Talk Morgan Forums Community Vehicle Talk (non-Morgan) Video Mercedes, one-off 1937 ash and aluminium

Thanks for sharing that Heinz it looks very aerodynamic for the time, it's good to bring our histories out into the open after such a long time there is nothing to fear but friendship.

Love those rear quarter windows.
Thanks for posting Heinz.
Nick

I worked for a Munich based company for 5 years and my first boss had escaped from Dresden at the age of 10 with his younger sister - the rest of his family being killed by the allied bombing.

He clearly didn't want to like me, but one night we went out and drank and talked and his story came out with an apology for his behaviour towards me. Once I understood his history, I could understand his behaviour as that must have been an horrendous experience for a 10 year old.

We became good friends and are still in touch, ironically because he has a nice collection of English sports cars.

I think there is a need to talk about what happened if nothing else to prevent it from happening again.

+1

The windscreen is amazing, inside and out.

I think, it depend with whom you are talking about the Nazi period in Germany. We German should never forget how many evil things happened. Of course I am glad to see that the world becomes more „normal“ again for our children (my own kids and their whole generation. They have a good insight due to their school education of historic subjects as well as by talks with us (in case of our children and in many other families as well, may be not in all families). As my wife is not German (she is half Colombian and half Bulgarian) it is even perhaps a bit easier for our kids to see the German history in a „half distant“ perspective.

My generation was at school at a time where we had a very detailed historical education about the Nazi period, in the 70s. The generation ten years older than me had no education about that dark period. But that generation started to ask questions, in their families regarding the role of parents, and also they asked which at their time working politicians, company leaders and e.g. magistrates had which function during the Nazi time. They became the generation 68. And in this subject it was good to have had this generation...young people who started to ask questions (which was a fact more concerning my part of the country, West Germany).

In my personal case I had the big luck that our school was open minded and they organized at a relatively early stage of after war history school exchanges with the UK and other countries like France etc. I had the big chance and I was in the privileged position of participating with a 1974 exchange program with students at Bexley Heath. Being 15 I spent 2 weeks in a very lovely family over there, and one year later, my guest student spent two weeks with my family in Germany.

At 15, it was a great time, but it was only a few years later that I realized how valuable this exchange really was. When I look back 30 years, into the eighties, it's all still very much alive.

If I imagine that the parents of my guest student in 1974 looked back for 30 years, then 1944 was also very lively for them. And yet I was a welcome guest. Today I mean to say that it was an inestimable value.

Nobody in my family was a soldier in World War II, my grandfather was too old and my father too young. He was lucky not to have to go to Russia as a 16 year old cannon fodder. But at the end of the war he had close contact with Americans and Englishmen.

Because when the Americans first came to our area, they chose my parental home to make it their officers' casino. Since my father was in high school which was not the normal case for a village at that time, and he already spoke English quite well, he had to (or was allowed to) work for the Americans as an interpreter. My grandparents had one hour to pack their things and lived in my grandfather's office, but I think, that was ok, other people had suffered much more and real sadness.

My father experienced a lot, not everything was nice, e.g. that his best friend, who unfortunately didn't speak English, died in an American prison camp being 17 as well.
But on the other hand it was an absolute shock therapy for my father to be together with the Americans, also in a good sense. There were some people with 10 passports, even a Swiss passport, who obviously belonged to the secret service, there was a US doctor who listened to jazz records from morning till night, and everyone lived in our house. Sometimes I would have liked to have been there, that must have been an absolutely agitated, unstable and exciting time. Nobody knew how things would continue in 1945. But my father, he died in 2003, was all his lifetime a really big jazz fan, me too today.

In the end the US people gave him a used motorcycle for his interpreter services.

Afterwards there were Englishmen in our house, they belonged to the UNRRA - United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, and my father, 17 years old, also worked for this group as an interpreter. Their task was to find out through interviews which German was ok after the Nazi era for responsible tasks and jobs, or who was a war criminal, which fortunately also included desk offenders.

That was the story from my family, there are many much sadder stories.
I just want to say that it should not be a problem for us today to talk about this time and also about violence and also about defeat.

On the other hand, it's unforgivable that we have idiots in Germany again today who deny e.g. the holocaust, what sort of sick souls.

The defeat was paradoxically not even poverty for Germany, on the contrary, how well people were doing ten years later. The defeat is partly playing (or I really have to speak in the past) played in the head, in the little things that are so important and valuable.
Just one example, years ago there was a TV series with Jeremy Clarcson, where he visited all your neighbouring countries. In the show from Germany they were in a bar restaurant. And then he asked, do you notice anything? What he meant was the dead silence in the restaurant that was full of people.
Well, that's again, I mean 15 years ago.

And of course such a defeat is a particularly difficult one, because it's not just a lost war, it's above all the subsequent horror that people in Hitler's time could become so angry or even ignorant. It was a mass psychosis, but that in turn should not excuse or relieve anyone for his actions.

It gets better every day, it did and does need time, but it is happily less and less.a issue in the mind and in everyday life today.
Thanks for listening.

Thank you for sharing Heinz. For me, the future is about people and how they interact.

I have worked in Munich, Paris, Pescara and Milan and have owned a company in Gyor in Hungary, my son has lived in Spain for two years and I am really glad that I have lived and worked through the period where the UK played a full part in Europe.

I am saddened that we seem to be drifting away from that and I suspect that subsequent generations of Brits will not have the same easy opportunities that I have enjoyed which will not help maintain the dialogue which is important to prevent a reoccurrence of the past.

Thank you Heinz.

One quite refreshing programme was on TV a few weeks ago......re-enactment of the Battle of Britain with model aircraft enthusiasts from Britain and Germany. It was great to see the friendship between both sides as well as the serious side of the re-enactments.
I’ve a number of friends in Germany and have always felt that we are probably more alike than any other European country. I do hope the mess of Brexit doesn’t change things but there is no reason it should....unless you follow the Daily Mail.

Thank you for that Heinz.

If we keep on sharing information and working together we can hope to avoid the hatred that leads to wars.

Maybe I shouldnt have mentioned the subject Heinz, but there was something about both the project and the car that brought to mind the German confidence and self belief of those pre war years. And without wishing to offend in any way, its an image that we see again made more poignant by contrast with the UK.

Anyway, enough of that. Once again I am hugely impressed byt your command of immaculate English and embarrassed by my lack of command of anything but English.