Axe
Germany, 1570-1580
Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden

(via epicwinsauce)

demons:

Public humiliation was often the go-to weapon of the Nazi Party to persuade the public to follow their ideals. This woman here was shamed and punished publicily for having a relationship with someone the State considered untermensch, or subhuman—most likely Jewish.

After this photograph was taken, the officials most likely shaved her head and stripped her to her undergarments. Coincidentally, the resistance factions of the French and Dutch would take this very far-Right punishment and use it on their own countrymen who had either collaborated with their German occupiers or slept with them.

Nazi legacy: The troubled descendants

Photo: “My Nazi father shot women with babies in their arms from this balcony, I am tormented by how much of him is in me’ … Monika, daughter of camp commander Amon Goeth

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The names of Himmler, Goering, Goeth and Hoess still have the power to evoke the horrors of Nazi Germany, but what is it like to live with the legacy of those surnames, and is it ever possible to move on from the terrible crimes committed by your ancestors?

When he was a child Rainer Hoess was shown a family heirloom.

He remembers his mother lifting the heavy lid of the fireproof chest with a large swastika on the lid, revealing bundles of family photos.

They featured his father as a young child playing with his brothers and sisters, in the garden of their grand family home.

The photos show a pool with a slide and a sand pit - an idyllic family setting - but one that was separated from the gas chambers of Auschwitz by just a few yards.

His grandfather Rudolf Hoess (not to be confused with Nazi deputy leader Rudolf Hess), was the first commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp. His father grew up in a villa adjoining the camp, where he and his siblings played with toys built by prisoners.

It was where his grandmother told the children to wash the strawberries they picked because they smelled of ash from the concentration camp ovens.

Rainer is haunted by the garden gate he spotted in the photos that went straight into the camp - he calls it the “gate to hell”.

“It’s hard to explain the guilt,” says Rainer, “even though there is no reason I should bear any guilt, I still bear it. I carry the guilt with me in my mind.

“I’m ashamed too, of course, for what my family, my grandfather, did to thousands of other families.

“So you ask yourself, they had to die. I’m alive. Why am I alive? To carry this guilt, this burden, to try to come to terms with it.

“That must be the only reason I exist, to do what he should have done.”

His father never abandoned the ideology he grew up with and Rainer no longer has contact with him, as he attempts to cope with his family’s guilt and shame. […]

For Bettina Goering, the great-niece of Hitler’s designated successor Hermann Goering, she felt she needed to take drastic action to deal with her family’s legacy.

Both she and her brother chose to be sterilised.

“We both did it… so that there won’t be any more Goerings,” she explains.

“When my brother had it done, he said to me ‘I cut the line’.”

Disturbed by her likeness to her great-uncle, she left Germany more than 30 years ago and lives in a remote home in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

“It’s easier for me to deal with the past of my family from this great distance,” she explains.

(via policethatmustache)

todayinhistory:

May 2nd 1945: Fall of Berlin

On this day in 1945 during the Second World War, the Soviet Union announced the capture of Berlin. The Battle of Berlin was the final offensive in the European theatre of the war. As the Soviets advanced on the capital, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler retreated into his Führerbunker and on 30th April he and his wife Eva Braun committed suicide. Two days later Berlin’s defenders surrendered to the Soviets as they captured the Reichstag and famously raised a Soviet flag over the historic building. The photo above by Yevgeny Khaldei became famous as representative of the fall of Berlin and, for Soviets, the victory of the USSR. 

(via epicwinsauce)

demons:

Prior to the Second World War, Dresden was one of Europe’s most beautiful cities and known to many as “the Florence on the Elbe.” On the night of February 13, 1945 — just twelve weeks before the end of the war in Europe — it was bombed for the first time, causing a firestorm and massive loss of life.

Between February 13 and February 15, 1945, 1300 heavy bombers dropped over 3,900 tons of high-explosive bombs and incendiary devices in four separate raids. The RAF bombed at night; the USAAF during the day. The resulting firestorm destroyed 13 square miles of the historic city center. Although the bombing had not been nearly as intense as on other German cities, the old buildings were timber-framed and the cellars were connected, feeding air to the greedy fire. The city was also completely taken by surprise by the attack, and with few anti-aircraft defenses it was left terribly unprotected. It was estimated that between 35,000 and 135,000 people were killed, a number which Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels inflated by a factor of ten.

Goebbels and other high ranking Nazi officials wished to use Dresden as an excuse to abandon the Geneva Convention on the Western Front. The Minister himself claimed that Dresden was a city with little to no war industries and as such the Allies had already broken the Convention themselves. None the less raids continued until April 17, though subsequent bombing did little more than churn the rumble. One question, however, still remains unanswered: was the raid on one of Europe’s most beautiful cities really necessary?

This bombing was so unnecessary, it’s not even funny. I love Dresden so much and I think of all the lives that were lost, all the history that was destroyed and I get so mad, but I never know how to address that anger. I just cry.

Did you know we’re actually NOT Nazi’s and there’s a lot more to our history than just Hitler? Did you know a lot of Germans were forced into supporting Hitler because otherwise the Gestapo would take you in the middle of the night and kill you and possibly your family? And that children were taught to tattle on their parents if they weren’t in support of the Nazi party? Did you know SS soldiers and Concentration Camp soldiers were actually executed for secretly sneaking food or helping the prisoners? Did you know a German made the first globe, first car, alcohol and mercury thermometer, electron microscope, the first freely programmable computer, the bunsen burner, etc? 

Probobly not since you’re too busy insulting my country and only thinking of Nazis when you hear it’s name and calling me a Nazi when I say, “Yes I’m German.”

I’m not saying to forget the Holocaust and the war. I’m just saying you don’t need to bring that up when I say I’m German. If that’s all you know about my country, kindly shut up.

(via birgit-prinz)

reprtg:

© mark power, berlin, germany — november 10, 1989

#1 east german soldiers share a laugh with the west german public, who are sitting on the wall
#2 the press gathers to watch east germans cross the border into the west

(via zwischenfischen)

art-of-swords:

Swords

In order from top to bottom: 

1. Thrusting Sword, German ca. 1550, pommel and quillon with burled decor. 

2. Hand and a Half Sword, German ca. 1520, with blade inscription and crucifix. 

3. Hand and a Half Sword, German ca. 1530, flower-bud shaped pommel and quillon ends, the blade with smith’s markings of JOHANNES HOPPE, Solingen. 

4. Battle Sword, German ca. 1600, the blade with imperial orb marks. 

5. Hand and a Half Sword, German ca. 1580, the blade with smith’s marks 

Source: Image and description Copyright Fricker Historical Weapons 

(via aafarensis)

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