Re: Best history of WWII

On Jun 7, 10:34 am, Joel Shepherd <joels...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
That's not to demean the folks who were there, or suggest that their
accounts have no value, or are just made-up stories. But one should be a
little cautious about giving them great weight, at least not without
some corroborating evidence.

Yes, you have to be very careful with eyewitnesses, especially after
so long a time. I had a history prof in college who was wheelchair-
bound as a result of a wound in early April 1945. At various times,
he told people that he had been shot by an enemy infantryman, and at
other times injured by a bomb from a German plane. He recalled being
at the liberation of Dachau.

As it turns out, his official personnel record has him being wounded
and paralyzed many miles from Dachau, and a few weeks before the US
Army arrived there. I don't think he was deliberately lying about
anything . . . I think in his years of hospitalization he must have
traded stories with other guys and ended up remembering some things
wrong.

The older I get, the more allowances I make for the vagaries of
memory, my own and others'.

Narr

.