Tornister and A frame from Nice liberation

[corporalSteiner]

If you are looking for the missing messkit strap, I have one in matching condition:

nice item.
as i understand it then, the leather aframe strap had three loops, whereas the web had just two, right?

[Gran Sasso]

nice item.
as i understand it then, the leather aframe strap had three loops, whereas the web had just two, right?

Right - maybee we need a new thread about those differences?

[Jean-Loup]

"No, he was murdered by civilians. If those would have been regular soldiers, then you could call him KIA. "

I am not a partisan lover, or German hater, but feel compelled to say the following, since you felt the urge to push the thread in a certain direction:

In a war were German forces organised and implemented a deliberate plan of intentional mass murder of innocent civilians, including children and babies, you can only expect that some of the more courageous civilians would take up weapons against the occupiers.
When soldiers do not respect the rules of war, are civilians to be expected to respect them? In a war were famillies are arrested and put into cattle cars, are other civilians expected to stand by with their hands in their pockets?

The average German soldiers in Nice at the liberation were class 1926 conscripts. However, these men, willingly or unwillingly, represented and protected Gestapo agents who painstakingly hunted down jews, communists, etc. Several of these Gestapo agents had been criminals themselfs before the war, and now were comitting criminal acts on behalf of a criminal government. I believe one Gestapo agent in Nice was executed by the Germans themselfs when it was discovered he was stealing items from deported people for his personal benefit.

In Nice hundreds if not thousands of Jewish familles were deported to concentration camps, including the familly of famous french political figure Simone Veil: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simone_Veil

When the Allies landed west of Cannes on August 15th 1944, the Germans reacted by executing (or would the word 'murdering' be more appropriate?) 8 prisonners in Cannes, and 23 in Nice, including several women. One of the executioners in Cannes was a petty alsacian criminal who had been recruited by the Germans when he was released from prison. That gives you an idea of what kind of caracters were working for the Gestapo and representing Germany in Nice.

Below I am posting photos of 2 men who were hung in Nice in June 1944, because they were communists, and as a reprisal for a German soldier being killed near their village. They were not linked to the death of the soldier, they just happened to be caught at the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong opinions, so were hung. Rumor has it that their hands were hidden so as to hide the marks of the tortures they had received from the Gestapo agents

So if you want to say that German soldiers killed by partisans in Nice were murdered, fine, but then lets put things into perspective: at least these German soldiers were 'murdered' with weapons in their hands, unlike Simone Veil's familly and so many others who were gassed or murdered when they had never held a weapon in their life.

On the day of the insurection of Nice, only 22 German soldiers were killed, and several dozen others surrendered, and were handed over to US troops the next day. The surendering Germans were not massacred as may have been the case in other places were partisans were involved. Many of the partisans were professional soldiers themselfs, policemen or Gendarmes.

For an other interesting set of items from the woodwork in Nice that help put things into perspective, please see to this thread: http://dev.wehrmacht-awards.com/foru...d.php?t=312670


Finaly, to get back to the topic:

-There is no garanty that the owner of this Tornister actualy died. He may have surrendered, or been wounded and treated in a local civilian hospital as many wounded Germans were.
-I did research on the Volksbund website with the name Radmacher, but didnt come up with anything that seemed to fit. However, you never know what might turn up in the future, so mayb I will one day know who this Radmacher was.

JL

[Gran Sasso]

"No, he was murdered by civilians. If those would have been regular soldiers, then you could call him KIA. "

I am not a partisan lover, or German hater, but feel compelled to say the following, since you felt the urge to push the thread in a certain direction:

In a war were German forces organised and implemented a deliberate plan of intentional mass murder of innocent civilians, including children and babies, you can only expect that some of the more courageous civilians would take up weapons against the occupiers.
When soldiers do not respect the rules of war, are civilians to be expected to respect them? In a war were famillies are arrested and put into cattle cars, are other civilians expected to stand by with their hands in their pockets?

The average German soldiers in Nice at the liberation were class 1926 conscripts. However, these men, willingly or unwillingly, represented and protected Gestapo agents who painstakingly hunted down jews, communists, etc. Several of these Gestapo agents had been criminals themselfs before the war, and now were comitting criminal acts on behalf of a criminal government. I believe one Gestapo agent in Nice was executed by the Germans themselfs when it was discovered he was stealing items from deported people for his personal benefit.

In Nice hundreds if not thousands of Jewish familles were deported to concentration camps, including the familly of famous french political figure Simone Veil: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simone_Veil

When the Allies landed west of Cannes on August 15th 1944, the Germans reacted by executing (or would the word 'murdering' be more appropriate?) 8 prisonners in Cannes, and 23 in Nice, including several women. One of the executioners in Cannes was a petty alsacian criminal who had been recruited by the Germans when he was released from prison. That gives you an idea of what kind of caracters were working for the Gestapo and representing Germany in Nice.

Below I am posting photos of 2 men who were hung in Nice in June 1944, because they were communists, and as a reprisal for a German soldier being killed near their village. They were not linked to the death of the soldier, they just happened to be caught at the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong opinions, so were hung. Rumor has it that their hands were hidden so as to hide the marks of the tortures they had received from the Gestapo agents

So if you want to say that German soldiers killed by partisans in Nice were murdered, fine, but then lets put things into perspective: at least these German soldiers were 'murdered' with weapons in their hands, unlike Simone Veil's familly and so many others who were gassed or murdered when they had never held a weapon in their life.

On the day of the insurection of Nice, only 22 German soldiers were killed, and several dozen others surrendered, and were handed over to US troops the next day. The surendering Germans were not massacred as may have been the case in other places were partisans were involved. Many of the partisans were professional soldiers themselfs, policemen or Gendarmes.

For an other interesting set of items from the woodwork in Nice that help put things into perspective, please see to this thread: http://dev.wehrmacht-awards.com/foru...d.php?t=312670


Finaly, to get back to the topic:

-There is no garanty that the owner of this Tornister actualy died. He may have surrendered, or been wounded and treated in a local civilian hospital as many wounded Germans were.
-I did research on the Volksbund website with the name Radmacher, but didnt come up with anything that seemed to fit. However, you never know what might turn up in the future, so mayb I will one day know who this Radmacher was.

JL

The usual blabblabla "bad germans.. they deseve it, no matter if Gestapo or regular solders who had no choice, etc"... What else to expect? - And I am not trying to push your thread in a special direction, its just a fact that he was not (IF at all) KIA.

Back to the theme - try his name RadEmacher, not Radmacher...

[Jean-Loup]

No, there is no usual blablabla... Or maybe you consider world war, holocaust, etc, as blabla?

-If you read my post you will see that nowhere did I say German soldiers deserved anything. In fact you will note that I specificaly mentioned that German soldiers in Nice were 1926 class conscripts, but maybe you didnt read that part?
-In case you did not notice I have been involved in finding several german soldiers killed in Nice, in contacting their famillies, and in welcoming them to the places where their ancestors fought. That is what you can expect from me, since you ask. However, I dont remember you posting on any of those threads.
-I am preparing a book about the war in Nice, that will also cover the German point of view, and I hope you will buy a copy of it to see that my point of view is rather neutral, and not anti german at all.


About the name, believe me, I have looked into seriously, but didnt turn anything up. The only possible next step would be to consult info at the WASt.

[JPhilip]

nice item.
as i understand it then, the leather aframe strap had three loops, whereas the web had just two, right?

No that's incorrect.
All messkit straps for A-frame do have three loops.
The third "loop" of the web strap is included in the buckle...so this variant has one metal loop and two web loops.

[JPhilip]

No, he was murdered by civilians. If those would have been regular soldiers, then you could call him KIA.

French partisans were not civilians anymore
An armband can be an uniform you know...

[Soldat de Fer]

Hello
Very nice thread J-L , thank you as usual for taking the time, research etc.. and give us an " open window on history" you are a real asset to this forum .
Nice find as well !!!! .
Now, why is it that there will always be an idiot to come and derail such great thread
Regards
P-Y

[JPhilip]

Pierre-Yves please, anyone can give his point of view, as far as the latter remains in the limits of what is allowed on the forum.

[Luciusdegeer]

I agree, Patrick is a very valuable and reliable member on this forum, and an extraordinary fleamarket hunter. But let's not forget we're sometimes dealing with horrible and controversial subjects! Everything we collect, even a modest messtin strap, can testify of real people's stories. I must admit that I 'derailed' myself in another thread and made an emotional statement, even political. Not acceptable for a historian. The father of historical science, Leopold von Ranke, summoned us to write 'Geschichte wie es eigentlich gewesen ist' (history like it really happened)... This matches IMO perfectly the filosofy of the WAF. But Patrick is entitled to his opinion, as long as we can get back to the subject without any hard feelings.
J.-L., thank you for your clarifications and for the story of Nice 1944! The gruesome photographs were shocking, but reminded us of the suffering that was endured by both sides. Still trying to balance myself between Belgian army 1940 (both grandfathers) and my fascination for the early WH...

L

[Jean-Loup]

"J.-L., thank you for your clarifications and for the story of Nice 1944! The gruesome photographs were shocking, but reminded us of the suffering that was endured by both sides."

Concerning the gruesome photgraphs of the men who were hung (Ange Grassi and Seraphin Torrin), I would like to add a couple of extra details to give a better idea of the effects this hanging had on the way people perceived the german army.
The two men were hung on the main street of Nice, and were left there for at least one day, on request of the German authorities, who wanted the execution to serve as an example.
As you can expect, this did not exactly boost the popularity of the German army.
Photos of the 31 people shot on the day the allies landed in southern France are also availlable...

Bad things happen on all sides in wartime, and IMO wanting to classify all resistances acts as 'murder' is a grotesque and irresponsable simplification of history; just like saying that all German soldiers were nazis would be.

Just to show that I do not have a once sided view of things, here is an other story that I posted a while back in the living history forum, that has a very interestign twist to it:


"In the Resistance, there was the best, and the worst; and one of my uncles was killed a the age of 18 by Frenchmen. He was in high School at <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /><st1:City w:st="on">Montpellier</st1:City>, and wanted to defend <st1:country-region w:st="on">France;</st1:country-region> to save <st1:country-region w:st="on"><ST1France </ST1</st1:country-region>and of course my grand parents were opposed to the project. He left with a friend, without warning anybody, and they found themselves in a resistance camp at Sommepy, near Reims, in the <ST1Marne</ST1 region. They quickly realized that they were all a bunch of hoodlums, who, to test them, forced them to go and rob a nearby farm.<O</O
When they saw that, they tried to escape, but since they didn’t know the region, they turned in circles in the forest, got lost, and were recaptured by those pseudo resistance fighters. They started to torture them saying they were spies, then threw them into a well. In <st1:State w:st="on"><ST1Champagne</ST1</st1:State>, the wells have a conic shape, so my uncle who was thrown in first was killed, but his friends fall was broken by my uncles body. He was wounded, but was saved by a German soldier who was repairing an electric wire above the well. He herd groans and warned his friends and the mayor of the village. So my uncles friend was pulled out and saved. He told his story, but the resistance fighter chief had so much influence, and was probably terrorizing the population, that he accused the mayor of being a collaborator, and the mayor was sent to prison, and he became mayor in his place.<O</O
My uncles friend came back to <st1:City w:st="on"><ST1Montpellier</ST1</st1:City> and told the whole story to my grand parents, and then he never wanted to hear anything about the war again. His parents were also opposed to it, and they moved and we never heard from them again."



JL

[Willi Z.]

WWII was a brutal time for all of humanity. It was a time driven by government driven political ideology (on all sides and the partisan movements as well) which forced people to hate their fellow man at levels never seen before. We could go on and on about the rules of war and crimes against humanity. At this point 65 years later, we need to be more objective but it seems as time goes one we understand less and less of what that period was all about, and what life was like for the common folks caught in the middle and in situations they could not control. Many have simplied that complex era.

My mother clearly to this day remembers seeing ther bodies of German soldiers hung by SS Feldjägers for desertion as she was fleeing the Soviets in Silesia, in early Feb of '45. Most of these men were only trying to save their families (as the Nazi regime and local political thugs certainly weren't), as her brother-in-law did as well (he deserted after 4 years on the Russian Front and forced the mayor at gunpoint to organize a "trek" out of their village). She remembers the SS units pulling out of her village while forcing the local Hitler Youth boys to stay behind to to fight the Soviets with only piles of Panzerfausts stacked on in my mother's farm. Some of the boys were her school mates and they were all crying for their mothers. My mother, her Mom, and sisters ended up in Dresden on the 13th in the AM, only 16 hours before the firebombing started. But that is another story...

Government sponsored political ideology (with their quest for uptopia) and their total control over the people (until the government runs away and leaves the people to the mercy of those their government pursecuted) is the real culprit and this fact seems to be forgotten in our current political situation around the world.

Thanks J-L for sharing your discovery. I enjoy your presentations.

And yes, Patrick is a very good principled man. I understand his passion and frustration.

[RAPH]

Nice A Frame from our lovely country.
Regards.
RAPH

[Naval Enigma]

This thread is why I collect. Simple objects can tell a story that is emotional, relevant and powerful. It's nice to find a community where people care about these stories.

[Wesley's Dad]

Strap

JL,

Just found this thread after a 4 month "holiday" away from the hobby. This short strap segment, as I stated in the last thread, is Soviet. No mystery at all. The buckle type, weave of web, the dimple on the top of metal stud, the leather disk under the retainer washer for the stud, and the small piece of cloth sewn to finish the end of the under turned section... The item is a shortened segment of a Soviet utility strap.