I had to go in some ladys yard today while working and I knew she couldn't see me approaching so I kept 'yelling' til she could see me,anyways...she said "Thanks for not startling me because of '36 - '43" (She had an accent) She then mentioned Germany and how she started out in Poland and eventually Germany and then U.S. She mentioned 'guns' without me even asking. She said "they searched houses for guns and other stuff"(they took her and hubbys' fur coats for the soldiers)

I asked what they did to someone with a gun and she said that all guns had to be turned in at the police station so if they found one you were killed on the spot and if you did turn one in but made the slightest 'remark' you were killed. She also told me about a 5 minute bombing raid that took out 7,000 people.(this was before A-bomb I guess).I wish I could have listened to her 'tales of history' all day.It really gave me chills at the time and then again when I was thinking of it on the way home.The things that people have to witness...

Back When I was at Ft Bragg, I used to frequent a german restaraunt called the Heidelberg.  My wife and I went there so often that the owner used to come sit with us and eat.  She was a little german woman named Kitty.  She lost both of her brothers and her Father who were fighting on the russian front. The only one that made it bach was her uncle, who later was killed trying to defend germany from the russians (he had come home missing a leg, if I remember correctly)
She fled via belgium prior to the collapse of germany, and then to england and america.
We used to have long talks late into the night about prewar germany, and the rise of Hitler.  
It was very intresting to me how he came into power, and no one realized he was an evil bastard until it was too late. I miss that place.

Actually, some knew...or had a pretty good idea that Hitler and the Nazis were evil.  Problem was each power group (The Junkers, the Army, the Catholic Church, the unions and trade guilds, the media & press, etc.) was lured into his evil web with promises that they wanted to hear.  Hitler co-opted the whole bunch of them.

Then...after he became chancellor in 1933 and got the Wiemar Republic weak-kneed politicos in the Riechstag to declare him Fuehrer, he simply used the SA Brownshirts to enforce his will until he could complete the process of creating the SS under Himmler.  Then he sent the SS to kill or jail all the SA leaders.  Since he had already co-opted the Army by altering their sacred oath to say they were to be ever loyal to "Mien Fuehrer Adolph Hitler" vice Duetschland, Hitler now controlled all of the major power entities in Germany...and this within oh...maybe two years from the day he was elected.  Amazing.

Rat bastard...too bad the Russians didn't capture the son of a bitch alive.

Get a copy of William Shirer's book, The Rise & Fall of The Third Reich.  The most detailed analysis of how Hitler amost conquered the world.  Shirer was a reporter for the NY Times...I think (And that before they went socialist too!) and he was stationed in Berlin in the thirties.  He witnessed Hitler's rise to power and then went back right after the war to pore over thousands of original source material Nazi documents to find stuff for his great book.

F*cking Nazis...[50]

Good analysis, WILDE man. Only got one correction. Bill Shirer, after an early stint as a newspaper journalist, was actually part of the first team of radio broadcast journalists in history.  Edward R Morrow hired him to work for CBS back just after Hitler came to power, and when WW2 broke out in 1939, it was Shirer in Berlin and Morrow in London who broadcast the first two years of the war to America.  Shirer got out of Berlin just about 2 or 3 months before Pearl Harbor. (Side note: Harry Reasoner was the last American journalist out of Berlin, on December 6, 1941).

Shirer's first book "Berlin Diary", is an immensely entertaining and informative look at what it was like to live in Nazi Germany during the '30s.  If you can find a copy, read it. [:D]

Thats right.Lots of people think Hitler stole or strong armed his way too power.He tried it once and failed.The second time around the Germans CHOSE him.His big business backers,Hindenberg,they all dispised him,but beleived they could use and control him once he was in power.....They found out otherwise.