Fury

[jamespowers]

Shooting unarmed prisoners by U.S. troops happened more in the Pacific, where the Japanese basically stopped taking prisoners, so the Americans retaliated! There is some kernel of truth to that seen, seems the Germans sent Hitler Youth forward with Panzerfausts, told them to take out the lead tank, then surrender, most of the time, the Americans would not shoot them. When Bradly heard this, he was reported to have issued the order, "shoot one of them, and send the other SOB back to tell his comrades what had just happened!" The incidents did stop very quickly after that!

The Hitler Youth were ferocious fighters and were known to be as such by our troops. They knew never to turn their back on them as prisoners because they would take advantage of the situation and kill them. As a consequence, our troops had little problem shooting at Hitler Youth that were shooting at them. They were no longer children. They were people with guns and that is all they saw.

 

[Stearmen]

The Hitler Youth were ferocious fighters and were known to be as such by our troops. They knew never to turn their back on them as prisoners because they would take advantage of the situation and kill them. As a consequence, our troops had little problem shooting at Hitler Youth that were shooting at them. They were no longer children. They were people with guns and that is all they saw.

I knew quite a few former Hitler Youths, when confronted with the reality, most weren't all that fanatical, probably why they moved here! Remember, the last Pope was one, once he was in the thick of it, he bugged out as soon as he got a chance. I never heard any one say, a kid after being captured tried to kill any of their comrades! I trust them, since they were there.

 

[Two Types]

The village of Vahrendorf (just south of Hamburg) is reported to have seventeen graves of Hitler Youth who were reportedly executed by British soldiers in the aftermath of the fighting for the village. I believe the claims, and counter claims, about the truth of this has been controversial. As such, it would be difficult to comment as to whether it was true. However, I asked a British veteran who was there about it and he pretty much confirmed it - although he wouldn't repeat it on tape when I was interviewing him.

I don't think he or his mates thought of the Hitler Youth as children, they were simply people who had been trying to kill them.

The impresion I have always got from British veterans is that they had mixed emotions: there was great sympathy for Germans (both soldiers and civilians) but an intense feeling of frustration that in the last month or so of the war - when an Allied vixtory was inevitable - that anyone should still bother to keep fighting. That frustration, I believe, led to examples of extreme and, arguably, uneccessary violence whilst the sens of sympathy made for long term psychological issues.

 

[Edward]

Oh, I know that Allied troops weren't paragons of virtue. I agree with p51, that having all of that happen to the same tank crew in such a short timeframe was the unbelievable part.

Oh, yes... that's where dramatic licence kicks in - the Virgil Hilts Principle, to put it another way.

My grandfather's two brothers were infantry in WW2. One in Burma, the other in the ETO.

The one in Europe said they fired up civilians if they had weapons. They were only told not to do it when members of the press were around.

I imagine this sort of approach was standard practice at the time. It would have been much easier to manage the media in those days, as well.

In March/April 1945 written orders were given to one British unit to shoot any civilians resisting but warning that they should not be put up against a wall when being executed. I assume it would make it too obvious they had been executed.

Sounds like they'd at least learned something from Ireland, then - albeit a couple of decades later!

The lone SS trooper letting that guy go? I didn't think that was odd. The guy could have easily been a conscript, as nobody was too discerning by that timeframe in the German military. Got a pulse and both feet and at least one hand? Here, grab a helmet, a smock and that rifle and come with me, bitte.
Really, it's not that big a stretch. Germans weren't all bloodthirsty, evil demons. I could easily see a kid who just wanted to survive the mess, go home and find what's left of his family, having grown up with this mess for the most part.
Yeah, I had no problem with that scene and wonder why so many did.

I'd be inclined to agree. As far as I know, only in the Baltic region were there conscripts to the SS (from 1943)... I don't think those units were sent to fight in Germany? In any case, it's always possible that the most hardened idealist can crumble when they know they're losing. [huh] Morel ikely if they were regular Wehrmacht, which is again where the dramatic licence kicks in, of course. I'm sure a sizeable chunk of the movie-going public aren't aware of the nuanced relationship between the armed forces of the German state and the Nazi party's paramilitary wing.

The village of Vahrendorf (just south of Hamburg) is reported to have seventeen graves of Hitler Youth who were reportedly executed by British soldiers in the aftermath of the fighting for the village. I believe the claims, and counter claims, about the truth of this has been controversial. As such, it would be difficult to comment as to whether it was true. However, I asked a British veteran who was there about it and he pretty much confirmed it - although he wouldn't repeat it on tape when I was interviewing him.

I don't think he or his mates thought of the Hitler Youth as children, they were simply people who had been trying to kill them.

The impresion I have always got from British veterans is that they had mixed emotions: there was great sympathy for Germans (both soldiers and civilians) but an intense feeling of frustration that in the last month or so of the war - when an Allied vixtory was inevitable - that anyone should still bother to keep fighting. That frustration, I believe, led to examples of extreme and, arguably, uneccessary violence whilst the sens of sympathy made for long term psychological issues.

I imagine had, by some bizarre turn of events, the Nazis managed to turn the course of the war around, we'd have heard an awful lot more about this sort of thing.

Sobering to think how many combatents on both sides must have come home with what would still have more or less been considered shellshock. I don't think PTSD was really fully understood in terms of combat troops until much more recently. I remember it still being questioned in relation to veterans of the first Gulf War.

 

[Fastuni]

As far as I know, only in the Baltic region were there conscripts to the SS (from 1943)...

That's pertaining to non-Germans in the Waffen-SS.

Ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche) - mostly hapless farmer boys - from occupied Eastern Europe, particularly the Balkans, but also from Axis states like Hungary and Romania, were regularly conscripted into the Waffen-SS.
Indeed the Waffen-SS had the prerogative to conscript Volksdeutsche - the Wehrmacht had no access to this source of manpower.

In the last stages of the war, Volksdeutsche Waffen-SS units were deployed in the Protectorate Bohemia-Moravia and Austria... I'm not entirely certain whether in the "Altreich" (Germany in 1937 borders) as well.

 

[Edward]

That's pertaining to non-Germans in the Waffen-SS.

Ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche) - mostly hapless farmer boys - from occupied Eastern Europe, particularly the Balkans, but also from Axis states like Hungaria and Rumania, were regularly conscripted into the Waffen-SS.
Indeed the Waffen-SS had the prerogative to conscript Volksdeutsche - the Wehrmacht had no access to this source of manpower.

In the last stages of the war, Volksdeutsche Waffen-SS units were deployed in the Protectorate Bohemia-Moravia and Austria... I'm not entirely certain whether in the "Altreich" (Germany in 1937 borders) as well.

Ah! That puts a different complexion on it... Thanks. It certainly makes the fictional event referred to above much more likely if we're dealing with a late-war conscript rather than a volunteer idealist.

 

[jamespowers]

I knew quite a few former Hitler Youths, when confronted with the reality, most weren't all that fanatical, probably why they moved here! Remember, the last Pope was one, once he was in the thick of it, he bugged out as soon as he got a chance. I never heard any one say, a kid after being captured tried to kill any of their comrades! I trust them, since they were there.

You have listened to the wrong people then and encountered the wrong people. There were several incidents documented in World War Two magazine. They described them as true believers who fought harder than the regular troops----not all of them but certainly enough to sustain the Reich for a few weeks more. Regular troops would surrender to the Western allies as soon as they could---not necessarily if they were confronted with the russians.

 

[jamespowers]

I don't think he or his mates thought of the Hitler Youth as children, they were simply people who had been trying to kill them.

And that is the long and short of it.

 

[Stearmen]

You have listened to the wrong people then and encountered the wrong people. There were several incidents documented in World War Two magazine. They described them as true believers who fought harder than the regular troops----not all of them but certainly enough to sustain the Reich for a few weeks more. Regular troops would surrender to the Western allies as soon as they could---not necessarily if they were confronted with the russians.

Stop reading that revisionist history!

 

[jamespowers]

Stop reading that revisionist history!

Those are first hand accounts from WWII veterans.

 

[jamespowers]

The real scoop:

This review of the film Fury appears in the January/February issue of our new interactive iPad edition, along with other exciting bonus content. To learn more, check out the World War II magazine app in the iTunes app store. New subscribers interested in the iPad edition can subscribe in the HistoryNet shop. Current subscribers who wish to add a digital subscription in addition to print should contact our customer service team at 1-800-435-0715. For more help with subscriptions, please read our Digital Edition FAQ.
I'm glad a young friend—when you're 90, somebody 64 is young—invited me to see Fury, the movie about GIs in Sherman tanks fighting in Germany in April 1945. In April 1945 I was a GI in Germany fighting in a Sherman tank, and I wondered how close the film gets to what I remember.
It gets darned close. Fury shows 88mm rounds and Panzerfausts hitting Shermans, and a mine blowing the tread off a Sherman. Coincidentally, I was in a Sherman hit by an 88 (it lodged in the engine compartment without exploding, and we had no casualties), and another Sherman that set off a Teller mine—two mines stacked, actually. And in April 1945 Germans shot my third tank with a pair of Panzerfausts.
Fury does show accurately how Shermans went into battle: spread out. And the film conveys the excitement of combat. The first time I was shot at in my life was that 88 round coming through the armor—totally mind-boggling. I could relate to the new soldier in the movie who six weeks before had been studying typing. Like him, I was as alien to the tank as the tank was to me. That part of the film is very well done. Perhaps the young soldier becomes a warrior a little too quickly, but I don't have any trouble believing that men who fought through North Africa and Sicily and Europe, as the other characters in the movie have, would be hard men. I came into the fight in late 1944, and I wasn't as hard as they are.
The movie also gets the emotions of combat right. I was in another Sherman with heavied-up armor when an 88mm crew a few hundred yards away fired at us. Their round hit but bounced off, which I'm sure surprised the Germans. Inside, the spot where that shot struck glowed red. The guy on the .30-caliber turret coaxial machine gun had seen where the round had come from. He laid a tracer onto the 88 and aimed our 76mm cannon and fired and that was that. I was watching through my periscope and saw the explosion and the bodies flying, the way they do in the movie. None of that affected me. You would have thought we had won the big game, yelling and screaming, until we reached the wreckage and saw the real horror of what had happened to those men. All of a sudden we were exhausted, same as the actors playing the crew.
I never experienced a one-on-one tank battle like the one in the movie, however. We fought at considerable distances. One of the few times we came upon a German tank we were taking a city, and down the street we saw the barrel of a Panther medium tank. We knew better than to try to fight it. We surrounded the Panther and called in a tank destroyer that had a gun capable of finishing it off.
In the movie a GI shoots a POW, and soldiers watching clap and laugh. I did see a mean little infantryman guarding some Germans hit and punch a prisoner, and when the prisoner ran that GI shot him. But no one clapped or laughed. In another scene the tank platoon takes a town. There's a building full of what are supposed to be German soldiers who turn out to be just kids; well, we once drove into an enemy roadblock, and afterward we saw the "soldiers" who'd been defending it. They were just kids.
I did see things in the film to pick on. Some but not all of the violence is overdone. I don't recall our fights lasting as long as the battles in the movie do, and when tanks road-march in Fury, they bunch up. Our battles were over in a flash, and the Third Army road-marched with around 50 yards or more between tanks—but then, we weren't making a movie. When we threw a tread, our commander didn't peremptorily say, "Fix it," and walk away, as if you could jack up a 33-ton tank like a car with a flat tire; everyone on the crew threw in on the job. And I don't remember a Sherman having as much room inside as the tank in the movie seems to.
Otherwise Fury gets it right, especially the sergeant Brad Pitt plays. When a young lieutenant orders him and several other sergeants to move out, he says, "The war's not going anywhere, sir," and lights a cigarette. That's how some sergeants were. Those sergeants took no **** from anybody, even generals. They were the backbone of the army.
All in all Fury does a pretty good job of showing tankers at war, and also what a stupid waste war is. I hate to admit it but Fury took me back to a high point in my life, which is what makes war so horrible. We wind up making movies that can't help but glamorize killing people because war is so damned exciting. —Lloyd Emerson served as a loader and radioman in the Third Army's 11th Armored Division.

 

[Edward]

Fascinating article. (His general comments on war are also very interesting, and chime with what most people who had fought in ww2 a d whom I met had to say about it).

 

[AmateisGal]

The impresion I have always got from British veterans is that they had mixed emotions: there was great sympathy for Germans (both soldiers and civilians) but an intense feeling of frustration that in the last month or so of the war - when an Allied vixtory was inevitable - that anyone should still bother to keep fighting. That frustration, I believe, led to examples of extreme and, arguably, uneccessary violence whilst the sens of sympathy made for long term psychological issues.

E.B. Sledge talks about this in his memoir, With the Old Breed. There was such frustration that the Japanese continued to fight knowing that they weren't going to win. I think it was absolutely baffling and incredibly frustrating to the Marines as to why the Japanese didn't surrender, why they continued to be killed instead of surrendering. It also infuriated them, and I can understand why. Their buddies were dying because of it.

 

[Big J]

E.B. Sledge talks about this in his memoir, With the Old Breed. There was such frustration that the Japanese continued to fight knowing that they weren't going to win. I think it was absolutely baffling and incredibly frustrating to the Marines as to why the Japanese didn't surrender, why they continued to be killed instead of surrendering. It also infuriated them, and I can understand why. Their buddies were dying because of it.

As the saying goes, 'no one wants to be the first or last person to get killed in a war'. The futility of continued resistance must have been so frustrating at the end.

 

[Stearmen]

Those are first hand accounts from WWII veterans.

Mine were, never did hear a single WWII soldier say he was afraid of those kids.

 

[Fastuni]

an intense feeling of frustration that in the last month or so of the war - when an Allied vixtory was inevitable - that anyone should still bother to keep fighting.

I think it was absolutely baffling and incredibly frustrating to the Marines as to why the Japanese didn't surrender, why they continued to be killed instead of surrendering.

If the Axis had been winning and occupied Britain or the US, would these Allied soldiers also think that they should surrender quickly instead of resisting to the bitter end, taking as many enemy invaders to the grave as possible? Did they consider the Polish/French/Soviet/Chinese etc. soldiers and partisans who didn't surrender to be "foolish diehards" because it appeared that the Axis might win?

Looking back at the early stages of the war, when the Axis was achieving victory after victory, those are usually considered as cowards/fools who surrendered to the Axis without resistance, while those who resisted and fought although "futile" are applauded as heroes.
Historiography usually glamorizes hopeless "last stands".

The behaviour of many German and Japanese soldiers, particularly the young ones, in the last stages of the war was perfectly understandable.
It goes beyond the (very persuasive) concept of patriotic duty.

A very popular saying among Germans during the last war years was "enjoy the war, the peace is going to be terrible."
Axis soldiers were (not without many good reasons - though propaganda of course fueled the dread) expecting the absolute worst from the victorious Allies.

They saw their countries bombed to rubble by the Allies and millions of their compatriots killed at home and the front... of course they were in the mood of avenging and desperate to avoid capture (depending on who and by whom). Fighting to death was seen as the honorable thing to do and something of a last chance to delay or at least put a higher price on the "unconditional surrender" the Allies insisted on.

How could after years of intense ideological molding, a young German or Japanese soldier be any less willing to continue a desperate, "futile" fight (which it often enough wasn't... part of the motivation of continued resistance against the Red Army for example was to ensure the evacuation of German civilians and save themselves from becoming POW in the East), than his Allied counterparts?

 

[Bushman]

That's probably one of my favorite lines from the movie, actually.

"Why don't they just give up?"
"Would you?"

It makes one stop and think. Had the Axis powers successfully invaded the United States or the UK... we would have fought to the last man standing.

 

[Steve27752]

That's probably one of my favorite lines from the movie, actually.

"Why don't they just give up?"
"Would you?"

It makes one stop and think. Had the Axis powers successfully invaded the United States or the UK... we would have fought to the last man standing.

Would we? No, I do not think so. I believe that there were/are many in the U.K. and U.S. that believe we would have been better off joining the Germans (not me I hasten to add).

 

[Bushman]

Of course, there are a small number of people (mostly Klansmen and Neo-Nazi movements) that agree with the Nazi ideology, but I feel like they are vastly out numbered by the people who are loyal to their country, or even their own livelihood. Heck, just look at how many people are willing to take up arms over something as silly as taxing cattle grazing or the US Army conducting a training exercise in rural Texas. In much of the US, any perceived threat, credible or not, to ones livelihood is often seen as good enough cause to beat the drums of war. There's people who would go to war over an attack on a US embassy. An invasion on the US mainland? I couldn't even imagine how large our standing Army would grow overnight.

 

[jamespowers]

Mine were, never did hear a single WWII soldier say he was afraid of those kids.

Would you say you were afraid to turn your back on kids because they might kill you?