That typically grim German contemporary late war joke, “enjoy the war whilst you can, the peace will be worse”.

I love Dr Robert Citino! He is just so gripping in his story telling of WWII. His enthusiasm is infectious. Thank you.

My grandfather went towards the US army with a white flag to prevent our village from beeing bombed, only after he could be sure the SS has fled the area. He was more afraid of the SS than of the Americans. Many germans died in the last days by SS groups prowling around on the search of soldiers as well as civilians who wanted to surrender.

"Enjoy the war -- the peace will be terrible." -- Graffiti left on walls in Berlin in early 1945.

As a young graduate I began my first job in Germany (West Germany, back then). I was 25 years old. I stayed at a small family run hotel opposite the railway station. The family had run it for years. It was a fine old building and I had estimated that it was built around 1880, judging from the style of its architecture. I spoke fluent German and got on with the family well. Herr Ralf Dommershausen would invite me up to the family's apartments to drink beer and to watch football: West Germany were on their way that year to winning a World Cup. Ralf was a very handsome and engaging man and we laughed a lot together as I listened to his stories. He had been aged just 10 years at the very end of the war. He told me that he and his friends used to 'shimmy up' to the loudspeakers attached high on lamp posts in the town to stuff old socks into them in order to muffle the recorded rantings of the Führer which were broadcast incessantly from them. He also told me that the Nazis had told the population that black US soldiers would eat captured German children. Herr Dommershausen had two older brothers. I can not remember their names. One evening I was invited to dinner with the family and there I met Ralf's brothers. Both were grim, tough, hard looking men, unsmiling with etched skin taught over their angular features. Both strikingly handsome and both tall, lithe and fit, though both would have been well into their seventies at the time. Both had been soldiers - and at least one, I think, an 'offizier' - in the Waffen SS. Still, today I get a shiver and a thrill when I recall that evening. I did not dare to ask them about their time fighting during the war. The company I worked for was founded by a young highly gifted physicist who had walked back to Germany after his release from a Russian POW camp sometime in the late 1940s. His company became, and still is, part of the world-famous German Mittelstand. I do look back fondly at my 10 years in Germany.

The reason for the largest loss in the final year is the obvious one. The German soldier wasn't fighting for someone else's homeland..they were in the end fighting to save their OWN homeland. And for your own homeland you fight the hardest

Citino’s passion is undeniable, he really conveys a confidence that he truly knows what he explains. I’m sure he was very close to being insanely involved in his research. Doctorates take you to this next level. Well done, very comprehensive. Thanks for the post 👍

My father's father died in one of the battles around the bridge at Remagden.My father never knew his father.His mother became a total drunk and my father and little sister were left alone many a nite at around 4 yrs old.Fucking horrible.My father was a terrible husband and father.My grandfather was around 26.His grave is near my home but recently we found that there were no remains buried here.Thats just one story.There are 10's of millions of others.If anyone believes there is glory in war is a fool.

'People should know when they are conquered.' 'Would you Quintus, would I?'

@8:39.. So no high ranking Germans were in Stauffenberg's plot except: Colonel General Ludwig Beck, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, Major General Heinrich Graf zu Dohna-Schlobitten, General Alexander Freiherr von Falkenhausen, General Erich Fellgiebel, Colonel General Friedrich Fromm, Major General Reinhard Gehlen, Major General Rudolf von Gersdorff, Lieutenant General Paul von Hase, Major General Otto Herfurth, Colonel General Erich Hoepner, Field Marshal Günther von Kluge, General of the Artillery Fritz Lindemann, General Friedrich Olbricht, Major General Hans Oster, General Friedrich von Rabenau, General Hans Speidel, Major General Helmuth Stieff, Colonel General Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel, Lieutenant General Fritz Thiele, General Georg Thomas, General Karl Freiherr von Thüngen, Major General Henning von Tresckow, General Quartermaster of the Army Eduard Wagner, Field Marshal Erwin von Witzleben, General Gustav Heistermann von Ziehlberg.

It's very nice to see a long term academic of this caliber being engaged in a Q&A session like this. He was asked some very interesting questions, and clearly loved the chance to share his knowledge with an appreciative audience. I have no real interest in the high res history of WWII, but the enthusiasm, scope and ability to extract and share lessons fellows like this have to offer is fascinating.

More people need to say this. Thank you for leaving the comment section up so people can actually share their own opinions with this video.

One of those soldiers senselessly killed in the last year of the war was my Granddad, my Dad was 4 at that time and never new his father.

Greatly interesting scholarship. Thanks Dr. Citino for that.

Fascinating lecture/Q&A, thanks for sharing.

Great presentation - thanks.

I really enjoyed this and I only wish I seen it a year ago. My Uncle Frank was an interpreter in WWII in the American Army, he spoke fluent German and Italian. At the end of the war he was in Italy..I very much remember him telling us as kids that General Kesselring did not surrender unconditionally and in fact more or less dictated what his surrender term would be..however, I can't really seem to find a lot of information on that. Can you fill in some details?

This is a good talk.

I'm very happy to see you return to this series...your reactions are always very thoughtful and insightful!

Fantastic lecture! This is the second video I have watched from Dr. Citino and in both he is such a compelling and interesting speaker. I will be buying his book soon!

Love Robert's passion.

I´ve been waiting literal years for another lecture from Dr. Citino on this topic, amazing, see you in an hour and a half.

Very interesting and informative. Thank you for posting.

Enjoyed this a lot! Vielen Dank für diesen ausgezeichneten Vortrag!

Wonderful. Thank you for posting. I need to listen to more scholarly talks.

My mother was born in 1947 in a small town in Ukraine. As a young girl I was always visiting that little town during my summer holidays. Once my mom introduced me to her friend, who was a bit older than my mom, but they knew each other since their childhood. She was a cheerful and a bit overweight woman. Later my mom told me that that friend of hers when she was about 5 years of age had crawled out of a mass grave and somehow miraculously survived after mass execution of local civilians during occupation. She was destined to be buried alive, as the bullet missed her. But the execution was done in the evening, it become dark and probably it was decided to fill the grave/trench in the morning. I still remember that woman and how her cheerful look contrasted with the horrible story. In 1993 as a student I spent August in Crimea. Once I was eating seafood soup in one of local taverns, I noticed an older man with a prosthetic leg , he ordered the same soup. I do not remember why we started talking. We both spoke some English, so conversation was possible, as he appeared to be German. He apparently has lost his leg in Crimea "somewhere nearby" during WWII. He told me that he had that urge to visit the place where he had fought and where he had lost his leg. I could not figure out my own feelings. I recalled immediately how exactly in this place in 1943 children sick with tuberculosis and therefore treated in Crimea sanatorium were simply killed by Germans. Little kids, sick, many in casts, some tried to hide, some tried to escape. I was looking at him thinking "was he one of those who was killing those children?", but at the same time a saw just an old man who was eating soup. I still have a very mixed feelings. I cannot hate him, I cannot forgive him. As for soviet soldiers raping women in Germany... this is nothing to be proud of, but German soldiers had been raping girls and women and doing other horrors in the Soviet Union for almost four years. And soviet soldiers saw the horrible evidence of it when they were pushing the invaders out. Add PTSD to it (there were no such a term in those years though), machine guns, and the thirst for revenge. War is a horrible thing. The flamboyant manners of the speaker enter in dissonance with the matter of the discussion. That is probably because Dr. Citino does not have anything what would have touched him or his family personally. My grandma was a doctor at sanitary trains during WWII until the train was bombed in 1941 and she found herself on occupied territory in Soviet Army uniform. It was a miracle that she survived. When I was asking her to tell me about the war she would always change the topic, I just remember how her eyes were changing as if she was looking inside into something horrible and dark.

Video Documentary GERMANY GET OFF YOUR KNEES -The ERNEST ZUNDEL Story kzfaq.info/get/bejne/iaqmaM2rypmUYXU.html

Dr. Citino is fascinating. This was stellar. (I just now found this.)

As always I always enjoy hearing Robert Citino’s lectures and from the Q&A session it’s pretty clear that he’s just so enthusiastic in answering the questions with lots of thoughts given.

Great video, thank you for posting it. At about 1:16:50 Dr. Citino alludes to the the tv show Gilligan's Island and Japanese soldiers hiding out there not realizing the war was over. I wonder if he is aware there was an actual episode a Japanese sub-mariner who lands on the island not realizing the war was over.

Citino knows his stuff ! Always love his lectures

Excellent, thanks.

This is one of the most illuminating presentations on the subject I've ever listened to. So much has been written or said about WW2 that it is hard to separate fact from fiction, reality from misconception. To learn the lessons of history we must first understand what actually happened.

Word of advice, go to the museum if you're in New Orleans. I visited in July 2007. Nice place!

I love this mans passion for history

as a writer his point at the start about the 'arc' of a book is a good one. its a very common but rather cliched thing which is something that holds back books to have them all squashed into some neat story arc. what matters is only this: is it interesting.

Another possibility is the phenomenon that surfaces in the U.S. occasionally that is suicide by police. The soldiers could surrender to the Soviets knowing how much they would suffer for that. They could desert or run and suffer the humiliation at the hands of their countrymen and possibly execution. Or they could fight their best and retain their dignity and die a warrior’s death. The last choice may have seemed the most palatable.

I want to know this guy's brand of coffee. This is worthwhile for this alone.

I would absolutely love to converse with Professor Citino about the minutia of the German Army combat operations on the Eastern Front of the European Theater. Dr. Citino deserves aplenty of time to express his expertise of German War-making throughout WWII.

Thanks for this chat

Really enjoy listening to Robert Citino. Thanks for sharing.

But he's extremely knowledgable: knows so much; without notes. Extraordinary.

Fantastic interview. Gotta get his book. ... he made me laugh a few times as well. Excellent questions from the gallery. I was appreciative, too.

Very enjoyable. Easy to listen to and must be a great teacher. Excellent.

the germans fought to the end because they were good at fighting to the end

Because they new what they were fighting for.

My grandson was fortunate to take a high school Advanced WWII History Class from a teacher who works at the speaker's museum during the summer. His class was able to do research there & attend several conferences for university professors from all over the world. They even did podcasts about campaigns called Tigers By The Fire on Apple Podcasts. His was on Operation Torch & he compared it to modern events.

Marvelous opening lecture!

As a retired veteran, the answer is easy. If you truly believe in a cause, it's worth fighting for to the end. It's no more complicated than that.

“Huge bribes at the top, and bullets at the bottom.” Classic!

Great conversation

Cimino is a very good and entertaining writer and a very engaging lecturer. Very good and, undoubtedly, makes you think.

I suppose one of the reasons why the generals went on until the end is one I have often observed in people however skilled in their jobs : Many are not able, or maybe inclined, to see their work within the wider context of society. They do the tasks at hand without wondering what the broader purpose is. I can easily imagine German generals basically losing themselves in the battles at hand and pushing from their minds how futile and even counter-productive their actions are.

The manstein estate in Pomerania is for real. He fled not long after from the Russian advance and went to live with relatives in an Apartment in Berlin.

Citino is such a fascinating listen

Brilliant. A pleasure to listen to.

Im sure the squads roaming around the cities near the end of days in Germany had a hell of a lot to do with it

I always appreciate Mr Citino's talks. You can't say the man lacks passion for the subject.

Another reason that people keep going on is that they are already so invested that they hate losing what they think they've built up.

I really enjoyed this program , very informative and well presented

If you look at the German surrender in ww1 you'll notice that the German army was told and so were the populace that they didn't actual lose that war which set everything up for the second one. If you have an unconditional surrender you don't have the game playing to the extent that occurred post 1918

26:51 "You act in haste and, of course, you have leisure time to repent." Life in a nutshell!!!! A WONDERFUL QUOTE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Cintino is clearly extremely knowledgeable and if there's one thing we should walk away from this discussion it's that Nations need to immerse themselves in the culture (and language) of their adversaries especially "how they fight" and their theory on how to wage a war, which just might make the possibility of a conflict along with the usual death and destruction, perhaps just a bit less likely. Cintino has amazing insight. One can also see that if Cintino didn't try to keep things light, having a profound understanding of the horrors of war my guess is he's doing everything to keep it together so as to not break down in front of hundreds of thousands of viewers. That takes a lot of strength. A great discussion and it must be a great book.

There is always a point of no return in adventurisms which fail. You try to tide over the worst and turn it to a face saving value when still empowered , failing which you have no other choice but to make the process of potential retribution as weak as you feasibly can.

Another little 'snapshot'. I returned to Neuwied-am-Rhein in the late Autumn of 2019. I walked the leaf-strewn cobbled paths of that town: familiar places that once I had known well. Not much seemed to me to have changed, though the town appeared somewhat shabbier than my memory allowed me to recall. I plodded up the stone steps of the "Stadtdeich" and along a stretch of the promenade. A sharp wind laced with rain nipped at my face and so I hunkered down on a bench, my hands buried in the pockets of my raincoat and my face buried in its collar. I was in a melancholy mood and I became aware that i was staring at the graphite reflection of the surface of the swollen Rhein. I spoke to a gentleman who came walking by. He was much older than me. I noted his accent: heavy and closed and I determined that it was not the local 'plattdeutsch' of the region. I enquired further. It turned out that he was from East Prussia, Stettin (Szczecin) - in that the part of Germany that was 'lost' to Poland after the war. He and his family and many others were 'evicted' by the Polish authorities and he moved to Hanover in the Western Allies' sector, but there, the Hanoverians gave them little room and so he moved on. He ended up in Neuwied just as many others were to be dispersed to other small towns throughout Western Germany. We talked a little more but it was cold that day and the rain was coming now in squalls. We bade each other farewell. Good men converse civilly whilst reason's awake. Later that same day I visited the grave of my son whose body, there in that small town in Germany, lies pavilioned and yet whose heart I carry in mine.

Good that he points out how the foot soldiers were appalled at the assassination attempt because the officers knew the reality and must have felt compelled to fight lest they get lynched for that reason too. However, giving the retreating civilians a shot at getting west was another factor not mentioned. Also the Kriegsmarine sp? (navy) was not entirely out and their co-operation with army was important. They managed to evacuate two million on the Baltic.

This guy is blowing my historical mind.

Great to hear this, the book is on my Xmas list.

You can't keep ignoring the effect of the unconditional surrender demand by saying "well, it can be argued it had some effect". This is pivotal.

Starting off by using generals like Rommel (forced by Gestapo to commit suicide in 1944), Guderian (sacked two times after controversies with inter alia Hitler) and von Manstein (sacked in 1944, also partly due to controversies with Hitler) as examples of high officers who kept on fighting for den Führer to the bitter end only to turn on the war effort in their memoirs would seem somewhat odd.

Tank you Dr. Citino for a quite informative lecture & discussion, but the speed by which you lecture & explain is faster than a MG-34 peaking sometime up to a MG-3 !!

Fantastic stuff.

a better question would be why would they not fight to the end? remember what Churchill said in 1940 expecting an invasion, "We will fight them on the beaches, in the streets and in the hills; we will never surrender." would you expect the Germans do any less? after all they were not French or Italian...

Had the pleasure of taking Citino for Military History at EMU. Great prof.

Someone made a great comment about why Germany started WWII, " Let's finish what we started in WWI and get completely destroyed this time".

very good talk

Modern corporations (including american ones) work exactly the same. Loyalty towards the bottom is nowhere to be found.

Citino is a cool dude.

My old college professor, Stephen Ambrose (Ike's biographer & Band of Brothers), told us 1945 was the deadliest year in the history of mankind.

The question of the headline is easy enough to answer. It is because the truth was harder to face than death.

To answer the question of this post in metaphor: the German army bought a ticket, they boarded the titanic, they embraced the notion that she couldn't be sunk, they cheered when the captain said," full steam ahead", they laughed when the message of ice field ahead came, when the ship hit the iceberg they scoffed that it meant anything, as the ship started to list and the lifeboats deployed the bat is put on dressed so the could get on a life boat and finally the German army, like the employees of the white star line, had no choice but to go down with the ship. An aside, Hitler did not die with gun in hand to defend berlin, he put it to his head like a coward

I'm going to steal the phrase "The Soviet Union lost the Cold War with their behavior on the last months of the war"

Title should be 'Captain hindsight talks about world war 2'

fascinating discussion....such is the subject of WWII

We need to talk thru any thought asking for “ Unconditional Surender “ again. Would the War turn out different if that demand was not made ?

While I was stationed in Germany, Bavaria, 1974-77, I made friends with many Germans who had survived the war, many of whom were veterans. Many times, after I knew one of these people for awhile, they would whisper to me- "You know, Hitler was right!", meaning his opposition to Stalin, but sometimes I think more.

very relevant today

Good video

They had a pretty good idea of how pissed off the soldiers of the Red Army were.

Dr. Citino's lecture was EXCELLENT! I wish everyone was so clear in their explanations - of anything. Since the internet, I've been in 'hog heaven' - learning soooo much. Almost every question I ever had about anything is answered. NOTE: I corrected a typo - I had nog heaven instead of hog heaven. But nobody called me on that. Maybe that expression, 'hog heaven', is out of date and no one knows it nowadays. Do you know if people know that expression? Recently, I've been interested in World War 2. That's pretty strange because I'm an engineer, which is a far cry from knowing history. We engineers learn equations, not words. Every college class begins with equations on a blackboard (do they still use blackboards? I gravitated - er. graduated in 1970). To this day, I have no respect for someone who thinks the answer to a question can be expressed in words, not numbers. Charles Murray, the guy from the Bell Curve book, once said that only engineering college students were 'real' students. Everyone else were just party kids at school. I think that's true. Yet, I know that the real money is not in math. It's in manipulation of people - so sad. Anyway, this answered my questions on why the war ended with a bang not a whimper. It also helps me to understand why Hitler was so fanatic about fighting when all was obviously lost - he didn't want a Russian sergeant pointing his rifle at his gut and saying, "Finally. You are about to wish you were never born." I'd like to know if Dr. Citino thinks Hitler committed suicide or if he escaped to Argentina. I personally believe he did NOT kill himself. He was the ONE person in Germany who did not fear reprisals from the army if he 'deserted'. There was not one man who would kill him at that point. Except for a few with personal issues or, of course, his victims. But not even a general who hated him would waste a bullet on him. Germany is still 'atoning' for the war. They are just now starting to emerge from the 'penalty box' for their barbarism. As a person raised Jewish, I have a hatred for him that cannot be expressed in words. I know that I would have been one of the millions of jews gassed - if I was lucky. I could have been used to compute the 'dive tables' that underwater divers use to time decompressions. That table was determined by having jews die underwater. It is an idea so ghastly that I can't get my head around it. i know that wars allow psychos to do crazy shit with no fear of reprisals, but the scale of the - I have no word for it - the scale of the brutality? barbarism? savagery? is off the charts. Yes, I know even the Aztecs ripped the heart out of a living person to insure good crops. But we're not talking about a 'primitive' culture. Germany was the world leader in technology. They had great artists, composers, etc. They were the height of intellectualism. For them to apply their technology on a massive scale to kill millions is something that tells me humanity is scum. People are scum capable of greatness. We are both. Damn, I never said that before. Thanks for the lecture. Sorry to drone on, but that's a good thing about the internet. I can just give my incredibly great opinions lol and who gives a shit? I'm just phosphors on a screen. If you read this to the end, please give a thumbs up. I'd like to think that someone actually was interested enough to read this... like the German army that would not stop... to the bitter end lol.

Thanks

good conversation

On the 50th Anniversary of D-Day, I met a Frenchman from Alsace that had been drafted into the German Army who escaped through the little bridge at Trun, near Argentan. He was in teers recalling the event. He says after the war he was acused of being a traitor to France.

The British interrogation of high ranking German prisoners was robust and supplemented by the eavesdropping of conversations amongst the prisoners.

Very interesting!

Dr. Citino went to Indiana University and the foreign language departments were incredible.

To sum things up: *The Soviets don't lose, they just walk backwards forever till you're out of energy.*

Pride, training, loyalty, hope...like most professional armies.

Fascinating!

The United States was the arsenal of the Allies during WW-II. Once the United States entered the war, the War Production Board initially attempted to predict equipment needs, losses, &c. When initial reports of shortages came back, the War Production simply multiplied the numbers produced by their models by 10 and were effetely requesting enough to fight ten wars. (Source - A mathematician who worked for the War Production board and was in 1968 and employee of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.) Amon other things, the United States was manufacturing components for Soviet weapon systems. These could be shipped across the Pacific on Soviet freighters for the duration of the war with Germany. By comparison, German war production peaked in the Autumn of 1944, and availability of consumer goods in increased in Japan in 1942.