Bodies of 21 German soldiers buried alive in WW1 trench found perfectly preserved 94 years later

That one "unidentified" item in the photos is a boot jack.

Wrong war. That's the next one in the series.

ooops, you're right! I'm going to blame my caffeine starved brain, lol

Well, my sentiment remains the same.

I find much of the European political interactions during the late 19th and early 20th century fascinating. They shaped the world, to a large extent, to what we have today. There is a lot of confusion it seems. For one thing, Germany got dragged into WWI for the most part by alliances it had established. The French and British were also drawn into to the conflict because of alliances. The actual "guilty parties" that started the war skated by with very little notoriety.

Most of the soldiers in all of our wars were kids, brainwashed into doing all sorts of things. I don't blame them so much as the politicians or religious leaders who got them to do this. You do notice that the warmongers don't tend to have their kids out on the front lines. German or not, it's tragic and I feel sorry for them. It's no different from the Crusades or anything like that in the past, where people got sucked into lies and told they should kill those who were different, or those who had what their country wanted. And a lot of the European wars were about greed, although they used religion and patriotism to help get the riches they wanted - so they could support more wars. Hell, I wouldn't want to have ruled England back then, much less tried to take over France and Scotland too! What sane person would have?

And think about our poor kids during Vietnam and Korea. At least during the World Wars, there was an actual direct threat.

Wars these days are much more politically correct. Ever see cartoons from the WWII era? Japs, slanty eyes, all kinds of propoganda. Just like the Native American takeover; painting them all as savages. Aren't humans great at finding ways to get people "like us" to hate a huge group of people who "aren't like us?"

katrix,

the thing about WWI though is that it really was a war of unfortunate circumstances. The germans & austrians (where the war actually started) weren't really evil, unlike WWII where Hitler did exactly what you said.

Oh, I get that. I guess I was mostly responding to mrsrachelm after she realized she was talking about the wrong war; I was too, but I think it's important to realize that even in WWII, those Germans and Japanese were brainwashed kids forced into crap they couldn't begin to comprehend. I DID see the Sound of Music, after all. Hmmpphh. I remember what happened to the older daughter's boyfriend. I know my history.

There could be a little truth to that (the boyfriend), actually, probably not but going to have to look that up. The nuns probably didn't take out car parts, though. They probably had never seen a car or a distributor cap.

For the kids forced to fight, all wars are unfortunate circumstances, and the same for the people living in the wake of the carnage. Our country still hasn't recovered from the Civil War, in many instances. And just think, we're fortunate enough to have very few wars fought on our actual soil. We lose our actual soldiers, but we don't lose what other countries do when they get into wars.

Dang. Side note - can't find out whether the Liesl and Rolf story was based on any reality, but the girl who Liesl was based on died recently at age 97, with no mention of a Nazi boyfriend. I'd love to know the truth behind the legend, just as a payback to me for having those songs stuck in my mind for years.

The timelines of the movie/play didn't match reality, so the likelyhood of that being true is very suspect.

Not sure if you stumbled across this link about the Von Trapps

That was a wonderful read! Thank you so much. If you weren't already on my friend list, I'd friend you all over again for that link.