(Mirror.)
Although the Second World War is a well‐known historical period, anthropological recoveries, especially of enlisted soldiers, are rare for the period. […] According to the biological profile of the soldiers recovered, a wide range of ages was represented (18–50 years old). This air force population contained young German boys, who were enrolled just before the beginning of the war (from the outskirts of Berlin, for example) (Adams, 1944) and military personnel who had several years of experience with the Luftwaffe (notably when engaged during the Spanish [Civil] War).
The young aviators were recruited from the age of 18, and training lasted a few months for bombers (Adams, 1944). The [Reich’s] air force was very selective. In 1939, the Luftwaffe was composed of young soldiers (half of the enlisted records) and supervised by former pilots from the First World War or by men who had moved from the Reichswehr to the air ministry in 1933 (Razoux, 2019).
This age distribution is consistent with the cohort of soldiers exhumed. All ages are represented without a predominance of young soldiers, which will be more important at the end of the war. They also had a minimal height requirement to be a pilot of at least 160 cm, and being between 170 and 185 cm was preferred (Moulin, 2009). The estimated stature of individuals was ranged from 157 to 179 cm. The estimate is proposed with a standard deviation, which explains the somewhat low range compared with the minimum size requirements.
However, we are still within the standards. All individuals were required to be within the specified heights to be recruited. The biological profile corresponds to the known recruitment for the Luftwaffe at the beginning of the war.
[…]
Historical documentation, archaeological evidence, and anthropological analysis all strongly suggest that the 10 individuals buried with military equipment are soldiers who died as a direct result of combat and airplane crashes. For the individuals buried without military equipment and with a craniotomy, this indicated that the individuals died at the military hospital near the airfield and were afterward buried in the temporary cemetery.
However, the cause of death was difficult to determine because they did not have lethal bone injuries. The practice of craniotomy was already observed in the German army during the First World War, but it was not associated with a specific cause of death (Jankauskas et al., 2014).
Click here for events that happened today (February 18).
1882: Axis commanding officer turned Allied traitor, Petre Dumitrescu, was born. He captured 15,565 Soviet prisoners of war at the cost of 10,541 casualties, but when Bucharest surrendered to the Allies in 1944 he helped capture of 6,000 Wehrmacht members. Make of that what you will.
1895: Hermann Florstedt, Axis concentration camp commandant, rudely imposed his presence on the earth.
1913: Erich Mußfeldt, another Axis criminal, stained humanity. Artur Axmann, leader of the HJ, joined him.
1932: The Imperialists established the collaborationist State of Manchuria in northeastern China.
1937: The Fascists ordered the constructions of Ermland and Franken as Tōkyō named Jisaburo Ozawa the chief of staff of the Imperial Japanese Navy Combined Fleet.
1938: The Imperial Japanese Army and Navy aircraft began a six‐month‐long aerial bombardment campaign against the Chinese temporary capital city of Chongqing. The Imperialists also renamed the Nanjing Safety Zone International Committee the Nanjing International Rescue Committee.
1940: Wehrmacht General Franz Halder, reluctantly, as ordered by Berlin, incorporated General Erich von Manstein’s planned thrust through the Ardennes Forest into the invasion plans for France. Likewise, Fascist submarines sank six merchant vessels that each flew French, Spanish, Greek, Panamanian, Netherlandish, and Norwegian flags. A total of forty men died on the six vessels.
1941: Berlin’s Chancellor met with tank generals and tank designers at his residence Berghof in southern Germany. He insisted on using larger (either 50‐millimeter or 75‐millimeter) high velocity guns for Panzer III and Panzer IV tanks. He also demanded some soldiers to be released from the front to man tank factories. Likewise, Axis aircraft mined the Suez Canal in Egypt, forcing the transit of carrier HMS Formidable into the Mediterranean Sea to be delayed.
1942: Berlin, Rome, and Tōkyō signed a military convention in Berlin, laying down ‘guidelines for common operations against the common enemies.’
1943: At the Berlin Sport Palace, Goebbels announced the implementation of total war in the Third Reich, bringing women into the industrial war effort. In the same speech, he also called Jews ‘the root of evil in the world’. Likewise, the Gestapo arrested Hans Scholl and his sister Sophie, members of the White Rose, for opposing the Third Reich.