That would have been terrifying.
Things were not pretty in the west. But the east was absolute madness by the end. There was no respect for life left, and little honour to be found anywhere.
It's a strange thing how people can end up so close to madness, and so filled with anger, violence, and fear. But then, after some time, it mostly 'wears off'.
If our grandfathers had met at that time, they may have tried to kill each other. But if they had met recently, there may have been no hard feelings.
People are strange, and fascinating.
People are strange, and fascinating.
That's why I love history, in a nutshell :)
What I like about history is how unrealistic it is.
Make some historic events into a movie and show it to people without telling them it is true, and they will say "Oh, that's not realistic. Real life doesn't happen like that. Totally unbelievable".
I know the feeling.
My grandfather spend the last years of the war running from the Russians. He was only a teenager, and was in the Hitler Jugend. He had been visiting his sister who was running a store in Lithuania that served German soldiers (they were both native Germans).
There was a lot of stuff regarding the Russians that he just would not talk about. I even got him drunk one time, and got a little out, but there is some pain there. A lot of that he's going to simply take to the grave, I'm afraid.