakia. My ancestors were from Breslau, and those whom survived were among them.
@daniellebcooper7160 No doubt. The difference between the two topics you mention is remembrance of history so as to not repeat it. Gender studies does nothing to improve mankind.
History is a huge thing in our family. Elie Weisel's "Night" is mandatory reading for my children at age 10. At age 13 I make them watch Schindlers List and they are quizzed. If they fail, they watch it again. Being Native American, we also study a lot on our people, Stockbridge Munsee and Menominee. Those who fail to heed history's warnings are doomed to repeat them.
@@Sam_the_Sham_and_the_Pharoahs So true. I'm very proud of your approach to the world and especially with your children. They are the building blocks of our future.
I was born in Amsterdam in 1946 and lived in the “shadow” of WW 2 which affected me for the rest of my life! Living in Canada and then in the US I see how it’s people have no clue how losing/destroying everything affects the masses, the ensuing corruption…yet persevere to rebuild and work hard to find the secret to living again! No time for feeling sorry for oneself so they innovated and rebuilt, creating a beautiful renewal of several European countries.
Well not all, many decided " I'm out of here!" And headed to North America figuring if they had to start rebuilding a life with nothing they might as well head to the new world where there was opportunity. My Grandfather who fought on the eastern front remembered how bad it was after WWI and for how long so packed my 17 year old father's suitcase, and told him to go and build a good life. My other grandfather took his whole family and left. With nothing more than they could pack in one suitcase each. Parents met in the new world because there were large communities german immigrants.
My Dad was 18 when released from Germab POW camp in Cherbourg, France in 1948 and returned home.when he returned home he got a job but in 1955 announced to hos family he was migrating to Melbourne, Australia. He went for a holiday in 1974, his first trip.home.His father had died.He took me as O had never been. Before ( I was 17). He had an extended holiday catching up with extended family on Germany and Poland .Meet my step.mother and stayed in German He had been naturalised Australian but to apply for work as a nurse( had worked as a Medic during war) had to reapply to be a German citizen for work. My beloved Dad past away in February 2016.I miss him dearly.May eternal rest Grant unto him oh Lord and let perpetual light shine upon him..He was 87.He had nightmares from the war as his school friend ( from 6 years.old).was blown to smithereens by some weapon in front of him.Too young to be fighting.He was taken from school at 14 and sent for.Army training. Sent to Front at 15.
And the resilience of the people in all the other countries who had to rebuild after the war - do you greatly admire their resilience too or is it only "special" people whose resilience you admire? It was the "make Germany great again" mindset that got these German people invading neighboring lands and committing horrible atrocities that brought about the suffering for everybody ELSE including themselves.
A family member as a child was shot in the leg by allie planes shooting down on trains filled with children escaping the city. My father in law was shot at in an open field after his small town was obliterated. Even as a child he saw that as overkill.
What you are referring to is war time. This video is about post war Germany. The Americans treated the Germans much better than the Russians did. But in war time, all sorts of atrocities happen. He should be glad he wasn't napalmed like that poor little girl in Vietnam.
@@pradeepswaminathan3993 Why don't you inquire into the number of Soviet troops killed by their rear-guard police battalions? These were required to stop Soviet soldiers from retreating or surrendering.
Your point needs to be more well known and understood. Any and every war has so much overkill in every way possible. Since war is hell, we need to never resort to war, if possible. It is not glorious like Hollywood wants you to imagine.
My grandad coming back home in Italy after fighting in ww1 in alps walked the local forests and picked up Austrian bayonets helmets shovels brought them back to use helmets made buckets bayonets taken to blacksmith and made in to knifes .I remember German helmet use in the caw stable as a bucket 😂
My uncle in Northern Italy still regularly finds WW1 artifacts in the fields and on mountain hikes. We forget the scale of what happened in the alps during that war.
In one week I met a woman from Dresden who survived the bombing and two sisters who survived the Blitz in London. This was about 10 years ago. They impressed me so much. Only in New York!
I remember Aachen in 1952. I was 4years young. Did not understand the mess I saw: ruined buildings. Later, at the beach in Katwijk near Leiden, I saw men loosening one leg, then humping into the sea on one leg. Men with one arm instead of two. It was 1956 and we had a beach-vacation there, along with many germans, 11years after the war. Money is allways welcome, no matter where it comes from.
A great documentary reminds me of 1979 when the Soviet Union occupied Afghanistan, The Soviet Athiest regime was the harshest regime ever. Watching from 🇵🇰
I wonder how much of these women's fortitude, resilience and resourcefulness in the years after the end of the war, was instilled and learned in the years prior and during the war in organisations such as the BDM.
This is a very well made docu-drama. As a child I remember traveling to East Berlin in the Russian Sector after the war with my mother who was married to a British Army officer and being amazed at the large numbers of women shifting all the rubble to clear the streets. The women looked like lines of ants working amongst the buildings and all the rubble. It was something I had not seen before in England and it left an indelible impression on my memory. I did not feel then or now any pity whatsoever to the plight of the Germans as the Luftwaffe had bombed London. The bombing of Dresden and other German cities was not criminal and was divine retribution for what the Germans had done in the war particularly the mass murder of over six million people in the death camps they had set up.
The name of the city that Elli left is Breslau. It was only renamed to Wroclaw when the city became polish in 1945 and is still today called Breslau in German.
Thank you for this very well done docudrama. I know people who lived through that period in Germany and this showed me what it had been like in reality.
Interesting and informative. Excellent photography job/reenactments enabling viewers to better understand what the orator was describing. Resourcefulness became the " Mother " of invention during the lean years following the war's end.
Nope. Nope, nope, nope. You're not goung to jerk a tear out of me for the hardships of the German people after the war they waged. I get it...most people weren't directly responsible for what "those people" did, but the people were at least partially culpable, to some degree. They were at least hoping to enjoy the spoils of the war. They had to suspect some things. If not, then they were part of the few that were just 100% in the wrong place at the wrong time, and that's tough, but they have to sit down and be quiet.
Before and during the war, she lived in Breslau, not Wroclaw. The expulsion of Germans from where their people had lived for maybe 1000 years is one of the most efficient examples of ethnic cleansing. Still, Germans built up their lives again and looked forward - as opposed to e.g. some in the Middle East...
...AND HOW MANY OF THOSE "EXPELLED GERMANS" WERE SENT TO GAS CHAMBERS AND CREMATION FACILITIES?!! AND I DON'T HAVE A DAM BIT OF SYMPATHY FOR THE GERMANS WHO WERE THROWN OUT OF THE SUDETENLAND BY CZECHOSLOVAKIA-!!! ...WHEN YOU START A MAJOR WAR- AND THEN LOSE IT- THERE ARE BOUND TO BE UNPLEASANT CONSEQUENCES...
@@pleunmaarleveld959 No, of course not. Still, it was an ethnic cleansing on a scale we have not seen since but the Germans accepted it and built themselves a new life in the area they had left. Like I said, others could learn from it.
You can thank Roosevelt for that. At the Yalta Conference he agreed to shift the Polish border west, incorporating an immense area that had always been part of Prussia/Germany. The largest ethnic cleansing operation in history occurred from 1945-1947 when some 10 - 15 million Germans were forced from their traditional homelands and sent into the Allied-occupied areas, so that their former homes could become part of Poland and Czechoslovakia. Roosevelt also agreed at Yalta that the Soviets could have war reparations from Germany in the form of human labor, in tacit agreement that the Reds could round up millions of men and women and ship them to the Soviet Union, where a huge number perished in labor camps for years after the war. My family was also from the (former) German city of Breslau, the same city and district capitol which, in this film, is given the Polish name "Wroclaw."
My mother and her family were resettled from their home near Lwów to Wrocław in 1945. Nobody asked them if they wanted to do it. And it has not been the German city for 1000 years, just 300 before the WWII. The mad Gauleiter Hanke decided to defend Festung Breslau even after Berlin signed capitulation act. He surrendered on the 06th of May 1945. Result? 75% of the city in ruins. And so this was the landscape my mother saw after arrival.
Nothing like making it to the end just to find out the story is fiction. Still, I'm sure the real stories of the post war are even much sadder 😢. Thanks for the video 😊
During the war the NAZIS confiscated the food in the conquered lands letting them starve. Summery execution of the conquered was common. The Soviets lost about 2/3 the German 1933 population. One can understand, but not justify, the post war treatment of Germans by the conquering Soviets. In contrast the US during the occupation of Japan brought in food to prevent mass starvation. My Stepfather was awarded a Medal by the Emperor of Japan for his work in getting food to Japan. As a child my stepfather only said terrible things about Japanese, he never told me about what he did for the Japanese people, and I only found out about his relief work in Japan after he died.
Let Me tell you...THIS IS ALL TRUE ! ! ...this is what my mom and I went through ! Often there was NOTHING to eat ! My dad was killed on the eastern front ( stalingrad) ! I was a baby...I often marveled, how my mother survived it all, with me ...she also had to clean bricks for the rebuild of the city...women like her became the heroes of her time...and unexpected in all this she was introduced to a wonderful man ! They married and lived together for 45 years till he past away...mom lived 20 more years...
Wow! That’s quite a life! I wish women like her were still around today. Could you imagine any of these “influencers” scrubbing bricks to help rebuild a war torn city?
@@Drew791 nope I'm afraid we'd never find anyone willing to do necessary things like those these days... male or female. Everyone wants everything handed to them and nobody wants to work... that's why the Latinos do so well here (in America), they don't mind working.
You need to document your story, library or museum should know of organizations recording German history.I remember my great grand parents,and others rescued,what a scar to carry🙏 Dorothy
@@Drew791You just nailed it man. So well said.
Which "sector" was she in?
I was fully blown away by how you were able to combine archival footage with reenactments to make such a great video. Thank you so much.
Lovely production.
This is a professionally produced show. It airs on television all over the world. It's not an amateur-made video. 🤣
Some of the photos are not of German children in Dresden. The photo at 5mins 40 seconds of the little boy in the oversized tweed coat with his large stuffed animal crying in the ruins is a quite famous photo from an anthology of photos of civilians in London during the German blitzkrieg bombings and later V rocket attacks. The English boy's family had just been killed in the bombing. The video producer should not be piece mailing various photos from different settings, ingenuous and disrespectful to the memory of the civilians on both sides of the war.
So lucky she was able to persevere
This is, hands down, the best docu-drama I think I've ever seen. It's extremely well made, and I learned a lot of things I had never known before, about a time I had never thought of, before. I remember my father, who served in thee mid-50's in the Army of Occupation, telling me how the train station in the town he was stationed in had been fixed up on one side for the GI's, but the other side (where Germans were permitted) was still in ruins. A sad time, with some amazingly resilliant people.
Finally a documentary about life in Germany, right after WW2. I have long been very interested in learning a bit about this topic
Genocide bombing by Roosevelt and Truman
this is above average for this kind of docudrama.
a good story, well written, well acted. good interviews.
interspersed with enough archival imagery to bring it home.
This is almost too sad to watch. It’s my duty as an American to watch it, and learn, though.
I have yet to source check but it may not be a true story
@@phantom8700 The narration at the end informs the viewer that
“…This is not biographical.”
What a powerful video. My Austrian mother was 16 when the war ended. All of this is true. We also lived in Warsaw from 1968-72 and I came back to East Berlin during the summers of 1979-81 while back from university. The scars of war and the effect on the survivors is so sad. I remember the hastily-patched bullet holes around windows and doors. At the time, I felt it was a totally normal way of growing up. Now, 64, I make sense of it through writing about it. May mankind learn from this...
What an amazing documentary! A very detailed look at a forgotten period of history and so well acted.
My wife's mother was in the USSR, Belarus as a child during the war. For years they lived in a burned out rail car. Another car doubled as a hospital, another as a school. Half her family died in the war. She remembers being hungry and cold as a child.
Mine was in Russia also
So were the blacks
@@rosykatzCATS History tells lots of Story ❤
I had relatives in post war France and Belgium . I found a letter on a scrap of paper from the husband of one of my cousins. He described how hard things were . Food was very expensive and many people couldn’t get clothing . They made shoes out of wood. My father visited relatives while he was in the army in post war Germany. They butchered a scrawny chicken and dug up wine bottles they hid from the Germans to give him a meal. He felt bad because they had so little.
Just casually clicked on recommended video and I haven’t even notice how fast 51 minutes has gone. Brilliant documentary.
Brilliant System of loved ones being able to locate missing others by their simplified yet complex filing system. A lot of attention to details were given to these people in order to locate their missing loved ones. The fact it worked so well is amazing and how many people who were reunited by this simplistic process. 😊
This whole "A Day in..." series is so well edited, acted, and the historian commentary peppered thru is excellent. Really brings the time period to life. Please make more and thank you!
I think A Day in an Occupied/Freed City takes precedence.
The original German should be toned down when there is an English speaker, otherwise a very true account, well done.
Wowww, hats off to the German rubble women,the Trummerfrauen, their contribution to the rebuilding of Germany is all but forgotten..Germany is great again only due to the extraordinary hard work and resilience of its people..Respect.
As a Canadian, you're welcome and sorry it had to be done.
P.S. you will figure it out !
@@XxxXxx-fm3wo It didn't have to be done. Dresden had little to no military value. This was death and destruction, for its own sake.
We need to stop canonizing the WWII allies. A lot of the things they did were wrong.
NO....the allies deliberately chose to obliterate the very heart of German culture....in an attempt to totally destroy the German people.
Deliberate and calculated.There was even the Morganthau plan to castrate all German adult males.....thats a fact.
In Japan the allies spared Kyoto which was the centre of Japanese culture.....
People knew Harris was the architect of the deliberate bombing of civilians in Germany.....which is why the mass murderer was known as "Bomber Harris".....and was disliked by the British public after the war.
Germany was by no means innocent of course .....but there is a difference between winning a war and attempting to obliterate a whole nation.
General Patton realized this at the end of the war saying "we fought the wrong side".....He was assassinated of course...
Unfortunately you can no long express free speech on subjects like this....but you can look for other sources of information.(like the book "Other Losses"....by James Bacque)
They were forced to do rebuild.
My mum, uncle and grandmother lived through this terrible time, luckily in western Germany. My grandfather was killed in 1942 on the Eastern front. The German economic miracle just shows what can be achieved with hard work, good organisation and competent politicians; not the appalling ones in the 1930s and 40s that caused all this misery and suffering on all sides.
on all sides? it was clear war between pure evil (germany) to good.
The German economic miracle just shows what can be achieved with massive American aid.
@@davidhoward4715With massive American aid, at the expense of the Allies. Britain fed them, provided Security and medical aid...At the expense of its own Citizens...without even a Thank you , or reperation...
@@woodenseagull1899 My Uncle gave his life. Doesn't get much more expensive than that. He came from the American side
@@davidhoward4715 победил гитлеровский фашизм СССР и была подписана капитуляция . СССР победитель фашизма прошлого столетия!🌞🌿🎎🚩🙏
You did absolutely an amazing job by reanimating those days
Astonishing, shocking, and upsetting at times , what the people had to endure, excellent video, thank you 🙏
Unfortunately the rebuilding process in Russian occupied Berlin. Didn't go as well in comparison to American sector of West Berlin.
This is so beautifully done! Thank you so much. Fascinating story that I have sent on to friends to watch. I am going to Dresden next year and will watch this many times to prepare for my trip.
It is amazing what a person is capable of when forced to. Only women and children left, because ALL THE MEN LOST THEIR LIVES.
Since you shouted it, do you really believe ALL THE MEN LOST THEIR LIVES?
most men over 12 and under 50 were dead@@389383
For most regions of postwar Germany, there were only 40 men left for every 100 women in the 20-30 age group.
Surprised there were even that many.@@Qwerty-hy5mj
@@389383 Nobody in their right mind believe that, not even @billwright281. It's a metaphor.
I do remember, with a friend we explored ruins, at times we spotted a furnished room on the 3rd floor but the staircase was gone, we claimed on water pipes to the 3rd floor, examined cupboards and wardrobes and beds. Sometimes we found something to eat, once
we found some cans of beans.
did you also found belongings of jews, murdered by the Germans?
This is such a well made docudrama! I'm really interested in the post war recovery and personal stories bring it alive! Thank you!
I had a senior German patient who lived though all this. She lived in a small town and due to family issues found herself homeless. She walk all the way to Dresdin, alone. That's a lot of moxie for a 13 year old. She said she slept only in cemeteries so avoid the groups of men who were causing trouble. Thankfully, she was never raped.
Dresden was full of refugees when it was bombed. The allies knew this.
That you know of
Oh wait. I am
Je Ve Clarie RawEiE
Oh wait. Raw!! It’s not working yet. My dad got his dragon suit back. We got it you guys and gals. See you on the dark side …soon I hope. It’s pretty bad here on my planet.
Also. EPawE
say you can say AweE now!! I se. Se I.
I often think that the resilience and character displayed by the German people after the war was one of the reasons that helped propel them to the position they’re in today. Conversely, as an American, watching my own society, self destruct through drugs, delusional, fantasy, and outright laziness will surely leave us in a bad position, if not in the future now, I say this as a Bay Area residence, whose watched the Bay Area decline dramatically over the last 40 years
How many stupid pills did you swallow. Post Ww2 Germany & western Europe enjoyed the economic plan called Marshall Plan & Berlin Airlift to avoid starvation. On top of that they enjoy the defensive shield under Nato. Besides never having to shoulder the burden of fully functional defense budget courtesy of US Armed forces deployed on the German frontier.
Adversity kills the soul but redeems others...comfort can redeem the soul but kills others
Are you forgetting what German society did to put themselves in this situation? All the men went off to make war on the entire world. But you think homeless people in the Bay area are far more self destructive and Germans are an example of the highest values and perseverance? Interesting.
Now Germany is filling up with people who didn't stay and rebuild.
@@redwater4778 wanna trade? I live in the Bay Area. I’m watching our own people destroy our society over the last 40 years I have watched probably one of the nicest places I’ve seen on the planet turn into a hell hole and out of control crime out of control drug use right on the streets and sidewalks, but hey, what’s the worst that can happen? I’ve been to Germany four times over the last five years. I can honestly say your worst is better than our best to me. Also, you have something that we’ve lost as a country you still have a German a identity Americans have given up on that. I guess we’ll just see how it all plays out.
It's always the poor citizens who suffer. The Germans survived to flourish again. God Bless guys!
Jujublu💚
After a bunch of land was stolen from them again
What about Warsaw
They flourish once again and produce a madman socialist influencer who influences all the western leaders and governments to restrict farming and citizens and lay the groundwork for another totalitarian government. Great Job allies.
This video is very well done - the most interesting documentary I’ve enjoyed in quite some time. Thank you!
I’m very fortunate that my grandparents on both side of my family left Germany in 1930 and went to USA! Thank God
Brilliant video. Something I’ve been interested in for years. Huge effort for Germany to rebuild after WW2 and Versailles.
Some vile comments here. Some people have to look a bit deeper than the obvious.
...I CONTEND THAT A HECK OF A LOT OF THOSE "VILE COMMENTS" ARE COMPLETELY JUSTIFIED-!!!
WHAT ARE YOU GONNA DO ABOUT IT?!!
@@daleburrell6273TYPE IN ALL CAPS! THAT FIXES EVERYTHING!
@@daleburrell6273justified? Not until you realize the farce of ww2 history written by the victors. You wouldn’t be prepared though, to realize Germans are modern history’s greatest victims.
They rebuilt because of AMERICAN aid.
@@sassycat6487 NO! The Marshall Plan funds speeded things up a little.
My mother lived through WW2 in Ulm, Germany. Her stories were similar to this documentary even as a child.
This is not perfect, of course, but it is the first production that presents the situation the Germans found themselves in after the war that is accessible and not too dramatic for those who still hate the Germans 80 years after the end of the war even if they or their families did not suffer during the war. The films I know about that period are much more tragic than this so the haters are deadly in their comments and they refuse to even start to get anywhere near considering that the German civilians too suffered a lot and that they were also victims of that war but THIS film is perfect for that and I will use it as such. Thanks for this upload, great idea.
They voted for their Great Leader, so one must assume things worked out just how they wanted.
When you vote does your preferred party always win?
@@renatewest6366 I have stopped voting a long time ago, I just don't like being lied to in my face. If more of us did the same they wouldn't have any choice but to make serious changes to that old, inefficient, costly and corrupt elite club who make a thousand promises when they want your vote and then forget about you for the next five years. And when you ask about their promises they all say the same thing: Well, the situation has changed, we couldn't predict that, first things first, etc, etc... I don't believe in that system. At the last election there was an electoral reform in the promises but the turnout was much better than they expected so they just dropped it, they showed us themselves what will make reforms possible, our move.
@@renatewest6366 I don't vote so if ever my country goes to war, I'm not part of it, don't starve me to death.
Lets Go Brandon@@alexcarter8807
Thank you for this superbly produced and colorized documentary. The colorization and scripting brings to life the difficult conditions of Russian-occupied Germany.
В отличие от немцев, русские не сжигали деревни вместе с жителями, не вешали на площадях тех, кто им не нравится. И у русских не было государственной программы по уничтожению местного населения с использованием газовых камер.
@@Тёмный_Механик Stalin was easier on occupied Germans than he often was on his own Russian people.
@@alansewell7810 За время правления Сталина (1924 - 1954) было репрессировано около 4 000 000 человек. Из них расстреляно около 1 000 000. Это конечно ужасные цифры. Но это гораздо меньше того, что указывает в своих мемуарах предатель Солженицын ( 110 млн) и гораздо меньше, чем погибло в немецкой оккупации. Например, английские, американские и японские интервенты, которые пришли "помогать" россии, убили за один год около 115 000!!!
@@Тёмный_Механик The numbers you mentioned of 4,000,000 (confined in the Gulag) / 1,000,000 (executions) were confirmed by British Journalist Alexander Werth (raised in Leningrad and fluent in Russian) who reported from the Soviet Union to the British press in the 1930s through 1945. HIs book RUSSIA AT WAR gives a balanced account as seen from a British journalist who had no use for communism or Stalin, but was sympathetic with the Russians in getting the Germans off their territory.
Outstanding video.
Thank you, I am a German-American
What a documentary. 10/10🎉❤❤❤. Great stuff really. Thank you.
Very well done. Excellent. History which needs to be told and remembered. Thank you.
I had an employee from Czechoslovakia who was 7 when Germany invaded. Things were good for her family during the war. Afterwards, with father killed in WWII, they were treated like dirt and couldn't get food or work. Much hate targeted towards them due to being German. They escaped Czechoslovakia for East Germany, which was only marginally better apparently. She spoke about her childhood/formative years often. She was deeply scarred by the experience, and this was obvious. Still, truly one of life's memorable characters for her off-center & frequently hilarious perspective. She was much loved at our company. Also, she found true-love & lived a fairly comfortable life in Berkeley, Ca. She even trekked to the Mt. Everest base camp! Typical of H. That was the thought of thing that was an amusing holiday to her...
...I DON'T BLAME THE CZECHS ONE GODDAM BIT FOR THROWING THE SUDETENLAND GERMANS OUT OF CZECHOSLOVAKIA AFTER WW2!!!
EVER HEARD OF A PLACE CALLED "LIDICE"?!!
@@AdamsOlympiawrong
Years ago I found a documentary which covered what happened to Germans who'd moved to occupied areas, specifically Czechoslovakia, and how they were treated at the end of the war. According to the documentary, many were outright assassinated despite their seeming assimilation into the population as farmers, etc--both adults and children. It was shocking. I need to find it again, I could swear I'd watched it on TH-cam.
@@theresavanriessen1269 Germans had been living in modern day Czechslovakia for about nearly a thousand years at that point, specifically in the areas known as the Sudetenland, Bohemia and Moravia.
@@cqpp...What's your point?!
Today, Dresden is an absolutely beautiful city. Even the cathedral has been rebuilt.
for west german money!!
@@tellyonthewall8751 What is your point?
@@biglebowski5737 just saying ...
@@tellyonthewall8751 ....so no point? BTW the cathedral was rebuilt from donations the last part was from Great Britain.
@@biglebowski5737 Only right .. the limey leveled it
Thank You for that documentary!
Thank you for this video. What happened to Dresden was criminal and take my hat off to the women and children left behind especially those who lost their men in the war. Bless them all. So tragically sad.
No empathy from me. Not after Germans destroyed my country and people.
I HAVE NEWS FOR YOU: 1- THE GERMANS STARTED THAT GODDAM WAR IN EUROPE, AND 2- ALL THAT THE GERMANS GOT WAS A DAM GOOD TASTE OF THEIR OWN MEDICINE!!!
WHEN A COUNTRY STARTS A MAJOR WAR- AND THEN LOSES IT- THERE ARE BOUND TO BE UNPLEASANT CONSEQUENCES...(!)
As criminal as your comments?
As criminal as Treblinka?
As criminal as Auschwitz?
Amazing work. I really love your documentaries. ❤❤❤❤
What a wonderful program! Thank you!
And yet kids today gripe about how “difficult their lives are and how hard it is adulting” if you put them this situation they wouldn’t last 5 minutes thank you for this special and wonderful story and making it into such a great documentary
Its more the lack of any belonging or community or higher calling. Our issues arent based out of the material
@@demaistre2458 wise words
I think any generation, even the latest ones in the U.S., will find a way to persevere in the worst circumstances. All the nonsense that we dwell on daily disappears and the survival instinct kicks in.
Germany had it coming
Our lives are "imagined out of nothing". We are passive when exposed to overload of information on the internet.
My father (aged 20)was on the Baltic coast at the war’s end (Parachute Regt) he told me soldiers could get as much tobacco as they wanted but were only rationed 200 cigarettes a month. So he rolled his own smokes and used the cigarettes as currency. He did saw what he spent it on.
In the end though, the Rubble Girls (Men and Children) are heroes. They brought their cities back to life, brick by brick.
Why did they cut the video before the end credits?? C'mon, their work deserves to be acknowledged.
It’s symbolic of the lives cut short.
🤣😂👌@@Matthew_Eitzman
I did some searching--it was made by ZDF, the German public broadcaster. You can find the episode on their website under "One Day in Dresden, 1946."
Some of the photos are not of German children, so a bit ingenuous for the producer to piece together various photos. The photo at 5mins40 seconds is a quite famous photo of a small child in London whose home was just destroyed, family killed by the German blitzkrieg. The boy is in an oversized tweed coat holding a large stuffed animal.
@@155gerard So just a small taste of what the holocaust museum does then?
There are 100s of photos just of the victims of Dresden which they pretend represent "victims of concentration camps". There are a great deal more from other sources being equally misleading.. they love using photos of Soviets and partisans killing people on the edge of mass graves as "evidence" of German "atrocities" as well. The list is endless yet you don't seem concerned with that.
What an amazing story!! and what a shame that its looking like history will repeat itself time and time again . May the world learn from the past .
My grandma was among those women, my mother and my aunt were small children and my grandpa was MIA, he was drafted and fought in Stalingrad. What they did not know then, is that he was taken prisoner by the Russians and taken to a POW labour camp in Siberia. After 8 yrs he got out and found his wife (my grandma) and daughters with the help of the Red Cross. After the Soviet Communists built the wall (iron curtain) many family members of our family on my mother’s side were cut off.
Hard years of bare survival, we grew up hearing all the stories.
I had a friend whose family was expelled from a town south of Breslau. She herself had been drafted and was a telephone operator for the Kriegsmarine, captured by the British and in a DP camp at the end of the war. She and a friend walked out of it, a British soldier let them pass after she said "you aren't going to shoot us now".. they walked from Kiel to Stuttgart and by some miracle found family. This is a true story, and it has haunted me; trying to imagine myself in such a situation is near impossible. So much we take for granted..
@diet…. That’s amazing he survived Stalingrad and the Gulag. Very few did.
@@YoreBeatenPath смешно. Из советского плена вернулось более 65% немецких пленных. А из немецкого плена менее 30%. В советских лагерях очень часто у пленных и охранников была одна и та же норма питания.
@@Тёмный_Механик I don't think so. Agreed that many Soviet prisoners died in German camps; but the blame for this lies mostly with your hero Stalin.
This is wild. Love it. I’d like this series on ancient cities now lol
I worked with a German. He told me how bad things were during the great inflation. How he remembered eating dandelions till there were more and eating soup seasoned with shoe leather
He told me of conditions on the eastern front - so cold that motor oil froze in the crankcase, about cramming as many as possible into a staff car to keep from freezing.
He was a chemist and told me that was in a communications unit. The Russians had telegraph lines made of iron. He said it took them a good while to figure out how to reconnect broken lines.
Chlip, chlip.
Sounds like an incredible man.
Actually, steel telegraph lines were also used by the allies in western Germany after the war.
Thank you so much for posting this. It’s great information 😊
16:30. Imagine fighting in a war and getting killed, only for the women of your country to sleep with the enemy. War is hell, but peace can be a terrible betrayal.
A totally different outlook on this moment in history ...very Eye-opening
I was 6 when the war ended. I still remember a lot. Yes food was scarce. We got chestnuts in the mountains to eat. My Opa fished from the Neckar River. I gutted and scaled them. Had coffee and a pice of bread for breakfast. School provided 1 ladle hot chocolate and sweet roll.
Now your age must be around 65-70 😮
⬆️And these are the educated surgeons Europe imports en-mass??, complete madness....
The madness of men who want war ,absolute insanity and still we have them 😢😢
makes physcopaths money.
Churchill
What a wonderful movie. I have always wondered how the German civilians survived after 1945. I have read "To Destroy a City" and "1945" but this film simply and graphicly with edited real footage woven into a fine film well acted did a good job. I have known some older Germans who survived. Some had class and some did not. We are all the same, are we not?
...NO, WE ARE NOT "ALL THE SAME": WE ARE INDIVIDUALS!!!
I can't believe how high production value this channel is. Just WoW!
Wow what a fascinating story very well done this should get some kind of Award. I was totally drawn in to Elli and her story BRAVO BRAVO !
Germany has sure turned itself around since the end of the Second World War. It is a first class country now and a model country for the world to admire.
RS. Canada
Dresden is a beautifully restored city now.
Thank you for this video. There's so much we are never taught about civilians during or after wars. The hardships were severe but show what the human spirit can overcome. The innocent pay such a heavy price.
My grandfather went missing in April 1945 on the Eastern Front. My grandmother did everything to find him and got taken by a man who said he knew where he was being held and could get him food. This went on for a week until she had someone follow him, only to find out he was eating the food himself. My father and his brothers at this time were scavenging anything that could be used, including looting the factory that made all fabric items for the Kreigsmarine. In 1990 when my father regained ownership of his father's home, the basement still had canvas body bags in it.
Unfortunately one of the misfortunes of war. Are unscrupulous individuals who take advantage of the post war weary 😩. ( eating food ment for someone else. )
did your Grandmother ever find her husband?
No, my grandfather was in Russia since the first week of the invasion and disappeared in April 1945 near Konigsberg, East Prussia. @@mottthehoople693
...THAT'S DISGUSTING-(!)
I don't believe any of you made it all up.
Many Thanks, Lovely Documentary....!!!
Civilians always suffer the worst in all wars.
Ich kann mich noch daran erinnern. Mit einem Freund machten wir zusammen Erkundungstouren in Ruinen. Wenn in einem Wohnhaus im 3. Stock ein Zimmer sichtbar war aber das Treppenhaus fehlte sind wir an Wasserrohren bis zum 3. Stock herausgeklettert haben in Schänke und Bett nachgesehen ob es etwas zum Essen gab. Einmal fanden wir einige Dosen Bohnen.
Dass war auch fuer der Zeit typisch in die Ruinen.
This reminds me of some of the stories my mother told me about growing up in Mannheim during the war. Nobody can say the current German people do not understand what it means to be a refugee.
It's 2023. Few native born Germans were alive during the immediate post war years
I am!
One of the best WWII documentaries ever. Very hitting.............
Remember hiroshima, nagasaki, warsaw, stalingrad and long list of many other cities this is what war brings, from ww2 or from historical times
Detroit, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco. This game is fun!😂
You are leaving out; that it is the price Germany & Japan paid for STARTING the
WARS in the first place....!
Gaza?
@@lolafinch Tel Aviv?
@@lolafinch my country has faced many destruction from historical times don't worry about gaza, every thing is rebuilt
Utterly fascinating. I’m a museum person and my mum lived through the Blitz in London. She told me many times of her experiences but things in this video, like musical instruments and children’s toys, I never even thought to consider until now. It saddens me to think how many women (and some men too im sure) were taken advantage of in the Black Market.
She was not from Wrocław, she was from Breslau. And there was not tens of thousands of refugees was 1.2 milion.
Breslau renamed Wroclaw after war and area becomes part of Poland
@@dawnX2148 exactly
They should have said 'Breslau' as they said that in German. Wroclaw is the city after 1945.
You are correct except for the number of refugees. Between 1945-1947 some 10-15 MILLION Germans were expelled from their traditional homelands and sent west, to make room for the newly resurrected Poland and Czechoslovakia. My ancestors were from Breslau, and those whom survived were among them.
@@sealteamtwo117 1.2 was estimated number for Poland only.
This should be shown in every school, instead of 'gender studies'. Thank you for making this available.
@daniellebcooper7160 No doubt. The difference between the two topics you mention is remembrance of history so as to not repeat it. Gender studies does nothing to improve mankind.
History is a huge thing in our family. Elie Weisel's "Night" is mandatory reading for my children at age 10. At age 13 I make them watch Schindlers List and they are quizzed. If they fail, they watch it again. Being Native American, we also study a lot on our people, Stockbridge Munsee and Menominee. Those who fail to heed history's warnings are doomed to repeat them.
@@Sam_the_Sham_and_the_Pharoahs So true. I'm very proud of your approach to the world and especially with your children. They are the building blocks of our future.
I was born in Amsterdam in 1946 and lived in the “shadow” of WW 2 which affected me for the rest of my life!
Living in Canada and then in the US I see how it’s people have no clue how losing/destroying everything affects the masses, the ensuing corruption…yet persevere to rebuild and work hard to find the secret to living again!
No time for feeling sorry for oneself so they innovated and rebuilt, creating a beautiful renewal of several European countries.
@@koyotekola6916Oh the irony
I greatly admired the resilience of the German people after the war . Especially the women. Once again you have made Germany great again.
Well not all, many decided " I'm out of here!" And headed to North America figuring if they had to start rebuilding a life with nothing they might as well head to the new world where there was opportunity. My Grandfather who fought on the eastern front remembered how bad it was after WWI and for how long so packed my 17 year old father's suitcase, and told him to go and build a good life. My other grandfather took his whole family and left. With nothing more than they could pack in one suitcase each. Parents met in the new world because there were large communities german immigrants.
Now there’s mass immorality.
My Dad was 18 when released from Germab POW camp in Cherbourg, France in 1948 and returned home.when he returned home he got a job but in 1955 announced to hos family he was migrating to Melbourne, Australia. He went for a holiday in 1974, his first trip.home.His father had died.He took me as O had never been. Before ( I was 17). He had an extended holiday catching up with extended family on Germany and Poland .Meet my step.mother and stayed in German He had been naturalised Australian but to apply for work as a nurse( had worked as a Medic during war) had to reapply to be a German citizen for work. My beloved Dad past away in February 2016.I miss him dearly.May eternal rest Grant unto him oh Lord and let perpetual light shine upon him..He was 87.He had nightmares from the war as his school friend ( from 6 years.old).was blown to smithereens by some weapon in front of him.Too young to be fighting.He was taken from school at 14 and sent for.Army training. Sent to Front at 15.
Well informed people now know WHO runs these wars....but you cannot say this on You Tube....You Tube is owned by them.
And the resilience of the people in all the other countries who had to rebuild after the war - do you greatly admire their resilience too or is it only "special" people whose resilience you admire? It was the "make Germany great again" mindset that got these German people invading neighboring lands and committing horrible atrocities that brought about the suffering for everybody ELSE including themselves.
I’m slightly confused as to how true to life this play is. It was very well presented.
A family member as a child was shot in the leg by allie planes shooting down on trains filled with children escaping the city. My father in law was shot at in an open field after his small town was obliterated. Even as a child he saw that as overkill.
Any mention of the number of German soldiers the SS shot . Wasn’t that an overkill too .
What you are referring to is war time. This video is about post war Germany. The Americans treated the Germans much better than the Russians did. But in war time, all sorts of atrocities happen. He should be glad he wasn't napalmed like that poor little girl in Vietnam.
@@pradeepswaminathan3993 Why don't you inquire into the number of Soviet troops killed by their rear-guard police battalions? These were required to stop Soviet soldiers from retreating or surrendering.
Your point needs to be more well known and understood. Any and every war has so much overkill in every way possible. Since war is hell, we need to never resort to war, if possible. It is not glorious like Hollywood wants you to imagine.
Why are comments depicting German atrocities being deleted or not allowed?
An excellent documentary about appalling conditions post war.
My grandad coming back home in Italy after fighting in ww1 in alps walked the local forests and picked up Austrian bayonets helmets shovels brought them back to use helmets made buckets bayonets taken to blacksmith and made in to knifes .I remember German helmet use in the caw stable as a bucket 😂
My uncle in Northern Italy still regularly finds WW1 artifacts in the fields and on mountain hikes. We forget the scale of what happened in the alps during that war.
In one week I met a woman from Dresden who survived the bombing and two sisters who survived the Blitz in London. This was about 10 years ago. They impressed me so much. Only in New York!
I remember Aachen in 1952. I was 4years young. Did not understand the mess I saw: ruined buildings. Later, at the beach in Katwijk near Leiden, I saw men loosening one leg, then humping into the sea on one leg. Men with one arm instead of two. It was 1956 and we had a beach-vacation there, along with many germans, 11years after the war. Money is allways welcome, no matter where it comes from.
A great documentary reminds me of 1979 when the Soviet Union occupied Afghanistan, The Soviet Athiest regime was the harshest regime ever. Watching from 🇵🇰
Ive always been fascinated by the huge hill outside Berlin built from the rubble. All the houses there now have underground garages...
I wonder how much of these women's fortitude, resilience and resourcefulness in the years after the end of the war, was instilled and learned in the years prior and during the war in organisations such as the BDM.
It's a great shame you didn't include the credits at the end. For anyone thinking this channel produced this documentary, it is highly unlikely.
The human spirit to live, to adapt is amazing.
My mil just died at 102. She was taken from Poland and put in a forced labor camp in Germany. She had some brutal stories.
Many many Poles travelled to Germany on their own for work and standard of living, which was much better in Germany. These people went VOLUNTARILY.
This is a very well made docu-drama. As a child I remember traveling to East Berlin in the Russian Sector after the war with my mother who was married to a British Army officer and being amazed at the large numbers of women shifting all the rubble to clear the streets. The women looked like lines of ants working amongst the buildings and all the rubble. It was something I had not seen before in England and it left an indelible impression on my memory.
I did not feel then or now any pity whatsoever to the plight of the Germans as the Luftwaffe had bombed London. The bombing of Dresden and other German cities was not criminal and was divine retribution for what the Germans had done in the war particularly the mass murder of over six million people in the death camps they had set up.
The name of the city that Elli left is Breslau. It was only renamed to Wroclaw when the city became polish in 1945 and is still today called Breslau in German.
Fascinating program. I greatly appreciate
My grandfather was deporté de travail, he has cleaned after the first bombing knight and second...this man was broken for life !
Thank you for this very well done docudrama. I know people who lived through that period in Germany and this showed me what it had been like in reality.
Dresden firestorm city, if you survive that you are very lucky. After ww2 we all said this never again, did not work very well eh.
Also Hamburg
Annalena Barebrain did a 360 degree turn???
Sadly humans have short memories and rarely learn from the past.
This was really excellent. Thank you.
Interesting and informative. Excellent photography job/reenactments enabling viewers to better understand what the orator was describing. Resourcefulness became the " Mother " of invention during the lean years following the war's end.
This was a great story, even if a fictional person. Thank you for sharing.
Nope. Nope, nope, nope.
You're not goung to jerk a tear out of me for the hardships of the German people after the war they waged.
I get it...most people weren't directly responsible for what "those people" did, but the people were at least partially culpable, to some degree. They were at least hoping to enjoy the spoils of the war.
They had to suspect some things. If not, then they were part of the few that were just 100% in the wrong place at the wrong time, and that's tough, but they have to sit down and be quiet.
how did u make this? this was awesome to watch. im completely impressed by the quality of your content. AMAZING!
Excellent work. Thank you for the information
Before and during the war, she lived in Breslau, not Wroclaw. The expulsion of Germans from where their people had lived for maybe 1000 years is one of the most efficient examples of ethnic cleansing. Still, Germans built up their lives again and looked forward - as opposed to e.g. some in the Middle East...
...AND HOW MANY OF THOSE "EXPELLED GERMANS" WERE SENT TO GAS CHAMBERS AND CREMATION FACILITIES?!!
AND I DON'T HAVE A DAM BIT OF SYMPATHY FOR THE GERMANS WHO WERE THROWN OUT OF THE SUDETENLAND BY CZECHOSLOVAKIA-!!!
...WHEN YOU START A MAJOR WAR- AND THEN LOSE IT- THERE ARE BOUND TO BE UNPLEASANT CONSEQUENCES...
Well they had no choice , did they, after their unconditional surrender?
@@pleunmaarleveld959 No, of course not. Still, it was an ethnic cleansing on a scale we have not seen since but the Germans accepted it and built themselves a new life in the area they had left. Like I said, others could learn from it.
You can thank Roosevelt for that. At the Yalta Conference he agreed to shift the Polish border west, incorporating an immense area that had always been part of Prussia/Germany. The largest ethnic cleansing operation in history occurred from 1945-1947 when some 10 - 15 million Germans were forced from their traditional homelands and sent into the Allied-occupied areas, so that their former homes could become part of Poland and Czechoslovakia. Roosevelt also agreed at Yalta that the Soviets could have war reparations from Germany in the form of human labor, in tacit agreement that the Reds could round up millions of men and women and ship them to the Soviet Union, where a huge number perished in labor camps for years after the war. My family was also from the (former) German city of Breslau, the same city and district capitol which, in this film, is given the Polish name "Wroclaw."
My mother and her family were resettled from their home near Lwów to Wrocław in 1945. Nobody asked them if they wanted to do it. And it has not been the German city for 1000 years, just 300 before the WWII. The mad Gauleiter Hanke decided to defend Festung Breslau even after Berlin signed capitulation act. He surrendered on the 06th of May 1945.
Result? 75% of the city in ruins. And so this was the landscape my mother saw after arrival.
I could not watch to the end bought back to many not so pleasant memories.
I have read of this era but this video enhanced it all! Great period clothing etc. I knew a few survivors, here in Canada..
Nothing like making it to the end just to find out the story is fiction. Still, I'm sure the real stories of the post war are even much sadder 😢. Thanks for the video 😊
Whether that exact Elly existed or not, the rest is true.
Okay, but I don't like being jerked around. The odds of getting the violin in the way she did was slim, and I was believing it.@@cattymajiv
You were not "jerked around". Although fiction, it is entirely possible that similar things occurred. Very possible in fact. @@Doo_Doo_Patrol
If you are going to make it up at least have her find her sister!
Thanks for the heads up. Don't really do fiction so I'm out
So well done, thank you.
During the war the NAZIS confiscated the food in the conquered lands letting them starve. Summery execution of the conquered was common. The Soviets lost about 2/3 the German 1933 population.
One can understand, but not justify, the post war treatment of Germans by the conquering Soviets.
In contrast the US during the occupation of Japan brought in food to prevent mass starvation. My Stepfather was awarded a Medal by the Emperor of Japan for his work in getting food to Japan. As a child my stepfather only said terrible things about Japanese, he never told me about what he did for the Japanese people, and I only found out about his relief work in Japan after he died.
Good Video! I really learned alot about being creative and resourceful!
A very sympathetic depiction of people who turned a blind eye to mass murder of their neighbors!