RichardSuhkoi
Airman 1st Class
- 136
- Apr 27, 2021
Some discussion here;The story is that the French at Agincourt told the English that they would cut off their fingers when they (the French) won. When the English won they chased the French waving the fingers they still had, opposite way round to the "v" for victory sign, which in UK is the way to say "f you" like the middle finger in most parts of the world. There is no evidence for this to be true at all.
False claim: “Middle finger” gesture derives from English soldiers at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415
A widely shared image on social media purportedly explains the historic origins of the “middle finger”, considered an offensive gesture in Western culture. The image makes the claim that the gesture derives from English soldiers at the Battle of Agincourt, France in 1415...
I can describe my Grandfather's experience in then Czechoslovakia. He was plant managerSo US forces in WW2 were much worse than German forces? An assertion I simply cannot be bothered to argue with. Just tell me which part of which fronts had no SS presence and any where you know that rounding up of Jews and others for execution didnt start immediately after the Germans captured anywhere?
I can relate my Grandparents experience in Czechoslovakia. My grandfather was the manager of a decorative ceramics factory, having been promoted from being a ceramics artist. After occupation he was visited and asked to manufacture small technical ceramic parts but mostly business was as usual, making lovely ceramic figurines. In the words of my Grandmother "the Germans were polite because they wanted everyone to go to work and make things for the war". After about 2 years, the political types (Gestapo) enforced anti semite rules, such as "no Jew may own a business". A personal friend of my grandfather was Jewish and by closing his stationery shop was bankrupted. My grandfather secretly took in all his inventory and sold it slowly in the company store and gave him the money, allowing him to get out. A Gestapo type suspected my grandfather of helping a Jew, and began arresting him for interrogation regularly. My grandfather complained to the German supply officer (that he was cooperating with to make the technical parts) and that man got the Gestapo guy admonished. As revenge, the Gestapo man made a report that my grandfather was a ceramic scientist/ engineer and he was forcibly collected and sent to work involuntarily far away, making military items. The working conditions were poor. He was freed only in 1946 and returned home thin and frail, and he developed silicosis after a few years and died in 1954. My grandmother did not forgive the Nazi. When the Russians came, she said they were much more rough and cruel than the occupying Germans. They accused the Czechs of being too wealthy, and too complicit. They raped anyone fingered as ethnic German. It didn't need to be true. They destroyed Jewish monuments that had survived the Nazis and persecuted Jews who had survived the camps and made it home. Jews changed their names and renounced their faith to avoid being expelled from school and job, and hope their regular interrogations checking for loyalty might reduce. They seized the factory and any homes considered bourgeois and forced the owners to take in tenants. Unlike the Germans who negotiated a price for goods allowing small profit, the Russians set the price of the goods and the exchange rate, causing shortages and poverty. They rewrote Czech history and taught that only Russia was good and that they were lucky to be junior members of the USSR. They forbade maintenance of buildings they considered "nationalistic" and built ugly Stalin statues and Soviet monuments. By chance, I was visiting as a child as the 1968 invasion occurred. I got to hear the tanks rumbling and the gunfire, see the flowers on the spot where people suicided in protest, felt the massive anxiety of the crowds being herded.So US forces in WW2 were much worse than German forces? An assertion I simply cannot be bothered to argue with. Just tell me which part of which fronts had no SS presence and any where you know that rounding up of Jews and others for execution didnt start immediately after the Germans captured anywhere?