Speculation, misinformation and lies, they said. ‘Speak to Legenda and Pomost for facts’, they said.

In the discussion about the Nazi War Diggers’ Battlefield Recovery, one of the under-currents – or counter-currents – was a defence of the programme. Any search of #NaziWarDiggers or #BattlefieldRecovery will show that those defences were few and far between. And the knowledge and motives of even those few defenders were sometimes questionable.

Nazi War Diggers’ Battlefield Recovery: playing soldiers and exhuming them

While it might be fun, it might not be fair to take the piss out of the Nazi War Diggers for finding it emotionally difficult to exhume some human remains. Handling dead bodies is a sombre and sombring act. It is certainly healthy for them to acknowledge the difficulty and manage their emotions, rather than try to be “manly” and “battle” through it. And it can be duly difficult to express such feelings as, when they found a child’s clothes, one retreated from the trench because his daughter ‘wears clothes‘ too.

I have never before seen anyone jam a metal pole into a suspected mass grave

I don’t know what to say about the Nazi War Diggers’ latest episode of Battlefield Recovery, though it looks like Paul Barford will have something to say. I do know that I’ve never before seen a metal pole (probe/auger) used to try to find human remains in a suspected mass grave. Who could have guessed that the first probe in relation to the Nazi War Diggers would be on screen and being used by them?

Metal harvest

This is a very brief post, in-between computer crashes. As the Wehrmacht Awards forum’s Jerry B (Bond) and so many others noted, the image of the Nazi War Diggers ‘trying to look like big game hunters with the spoils of the hunt was in incredibly bad taste‘.

Battlefield Recovery’s Nazi War Digger ‘notes that the dog tag has no market value’. He should know. He sells dog tags.

Despite professional and public outcry then and now, the “Nazi War Diggers” who were going to be broadcast on National Geographic two years ago have been (barely) rebranded as action heroes of “Battlefield Recovery” and broadcast on Channel 5.

Clarification awaiting clarification: the Latvian War Museum was ‘aware’ of Nazi War Diggers’ plans to excavate

A historian in the Second World War section of the Latvian War Museum, Valdis Kuzmins, has clarified his colleague’s statement.

a note on the volunteer human rights exhumers of Legenda

Some of the dismay and anger concerning Nazi War Diggers has been directed at the local advisers and supervisors, Legenda. Latvia’s human rights exhumers are volunteers doing difficult work in difficult circumstances. As I said before, at least sometimes, their work is informed, organised and well-equipped; it is done by people who can identify bones; and it involves the recording of the site and their finds. They want to do good work all of the time, and have appealed for advice and help.

Nazi War Diggers: Error 404 – page not found

National Geographic has pulled Nazi War Diggers ‘indefinitely’!

Since ‘”consulting with colleagues” at the National Geographic Society’, the National Geographic Channel has pulled Nazi War Diggers ‘indefinitely‘, in order to review ‘questions raised’ during days of mass condemnation for the ‘macabre disrespect’ with which it handled dead bodies.

the Latvian War Museum does not approve of Nazi war diggers

[Clarification: the Latvian War Museum has clarified its statement – it was ‘aware’ of Nazi War Diggers’ plans to excavate.]

On the 28th(?) of March 2014, National Geographic changed their information concerning Nazi War Diggers and claimed that, ‘during filming, our production crew remained in close contact with local museums, including the Latvian War Museum‘. The understandably outraged [One member of staff at the] Latvian War Museum has stated that it did not approve of Nazi war diggers, it does not approve of Nazi war diggers and, in fact, it tried to stop Nazi war diggers [clarification].