"HISTORICITY MOD version 1.1" updated with new changes and for use with SC 1.05

[JerseyJohn]

Immer Etwas -- Yes, and agreed on everything but Jack Kerouac!

My point was never that German youth were unique nor was it that those who had been members remained brainwashed till death.

In the case of the Hitler Youth, Hitler's death undid much of the conditioning. When it became commonly accepted that he had not died in battle but by suicide, it freed most of those who, after the war, might still have been influenced by his mistique.

One Hitler Youth a little too young to be drafted at war's end remembered how, on the last day of the academy, the administrator said, "Boys, the war is over and you should all go home." He said it was as though everything drained from his body, he was empty and nothing on earth made sense.

In post-war Germany young men in their late teens came to see how limited their up-bringing had been and realized the only role they were being prepared for was that of a soldier.

I'm aware of the Americans who inflicted the electric shocks and also have read Freud's book, which makes it's points concisely and is not a huge tome but a digestible work that should be read more widely.

There was a similar experiment during the sixties involving college students divided into jailors and prisoners. It went from playful to vicious and had to be aborted.

I have no doubts that any country, including the United States, can come under the control of a totalitarian regime.

If it happened in America I'm sure it would find tens of millions of "freedom loving" citizens who would be more than willing to cooperate under the proper circumstances. If it's methods were in any clever, if it provided soothing words and prosperity, the overwhelming masses would act as though nothing were wrong.

Which is why I don't blame the German people for the nazis taking over in 1933. The average person only wants to work and attend to his or her own affairs; governments are created by power brokers, not the people.

In the case of Germany, 1933, the power brokers were outsmarted and all of humanity eventually was stuck paying the price.

But I'm not worried about that happening today, especially in America; it's not like we have special interests and power brokers running things, or a government that keeps it's citizenry in the dark on practically everything.

I hope this doesn't start a "New World Order" attack -- the Hitler Youth thing was bad enough!

***

Young people are always utilized by dictators -- the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia gave weapons to children and had them wandering the countryside exercising powers of life and death. The result was random murder and chaos.

Communist China had it's Red Guards, with similar, though not as extreme, results.

After the war most former Hitler Youth looked back with bitterness at the way they had been used by the state.

Armed boys in uniform appear everytime a country fights to the death for it's existence. Photos from the American Civil War in 1865 clearly show the corpses of southern boys eleven and twelve years old mangled those of middle-aged and even elderly comrades. And I dare say there was no Jeff Davis Youth movement that put them there.

Anyway, the ONLY point I was trying to make, was that Nazi Germany trained all of it's boys in infantry tactics and fanatical loyalty which raised the fighting quality of their infantry units.

I never said they were turned into zombies or that the survivors are dangerous old men, nor did I say the effect couldn't be duplicated elsewhere, because it obviously can be done anywhere the proper conditions exist -- what I did say was this, only nazi Germany had millions of boys wit extensive militarily training and they played a major role in their countries effort. Anyone who denies that is wrong. Period.

***

RE Jack Kerouac: While his books influenced legions of free spirits, many of whom went off wandering the roads, I fail to see where they have much in common with the Hitler Youth!

In a 60's Writer's at Work interview, Kerouac seemed bemused by the whole thing and said he didn't like having kids pop in at his home all hours of the day expecting to be greeted with a joint and a drink!

RE: SC and the MOD's construction, I'm not sure who made the super unit point, but it makes sense. The Germans are already strong, they build armies pretty easily, having the same effect as a generation of pretrained soldiers.

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"Don't gotta be mean because where ever you go, there you are!" -- Buckaroo Bonzai.

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[ October 27, 2002, 02:49 AM: Message edited by: JerseyJohn ]

[dgaad]

Originally posted by KoopaTroopa:

It is what I meant, or actually its the only snippet of any scandanavian language I know.

[Desert Dave]

As originally posted by JerseyJohn:

RE Jack Kerouac: While his books influenced legions of free spirits, many of whom went off wandering the roads, I fail to see where they have much in common with the Hitler Youth!

In a 60's Writer's at Work interview, Kerouac seemed bemused by the whole thing and said he didn't like having kids pop in at his home all hours of the day expecting to be greeted with a joint and a drink!

**Author's Note: This is a bit of Esoterica between two apparent admirers of iconographic America. Hence, any who prefer merely nuts & bolts for breakfast, please disregard.

Myself, I enjoy the rare but aesthetically satisfying spread of Belgian blueberry waffles with a tiny rind of butcher-cut bacon lolling on the side! I heartily apologize right up front for this, the very occasional digression from your typical fare.

JJ:

Jack Kerouac, the Canuck-American who quite literally changed the way post WW2 America youth (... along with Brando in "The Wild Ones" and James Dean in "Rebel Without a Cause") thought about the torporous, Self satisfied "Establishment," did indeed revert back to his conservative Catholic roots once he became less the "roaming Pic," and more the "staid & settled Burgher."

There is the famous story of when prankster and literary gadfly -- Ken Kesey, along with Neal Cassady (... driving the band of Merry Pranksters in a day-glo bus aptly named -- "Further") stopped by Jack's pad in NY City.

One of the bemused & benumbed "hippies" had the terrific temerity to sit on the American flag (... sewn on the back of his jeans). Jack didn't care for that blatant and ignorant act of disrespect, and threw everybody out -- post haste, on their keister. I likely would have done the same.

Jack Kerouac was a rollicking roughneck choirboy deep down in his solitary soul, and since he was also, eventually, a renegade sot, his later years were (sadly enough) lived in a state of vast confusion, and ever incipient paranoia. :eek:

To answer your question quite specifically, I simply said that YOUR statement resembled something any of the Beats might have said, NOT -- that the Beats themselves resembled Germany's wayward youth.

Obviously and apparently impossible, yes?

I stress again -- there were very few places for any -- youth or adult, to go and find work during that perilous time in Germany. As a corollary, if you recall, it took FDR's government intervention during the Great Depression to get the many 10s of millions of hungry men off of America's mean streets.

Good for us that it involved public improvement programs such as TVA & CCC and the glorious Writers/Artists (the great Jackson Pollock was one beneficiary) workshops.

Bad for Germans, true as all get out, that it mostly involved rigorous "militia" activity (... though, then and now, we have more than our share of that kind of thing as well, yes?).

[JerseyJohn]

Immer -- taking some time out from SC postings.

I misread your meaning -- was sure my interpretation was incorrect but wanted it clarified.

Having apparently grown up in America roughly the same time as yourself, I remember the transformation that was taking place which you described.

The early fifties was "God Bless America" and Cold War blustering all over the country. It was as though everybody had to get up every morning and say "I'm an American and I can handle any ten commies that ever lived!"

By the time the Sputniks were launched it reached a national paranoia -- just what the hell were those dirty Reds doing up there --? Watching us (not that we weren't watching them,) aiming missles at us? (not that we didn't have a few in places like Turkey aimed at Moscow & Kiev) --

People like Jack Kerouac, Marlon Brando, James Dean and various musicians (jazz and country/folk primarily, though Leonard Bernstein was also a prime "Pinko!") helped establish a more relaxed and free thinking mentality. I remember the hostility they, individually and as a group, incurred, being lumped together as reds, pinkos, non-conformists and whatever other label the mainstream wanted to apply.

A confused argument I remember from a family get-together back then had an uncle getting red faced, practically screaming "Don't tell me, I went there and I fought those bastards." My cousin said, "The Russians?" and he snapped, "No -- the Germans -- they're the same thing with different names." Which is the way I remember those days. Grandfatherly Ike playing golf and taking care of the country and a near war mentality behind all the prosperity.

Before TV became obsessed with westerns it aired constant WW II movies with Bogey, John Wayne and Randolph Scott that are seldom programmed today because of their blatant propaganda.

As a kid it became confusing; the Japanese had a little red star on their helmets and the North Koreans/Chinese Communists also wore a star, on black and white TV they looked identical. Russians and Germans were each mentioned as friends sometimes and as enemies other times -- comic books added to the confusions -- were we still at war, and if so, with whom? Did those guys take turns fighting us or what?

It was like the story of Napoleon walking along the Borodino battlefield a day after the fighting looking at the corpses and saying, "They have lost three to our one!" A colonel standing nearby told an aide, "The Emperor no doubt counts Prussian dead among our enemies."

By the mid-60s I thought things were loosening a bit, Ed Sullivan kept booking Ruskies like "the Don Cossacks" -- swirling sabre dances jumping insanely while millions of Americans wondered if someone would slip and decapitate his partner on live TV! Russians started being seen as something other than "commie bastards."

But most of that went down the tubes with Vietnam and the divisions it caused, shuffling the American scene wildly, along with concurrent convulsions from the long overdue Civil Rights movement. I think most young Americans today, if put in a time machine and sent back to the early 50s, would be shocked at how different the country was -- the President and various Governors fighting over the right of non-whites to attend the same public school as their white neighbors!

Things like Civil Rights progressed but other things, like the Cold War, went backwards -- by the eighties it was almost at it's starting point of the fifties -- worse perhaps because we had a chip on our shoulder over "losing" Vietnam. It was so bad that great victories like Grenada, Tripoli and Panama were cheered wildly! When the Russians were driven out of Afghanistan the big thing wasn't the event itself but gratitude that they'd suffered their own version of Vietnam.

And of course the two initial U-Boats in the North-Atlantic are dead against a human player.

What gets me today is how mild yesterday's revolutionaries were. Kerouac now is nothing more or less than the quality of his fiction, some like him, some hate him, which is probably what he would have wanted. One time no-goodniks like Henry Miller raise a laugh these days with forbidden works like Tropic of Cancer, once banned in the author's own country, the land that legalised Freedom of Speech.

After the last posting I re-read the Kerouac interview that was mentioned. It was conducted in '67 (the Paris Review Interviews, Writers at Work, 4th Series, 1974 available in Penguin Press), a couple of years before his death. Consistant with your remarks on his later life his comments stray, lack consistency and are peppered with shots at Burroughs and various other writers and poets he'd earlier befriended.

Which helps explain how the Hitler Youth and their girlfriends in the League of German Maidens caused the UKs low MPP totals.

[ October 28, 2002, 01:18 AM: Message edited by: JerseyJohn ]

[Genghis]

Moving this again to the front page since dgaad's modifications adds a lot of flavor and it's still available from his website

Don't get me wrong I still enjoy v1.06 though as it's a great patch

Here is his website again for the zip file:

http://legionhq.net/GameStuff/

Anyone tried this mod yet with v 1.06?

Hmmm I guess I should just write to him hehe.

[ December 30, 2002, 05:55 PM: Message edited by: Genghis ]

[JerseyJohn]

Genghis

Excellent choice and in the end it even has Jack Keruoac! I still think dgaad was one of the best who posted here. There was a dedicated Stalinist named EB who would drive him up a wall. No matter what the topic EB would manage to throw in a pitch for The People's whatever and the next posting would be dgaad and a lot of times the next posting was a padlock!

Bill Macon's 1939 & 40 scenarios are similar to dgaad's and incorporate some later suggestions and ideas from Martinov's 39 scenario.

Very glad you brought this one back; it's one of the best!

[ December 30, 2002, 05:57 PM: Message edited by: JerseyJohn ]

[Konstantin V. Kotelnikov]

Another Stalinist? :eek:

[JerseyJohn]

Konstantin

He made you look like a bleeding heart liberal!

[Konstantin V. Kotelnikov]

GASP !!!!!!!

I have been labeled with the L word. Oh well I better move out to California and run for public office now.

[Genghis]

JerseyJohn -

Sure thing I hope people still find it useful.

Aye dgaad really did post a lot of great insights. I hope he is still posts regularly.

I went back to the very first beginnings of this SC forum and started sifting through hundreds of posts.

And yes I saw his debates with EB...makes for intersting reading.

I don't want to rehash what was said but I agree with dgaad. Western Allies did contribute significantly to help Soviet Union win the war.

One of the most overlooked contributions made though was the Allied Strategic Bombing offensive.

It forced Germany to divert significant air assets from Russia to defend Germany. Thus giving Russia tactical air superiority from like 1943 onwards. This is a big oversight that the Russians tend to ignore when complaining about Western inaction.

Of course the Russians also overlooked the Pacific Theater where the US/UK were fighting alone there til mid-late 1945 when USSR jumped in to grab their share of the spoils.

[ December 30, 2002, 06:26 PM: Message edited by: Genghis ]

[JerseyJohn]

Konstatin

Didn't mean to shake you up -- thought you'd be glad to know there's another Stalinist out there!

Genghis

Interesting aspects. As I understand it, when the U. S. agreed to the Elbe division line it was at a point in the war long before D-Day when American and British planners thought the Russians might reach Berlin before the West reached Paris. What wasn't anticipated was the slowing effect distance had on Soviet supply lines. In the end the Elbe turned out to be a good choice with spearheads from east and west meeting in some cases and overlapping in other cases.

Regarding Russia and Japan. At first the U. S. didn't want the USSR in China, Manchuria or Korea and of course not in the Japanese Home Islands. America felt it was her war with assists from the Commonwealth and China and they didn't want to share post war policy there with Russia. Later, when the Japanese fought fanatically for island after island the American planners began thinking it might be good to have Russian infantry landing on Japan along with Americans. The reason was an estimated 1,000,000 allied casualties!

The A-Bomb was still a top secret project (except for Stalin, who knew about every major advance thanks to sympathetic scientists at Los Alamos) and those same Allied planners knew nothing about it.

By early 1945 the Western Powers were trying to accelerate the transfer of Russian troops from Europe to the Manchurian border, but of course Stalin wanted Berlin and Western Europe first.

Germany fell and an embarrassing thing happened. The U. S. tested an Atomic bomb in the Arizona desert and it worked! Russia was back to being unwelcome but by then it was too late. As it turned out, the two A-Bombs were dropped almost simultaneously with the Russian invasion of Manchuria and Korea. It wasn't that they were lagging behind, it was more that the U. S. was moving it's plans ahead of schedule to get Japan to surrender before Russian troops could land on the Home Islands. Oh what a tangled web nations weave . . ..

The planned invasion of Japan, Operation Olympic was expected to incur so many casualties that the U. S. is still using the Purple Heart medals that were set aside for it!

Haven't seen a posting from either dgaad in or EB in over a month. Of course that could change at any time and I hope it will. EB also contributed some useful things and I enjoyed our exchanges.

[ December 30, 2002, 06:57 PM: Message edited by: JerseyJohn ]

[pzgndr]

Where IS dgaad?? I properly acknowledged the trail-blazing efforts of his Historicity mod in the development of my Campaign mods. Yet no comment from him in months, nor any additional updates or other contributions. I never particularly cared for some of EB's political comments, but he too is a former SC gamer who is no longer contributing. Many others have also abandoned this forum and have taken their ideas with them. This is a loss for all of us. Too much has been wasted on this forum with Nazi or Stalinist debate about one thing or another, or worse, and it simply distracts from the game and our efforts to improve it. Such topics should be off-limits, or at least specifically confined to the General Discussion Forum, so we can focus on the game.

[JerseyJohn]

Bill

In principle I agree. The problem is as people are given narrower areas to work in their ideas also tend to become narrower.

Nobody agreed with EB's views. But buried within them there was often useful information or at least a different way to look at things regardless of how bizarre it might seem to others.

dgaad should still be contributing. I have no idea why he isn't.

If the site is looked at as some sort of database for SC related topics it will dry up and become totally unproductive.

The problem with the General Forum is it's located outside of the SC site and it's easy to end up going there instead of here.

Your idea in that earlier forum seemed good to me; have different areas for different postings, including sheer entertainment based upon areas involved in or even just touching on the game.

Have lunatic areas right here in the site because some of us enjoy making a lot of serious postings and suddenly enjoy breaking loose a bit and doing something insane. Which to a large degree is what has happened here lately. The place was becoming to damn dry -- my own postings included. Occaisionally some of us need a three headed dragon to liven it a bit on the way to more serious postings.

Yes, there was also a certain amount of utterly unacceptable behavior. The problem here is it all gets lumped together and that isn't just unfair, it's a sure way to lose almost everyone.

Did anyone notice the way dgaad and EB kept posting their little hassles and suddenly an entire perfectly good forum would be locked up behind them? What happened to the original unresolved thread? How fair was that to the numerous people who contributed things before the padlock? And yes, where are those two now -- maybe it was one too many padlock for both of them.

Nobody is going to report here as though it were a job. From what I can see a huge amount of SC ideas have already been posted and a number of people, myself included, are becoming frustrated because we find ourselves repeating so many earlier thoughts we weren't aware were already stated. Instead we'd like to know what's already gone into this site and be able to use that info as a basis for fresh ideas.

Plus, some of us just like to fool around as well. Empowering others to decide what a person can or can't do is a very shaky thing and invariably will turn many good contributors off.

Aside from which, who gets to decide on these things? I don't like bedlam but I don't like stuffiness either. Other's criteria are narrower or broader than my own. Do we exclude EB because his entries inevitably proke dissention or do we exclude the ones who respond to his postings with dessention? I don't see any clear answers.

People and topics need space, room to move around in. I draw the line at obscenities and openly insulting remarks against either ethnic groups, races or specific individuals. But who judges when an exception to one of those things has ocurred? I suppose I'd draw it other things as well, but I'd have to be shown an example to know for certain.

There are other websites out there similar to this one. People tell me about them all the time, some of them former frequenters to this site and one of them the person who got me interested in it. But I like this one.

The reason I like this one is I feel free to write serious postings complete with photos of ships, weapons and people and I also feel free to create postings with three headed dragons and assorted other nonsense when I think they'd go well somewhere or feel like making such and entry.

Without that freedom the place starts falling to drudgery for most people and why would anyone want to go to something like that on their own time when they could be something they enjoy, which usually is not a virtual boor war where everything is done in a monotone. That's fine for those who like it and I'm against anyone who makes fun of a person who does things that way, but damned if I'm going somewhere on my time and somebody's telling me I have to do things their way. Fine. Then, I suspect like so many others who began feeling restricted, there are suddenly other roosts to go to.

But getting back to certainties, about the only thing I can say for sure here is a spelling checker wouldn't hurt.

[ December 30, 2002, 08:25 PM: Message edited by: JerseyJohn ]

[Sir Whiskers]

Dgaad, interesting idea on the German economy. I've always thought it should be the opposite - give Germany the one-time looting, but very little long-term benefit for a conquest.

Historically, Germany outfitted entire panzer divisions with captured tanks, trucks, etc., but because of the essentially "gangster" nature of their occupations, they managed the conquered territories very badly.

If you reduced the amount of production a conquerer gains by half the current level, you would considerably reduce the potential for Germany to produce hordes of air fleets, tank groups, and armies. It would also simulate the brittle nature of the German war effort - it had to keep conquering, as Germany simply didn't have the economic infrastructure to support a long war. Using this change, once the eastern front becomes a war of attrition, Germany would quickly run out of MPP's to reinforce its existing units and build new ones.

Naturally, all of this is IMHO - opposing viewpoints are always welcome.

[JerseyJohn]

Sir Whiskers

Not certain, but I think you've just entered something original and brilliant and I agree entirely. After the initial gorging by the quartermasters and professional officers, control passed to the Gestapo and the political hacks who directed them.

Along with occupation came Goering searching for art treasures and fine wines, Himmler and his staff for ill-begotten spoils, and so on.

Nazi administration was so inefficient it had to rely upon slave labor to keep things running. French POWs from 1940 could not be returned because they were needed in the nazi labor force!

I'd recommend altering it a bit.

Allied plunder is cut in half (to discourage things like the LowLands, Greek and Norwegian Gambits) while long term returns are kept at 100% reflecting the fact that under their rule workers don't report to factories at gunpoint.

German plunder is 250% the normal rate (they were very good thieves) while permanent production is halved.

Great posting! :cool:

[ December 30, 2002, 09:10 PM: Message edited by: JerseyJohn ]

[Compassion]

Originally posted by JerseyJohn:

German plunder is 250% the normal rate (they were very good thieves) while permanent production is halved.

YEah, but German plundering of the sort that Goering did added nothing t the economy. Other than the pre-war plunder of the Chech armaments industry, I can't see any justification of having plunder in the game at all.

[JerseyJohn]

Compassion

The initial plunder I was referring to was what SirWhiskers was discussing in the preceeding post. The German use of captured vehicles, tanks, artillery pieces, aircraft, small arms and everything else to flesh out their own war machine.

After the professional soldiers were finished with the real work the personal and institutional plunderers like Goering and Himmler would come through like vultures. And finally the imbecile slave drivers would set in and all semblance of production efficiencey would spiral downward.

I think this is a great concept.

[ December 30, 2002, 09:20 PM: Message edited by: JerseyJohn ]

[Compassion]

Ah, but even then, it takes a long time to integrate equipment that's used by anyone other than garritroopers. Yeah, they used captured Hotchkiss's but even the Brtish laughed at that and left them on the beach because they were terrible weapon systems. Like I said, the only place you see the kind of plunder you are talking about is from the Chech weapons industries. What you are talking about happenend only in limited fashion in the East where coy of T-34's were painted with crosses and coy of Panthers sported red stars... but at dribs and drabs rate that wouldn't amount to more than adding a point to a corps now and again.

[JerseyJohn]

Also, in the Afrika Korps were there was probably the greatest mixing of captured truck types, numerous problems arose. Factory manufactured spare parts were usually a fantasy and had to be converted by machinists from whatever was floating around.

Still, I think it's an outstanding idea as it can be used both ways with the adaptation: by minimising Allied plunder it discourages gamy invasions, by maximizing German plunder and minimizing regular production it encourages numerous invasions regardless of the World Map situation. Using normal production quotas for the allies reflects the greater rationality of their polices.

It's the sort of thing which, if adapted into the game ought to either be an option or part of a slide bar.

[SeaWolf_48]

Good points Jersey, the Hilter Youth were in military training since 1933. They became the backbone of the Wehrmacht, and most of these boys were killed in Poland, France and Russia in 40-41. In two and a half years, Sept 39 thru Jan 42 Germany lost 1,400,000 men, boys enlisting and being drafted were about 400,000 per year (a slow drain on the army, becoming smaller and smaller).

The point about having super units at the end of the game; Where are the I and II SS Corps in this game. Where are Super units like HG LW Div, 1AH SS, 2Deut SS, 5 Viking SS, 12 HJ SS, 1 Prcht. on and on.

[GroupNorth]

Damn, I forget the man's name, but years ago we had a visiting Canadian professor make a surprise lecture regarding his tour in Italy, Normandy, and the Low Countries.

His company was assaulted by elements of one of the Hitler Jungen SS divisions in Normandy, and he told a wild story about how some of his mates, after being captured and stripped to their underwear, overpowered (all fists flying) some of these heavily armed teenagers. Many of them were already vets from Russia.

Crazy, crazy stuff.

[JerseyJohn]

SeaWolf_48

Thanks -- that was a while ago and I remember I kept getting flack about how the Hitler Youth were just another form of the Boyscouts, nonsense like that, except from a few knowledgable people like Bill, Immer, zeres and dgaad, so I gave up on the point. Glad you revived it.

The topic of crack units came up a few times and was dealt with the same way every time; essentially they were divisional or brigade sized and the game operates on a larger scale. I suppose two or three crack divisions could be put together as a crack corps, but in this case I have to admit those against the concept have a point -- it would be hard to make it work on this scale.

I'd like very much to see crack units represented but I don't think it can be done here. It would need the next step down, a division/brigade scale, which I'd like but the consensus is it would be a different game from SC.

I came across this photo on the web somewhere. It didn't have any particular note attached. I'd appreciate knowing something about it. Are they Hitler Youth? It doesn't have the feel of a late war photo, but from what I can see they're wearing regular army uniforms and either they're young teens who haven't finished growing or the officer handing out decorations is extremely tall (the foreground NCO also seems tall, which leads me to believe they're boys in line, but are they training or actually in a fighting unit? Perhaps cadets? The second boy from the end looking to his right, into the camera, is doing something no trained soldier would do while standing at attention -- and no thirteen or fourteen year old Hitler Youth would have done it either! Curious sort of photo. I get the feeling the kids in line aren't Germans.

[ December 30, 2002, 10:21 PM: Message edited by: JerseyJohn ]

[Konstantin V. Kotelnikov]

There was a very good book that I read and I can't remember the title for the life of me.

The authour was attempting to debunk a lot of the myth around the SS. His basic premise was that the Waffen SS had too things going for it. It was mostly volunteers and thus had a high esprit-de-corp and that they always got the best and most equipment, often to the determent of the Heer units.

He did a good job in his book of proving his premise. I wish I could remember it's name.

Some of that would be hard to simulate in the game since all units upgrade at the same time. But you could name a unit a SS corps or tank group and then always rebuild them to full strength before you start replenishing other units. In a war of attrition this would give you units much stronger than the others.

On the subject of the Hitlerjugend division. They were to most fanatical fire eaters of the entire german nation. Statisically it had the highest percentage of Nazi party members.

There is a fellar who lives in Iowa City who served in a heer unit. He said that one time in france, before normandy he was in a french jewelers shop looking to buy something for his woman. A SS fellar strolled in fresh from Russia as they were refitting in France at the time, and wanted some jewlery for his woman. Then the shop keeper asked to be paid the SS man pulled a pistol. Willie said "Put that away, this isn't Russia" and the SS fellar stormed off.

I love the veterans stories.

If I remember the name of that book I'll post it. I'm sure I borrowed it as it is not in my personal collection.

[Compassion]

Originally posted by JerseyJohn:

Thanks -- that was a while ago and I remember I kept getting flack about how the Hitler Youth were just another form of the Boyscouts, nonsense like that, except from a few knowledgable people like Bill, Immer, zeres and dgaad, so I gave up on the point. Glad you revived it.

Anyone who has seen Triumph of the Will knows that's a lie. EVERYTHING in Germany was a military unit. The sight of the "Laborer's Guild" with military like uniforms & banners and chromed shovels slung over their shoulders standing in ranks 50,000 strong at attention in front of Hitler while he gives his endorsement of them shows what was happening in the Reich.

Yeah, those are boyscouts on parade.

[JerseyJohn]

Compassion

Thanks for posting that. A lot of those ridiculous remarks I mentioned are on the first page of this forum! To me such uninformed nonsense is too agravating to post responses to. I did because I like the guys who posted that rubbish, but -- really, just go one page back and you'll see it -- hooray for the boyscouts! A fine organization but as different from the Hitler Youth as firemen from a flame thrower crew.

Konstatin

That was nother conflict I had somewhere, that the Waffen SS were not so much crack troops as extremely fanatical and well equiped formations with first pick on everything and later that included conscripts when volunteers became scarce.

A chess playing friend of mine, a Fin, was a member of the Waffen SS who'd fought in Russia. I came to learn this gradually over about a year of chess games. The second year we were good friends. He was a widower and we played frequently at his apartment, where he had memorabelia and photos. I can't give details but it was sort of weird having grandfatherly feelings toward this old guy and seeing those photos. That's why I don't like judging people.

During that same period I lived in a neighborhood with numerous camp survivors. Oddly enough, the survivors I've known were nearly all live-and-let-live types. I never discussed them with him , nor him with them. But ever since I've been skeptical of claims that the Waffen SS were only soldiers. Not true. They were good soldiers, yes, but America also had good soldiers and no G.I. I've ever known would have kept what that old man hung on to.

I think what I'm getting at, or the nearest calm subject I can get at, is nothing in that fuzzy area was simple or easily explainable.

Like you, I've also loved veteran war stories. I found most of my uncles who saw combat, liked to reminisce about things that happened off the battlefield that were usually humorous in nature. European war vets I've known, like that old man and one who'd served in the French Foreign Legion from the 30s thru 1960 or so, were more willing to discuss actual battles.

[ December 30, 2002, 10:50 PM: Message edited by: JerseyJohn ]