remember that the general declared martial law and ordered all the german civilians nearby to go there and help bury the bodies. they were forced to witness what was done in their name. they claimed they didnt know. now they knew.
The camp depicted in Band of Brothers is Kaufering IV which was one of 11 labor subcamps of Dachau located in the Landsberg (Bavaria) region of Germany known as the Kaufering complex. Contrary to what is shown in Band of Brothers, the camp was actually liberated by the 12th Armored Division on April 27, 1945 with some units of the 101st Airborne Division arriving on April 28 and Easy Company arriving on April 29. And there were only about 7 prisoners found alive (they had hidden), along with about 500 bodies. For dramatic purposes, Easy Company is shown liberating the camp. From the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: _As US armed forces approached the Kaufering complex in late April 1945, the SS began evacuating the camps, sending the prisoners on death marches in the direction of Dachau. Those inmates who could not keep up were often shot or beaten to death by the guards. At Kaufering IV, the SS set fire to the barracks killing hundreds of prisoners who were too ill or weak to move._ _When the 12th Armored Division and 101st Airborne Division arrived at Kaufering IV on April 27 and 28, respectively, the soldiers discovered some 500 dead inmates. In the days that followed, the US Army units ordered the local townspeople to bury the dead._
No, they weren't helping voluntarily. The American general declared martial law in that area and everyone aged 14 through 80 years of age had to help bury the bodies, and that included the camp director's wife in that red coat.
The civilians helping were the locals. Winters has a line before that scene about enacting martial law and every able bodied person was sent to clean up the bodies.
@@fasiapulekaufusi6632 Actually, it was General Eisenhower, Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Forces (SCHAEF). He said toured every nook and cranny of the camps so that he would be prepared to testify as to what he saw. He made German civilians AND his own troops go to them for the same reason and also in case someone tried to say later that the Holocaust was propaganda. Interestingly enough his prophecy came true. There are Holocaust deniers to this day.
@@fasiapulekaufusi6632 If I recall correctly the civilians wasn't told to clean it up but was forced to walk through the camps and witness the atrocities and piles of the dead in mass graves.
@@fasiapulekaufusi6632 actually it was Eisenhower, who was told that the Germans were saying that the reports by American soldiers were exaggerated or lies, who the citizens of the towns around the camps to be shown the atrocities that occurred in the camps. To make sure that everyone would know and never forget!
My uncle took part in the liberation of the mittlebau Dora camp.he was a combat veteran.40 years later and would still weep when he talked about what he saw there.
I can’t imagine… About a year ago I watched this Court TV series about the Nuremberg trials, which of course used Army footage. I grew up in Germany so knew about the Holocaust since 3rd or 4th grade, we even visited the Anne Frank house on my 4-day sixth grade trip to the Netherlands . Seeing the footage in the Nuremberg series, I literally held my stomach and sobbed. I’m blinking tears NOW. I can’t imagine what that would be like - of course to survive that hell - but even to see that. My brain cannot comprehend.
Keep telling people about that. The survivors are almost all gone now, and the neo-Nazis hunger for the day when no victims can speak for themselves anymore.
It is truly unbelievable what they were capable of doing to their fellow humans. But they did it and it's important to learn. Many of the people you saw in the episode were people from a hospital who were going thru very different stages of cancer, eating disorders and different diseases.
This show had a pretty profound impact on my life, mostly because of the timing of it. It came out a few years before I joined the Army out of high school, and it motivated me to join the Airborne as well. I graduated Airborne school, but was sent to the 25th Infantry because they were about to deploy to Afghanistan so no jump unit for me. When we got back they pulled us into the division theater and much to my astonishment, brought out four of the actual veterans from easy company and some of the actors to talk to us. It was like a dream come true for me, who loved the show so much. I won't say who was there so I don't spoil anything, but it was a bit overwhelming to see them in person.
Eisenhower ordered the locals to help with the burials so that there would be no dispute over what happened. He also ordered extensive photographic and movie evidence so that it couldn't be swept under the rug which some groups are trying to do now. That woman's husband was Wehrmacht, regular German army, a career man, not SS but still. I like the juxtaposition of that woman finding Nixon in her house and her accusing stare and him feeling shame like he was a common criminal. Likewise later at the camp and Nixon staring her down and her feeling of shame and complicity in what happened.
And after that start Operation Paperclip, Von Braun working the american goverment and the NASA welcome him and his buddies (later that Ford gave him Presidential Medal of Freedom). So stop moralizing only lasted until other interests overwrote it!
The camp shown in Band of Brothers is Kaufering IV (Hurlach) which was actually found and liberated by the 12th Armored Division on April 27, 1945. Colonel Edward Seiller of the 12th Armored Division took control of the camp on April 27 and ordered civilians from the Landsberg am Lech area to bury the dead. Easy company didn't actually arrive until April 28. The actual film can be viewed here: czcams.com/video/NS02Cq3Lifc/video.html
Don't imagine for a second that people who would do THAT to human beings were confined to that time period or that region. There's groups of people in most nations today, who would like nothing more. Except they can't get away with it today, at least not to the same extent (looking at you, China) It's why stuff like this is so important. "Never forget" is bandied about after most disasters or atrocities...but for this one in particular, it's oh so important.
I wasn't in a concentration camp. I was in a refugee camp when I was 8 to 9 yrs old. This was after the Vietnam War when my family had to escape Saigon because we were Chinese and the North Vietnamese were rounding up all Chinese to prevent spying and possibly due to racism. We escaped with other refugees on a wooden boat (close to a hundred people sitting room only) that grounded in Malaysia. My family were on the beach at night when my father told us that everything we had sunk with the boat including our clothes and money and valuables to barter. My family spent months, first in tents, then managed to get to a spot where we build a shelter from borrowing an axe so we can chop wood and branches with leaves to build a shelter. It was miserable only food donated. We had a campfire to cook eventually and keep warm. I was too young to help much, especially to get wood as I couldn't cut down the trees. It does build a sense that life isn't a reward but an effort to survive. It also taught me the value of helping people, family, and ones less fortunate than me. I was one of the lucky ones and believe if not for the help of others I might also be the ones I saw die from starvation and ill health.
12:34 "How can you even do this to fellow humans, how?". Voltaire (1694-1778) said: "Those who can make you believe in absurdities can make you commit atrocities"
My favorite part of this episode is the contrast of shame between Nix and the German lady. He had shame in his eyes when she confronted him in her home, and she had shame in her eyes looking at Nix at the end, for what her husband was likely a part of.
I know you'll get lots of comments about this, but the cast was strongly advised to not see the camp before filming the scenes, so many reactions are very real. And many of the prisoners were cancer patients serving as actors that volunteered, so even their appearance isn't greatly exaggerated by film. Many of them really looked like that.
The actors playing the concentration camp survivors were cancer patients who volunteered for the role, wanting their medical condition to give authenticity to the role to truly strike home the horror of what was done
The combat jump Nixon was talking about in the beginning of the episode was called “Operation Varsity”. My father jumped in that as a 1st lieutenant. It was the only airborne drop in Germany
Good reaction. Most people in the west knew that there were "prison" camps in Nazi Germany, but didn't know they were actually extermination camps. You should react to Casa Blanca from 1942. Watching the movie, you will see a contemporary perspective of what people believed the camps were before they were actually captured. (Also, the screenplay for Casa Blanca is considered by many to be the greatest ever written.)
I remember in highschool we had a holocaust survivor come in and I don't remember his name but there was a PBS special on him and his wife at the time. And yeah he said when he was liberated people kept asking what food they all wanted and a lot of the people were asking for meat or things they haven't had in years and their bodies couldn't handle it. Many people got sick and died because they started to get fed things their body's couldn't handle.
The town was forced to help. It was so they couldn't deny it ever happened . This actually happened a lot. Interesting fact, when the series first came out at the same time 9-11 happened. They canceled the show and it took about a little over a year before they put it back on.
Love your reactions. They explained in the episode that everyone 14-80 was forced to help burry the bodies b/c the Americans knew they were complicite in some way or another.
The toughest episode to watch, but, the most important to watch. "If anyone ever tells you the Holocaust didn't happen, or that it wasn't as bad as they say, no, it was worse than they say. What we saw, what these Germans did, it was worse than you can possibly imagine." - Edward "Babe" Heffron
Gen. Eisenhower ordered that German civilians from the areas surrounding the camps that were liberated be forced to start the clean up. For most of them, it was the first realization of the pure evil their government had been doing in their name.
Don't forget, the Nazi government didn't really advertise what they were doing, and, anyone who asked too many questions would find themselves getting whisked off by the Gestapo in the middle of the night, never to be heard from again.
'Why We Fight' is the name of a series of films produced by US Government (several directed by Frank Capra) to explain to the soldiers why they were fighting a war. All the Easy Co soldiers would have seen them, They are also available on CZcams.
The actors were not allowed to see the camp before the scene was shot. Their reactions were real to seeing all those cancer patients and dead bodies in that situation.
In real life, the 101st did not liberate Kaufering IV. It was liberated by the 12th Armored and the 101st (And Easy) arrived the following day. That being said, Liebgott was forced to translate that the prisoners were to remain in the camp.
Just after high school, I went on a trip through Europe with a number of other American teenagers. We landed in Germany, and before we even checked into the hotel, they took us to Dachau. It would have hit me hard if I hadn’t been jet lagged. Instead, I had my first anxiety attack in addition to the other psychological damage. I think people can do such things to other people if the people doing it don’t see the other people as people.
Exactly true! People do these vile acts to other people becuase they have been indoctrinated with the thought that some kinds of humans (be it based on religion, culture or disabilities) are worth less than other humans. I've visited the Sachsenhausen and Theresienstadt camps. Despite none of them being true extermination camps it was still sickening to learn of the horrors that were inflicted on those held there.
To understand Nixon you must understand why he never fired his gun in combat. His job was in Intelligence. Basically he would go between the squads and the company command post relaying information to both. So for Nixon the boys blowing up over Germany was devastating as he had a very good idea of exactly how many men died company wide from the very beginning. This coupled with survivors guilt ate at him mentally. Like many of the men who return from war. They are left with the question Why did I get to live?
I did see this when it was first shown but still, I feel right with you on this episode. I can tell that almost any time I see this episode it will be hard. The town people claimed they were not aware of what was going on in the camps outside the towns, so the Army ordered the civilians out to the camps to help bury some of the bodies and clean up. The Army said they did that so that people would see it for themselves and not later claim that the Army made-up the stories about the camps. Great reaction.
They are NOT in the same situation, battle yes, What they are fighting for NO. Keep up the great work, hope your feeling better. The Documentary is the real ending
Awesome reaction, thank you for sharing your visit of a camp. Unfortunately in America, most youth don’t know or understand what had happened during those times, and it would be nice if the school systems here provided trips to locations such as this, to bring things into perspective for our youth here in the states
Marylander here, we learn quite intensively about the Holocaust throughout several years of history class. But we have much better education that a lot of states. And yes, while the Allied leadership had heard believable information about the true scale of the Holocaust, most soldiers and the world at large didn't know the scale of atrocity until later when they encountered camps; until then the idea of a concentration camp was someplace to imprison and concentrate prisoners. Allied leadership knew that there was no way to stop the death camps until they advanced enough and won the war anyway, and they were also wary that broadcasting the truth would sound like hyperbolized propaganda. That's why they made sure to document as much of the Holocaust as possible when camps were liberated by the Soviets and Western Allies.
@@sebastianjoseph2828 yeah I feel northern east coast education systems are significantly better than most from what I’ve heard, which is great! In my region within the Midwest, it’s taught for maybe a few days tops, for general courses in junior/high school
There was this study done called Milgram experiment at Yale university to try and understand what people are willing to do to be obedient to authority. The study was set up to see how many people were willing to believe they were delivering electrical shocks to other people at increasing voltages, even if they thought the shocks could be causing severe pain up to possibly lethal. In reality, the subjects were not shocking anyone but believed they were. Every participant was willing to go up to 300 volts and over 60% went up to 450. The people doing the test were "shocked" to see people would go this far. But it does help to show from a psychological perspective how these types of things happen. No one believes they would do that, but in fact they would if they thought they were doing right by their government.
I've watched the series probably 7-8 times or more. i still find myself being exposed to the cutting of onions, when theyre at the camp. i'm not crying, you're crying! haha
The nazi propaganda campaigns promoted these camps as humane reducation centers with 3 square meals a day and classrooms for teaching. The people probably knew the camp was there, some might have even known the true horror of it. But let's be real here, the human mind is not always capable of accepting such horror. If you had to accept reality, or accept the propaganda. . . Be honest with yourself, which would you believe? What would help you sleep at night? More often than not, we are more content with the lies. Look no further than the current rise of facisim on a global scale over the last 20 years or so. It is now, as it has always been. Fueled by lies. But they are lies that empower and make people feel safer and more powerful. Thats where their true power resides
Re the old veteran wanting no more combat. As you found out at the beginning of this episode, the 101st was being kept out of Combat by this time, and it was the newer units that were being sent in to do the fighting. Capt. Nixon was telling about jumping with one such unit, the 17th Airborne Division, that jumped into Germany and suffered heavy casualties. THOSE new guys saw plenty of action. But, the replacements in a veteran division that had taken heavy casualties from June through February were going to see very little. The veterans were so affected by PTSD, it was a good idea to let them rest and let the newer units do the fighting. Also, it probably seemed more fair to let the guys who had risked their lives so many times already stand down and be safe for a change.
The camps broke even the most hardened combat vet. Even Gen Patton himself cried when he saw one of the camps. My great uncle was in WWII, went through D-Day and Bastogne and much more. Never broke, but seeing the camps, gave him severe , what we now call severe ( PTSD ) Drove him to drink, had a hard time holding down a job. I never understood why until I experienced Iraq and Afghanistan. As bad as seeing the camp in this episode. They were actually a million times worse. What's really sad is there are people claiming this never happened.
i watch the series every year Aswell i plan it so the Bastogne episode is on xmas eve just to remember how lucky we are living in better times (well except for the Ukraine and Russian part of Cors)
When your body undergoes extreme starvation it shuts down parts of your digestive system to prioritize what little energy it has to keeping your body alive. If you eat too much too fast it overwhelms your system, even splits your digestive system open. Lots, and I mean lots of the camp occupants died after being liberated just because their bodies couldn't handle getting nutrition. The damage was quite literally already done and they were essentially dead people walking. In 2008 I got to visit the Netherlands and went to a camp. They told us the commandant of that camp would walk out into the prison yard and drop his hat on the ground. He'd then select a prisoner to pick it up for him. Once retrieved the commandant would toss his hat over the dead line and demand the prisoner return it or he would shoot him. That was the prisoner's choice, be shot for getting the hat or be shot for not getting it
those groups have always been around and always will be. its a very dark aspect of human nature which will never cease to exist. under the right circumstances everbody is capable to do horrible things.
I would describe it as the most powerful and moving episode. Depictions like Why we Fight are important for people of your age to watch and be conscious of. Not just one day in a history class. The 1940s were so long ago, but events like The Holocaust and words such as 'genocide' shouldn't be forgotten. Because it could easily happen again.
Last year i was finally able to get my hands on 2 org 1940 VAT69 Bottles and some newer "VAT69 Gold" which added nicely to my WW2 E/506th kit and is a big hit at WW2 weekend displays. in 2017 i got to work on a film with Ron Livingston (Nixon) so we got to chat about BOB and how we both tried to out drink Wild Bill & XXX and i got to thank him for doing this series and he signed my copy of BOB which is also signed by some of the other E co vets.
Young lady you're compassion shows, you have a beautiful warm heart. Everytime I watch this episode I get teary eyed. Great reaction again. An I will never believe the German locals didn't know about the camps. They were right in their back yard. An they are just as guilty letting this go on. Keep up the good work.
The starving and then overfeeding. So, digestive enzymes are proteins, and like any other proteins, they are produced by the body to break down food, so enzymes are protein chains designed to break down and digest other proteins. When starving, the body ceases to produce large amounts of enzymes, and the person is barely eating, so a lot of enzymes are not required; other proteins are much more important given the limited nutrition available. Then, when suddenly large quantities of food are available, the urge is to eat as much as possible, but the body literally needs time to start ramping up the enzyme production to speed digestion.
Its a common misconception, that old womans husband was not a nazi. That was an iron cross he was wearing in the photo thats a germany army award and a german army uniform he was wearing. The band across the edge of the photo indicates he is also dead.
The clean Wehrmacht myth is horseshit. They knew. They lived through the Nuremberg laws. They lived through Kristallnacht. They saw Jewish neighbors one moment, and saw them being rounded up the next moment. Fuck her and her fascist husband. The idea that you're not a Nazi unless you are in the SS or wear an swastika armband 24 hrs a day is absurd.
@@drach420 Believing that every single German was bad because he was born as German at the beginning of the 20th century is as absurd as saying that the Wehrmacht was 100% pure. This war was not as black and white as some people think.
There's alot of debate as to the extent which the German population knew of the atrocities being committed but as far as I'm concerned they knew they had.
In the Fall of 1973, PBS began broadcasting Dr. Jacob Bronowski's miniseries on Science and Society, "The Ascent of Man." Introduced by a very young Anthony Hopkins, this is/was a legendary series. Episode #11, "Knowledge or Certainty," explored the difference between these words. In an ad libbed conclusion, Dr. Bronowski took us to Auschwitz for a detailed look at the difference between Knowledge and Certainty. czcams.com/video/ltjI3BXKBgY/video.html Needless to say, it has stayed in my memory all these years as the best answer to Easy company's question: "What are we doing here?"
Mid-war there was aerial photo-reconnaissance photos showing some of the camps (along with other intel sources) but there wasn't much that could be done until ground forces reached those locations. The prime effort was to win on the battlefield.
Gottlieb, the translator, was half Jewish by birth. For me, the most poignant scene of the entire series is when he has to tell them to go back in the camp. So well acted and directed.
There's a documentary you should watch after the final 10 episode it's called we stand alone together and it interviews the various men that were portrayed in the band of brothers
Larissa > Another great review ~ When you have a chance, watch HBOs CONSPIRACY, one of their first movies they made on their own along with BBC Films .. .. Kenneth Branagh, Stanley Tucci, Colin Firth, Tom Hiddleston, Brendan Coyle .. .. It portrays the one 1942 evening in Wannsee when the SS cemented the 'final solution' and the only veto came from Hitler's personal lawyer .. .. Like all conflicts/genocides, decided on by Lawyers & Politicians .. ..
The conference was largely a decision on how to exterminate Jews, not whether to do so. Jews and others have been shot on mass for over 15 months at that point. It was disorganized and as far as the Germans were concerned, it both wasted resources and would break the morale of the men doing it. even hardened members of the SS would become drunks and drug users unless they were already sociopaths
Most of the camps were in the East and even the Soviets did not start discovering them until the war was almost over. There WERE reports about the camps being made to the various intelligence agencies. However, the reports were being made by Jews and the allies tended to believe the reports were exaggerated in an effort to get the allies to advance faster. The soldiers were not told about the reports so were completely unprepared when they first started finding the camps.
Yup. I was going to add this (mostly). There were SEVERAL sources for the data about camps. This included reporting by captured British pilots who escaped and other organized intelligence sources. I don’t know, however, if the full extent of the depravity was universally known by the Allies. But this is true. The average soldier wouldn’t have been made aware. Thus, the surprise and horror. Great comment.
The woman's husband's photo showed an Army officer. He wasn't SS and it'd be wrong to assume he was a Nazi. Not all soldiers were members of the Nazi party. Many despised Hitler and his "gang."
the actors who played the jews were not actors. they were cancer patients who voulenteered to do it and many did not live long enough to see the show air
They believed that the story waa one too important not to be told, no matter their illness and how taxing it must have been on them, so they volunteered.
The writing for this is brilliant. We start with the vets explaining how similar they were to the German soldiers. Then we see Luz and Perconte with the girl in the barn. We like those guys but we are still worried for that girl. Winters comes and forces a family out of their own house without a second thought. Spiers loots for his own benefit. The French execute German prisoners and nobody except O’Keefe cares. These are not the same guys we met at Toccoa. They really are very similar to the Germans. Then all of a sudden the difference becomes very clear.
You understand people shooting at each other in war, and even shooting a surrendering enemy that's been shooting at (and killing) you and your buddies in an immediate rage - even if it's technically illegal... But to just slaughter innocent people or work them to death is entirely different. You see your military enemy as human, but the concentration camps were literally treating them like animals.
I agree, the inhumanity of man to man is unfathomable. The Nuremberg trials determined that "just following orders" is not an acceptable defense. Well done young lady!
- “How can they just walk into peoples home?” How can a country just walk into Poland, Benelux, France, Czechoslovakia, the USSR? That’s how! - Though the title is “Why We Fight”, the camps were not the only reason. You might also have noticed in earlier episodes the Allies were there to liberate most all of Western Europe. - We should not be surprised by this type of mass murder/genocide. Millions were also killed by Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and others who run tyrannical regimes in the 20th Century. Don’t be surprised when it happens again.
Imagine seeing all of the horrors of War and then being speechless, after seeing this..."Why We Fight" is also a legendary documentary by Frank Capra made DURING the War. When the fate of the World still hung in the balance...I also believe the Nazi Woman in the stark red coat is a connection to the little Jewish girl who dies in the Holocaust in Schindler's List. I doubt there are many coincidences in Spielberg's work.
Re Schindlers - The girl in the red coat represented innocence; the woman in the res coat represents guilt. Notice how her coat is the only color in the scene - another nod to Schindler.
@14:27 - As the defeated occupied side of the war, the woman and the others didn't have the option of volunteering to do stuff. What's clearly shown in the episode is that the German civilians were forced to the clean up the concentration camp as well as all destruction on their town caused by the fighting.
It´s a nice noble thought by thinking you that "I do not forget". That wasn't anyway new idea what Germans did, only very efficiently organized and still those kind of things are still happening (N.korea, China, Africa, 90s Balkan war.). Unfortunately humans like to live theire own bubble, phrase: out of sight out of mind. describes quite well people thought process.
I went to Berlin a few years ago, and visited the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. It was a tremendously bleak place. Since then, seeing this episode and reactions to it, I can't help but overlay the camp in the episode with the one I saw. Everyone has a responsibility to not let it happen again, especially since there are extreme right-wingers with power in Europe, Latin America, and the US.
I can't help but get choked up every time I see this episode. This mini-series should be required viewing by everyone. It should make you feel uncomfortable watching it.
_This mini-series should be required viewing by everyone. It should make you feel uncomfortable watching it._ There are a lot of embellishments and fictional elements in Band of Brothers. For instance, the camp liberation and associated scenes are fictional. The camp depicted in Band of Brothers is Kaufering IV which was actually liberated by the 12th Armored Division on April 27, 1945 with some units of the 101st Airborne Division arriving on April 28 and Easy Company arriving on April 29. And there were only about 7 prisoners found alive, along with about 500 bodies.
I've watched this whole series a dozen times at least, and have reacted to people watching this episode easily 20 times, and I will never fail to tear up at the reveal of the camp. This is my favorite episode, because of how well they do a one-two punch on the audience: they start essentially equivocating the Germans and the Americans, with the "hunting" story, etc. And then you have Nix essentially invading a woman's house, and he's clearly the "bad" guy in this situation. The constant mocking of O'Keefe. And then. WHAM! The one thing that we all know about WWII that hasn't been brought up at ALL in this series shows up, and I'm just pummeled by it! All the reactions make sense, all the horror is laid bare. And as bad as the visuals are here, the dialogue makes it even worse - "the womens' camp", finding camps bigger, ovens for burning the bodies - this horror show we've seen is NOT the worst of the worst, and that's terrifying! I'll never forget the first time I saw this, and like I said, I tear up every time I see it now. Such an amazingly powerful hour of TV - it's one of the reasons this is my all-time favorite show/series/movie! Band of Brothers is one of the pinnacle milestones of American drama!
At this point, the German people had been worn down by years of Nazi party propaganda against the undesirable people they targeted. That is, IMO, the worst crime the Nazis committed was the systemic way they made every German an accomplice to their crimes.
I see many people reacting to this episode and they making the mistake of jumping to the conclusion that this is the first time that the outside world is learning about the Death Camps. That's not to say that this episode is historical inaccurate. This episode shows how many combat soldiers, who had been cut off from normal news sources, learned about the Death Camps. There were media reports and there are even recordings of Churchill referencing the systematic murder of Jews in public speeches. However, the Western world was awash in anti-German propaganda and it was common knowledge that much of the propaganda was false. So, when there were reports of German atrocities, it wasn't front pages news. Many who did hear about the atrocities dismissed it as hyperbole or just plain propaganda. People found it inconceivable that these stories could be true. Stories of the Death Camps had circulated widely in the Jewish community and it's almost a certainty that the Jewish soldiers in the unit were familiar with the reports of the Death Camps. Though this is not reflected in this episode. On a related note, if you want to learn about one of the greatest bad asses in the history of the human race, Google "Witold Pilecki." He was a member of the resistance who decided that first hand intelligence was needed to obtain bona fide evidence of the Death Camps. Pilecki purposely got himself arrested and sent to Auschwitz. Pilecki could have been murdered a dozen different ways and never even made it to Auschwitz. Yet, he did ultimately end up there and made detailed reports of the atrocities. These reports were smuggled out. Pilecki himself escaped so that the could he could deliver eye witness testimony to his fellow resistance members in hopes of a raid being mounted to rescue the prisoners. Sadly, his reports fell on deaf ears as his fellow resistance members found his reports to be too shocking to be believed.
Definitely the episode that left the biggest impression on me. Probably the only one where I warn people it's going to be dark, which usually has people ask me how can it be worse than the battles.
" All I can think is, how can you even do this to fellow humans?" It's easy. In 1935, German courts ruled that Jews were not human and did not deserve the rights their neighbors enjoyed. Kind of makes you wonder about COURTS, huh?
The only scene in this episode I disagree with is when they raided the bakery. Germany at this time wasn't so well stocked with food, food to civilians was literally being rationed, and they even sent police to counter potatoes to make sure people were not hording food. So seeing so much fresh cheese/bread is kind of a stretch. Germany was in such a bad position food wise by this time, that even after the war, with western help German civilians were still surviving on near starvation rations provided primarily by the USA as other parts of Europe took priority when it came to rebuilding.
Watch the finale and my reaction to the documentary ‘We stand alone together’ here already!: Patreon.com/larissazeeuwe
@Larissa Zeeuwe. "How can people do this to others" .......... quite easily, Bucha Ukraine, etc.
remember that the general declared martial law and ordered all the german civilians nearby to go there and help bury the bodies. they were forced to witness what was done in their name. they claimed they didnt know. now they knew.
The camp depicted in Band of Brothers is Kaufering IV which was one of 11 labor subcamps of Dachau located in the Landsberg (Bavaria) region of Germany known as the Kaufering complex. Contrary to what is shown in Band of Brothers, the camp was actually liberated by the 12th Armored Division on April 27, 1945 with some units of the 101st Airborne Division arriving on April 28 and Easy Company arriving on April 29. And there were only about 7 prisoners found alive (they had hidden), along with about 500 bodies. For dramatic purposes, Easy Company is shown liberating the camp.
From the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum:
_As US armed forces approached the Kaufering complex in late April 1945, the SS began evacuating the camps, sending the prisoners on death marches in the direction of Dachau. Those inmates who could not keep up were often shot or beaten to death by the guards. At Kaufering IV, the SS set fire to the barracks killing hundreds of prisoners who were too ill or weak to move._
_When the 12th Armored Division and 101st Airborne Division arrived at Kaufering IV on April 27 and 28, respectively, the soldiers discovered some 500 dead inmates. In the days that followed, the US Army units ordered the local townspeople to bury the dead._
Nixon was an alcoholic prior to the war.
No, they weren't helping voluntarily. The American general declared martial law in that area and everyone aged 14 through 80 years of age had to help bury the bodies, and that included the camp director's wife in that red coat.
The civilians helping were the locals. Winters has a line before that scene about enacting martial law and every able bodied person was sent to clean up the bodies.
In real life it was general patton who initiated this martial law. He was real pissed off when he found out about the camps.
@@fasiapulekaufusi6632 Actually, it was General Eisenhower, Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Forces (SCHAEF). He said toured every nook and cranny of the camps so that he would be prepared to testify as to what he saw. He made German civilians AND his own troops go to them for the same reason and also in case someone tried to say later that the Holocaust was propaganda. Interestingly enough his prophecy came true. There are Holocaust deniers to this day.
@@fasiapulekaufusi6632 Really? that's interesting. Didn't know it was Patton.
@@fasiapulekaufusi6632 If I recall correctly the civilians wasn't told to clean it up but was forced to walk through the camps and witness the atrocities and piles of the dead in mass graves.
@@fasiapulekaufusi6632 actually it was Eisenhower, who was told that the Germans were saying that the reports by American soldiers were exaggerated or lies, who the citizens of the towns around the camps to be shown the atrocities that occurred in the camps. To make sure that everyone would know and never forget!
My uncle took part in the liberation of the mittlebau Dora camp.he was a combat veteran.40 years later and would still weep when he talked about what he saw there.
I can’t imagine… About a year ago I watched this Court TV series about the Nuremberg trials, which of course used Army footage.
I grew up in Germany so knew about the Holocaust since 3rd or 4th grade, we even visited the Anne Frank house on my 4-day sixth grade trip to the Netherlands .
Seeing the footage in the Nuremberg series, I literally held my stomach and sobbed. I’m blinking tears NOW. I can’t imagine what that would be like - of course to survive that hell - but even to see that. My brain cannot comprehend.
Also I thank your uncle for his service 🇺🇸
Keep telling people about that. The survivors are almost all gone now, and the neo-Nazis hunger for the day when no victims can speak for themselves anymore.
It is truly unbelievable what they were capable of doing to their fellow humans. But they did it and it's important to learn. Many of the people you saw in the episode were people from a hospital who were going thru very different stages of cancer, eating disorders and different diseases.
This show had a pretty profound impact on my life, mostly because of the timing of it. It came out a few years before I joined the Army out of high school, and it motivated me to join the Airborne as well. I graduated Airborne school, but was sent to the 25th Infantry because they were about to deploy to Afghanistan so no jump unit for me. When we got back they pulled us into the division theater and much to my astonishment, brought out four of the actual veterans from easy company and some of the actors to talk to us. It was like a dream come true for me, who loved the show so much. I won't say who was there so I don't spoil anything, but it was a bit overwhelming to see them in person.
Thank you for the story & your service!
At basic training in the Army in 2007 we watched the entire series, an episode every Sunday.
I’m absolutely mesmerized by your eyes. They’re gorgeous
Eisenhower ordered the locals to help with the burials so that there would be no dispute over what happened. He also ordered extensive photographic and movie evidence so that it couldn't be swept under the rug which some groups are trying to do now. That woman's husband was Wehrmacht, regular German army, a career man, not SS but still. I like the juxtaposition of that woman finding Nixon in her house and her accusing stare and him feeling shame like he was a common criminal. Likewise later at the camp and Nixon staring her down and her feeling of shame and complicity in what happened.
And after that start Operation Paperclip, Von Braun working the american goverment and the NASA welcome him and his buddies (later that Ford gave him Presidential Medal of Freedom). So stop moralizing only lasted until other interests overwrote it!
The camp shown in Band of Brothers is Kaufering IV (Hurlach) which was actually found and liberated by the 12th Armored Division on April 27, 1945. Colonel Edward Seiller of the 12th Armored Division took control of the camp on April 27 and ordered civilians from the Landsberg am Lech area to bury the dead. Easy company didn't actually arrive until April 28. The actual film can be viewed here: czcams.com/video/NS02Cq3Lifc/video.html
The brilliance of both those scenes was the physical acting with no words said.
Don't imagine for a second that people who would do THAT to human beings were confined to that time period or that region.
There's groups of people in most nations today, who would like nothing more. Except they can't get away with it today, at least not to the same extent (looking at you, China)
It's why stuff like this is so important. "Never forget" is bandied about after most disasters or atrocities...but for this one in particular, it's oh so important.
What Russia is doing to the Ukrainian people is the most recent atrocity.. humans are savage
Ya, it really bothers me how dismissive people are about what's happening with the Uighurs.
Yeah people don't seem realise that China is literally doing the same thing to it's minorities as we speak.
I wasn't in a concentration camp. I was in a refugee camp when I was 8 to 9 yrs old. This was after the Vietnam War when my family had to escape Saigon because we were Chinese and the North Vietnamese were rounding up all Chinese to prevent spying and possibly due to racism. We escaped with other refugees on a wooden boat (close to a hundred people sitting room only) that grounded in Malaysia. My family were on the beach at night when my father told us that everything we had sunk with the boat including our clothes and money and valuables to barter. My family spent months, first in tents, then managed to get to a spot where we build a shelter from borrowing an axe so we can chop wood and branches with leaves to build a shelter. It was miserable only food donated. We had a campfire to cook eventually and keep warm. I was too young to help much, especially to get wood as I couldn't cut down the trees. It does build a sense that life isn't a reward but an effort to survive. It also taught me the value of helping people, family, and ones less fortunate than me. I was one of the lucky ones and believe if not for the help of others I might also be the ones I saw die from starvation and ill health.
12:34 "How can you even do this to fellow humans, how?". Voltaire (1694-1778) said: "Those who can make you believe in absurdities can make you commit atrocities"
My favorite part of this episode is the contrast of shame between Nix and the German lady. He had shame in his eyes when she confronted him in her home, and she had shame in her eyes looking at Nix at the end, for what her husband was likely a part of.
I know you'll get lots of comments about this, but the cast was strongly advised to not see the camp before filming the scenes, so many reactions are very real. And many of the prisoners were cancer patients serving as actors that volunteered, so even their appearance isn't greatly exaggerated by film. Many of them really looked like that.
The actors playing the concentration camp survivors were cancer patients who volunteered for the role, wanting their medical condition to give authenticity to the role to truly strike home the horror of what was done
The combat jump Nixon was talking about in the beginning of the episode was called “Operation Varsity”. My father jumped in that as a 1st lieutenant. It was the only airborne drop in Germany
Good reaction. Most people in the west knew that there were "prison" camps in Nazi Germany, but didn't know they were actually extermination camps. You should react to Casa Blanca from 1942. Watching the movie, you will see a contemporary perspective of what people believed the camps were before they were actually captured. (Also, the screenplay for Casa Blanca is considered by many to be the greatest ever written.)
I remember in highschool we had a holocaust survivor come in and I don't remember his name but there was a PBS special on him and his wife at the time. And yeah he said when he was liberated people kept asking what food they all wanted and a lot of the people were asking for meat or things they haven't had in years and their bodies couldn't handle it. Many people got sick and died because they started to get fed things their body's couldn't handle.
The town was forced to help. It was so they couldn't deny it ever happened . This actually happened a lot. Interesting fact, when the series first came out at the same time 9-11 happened. They canceled the show and it took about a little over a year before they put it back on.
They forced the citizens in the villages to come help dispose of the corpses and to witness the camp.
Love your reactions. They explained in the episode that everyone 14-80 was forced to help burry the bodies b/c the Americans knew they were complicite in some way or another.
The toughest episode to watch, but, the most important to watch. "If anyone ever tells you the Holocaust didn't happen, or that it wasn't as bad as they say, no, it was worse than they say. What we saw, what these Germans did, it was worse than you can possibly imagine." - Edward "Babe" Heffron
Gen. Eisenhower ordered that German civilians from the areas surrounding the camps that were liberated be forced to start the clean up. For most of them, it was the first realization of the pure evil their government had been doing in their name.
Don't forget, the Nazi government didn't really advertise what they were doing, and, anyone who asked too many questions would find themselves getting whisked off by the Gestapo in the middle of the night, never to be heard from again.
'Why We Fight' is the name of a series of films produced by US Government (several directed by Frank Capra) to explain to the soldiers why they were fighting a war. All the Easy Co soldiers would have seen them, They are also available on CZcams.
Those German villagers knew about it, but the rest of the world didn't until we started finding them.
In the heart of man is the potental forgreat beauty and great ugliness. Great compassion and great savagery.
The actors were not allowed to see the camp before the scene was shot. Their reactions were real to seeing all those cancer patients and dead bodies in that situation.
I love the image of the violin case closing at the end. Like the lid or coffin on what was once the most advance country in world.
In real life, the 101st did not liberate Kaufering IV. It was liberated by the 12th Armored and the 101st (And Easy) arrived the following day. That being said, Liebgott was forced to translate that the prisoners were to remain in the camp.
10:34
I believe It’s Serbian. He is saying:
Please help my father. He’s still alive. Please help him.
It’s still happening in China
WUT?
If things are left unchecked, at some point in the future it will be happening in the UK and the US, and probably many other countries.
Just after high school, I went on a trip through Europe with a number of other American teenagers. We landed in Germany, and before we even checked into the hotel, they took us to Dachau.
It would have hit me hard if I hadn’t been jet lagged. Instead, I had my first anxiety attack in addition to the other psychological damage.
I think people can do such things to other people if the people doing it don’t see the other people as people.
Exactly true! People do these vile acts to other people becuase they have been indoctrinated with the thought that some kinds of humans (be it based on religion, culture or disabilities) are worth less than other humans. I've visited the Sachsenhausen and Theresienstadt camps. Despite none of them being true extermination camps it was still sickening to learn of the horrors that were inflicted on those held there.
To understand Nixon you must understand why he never fired his gun in combat. His job was in Intelligence. Basically he would go between the squads and the company command post relaying information to both. So for Nixon the boys blowing up over Germany was devastating as he had a very good idea of exactly how many men died company wide from the very beginning. This coupled with survivors guilt ate at him mentally. Like many of the men who return from war. They are left with the question Why did I get to live?
'We stand alone together is a must to watch. The documentary ofBand of Brother'
I did see this when it was first shown but still, I feel right with you on this episode. I can tell that almost any time I see this episode it will be hard. The town people claimed they were not aware of what was going on in the camps outside the towns, so the Army ordered the civilians out to the camps to help bury some of the bodies and clean up. The Army said they did that so that people would see it for themselves and not later claim that the Army made-up the stories about the camps. Great reaction.
They are NOT in the same situation, battle yes, What they are fighting for NO. Keep up the great work, hope your feeling better. The Documentary is the real ending
Awesome reaction, thank you for sharing your visit of a camp. Unfortunately in America, most youth don’t know or understand what had happened during those times, and it would be nice if the school systems here provided trips to locations such as this, to bring things into perspective for our youth here in the states
Marylander here, we learn quite intensively about the Holocaust throughout several years of history class. But we have much better education that a lot of states. And yes, while the Allied leadership had heard believable information about the true scale of the Holocaust, most soldiers and the world at large didn't know the scale of atrocity until later when they encountered camps; until then the idea of a concentration camp was someplace to imprison and concentrate prisoners. Allied leadership knew that there was no way to stop the death camps until they advanced enough and won the war anyway, and they were also wary that broadcasting the truth would sound like hyperbolized propaganda. That's why they made sure to document as much of the Holocaust as possible when camps were liberated by the Soviets and Western Allies.
@@sebastianjoseph2828 yeah I feel northern east coast education systems are significantly better than most from what I’ve heard, which is great! In my region within the Midwest, it’s taught for maybe a few days tops, for general courses in junior/high school
I wish they would teach about the atrocities committed by Japan towards the Asian people they occupied. They made the Germans look like choir boys.
There was this study done called Milgram experiment at Yale university to try and understand what people are willing to do to be obedient to authority. The study was set up to see how many people were willing to believe they were delivering electrical shocks to other people at increasing voltages, even if they thought the shocks could be causing severe pain up to possibly lethal. In reality, the subjects were not shocking anyone but believed they were. Every participant was willing to go up to 300 volts and over 60% went up to 450. The people doing the test were "shocked" to see people would go this far. But it does help to show from a psychological perspective how these types of things happen. No one believes they would do that, but in fact they would if they thought they were doing right by their government.
This is why the IDF's motto is "Never Again".
I've watched the series probably 7-8 times or more. i still find myself being exposed to the cutting of onions, when theyre at the camp. i'm not crying, you're crying! haha
Hard to watch, but no one should forget what people are capable of. I find it hard to believe that the townspeople had no idea that the camp existed.
The nazi propaganda campaigns promoted these camps as humane reducation centers with 3 square meals a day and classrooms for teaching. The people probably knew the camp was there, some might have even known the true horror of it. But let's be real here, the human mind is not always capable of accepting such horror. If you had to accept reality, or accept the propaganda. . . Be honest with yourself, which would you believe? What would help you sleep at night? More often than not, we are more content with the lies. Look no further than the current rise of facisim on a global scale over the last 20 years or so. It is now, as it has always been. Fueled by lies. But they are lies that empower and make people feel safer and more powerful. Thats where their true power resides
The SS troops were volunteers. Everyone who was stationed at a concentration camp was a volunteer.
Re the old veteran wanting no more combat. As you found out at the beginning of this episode, the 101st was being kept out of Combat by this time, and it was the newer units that were being sent in to do the fighting. Capt. Nixon was telling about jumping with one such unit, the 17th Airborne Division, that jumped into Germany and suffered heavy casualties. THOSE new guys saw plenty of action. But, the replacements in a veteran division that had taken heavy casualties from June through February were going to see very little. The veterans were so affected by PTSD, it was a good idea to let them rest and let the newer units do the fighting. Also, it probably seemed more fair to let the guys who had risked their lives so many times already stand down and be safe for a change.
The guy carrying the old man was asking for help in polish
The camps broke even the most hardened combat vet. Even Gen Patton himself cried when he saw one of the camps. My great uncle was in WWII, went through D-Day and Bastogne and much more. Never broke, but seeing the camps, gave him severe , what we now call severe ( PTSD ) Drove him to drink, had a hard time holding down a job. I never understood why until I experienced Iraq and Afghanistan. As bad as seeing the camp in this episode. They were actually a million times worse. What's really sad is there are people claiming this never happened.
I rewatch all these every year around REMEBERANCE Day here in Canada..
i watch the series every year Aswell i plan it so the Bastogne episode is on xmas eve just to remember how lucky we are living in better times (well except for the Ukraine and Russian part of Cors)
When your body undergoes extreme starvation it shuts down parts of your digestive system to prioritize what little energy it has to keeping your body alive. If you eat too much too fast it overwhelms your system, even splits your digestive system open. Lots, and I mean lots of the camp occupants died after being liberated just because their bodies couldn't handle getting nutrition. The damage was quite literally already done and they were essentially dead people walking.
In 2008 I got to visit the Netherlands and went to a camp. They told us the commandant of that camp would walk out into the prison yard and drop his hat on the ground. He'd then select a prisoner to pick it up for him. Once retrieved the commandant would toss his hat over the dead line and demand the prisoner return it or he would shoot him. That was the prisoner's choice, be shot for getting the hat or be shot for not getting it
Make no mistake...there are some groups of people in this world, who would love to see this happen again, to the people who oppose them.
those groups have always been around and always will be. its a very dark aspect of human nature which will never cease to exist. under the right circumstances everbody is capable to do horrible things.
I highly recommend oradour sur glane to visit in the future 600 died and 10 survived and the village is still the same nothing has changed
I would describe it as the most powerful and moving episode. Depictions like Why we Fight are important for people of your age to watch and be conscious of. Not just one day in a history class. The 1940s were so long ago, but events like The Holocaust and words such as 'genocide' shouldn't be forgotten. Because it could easily happen again.
Last year i was finally able to get my hands on 2 org 1940 VAT69 Bottles and some newer "VAT69 Gold" which added nicely to my WW2 E/506th kit and is a big hit at WW2 weekend displays. in 2017 i got to work on a film with Ron Livingston (Nixon) so we got to chat about BOB and how we both tried to out drink Wild Bill & XXX and i got to thank him for doing this series and he signed my copy of BOB which is also signed by some of the other E co vets.
Young lady you're compassion shows, you have a beautiful warm heart. Everytime I watch this episode I get teary eyed. Great reaction again.
An I will never believe the German locals didn't know about the camps. They were right in their back yard. An they are just as guilty letting this go on.
Keep up the good work.
The starving and then overfeeding. So, digestive enzymes are proteins, and like any other proteins, they are produced by the body to break down food, so enzymes are protein chains designed to break down and digest other proteins. When starving, the body ceases to produce large amounts of enzymes, and the person is barely eating, so a lot of enzymes are not required; other proteins are much more important given the limited nutrition available. Then, when suddenly large quantities of food are available, the urge is to eat as much as possible, but the body literally needs time to start ramping up the enzyme production to speed digestion.
The German civilians were definitely not volunteering to clean up the camp. They were volun-told to.
They didn't volunteer, they were forced to help dispose of the bodies.
Its a common misconception, that old womans husband was not a nazi. That was an iron cross he was wearing in the photo thats a germany army award and a german army uniform he was wearing. The band across the edge of the photo indicates he is also dead.
The clean Wehrmacht myth is horseshit. They knew. They lived through the Nuremberg laws. They lived through Kristallnacht. They saw Jewish neighbors one moment, and saw them being rounded up the next moment. Fuck her and her fascist husband. The idea that you're not a Nazi unless you are in the SS or wear an swastika armband 24 hrs a day is absurd.
@@drach420 Believing that every single German was bad because he was born as German at the beginning of the 20th century is as absurd as saying that the Wehrmacht was 100% pure. This war was not as black and white as some people think.
I have also been to Sachsenhausen, just north of Berlin, it really hits home.
There's alot of debate as to the extent which the German population knew of the atrocities being committed but as far as I'm concerned they knew they had.
In the Fall of 1973, PBS began broadcasting Dr. Jacob Bronowski's miniseries on Science and Society, "The Ascent of Man." Introduced by a very young Anthony Hopkins, this is/was a legendary series. Episode #11, "Knowledge or Certainty," explored the difference between these words. In an ad libbed conclusion, Dr. Bronowski took us to Auschwitz for a detailed look at the difference between Knowledge and Certainty. czcams.com/video/ltjI3BXKBgY/video.html Needless to say, it has stayed in my memory all these years as the best answer to Easy company's question: "What are we doing here?"
Really tough episode. Definitely "why we fight."
Mid-war there was aerial photo-reconnaissance photos showing some of the camps (along with other intel sources) but there wasn't much that could be done until ground forces reached those locations. The prime effort was to win on the battlefield.
You know there was a transit camp in Holland. Westerbork.
Gottlieb, the translator, was half Jewish by birth. For me, the most poignant scene of the entire series is when he has to tell them to go back in the camp. So well acted and directed.
Liebgott*
@@garytomblin3572 thank you. I think I got autocowrecked......
You missed marshall law was declared. She had to help.
Martial law
you missed a crucial point, Winters said the locals were to be rounded up to help cleanup the bodies.
There's a documentary you should watch after the final 10 episode it's called we stand alone together and it interviews the various men that were portrayed in the band of brothers
How can people do this? Unfortunately, very easily.
Larissa > Another great review ~ When you have a chance, watch HBOs CONSPIRACY, one of their first movies they made on their own along with BBC Films .. .. Kenneth Branagh, Stanley Tucci, Colin Firth, Tom Hiddleston, Brendan Coyle .. .. It portrays the one 1942 evening in Wannsee when the SS cemented the 'final solution' and the only veto came from Hitler's personal lawyer .. ..
Like all conflicts/genocides, decided on by Lawyers & Politicians .. ..
The conference was largely a decision on how to exterminate Jews, not whether to do so. Jews and others have been shot on mass for over 15 months at that point. It was disorganized and as far as the Germans were concerned, it both wasted resources and would break the morale of the men doing it. even hardened members of the SS would become drunks and drug users unless they were already sociopaths
My favorite episode ❤❤❤❤
Most of the camps were in the East and even the Soviets did not start discovering them until the war was almost over. There WERE reports about the camps being made to the various intelligence agencies. However, the reports were being made by Jews and the allies tended to believe the reports were exaggerated in an effort to get the allies to advance faster. The soldiers were not told about the reports so were completely unprepared when they first started finding the camps.
Yup. I was going to add this (mostly). There were SEVERAL sources for the data about camps. This included reporting by captured British pilots who escaped and other organized intelligence sources. I don’t know, however, if the full extent of the depravity was universally known by the Allies. But this is true. The average soldier wouldn’t have been made aware. Thus, the surprise and horror. Great comment.
The woman's husband's photo showed an Army officer. He wasn't SS and it'd be wrong to assume he was a Nazi. Not all soldiers were members of the Nazi party. Many despised Hitler and his "gang."
The town people were forced to bury the dead by General Taylor who declared Martial Law.
the actors who played the jews were not actors. they were cancer patients who voulenteered to do it and many did not live long enough to see the show air
They believed that the story waa one too important not to be told, no matter their illness and how taxing it must have been on them, so they volunteered.
That's a young Tom Hardy that played Janovec
The writing for this is brilliant. We start with the vets explaining how similar they were to the German soldiers. Then we see Luz and Perconte with the girl in the barn. We like those guys but we are still worried for that girl. Winters comes and forces a family out of their own house without a second thought. Spiers loots for his own benefit. The French execute German prisoners and nobody except O’Keefe cares. These are not the same guys we met at Toccoa. They really are very similar to the Germans.
Then all of a sudden the difference becomes very clear.
the way they walk in everybodys houses is insane, what do you think the germans did the same with the jews living in germany couple years earlier.
“I guess they’re helping voluntarily”
😂 ah, to be so young and naive, again. Wouldn’t that be nice.
You understand people shooting at each other in war, and even shooting a surrendering enemy that's been shooting at (and killing) you and your buddies in an immediate rage - even if it's technically illegal... But to just slaughter innocent people or work them to death is entirely different. You see your military enemy as human, but the concentration camps were literally treating them like animals.
I agree, the inhumanity of man to man is unfathomable. The Nuremberg trials determined that "just following orders" is not an acceptable defense. Well done young lady!
- “How can they just walk into peoples home?” How can a country just walk into Poland, Benelux, France, Czechoslovakia, the USSR? That’s how!
- Though the title is “Why We Fight”, the camps were not the only reason. You might also have noticed in earlier episodes the Allies were there to liberate most all of Western Europe.
- We should not be surprised by this type of mass murder/genocide. Millions were also killed by Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and others who run tyrannical regimes in the 20th Century. Don’t be surprised when it happens again.
Now that you have seen this you may want to consider seeing Schindlers List.
Imagine seeing all of the horrors of War and then being speechless, after seeing this..."Why We Fight" is also a legendary documentary by Frank Capra made DURING the War. When the fate of the World still hung in the balance...I also believe the Nazi Woman in the stark red coat is a connection to the little Jewish girl who dies in the Holocaust in Schindler's List. I doubt there are many coincidences in Spielberg's work.
Re Schindlers - The girl in the red coat represented innocence; the woman in the res coat represents guilt. Notice how her coat is the only color in the scene - another nod to Schindler.
@14:27 - As the defeated occupied side of the war, the woman and the others didn't have the option of volunteering to do stuff. What's clearly shown in the episode is that the German civilians were forced to the clean up the concentration camp as well as all destruction on their town caused by the fighting.
It´s a nice noble thought by thinking you that "I do not forget". That wasn't anyway new idea what Germans did, only very efficiently organized and still those kind of things are still happening (N.korea, China, Africa, 90s Balkan war.). Unfortunately humans like to live theire own bubble, phrase: out of sight out of mind. describes quite well people thought process.
I went to Berlin a few years ago, and visited the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. It was a tremendously bleak place. Since then, seeing this episode and reactions to it, I can't help but overlay the camp in the episode with the one I saw. Everyone has a responsibility to not let it happen again, especially since there are extreme right-wingers with power in Europe, Latin America, and the US.
We are not different than any other animal. We might even be worse.
Kiitos.
I can't help but get choked up every time I see this episode. This mini-series should be required viewing by everyone. It should make you feel uncomfortable watching it.
_This mini-series should be required viewing by everyone. It should make you feel uncomfortable watching it._
There are a lot of embellishments and fictional elements in Band of Brothers. For instance, the camp liberation and associated scenes are fictional. The camp depicted in Band of Brothers is Kaufering IV which was actually liberated by the 12th Armored Division on April 27, 1945 with some units of the 101st Airborne Division arriving on April 28 and Easy Company arriving on April 29. And there were only about 7 prisoners found alive, along with about 500 bodies.
8:14 Tom Hanks is a war criminal
I've watched this whole series a dozen times at least, and have reacted to people watching this episode easily 20 times, and I will never fail to tear up at the reveal of the camp. This is my favorite episode, because of how well they do a one-two punch on the audience: they start essentially equivocating the Germans and the Americans, with the "hunting" story, etc. And then you have Nix essentially invading a woman's house, and he's clearly the "bad" guy in this situation. The constant mocking of O'Keefe.
And then. WHAM! The one thing that we all know about WWII that hasn't been brought up at ALL in this series shows up, and I'm just pummeled by it! All the reactions make sense, all the horror is laid bare. And as bad as the visuals are here, the dialogue makes it even worse - "the womens' camp", finding camps bigger, ovens for burning the bodies - this horror show we've seen is NOT the worst of the worst, and that's terrifying!
I'll never forget the first time I saw this, and like I said, I tear up every time I see it now. Such an amazingly powerful hour of TV - it's one of the reasons this is my all-time favorite show/series/movie! Band of Brothers is one of the pinnacle milestones of American drama!
Those people weren't volunteers they were ordered to do that.
martial law was evoked making them obey the orders of those in command and her husband was a regular German army the Wehrmacht a general
Thanks and keep up the great work L !!
Even if I hated someone I could never do something this heinous to them.
At this point, the German people had been worn down by years of Nazi party propaganda against the undesirable people they targeted. That is, IMO, the worst crime the Nazis committed was the systemic way they made every German an accomplice to their crimes.
I see many people reacting to this episode and they making the mistake of jumping to the conclusion that this is the first time that the outside world is learning about the Death Camps. That's not to say that this episode is historical inaccurate. This episode shows how many combat soldiers, who had been cut off from normal news sources, learned about the Death Camps. There were media reports and there are even recordings of Churchill referencing the systematic murder of Jews in public speeches.
However, the Western world was awash in anti-German propaganda and it was common knowledge that much of the propaganda was false. So, when there were reports of German atrocities, it wasn't front pages news. Many who did hear about the atrocities dismissed it as hyperbole or just plain propaganda. People found it inconceivable that these stories could be true. Stories of the Death Camps had circulated widely in the Jewish community and it's almost a certainty that the Jewish soldiers in the unit were familiar with the reports of the Death Camps. Though this is not reflected in this episode.
On a related note, if you want to learn about one of the greatest bad asses in the history of the human race, Google "Witold Pilecki." He was a member of the resistance who decided that first hand intelligence was needed to obtain bona fide evidence of the Death Camps. Pilecki purposely got himself arrested and sent to Auschwitz. Pilecki could have been murdered a dozen different ways and never even made it to Auschwitz. Yet, he did ultimately end up there and made detailed reports of the atrocities. These reports were smuggled out. Pilecki himself escaped so that the could he could deliver eye witness testimony to his fellow resistance members in hopes of a raid being mounted to rescue the prisoners. Sadly, his reports fell on deaf ears as his fellow resistance members found his reports to be too shocking to be believed.
Definitely the episode that left the biggest impression on me. Probably the only one where I warn people it's going to be dark, which usually has people ask me how can it be worse than the battles.
Great reaction. I hope that you will consider doing movies.
" All I can think is, how can you even do this to fellow humans?"
It's easy. In 1935, German courts ruled that Jews were not human and did not deserve the rights their neighbors enjoyed.
Kind of makes you wonder about COURTS, huh?
I highly recommend watching the YT channel Reel History. Jared breaks down each episode and explains what's true and what's Hollywood.
The only scene in this episode I disagree with is when they raided the bakery. Germany at this time wasn't so well stocked with food, food to civilians was literally being rationed, and they even sent police to counter potatoes to make sure people were not hording food. So seeing so much fresh cheese/bread is kind of a stretch. Germany was in such a bad position food wise by this time, that even after the war, with western help German civilians were still surviving on near starvation rations provided primarily by the USA as other parts of Europe took priority when it came to rebuilding.
Yeah, I noticed that too. They were starving so where did all that food come from?
2:11 young Tom Hardy allready going for it
And amazingly, you can understand him when he speaks. He seems to have lost that ability in recent years...
Tom Hanks Alert 🚨08:10 👀
Thats not him.
2:35
The highest respect = Winters
The lowest respect = Nixon