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Hogge Wild posted:Best Prussian song: What is it with He-goats, negroes and crucifixes? Also, lol, Kugel. In Lithuanian, it's colloquial to our, uh, potato pie (grind potato, cook that stuff)... it probably felt like taking a bullet to the stomach to poor Germans. We also have potato dumplings known as "zeppelins", because they're big, long and grey. Kind of strange to see German words in our language, since Germans don't seem to be as historically influential as that one invasion prone neighbor...
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Dec 24, 2014 16:33
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I'm really looking forward to the next few days' 100 Years Ago posts. 
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Dec 24, 2014 17:52
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Tomn posted:I don't know, this one gives it a hell of a run for its money. Holy poo poo that's amazing. JcDent posted:What is it with He-goats, negroes and crucifixes? Are you kidding? Baltic Germans were a HUUUUUGE influence on that area. Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia were all absolutely lousy with them until they got "re-patriated" (this takes a very interesting view on nationality to view as re-repatriation) to Germany in the late 30s/early 40s.
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Dec 24, 2014 18:20
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JcDent posted:What is it with He-goats, negroes and crucifixes? It's a series of curses thrown out to emphasize the following sentence: "The Moors, the devil, lightning and crucifix (which is used as a generic expletive in German) - WHOo doesn't yet know Frederick's soldiers!"
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Dec 24, 2014 18:35
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JcDent posted:Also, lol, Kugel. In Lithuanian, it's colloquial to our, uh, potato pie (grind potato, cook that stuff)... it probably felt like taking a bullet to the stomach to poor Germans.
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Dec 24, 2014 20:49
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HEY GAL posted:Kugel also means anything round, like the ball in a ballpoint pen, and in my experience Germans eat nothing but potato products and slightly renamed Russian food. What about sausages and cabbage?
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Dec 24, 2014 20:52
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Does the phrase he got me in the kugels exist yet?
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Dec 24, 2014 21:37
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Cyrano4747 posted:The reasoning was that no matter what side won they'd be able to claim service and wouldn't need to move again. Pretty common in pretty much all the border areas, actually, like what became West Virginia. I've also read of similar stuff in the English Civil War, which given that first the Roundheads won and then a decade or so later the Royalists came back from the dead was pretty sensible. Being wholly on one side or the other was hazardous for the health whichever you'd picked.
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Dec 24, 2014 21:42
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Given how ineffective Axis intelligence was: did loose lips ever sink a ship?
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Dec 24, 2014 22:32
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Nenonen posted:Given how ineffective Axis intelligence was: did loose lips ever sink a ship? Yes. A US Senator told the press that Japanese depth charges weren't going deep enough to sink US subs. Word got back to the Japanese and they adjusted.
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Dec 25, 2014 00:26
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 More proof it's a good idea to talk poo poo when mentioning capabilities, I guess. Happy holidays, thread!
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Dec 25, 2014 00:31
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There's also the US military attache in Egypt, Bonner Fellers, who was ordered over his concerns about security to transmit his messages in a stolen and later cracked code. This information compromised efforts to resupply Malta among a great many other things and between the two convoys only two ships made it through, with the larger convoy forced to turn back. It was ultra intercepts of a message where he compared British tactics negatively to American ones that let them figure out his transmissions were the source.
xthetenth fucked around with this message at 00:37 on Dec 25, 2014 |
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Dec 25, 2014 00:33
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HEY GAL posted:in my experience Germans eat nothing but potato products and slightly renamed Russian food. I'd be interested in hearing what those Russian foods would be? We have some food exchange with Russia here in Finland, but I haven't ever heard that Germany and Russia would have too. Tomn posted:I don't know, this one gives it a hell of a run for its money. Ahahahaha drat! Hogge Wild fucked around with this message at 01:05 on Dec 25, 2014 |
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Dec 25, 2014 00:50
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Hogge Wild posted:I'd be interested in hearing what those Russian foods would be? We have some food exchange with Russia here in Finland, but I haven't ever heard that Germany and Russia would have too. Edit: Dill in everything Edit 2: Also Vietnamese food everywhere (with dill instead of cilantro--it is Vietnamese-German fusion). It's impossible to find good Chinese food in Dresden; what Chinese food there is is made poorly by Vietnamese people. Stupid Sino-Soviet Split. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 01:31 on Dec 25, 2014 |
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Dec 25, 2014 01:10
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I got Sleepwalkers and Stalingrad for christmas. Thanks for the book recs in this, the best thread in A/T.
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Dec 25, 2014 01:30
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Thanks for the stories thread, it's kind of weird to know I'm not the only one who had some really close calls in the elderly department. I just remembered two other stories. My paternal grandfather was in Manzanar with the person who wrote the first chapter of this book and my dad actually has a copy that was signed by him. It's where I got most of my info from the camps, because my grandpa never talked about it to me before he died. Apparently the only time he ever mentioned it was when he got a check in the mail from the government decades later, which he immediately tore up because in his words "I don't need their drat pity money" and according to my dad that was the only time he ever swore in his life. OTOH my maternal great-grandfather came over from Japan sometime around WWI (The dates are sketchy because 14 year olds are a bit unreliable), came to the US and was immediately kicked out down towards Mexico along with every other illegal immigrant that was with him. Right smack dab into the [url="https://"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Revolution"]Mexican Revolution[/url], but despite the brutal war and the fact they were in some of the most inhospitable terrain in North America they managed to do well for themselves. But up until the day he died he complained about that time some of either Huerta's or Pancho Villa's men stole some horses and said they'd pay him back. They never did. And he sent his first daughter to be educated in Japan, because a woman wouldn't run the risk of being drafted into the Army or the Navy like a son would and in Japan she could get a better education than what they could offer in Sonora. She arrived around '39-'40ish, got stranded following Pearl Harbor, was "persuaded" to sew uniforms for the Army then was again "persuaded" to become a nurse, was firebombed, became a first responder to Nagasaki and somehow ended up as a secretary to an American who worked for McArthur before finally managing to come home almost 10 years after she left. That last story I thought was bullshit because she only speaks Spanish and Japanese, but she has books that the American guy apparently gave to her and signed. I'll have to look him up to see if he did anything important. There could probably be an entire thread worth of these cool family stories, I personally love reading other people's stories. HEY GAL posted:Edit 2: Also Vietnamese food everywhere (with dill instead of cilantro--it is Vietnamese-German fusion). It's impossible to find good Chinese food in Dresden; what Chinese food there is is made poorly by Vietnamese people. Stupid Sino-Soviet Split.
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Dec 25, 2014 03:36
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Don Gato posted:Is Vietnamese food common in former Soviet countries? I never thought about that and now I'm genuinely curious. Did anyone behind the Iron Curtain enjoy Cuban and Korean food as well? Maybe I'm just overthinking this. Not in Lithuania, no. I'd say that stuff is popular in Germany because it's an immigration magnet.
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Dec 25, 2014 04:06
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Vietnamese and Cuban people are common in the former East Germany, and so is a deracinated version of their food with anything approaching spice removed. I don't know about any other former Soviet countries. Edit: There's a club for Dresden Veterans Of The Vietnam War, and I want to ask them about their lives. Edit 2: It's this ethnic group: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnamese_people_in_Germany HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 04:21 on Dec 25, 2014 |
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Dec 25, 2014 04:14
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Cyrano4747 posted:
My mother is descended from a confusing mishmash of Baltic German traders. One of them was even appointed to a customs post by Empress Anna I Ivanovna*! * - or more likely by one of her clerks signing for her, and it was while she was still running Kurland
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Dec 25, 2014 04:57
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Don Gato posted:Is Vietnamese food common in former Soviet countries? I never thought about that and now I'm genuinely curious. Did anyone behind the Iron Curtain enjoy Cuban and Korean food as well? Maybe I'm just overthinking this. I can't recall seeing any Chinese or Vietnamese food in Moscow, but sushi bars are everywhere. HEY GAL posted:I study in the former East Germany: solyanka, pelmeni, vodka, wine from Georgia, borscht, ice cream imported straight from Russia, etc. They eat all these things. I don't know about the former West Germany. Does East Germany have sauerkraut or superior Russian pickled cabbage?
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Dec 25, 2014 05:01
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Ensign Expendable posted:Does East Germany have sauerkraut or superior Russian pickled cabbage?
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Dec 25, 2014 05:24
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Saint Celestine posted:So... throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, was every artilleryman just completely deaf? And 20th, most vietnam era artillerymen can't hear for poo poo.
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Dec 25, 2014 05:27
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Merry Christmas to my favorite thread in SA. I rarely contribute, but I read it every day. Looking forward to the next 100 years ago Christmas Truce Edition, and every time Hegel posts about 30yw bros its like waking up and running for the gifts.
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Dec 25, 2014 05:27
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My maternal grandfather was on a Destroyer Escort, the USS Ira Jeffery (DE-63/APD-44). Did convoy escort across the Atlantic for a while, and had a close call when the convoy they were escorting was attacked by a U-Boat that sank a merchant ship as well as the first escort that went to go chase it off (The Ira Jeffery was the second). Halfway through the war it was selected for conversion into a fast transport (APD), and had the War continued for a few more months it would have served delivering UDT teams into minefields to clear them ahead of the invasion fleet. So, uh, I'm pretty glad the war ended when it did!  Unfortunately, I never got to talk to my grandfather about his service-he died of pancreatic cancer when I was only 3. I did get to go to one of his ship's reunions with my grandmother though, and had an interesting time talking to his former shipmates. I've been thinking about trying to email some of them, but most of them are probably already gone  I had a few other relatives that fought during the war, my Great-Grandfather on my Dad's side and a Great-Great Uncle, but I don't know much about their service. My Great-Grandfather was already serving in the Navy before the War, but mostly did desk duty IIRC, though I may try and ask my grandmother for some of his records when I visit her this weekend. I know even less about my Great-Great Uncle-he might have been a gunner on a dive bomber, and I seem to recall hearing that he got a Distinguished Flying Cross, but I never got the opportunity to talk to him much and I have no idea about any other aspect of his service. I'll definitely have to ask around if I have the opportunity this weekend.
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Dec 25, 2014 05:37
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Animal posted:...and every time Hegel posts about 30yw bros its like waking up and running for the gifts. Here's something; it took place in the Christmas season, but the protagonists are not my subjects, and they are not bros. There's a nasty edge here that I don't see in most of my own research. (Except for the dude who stabbed his wife twelve times, that's going to become its own article, I think.) The second night of Christmas (26 Dec), Swedish occupied Verden, 1668. A Gefreyter is coming home to his quarters, which belong to a groom in the service of Obrist Leutnant Geyso. Both of these people are Germans in the service of the King of Sweden. When he gets there, the groom's little son greets him trustingly--I'm going to reproduce this sentence in the original because Cyrano4747 thought that some of my documents sounded almost North German. They don't; this is North German: "Mein klein Hundgen ist krank, ich habe ihm ein wenig bier zu trinken gegeben, sehet doch solches jammern." ("My little dog is sick; I gave him a little beer to drink but look how he cries." Consider how this child has seen the adults around him deal with sickness, injury, hunger. He's five years old.) The Gefreyter answers: "What do I care about your dog?" and punches the child square in the face. When the groom protests, the Gefreyter turns on him: "Are you lacking something, so come out, you are not the devil yet, do not bite me, I have been your servant long enough." He draws on him, stabs him in the chest, and beats him to the ground, then drags him out the door by the hair and continues to mistreat him, although he is now either unconscious or dead. Meanwhile, his companion beats the groom's wife. Although neighbors heard the commotion, they thought that only soldiers were fighting, so they declined to intervene. The corpse was terribly battered. The only witnesses were the five year old boy and his older sister, who was seven. Since the groom's maid immediately questioned her in detail when everything was over, the maid was able to describe the crime to the notary. This awareness on the part of normal people of how trials and evidence work is something I've seen in my subjects as well: when the witnesses in the Deckert suicide were examining the scene, one of them told the other that they should make sure to get everything down for the investigation. Since the crime was exceptionally brutal, and since (at least according to the historian who's describing this) the testimony of children was regarded as absolutely believable, the Gefreyter's requests for clemency are denied and he's executed. (His companion will be flogged through the ranks six times, though.) It turns out that four weeks earlier, Geyso's regiment was dissolved and everyone was abgedanked except for the people in his personal service, like grooms. The historian who wrote this book is pretty sure that this Gefreyter had belonged to this regiment, the same regiment as his landlord. His landlord has a secure livelihood, and he doesn't. Edit: Speaking of dialects, here's how a guy from Hinterpommern told his comrade (a Swede) not to steal from a tradesman (another Pomeranian, whom he recognized as such "by his boots"): "Gifft em dat pferd wedder, lad de lüde noch tho friede lopen, man kan noch nich seggen wie es noch kommen kann." HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 04:49 on Dec 26, 2014 |
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Dec 25, 2014 08:29
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HEY GAL posted:Edit: Speaking of dialects, here's how a guy from Hinterpommern told his comrade (a Swede) not to steal from a tradesman (another Pomeranian, whom he recognized as such "by his boots"): "Gifft em dat pferd wedder, lad de lüde noch tho friede lopen, man kan noch nich seggen wie es noch kommen kann." As a Northern German, that sounds all perfectly reasonable to me. ("Give him the horse back and let the people go in peace, you don't know what might happen later!")
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Dec 25, 2014 09:48
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Might as well be nedersaksisch Dutch: "Geef um dat peerd weer [terug], etc."
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Dec 25, 2014 10:10
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From England to the Alps, we squint at one another in half-comprehension
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Dec 25, 2014 13:13
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HEY GAL posted:Vietnamese and Cuban people are common in the former East Germany, and so is a deracinated version of their food with anything approaching spice removed. Most Cuban food is pretty mild. Most Cubans I know are enormous spicy-food weenies, and won't even eat hot wings. On the other hand, most Vietnamese people I've met seem like they were born munching on ghost peppers.
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Dec 25, 2014 13:15
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SeanBeansShako posted:Prussian band music is the worst military earworm. You'll hear it in your head forever. I mean yeah, it's a good joke, but come on
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Dec 25, 2014 13:22
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A couple pages back I posted some stuff about my Grandad's WW2 shenanigans, and I thought I'd check his autobiography to make sure I had the facts straight. Couple of corrections and some questions about the whole thing: The part of Canada he thought he was getting posted to was Quebec, but he ended up at the Royal Navy Commandos school at Loch Long. After training his unit was attached to the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division, and presumably went ashore with them on D-Day at Juno Beach, not Sword. Problem I'm having is figuring out which Commando group he was in - as far as I can tell from a quick search the order of battle for Juno doesn't list the RN Commandos at all. Anyone able to help me figure that out?
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Dec 25, 2014 14:02
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HEY GAL posted:At least it's correct for the period, unlike the reenactment I was at where our piper just picked "Seven Nation Army" every loving time Oh hell, are there any youtube vids of that?
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Dec 25, 2014 14:10
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War stories I am Norwegian and my family had the pleasure of housing a group of relativly high up german officers during the occupation. When ww2 finally ended they all discharged their guns into the roof as they feared that the german army in Norway would maybe not surrender. The bullets holes were still visible when I grew up ( the roof was fixed but the “underside of the roof” was never needed to be repaired. Things got a little hairy for my maternal grandfather as one officer thougth his family looked a bit too jewish. The whole family had to trough two very torough medical examnitions to determine if we were sufficiently Aryan. Had the doctor felt a little different my grandfather and his entire family could have been shipped out to some extermination camp. My maternal grandfather was too young to fight in the war. He did however save a German soldier on leave from drowning ( my family lived by the seaside). My maternal grandfather had two uncles. One worked in the police. The police cooperated fully with the Wehrmacht during the occupation and took the imitative to expel the jews from Norway. The Germans would have preferred to wait a little longer. The uncle who worked in the police did not agree with this anti-Semitic policy but he knew he could do nothing to stop it. The day before the few Jews my city was scheduled to be arrested and put on a German ship to Poland he fled into countryside with his family and joined the resistance. I don`t what he did in the resistance, he may have killed German soldiers, he may have done nothing at all, I really don’t know. I guess he must have had some idea what was waiting for the jews when they arrived in the east. ' But my maternal grandfather also had a uncle who was member of the national unity party ( basically Norwegian Nazi`s)where he a leading role locally. He volunteered to become the drive and butler of a German officer. The officers would often “raid” farms in the countryside for food and booze and party like it was 1939 afterards. My fascist great uncle was always invited to these parties. He and his wife ( also a fascist) actually received an apartment that had belonged to a jewish family as a reward(complete with furniture). They had a son who volunteered to figth on the eastern front where he died. After the war he and his wife served time for treason( and lost their apartment obviously). He lived a long life and was a total oval office to the very end. He once told my maternal grandmother that “Hitler did one good thing at least, he got rid of all the retards” this was in the 90`s and my little sister had just been diagnosed with a serious mental handicap , a fact known to both of them at the time. He was deeply unpleasant man to the very end, no one from my family attended his funeral when he died in 1996. I often wonder why my maternal great uncles were so different. Nature or nurture?
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Dec 25, 2014 15:42
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This seems like a good time to ask. Is there an easy way to find RAF service records from WW2? I know my paternal grandfather earned an O.B.E., and a bunch of other medals, but I don't have the slightest idea of what he actually did.
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Dec 25, 2014 15:45
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Space Butler posted:This seems like a good time to ask. National Archive is your best bet. There are probably paid website and research services you can use, but at the end of the day it boils down to sitting down in Kew for an afternoon. I can do some of it for you if a few other people decide they want me to have a dig around there.
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Dec 25, 2014 16:47
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HEY GAL posted:Thanks very much!  Thank for that.
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Dec 25, 2014 18:55
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Am I too late for the relativechat? Got a couple of stories I'd like to share. My paternal grandfather was a telegraphist in the Royal Navy during WW2. He was in the battle of the North Atlantic and served on the Russian convoys as well, we've got a scrapbook kicking around with some amazing photos he took during his service. The main story of his naval career was that he was on the HMS Curacoa, an AAA cruiser (I think) that was escorting the Queen Mary (being used as a troopship) off the northwest coast of Ireland. There was a lot of debate about who precisely was to blame but they got their manoeuvring patterns muddled and the Queen Mary sliced clean through the Curacoa amidships. My grandad said that one of his mates came running in saying "grab your camera, you'll never get a better view of the Queen Mary" so he was out on deck as the collision happened. He jumped overboard and was luckily one of the survivors but apparently had to tread water for three hours before he was picked up. He died in 1997 but was interviewed in the late 90s for an Australian documentary, and that footage was reused in a recent Deep Wreck Mysteries episode on the whole affair. It was slightly odd to suddenly be seeing my long-dead grandad talking about seeing what he thought was a football floating along but then realised it was a severed head. After the war he ended up working for GCHQ (one of the UK intelligence services along with MI5 and MI6) and was also involved in naval veterans groups - I know he had a lot of contact with U-boat veterans' groups too. One of my great grandfathers was in the Norfolk regiment at the outbreak of ww1 - he was at Mons, the Somme and Passchendaele but got out with a hand wound some time in 1918, I inherited his Old Contemptibles Association badge and his wound badge. We were doing some family tree research and found that his official records include a copy of a letter my great grandmother wrote to some government official begging for money to go visit him in hospital as she was too poor to get there otherwise. Don't know too much else about him aside from that he supposedly was in the Black and Tans in Ireland, which is kind of weird considered that one of my Irish grandmother's (on the other side of the family) brothers was rumoured to be involved in the IRA at about the same time. Owlkill fucked around with this message at 19:48 on Dec 25, 2014 |
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Dec 25, 2014 18:59
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jng2058 posted:Some brief Google-Fu turns up the existence of Kagnew Station a US Army radio installation that was taken over from the Italians in '43 and in use until 1977. Ghost of Mussolini posted:He could have also been part of the effort to train and equip the Ethiopians. They sent troops to Korea (and later to many UN missions) and that would fit with the time-frame. Thanks for the info. I dunno how much of that my grandfather was actually doing, all the pictures we have of him in Ethiopia are of him hunting gazelle and riding camels. He looks like he was having a great time!
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Dec 25, 2014 19:54
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What military history related poo poo did everyone get for Christmas, then?
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Dec 25, 2014 20:19
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HEY GAL posted:Vietnamese and Cuban people are common in the former East Germany, and so is a deracinated version of their food with anything approaching spice removed. I don't know about any other former Soviet countries. Vietnamese people are also common in former West Germany, just for different reasons. (Germany took in a lot of refugees when South Vietnam folded.) The Chinese restaurant our family was going to for about ten years straight for our Christmas dinners was operated by a Vietnamese family.
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