France’s Zone Rouge – A Forbidden No Man’s Land Poisoned by War (2015)
messynessychic.com
messynessychic.com
In fact, after the war, the red zones were quite extensive, but there was an intense lobbying to reopen these lands to agriculture.
In the 20ies, a farmer detonated an unexploded ammunition was not an uncommon occurrence.
Nowadays, this is a really rare event, I think there was a case in Belgium about 10 years ago, but it's quite uncommon.
However, when you dig, you always find something. My mother started a small garden (about 4 x 8 meters) a few years ago and when she worked the soil for the first time, she found various leftovers like shell heads, shell fragments, bullets, lead spheres used in shrapnel rounds, etc.
And it's not uncommon to find unexploded shells on the side of the roads, farmers when they find them, put them on the side of their fields.
When my mother was a child in the 50ies and 60ies, she used to help her parents collect these various metal fragments as it was a way to get a small additional revenue for the family. When we cleaned-up my late grand-father's house, there were buckets full of those in fact. There was also an unpinned unexploded grenade by the way. If I recall correctly, they called the local "garde champetre" to deal with it, and it's still in his attributions to deal with such finds.
However, there are some big ammunition depots in north of France with all these WWI shells collected over the years. And a lot of those shells are still not neutralized.
Also, another interesting side effect is all the cemeteries in the area, the land is literally peppered with them. And these cemeteries are UK territories (In fact the Thiepval monument is one of the highest structure on UK soil and in continental Europe). This was actually a blocker for a nearby city (Albert) when they tried to extend their airport, they were blocked by these cemeteries.
This seems to be something that some British tourists like to do. At Paris Gare du Nord where you board the Eurostar train to London there are signs saying that you are not allowed to bring explosives that you dug up as souvenirs on board a fricking train.
> In fact the Thiepval monument is one of the highest structure on UK soil and in continental Europe
What do you mean? Highest in what sense? According to Wikipedia it's 43 meters high, which isn't a lot, so that cannot be what you mean.
As for the Thiepval monument, I meant one of the tallest building on sovereign UK soil, but outside the British Isles. However, I've heard in a casual conversation, I'm not sure it's actually true. Yet, it's definitely a big memorial monument ^^, you can see it from miles away.
(Though, off-topically, I don't necessarily buy the "UK soil" part. Supposedly even the "embassies are foreign soil" thing is more of an urban legend than legal reality. Also, the monument being the property of the UK should be enough to block its destruction.)
It depends on what you mean by "foreign soil." Embassies are extraterritorial--as the name implies, it does not represent a claim on land, but the laws of the diplomat's country, not the host country, generally apply. This difference is sometimes crucial: being born in an embassy would not give you jus soli citizenship and GWB set up the terrorist prison in Guantanamo Bay to try to ensure that the Constitution wouldn't apply (since Guantanamo Bay isn't US soil, it's a base leased to the US by Cuba).
Yes, it might be a little more complex than that:
> On 29 December 1915, a law was passed creating a right to a perpetual resting place on French soil to any soldier in the French army or Allied army who had died for France. The land that contains the UK's war cemeteries abroad is held "in perpetuity" by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC)
Every time they dig to start a new building, they find some exploded bombs. And each time, it's an evacuation of a lot of people in the city center to deal with it (easily a few hundred meters which in a city center means a few thousands people).
However, leftover bombs from WWII are a bit different. They tend to be bigger, hundreds of kilograms where the "typical" shell you find in old WWI battlefields are less than 10 kilograms. Also the problematic is a little different since on one side, it's a medium to big city, on the other it's mostly the countryside.
Birmingham is the same. There was a WWII bomb found last year right by two major roads where they cross a railway line. Travel into the city centre was completely stuffed up for two days. I felt the controlled explosion three miles away.
Normal shells are fairly easy to dispose of using explosives, so those might be poison gas shells. I know Belgium had an enormous backlog in destroying such shells in Houthulst even as recent as 15 years ago (http://www.greatwar.nl/frames/default-houthulstn.html), but don’t know what happened with it (at the time, there were talks on the urgency of cleaning it up)
And yet, this is a real thing that happened, and is a part of our past. A generation who very soon will only be ancestors the living participated in battles so destructive that they did this to the land they were fought on. I find that difficult to fathom.
Of course, humans have only gotten better at killing each other since, and WW2 was more destructive overall. But the static nature of the Western front, combined with the unrestrained use of artillery and gas, and the total commitment of manpower on both sides in places like Verdun, gave its battles an apocalyptic intensity that I think is unmatched in any war before or since. And that, hopefully, we won't ever see again.
The only reason WW2 had more combat casualties than WWI is that the USSR decided to defend their country with a meat wall of unprepared soldiers. That generation of Russians had like an 80% casualty rate or something crazy like that. Nearly wiped out an entire generation.
The Russians, and the people of the USSR, like all the allied forces, died heroically in the battlefield fighting fascists. Calling them a "meat wall" really fucking grinds my gears as it's extremely insulting and derogatory to the dead.
They lost most of the munitions and equipment in first _months_ of war, and lost half of the factories as well.
So they had to rely on lend-lease from much-hated capitalists.
And yes, human waves (if you don't like other term) and general disregard for human lives were common in Soviet tactics. That's the reason for staggering losses (they still cannot get their number right, now there are talks that USSR losses were 2x higher, i.e. ~40 millions).
He is not.
> specifically in terms of infantrymen operating in fire teams that shared one rifle among several men attacking the enemy in enfillade
That's bullshit straight from Enemy at the Gates and CoD2.
> is described in Zhukov's memoirs
I happen to have them on my shelf, I'd like you to point me to the pages you're referring.
Or Eisenhower memoirs? He mentions a quote from Zhukov:
> There are two kinds of mines; one is the personnel mine and the other is the vehicular mine. When we come to a mine field our infantry attacks exactly as if it were not there.
Now, in the context: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6rabb3/did_t...
Thank you, good sir, I will drink myself out.
But before I indulge myself into drowning myself in beer, can you please elaborate, where you'd saw a 'pop history nonsense'?
Well, I don't know where you did, but you shild ask for a refund if that's what you got on the Eastern Front after several years.
> where you'd saw a 'pop history nonsense'?
> They lost most of the munitions and equipment in first _months_ of war, and lost half of the factories as well.
Indeed, they lost a lot of (mostly obsolete) equipment, but still were able to out produce the Germans from 1942 on in most areas.
> and lost half of the factories as well.
And still had enough to bring back to the Urals (as well as pre-established ones) to keep war industry running.
> And yes, human waves (if you don't like other term) and general disregard for human lives were common in Soviet tactics.
Yah, that's German propaganda for you man. They were
> That's the reason for staggering losses
Absolutely nothing to do with the litteral extermination of Soviet PoW by the Germans (more than 3M deaths).
> now there are talks that USSR losses were 2x higher, i.e. ~40 millions
Is unsourced rumor that literally more than one out of 5 Soviet citizen died in the war really worth to mention?
> human waves were common in Soviet tactics
Please let me show you some orders directly from Zhukov:
The commanders of the divisions are personally at fault for the 49th Army's failure to accomplish its objectives and for its heavy casualties. They still grossly violate the instructions of Comrade Stalin and the order of the Front regarding the use of massed artillery to achieve a breakthrough, and about the tactics and techniques of attacking the defenses of populated areas. The units of the 49th Army for many days criminally continue their head-on attacks on Kostino, Ostrozhnoye, Bogdanovo and Potapovo without any success, while suffering heavy losses.
Even a person with basic military education can understand that these settlements are very suitable defensive positions. The areas in front of these settlements are ideal for firing upon, but despite this the criminally conducted attacks continue in the same places. As a result of the stupidity and indiscipline of the organizers, people pay with their lives, without bringing any benefit to the Motherland.
If you still want to keep your current ranks, I demand:
Immediately stop the criminal head-on attacks on the settlements. Stop the head-on attacks on heights with good firing positions. When attacking make full use of ravines, forests and terrain that is not easily fired upon. Immediately breakthrough between the settlements and, without waiting for their complete fall, tomorrow capture Sloboda, Rassvet and advance up to Levshina. Report the execution of the order to me by 24:00 of 27 January.
Yes, there were stupid head-on attacks from inexperienced and/or incompetent officers. No, they were not “common Soviet tactics”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battles_of_Rzhev
Zhukov was a commander. Read about the ammunition famine - 3 bullets per rifle. Sounds like a meat wave to me.
Are you aware of their reluctancy to show true numbers? In 1946 they've declared the number of losses as 7 millions. 15 years later - 20 millions. 40 years later - 27 millions.
Now, 70 years later, they're talking about 40 millions.
You mean before they were fighting alongside the facsists. I mean that sounds great and heroic if you completely ignore the fact that Russia and Germany were allies and co-invaded Eastern Europe, thus starting the European front war.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov–Ribbentrop_Pact
But I will agree with you, Russia probably did the most to turn the tide of the war, but they really didn't have a choice. Hitler turned on them and they were fortunate to be included in the allied forces rather than defending their motherland against everybody. Patton wanted to drive into Russia after Germany and we were the only nuclear power in the world.
I mean in WWI, they abandoned the allied war effort before they slaughtered the Romanov's and in WW2 they started on the axis side. In between the government starved millions of people. What were you saying about anti-communist propaganda? Sounds like they don't need any help in that regard.
>Calling them a "meat wall" really fucking grinds my gears as it's extremely insulting and derogatory to the dead.
Give me a break, I'm sure Poland really weeps for them. Read about what the Soviets did when entering Germany (not that Germany was any better invading Russia).
I read that claim quite often, it's not entirely accurate: "The Buzzfeed claim is overstated, although not by a wide margin. Around two thirds (more exactly, 68%) of the original 1923 male birth cohort did not survive World War II. But the war is not the most important reason for the poor survival rate; almost half of them died before the war broke out."
More: http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/markharrison/entry/was_the_soviet...
He speaks at length about the Battle of Verdun. And it toss house list of places and battles he's never want to be at.
I also enjoyed Celtic Holocaust, which is a more approachable length.
Maybe I picked a wrong episode or need to give it another try.
I think if you come into the series believing you’ll hear a straight up factual recount of events without bias, you’ll be disappointed. It’s more of a discussion (albeit in monologue form) than documentary. That said I find he treads the topic very carefully, trying hard to present the case in different lights – I think this might be why it’s a bit long winded at times. At the same time, this is what gives it color in my opinion. He’s also a very good narrator I feel.
I wouldn’t base a history paper off of these episodes, but I’d be comfortable in using them as a starting point for deeper dives.
Likewise Black Adder series concluded with a similar visual contrast: https://youtu.be/vH3-Gt7mgyM?t=176
People live there, there are farms everywhere, and many, many small cities and villages.
Some forbidden areas might still exists, and I wouldn't be surprised about people finding relics of the war (bunkers ruins are a common sight on the nearby beaches for example), but it's nowhere near as pictured on the map.
> Until the mid 1970s, much of the “clean-up” was only done superficially, destroying hundreds of thousands of unexplored WWI chemical bombs without considering the leaks and contamination to the soil and water.
> Alarming amounts of lead debris scattered by shrapnel were also left in place, contaminating the soil with non biodegradable lead, mercury and zinc likely to remain for at least 10,000 years to come.
In addition, you don't get obviously sick from heavy metals such as mercury or lead unless it's a large enough amount to result in acute poisoning symptoms. It has an effect in the tiniest amounts though, and it bio-accumulates.
I never saw any of the "forbidden" signs anywhere on the other hand.
Which doesn't mean it's not a thing, I don't pretend to know all the area, it just means it's small enough in size and in remote areas, so that a local don't stumble upon this anymore.
Given my own experience as someone who had a (lab test proven) chronic heavy metal poisoning and what my (university researcher) doctor told me, but also what I know from the history of lead until and even after it got banned from gasoline, your assumption that people (officials) care is probably unwarranted.
What cannot be seen, and what does not have any immediately recognizable and attributable effects, but on the other hand causes large costs, is usually dismissed by most people, and pointing it out is "irrational" and "fear mongering". There are people who want to go back to Chernobyl, only recently (on HN?) there was an article about young people illegally going there, claiming there is no problem. That's individuals - the incentive is even higher for officials not impacted by any negative effects, but who are impacted when they "hinder the economy with useless regulations".
> a local don't stumble upon this anymore.
A local won't notice. Not even if they themselves slowly get poisoned by small trace amounts. From experience, you cannot tell the effects of low-dose chronic heavy metal poisoning from thousands of other little problems (unless you take chelators for long periods to see if they change anything; but they themselves don't do all that much since they only work in extracellular space, but much or most of the poison is stored inside cells in chronic poisoning). Eye sight suffers? RSI symptoms? Dry eyes? Occasional muscle cramps here and there? Bowel problems? Skin issues (e.g. psoriasis, etc.)? Easily stressed? Occasionally slightly aggressive for no apparent reason? It is subtle, and every single symptom can be attributed to "age", "stress", "that's normal" ("everybody has problems"). As I said, you don't get recognizably sick in any traditional sense. In addition, even if a doctor knows about the problem and would be willing to diagnose it, it actually is impossible on an individual basis since you cannot reliably measure body burden unless you cut pieces off of organs and send them to a lab. Alternatively, one can try chelation for very long periods (6-12 months at least) and see if that helps with anything. All very impractical.
So, since it's impossible to reliably recognize (on an individual basis - it would require population statistics, large samples), nothing happens. See the lead discussions that came up after Flint, when it was in the news that there were a lot more places than Flint with lead problems. It's all out of the news again by now - guess what is going to happen with all those places.... I'd say nothing at all.
For perspective, in the German state of Bavaria there still is an active alert for radioactive wild boar caused by Chernobyl fallout, which I would think was a lot less than what happened in the trenches of WWI (scale, yes I know, one is about radioactivity, the other one about "only" heavy metals and chemical poisons): http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/a-quarter-cent...
That seems too high to be true. The page doesn't give the source, but I wonder if something like bioavailability got misinterpreted as composition.
I found this study (https://hal-insu.archives-ouvertes.fr/insu-01267232/document) but I am afraid I don't know how to read the results.
I assume that 17% is the absolute maximum proportion of arsenic ever found in a single small sample.
These commas appear to be thousands separators, so that's a maximum of 73 grams per kilogram or 7% per mass of a soil sample. I'm not a doctor, but I would advise against eating significant amounts of these soil samples.
I always found that hard to credit, but the man is otherwise always sober in reporting, so perhaps not.
Countless millions of people were killed - not known even to the million precision - in many wars and terror campaigns there during XX century.
In each case, there's were lot of red lines that threatened the "country's honour" (read: the governments credibility), quite a few powerful factions that were to gain of a war and somehow , partly with the help of those factions and those read lines, it all spiraled out of control.
Not unlike what we see today with US (or NATO) vs Russia/Iran/Syria/NK and China to a somewhat lesser extent.
Yea, no, that's S.T.A.L.K.E.R. concept art.
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/Dxk4E
It's been commonly used in web pieces about the Zone Rouge, but there doesn't appear to be any real connection. (And some of the details of the piece make no sense in that context, like the unburied corpse in the foreground or the heavily armed figure on the left side.)