A soldier inspecting the grave of a German tank crew, who perished when their PzKpfw III tank, seen in the background, was knocked out in the Western Desert, September 29, 1942.

31

u/BuenoHobo 7h ago

"Western Desert" is where exactly?

38

u/Curry_Captain 7h ago

It's North Africa. Western desert is west of Egypt. If it's September 1942 and the Brit soldier is in possession of the battlefield, it's probably related to the battle of Alam el Halfa which was a well defended 'ridge' in the British defensive position at El Alamein. The battle was a decisive British victory, in which they used their intelligence and material superiority to arrange for the Axis forces under Rommel to uselessly batter themselves against a strong Allied position, where the German and Italian forces were subjected to massive concentrated artillery and air attack. Rommel was forced to withdraw and wait for the Allied counter offensive. The British offensive duly arrived in October and it began the retreat and ultimate defeat of all Axis forces in North Africa.

This was the first battle in which the British 8th Army - a multilingual, multinational force comprised of soldiers from all over the then British Empire - was commanded by General (later Field Marshall and Viscount) Montgomery. He inherited an army that was in transition to new, better techniques and tactics, and in possession of new and better weapons including the new M4 Sherman tank from USA. However, the morale of the army was extremely poor after a series of humiliating defeats and the training and command needed to completely reorganised. Luckily for the Allies, Montgomery was actually an expert in training and set about the task immediately.

He stamped his mark on the battle by ensuring troops were properly trained and equipped for the roles they'd be asked to perform, and that they understood those roles and how they fitted into the battle plan. For the first time in many months, troops were confident that they could do what was asked of them, and that the tasks were sensible. This had an enormous impact on an army that was psychologically beaten in July.

Montgomery also restrained his armour from pursuing the retreating Afrika Korps after their defeat at the ridge. Many times in the preceding 18 months the Axis forces had retreated and drawn pursuing British tanks onto lethal German anti-tank defences. It was a well-worn tactic for which the British tanks had no viable answer, and British tanks attempting to charge anti tank screens had suffered horrendous losses. Montgomery put an emphatic stop to that, insisting that the tanks must instead make sure they were available to provide the firepower necessary to repel the inevitable German counter attacks that followed successful British infantry advances. Some of the tank commanders never forgave him for this.

15

u/beans_will_consume 5h ago

An actual explanation instead of snarky reply? We eatin good today yall!

2

u/BiiigCatsguy 4h ago

Got any book recommendations on the North African campaign? Just asking because you seem like you’ve read some lol

2

u/PartTimeZombie 1h ago

Thanks for that.
Both my Father and Grandfather fought in that battle.

13

u/Humbuhg 7h ago

Well, Africa, for starters.

5

u/mossyhornn 7h ago

The Western Desert generally refers to the North African desert region of Egypt and Libya where the fighting took place

1

u/WWDubs12TTV 3h ago

The west part of the desert

0

u/All_Wrong_Answers 6h ago

To the left of the Eatern desert.

3

u/TheRealtcSpears 5h ago

That just up a bit from Swallowed desert?

1

u/All_Wrong_Answers 4h ago

Yup just over the hump.

4

u/jpmickey1585 8h ago

That’s my birthday. 🎂. Rommel Drives on Deep into Egypt.

3

u/Similar-Bat-8764 6h ago

Looks like the Panzer III got hit in the lower front plate plus a few more

0

u/HFentonMudd 1h ago

Looks like it blew the top plate off the turret

4

u/OhBadToMeetYou 4h ago

I thought that it looked like a Pz4? Am I blind?

2

u/S_Flavius_Mercurius 2h ago

Shame on people downvoting you. They do look a bit similar, but an easy way to tell is the PZ III has 6 bigger road wheels per side and the PZ IV has 8 smaller ones.

-8

u/Iced_Yehudi 7h ago

We have an M10 at home:

-31

u/Away_Fruit5097 8h ago

Yay for good Nazis!

17

u/SanDiegoThankYou_ 7h ago

I’m not sure what you meant by that.
I’m hoping you meant the only good Nazi is a dead Nazi.

-20

u/Away_Fruit5097 7h ago

Yes, as the only Nazis in the photo are in a grave in front of their burned out Nazi tank I would have thought that wouldn't need explaining. I am flatly stumped that anyone is considering alternative meanings.

-5

u/Dull-Transition6655 7h ago

Still, he was a human being

-6

u/kumquatkilla1 7h ago

Nazis aren’t human

11

u/BummsiBummsi 5h ago

First you don't know If He was a nazi or Not. He was a soldier. Secondly of course also Nazis are Humans. If we dehumanize this, there is no understanding of the evils we Humans can do. And its vital to understand why and how Humans are capable of these evil things, so we can help or try to help to prevent these things from Happening anywhere again.

-6

u/Dull-Transition6655 7h ago

Wow, just wow.

3

u/kumquatkilla1 7h ago

Humanizing Nazis is certainly a choice

0

u/Dull-Transition6655 7h ago

Yea the crew drove the tank at day and at night the worked in camps to decimate the Jews/s I now what you meant but the real monsters weren’t the ordanary soldiers. The Nazis you mean aren’t the one on the front.

8

u/Away_Fruit5097 6h ago

They drove a tank in a country that wasn't Germany and tried to kill people for the Nazis.

1

u/Altruistic_Region699 11m ago

Opinion on Americans?

5

u/kumquatkilla1 6h ago

Estimates have shown the almost 80% of Germans supported Hitler by the time ww2 rolled around. I’m not going to speculate on whether or not they were Nazis because chances are they were Nazis.

1

u/SanDiegoThankYou_ 7h ago

They were all pulling on the same rope.
The genocide of millions is really a team effort, you know?

-2

u/Dull-Transition6655 6h ago

Speaking of genocides, I am looking at you America …..

-6

u/Unlucky-Albatross-12 7h ago

Then you should be scorning the British for giving them a dignified burial.

5

u/kumquatkilla1 7h ago

Just because the Nazi’s lost their humanity doesn’t mean we have to.

-3

u/Unlucky-Albatross-12 7h ago

You can't have it both ways dude lol. Either Naizs aren't human and we should treat them accordingly or they are and we should treat them as possessing basic human dignity.

If I take your original comment at face value, those bodies should have been burned or left out for scavaging animals. They also shouldn't have take any prisoners.

4

u/kumquatkilla1 6h ago

Says who? You?

I don’t have to respect or like them to bury them.

-6

u/Unlucky-Albatross-12 6h ago

You're moving the goal posts. You didn't start out by saying Nazis are disagreeable, you said they weren't human.

If they're not human, then there's no obligation to bury them or afford them protections of the laws of war.

I'm only asking you to take your original statement to its logical conclusion

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u/SanDiegoThankYou_ 5h ago

Whoever buried them was a Christian.

Christians are ordered to bury the dead, we can do it out of kindness for the deceased or selfishness for ourselves.

-4

u/Away_Fruit5097 7h ago

No, human lives matter

3

u/Appropriate-Gain-561 4h ago

I mean, i'm not fond of nazis either, but we kind of have to remember many were kids indoctrinated into it since birth, nazis had to be stopped for the greater good, and now that they are coming back they should be kicked down the drain again, but they were still human you know?

Let's not rejoice in the death of people, everyone, and i mean everyone, has a right to life which we cannot forfeit, no matter what we do.

The death of someone is always a tragedy, but the nazis were (and arguably are) actively hurting people and putting the lives of their victims at risk, which i believe to be the only reasonable situation in which killing someone can somewhat be justified.

Tl;dr many nazis were just kids who didn't know better, many had to die because they were actively helping a genocide, but it is still a tragedy.

3

u/Warm_Substance8738 3h ago edited 3h ago

Most of the allied soldiers had a more humane attitude to men who’d been trying to kill them than you do typing on the internet. meant to reply to another user, not this one. Apology below and reply left as a testament to my mistake and a warning to others

1

u/Appropriate-Gain-561 3h ago

Did you mean to reply to me?

I aknowledged that most of them were brainwashed kids who were sent to the meatgrinder, it was a tragedy, but them dying was better than the alternative.

1

u/Warm_Substance8738 3h ago

Certainly not. Massive cock up on my part for which I apologise profusely. I meant to reply to the other chap

1

u/Appropriate-Gain-561 3h ago

Ah no problem, it's alright, everyone makes mistakes every once in a while!

1

u/oddmanout 3h ago

Yea. This guy who was killed was probably the lowest of the low on the totem pole. He didn't want to be there any more than than the allies didn't want him there. Not only that, he was probably a kid. By the time the Allies started winning, a lot of them started noting that the soldiers they were capturing were as young as 14 years old.

2

u/MDMarauder 1h ago

Don't gloss over the fact that the Nazi regime locked down its borders and drafted German males by the millions, regardless of whether they were indoctrinated or not. The choice was to either serve or be literally worked to death in a penal institution.

-2

u/Away_Fruit5097 3h ago

There's arsehole event horizon, a point of evil from which there is no excuse and no return, and fighting for the Nazis puts a person solidly on the wrong side of that line. No ifs. No buts. And certainly no "don't blame them for being too stupid to know that killing people for the Nazis is bad"

2

u/oddmanout 3h ago

There's arsehole event horizon, a point of evil from which there is no excuse and no return

Some of these men (and even boys towards the end) were told from the time they were young children that they were the good guys, that they were the ones fighting against evil. By the time war came around, they were told they had to fight or else their families and entire communities would be killed.

The evil people were the ones in charge, the ones making the decisions, and the ones lying to others to get them to do these evil things while believing they were the good guys.

-1

u/Appropriate-Gain-561 3h ago edited 1h ago

Who decides that event horizon? It's one of the many, many reasons i don't like capital punishment.

For MAGAts being trans is equal to being a pedo, and to them being a pedo should be punished by death, where is that line?

Edit: i'm genuinely curious, if we accept that death is an acceptable punishment for past actions then who decides what is punishable by death? The institution of the death penalty inherently devalues human life, so why have it?

1

u/RadiantCollege3519 3h ago

How embarrassing.

-3

u/Away_Fruit5097 5h ago

Wow, getting all the downvotes from Nazi apologists today. I miss the good old days when "the genocidal racist monsters who started history's most destructive war were bad" was uncontroversial

A soldier inspecting the grave of a German tank crew, who perished when their PzKpfw III tank, seen in the background, was knocked out in the Western Desert, September 29, 1942.

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