http://www.tiger-apotheke.de/ Web translation: https://translate.google.co.uk/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tiger-apotheke.de%2F&edit-text= Wiki - Otto Carius Might have to read 'Tigers in the mud' again.
Thanks for posting that. I knew the name but not much about him. Have just been having a read & look into his life.
Always see that book popping up in discussions, but never read it. Maybe I thought that it would be, like a lot of German biographies, self-serving and apologist. Anyways, you have to say that the name of his pharmacy was original......
It's alright. Bit plodding, and not really worthy of the gush it engenders in fanboys (what is) - never trust personal kill claims/boasting etc. but it's at least a reasonably recent to post-war memoir with some 38t and Jagdtiger stuff thrown in. Think he wrote it for his veterans association originally, which sort of excuses some of the tone problems sometimes found in such memoirs. (That might be nonsense, need to check... pretty sure it was a private tome originally though.)
Is it along the same lines as Will Fey, Adam? Do they turn their steely eyes towards the growing storm in the East?
Years since I've read it, but I don't recall it being in the same 'steely' league as some. It's just another memoir really, no more no less, most interesting perhaps for how widely read it's been because of that magic 'Tiger' word, and how such wide reading can affect the popular historiography of a period. He and the book really are worshipped uncritically by some, a phenomenon I now find interesting more than annoying. (While also being a bit annoying... obviously.)
Before we all go nuts on this guy - we should recall that in his destruction of 150 Tanks et al - he MIGHT have killed approx 200 British Tank crew members and wounded as many more…… Cheers
Not going nuts, Tom. Nor would I, or I imagine anyone else here. Just noting the passing of a pretty well known contributor to the overall record. MK's usually good on that '150' business and overall German propagandic 'Kill culture'. I'm always more interested in the fanboy circling that happens and how the history was often originally fluffed up than the claims themselves. Little Carius Interview (machine translation I'm afraid): https://translate.google.co.uk/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fheroesdeguerra.blogspot.fr%2F2012%2F05%2Favande-de-entrevista.html&edit-text=
As I have oft mentioned, I occasionally post on ww2f. I was not surprised to see that the death of Carius received more responses there than here, on this forum. Ron ps On returning to ww2f I see that I am incorrect with my figures and this site leads by far. What I did notice however is that WW2f uses the conventional RIP phrase to record his death.
More information leads to better understanding, as always. Interview: http://tankarchives.blogspot.nl/2014/08/carius-interview.html
Good stuff, Nijmegen. I keep forgetting about archive awareness; one of the better recent WW2-y sites on the web. I hadn't known the Pharmacy postwar thing (that I remember anyway), still working right up to his death, having officially retired at 89. Yes, D. Mostly (nearly all?) Eastern
Nicely corrected Tom. Though I don't think anyone here has forgotten that in war combatants will kill their enemy. Yes, D. Mostly (nearly all?) Eastern Diane So the Tank Crews MIGHT have been allied… Cheers
Are we not allowed to mention the passing of German Veterans ? They were there - unlike a lot of us who only read books about it.
We're a history forum. The Second War had multiple sides. We discuss them all or we're looking at the thing through an exceptionally fractured lens. Everyone can slag or support as their opinions see fit, obviously, but an implication that it's iffy to discuss these chaps at all is a bit off, I think. Well-known Heer veteran & author dies: if that's somehow taboo to chat about then I dunno why I'm here really. Now I see MK lurking... He's usually rather entertaining on 'Panzer Aces'.
There is nothing wrong with commemorating a WW2 veterans passing, be it Allied or Axis. It would only be wrong if we resorted to the Fanboy rhetoric of "Oh my god, he was so cool..." Then we would rightly deserve a good spanking!!
well I guess one had to be a member of a Tank Crew who had his Troop Leader and Tank Commander killed to have a different opinion to those who never heard a shot fired… Cheers
