Footage of the fall of Berlin 1945...interesting.

[SummerSnow]

That's how it looked like just after the German surrender! Fascinating moving pictures in color show the situation of the city in summer 1945 and daily life in the ruins.

[Docreed2003]

1. Fascinating! Thank you!

[Blue_true]

21. Sure was. A second thanks. nt

[shraby]

2. Interesting. Thanks

[rzemanfl]

3. K&R. n/t

[mitch96]

4. Interesting that you don't see any fat people...n/t

[Brother Buzz]

9. Interesting, five pounds of black market butter was worth a king's ransom back then

[mitch96]

10. "five pounds of black market butter"

I've heard after Saigon fell it wasn't gold that got you places it was toilet paper!! Foodstuffs, cigarettes. Common commodities that were impossible to get were king..
m

[kcr]

12. ...

http://rarehistoricalphotos.com/berlin-end-war-1945/

The biggest problem that the Berliners had to face was the threat of starvation. German war-time ration cards were no longer valid. Any remaining rations were either used to feed Russian troops or stolen by hungry Germans. On May 15, the Russians introduced a new five-tier ration-card system: The highest tier was reserved for intellectuals and artists; rubble women and Schwerarbeiter (manual workers) received the second-tier card, which was more valuable to them than the 12 Reichsmark they received for cleaning up a thousand bricks; the lowest card, nicknamed the Friedhofskarte (cemetery ticket) was issued to housewives and the elderly. During this period, the average Berliner was around 6 to 9 kg (13 to 20 lb) underweight.

[hibbing]

5. Cool

Anyone have any idea of what those toppled statues on the stairs were of? I couldn't listen to the narration if there was any.


Peace

[Leghorn21]

6. Bookmarked for later - so many thanks for posting this, Snow!! nt

[IronLionZion]

7. Any info on who made the video?

It's fascinating. Thanks for sharing

[SummerSnow]

13. Here it is.

The video comes from Konstantin von zur Muehlen, the founder of Chronos Media, which has access to an archive of historic film footage.

link ....http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/colour-video-reveals-berlin-life-after-the-fall-of-hitlers-germany-10226717.html



I found the video on YouTube. There are similar ones from this media company on there as well.

[winetourdriver01]

8. Lessons

Germany was a fairly progressive democracy before they let their right wing spin out of control.. The rest of the western democracies (and the Soviets) had to band together to set things right.. Does anybody see where I'm going here?

[Blue_true]

23. I am getting the impression that military leaders

in the US are having doubts about Trump. If that gets worse, look for a wild scramble among republicans to replace him.

[smirkymonkey]

11. Fascinating. Thank you for sharing.

[mikeyDE]

14. Could easily have been titled "German Exceptionalism"

This is what eventually happens to societies that claim exceptionalism. Fascinating and frightening.

Another German aftermath film can be seen in the film Mondo Cane, ca. 1963. A vignette shows a street scene in Hamburg more than a decade after the end of the war. People still without good paying works, drunks, men and women collapsed on the street. The picture of hopelessness.

[apkhgp]

15. Never Again!

As I said I a previous post this is the legacy of death and destruction that Hitler left the world. 45 is in there somewhere. With his back-stabbing of the LGBTQ community to this Healthcare mess he wants to ram down our throats. More and more people should be able to see what kind of a lying, scam artist he is.

[panader0]

16. Wow--as a guy who has spent 45 years in construction,

I saw so much work.

[BumRushDaShow]

17. And then there was the Marshall Plan

http://marshallfoundation.org/marshall/the-marshall-plan/history-marshall-plan/

[BigmanPigman]

18. I have watched The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich on the History channel several times.

It is fascinating and I recommend it. The women and children had to do most of the labor themselves since the men had been killed. They weren't finished rebuilding for almost 20 years. Most of the Nazis who were convicted of war crimes at Nuremberg and sentenced to jail "for life" were all released in less than 20 years due to political reasons. This was mostly due to the fear of the spread of communism and maintaining allies for the new Cold War.

[jimmil]

20. I read

That the final war debris was cleaned up in either 1980 or 1984. I was amazed.

[moondust]

25. There are still buildings

with the pockmarks of bullet holes in them. I lived in Berlin in the mid 70s and there were old apartment buildings in my neighborhood that had bullet holes in them.

Much of the rubble that was left of Berlin after the war was piled up out in the forest to create a good-sized hill that was called Teufelsberg (Devil's Mountain). The U.S. and Britain later built a listening post on top of it that lasted through the Cold War but has subsequently been abandoned and left to decay and collapse.

[Adrahil]

19. My mother was there.... age 7

she never really recovered. It haunted her until her death.

[VOX]

22. "...One strong new idea to carry new strength which would make Germany great again."

"Nationalism and Socialism had to be redefined and they had to be blended into one strong new idea to carry new strength which would make Germany great again." -- A. Hitler, February, 1940

Sound familiar?

[Blue_true]

24. How is your goose stepping?

Doing a good job on the parade grounds may come in handy with Trump in office. At least Hitler fought in WWI and didn't catch a bad case of bone spurs.

[ecstatic]

26. Wow. I don't recall hearing that mentioned during the election

He stole Hitler's phrase and nobody called him out on it. Smfh

[Rhiannon12866]

27. Wow, a fascinating look at post war life. I wish I could show this to my Dad.

He visited Germany as a young student in the early '50s and talked about the ruined buildings he saw - that were still actively being used. When he began traveling years later, Germany was the first country he wanted to visit to see how things had changed...