yassakool: the-alt-historian: fruitflyfairy: erwin-und-panzer: the-alt-historian: erwin-und-panzer:
yassakool: the-alt-historian: fruitflyfairy: erwin-und-panzer: the-alt-historian: erwin-und-panzer: enragedshithead: the-alt-historian: Germany’s famous unit of immortal soldiers pose with their heads in their hands, 1921. The Immortals, ordinary men resurrected from death by a process as yet unknown, served with honour in the First World War until they were liquidated (by being burned to death, the only way they could be killed) by the Weimar Republic in 1924. What the fuck what the fuck SOMEONE EXPLAIN THIS TO ME The description basically says it all. The man on the far left is Oberleutnant Hans von Pommen, the commander of the unit. In the last month of the Battle of Verdun he was stabbed 18 times, shot twice by French snipers and stepped on a land mine. The land mine was the hardest thing for him to recover from, but he eventually grew back his missing legs.Third from the right is Feldwebel Ulrich Mannstein, who single-handedly (ie both by himself, and with only one arm) stopped a charge of Mk V Females on the Somme.I’m sure there are some other famous ones there. The description doesn’t mention that the French eventually had dedicated flame units to deal with the Immortals. The unit was originally 150 strong. some pertinent quotations regarding the Immortals: “Coming back is like waking up from a deep sleep, a sleep that fills you like quicksand. When you wake up it’s like breaking the surface of a scummy pond. I’ve never felt as energized or strong as after I’ve come back.”– Oberleutenant Hans von Pommern, Belgium 1914“I feel good. I feel fine. After a few times you don’t even notice the pain anymore.” – Gefreiter Georg Steinbrenner, after having his spine broken in three places and one arm severed by a shell impact. France 1916.“We don’t need weapons anymore! We don’t need tools of any sort, we are invincible, we’re fucking gods on Earth!”– Unteroffizier Wilhelm Eichelberger, France 1915“How did I do it? Focus, that’s all. Focus is really all you need.”– Feldwebel Ulrich Mannstein, on how he knocked out four Mark V Females with nothing but a sharpened shovel and grenades“I can’t do this anymore, please don’t wake me up I’m not going back I’M NOT!”– unidentified Immortal, German aid station, 1917. The words were recorded in the war diaries of Hauptmann Friedrich Ritter von Sternberg, the attending surgeon, who later wrote that “such plaintive screams, coming from a man whose entire face was a wet and bloody pulp, cut me to my very core”“Their demeanour was strange, almost cheery, as we started up the flamethrowers. Quite unsettling were their guttural cries as they burned, strange animal shouts of pleasure and joy. We had all heard the stories of how they became unhinged towards the end. I hope the government has the good sense not to re-start a project like this.”– unidentified Provisional Reichswehr officer who witnessed the burning, 1925 “The jerries walked right through our lines. Can’t have been more than a platoon. I saw only one of them fall, an FT had blasted him with its cannon and took the top half of his body off. If I hadn’t known better I’d say he kept crawling. It was then that I noticed the French were bringing up some guys who had the weirdest apparatus attached to their backs. Looked almost like they were wearing some sort of deep sea suit. Heavily armoured with two tanks on the back, carrying a pipe which had a cable streaming out from the tanks. I don’t know what was more terrible, the Germans who didn’t die, or the weapons the French used… I’m still haunted to this day.” - Corporal Alan Michael, American Expeditionary Force recounting an incident in 1918 I call bullshit. Theres no way that this is real. look up “They Wouldn’t Die: Memoirs of An Investigation into Germany’s Most Secret Military Unit” published 1931 by CPT Jacob Klemenz, USMC. Klemenz came face-to-face with members of the Immortals during the Great War, and afterwards embarked on a decade-plus research project to find out why and how they existed. his account is for sure on Project Gutenberg, it’s a little dry but makes for fascinating reading Quick correction, U.S. Marines use the “Capt” abbreviation for Captain, since we’re stodgy and cling to a lot of stuff that predates the Civil War. Otherwise, he also had entries in the oral histories at the Counterintelligence School I attended. Fun fact: most organized intelligence fields at the time wrote nothing down in order to prevent the theft of information, so now all those accounts are reproduced in written oral histories. Given their sensitive nature, you won’t see them outside secure facilities, so Klemenz’s first reports of the Immortals (plus some other stuff most people haven’t heard of and even Klemenz wasn’t allowed to write about in memoir) are required reading while attending the school. -- source link