A German WWII Cemetery in Normandy | History Traveler Episode 52

well we are making our way through Normandy been to a lot of interesting places so far a spot where I'm at today I usually try and research and you know get as much knowledge as I can I don't know as much about this place but I wanted to stop here at least for a few minutes just because it's interesting we are at the Cumbrae War Cemetery right here in Normandy and this is a German War Cemetery [Music] [Music] so during the Battle of Normandy there were over a hundred and fifty thousand casualties on the German side now that includes of course dead wounded and missing and over 21,000 of the dead are buried right here all right kind of take a look around it some of the graves here at the German war cemetery here in Normandy [Music] so the German graves are a little bit different in that it doesn't appear that each German gets his own individual grave so here Helmut cou pets died on now the dates are a little bit different in German than in than what you would find in the US as well so that says 87 that doesn't mean August 7th that was July the 8th of 44 here's somebody else that died June 18th of 44 and here's another set of graves here's an individual that died on d-day plus 2 on June 8th of 44 this is kind of interesting here's the guy that was killed on June the 10th so that would have been during the Battle of Normandy and then below it the other one buried here says I ain't sure so that so one German soldier so this is an unknown soldier there's another unknown right next to it and as we're walking we're just finding these everywhere here's one that says survived which so Dotson so these are two unknown soldiers that are buried here in this spot [Applause] interesting Wow look at this one Carl stutes born April 12th 1925 and was killed on d-day you got to wonder where he was at here's a another German soldier killed on d-day Eric lauric now at the very center of the cemetery is this tummy less what a tummy list is just a mound of earth that has the graves of the dead beneath it and in this particular one there are over 200 I think 207 unidentified soldiers and then all around us you have 49 different rectangular grave fields and each grave field contains 400 soldiers kind of gives you an idea of the heavy cost that Germany paid for the actions of Adolf Hitler [Music] [Music] so as I've been walking through this cemetery I've been thinking what's the what's the takeaway lesson what can we learn here I think the one thing that we can take away from the German war cemetery here in Normandy is that actions have consequences so the actions of one man Adolf Hitler led to the deaths of all of these his own countrymen in his war of aggression on Europe how many German lives did he take [Music] now actions have consequences doesn't just apply to Hitler it applies to all of these guys whether they were drafted or whether they were active and willing and eager participants they still fought in support of an evil despotic regime so I think the one thing that all of these men would say if they could speak now is be careful how you live because your actions have consequences I'm glad that we stopped here today this is a part of history might be an ugly part of history but all history deserves to be remembered [Music] you [Music]

Channel: The History Underground

Views: 83,425

Rating: 4.8661418 out of 5

Keywords: history, history travel, history traveler, travel, history underground, wwii, ww2, world war II, world war 2, dday, d-day, omaha beach, normandy, june 6, german, jd huitt, utah beach, cemetery, war

Id: mz81JRtrUgk

Length: 7min 3sec (423 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 13 2020