#world war 2 history

[deutschland-im-krieg]

[1980] Large format book with excellent colour fold out sections. For more, see my Facebook group - Eagles Of The Reich

[writersflow]

The Baba Yaga Mask by Kris Spisak

I loved this debut novel by Virginia writer Kris Spisak.

In essence a sister story, and tribute to family and generational history, this multi-voiced narrative immerses the reader in Ukrainian culture and history, as well as modern Hungary and Slovakia. We are taken on an international game of hide and seek which uproots the characters as well as secrets and treasures from the past.

I have to admit, I have met the author/editor, who also has published non-fiction books including Get a Grip on Your Grammar. When I learned she was writing a fiction book, and that it referred to the legendary Baba Yaga who has fascinated me since I was young, I bought it without learning anything else. This is not a baba yaga story, and yet it is, because her image as well as her spirit permeate the story, just as the legend has in history. I have been reading and learning more about Ukraine this year because of the invasion and attacks. I have also been looking into my own family history and learning more about my Slavic heritage. I was not actually expecting this book to be connected to so much of that and was pleasantly surprised. It was written before the invasion in February 2022, so none of that is addressed. One can feel the tension building though, even in the brief time the characters spend in Ukraine.

Spisak clearly loves language and her story is nearly poetic in many passages. She brings the three women whose stories are told to life, with deep third-person pov, as well as the settings. I honestly felt like I could picture and imagine being in these amazing faraway lands I will probably never see. And I could feel the sisters' physical and emotional journeys as they race across countries seeking their grandmother and finding so much more about themselves and their family. I laughed; I cried; I learned. Brava!

[nickysfacts]

M&M’S 🤝 Kratos

Both created by Mars, both born on the battlefield, and both fearlessly remained loyal to their troops!

🔴🏺⚪

[whereserpentswalk]

The nazis that you see in movies are as much a historical fantasy as vikings with horned helmets and samurai cutting people in half.

The nazis were not some vague evil that wanted to hurt people for the sake of hurting them. They had specific goals which furthered a far right agenda, and they wanted to do harm to very specific groups, (largely slavs, jews, Romani, queer people, communists/leftists, and disabled people.)

The nazis didn't use soldiers in creepy gas masks as their main imagery that they sold to the german people, they used blond haired blue eyed families. Nor did they stand up on podiums saying that would wage an endless and brutal war, they gave speeches about protecting white Christian society from degenerates just like how conservatives do today.

Nazis weren't atheists or pagans. They were deeply Christian and Christianity was part of their ideology just like it is for modern conservatives. They spoke at lengths about defending their Christian nation from godless leftism. The ones who hated the catholic church hated it for protestant reasons. Nazi occultism was fringe within the party and never expected to become mainstream, and those occultists were still Christian, none of them ever claimed to be Satanists or Asatru.

Nazis were also not queer or disabled. They killed those groups, before they had a chance to kill almost anyone else actually. Despite the amount of disabled nazis or queer/queer coded nazis you'll see in movies and on TV, in reality they were very cishet and very able bodied. There was one high ranking nazi early on who was gay and the other nazis killed him for that. Saying the nazis were gay or disabled makes about as much sense as saying they were Jewish.

The nazis weren't mentally ill. As previously mentioned they hated disabled people, and this unquestionably included anyone neurodivergent. When the surviving nazi war criminals were given psychological tests after the war, they were shown to be some of the most neurotypical people out there.

The nazis weren't socialists. Full stop. They hated socialists. They got elected on hating socialists. They killed socialists. Hating all forms of lefitsm was a big part of their ideology, and especially a big part of how they sold themselves.

The nazis were not the supervillians you see on screen, not because they didn't do horrible things in real life, they most certainly did, but because they weren't that vague apolitical evil that exists for white American action heros to fight. They did horrible things because they had a right wing authoritarian political ideology, an ideology that is fundamentally the same as what most of the modern right wing believes.

[xoxoauntscripty]

*TW for amateur surgery*

Okay. It's 1942.

There's a US submarine, USS Silversides, operating in HIGHLY dangerous Japanese waters.

And one poor bastard, some machinists mate, gets a case of acute appendicitis

They can't radio for an airlift because the Japanese will find them

But they don't have a surgeon on board.

The only medical person they have is a fucking pharmacist's mate

As in, a pill counter guy

As in, the cold and flu and small stitches guy

Not the "cut open a machinists mate on a moving submarine" guy

Not even 3 steps below that guy

But he's all they have, and if they do nothing, this guy is gonna fucking die.

So this motherfucker

Risks a court martial

To do surgery

Without an OR

With bent fucking spoons as makeshift retractors

And the patient's coworkers as assistants

He somehow miraculously fucking gives the dude spinal anesthesia, correctly

Opens the abdomen

Cuts out the appendix (somehow without rupturing it, which would have killed the guy)

Almost kills everybody with ether (because of course he does, it's incredibly dangerous for everyone in the room)

Identifies a MAJOR fucking bleed

Can't find the source of the bleed, so he *runs the bowel like a fucking surgeon*

Figures out it's a clamp that slipped

Does fucking vascular surgery to fix the bleed

Closes the guy up

And the patient fucking lives

This fucking completely untrained pharmacist's mate

Performs a major surgery

Underwater

On a moving ship

Without antibiotics

And saves a motherfucking life

(And manages the patient through multiple rounds of getting depth charged by a Japanese destroyer, because war)

The fucking patient is back on duty less than a week after the surgery.

So tip out a fucking glass to Pharmacist's Mate Thomas A Moore, who risked a murder and professional suicide

And possibly had

The biggest balls under the waves.

[theworldatwar]

A US soldier gratefully accepts a glass of wine from a French civilian - Cherbourg, 27th June 1944

[sgtgrunt0331-3]

An American G.I. leans out his tent to shake hands with a dog in Luxembourg’s frozen landscape during the Battle of the Bulge, January 1945.

[histcryprincess]

French girls wearing their German boyfriends uniforms during World War 2. The photo on the right was found on a German POW.

[shinishmermaid]

[pattern-53-enfield]

Lydia Spivak, "Ballerina of the Brandenburg Gate"

[lonestarflight]

Two workers attaching a Pratt & Whitney R-2800 Double Wasp onto a F4U Corsair at the Chance-Vought factory in Stratford, Connecticut.

Date: March 1943

NARA: 179036630

[the-history-of-fighting]

Richard "Dick" Ira Bong (1920 – 1945) was America’s top fighter pilot during the WW II, with forty confirmed Japanese aircraft down by his Lockheed P-38 Lightning fighter.

Bong considered himself to be a poor shot so to compensate, he would get very close to his target, sometimes even flying through the debris of exploding planes. His exploits include:

He was once caught alone by nine Japanese zeros. He turned to face them, took out three and managed to send the rest into retreat.

When escorting a small boat over the Pacific, he noticed a large crocodile following it. He promptly dropped down to sea level and blew the creature out of the water with his 20mm autocannon.

In 1942, he was temporarily grounded for looping over the Golden Gate Bridge and flying so low down a street in San Francisco that he blew the clothes off a woman’s clothesline. When reprimanding him, his commanding officer General George C. Kenney said:

“If you didn't want to fly down Market Street, I wouldn't have you in my Air Force, but you are not to do it anymore and I mean what I say.” Kenney later wrote, “We needed kids like this lad.”

The History of Fighting

[queerism1969]

[dronescapesvideos]

PBY Catalina Flying Boat in the icy waters of Kodiak Bay, Alaska, during World War II. The crew are wearing wader suits made of waterproofed canvas with attached boots and gloves.

➤➤ PBY VIDEO: https://youtu.be/2qlMbZ70rqc

➤➤ HIGHER RESOLUTION IMAGE: https://dronescapes.video/hwndn4ta

[bantarleton]

The war memorial in Abertillery, South Wales.

[theworldatwar]

US Marines pose with their War Dogs - Bougainville, Solomon Islands 1943