re: Where would you have rather been a soldier: Stalingrad or Verdun?

I think both battles had their own unique style of misery. Trench warfare in and of itself was brutally miserable - especially during the rainy season. And of course the extreme cold of the Russian winter made things around Stalingrad unbearably cold, especially for the Germans.

Take this...over 1.1 million Russians were killed, wounded, captured, or listed as missing around Stalingrad. 1.1 million casualties in a little over 5 months of combat. 1.2 million Americans (both Union and Confederate) were killed, wounded, captured or listed as missing in the four years of our Civil War. One battle on the Eastern Front almost cost the Russians more casualties than Americans lost in the entirety of the Civil War! Think about that for a minute.

Was it Verdun, Somme or Ypres that had a day with the most casualties in the history of warfare?

On an off related note, I always sympathized with the French people's stance against Bush Jr's 2003 war in Iraq. Even though some of the republican blowhards who never served a day in the military, mocked the French by calling them cowards and changed the name of French fries to freedom fries in the congressional cafeteria.

The massive human toll these battles took on the French Army should be self explanatory- but there were many more, and makes our civil war look like child's play. One of those battles saw 10 times the casualties in one day as the deadliest day of the civil war at Antietam. The worst part is France had little to nothing to gain from participating in that horrible war.

They also had the unfortunate geographical location when Germany was under Hitler's rule a generation later. Much of their country was under German rule until VE day.

Both

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The weather was better.... at Verdun

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Like saying you’d rather die by being eaten alive by red ants rather than by gnats.

I’ve been to Verdun a couple of times. It was hell during WWI. Just like Stalingrad was hell ver.wwii

There was a Japanese dude who was at Hiroshima for the atomic bomb, and fled from there to his home in....yup, Nagasaki just in time for atomic bomb number two.

He died in 2010 at 93 of stomach cancer. Wikipedia Link

Also I think there was the same person (a woman) on the wrecks of the Titanic and the Brittanic and the Olympic.

What are some cool WW2 related things to look at on google earth?? That’s one of my favorite timekillers