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bangdazap t1_ivy4is3 wrote

Reply to comment by superslowboy in Simple/Short/Silly History Questions Saturday! by AutoModerator

I know German POW were enlisted to clear minefields after WWII, both naval and on land. Some fortified buildings like U-boat pens resisted demolition and were left as they were.

Some land on the WWI western front was so severely destroyed that it still hasn't been returned to agricultural use

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superslowboy t1_iw0jz3b wrote

Wow,still? That’s crazy

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calijnaar t1_iw1ukt6 wrote

There's also still a lot of unexploded bombs around. It's not that unusual to find bombs during excavation works in Germany, here in Düsseldorf you get a small scale evacuation every few month because someone dug up a bomb and it has to be defused.

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superslowboy t1_iw2ohuz wrote

Wow. I’m all of a sudden so curious about the aftermath. Did they teach you about what I imagine was confusion and chaos in the immediate period after the end of the war?

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calijnaar t1_iw2xf7b wrote

To be honest, it was not a particular focus in school here in Germany. For obvious reasons the approach is more like in the 30s we let the nazis seize power and here is why we won't fucking let that happen again... you learn a bit about the Trümmerfrauen, literally 'rubble women' - a lot of the clean up work was done by women because a lot of the men were dead, injured or POWs. And you learn a bit about the flight from the formerly German Eastern territories, with stuff like the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff. I'm not even sure if the latter is still considered that relevant in school curricula these days, that may well have been viewed as more topical when therewas still a GDR and a cold war going on. I'm curious how this is taught in other European countries. Pretty sure you have a different perspective if you didn't start the whole bloody war. Britain, for example, would have had a lot of clean up to do as well fro the Bitz ad other German bombing campaigns. (And there must be the same probes with WW2 bombs still being found on costruction sites) And given how long rationing had to continue after the war, Icould well imagine that the whe postwar reconstruction is still a topic of history classes.

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