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. geoff501

    geoff501 Achtung Feind hört mit

    Watched it all on demand. I needed to to subit an Ofcom complaint.
     
  2. geoff501

    geoff501 Achtung Feind hört mit

    Probably not. Plenty of ghoulish metal detectorist site available.
     
  3. Ramiles

    Ramiles Researching 9th Lancers, 24th L and SRY

    The premise just seems too weird. Unsettling. A mismatch. It feels like it's been cut from a different version too, where stuff went on that now they don't want now to tell us about. Still don't understand quite where the "over-excited shooting on the range" is meant to fit in, and all four of them jumping in on top of a freshly opened grave to fight over a trowel before "tenderly" reaching in to lift out a skull, I actually thought one of them was going to really prove that they could "act" by going "Alas poor yorick," still I didn't know him so... any thing of value down there?

    The "insets" where we "get to know what was going on in their minds" are also sometimes deeply unsettling too. Like some chap off in a field prodding about having a find and just being told after the event - "oh you're lucky, had this been live like in this marshy ground so many of them are you'd have been blown to bits!" (health and safety anyone!) It's a wonder after that that he wasn't a gibbering wreck. Or pulling out what the guy clearly thought at first was a grenade pin on a potentially live WW2 era grenade and clearly feared that said unearthed WW2 grenade was now about to explode and kill them all! was actually a very obvious German razor. Close shave anyone? (i thought someone might say ;) )

    Still the ability to pick out historic detail and identity from other mere fragments and scraps seemed laudable (to anyone I guess?), however pricing such up by adding 600 or 2000 Euro "for that one" seems to show a dealers eye and level of expertise, rather than an archaeological mind, don't see Phil Harding much picking up bit of iron age flint and saying £20, £50, £300 oooh! £2000 kerching! and also isn't this just an encouragement to see such things as foremost as having monetary value, as WW2 collectibles, rather than contextual historical artifacts? and must appeal more to those of such a mind. They even at once stage once said that they were collecting German stuff because obviously it was worth more than other stuff.

    My tastes don't run to collecting old German WW2 stuff, but I can understand the urge to collect certain things. Also if it was something that my grandfather had brought back I think I'd treasure it none the less.

    I think Ch5 should have just gone the whole hog and just kept this called "Nazi War Diggers" - so that people knew more what to expect. It seems like a perfectly adequate name for such a show, and far less ambiguous than "Battlefield Recovery".

    Googling "Battlefield Recovery wiki" takes you to this:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlefield_archaeology

    "The discipline is distinct from military history in that it seeks to answer different questions, including the experiences of ordinary soldiers in wider political frameworks. Therefore, battlefield archaeology is not concerned, primarily, with the causes of conflict but of the sites where conflict actually took place, and of the archaeology of the event"

    Doesn't say anything about "and then selling it on"

    Perhaps though they should have done this more extensively first:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeological_field_survey

    Rather than apparently having a chat with a local and then sending a bulldozer in, digging a few holes and just hoping for the best...

    Just odd, odd, odd. Not particularly impressed. Ch5 please bring in a professor or two so we can have some context to what these people are up to. They say that they have a local museum contact on-board and all the right permits etc. but why not show the viewers said museum and some of the (tortuous?) process that they went through in order to get these permissions to dig. Otherwise people won't know that you don't just go out with a detector and spade whilst on your Latvia hols and just plunge straight in and hope for the best... how easy are such permits to obtain and clearly they can't go digging there without some more support than just the four of them and a digger - so where are the shots of all the ancillaries, university, museum types with clipboards/notepads, digital cameras and rulers etc. measuring everything up and all the rest? Perhaps they (the ancillaries) are just shy, or are all in another field, archaeology perhaps? ;) - I hope at the end of the "show" they show the museum and the exhibits on display. Perhaps not in the "gift shop" though.

    All the best,

    Rm.
     
    Swiper and Heimbrent like this.
  4. STAN50

    STAN50 Senior Member

    I watched part way through the episode where the human remains were unearthed and removed. I have to agree to this was slightly uncomfortable to watch.

    Having said that, they did present the remains to a Germany cemetery at the end of the programme.

    Not sure though whether at the point of finding human remains they were right to continue. Although not quite the same I know, but here in the U.K. if you find a body in the ground when involved with a historic dig - maybe say with a WW2 aircraft dig for example, you are required to advise the authorities.

    If nothing else maybe it would have been nice to see a member of the clergy brought in at that point to say something appropriate, rather than just the group of friends speculating over how the poor soul died and removing the body parts.

    Also, with the possibility of still active and maybe even unstable ordinance in the ground I'm not sure whether I would have approached the chosen sites using a JCB bucket. But then I suppose how does one get down to the area they want to search otherwise would be the response to that.

    So an interesting programme yes, but for me slightly disturbing.

    And one has to agree that these programmes will most probably cause others to become motivated in doing similar. People often copy each other.
     
  5. Over Here

    Over Here Junior Member

    Can't be bothered to watch, but have seen similar in the past no doubt. Grave robbing plain and simple. On the other hand, can't say I blame the Russians for not giving a damn considering what was done to them. I'm surprised they tolerate the presence of any such graves on their territory. Must be a big market just in Ukraine for SS stuff these days.

    The Germans must have spent more trouble and transport herding Jews to extermination than they did transporting their war dead.

    Still the dead of Waterloo were turned into bone meal in the end, IIRC, so things have improved a bit since then.
     
  6. geoff501

    geoff501 Achtung Feind hört mit

  7. geoff501

    geoff501 Achtung Feind hört mit

    Why take the remains to a cemetery? Bet he was an actor, part of the script.
     
    Drew5233 likes this.
  8. Ramiles

    Ramiles Researching 9th Lancers, 24th L and SRY

  9. Drew5233

    Drew5233 #FuturePilot 1940 Obsessive

    That was bullshit taking those remains to the cemetery. Anyone notice the almost seamless edit where he originally mistook the Femur for a Humerus until he put the bone up against his arm and one of the others said 'It's a leg bone' :lol:
     
  10. SDP

    SDP Incurable Cometoholic

    I agree with Andy (drew); that cemetery scene must have been totally concocted. I honestly can't believe that the Authorities responsible for that cemetery would have given their permission for such disrespectful filming and certainly no genuine official would have accepted the 'grave digging trophies' in that way.....complete with 'trophy razor'. That scene alone is enough to condemn these low scum idiots even without the rest of this disgraceful programme. I hope for the sake of decency that Channel 5 provide more information about those human remains (i.e. confirm that they were properly deposited with the appropriate Authorities)....and confirm that they will be given a proper burial in full accordance with current (German War Graves?) practice.

    Programmes with lads being lads, having jolly japes, being silly and generally larking about can, of course, be highly successful: it's called Top Gear and it can provide great entertainment. If this particular programme was meant to be 'entertainment' then I suppose they've got to score 10/10......but it wasn't, was it?

    On a more serious note, what this programme has taught 'likeminded' people is that it's OK to go around digging up battlefields and playing with live ammunition.......great fun...I suppose the rest of us could always follow them around (but not too close) to eventually pick up their pieces and have a jolly laugh at their still warm humerus...or femur......or brainless skull.......!

    Question: what are the OFCOM guidelines about this sort of thing? Got to be against some Code of Practice or something.
     
  11. Paul Reed

    Paul Reed Ubique

    Highly questionable television - the fallout from which may hamper future, serious, TV studies of WW2 battlefield archaeology, sadly.
     
  12. STAN50

    STAN50 Senior Member

    Sadly there probably is a lot of people carrying out these sorts of activities quietly.

    Metal detecting is easy to get involved with and random trespass happens all the time.

    Have to agree with one of the recent comments above: the final scene of the remains being presented to the German cemetery could have been staged. Guess we won't know for sure unless someone has the inclination to look into it.
     
  13. Heimbrent

    Heimbrent Well-Known Member

    They are :)
     
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  14. SDP

    SDP Incurable Cometoholic

    Like no doubt all others and, indeed, yourself, I sincerely hope you are wrong. Hopefully this case can be used to bear down on these people such that some good could come out of it in the end.
     
  15. BrianM59

    BrianM59 Senior Member

    Have done several Battlefield Detectives for C5, or 'Five' as we have to know them now and while I haven't seen this particular programme, it appears that their ethical standards have taken a big dip - although, they are owned by Paul Raymond now, so perhaps no surprise there? I encountered the Gallipoli Diggers while in Turkey, which was an interesting take - the law there was pretty clear, you can't take material away from the battlefield, but these guys had large collections. The whole area had been recently demilitarised and is still pretty remote - you need a jeep to get to a lot of sites - so the battlefield is very well preserved. However, there was still a large military presence and a lot of negotiations with both civil and military authorities was necessary before filming could take place. Personally, I wouldn't have wandered about with a metal detector, even if I'd had the inclination and as far as I know, it wasn't by any means a common pursuit.

    There is a lot of spent ammunition underfoot as well as shrapnel, sundry lumps of metal and unexploded ordnance, quite often to be found in villages on the battlefield. In certain places, you come across bones - not fragments, but whole human bones. The accepted protocol was to place these in one of the ossuaries where they are interred regularly. The Turkish practice was like the French, to use ossuaries for unknown remains and individual burials where identity was known - the French cemetery at Morto Bay is beautiful and both practices are evident.

    In the end, the Diggers were so cagey about being interviewed and we weren't convinced it was ethical, so they didn't go in the programme. On the other hand, I have been up to Imber on Salisbury Plain at Easter and watched grown men dragging rotting belts of ammunition from hedgerows and digging live clips out of soil while their children watched. One bloke saw me observing, perhaps skeptically as there are signs everywhere telling you not to, and his retort was ,'they're only blanks' - they weren't, but hey ho.....
     
  16. RCG

    RCG Senior Member, Deceased

  17. Mark Hone

    Mark Hone Senior Member

    Brian-Paul Raymond died in 2008. I think you mean Richard Desmond, but he sold Channel 5 to US media giant Viacom in September 2014.
     
  18. BrianM59

    BrianM59 Senior Member

    Thanks Mark - I just thought 'pornographer' and there it was....apparently National Geographic ordered the programme in early 2014 and Viacom, who beat NG to the bid (paying £450 million!) took over in September as you say.
     
  19. Ramiles

    Ramiles Researching 9th Lancers, 24th L and SRY

    http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2015-08-26/tony-robinson-time-team-could-return-with-a-reboot-like-top-gear

    And this is not it. Or is it perhaps? :(

    There's some interesting (fairly recent 10/1/2016 serious comment) here:

    https://conflictantiquities.wordpress.com/2016/01/10/nazi-war-diggers-battlefield-recovery-media-market-online-trading/

    With this there for example:

    "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???

    &

    [Military historian and battlefield guide Rob Schäfer points out that ‘legally [German] WW2 dog-tags are property of the Wehrmacht Information Office in Berlin (WASt)’; ‘digging, trading, [selling] them is a criminal offence‘; it’s ‘one of the reasons Ebay Germany was forced to stop them being listed‘.]

    I am starting to wonder why on earth this series is still being run. But if it is perhaps part of some on going police investigation C5 might perhaps be scheduling it so as to provide a stream of evidence for the police. I would reiterate the warning though to "Still, be careful what you say" even though it doesn't appear to be advice that the "presenters" have taken in the show, if there are some "serious questions to answer" I hope someone involved will nevertheless endeavour to do so.

    Well one can only hope perhaps...
     
  20. SDP

    SDP Incurable Cometoholic

    Watching for a couple of minutes at random as its on at the moment. Unashamed argumentative souvenir hunting. Total disgrace.
     

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