Started down a YouTube rabbit hole of German Home movies of WWII.
These are fascinating videos. Of course, we mostly see German soldiers in very scripted documentaries. For example, if you notice in the German documentaries about the West Front, the German troops are generally filmed moving right to left, and in the German documentaries about the Eastern Front, they are shown moving left to right. So to the German audiences, they're always "advancing." The newsreels are all 100 percent propaganda, and don't really show you an accurate picture of the war.
German Soldier's Private film footage from the Eastern Front -1941
This is a German soldier's private footage from the Eastern Front. This of course would never have been shown in Germany, and probably sat in a can undeveloped for decades after the war. I just typed up some notes while I watched. Here you go. Let me know of anything cool I missed.
The first 5-10 minutes is in Ptuj, Slovenia, which I identified by the fact that the Germans made a new sign with the Germanified name Pettau (Everything in old East Prussia/Austro Hungarian empire has an historic German name that they usually slapped on it as they marched in. Osweicm becomes Auschwitz for example). There is another town I can't place, but probably also Slovenia. Because it doesn't look like crap and Slovenia is the only place in Eastern Europe that doesn't look like crap. This dates this to probably May/June 1941 shortly after the German invasion of Yugoslavia. Fits with summer.
Lots of great pics of German troops playing sports and horseing around. Cool Stuka buzzing a soccer match. Training exercises, etc. Note the white or light colored uniforms. Never seen that before, and no, it's not snow gear.
Then they take a train presumably East, see actual evidence of fighting. Knocked out tanks. Some really unusual tanks I've never seen before.
At 15:22, there's a sign with Cyrillic lettering. I'm no expert, but it seems to be numbers, not actual letters. Someone check that. Looks like possibly a Ukranian flag on one side and a Nazi flag on the other. Underneath the sign, It says Heil Hitler.
More guys marching, just being guys. The comraderie and horseplay is pretty much the same in all military outfits. (I even experienced it in Aggie Bonfire cut, which was a quasi-military experience).
At 20:01, that it appears to be an officer (followed a few seconds later by more men) of the Italian Expeditionary Corps in Russia, something you don't hear much of. This suggests this is August or later in 1941 in Southern Ukraine.
22:00 Cool river crossings. Check out the engine on that boat.
25:00 Soviet prisoners.
At 26:53, sign. Translation: "Who blocks the roads, blocks ammunition!
Stopping point
Passing or stopping for the next 10 KM is strongly prohibited. Single file for vehicles."
On the left of the sign it says 16 km to the bridge.
At the bottom, there is a picture of a bear with a crown on it with an arrow. The bear with the crown is the symbol of Berlin.
29:18 SNOW! Oh crap!
This must be around October 1941.
30:00 Funerals for several soldiers. one cross is shown Franz Roeder. Can't make out the date, but it looks to be ??.12.1941, which woudl be December.
One thing you notice is how little actual fighting there is. Based on my own experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, you put the damn camera down if bad crap happens. But even so, it's pretty clear they went really long stretches without actual fighting, which is true based on what we know of the Eastern front, but often forgotten in the popular conception.
32:24 The sign on the building is "Soldatenheim" which means soldier's home. Kind of a USO for German troops. This is in a very big city. Don't think it's Kiev, or he would have taken shots of the nicer architecture.
35:29 Sign on train car says "Wehrmacht property." Lists the trains on the line from Przemysl, which is in Poland to Cottbus. Goerlizer Bahnhof is one of the train stations in Berlin.
35:00 presuming its still chronological, they're in the spring of 42. Pretty spartan transport
36:50 nice Fiesler Storch
38:54. That is a ****e Wulf 189 observation plane. Kind of looks like a German P-38, except it was basically useless in combat.
The more you watch this, the more you realize just how huge the Soviet Union is.
40:57 Bf-110
41:10 More Russian POWs
You hear about how dependent Germany was on horses, and if you just went by newsreels, you'd think that's exaggerated, that they only needed horses at the end. But no, they're dependent on horses the whole way through.
43:00 This series starts with a car pulling up with what looks like a Ukranian flag. Then you see some folks escorting a senior officer in a light colored uniform. I wonder if this is a Ukranian or White Russian collaboratist general.
48:40 Looks like we're in Operation Blue, late summer/early fall 1942 trying to capture the Caucausus oilfields These are likely Azeris. The musical instrument the guy is playing is probably a Zurna. Looks like a great big "Communism is over" party going on.
The film kind of ends with a peaceful local harvest of grain. Probably that was the last good moment, because within a few weeks this army was transfered to a place called Stalingrad. Horst the photographer and his friends probably didn't do much pleasure filming after that.
I see more of these sort of videos. If y'all like, I can post more.
These are fascinating videos. Of course, we mostly see German soldiers in very scripted documentaries. For example, if you notice in the German documentaries about the West Front, the German troops are generally filmed moving right to left, and in the German documentaries about the Eastern Front, they are shown moving left to right. So to the German audiences, they're always "advancing." The newsreels are all 100 percent propaganda, and don't really show you an accurate picture of the war.
German Soldier's Private film footage from the Eastern Front -1941
This is a German soldier's private footage from the Eastern Front. This of course would never have been shown in Germany, and probably sat in a can undeveloped for decades after the war. I just typed up some notes while I watched. Here you go. Let me know of anything cool I missed.
The first 5-10 minutes is in Ptuj, Slovenia, which I identified by the fact that the Germans made a new sign with the Germanified name Pettau (Everything in old East Prussia/Austro Hungarian empire has an historic German name that they usually slapped on it as they marched in. Osweicm becomes Auschwitz for example). There is another town I can't place, but probably also Slovenia. Because it doesn't look like crap and Slovenia is the only place in Eastern Europe that doesn't look like crap. This dates this to probably May/June 1941 shortly after the German invasion of Yugoslavia. Fits with summer.
Lots of great pics of German troops playing sports and horseing around. Cool Stuka buzzing a soccer match. Training exercises, etc. Note the white or light colored uniforms. Never seen that before, and no, it's not snow gear.
Then they take a train presumably East, see actual evidence of fighting. Knocked out tanks. Some really unusual tanks I've never seen before.
At 15:22, there's a sign with Cyrillic lettering. I'm no expert, but it seems to be numbers, not actual letters. Someone check that. Looks like possibly a Ukranian flag on one side and a Nazi flag on the other. Underneath the sign, It says Heil Hitler.
More guys marching, just being guys. The comraderie and horseplay is pretty much the same in all military outfits. (I even experienced it in Aggie Bonfire cut, which was a quasi-military experience).
At 20:01, that it appears to be an officer (followed a few seconds later by more men) of the Italian Expeditionary Corps in Russia, something you don't hear much of. This suggests this is August or later in 1941 in Southern Ukraine.
22:00 Cool river crossings. Check out the engine on that boat.
25:00 Soviet prisoners.
At 26:53, sign. Translation: "Who blocks the roads, blocks ammunition!
Stopping point
Passing or stopping for the next 10 KM is strongly prohibited. Single file for vehicles."
On the left of the sign it says 16 km to the bridge.
At the bottom, there is a picture of a bear with a crown on it with an arrow. The bear with the crown is the symbol of Berlin.
29:18 SNOW! Oh crap!
This must be around October 1941. 30:00 Funerals for several soldiers. one cross is shown Franz Roeder. Can't make out the date, but it looks to be ??.12.1941, which woudl be December.
One thing you notice is how little actual fighting there is. Based on my own experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, you put the damn camera down if bad crap happens. But even so, it's pretty clear they went really long stretches without actual fighting, which is true based on what we know of the Eastern front, but often forgotten in the popular conception.
32:24 The sign on the building is "Soldatenheim" which means soldier's home. Kind of a USO for German troops. This is in a very big city. Don't think it's Kiev, or he would have taken shots of the nicer architecture.
35:29 Sign on train car says "Wehrmacht property." Lists the trains on the line from Przemysl, which is in Poland to Cottbus. Goerlizer Bahnhof is one of the train stations in Berlin.
35:00 presuming its still chronological, they're in the spring of 42. Pretty spartan transport
36:50 nice Fiesler Storch
38:54. That is a ****e Wulf 189 observation plane. Kind of looks like a German P-38, except it was basically useless in combat.
The more you watch this, the more you realize just how huge the Soviet Union is.
40:57 Bf-110
41:10 More Russian POWs
You hear about how dependent Germany was on horses, and if you just went by newsreels, you'd think that's exaggerated, that they only needed horses at the end. But no, they're dependent on horses the whole way through.
43:00 This series starts with a car pulling up with what looks like a Ukranian flag. Then you see some folks escorting a senior officer in a light colored uniform. I wonder if this is a Ukranian or White Russian collaboratist general.
48:40 Looks like we're in Operation Blue, late summer/early fall 1942 trying to capture the Caucausus oilfields These are likely Azeris. The musical instrument the guy is playing is probably a Zurna. Looks like a great big "Communism is over" party going on.
The film kind of ends with a peaceful local harvest of grain. Probably that was the last good moment, because within a few weeks this army was transfered to a place called Stalingrad. Horst the photographer and his friends probably didn't do much pleasure filming after that.
I see more of these sort of videos. If y'all like, I can post more.
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