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Comment by peaton | Hacker News Reader

Wow, I guess this is what would have happened online during World War II if it happened in modern times. Interesting historic landmark as far as information dissemination during confrontations/wars.

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relevant: https://twitter.com/RealTimeWWII "@RealTimeWWII is a Twitter feed describing the events of World War II, created by British historian and Oxford grad Alwyn Collinson(...)."

Are they basing it on the right dates and wrong year, or is it simply starting from the creating of the page?

They're using the right dates. So today's tweets are for August 1942.

According to the Wikipedia page[1], "Collinson [the author] began the feed in late August 2011, to coincide with the start of World War II with the German Invasion of Poland in September 1939. He has tweeted the events of the war as they happened on each date and time exactly 72 years earlier."

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/@RealTimeWWII

This is pretty cool. It'd be interesting to have a personal service set up around this such that it starts sending messages just to you with "news" updates. I briefly looked at these tweets, but since I didn't follow @RealTimeWWII when it first started, I cannot get the full effect.

More broadly, I'd love to see the original coverage for a few historical events. My most recent curiosity is the Watergate scandal. What was on TV at the time? What were people saying? I know what the scandal "was" but I don't know how people reacted to it. I was I could in some fashion reproduce it at the time and see what was going on.

History as a Service. Scheduled notifications about historical events relayed in "virtual real time" from a start date of your choosing.

Like a DVR (or Netflix streaming) for history.

No, it's not at all what happened when the Nazi's advanced in WWII. If you watch the Vice News reports, it seems that the people are ambivalent to who rules over them, they just want the fighting to stop. In contrast, in WWII, the Nazis were not much liked by the occupied peoples.

While it was a little bloody (mainly through assassinations), there was a sizable faction within Austria that hailed the unification of Germany and Austria. The Reich was cheered by thousands on their celebratory tour through the country in 1938.

> it seems that the people are ambivalent to who rules over them

Based on my contacts in Ukrane (4 colleagues), no, they are not ambivalent. They don't want Russia in their country.

Hell, we've had to help one of those 4 re-locate due to the invasion.

Nonsense. Go read a book. When the Nazi's rolled into Austria they were met by cheering crowds.

The similarities between these 2 conflicts is extremely eerie.

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