If I remember correctly, the spherical design was mainly created to resemble a baseball. Since most US citizens knew how to throw a baseball at the time it would mean they didn’t have to train soldiers as much
That is a myth. The spherical form is to maximize surface area to volume for shrapnel, ensuring that no matter how it lands. Shrapnel will go in all directions.
It’s also wayyy more cost effective when you’re transporting them. For the Allies, because they relied so heavily on supply lines every cubic foot of space on a ship or truck was important. Carrying a grenade on a stick to the front means not carrying three more grenades. I’m sure four grenades are more lethal than one grenade that a soldier might be able to throw a little bit further.
That was the original plan, which caused a lot of the trouble the Germany currently has. There weren’t big programs for immigrants to learn German until decades after the original Gastarbeiter had arrived. There was no effort at all of integrating them or their children until basically an entire generation had already come, settled, and retired. Even aside from cultural aspects, a lot of the descendants of Gastarbeitern don’t have German citizenship. It’s fucking wild to me that someone could be the third generation of their family born in a country and still not be given citizenship.
I’m an immigrant and a German teacher, so I’m probably biased, but that’s not the way to go about things.
My ex was like that; 3rd generation, no German pass.
Her grandad worked the factories, her mum was born and grew up in the workhouses next to the factories (apparently they’d hand him lunch through the wall), and her mum had no formal education other than sunday school.
Fiercely proud of their heritage and shunned/mocked by previous generations of Germans, they didn’t see the need to get German citizenship. Even my Ex.
When I saw the way things were going in Germany, I begged her to get her German passport before it was too late. I hope she did.
It’s an incredibly sensitive topic for both ethnic Germans and descendants of Gastarbeiter (as well as for people who are both, obviously), and I’m an autistic foreigner, so I’m trying to be delicate, but I might be missing the mark.
It seems to me that it created a group of people treated as second-class who weren’t given the tools to do well in the German education system, and systemic discrimination solidified that. I hear complaints from (some, racist) Germans that immigrants haven’t integrated, but how could they (obviously there are individuals who integrate under those circumstances, but that’s not going to work with a wave of immigrants from the same country- they’ll just form cultural enclaves, because they won’t get community support otherwise)?
For more recent immigrants, like my coworker from Syria, who’s been in Germany for nine years as a refugee, the choice is between staying a refugee (the German government could at any time say that Syria is safe again and send him back with a few days’ notice) and applying for residency outside of his claim for asylum, thereby giving up his right to asylum (so if they say no, he’d also have to go back with a few days’ notice). His wife and their daughter are in the same position. How on earth can anyone expect him not to teach his daughter Arabic? She might at any point have to move to Syria.
If I remember correctly, the spherical design was mainly created to resemble a baseball. Since most US citizens knew how to throw a baseball at the time it would mean they didn’t have to train soldiers as much
That is a myth. The spherical form is to maximize surface area to volume for shrapnel, ensuring that no matter how it lands. Shrapnel will go in all directions.
That’s definitely a myth. Soviet WW-2 grenades like RGD-5 and F-1 are also spherical and baseball was unknown at that time in USSR.
It’s also wayyy more cost effective when you’re transporting them. For the Allies, because they relied so heavily on supply lines every cubic foot of space on a ship or truck was important. Carrying a grenade on a stick to the front means not carrying three more grenades. I’m sure four grenades are more lethal than one grenade that a soldier might be able to throw a little bit further.
So… what were the Germans so used to throwing that theirs had a handle?
Going off of the shape and what I know of Germany today, beer bottles.
or Yufkas
Those came after WWII, from the Gastarbeitern who helped rebuild Germany
nur “gäste”, lmao
That was the original plan, which caused a lot of the trouble the Germany currently has. There weren’t big programs for immigrants to learn German until decades after the original Gastarbeiter had arrived. There was no effort at all of integrating them or their children until basically an entire generation had already come, settled, and retired. Even aside from cultural aspects, a lot of the descendants of Gastarbeitern don’t have German citizenship. It’s fucking wild to me that someone could be the third generation of their family born in a country and still not be given citizenship.
I’m an immigrant and a German teacher, so I’m probably biased, but that’s not the way to go about things.
My ex was like that; 3rd generation, no German pass.
Her grandad worked the factories, her mum was born and grew up in the workhouses next to the factories (apparently they’d hand him lunch through the wall), and her mum had no formal education other than sunday school.
Fiercely proud of their heritage and shunned/mocked by previous generations of Germans, they didn’t see the need to get German citizenship. Even my Ex.
When I saw the way things were going in Germany, I begged her to get her German passport before it was too late. I hope she did.
It’s an incredibly sensitive topic for both ethnic Germans and descendants of Gastarbeiter (as well as for people who are both, obviously), and I’m an autistic foreigner, so I’m trying to be delicate, but I might be missing the mark.
It seems to me that it created a group of people treated as second-class who weren’t given the tools to do well in the German education system, and systemic discrimination solidified that. I hear complaints from (some, racist) Germans that immigrants haven’t integrated, but how could they (obviously there are individuals who integrate under those circumstances, but that’s not going to work with a wave of immigrants from the same country- they’ll just form cultural enclaves, because they won’t get community support otherwise)?
For more recent immigrants, like my coworker from Syria, who’s been in Germany for nine years as a refugee, the choice is between staying a refugee (the German government could at any time say that Syria is safe again and send him back with a few days’ notice) and applying for residency outside of his claim for asylum, thereby giving up his right to asylum (so if they say no, he’d also have to go back with a few days’ notice). His wife and their daughter are in the same position. How on earth can anyone expect him not to teach his daughter Arabic? She might at any point have to move to Syria.
Dildos
Axisaxes