Nazi War Diggers aka Battlefield Recovery

Anyone seen this? These scum don't know a humerus from a femur or their asshole from their face. Disgusting.

http://natgeotv.com/za/nazi-war-diggers/videos/human-bone-removal?utm_content=bufferb50e2&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

 

Surely they have not watched Time Team and seen how it is recorded.

A bloody disgrace.

 

Global TV star? I hope there is enough evidence to prosecute him.

There would be a bigger outcry if they were digging up Doughboys or Tommies.

 

Since open travel after the collapse of the Soviet Union,there has been an increasingly vandalising of German war graves in Russia and its former satellite states to supply a market for German war relics...the SS gear being seen as the most valuable relics.It is a market that appears to have a ever increasing demand with no legislation to arrest it.

The Germans always created battlefield cemeteries where they could, with the intention that they were staying.After their occupied territory was recovered by the Soviet Union there was little regard for the cemeteries and graves.In most part the graves and cemeteries of the ideological foe were desecrated .

I think the breakthrough as regards the change of attitude towards the former foe and the responsible recovery of the German dead took place from 1976 when the Soviet Union Red Cross recovered and created two cemeteries for German POWs in Moscow...namely Moscow-Lujblico with 476 dead and Moscow-Krasnogorsk with 211 dead.Then in 1882,the SU Red Cross created,three more German POW cemeteries with 576 dead and finally in 1989,4 more POW cemeteries were created and almost a 1000 dead were recovered...two of these cemeteries being located in Usbekistan All these POWs are probably identified and the exact location of their remains would have been known.

On 13 September 1990,an agreement between the Soviet Union and Germany was made for the Germans to access their war dead.This agreement was then recognised by the Russian Federation from a meeting with Helmut Kohl in Moscow on 14 December 1992.A further agreement was made with the independent Georgia on 25 June 1993.A similar agreement was also made with the newly independent Latvia a little earlier and a German POW cemetery was established at Riga with 433 dead interred.

So 20 years ago the German VDK organisation,a voluntary group who carry out the same work as the CWGC were faced with the recovery of their dead in Russia,a very demanding task which seems to be impossible to complete.The Russian campaign cost the Germans 2.2 million dead and of these over 1.88 million are listed in lying in unknown graves.The total German Second World War missing is given as 1.2 million ie, all war fronts.

I would think that the availability of voluntary resources could be a problem and priority could be given to the recovery of dead from the Russian Federation....118.000 different locations where German dead are reported to be.

As regards the unauthorised search for the dead,it is probably an offense but does the likes of Latvia have the resources to prevent this occurring.Latvia is easy to travel to and reside in,being a EU member state for over 10 years, whereas access to the Russian Federation requires a hefty priced visa...easy access to supply a dedicated market of trophy seekers and the wheelers and dealers who operate in it.

 

Most of the comments appear to echo the sentiments here.

Roxy

 

D- looks like the video has been taken off?
http://inagist.com/all/449215019407122433/

 

Due to air in UK on Tuesday May 13th
http://www.tvwise.co.uk/2014/03/national-geographic-orders-nazi-war-diggers-factual-series/

 

Some info on Paul Reed's twitter feed

 

NatGeo, Discovery and History (ha!) channels as shown here are complete rubbish, more like "reality" shows. It's all (supposedly) antique auctions, car pimping, aliens everywhere. It used to be bad enough, but now it's garbage.

 

Not seen the video so an open mind for me. That said the 18 pictures I looked at don't leave me with much hope they know what they are doing and that's coming from someone who knows nothing about this sort of thing.

After reading there Bio's I found myself disliking them a little more:

http://natgeotv.com/za/nazi-war-diggers/biographies

 

What's PR saying?

 

https://twitter.com/sommecourt