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TIL after Czech resistance assassinated brutal Nazi Reinhard Heydrich, the Czech town of Lidice was razed and nearly all of its citizens, pets and livestock were shot. In response to Hitler's desire to wipe Lidice off the map, Venezuela, Brazil, Panama and Mexico renamed towns to Lidice.
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To show how much they wanted to do an exemple, they erased Lidice from the maps, razed the houses and then put soil on all the erased ruins. Men were shot while the women were sent to forced labour and the children were Aryanized or gassed. They even dug out the bodies from the graveyard in order to burn them!
And the reason why Lidice was chosen: apparently, someone quoted this town's name in a letter seized by the Gestapo, and they needed to express their vengence, especially since Hitler initially wanted to murder 10,000 Czechs to avenge Heydrich before being talked out of this by Heydrich's deputy, Karl Hermann Frank.
This massacre was one of the reasons why British secret services tended to not use assasinations against high-ranking Nazis afterwards.
What a conversation this must have been talking someone out of killing 10,000 people and instead "just" murdering a village full of people.
Hitler;
...
Ps: Even in our darkest of times, if we cannot laugh, the enemy will have a victory.
Actually according to Hitler's journals, it was a fairly pragmatic discussion. Afterall Frank was known to be very hateful towards Czechs and was always advocating for harsh treatment of the Protectore, so he wasn't talking Hitler out of this because of some humanitarian concerns. He merely knew that indiscriminate killing of 10k people could potentionally start a full-out rebellion of the Czech population which they could not afford, because the occupied Bohemia and Moravia were at that point one of the most important industrial bases for the Nazi war efforts and the Czechs were important as a source of skilled forced labour. Both Frank and Hitler realized that keeping the Protectora stable was in the very interest of Nazi Germany and killing 10k people was simply too risky.
That's National Socialism for you.
Please, dictators have been doing the village raising bit for millennia. You know what's cool? Stopping them from dancing.
That's Hitler for you.
Jesus fucking christ, I know Nazis were evil and insane but like shit...
For us living in peacetime it's absolutely unthinkable fucking crazy in the head how people can do such a thing.
What a waste of time. I hope all who read this can join in and try to live life in a way that does not create more war. We all have only one life, and one human is pretty insignificant in the grand scheme of things. But I hope I can dedicate my life to doing good, and things that don't create war. ☮ Peace and love isn't just hippie shit! For those in nations who are at war - let's urge our leaders to end it, even if one persons actions can only move the needle a millimeter.
Where the fuck are you living that you think you are living in peacetime?
The United States has been at war non-stop since the "end" of WWII.
And just to make sure you understand it's not just what the US is doing directly, spend some time looking up what the US exports more than anything else.
Modern conflicts aren't exactly total war. Life during ww2 would be significantly different than life in a country at war today. Though maybe certain places in the middle east wouldn't look terribly different in terms of destruction.
I think you fail to understand just how engaged in total war America is. America is simply defined by its ongoing state of war.
What is our largest export business?
What is the largest part of our federal budget?
What business are the largest corporations engaged in?
What is the largest class of WIC recipients?
How many billions of dollars went to companies providing private mercenary services in the last 20 years?
Well I am not American, so I guess that's why.
Although I hope that America will figure out a way to get out of their wars and have peace.
Maybe worry about your women folk getting raped six ways from Sunday, hm?
More people died in WW2 than all the wars after that. This is actually one of the most peaceful periods in history. You'll have to go back 2000 years to find a comparable period.
And it also destroyed all resistance in Bohemia. After the massacres no one in Bohemia dared rebelled. So unfortunately it did work.
If I were the British secret services, I would've assassinated high-ranking officers even harder as to continuously avenge the Czechs. Not like Germans ever made it onto the British Isles anyways.
That's a pretty cowardly thing to do when your own soil isn't at risk considering that is exactly what was expected.
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havenn't seen it yet but there is also Lidice movie
On Amazon Prime atm. Just watched it the other day. I'm a sucker for anything with Cillian Murphy.
I've never even heard of him
It was unexpectedly really good. Even the awkward love interest stuff. Stranger than fiction to a point.
There is also a great book, HHhH.
*HHhH
Lamb of God also wrote a song about it.
As did British Sea Power
Yup. It's got Cillian Murphy and the dude from 50 shades
I just watched this movie on Sunday. Nazis where truly terrible. It is hard to believe such a group existed.
People of all types have the capacity for great evil. :(
The Japanese did similar stuff. So did the Communists.
From the article:
And then...
If your friends ever tried to tell you that the Nazis were the "good guys", or that they were "misunderstood" and it's just a few bad apples, then find new and better friends.
It was just a few bad apples.
A few million bad apples.
And even more millions of enablers.
More terrifying is how the millions of enablers moved on from the tyranny and horror within weeks of VE Day.
And a lot of them in East-Germany went from enablers of fascism to enablers of communism.
and here is a piece of music I've had the privilege of playing recently, composed by Bohuslav Martinu in memory of the town of Lidice https://youtu.be/FYlwizW00G4
I love this piece. I played it about 3 years ago, 1st Bassoon. One of the few pieces that genuinely made me cry while performing.
It were two villages who shared the same fate, Lidice and Lezaky ... horrible both. But in Czech Republic many streets and city squares are named after them.
You should read the book Seven Men at Daybreak. Favorite ever and it's about the assassination and talks about this at the end.
I've read it. It's a fantastic book that reads like a Hollywood screenplay, and poses a difficult question. Was the horrible price Lidice paid worth the life of one Nazi?
Just went to purchase it on Amazon.
Cheapest for mass market paperback is $40.
Price goes up to $2500.
Alrighty then
Jeepers..I need to find my copy.
Did brazil venezuela or panama welcome fleeing nazi's the way argentina did? If so it'd be pretty ironic.
edit:
bad source but its pretty old news so its probably fairly accurate:
also:
http://www.history.com/news/how-south-america-became-a-nazi-haven
Venezuela didn't welcomed nazies. It accepted a ship with jews that no one would accept though
Venezuela used to be pretty cool
Yes, it makes sadder what is happening there. Venezuela used to support people from other countries that suffered dictatorships and wars, and we've been alone for a long time. Fortunately, other countries have realized that what the oppposition said was true and they're begining to raise their voice
Brazil didn't exactly welcome then seeing as they had forces in italy serving with the allies
so how did 1500-2000 end up in brazil? Did they fly under the radar or convince them they were ordinary citizens?
You had millions of refugees fleeing Europe in the aftermath of WWII. I don't think it's out of the question that 1500-2000 got through. Brazil was an allied country against Germany and as far as I know there was never any blatant harboring like what was seen in Argentina.
There was a large German Brazilian community descended from German immigrants during the 1800's so yes, they could have definitely flown under the radar and posed as ordinary citizens-especially after a few years of learning Portuguese and adopting the Brazilian German accent.
This is just a guess, but quite a few Germans settled in South America during the 1800s. It would be easy for Nazis to blend in those settlements. Now as far as how they got there after the war, I have no idea.
Live at Panama, never heard of it before...
is in capira
Thank you, fellow Panamanian (you are, right?)
yes I am
Yaaaay
Not Czech but love kolaches and klobasniks. How do you pronounce Lidice?
Ly-di-se
Impossible to explain soft i and hard y over text. You have to hear it.
Wouldn't it be Lee-'dee-tse? (I'm Polish, that's how we pronounce it, and there are no diacritics/accents in the Czech spelling that would change how it's pronounced.)
They are short "i"s. I was going to try and explain it, but its too difficult. Polish and czech pronunciation are different, dont let anyone convince you otherwise. Heres a fun one for you: "strc prst skrs krk".
It's not S, rather ts, the same way you pronounce the second C in science. Just hard C
Like i said, i cant write it out like that, so ive given up. If you wanna know how to say it, PM me your phone numbers, ill call you and leave you a detailed voicemail all about czech pronunciation
I'm Czech myself, no need for that hah
But not Argentina ehhhh.....amirite?
Interesting. I remember seeing about this in the documentary series "WWII in Color." I also find their obstinacy interesting, particularly that of Brazil who would go on to harbor Nazi fugitives after the war.
Brazil was a member of the allies sending some 50,000 men to italy.
I think you may be thinking of Argentina, they are kinda famous for nazi run aways
Brazil has some too but it isn't really welcoming to them, they often chose to live in rural areas where people don't really have a lot of education to think about nazi fugitives, they just work on farms. These nazis tend to be very wealthy too, making them higher up in the hierarchy and people tend to question them even less.
Isn't there some German town in some south american country? Like it's built just like a German town, just not in germany.
Southern Brazil had loads of immigration from Germany and Italy in the 1800s. So lots of German and Italian culture there.
However, Brazil was 100% allied after Germany sunk merchant ships. Being the only south American country to actually send troops. After the war, it there was no hunting down of escaped Nazis, but there was no active welcoming, differently from Perón's Argentina.
You might be thinking of San Carlos de Bariloche.
True, they were a member of the Allies. However after the war they took in around 1500 - 2000 Nazi war criminals. Source: http://www.history.com/news/how-south-america-became-a-nazi-haven
You know someone's a bad bastard when considered brutal even by Nazi standards and a program of genocide is named in their honor. [Aktion/Einsatz Reinhard(t) was the phase of the Holocaust that entailed sending Polish Jews to extermination camps - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Reinhard ]
The Nazis didn't hide massacres like this. They didn't cover them up like they did with the death camps. They actually advertised these atrocities across the empire and around the world. They were proud that they slaughtered entire villages of innocent people as an example to others.
Can you link some sources of Nazis themselves advertising their atrocities? Not that I don't believe you, but its so that I can have a definite source that can't be dodged with "ah but there's no real proof!"
We stopped at the museum when we went to prague, from belgium. It was a schooltrip and our schooltrip leader was our history teacher. He told us in a dark entertaining way what happened. The museum had a short documentary, he asked the museum staff to mute it aso he could do the voiceover. he literally aced it by telling us everything, explaining all that was shown. I will never forget this experience.
Also, one of the staffmembers tried to interrupt him but he shoo'd in a german fashioned way. She wanted to ask us if we could move away the bus, it was parked wrong.
Man, I miss school. I miss everything about it.
This wasn't just a Nazi thing. The German Army was big on reprisal killings of everyday citizens when a soldier was killed well before Hitler came to power. Reprisal murder of Belgians was one of reasons the US intervened against Germany in WWI.
I read about this in the new Mercy Thompson book - didn't know it was true (didn't go fact checking either :S ).
There's a very fascinating book about this town, about a girl who was Aryanized, and the book is called "Someone named Eva."
It was very true. Unfortunately.
Kitty Jane is from Czech.
How does one reconcile this having been done, clearly by a large group of people, with the possible existence of "humanity" whatsoever
Was this the same Reinhard Heydrich that was supposed to be depicted in Man in the High Castle?
But not Argentina
I have been here. Eerie place.
B-but the Germans were just protecting their fatherland!/S
Hmm wasn't there an enemy named after him in Return to castle Wolfenstein? (the game)
Did it stop the assassinations?
And right before he died he said "I need healing"
There is a time and place for memes. This is not that time.
Is renaming a town the national equivalent of a stupid fucking facebook flag profile filter?
Idiots.
You sure showed them. 😒
Personally I'd have every nazi and every German soldier executed but this'll do in its place.
What's with all the ww2 ally circlejerking threads lately?
By lately do you mean 1943-2017, allies won get over it.
If you want an axis circlejerk you'll have to start it.