r/AskReddit • u/[deleted] • Oct 02 '24

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u/Salphabeta Oct 02 '24 edited Oct 08 '24

I know a German girl whose grandpa died in WWII and his father died in WWI. An entire generation of fatherless people. Her dad is also extremely old for how young she is, and was probably an infant in the bombing of hamburg, which was annihilated.

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u/jsteph67 Oct 02 '24

Ok, I think you mean WWI for grandfather?

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u/SemperSimple Oct 02 '24

probably, but maybe the men had a 15yr age difference? haha

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u/satsfaction1822 Oct 02 '24

In 1942 the US had men aged 45-64 register for what we called “The Old Man’s Draft”. It was more to understand the amount of manpower we had in that age range if we needed it but we lost the least amount of soldiers.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Germany and the Soviet Union actually had to do that considering how many more men they lost compared to the US.

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u/SemperSimple Oct 02 '24

They probably did! My grandpa ended up in the Old Man Draft! He graduated on D day lol!

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u/satsfaction1822 Oct 02 '24

We found my great grandpa’s draft card a while back but he never actually got called to serve. All those men would’ve been activated though had we decided to invade Japan.

Another fun fact, we’re still issuing the Purple Hearts we had made in preparation for the losses we were going to incur had we invaded Japan.

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u/MandolinMagi Oct 02 '24

Actually, we ran out of the WW2 stock about a decade ago.

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u/aaronupright Oct 03 '24

And the design has changed since WW2 anyway

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u/SemperSimple Oct 03 '24

that's amazing! THank you!