Louie the Toad Posted August 24, 2002 Share Posted August 24, 2002 Given to my opponent by random AI pick. They seem to fight for a bit, then run. Hah Ha Ha Haaa ! Toad Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
M Hofbauer Posted August 24, 2002 Share Posted August 24, 2002 WSS conscripts are nowhere an oxymoron. Rather, towards the end of the war the quality of the WSS deteriorated so much that this type of quality would be very well possible. If it helps you, think that your forces are running into an WSS training area and facing the fresh recruits there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JasonC Posted August 24, 2002 Share Posted August 24, 2002 Hardly oximoronic. Some of them were greener than grass by the end. Militarized police formations were pressed into front line service from the summer collapse onward. Others were non Germans with blue eyes recruited from the four corners of Europe. In one case, an entire battalion of Waffen SS went over to the French Maquis as a body in the south of France, when they saw which side was going to win locally. They were ethnic Ukrainians, who had started the war under Stalin, resisted him for nationalist reasons, joined the Germans, were transfered to France, and ended by switching to the French resistence. WW II was a rather chaotic war. Nothing stays in neat, simple, stereotyped categories. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Emrys Posted August 24, 2002 Share Posted August 24, 2002 Jason, do you know if that particular batch was sent back to the USSR at the end of the war? I think nearly all former POWs that went over to the Germans were sent back and were imprisoned or shot when they returned. But I wonder if the French may not have given special consideration to this lot. Michael [ August 24, 2002, 05:15 PM: Message edited by: Michael emrys ] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JasonC Posted August 25, 2002 Share Posted August 25, 2002 I don't know. Although I have looked, I have not found anything definite about what happened to them from the time they joined the resistence to the end of the war, let alone after. I have looked into the chaos in the south France campaign in particular, and there is an enourmous amount of variety. I would not be the least surprised if nothing happened to any set patterns. These were not PWs released in Germany at the end of the war, the normal category you are speaking of. Indeed, I would not be surprised if many of these characters wound up in the French Foreign Legion after the war, or otherwise disappeared into the diaspora of "greater France". Some might even have fought at Dien Bien Phu in Indochina; I know from Bernard Fall's books on the subject that other ex members of the Waffen SS did, after joining the Legion to hide their past. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gatpr Posted August 25, 2002 Share Posted August 25, 2002 A fellow named Peter Tolstoy wrote a couple of interesting books about the repatriation process. The Allies sent thousands of people they captured in uniform to the Soviets. A fairish number had never even held Soviet citizenship. Kind of like Raoul Wallenberg. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Dorosh Posted August 25, 2002 Share Posted August 25, 2002 One Ukrainian SS Div hid out in the Carpathians and fought their way to the west in 1946. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seanachai Posted August 25, 2002 Share Posted August 25, 2002 Hmm, is this another of those "Can you believe there's some dumbass person/thread/game/movie/book/erudite military historical study that doesn't believe the Waffen SS were the best soldiers of the war/the greatest soldiers ever/the finest achievement of human history/the men I wish had fathered my children? Pretty bizarre, eh?" threads, or just another silly misconception? [ August 24, 2002, 08:27 PM: Message edited by: Seanachai ] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Warmaker Posted August 25, 2002 Share Posted August 25, 2002 Originally posted by Michael Dorosh: One Ukrainian SS Div hid out in the Carpathians and fought their way to the west in 1946.Holy sh!t! Where'd they fight their way to? By 1946 Eastern Europe wasn't a nice place to be, esp. for an old Waff.SS division. Anywhere I can read about this? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Mike Posted August 25, 2002 Share Posted August 25, 2002 I suspect it'd be the remnants of a division - essentially well organised guerillas. After all anti-Sov guerillas existed in hte Baltics until the 50's, so it wouldnt' be too hard for some to survive in the mountains of central Europe for a year - it's not like Central Europe was well organised, and at thtat time some of the post-war Govt's were still vaguely democratic. Anyway - the thing I was originally going to say is that in the CNBB demos I got a platoon of conscript Guards Armoured IS-2's!! :eek: :confused: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gud Posted August 25, 2002 Share Posted August 25, 2002 Originally posted by Warmaker: </font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Michael Dorosh: One Ukrainian SS Div hid out in the Carpathians and fought their way to the west in 1946.Holy sh!t! Where'd they fight their way to? By 1946 Eastern Europe wasn't a nice place to be, esp. for an old Waff.SS division. Anywhere I can read about this?</font> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Soddball Posted August 25, 2002 Share Posted August 25, 2002 By 1946, Eastern Europe (maybe exc. DDR) was a chaotic affair, with Communists making semi-legal takeover of governements Erhumm. Erhumm. Semi-legal takeover over governements (sic)? The communists imposed their own evil dictatorship on all of Eastern Europe. There was no semi-legal about it. They shot or imprisoned anyone without a party badge or anyone WITH a party badge whose face didn't fit that week. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Dorosh Posted August 25, 2002 Share Posted August 25, 2002 Originally posted by Mike: I suspect it'd be the remnants of a division - essentially well organised guerillas.I'd have to look up some references - but a web search on the Galician division might yield dividends. Not sure offhand of the numbers involved, but IIRC they managed to keep some assault guns and other heavy equipment. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JasonC Posted August 25, 2002 Share Posted August 25, 2002 It is the 14th SS division that you are speaking of. Here is a little background from off the web - "The history of the 14th Waffen-Grenadier Division der SS is particuarly interesting because of the nationalist, Ukranian question. Despite Nazi ethnic-pseudohistory, the people of "Galicia" regarded themselves as nothing but Ukrainian, and passionate nationalists at that. The OUN, the Ukrainian Nationalist organization (formed in the 1920s, it still managed to survive, however precariously, under Nazi rule) realized that the one thing that both Nazis and Soviets respected was military might; through it was the only possible hope for national freedom. So the "Galicians" volunteered for the Waffen-SS, not only to keep the Soviet Army out but to gain access to the military training and equipment essential to win their freedom from either (or both) totalitarian systems. "14th Waffen-Grenadier Division der SS was formed in mid-1943. From its inception members of the UPA (Ukraine Povstan'ka Army), a guerrilla army for national liberation, infiltrated the division. The 14th SS fought only one major battle - the disastrous Brody-Tarnow pocket - which decimated the division. After a period of rest and refitting, the division participated in several half-hearted antipartisan operations in Slovakia and Slovenia, surrendering in Austria in May 1945... "The 14th SS division has an interesting Cold War postscript. Although the division was shattered at Brody, not all of the missing troops were casualties. In fact, thousands of Ukrainian SS troops hid in the forest in the Carpathian mountains and joined the UPA. From 1945-47, many of these troops fought their way through to the US Occupied zone of Germany, surrendering and eventually emigrating to the west. The remaining guerillas of the UPA fought Soviet (i.e. Russian) troops until all resistance eventually faded away by 1956." As with the other case of the Ukrainians in southern France, the chaos of the period reflects shifting political constellations around the men involved, more than any penchant for switching sides on the part of the men themselves. Thus the battalion that switched in southern France probably considered themselves simple anti-communists throughout their whole complex trajectory. That meant resistence when Russia occupied western Ukraine, then a willingness to serve the Germans, and when the Germans had clearly lost, backing the Gaullist faction of the French resistence against the communist faction. Finally, for those who ended up in the French Foreign Legion after the war, it meant fighting the NLF in Indochina. From the perspective of the men involved, it was the world around them that changed, not themselves. Of course that does mean whatever they were trying to do, they wound up being used by half a dozen powers with entirely different agendas. For whatever it may be worth... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gud Posted August 25, 2002 Share Posted August 25, 2002 Originally posted by Soddball: </font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr /> By 1946, Eastern Europe (maybe exc. DDR) was a chaotic affair, with Communists making semi-legal takeover of governements Erhumm. Erhumm. Semi-legal takeover over governements (sic)? The communists imposed their own evil dictatorship on all of Eastern Europe. There was no semi-legal about it. They shot or imprisoned anyone without a party badge or anyone WITH a party badge whose face didn't fit that week.</font> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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