Interesting tidbit-your call

[Andreas]

This seems strangely relevant:

Sawoniuk was born on 7 March 1921 in a remote area of Europe, that is Domachevo, Belarus. Fatherless, he may have starved in the harsh climate but for, ironically, the generosity of local wealthy Jewish families.

But when the Germans swept into the town in 1941, he quickly took up with the invading force. They gave the penniless, resentful youth the power of life or death over his Jewish former benefactors.

The house in Domachevo that he stole from Jews

A 20-year-old Sawoniuk joined the Nazi's police force which was geared towards pursuing the policies of suppression and genocide of Jews locally. He displayed enthusiasm in dispensing his tasks of rounding up and murdering Jews trying to escape the massacre.

An old school friend, Fedor Zan, watched him change. "Nobody could stand him. He had an animal attitude to people," said Mr Zan.

[sNIP]

Neighbours on his Bermondsey estate were shocked at Sawoniuk's arrest in 1996. One, Marion Henry, 63, who had known him 20 years, called him "nice" and "charming".

All the best

Andreas

[Santosdiablo]

Stalin did not kill more people then hitler

What a dumb thing to say

If you look at what Stalindid from a plus/minus side he comes to around plus minus 0

Stalin's government placed heavy emphasis on the provision of free medical services. Campaigns were carried out against typhus, cholera, and malaria; the number of doctors was increased as rapidly as facilities and training would permit; and death and infant mortality rates steadily declined. Education in primary schools continued to be free and was expanded, with many more Soviet citizens learning to read and write, and higher education also expanded. Stalin was the only ruler in the history of Russia and Soviet Union who established fees for secondary education in public schools.

Yes Stalin did kill people but most of them were for the greater good of the Soviet Unnion

From an objective view

Because if Stalin hade not exported so much grain or pushed the people so hard then the industry would never hade been built and no industri would have meant that the nazies would never hade been defeated

[Sergei]

Approximately once in every five posts, this thread steps further into the bizarre...

[Santosdiablo]

I am just replying to some guy who wrote that communism is equally as bad as Nazisim and that Stalin Killed more people then Hitler

[Mad Russian]

Originally posted by Sergei:

I'm just saying that there actually is at least one Nazi frequenting this forum and several others have been banned before.

It certainly must have been bad for them to be banned. JasonC cusses people out, tells them to leave the forum like he owns it, tells them to go somewhere and die and he gets to stay.

Yes, these people that were banned must have been really something to see... :eek:

[General Bolt]

Beam me up Scotty no signs of intelligent life around here. (Refering to St-Dia-blow)

[Santosdiablo]

Well Bolty unlikeyou i can look at things from a very objective view

Just forget about suffering, emotions and feelings and just look at nummbers and you will see

[Zalgiris 1410]

Originally posted by Andreas:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Zalgiris 1410:

To be fair about Johnny the SS Dutchman, while I'm assuming that he served in the 'Westland' Regiment of the 5th SS 'Wiking' Pz/Pz Gren Div, I don't think that it murdered anyone as part of the holicaust or for Liebensraum AFAIK. It spent most of its time in the front line, or refitting or reforming to rush back immidiately into it and consequently spent little if any time in the rear zone. I'm not aware of this formation having perpertrated any massacres of Soviet civilians, Jews, Gypsies or Commissars nor of conducting any 'capture no prisioners' episodes either during all the time it served on the Eastern Front.

While 5 SS has long been seen as a 'clean' unit, there is now apparently evidence that it was involved in mass-murder of Jews early during Barbarossa, during July 41 near L'vov IIRC.

All the best

Andreas </font>

[PzKpfwIII]

Prinz Eugen had some lulus in it as well; the Anti-Partisan Badge was probably not something to be proud of.

[Sergei]

Originally posted by Santosdiablo:

Well Bolty unlikeyou i can look at things from a very objective view

Uhm, actually, no. Either you are very partial in your view, or then your knowledge about what happened in the Soviet state in 1917-1991 is based on a couple of anecdotal "facts", probably learned by reading a circulated "Did you know..." type e-mail.

It can be justifiably argued that some of the rough-handedness of Stalin was, in the end, beneficial to Russians (though not so much for other Soviet peoples and ethnic groups). But most of it was done just to ensure that the authority of Stalin and his henchmen wouldn't be challenged by anyone within or without the Party.

The bottom line is that being a genocidal dictator is not a beauty contest, even if some of the events of 20th century would suggest something different. No matter how Hitler and Stalin rank relatively, they still are Hitler and Stalin, and their actions are inexcusable.

[Aco4bn187inf]

Hey, anybody ever hear of a book called the Diary of Anne Frank? Yeah, I know it's an obscure one. The reason that girl, and countless others like her, were murdered is because her family was turned in by Dutch collaborators. Surely our brave, plucky Dutch SS man would have been horrified to hear about that sort of thing. Which he never did. Wink, wink.

By the way, that website with the anti-partisan badge describes the anti-Nazi partisans as "terrorists." Well, that sure straightens out my thinking on the thorny issue of Nazi occupation.

Is there no Canadian Nazi Party? Well, I bet there's some kind of party going on up there, because, correct me if I've got the details wrong, the Canadian Airborne Regiment was disbanded in 1996 for its ties with right wing extremist groups. But heck, that's ancient history, anyway.

And Stalin? He just can't catch a break in this liberal media these days. At least we've still got Kim Jung Il in North Korea, holding up that good old-fashioned Stalinist system. God bless 'em! (Oops, can't say that...)

[Erik Springelkamp]

I think it could be implied by the bombing of an "open" city resulting in 40,000 deaths

Without further moral impications, just to straighten some facts:

Rotterdam was not an "open city" in may 1940.

The spearhead of the German attack to The Hague was going straight through the center of the city and was stalled by fierce resistence by the Royal Dutch Marines, who were holding out for days at the "Willemsbrug" (Williams-brigde) against the Germans, and German pantzers could not advance - and they were needed elsewere.

So the bombing was aimed at a military target: the marines. De Dutch command was willing to capitulate locally in order to avoid the bombardment: there were negotiations about the German ultimatum. The capitulation failed because the Dutch command required a German officer of higher rank. Then they were just too late, but the last planes aborted the mission because by then the right coloured rockets were launched.

The number of casualties was not 40,000 but 800.

Which is just as bad for the 800 of course.

From a military point of view the airborne attack on the bridges as a carpet for an armoured spearhead was interesting and a complete surprise, like a slightly more successfull Market Garden.

Although the part where the airborne forces were supposed to capture the Queen and Government failed. And airborne losses were very high.

Next day the Dutch capitulated generally (for Europe):

- There was no more ammunition for the artillery

- With the Rotterdam bridges conquered all of Holland lay open to advance.

- There were threats of more bombardments (and those _would_ have been "terror-bombardments")

- There was no hope of a French or Brittish relief

- The Queen and Government had successfully evacuated

[ November 07, 2005, 11:54 AM: Message edited by: Erik Springelkamp ]

[Efraim]

Well, JasonC, while very brisk and almost troll-like, seems again to be absolutely right.

What should I say? It sadden me to see young people defending nazi criminals.

The best thing that can happen to them is to be pancaked by a truck.

[stoat]

Originally from various people (you know who you are):

If you look at what Stalindid from a plus/minus side he comes to around plus minus 0

That's a great math formula you use there.

Yes Stalin did kill people but most of them were for the greater good of the Soviet Unnion

So killing is alright if it's for the "good of the country? Even then, how is killing your political oppostion good for the country? How is killing church leaders good for the country? How is that any different from what Hitler did?

that communism is equally as bad as Nazisim

Communist regimes have killed far more people than Hitler ever did. They are just as oppressive, too.

Just forget about suffering, emotions and feelings and just look at nummbers and you will see

I agree. Because there is nothing worthy of consideration in suffering, emotions, or feelings.

stuff about 5 SS being clean or not

While they did not participate in the mass executions of the Einsatzgruppen, they were certainly not completely innocent of such things. Zhitomir is the example that comes to mind.

The number of casualties was not 40,000 but 800

You are right there. I think I meant the entire campaign, but I am not entirely sure of the number.

As a side note, up in Chicago a few months ago, government authorities found an old Nazi war criminal that had been living in the US for some time. He was a US citizen (no longer) and the folks that lived around him said he was a kind, though a reserved and quiet man. One cannot atone for those deeds by being kind for the rest of your life. One cannot wash the blood off of your hands by living out your days peacefully. Maybe we should not judge, but how can you forgive? Millions were killed, no, exterminated, and you would say "Yes, it was wrong, but it's okay if they're sorry." That is not acceptable.

[Santosdiablo]

Uhm no Communsim did not kill as many people as the nazies

Look

If you have one dollar then remove that dollar and then add a dollar you still end up with one dollar you dont gain or lose anything

Stlin killed people indirectlly by exporting alot of grain

But prolonged life by increasing the medical system alot and giving lots of jobs

If you dont have a job in the 20s 30s then you dont have a chans to survive

But people seem to miss this fact

Medical system went up alot, jobs for everyone,

starvation through grain export and pressing people to work long days

And the killings of political opposition was never higher then 10s of thousands

You also seem to forget that Hitler when rizing to power killed all oposition in the 20s and 30s, the SS and the SA hade public blood baths of all opponents and very often would clash with political opposition in Germany but this ofcurse you forget

[Sergei]

Originally posted by Santosdiablo:

Stlin killed people indirectlly by exporting alot of grain

But prolonged life by increasing the medical system alot and giving lots of jobs

Distort it as you can.

Exporting grain? Heck, he didn't just export grain - he destroyed the Soviet countryside with his forced collectivization. Productivity and real income fell, rationing took place from 1928 to '35 and there was a severe lack of housing.

Medical system? Are you seriously claiming that Trotsky, Zinovyev or any other competitor THAT HE KILLED wouldn't have done his best to provide the people the same, and more, than Stalin did?

Jobs? Stalin destroyed Soviet agriculture. But OTOH, millions ended up in the GuLAG - hey, that's +/- 0! Wow, the economists of our day could learn so much from Stalinism!

[stoat]

Umm...yes it did.

If you kill 4 million people, and then teach the rest of the population to read, you still have 4 million dead people.

Stalin is responsible for 43,000,000 murders. The majority of these were in gulags, work camps, the like.

The most common figure for Jews killed in the Holocaust is 6 million. The most extreme are closer to 20 million. For the benefit of the doubt, let's say it's 20. Add to that all of the German casualties, military and civilian from WWII and that's up to 35 million (15 million being generous). How many people did he really kill in the 20's and 30's? We'll say 5 million, again being quite generous.

Stalin killed three million more people than Hitler.

Hitler's reign of terror ended in 1945. How many more millions did the Soviets kill after this? No matter, I'm sure their postwar social reforms more than make up for the wholesale slaughter of their people.

[Mad Russian]

And yet another view:

"...why is this never brought up, but the Waffen-SS 'massacres' time and time again? It must be remembered that, of the 910.000 men who served in the Waffen-SS, 313.749 did never return home. Every Army contained individuals who perpetrated war crimes. Does the massacre of 560 Waffen-SS soldiers from Wiking and Nord at SS-Übungsplatz Dachau by American soldiers have to be mentioned every time the US Army is brought up? The answer is quite obviously no, as those men were not representative for the whole American Army. That same argument goes for the Waffen-SS. Those who are intoxicated by the Zeitgeist and acting with malice will certainly try to associate the entire Waffen-SS with every war crime committed, even and especially the vague incidents at Baugnez. But by those same standards, the whole US Army was guilty of My Lai, and should also be condemned as a criminal organization. This of course, is nonsense, as much as it was nonsense to call the Waffen-SS a 'criminal organisation'..."

That was just a bit of the article. You can read the rest for yourselves...I am making the assumtion here that you can read.

http://www.geocities.com/wolfram55/warcrimes.html

[Santosdiablo]

You guys are just pulling nummber out from your ass

And yes people went to Gulags

But you seem to forget that there were criminals in the Soviet Unnion it was not a criminal free country

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalin

Just read

Also the increase in the Industry was extreme it is highly unlikely that some one else would have been able to do the same

By killing off your enemies you insure that your plans are carried out and fullfield and that there is no chans of them being interupted with political problems

Look at the big picture

And stop pulling figures out of your ass

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalin

[stoat]

Since many peasants resisted collectivization, the government resorted to often violent repression against so-called "kulaks," resulting in millions of deaths.

I read it. Look what I found. Are you saying that all of those millions were criminals? Because it sounds like you are justifying it by saying that Stalin was just reducing crime rates by killing people.

I pull no figures out of my ass, though were I to they would certainly smell better than your arguments. I have seen things come from there that have better cohesion than anything you have posted here.

[Andrew H.]

Originally posted by Panther Commander:

[snip]

That was just a bit of the article. You can read the rest for yourselves...I am making the assumtion here that you can read.

http://www.geocities.com/wolfram55/warcrimes.html

Yeah...

From your Nazi website:

This site is dedicated to all the brave men who served in the mother of all fighting divisions, the 1. SS-Panzerdivision Leibstandarte AH, who, for all their undoubted bravery, were classified as criminals and carried the near exclusive blame for the blackest of Nazi crimes for years. May their Honour and Loyalty shine like a beacon.

If you are genuinely interested in this issue and not simply a Nazi apologist, you would do well to do some actual research into war crimes and the Waffen-SS, where you will find that their record is really quite bad (with exceptions for a couple of units, but really only a few). It's actually much more educational than reading revisionist websites which try to obscure well documented Nazi atrocities.

[Sergei]

Originally posted by Santosdiablo:

Also the increase in the Industry was extreme it is highly unlikely that some one else would have been able to do the same

That's just you pulling empty claims out of your arse. Soviet industrialization could have been achieved by far less draconian measures, by emphasizing consumerism like Zinovev. And even if it couldn't, then anyone else could have done what Stalin did, Trotsky for example.

By killing off your enemies you insure that your plans are carried out and fullfield and that there is no chans of them being interupted with political problems

Eh. By killing all opposition you surround yourself with sycophants and end up with a thoroughly corrupt and inefficient administration where it is more important to ensure your very survival than do your job. Which is what Stalin achieved. He also killed all the upper ranks of the Red Army, thus greatly helping the enemy, leaving only incompetent thugs like Voroshilov alive. In the end, if Stalin had been removed from power then it'd only been because he deserved to be.

Look at the big picture

Would you do the same when talking about Hitler and his crimes? How he rebuilt the German economy like no-one else could have, how he sacrificed lives to defend Germany, how he blah blah blah?

[Mad Russian]

Andrew, sorry, I don't have a website of any kind, let alone a Nazi one. Nor am I a Nazi apologist.

I am just a little tired of the fact that the only combat unit in WWII that committed warcrimes was the Waffen SS. As the article says all armies commited them. Unfortunately for the Germans the victors hold warcrimes trials not the losers.

That is what makes an SS soldier that shoots a Russian POW a warcriminal and a Russian Guards soldier that shoots an SS man just a guy that couldn't cope with all the bad things that happened in his life and to his family.

As just a single example of a long and drawn out war, what about the SS men that were shot by the 3rd Armored Division men after the death of General Rose? I can talk about that unit since I was a member of it.

And that prattle that JasonC is spouting..."F*ck Off! Or better still, they can leave. Or better still, they can die and be damned."...seems to be no better to me than the ideals that he claims to hold in such low esteem. That is how I often make my points by wishing that someone be dead for their views. That is EXACTLY the kind of crap the Nazi's put out. So if you want to point fingers better look in your camp first.

For the most part we all agree that the Waffen SS committed war crimes. Those that don't agree to that need to do some studying as you suggest.

There is a group of members, on this site, that appear to have never served in ANY armed service for any nation on this planet, and yet want to tell everyone else what they should think about being a soldier. How they should act and whether in fact they should live or die. Who died and left these people in charge of what other peopel think?

You have run Nazi's off the site. Did that change their views? I am not nor have I ever been a Nazi or a Communist unless you think being a Republican equates to that and I know some Democrats that do...

I also do not think that every single person on this planet that utters the letters SS is a card carrying Nazi. What utter lunacy. It is the very attitude of JasonC and those like him that ramrodded the Red Scare in the US during the 50's.

What are you afraid of? Someone with a different attitude than your own? JasonC seems to think that he is the sole keeper of all things WWII, that his attitude is the only one to have. That he is never wrong.

I'm sure he's right.

If you are a member of that group then you need to think what you are being so defensive of. The SS? After 60 years?! Give me a break.

I'm not a revisionist. I do historically based scenarios that are researched to a degree I would imagine few others bother with. I am not glorifying any organization when I do a scenario with the SS in it. It is an examination of the actions on the field of battle.

There was no political statement being made by the original poster UNTIL JasonC made it into one. To take another line of thinking, if you didn't like the thread why didn't you stay out of it? Instead of the poster having to go off and die, why didn't YOU just go on to a thread that wasn't offensive to you? Why did you feel obligated to jump on a guy that was sharing his own personal thoughts? What made it so impelling that he be pounded into the mud for his attempts to share what he thought was an innocent meeting with a veteran?

What?

No, that would have been too simple and not near sensational enough!

Give me a break... :mad:

[David I]

As a soldier, try to have the guts to refuse an order when that order is to gun down the women, children and old men in a ditch. A bitch to do but good advice. Alexander Solkinizin (I think I butchered his last name) went to jail, for the 1st time, when he suggested that maybe it wasn't a good idea to rape and murder the Poles (much less the Germans) in his area of operations. Considered a thought "against the war effort".

DavidI

[Andreas]

Originally posted by Panther Commander:

And yet another view:

"...why is this never brought up, but the Waffen-SS 'massacres' time and time again? It must be remembered that, of the 910.000 men who served in the Waffen-SS, 313.749 did never return home. Every Army contained individuals who perpetrated war crimes. Does the massacre of 560 Waffen-SS soldiers from Wiking and Nord at SS-Übungsplatz Dachau by American soldiers have to be mentioned every time the US Army is brought up? The answer is quite obviously no, as those men were not representative for the whole American Army. That same argument goes for the Waffen-SS. Those who are intoxicated by the Zeitgeist and acting with malice will certainly try to associate the entire Waffen-SS with every war crime committed, even and especially the vague incidents at Baugnez. But by those same standards, the whole US Army was guilty of My Lai, and should also be condemned as a criminal organization. This of course, is nonsense, as much as it was nonsense to call the Waffen-SS a 'criminal organisation'..."

That was just a bit of the article. You can read the rest for yourselves...I am making the assumtion here that you can read.

http://www.geocities.com/wolfram55/warcrimes.html

Apologist Nazi claptrap that website, sorry. 560 SS soldiers were not killed at Dachau (do a search in the HWC section of AHF, has been discussed at length there, several times). Whether 313,749 WSS soldiers did or did not come home is irrelevant. Every single one of them could have been a war criminal, or innocent. That they got killed during the war is irrelevant to that. His discussion on partisans shows how clueless the author of the website is - partisans could of course be shot if they were not identifiable, but that is not really the issue, as anyone who has even had a cursory glance at partisan warfare as conducted by the Germans will have to admit.

I agree that not every W-SS soldier was a criminal, but the particular case discussed here in this thread is of someone who quite obviously bought the ideology, and became a traitor to his country in the process. Different from a late-war draftee or some surplus Luftwaffe guy sent to the W-SS from his airfield to gain the Endsieg.

All the best

Andreas