Nazi soldiers pose for Red Army calendar
Red Army vets of the Great Patriotic War were less than impressed when a calendar designed to celebrate the 65th anniversary of the Soviet Union's victory over Nazi Germany featured some of the latter's troops proudly posing for the camera. The gaffe came to light when officials began to distribute posters to government …
This topic is closed for new posts.
Perfect candidate for a downfall subtitle youtubery!
Before they take it down of course.
Understandable
A girls head is so easily turned and those nazis were such snappy dressers.
Michael h f Wilkinson - Ooops
I knew they had shortages in Russia but I didn't think it was as bad as running out of bullets.
Badda-Bing!
Doesn't look right to me
Well, the second picture is obviously a German parade. But the first one is by no means clearcut. The tank itself is a T34, the standard Soviet medium tank - but it is unmistakably a T34/85 (the long gun) which did not appear until early 1944. So the timing is all wrong - by that time the Germans had been driven away from Leningrad. And the soldiers jumping off the tank look like Soviet desants - tank riders - a technique that the Germans did not use. (They rode on tanks, but did not usually go into battle on them). Moreover, their weapons look like short rifles or sub-machine guns, which were typically used by Soviet troops, whereas the Germans preferred more powerful and accurate long-barrelled machine guns.
ahem
"Germans preferred more powerful and accurate long-barrelled machine guns."
*cough* MP40 *cough*
Reply for Tom Welsh
That would be because it's RKKA (Soviet) troops advancing across the southern Ukrainian plains in May 1944. They're also armed with M44 carbines and PPS-43's. I own both :)
Also, the caption said Stalingrad, not Leningrad. Major (1,500km+) geographical difference.
It's good to know...
...it's not just the UK that has an appalling education system !
Mind you Nu Labour is obviously just a front for hardline Moscow Marxists, so hardly surprising that our kids general knowledge is on a par with Siberian peasants. (Or is it the other way round ?)
Mine's the one with a copy of the Daily Heil !
OOPS!
“We are young and we didn’t see the war. We don’t know what fascist soldiers looked like," said Prisoner Svetlana Somova as she boarded the train for Siberia.
As for the captions, Ian Hyslop would be turning in his grave...........if he was ........well,........ you know.
“We are young and we didn’t see the war. We don’t know what fascist soldiers looked like."
Aww.... Bless!
I've never seen Nazis, but I know what they look like. Movies? Textbooks? Google search? I'm surprised she didn't think, while "grabbing pictures from the web" (!! orphaned photos, right?), to look up what the enemy looked like!
Well
In bothering to research the photos beyond "soldiers, black and white, must be WW2, they'll do", she might have accidentally found out that the images were copyrighted or something. Can't have that now, can we?
Freetard FAIL.
Shurely shome mishtake?
Because that parade looks mightily like the Wehrmacht to me. The eagle and swastika wasn't worn by the Red Army. But like the charming Russian lady, ICBW.
FAIL
Svetlana Somova, a senior manager at the publisher, admitted: “We are young and we didn’t see the war. We don’t know what fascist soldiers looked like."
Well, you see, there's this thing called the Internet - by doing some research about the 1939-1945 war you'd probably find out !!
Re: FAIL
1941-1945 (great patriotic) war. Wouldn't want to remind them of how their occupation of the Baltic States, invasion of Poland with the approval of Hitler, and the beating they got trying to invade Finland. The last of which almost resulted in the British and French declaring war on the USSR (although only as a pretext for occupying Norway and Sweden).
May want to check your sources
The "Red Army Victory Parade" are also German soldiers, they may be Luftwaffe but I can't see the emblems too well.
What?!?!...
@“We are young and we didn’t see the war. We don’t know what fascist soldiers looked like."
The solution is called Research! ... I didn't see the Roman invasion of what we now call Britain, but I can look it up!
It astounds me when people try to defend their ignorance as if its a virtue!
You're winding us up ...
Since those two photos are *clearly* wrong, showing Soviet soldiers leaping off a T34/85 (left photo, labelled "Nazis 1942") and German soldiers (right photo, labelled "Red Army"), I think you're just winding us up more. Or is it making a point about the "ever-reliable interwebs"?
Newspeak???
Svetlana Somova, a senior manager at the publisher, admitted: “We are young and we didn’t see the war. We don’t know what fascist soldiers looked like."
Is that newspeak for: I'm young and beautifull and that's why I got this job but I'm dumb as a doorknob.
Thanks for the fading memories
At least the vetrans can be thankfull that it has been so long since this atroserty that the young have no idea what a german soldier of the second world war looked like.
Not sure that they'd be thanksful for that, really
I'm not at all thankful that these memories are fading, and somehow, I doubt any veterans would be either. In fact it makes me worry for the future; how long until we repeat history that we've forgotten?
I wonder what will happen when the atrocities of WW2 have fallen out of "living memory" and become just another bunch of dry facts in a textbook, taught to disinterested teens by teachers who are just reading from said textbook and have no real connection to events themselves?
SS Director of Marshall Space Flight Center Pic ?
Could TheReg please also post a picture of that Mad Boffin von Braun in an SS Uniform ?
@jlocke
He was a comissioned SS officer! Another piece of histroy revealed - respect
Allo Allo Anon.Coward
I knew Von Braun was saved from the treatment he deserved from the Russians. He was well aware that slave labour was building the V2.
He should have been hanged.
Hello, cheeky.
Nice pictures.
But the tank wasn't in service before 1944.
Nice switcheroo on the pics but....
The T35-85 wasn't available at Stalingrad, that would be the T34-76.
Mine's the duffle coatt
Well done El Reg
Fooled 'em all...
But the real point is, if the bimbo didn't know what Wehrmacht or indeed Russian Army soldiers looked like, she should have checked, not just used whatever was handy. Or watched "Enemy at the Gates" a few times. Gotta love Bob 'Oskins as a Molotov (was it?) (IIRC?)
Tanks for the info!
Love how every poster on here has missed El Reg's subtle picture captioning nuances ;-)
Back to school the lot of ya - module: Sarcasm 101
Re: Tanks for the info!
I think this kind of caption joke is relatively unknown. Doubtless someone will step in to prove me wrong, but I think Private Eye pioneered the form and it hasn't really spread. Whilst a fair number of El Reg's UK readers will get the joke, I suspect everyone else just thinks its an ironic cock-up.
Caption gag
I'd expect a lot of El Reg's American readers to be familiar with Craig Ferguson's twist on the caption gag - "Do we have a photo of Paul McCartney?"
Oh. My. Gawd.
Truly, you can't get decent commentards these days. Absolutely no appreciation for the tongue-in-cheek mockery of putting up two deliberately miscaptioned ww2 piccies to punctuate an internet article about misidentified ww2 piccies from the internet.
@hugo tyson - 'Enema at the Gates' really wouldn't help much, it's like U-571 but worse. http://www.battlefield.ru/en/hall-of-shame/206-enemy-at-the-gates.html
Enema at the Gates
@Trygve - Yeah, but at least they had the right hats on!
Huh?
That particular piece of whateveritis reads like it was spouted by a former Chekist. "Political officers were different" - oy vey...
I must admit, I get the two confused too.
“We are young and we didn’t see the war. We don’t know what fascist soldiers looked like."
I'm not that young but I don't really know the difference between Stalinism and Naziism either -- well apart from the Hugo Boss shirts and VW Beatles of the latter.
How...
do you get to be a "senior" manager if you're "young" and stupid?
The comment she makes is true though, she doesn't know what fascist soldiers look like, generally they're indistinguishable from democratic ones.
Modern Parallells
Nick Griffin and the BNP obviously don't know what Nazis are either - otherwise they'd realise that they've been looking at them in the mirror every morning...
El Reg Couldn't Tell the Difference Either
Bad Form, Old Boy - It seems you made the same mistake. That second army of the "red parade" is a right solid column of Deutchland's finest (at the time). Note that such an assembly in today's Germany would be quickly clubbed and scattered before the police have a chance to get there and arrest them.
A much clearer image of same found here: http://www.highestfive.com/combat/drug-use-and-addiction-in-war/ (Just whipped out of me coat, eh?)
Given this, I don't think it chivalrous to Bear down on the poor lass, do you?
russian or german..
you still don't want to have been a polish doctor/lawyer/creative in '41
Communist Censorship
It's obvious why young people in Russia don't know what German uniforms looked like. They hadn't been allowed to watch enough Hollywood movies about World War II.
Perhaps we can get Russia to import dubbed episodes of "Hogan's Heroes" to help solve this problem!
Dumb Chix Wro.. Rro... ummm Rok.
Reminds me of other brilliant stupidity:
Guy gets press release from NASA of HUGE starfield... as they typically are.
You know the science question goes like this: "If you was to drive a car at 100Kmh with an infinite fuel supply, and cruise control, how many hundreds of thousands of millions of centuries after you die, would it take you to drive from one side of it to the other"....
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/447139main_hubble20th-img.jpg
Then he says this:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/achenblog/2010/04/hubble_20th_anniversary_image.html?wprss=achenblog
"I haven't read the press release but just from my initial eyeball estimation I can tell you that this cloud in space is literally hundreds of miles across and contains dozens of stars, planets, planetisimals, plutonoids and astrodots."
Svetlana Somova = Thick as a Brick ( and NOT working for me ).
SS Sturmbannführer / Director Marshall Space Flight Center Wernher von Braun
Here you have the image of a good American Patriot's earlier life:
http://www.reformation.org/wernher-von-braun.html
He designed and built the Saturn V rocket. It is always interesting to see that any sort of criminal can start over in America and live the American dream.
I am sure he would also have become a KGB Major (Sturmbannführer == Major) if Stalin had given him the Rubels to build a rocket. Members of his team were caputed by the Russians and their knowledge extracted for the Russian rocket program.
The SS had skull logos on their uniform. Just to make sure one would be able to clearly identify the troops of the devil.
Stalin had Korolev...
...had to get him out of the labour camps and back to reasonable health first though.
Anyways....
The Bad Guy is the one that Churchill designates as the Bad Guy in his memoirs. If I have to choose, I shall prefer a black uniform which clearly shows that I'm the state-sanctioned badass. It's just more stylish, even Philip K. Dick recognized _that_.
Vicotry Parade
Front row, second from the left - a little short to be a Stormtrooper?
Soviet Spy
Well spotted!!! He was the greatest patriot in Great Patriotic War!
Note: the way he marches right past Hitler, scornfully with his rifle unshouldered. He infiltrated the wehrmacht, just so he could ruin their orderly parade photos.
hmm war movie accuracy
War movies that are very accurate are usually so friggin depressing like real war they do poorly at the box office. That is why in general war movies are a bad idea to make (won't stop the Hollywood hit machine from skewing those that fought and died) Haven't see too many war movies that capture the pure chaos and random death of real combat. Also haven't heard of too many soldiers that feel like heros during debriefing. Maybe years later they realize what they did was necessary and heroic but most just want food and sleep and to try and forgot what just happened.
This topic is closed for new posts.
