SS Bashing

[JasonC]

[JonS]

lol

[Guest Mike]

Originally posted by zmoney:

I’m not at all a fan of the “what if you were there, what would you do in that situation” defense. I’ll break it down for you; if you saw a group of people in flashy uniforms beating and killing people because they were Jews would you want to join? I mean they do have flashy uniforms.

As long as you weren't a Jew you would probably consider it in the UK, France, Poland, Hungary, Italy, the USA and pretty much every other "Western" state at the time.

I also hate moral equivalence. Just for the record the KKK was and is a stupid social club, not a unit in the US Army, so there goes your argument about that.

no problem - the SS wasn't part of the German army.

However both started among disaffected elemetns of a defeated country that blamed the defeat on someone else and/or sought to get revenge.

In it's second incarnation the KKK had about 15% of eligible US population as members, making it the most popular political movement the USA has ever had. They also sympathised and supported the Nazis, essentially resulting in their disappearance after WW2.

[JonS]

FWIW, there was a fairly long discussion about guilt and the SS here, from a few months ago.

[Shmavis]

Originally posted by Bannon DC:

Oh man, we are off and running.

This thread will really l-e-n-g-t-h-e-n when Jason C chimes in. Let me summerize... Nazi Punks F'Off.

Jason wasn't bashing anybody. He was just singing a Dead Kennedys song. Right, Jason?

By the way, I posted some more details on 1SS at 0115 at The Proving Grounds.

[mat69]

Originally posted by zmoney:

Everyone who joined went in with open eyes and knew what kind of an organization it was.

That's not true. Fact is that every member of the police was under the command of Himmler. Even if they did not want to, otherwise they would not be member of the police anymore. And that is why so many war crimes have been comitted by police officers, as they were under the command of the SS. Only few people stood up against this (also at that time!) actions against the law. One of the few SS members who helped Jews was Adolf Zündler. Klaus Hornig refused (and forbid it for his subordinates) to shoot Jews as it was against the "Militärstrafgesetzbuch" §47 (following an illegal order --> if you knew that the order was illegal you comitted a crime) It is indeed questionable if they could have done more to help, but still they helped.

I also doubt that most of the people joining the voluntarily had a clue what awaited them. Yet this has nothing to do with the crimes many members of the SS commited.

I think important would be to know what you call a Nazi. What is a Nazi for you?

A member of the NSDAP? A person livening in Germany at that time ...?

Anyway there were members of the NSDAP who were against those movements (the person you will know is Oskar Schindler), some worked with the resistance, but yes many simply profited of their membership and did nothing (I won't comment on their possibilites here) to help.

@Pandur you do know that "jews" (people who felt as Germans, who fought in the 1st World War and were honoured ... that was not important, important was that one of your grandparents was jew ... etc. considering that Judaism is a religion it is interesting that you were still considered a jew, even if you did not practise your religion) weren't the only people who were "hunted" at that time. Also people with other political views (between 1933-1938 especially social democrats and communists were inhabitants of the KZs), minorities (like homosexuals, gypsies, people with disabilities) ...

You do know that in Germany there were relative few pogroms against jews up to 1933, compared with Russia. Anitsemitism was very common at that time and is in some places still now.

[ May 18, 2006, 01:41 AM: Message edited by: mat69 ]

[Sergei]

Originally posted by Pandur:

everone here thinks nazis where just racists becouse they tricked you into thinking it they tricked the whole world by beliveing their own, wrong thoughts that "jews" are a race. a jew is like a christ. he belives in the jewish religion.

so i dont know at the moment what the word for "destruction of a religion" is, but nazis wherent racists at least at the jewish part of the story.

Pandur,

are you an idiot or just hopelessly stupid? One is a racist if he believes in racist ideas (ideas according to which we are defined by our race). Whether the categories he has created to support these ideas, like Jews, Blacks, Aryans, really exist, doesn't matter.

That Nazis considered Jews to be a race is very clearly seen in that they weren't hunting down people of Jewish faith or culture, but people of Jewish race. Now don't come here telling that Holocaust was motivated by religious, not racial hatred.

[George MC]

Originally posted by Shmavis:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Bannon DC:

Oh man, we are off and running.

This thread will really l-e-n-g-t-h-e-n when Jason C chimes in. Let me summerize... Nazi Punks F'Off.

Jason wasn't bashing anybody. He was just singing a Dead Kennedys song. Right, Jason?

By the way, I posted some more details on 1SS at 0115 at The Proving Grounds. </font>

[Bigduke6]

From time to time I have call to travel to villages in Ukraine, where from time to time I have the opportunity to talk to people who lived in villages when the S.S. came through. Just to be clear, this wasn't the Wehrmacht, this wasn't the Einsatzkommandos, this wasn't the Reich's civlian administration. This was the guys in the sharp uniforms, with lots of armored vehicles. When I hear some one tell me an S.S. story I make a point of asking details to make sure the storyteller is talking about the S.S.

Here is a partial list of what S.S. soldiers did when they entered a Ukrainian village, according to the recollections of eyewitnesses.

1. Routine execution of any civilian appearing to have been involved in the resistance.

2. Routine exectution of civilians appearing to be Jewish, Gypsy, or otherwise not Slavic, pretty much on any pretext. It could be for fun, because the civilian didn't get out of the S.S. trooper's way, because the civilian talked back, or because the civilian appeared to interested in the S.S. unit's equipment.

The ethnic Greeks, who actually had settlements all over the Ukrainian steppe, really suffered because they had dark complexions and so got the same treatment as the Gypsies and the Jews.

3. Systematic execution of military Commissars, whenever and wherever they came into S.S. control.

4. Periodic execution, and frequent terrorising, of Communist party officials. They were always the first S.S. target for reprisals for partisan attacks.

5. The treatement of the civilians they did not kill, as slaves, no more and no less. Civilians in villages in S.S. control had no rights, not to their lives, nor their property. An S.S. soldier was, generally speaking, not only within his rights to shoot down a little boy whenever he felt like it, but the boy's parents had no recourse. Period. They were members of an inferior race in lands conquered by the S.S.

6. Mass reprisals against civilians for partisan attacks. As a general rule, the S.S. would kill ten civilians for every single S.S. trooper killed by the partisans. In some cases the S.S. units would conduct reprisals - this is burning villages, killing some inhabitants and handing the rest over to the Reich as slave workers - for partisan attacks on S.S. equipment, like a train with panzers blown up.

I could go on, but I think that gives the general idea. I'm not arguing the Red Army was a pack of choir boys, nor am I even trying to demonstrate the Red Army was somehow nicer than the S.S. That's not material here.

What is material is that there are people still alive who faced the S.S. not on battlefields, but as civilians in the path of Waffen S.S. units. I have talked to some of those people, and without exception, they have described the S.S. to me as a pack of murderers.

That's not the same, of course, as condemning the entire Waffen S.S. as a pack of murderers in cold historical hindsight. But the universal hatred of the S.S., nearly a lifetime after they went through, in regions like rural Ukraine, makes me very suspicious of people trying to paint the S.S. as a band of brave heroes.

[Black Jack Pershing II]

FWIW, there was a fairly long discussion about guilt and the SS here, from a few months ago.

Ahh, good times.

[Tagwyn]

Corvi: What trick am I trying? Tag

[Corvidae]

I guess my point was lost.

People are people are people, but some people just dont like to accept that fact,

Its sad,

The german war in the east was the last war of colonialism to have the excuse of ignorance.

I want something good to come of the evils of that event, a lesson to be learned if you will,

That People are People are People.

But I guess that most people would rather ignore the lesson, even if it means the risk of repeating the mistake themselves.

As long as we depersonalize, dehumanize and demonize the other, we will never be able to recognize and correct the faults, mistakes, and evils we place on them,,,,, when they appear amongst ourselves,

I know it makes you uncomfortable to think that you yourselves could just like the germans who lived in the 1930s, But the germans who elected Hitler and bought into his fantasy of a new world order, were just ordinary people who wanted to be comfortable, They waved their flags patrioticly to celebrate when they were told they were entitled by god and destiny, and they believed what they were told...... just like you,

ok, so could a moderator please lock this thread?

[JonS]

Originally posted by Black Jack Pershing II:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr /> FWIW, there was a fairly long discussion about guilt and the SS here, from a few months ago.

Ahh, good times. </font>

[John Kettler]

JasonC,

Is the decidedly lopsided outcome the result of magnificent skill, a lousy opponent, a rigged scenario, or some combination of these? Being unfamiliar with the scenario, I have no basis for judgment.

Bigduke6,

Greeks in Ukraine? New one on me! Can semirelate to their plight, though. Olive skinned Caucasians

with dark curly hair look a lot like Iranians, and that wasn't a good ethnic group to visually mimic during the hostage crisis under Carter. Came close several times to getting pounded as a result of misidentification.

Thanks for a most interesting piece of personal historical investigation! FWIW, I think the German policy in the Ukraine was one of the dumbest and most egregiously counterproductive things done in recorded history, and that's not even factoring in the horror and the tragedy of it all. How many division equivalents did the Germans have to commit to antipartisan operations there, and how many division equivalents could they have raised had they really run with the Vlasov's Army concept? In turn, how would those things have afffected the Ost Front situation?

(sits down and waits patiently for JasonC to come along with the data)

Regards,

John Kettler

[ May 19, 2006, 01:34 AM: Message edited by: John Kettler ]

[JasonC]

Nazi punks can't fight, they are pussies. That's why so many of them die.

C - yeah yeah we get it unless we agree with your ridiculous idea that everyone is a Nazi, we are Nazis. The one dehumanizing the other is the one slinging around "the other" and pontificating about what Nazis we all are. Just utter navel gazing drivel.

[Black Jack Pershing II]

Indeed [smile] All things considered, I think it was a fairly productive discussion.

Non Je ne regrette rien!

[mat69]

So you mean that it was not coincidence that Holocaust happened in Germany? Do you think Germans like war by nature? Do you think - like Roosevelt - that Germans have to be extinguished?

It's interesting after all that experiments like the Milgram experiment show that humans are in general influenceable by people with a certain "authority". And no, this is no try to underestimate the crimes that were commited, but only a try to show that few people are "immune" to such actions themselves.

[Mad Russian]

I met an SS Major one time. In either late 1974 or early 1975. He would tell you was an ex-SS Major.

He hated just about everything and everyone. Americans, Russians, British...

I guess I can't remember him hating Canadians. That in itself is interesting.

You ever meet a real Nazi, face to face, and you'll have no doubts about why WWII was fought.

[Tagwyn]

Did you tell him that we hate him and his ilk too? Look him up and tell him if possible. Tag

[Ellros]

I just want to get this in before the padlock hits...

Hi Mom!

[Aco4bn187inf]

One always has to be one one's guard about these things. I saw a show about the Bulge on something like the History Channel and they were giving equal weight to the statements of the historians, the Allied participants and the SS veteran!

About the Malmedy massacre, they played the statement of an allied witness, ( graves registration guy or something) then the statement of an SS veteran who said, "Oh, that's nonsense, the SS would never do any massacres." - and they left it at that! As though the whole thing were just a matter of opinion, and, gosh, it's so controversial, I guess we'll never know the truth.

Well, there is no doubt or legitimate controversy about the nature of the SS, and there are not two equal sides to the story. Bigduke6's post sums it up- the closer you look at what they did, the worse you see they were.

They were not people 'just like us', unless our idea of a good time is, say, herding people into a barn and burning it down.

[Pandur]

(ideas according to which we are defined by our race). Whether the categories he has created to support these ideas, like Jews, Blacks, Aryans, really exist, doesn't matter.

That Nazis considered Jews to be a race is very clearly seen in that they weren't hunting down people of Jewish faith or culture, but people of Jewish race. Now don't come here telling that Holocaust was motivated by religious, not racial hatred.

i think the biggest problem here is that I make no difference inside the "human race". there are meybe black, red, yellow and white people but there are no jewish, chistian, or islamic "races".

so the word racism isnt really "useable" on the human kind in that way.(remember the KKK example. their racists becouse the white are against the black race...)

thats meybe why everyone misunderstands when i say things like bevor.

so in my thinking it was in fact motivated primary by religion(jewish; and i dont talk about politcians and "adel" there) as oposed to most other people wich threat every "relegion and/or country" as a "race" wich is plainly wrong in my eyes.

the fact that the jews are a "race" was made up by "nazi doctors"(Mengele to name one, his family makes agrecultural equiment now in austria) wich have done partly insane experiments on humans to fit the propaganda machinery.

i hope this explains a bit.

EDIT:

and yes i do know this stuff. i live in austria, we got some KZ´s here and i saw and heared the stuff tousend times in shool and exhibitions(sp?) and etc and etc. it isnt like i never heared of it and live and the other side of the world.

[ May 19, 2006, 12:24 AM: Message edited by: Pandur ]

[Shmavis]

Corvidae, if you're saying that what happened in Germany can happen to other peoples/nations, I agree. To claim otherwise, without maintaining any level of vigilance and knowledge of history, invites disaster.

I'd like to relate something of a personal story real quick about German/Nazi doctrine in occupied territories:

My grandmother on my father's side of the family was born and raised in Trieste, in occupied northern Italy. She worked in something of a soup kitchen that served German troops stationed in the area. She said that they were always very well-mannered, addressing her as "Signorina Alida". However, if a German soldier was killed by partisans and the like, 10 civilians were selected at random and summarily executed. I believe by hanging. Whenever there was an execution(I guess, in the city square) my great grandmother would give wide berth to the area when walking with my grandmother on their daily commutes. I think the troops were regular Heer, and if they were, it must have been even worse with the SS.

[Other Means]

Originally posted by painfbat:

= = = If i had been born in Germany between 1916 and 1924, i would hate and fear the SS, and i wouldn't be allowed to join it. = = =

Maybe not, you're responding with what you know now. You wouldn't be knowing it back then. Suppose you were born 1928 or 1929, you'd be 4 or 5 years old when HH comes to power. Big change you'll be joining the SS by 1944/1945. Read: Hitler Youth, The Hitlerjugend in War and Peace 1933-1945(Brenda Ralph Lewis)MM Amber Books Ltd. London, ISBN 90-438-0870-9.

Cheers

...you mean AH?

[mat69]

@Shmavis, there is no doubt that many crimes were commited in the occupied areas so later also Italy, like in Boves where Peiper ordered that a whole village with all inhabitants who did not flight into the fields (so old and ill people) were killed. That was called "anti-partisan measures". Or the Grand Hotel in Meina ...

What I find more interesting allthough is how you become such "monsters". I doubt that everyone commiting crimes was "evil" per se. I believe that the whole surrounding (superiors, military setting ....) supported the transformation. That has nothing to do that many/some (no clue) of the real Nazis still think the same way. We call them "Ewiggestrige" (stick-in-the-mud) here.

It's also interesting, why people from Estonia, the Netherlands, France, Italy, Croatia etc. joined the SS (about half of the Waffen-SS members were not Germans!). One of the last fightes in Berlin were fought by the SS-Division "Charlemagne" (Nr. 33) ...

@Pandur, now this explains your nickname ...