Thread: Germans Hang Russian Civilians.

The many reports of German brutality in the occupied towns and villages in Russia were strikingly confirmed by this remarkable series of photographs found on a dead German officer. They illustrate the callous hanging of five Russian civilians near the town of Velizh in the Smolensk region, in September 1941, and show: (1) The victims being paraded before an officer who was sentencing them to death; (2) Climbing on to the platform of the gallows for a soldier to fix the nooses round their necks; (3) Nazi soldiers about to remove the platform; (4) The dead bodies of the five victims after the hanging.

Hello

Were those hangings supposed to make a political statement or some other similar purposes? They seem to be a lot of trouble just for disposing a few dissidents (not to mention incriminating evidence). It would be simpler with a few bullets and a hole in the ground. The Japs favored bayonets and knives, which are as effective as hanging with none of the fuss. :)

No it was because the War on the Eastern Front was a no holds barred, No quarter given & none taken battle of idealogies. Hitler viewed the people of the Eastern Lands as sub-human, or at best slaves, to be used in the 1000 year Reich. To achieve "Lebensraum" - Living Space, The Germans would need to conquer the Eastern Lands & Russia and control the huge resources to be found there. This was foretold in Hitler's Book - "Mein Kampf" in which he set out Germany's future and his own ideology. Of course it didn't quite turn out that way ...

Very well put Spit
The sickening facts are that at this stage, methods were unimportant. These type of early "inefficient" attempts were "refined" in other parts of the Reich, and so became the gas chambers.

Gee, that aryan race concept still gives me the chills. The movie schindlerś list had a lasting impact on me. My favorite, despite it not being a bang-bang kind of war movie.

Didnt Hitler and his cronies understand that the more brutal his tactics were
the more determination he would inspire from from his opponents to topple him? This is how its been throughout world history , not just our modern day history.