Nazi War Diggers aka Battlefield Recovery

Discussion in 'WW2 Battlefields Today' started by geoff501, Mar 27, 2014.

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Did you like the show?

  1. Yes, I learned a lot (will watch the next episode)

    1 vote(s)
    5.9%
  2. No, I was disgusted (will not watch again)

    14 vote(s)
    82.4%
  3. Can't say

    2 vote(s)
    11.8%
  1. Heimbrent

    Heimbrent Well-Known Member

    Well, at least in today's episode on one site they're working with a Polish archaeologist and his team who ensured they did a proper job.
     
  2. Ramiles

    Ramiles Researching 9th Lancers, 24th L and SRY

    Not an episode that they showed in Poland though apparently?!

    "The Nazi War Diggers were also rebranded as “War Treasure Searchers [Poszukiwacze Wojennych Skarbów]” and broadcast on the Discovery Channel in Poland last year – notably apart from the episode on their exploits in Poland. And, even since that broadcast, there have remained serious questions to answer." War Treasure Searchers - really???! They appear to be digging graves and personal effects not on some mythical quest for Nazi gold???

    The bit where they were shifting all the exhibits in the "museum" so that they could place them on a table like a corpse was a bit odd. As too was the focus on the knuckle duster ?! Interesting "relic" but do we seriously not know (and explained in graphic detail?!) how one of those "works" ? Not quite sure what I was meant to learn there, but these were Germans and Russians - a Polish archaeologist (fair enough as it's in Poland) but is it fair to the dead? I just don't know. Seems to be this is just too close to the bone, including the knuckle duster comments and arm flailing exampling for effect...

    Just back in weird, odd territory again I guess...
     
  3. RCG

    RCG Senior Member, Deceased

    Only one more episode left.

    So the question is, after they have studied the viewing figures,will they decide to make another series?
    After all they are not going to worry about the reason why people watched, only about the money it has generated.

    Can we do anything to stop them?
     
  4. Ramiles

    Ramiles Researching 9th Lancers, 24th L and SRY

    Having finally managed to watch the whole ghastly thing it did dawn on me why perhaps it had not been shown in Poland as going under the title "War Treasure Searches" it's conclusions seemed to pertain to the uncovering of a massacre of retreating German civilians.

    In conclusion I say that this one was a mis-match of two halves and in this case two halves didn't make much of a whole.
    Bit of a curate's egg* (though I am struggling very hard to find its good qualities, the reassuring captions that say periodically that they are doing everything properly that just pop up just when it looks like things are really going off the rails is reassuring perhaps ;) )

    Interesting wiki page:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Gottlieb

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Gottlieb#Media
    "A documentary series set in Eastern Europe, featuring Gottlieb as one of four principal cast members..." and it goes on...

    As regards who the media thinks watches these shows, I record it, and then delete it, so sadly I don't get to watch any of the adverts. So someone's wasting their money there... just so they know ;)

    * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curate%27s_egg
     
  5. Ramiles

    Ramiles Researching 9th Lancers, 24th L and SRY

  6. Ramiles

    Ramiles Researching 9th Lancers, 24th L and SRY

    Another curate's egg, the latest episode I think. Perhaps a bit of a less of a stink to this one though, particularly as the ghastly thing is over now.

    Slightly more subdued and toned down in parts it seemed this one to me, and more poignant and perhaps a bit more respectful in parts. Slightly more actual archaeology seemed to come out. But the worrying aspects of the show still seemed to be there in spades. But I can but dig the dirt I guess...

    The wracking up assessment of the monetary valuing of artifacts was still there, particularly when you have a dealer in what looked slightly more like a garage than a museum (perhaps this was just the back stage storage area) telling the locals that they have $5000, $10000 on their shelves (presumably these are US - not "local prices" here and there). It looked about as secure as any typical derelict garage site or farm track outhouse. And I suspect a crowbar and a hammer would be wending its way there in a trice, unless the show helped them up their security substantially with cc tv, armed guards and sniffer dogs after they left and broadcast this "advert" to the world, I just wonder now how much of this stuff and stuff like it cropped up subsequently, soon thereafter on ebay etc.

    I actually felt a bit sorry for them, having to handle unexploded ordinance as part of their job, the presenters, but particularly the bomb disposal experts they called in and a decent documentary could have been made just of this, and in other warzones and ex-warzones where unexploded shells and mines are commonly found, and have to be safely disposed of.

    Also the discovery of unmarked graves is laudable, and the dealing with such. But I can't help feeling that for one particular German family this chance discovery may give closure and/or come as quite a shock. Wouldn't it have been more respectful to wait/embargo this until this family were found and ask their permission first if the series could broadcast this exhumation on their show?

    It's the sort of thing that you can wrap your head around, how would we feel if a German or Japanese, even up-beat Top Gear esque Italian team were doing this in Normandy or North Africa or Malaya, Burma etc. and digging up the graves of British or Commonwealth, US etc. war dead, and broadcasting that they were doing it on the back of their expertise as dealers and finds metal detectorists as part of some almighty treasure hunt, albeit this time donating any "finds" to local museums that seem (purely on the face of it) to be abandoned garages or rusting farm outhouses there. I'd hazard that the "publicity" of such can only truly serve to raise the value of such artifacts, increase interest and thereby bring more to the market and encourage their trade, wherever they are likely to raise the highest price. If someone "finds" such things in Latvia now - they are going to think aren't they, right, take it to the local musuem and "where is my $500 the US guy said this was worth?", and when they (the local museum) say, "no you donate it here, we don't pay for this", they'd (the finders) soon think they've just got to find more and post haste ship it out to the US or wherever, deep apologies if that's not fair to any Latvian farmers or labourers here. But $500, $10,000 or $20,000 is a lot of money to some I guess. And the "Nazi War diggers" seem to be suggesting that what they are doing is encouraging people not to go out and just find this stuff, but if they do, wink wink, we know that they'll pop it down the local museum and just give it away. Shady logic at best. But if the caption says it's just so, I can but be reassured I guess.

    Not sure how to fill the deep hole in my life this, the last episode will leave.

    Might have to watch the "world at war" again or a re-re-repeat of timeteam once more now I guess ;)

    All the best,

    Rm.
     
  7. MLW

    MLW Senior Member

    Ironically, the field of archaeology has its origins in the treasure hunting and grave robbing of the late 1800s at Troy, in Mesopotamia, and Egypt. So, I guess we have not progressed all that far in the last 100 years or more.
     
  8. Heimbrent

    Heimbrent Well-Known Member

    Who do you mean by "we"?
    What the four nazi war diggers are doing in this series has nothing to do with archaeology.
     
  9. Ramiles

    Ramiles Researching 9th Lancers, 24th L and SRY

    Not according to this ;)
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeology

    But I suspect that treasure hunting and grave robbing date back a bit further than the 1800s anyhow. B)

    The Victorians were pretty advanced but they didn't do everything first.

    Perhaps you mean the field of popularised archaeology? But still "nazi war diggers" wasn't exactly that, I just think that the original name of the show before its re-branding "gave it away" better and was significantly more apt.

    Even popularised archaeology dates back pretty far and was usually a way to a means to garner more funds so that more digging could be pursued. And disbursements made to the local population and usually some local, happy bigwig, that pocketed a packet was "happy to look the other-way" as a result.

    The classics too are rampant with the treasure hunting (Golden Fleece) and grave digging (ring of the Nibelung) sort of stuff, along with the just turning up and saying - "right now I own this place, you lot just shoo..."

    The world wasn't some perfect utopia before the Victorians came along. Usually the ire of the gods though was meant to deal with transgressions of that type, hence the curse of the Mummy myth and melodrama of that type. Though people still ground em up and turned them into medicine, melted down whatever gold they could find and smashed stuff up to get at inlaid jewels. Even back in Cleopatra's time. Same with the oracle bones of the Chinese. Some bright spark saw them "first" in a medicine shop and realised that they carried writing, and they had been being dug up for years just to grind up and turn into a tonic I think for a sore head.

    People had been plundering Pompeii for hundreds of years, digging random pits before something more systematic came along, and told them what's what.

    Arguably many Egyptian tombs were designed with a eye to actually keeping people out. If the case is that they should have forever remained sealed, then a lot would have never have been found out. And we'd probably still be thinking that the earth was about 6,000 years old. The ancient Egyptians were seeking a form of immortality, they wanted their names to live on. I think in a sense at least some of them got that and thanks to some archaeology now get to rest with their valuables with (albeit quite often) a hefty crowd to see.

    If the case is that "we" (and by "we" who :) ) shouldn't have taken anything from there or indeed anywhere, then much of it all would by now have been irretrievably lost, not just in its context but also in wanton artifact destruction too (that's sadly all too often come about, by those that couldn't care less about what was there) in immeasurable ways. But I see the point too that by taking some of this "stuff" too early in archaeology's infancy much also has been lost.

    As regards plunderers, we have had too the Conquistadors, and those who plundered subsaharan Africa and the west African civilisations. All of whom plundered peoples that had done a fair bit of mayhem and plundering themselves. And some of the stolen Inca wealth the Spanish plundered was pinched on the high-seas by the English themselves... so oops for that.

    But we have progressed a long way in the last 100 years. People have Iphones now and selfies for heavensake!

    If all this feels like a step back in time it is because it is.

    Part of the program's premise is suggested in that "what they were doing was okay because it was better than the illegals" and that "this was a step-up on that".

    What's ironic is just how small "a step" this is, or else that it is actually a big step back. It's also something else to look at objects that have been buried for hundreds or even thousands of years and whom no one alive now could have known, in order to actually find stuff out.

    But to do so when the history and the mortal remains are so recent, and to actually be looking for the best and most pristine examples of things that you know are able to command a high price? Nope it's not archaeology.

    If they were looking for something unusual or out of the ordinary (and not judged by its cost) or even trying to actually primarily find something factual out, maybe, just perhaps.

    It was pretty clear from the state of the "museum" or the garage that they had plenty of WW2 helmets, guns and ephemera of kit they barely knew what to do with there. Adding to the weight on the shelves hardly goes far to explain what "it" was all for. The diggers seemed to be motivated simply by the desire to find for themselves one of some "thing" that they knew most likely must be there, a bit like watching someone go fish for fish in a barrel, and go after things that were "mass-produced to order" in generally large numbers quite recently in fact.

    That looks like "treasure" hunting to me, not looking for some greatly new significant find there. I suppose much of it could be "looted away" by black-diggers if we don't look out. But in order for people to want to "dig it" and "steal it" there has to be a market for such stuff out there. To reiterate this just seemed to be encouraging and condoning that, or at the very least continually referencing the fact that it was there. At some point someone could have said "and don't ever buy this stuff" or "at the very least be incredibly careful who you buy it from", avoid getting it from these parts of the world, cause all that stuff should be in a museum.

    It just seemed like a given that there's no hope whatsoever of that sentiment there.

    And the world rolls on much as it did before I guess.

    All the best,

    Rm.
     
  10. MLW

    MLW Senior Member

    By the way, I did start of my original post with "ironically", and 'we' means humanity as a whole. So, please do not get me wrong, what is portrayed in the TV series is wrong and I am not in favor of it all.

    Ramiles may be right, perhaps it all started earlier than the late 1800's. But it is also true that 'modern' archaeology's roots are in places like Troy and Mesopotamia where it was all about finding spectacular gold and artworks to take back to Europe, as well as the first digs in Egypt that destroyed the graves and mummies of innumerable common people that were not considered worthy of preservation. It was not until William Petrie, alarmed at what was going on, started to codify a scientific methodology.
     
  11. Little Friend

    Little Friend Senior Member

    I watched two episode and thought what a bunch of Cowboys. Childish, argumentative idiots.
     
  12. Ramiles

    Ramiles Researching 9th Lancers, 24th L and SRY

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