Wehrmacht Complicity in the Holocaust in Ukraine

World War II German Military
#1

Interesting info’s with an article focusing on the Wermachts role in the Holocaust, and with some very informative links to DDR and BRD Archives on individual war tribunals, as well as the crime scenes, and the persons convicted. I guess thousands of WW2 cases are listed here, from all over Europe.

http://www1.jur.uva.nl/junsv/Inhvzbrdddr.htm

http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.com/2008/08/wehrmacht-complicity-in-holocaust-in.html

Another link I would like to introduce to all interested in Wehrmacht and SS is axishistory.com, and English speaking forum, but with an majority of German users, some of them vets. The most complete forum on Axis history on the internet I have seen.

http://forum.axishistory.com/

#2

I think you are either trolling or pursuing some form of anti-German crusade which you have consisently pursued and consistently failed to support with evidence since you joined the board. You pervert and misrepresent the evidence you present in support of your case, which indicates that you have no case because you cannot present uncorrupted evidence to support it.

Your main case is that the Wehrmacht, by which you usually mean the Heer, was as bad as the SS in its involvement in the Holocaust. You refer to isolated events allegedly (see below) involving the ‘Wehrmacht’ which you then project upon the whole of the Heer and or Wehrmacht to show that the whole was as bad as some of its elements.

There is no major army involved in WWII on either side which could not be tarnished by such reasoning, which results in the Allied armies being as bad as the Heer which according to you was as bad as the SS, from which it follows that Allied armies were as bad as the SS and just as involved in the Holocaust as the SS. If that sounds like bullshit, it is. As are your founding assertions about the Heer and Wehrmacht.

Remarkably, you fail to observe your own standards as posted in your first post on this board after introducing yourself.

So to make it short, I think there is a great deal of misunderstanding towards the issue of pride in remembering the members of the German Wermacht or Waffen SS. I have posted a doku made at the controversial Wermacht exibition, in the dokumentary German vets are disscussing
the crimes of the regular German army.

Before you express any opinion, it is important to deeply understand the difference, between those fighting defending their country, and those fighting for an Ideology like Nazism.
My bold. http://www.ww2incolor.com/forum/showthread.php?p=152628#post152628

You clearly lack the knowledge and or analytical detachment to assess the frequently tendentious material you present in support of your case.

You present your links in the post above as ‘focusing on the Wermachts role in the Holocaust’.

Your second link supposedly demonstrates that

The Wehrmacht is thus an important source of material both for understanding the co-ordination of the Holocaust in Ukraine and for combating Holocaust denial, because many of the most explicit accounts of killing policy were written by Wehrmacht administrators.

So?

Even if Wehrmacht administrators did write about them (which isn’t the case with some of the sources relied upon by your blogster - see below), where is the evidence that any Wehrmacht force committed them?

Your second link also says

In Zhytomyr, the problem of killing children was resolved differently. As Lower (p.244) notes:
Sk4a commando leader Heinrich Huhn…recounted that at the subsequent ghetto liquidation at Zhytomyr on 19 September: “The women were allowed to hold their children in their arms” (Heinrich Huhn statement of 13 October 1965, Callsen Trial, ZSt 207 AR-Z 419/62, BAL.).

Obviously you have no idea what Sk4a stands for, unless you are intentionally trying to misrepresent an SS Sonderkommando (Sk4a) unit, which was a sub-unit of the SS Einsatzgruppen, as a Wehrhmacht or Heer unit.

Again, in your blog link is this statement:

The third example, Lutsk, was a reprisal shooting described in Operational Situation Report USSR No. 24:
On July 2 the corpses of 10 German Wehrmacht soldiers were found. In retaliation, 1160 Jews were shot by the Ukrainians with the help of one platoon of the police and one platoon of the infantry.

I don’t see you getting wound up by the Ukrainians who are presented as primarily responsible for this retaliation for the German deaths, with the help of one platoon of the police (i.e. presumably SD, or Security, or Field police, being more effectively SS or SS / Party related than Heer) and one platoon of the infantry. Instead, you prefer to present the alleged involvement of one platoon of unidentified, but presumably Heer, infantry as being responsible for something in which the SD /SS and Ukrainian militia were the main actors. This demonstrates that you present facts to suit your prejudice rather than analysing them dispassionately to reach a balanced conclusion.

In the end, your blogster concludes only that

The Wehrmacht is a massive source of contemporary perpetrator information that leaves no doubt that a genocide was being committed in the USSR.

Nowhere does he claim, as is your line in other posts, that the Wehrmacht was as guilty as the SS etc for the Holocaust or other war crimes.

Which is just as well as, for example, the report upon which he relies for the aspects I have challenged is in fact shown in the link in his blog to be a report to the Chief of the SD about Einsatzgruppen activities in a book of reports about Einsatzgruppen activities, which has absolutely nothing to do with the Heer or Wehrrmacht.

As do most of your bigoted anti-German attacks which you seek to base upon your unsupported assertions that the Wehrmacht was as much an instrument of the Holocaust and the Nazi state as the SS etc. Which is complete bullshit, so if you can’t post anything but complete bullshit it would be good idea to post nothing at all.

#3

You tell em RS!..Don’t take no Lip. You tell it as it is.Right on!

#4

Yo!

You ma man, Herman!

Ah knoo we’d connect bigtime, some day, you crazy Canuck! :wink: :smiley:

#5

I think the links I posted are valid and serious sources, who speak for them selves.

#6

I think you are being a little harsh and to describe the involvement of the Wehrmacht in atrocities (not always the Holocaust) as isolated is twisting the facts, the German Army (not SS) was complicit in anti-partisan sweeeps (which were often merely used as a front to round up Jews), the deliberate mistreatment, leading to death of Soviet POW’s, assissting the Einsatzgruppe (who often used Army troops in round ups), round ups for slave labour/deportation etc etc.

!“Frustrated by partisan guerrilla activity, the Wehrmacht’s reprisal policy featured public hangings and executions of large numbers of defenseless civilians. Jews became easy targets because of their identification as purported supporters of Bolshevism. Troops shot those “walking about” during curfew, burned down entire villages suspected of harboring partisans, drove off livestock, destroyed food reserves, and sometimes forced the rounded-up Jews to clear minefields with rakes.
An Einsatzgruppe A report credited the Wehrmacht with shooting 19,000 partisans and “criminals,” identified as “mostly Jews,” by the end of 1941. !”

http://www.holocaustchronicle.org/StaticPages/269.html

#7

I’m not disputing such events.

But freyir_33’s approach is that events such as you have outlined were the universal conduct of the Heer and or Wehrmacht everywhere they went and that every member of the Wehrmacht is guilty of everything the Nazi state did, to support his assertion that the German people have nothing to be proud of in WWII.

That is just arrant nonsense of a spectacularly ill-informed kind to support a modern day bigotry against the German people.

In occupied France the Heer were noted for correct behaviour, and often better than the Allied troops who invaded later.

Where is the evidence for Heer and or Wehrmacht involvement in the Holocaust in North Africa? Or for assisting there atrocities of the Einsatzgruppen kind?

As for anti-partisan sweeps allegedly used as a front for rounding up Jews, some of the most vigorous partisan activities were in Yugoslavia where Jews were a minor part of the population and a minor part of those killed in racist sweeps and atrocities by local fascist forces with or without German assistance. Why not highlight those atrocities as evidence of the widespread inhumanity and brutality which was abroad in Europe during WWII, and which had nothing to do with the German people or the Nazis?

My problem with freyir_33 is that he, like most people nowadays who lack understanding of the breadth and depth of fascist sympathy and anti-Semitism in Europe before and during WWII, and since, chooses to ignore the enthusiastic complicity of many nations in assisting the Nazis in their conduct while he lays everything at the feet of the German people, as distinct from the Nazis, and every organ of the German and or Nazi state including every member of the German armed forces.

Without the active assistance of some of the nations Germany occupied, the Holocaust would have been vastly less damaging to the Jews. That is not the fault of the Nazis or the German people but of the widespread anti-Semitism which infected Europe before WWII and which was given brutal free rein during WWII.

By all means lay blame at the feet of the German and Nazi forces and the Nazi and German organs of state which participated in such events, but for Christ’s sake let’s stop this blinkered approach that it was only Nazi Germany which was involved in the Holocaust and in local atrocities. Many of the bastards who were up to their lousy necks in those appalling events were neither German nor Nazi, but they are ignored while the Germans are blamed by the likes of freyir_33 for something Nazi Germany could not have carried out without the active participation of other nations which shared or even exceeded Nazi hostility to the Jews and others.

#8

Honestly , i dont’ know by what they should be proud in ww2?
The war that so brillianltly was started, but THEN so badly losed?
Yes it was the GREAT Wermach success in 1939-42, but what was then?
The Nightmare and collapse, the terror and separation of GErmany.
Strongly , i don’t know by what average germans might to be proud in ww2.

Without the active assistance of some of the nations Germany occupied, the Holocaust would have been vastly less damaging to the Jews. That is not the fault of the Nazis or the German people but of the widespread anti-Semitism which infected Europe before WWII and which was given brutal free rein during WWII.

Mate, you absolutly right.
In fact the Local antisemites killed even more jews then the SS( Lockal Holocaust-it should be the whole separate thread)
Sure not all of the such events did occure on the territory , controlled by Wermacht.
But Nazis germany was ONLY the state where the Anti-semitism was a LEGAL state policy.
In every city the Wermach come in 1941 the first what usially happend - the Anti-semitic pogroms.It was regular in Ukrain and BAltic states.
German military authorities not only did nothing to prevent the pogroms, but actively warmed up the anti-semitic feeling among the locals via their “Judo-bolshevics” propogand.
This is FACT.

#9

I agree with you RS but feel this board is equally rife with the mindset the SS and the local auxillaries were somehow totally responsible for all atrocities whilst the “First NATO European Army of the Waffen SS” and the “whiter than white heroes” of the Wehrmacht gallantly held back the Bolshevik rapists and saved Europe. Whilst I agree that no army behaved perfectly, Germany’s state policy was one of conquest, destruction and execution, to a lesser degree (but only slightly) so was the Soviet Union’s.

No one soldier is totally representative of, or guilty for the crimes of his state but the level to which atrocities were carried out in the German Army exceeds that of the Soviets and far exceeds the Western Allies.

#10

Also to be fair to Freyir the links he posted are not revisionist or controversial. The Justiz und NS-Verbrechen is just about war crime trials (and have a look at the number of trials of Waffen SS for executing German civilians and “deserters” at the end). A blog site that seems fairly balanced plus the absolutely excellent Axis History Forum. There are far more critical and less well informed sites that could have been posted to prove his point if he actually has an agenda.

#11

Seeing that it was the Heer that was responsible for the vast majority of the 3.5 million Soviet POW deaths through ill treatment and murder ( that’s not including the help it gave in the killing of Jews) he does have a point.
http://www.enotes.com/genocide-encyclopedia/soviet-prisoners-war

#12

I know very few educated German people who shares your views, but you might find some SS vets who do.

I far as I know from my years in France, Hostage taking and retaliation was standard procedures in occupied France by the Wermacht, in Denmark the Wehrmacht dealt with executions of saboteurs, arresting of jews (even though 90% of the Danish Jews escapes with the help from the resistance, trough a tip from the German gesandt Renthe Fink).

Maybe the only place where the Wehrmacht did actually behave like other armies, allthough in December 42 some 5000 Tunisian Jews where internated
in Work camps.

Conditions in the camps were awful, particularly those run by the Germans. The Jewish notables set up committees to improve the lives of the internees by classifying workers as sick and helping them escape. This became progressively easier because discipline in the camps broke down as the Axis hold on Tunisia weakened.

So all the progroms would had happened anyway, without the backup of the German Army?

Again presuming Germany had not invaded any countries, the Poles would have started a Holocaust by themselves?, I dont think anyone would.
Germany was the driving factor. Actually most people in the occupied areas who was backing up on the Progroms, Holocast etc was often people of German heritage, like in Rumania(Rumäniendeutsche), or ancesters of Germans in the Baltic staates.

Actually most states and it’s people in the occupied zones, as well as some Axis states denied supporting the Germans in carrying out holocaust, the best example is Italy and Finland, or Denmark for that sake.

To accuse me for denying that other nationalities took part in the Holocaust or war crimes etc is nonsense, but the German state and its supporters was the major force behind it all.

I do not accuse single Wehrmacht German soldiers for being more cruel than anyone else, most of them had no choice in the given situation than just flowing with the stream, (if they did not have the intellectual property of Marleen Dietrich or Berthold Brecht who could easily find asylums outside of Germany).

My own family in WW2 was divided, My Uncle joining the SS(died in demjansk), with the rest of the family being ashamed of him, they where Conservative Royalists who would not accept anything what had to do with the Nazis, even with their pre war knowledge. For sure many Europeans in the occupied zones could have done more to prevents Holocast, but mostly they was just as afraid as the Single members of the Wermacht personnel, and chosed to keep low profiles, to avoid retaliation from the Germans.

It is true that that some of the most cruel retaliations in the occupied countries, was carried out by local milits groups often formed by former Waffen SS soldiers(The Shallburg corp*). In Demmark These groups was operating under the local Wehrmacht commander Dr Werner Best, who himself, enjoined a great life after the war(he was in the Wermacht, so he was no criminal).

So… Rising Sun, just with my minor knowledge of what the German Wehrmacht did in Denmark (where nothing really happend compared to other countries), do I slowly start to think that you are trolling here and not me, especially after your rigorous defense of a very suspect client.

*

Latest Book about von Shallburg, “a patriotic betrayer of his Country”

#13

This quote illustrates beautifully the difficulty I have with your highly selective presentations of ‘evidence’ in support of your case against the Wehrmacht, which I note has been significantly diluted in the later parts of your last post under pressure of my opposition.

Here, for the information of other members who deserve to see how duplicitous you are in misrepresenting the ‘evidence’ you use in your anti-German crusade, is the full paragraph from which your quote above is taken.

Approximately 5,000 Tunisian Jewish men were conscripted for almost forty detention camps and forced labor areas near the front lines. These camps were run by both the Germans and the Italians; the most important one was the military port at Bizerte, under German control. Conditions in the camps were awful, particularly those run by the Germans. The Jewish notables set up committees to improve the lives of the internees by classifying workers as sick and helping them escape. This became progressively easier because discipline in the camps broke down as the Axis hold on Tunisia weakened.

Why did you omit the involvement of the Italians mentioned in the sentence immediately preceding your selective quote which presents the Germans as the only offenders?

Why didn’t you criticise Italian complicity in the same exercise? Because, as is apparent from your various posts, you are focused on the Germans and see only the bad in them while largely ignoring or excusing the bad in other nationalities’ conduct in the Holocaust and atrocities during WWII.

Why did you conveniently ignore the involvement of the Vichy French in similar actions against the Tunisian Jews in your highly selective and misleading quote lifted from the following article from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, not to mention pre-war persecution of the Tunisian Jews by other elements , as described in the article from which you lifted your highly selective quote?

Here, for the information of other members, is the article from which you took a selective quote to misrepresent the Wehrmacht’s (or Heer’s) actions as the only people ever involved in oppressing the Tunisian Jews.

JEWS IN NORTH AFRICA: OPPRESSION AND RESISTANCE

The Jews of North Africa were relatively fortunate because their distance from German concentration camps in central and eastern Europe permitted them to avoid the fate of their coreligionists in Europe. They were also fortunate not to have had to live under German rule. The Germans never occupied Morocco or Algeria. Though they briefly occupied Tunisia from November 1942, after the Allied landings in Morocco and Algeria, until May 1943, the Germans never had the time or the resources to subject Tunisian Jews systematically to the measures implemented in areas under direct German rule in Europe.

Nonetheless, attacks on Jews and Jewish property by local European antisemites and native Muslims, which had taken place before the war in all three countries (Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia), continued unhindered by the Vichy authorities.

Even before World War II, the French government had set up internment camps in the French Pyrénées region to hold Spanish Republicans who had fought against Franco’s fascist rebels in the Spanish Civil War, persons suspected or convicted of political crimes, and Jewish refugees who had sought refuge from Nazi Germany in France.

After the armistice with Germany was signed, Vichy authorities sent foreigners (including Jews) who had volunteered for and fought in the French army against the Germans in 1940 and foreign Jewish refugees to work camps in Algeria and Morocco. Upon their arrival, the Jewish refugees received aid from local Jewish committees, as well as from the Joint Distribution Committee and the HICEM, an international Jewish migration organization. These organizations also tried to obtain visas and organize travel to the United States for the refugees.

The Vichy administration sent other Jewish refugees to camps in southern Morocco and Algeria to work as forced laborers on the pan-Saharan railroad line. There were approximately thirty camps, including Hadjerat M’Guil and Bou-Arfa in Morocco and Berrouaghia, Djelfa, and Bedeau in Algeria. Conditions were extremely harsh for the over 4,000 Jewish labor conscripts working on the railroad.

The Allies had been planning to establish a second front in North Africa since September 1942. Operation Torch called for British and U.S. forces under the command of General Dwight D. Eisenhower to land on the beaches of Algeria and Morocco and capture Casablanca, Oran, and Algiers. Because he wanted the Vichy administration in North Africa to switch sides and fight with the Allies against the Germans and Italians, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt opposed coordination with Free French forces under General Charles de Gaulle. On November 8, the Allies landed successfully in Algeria and Morocco, and, after initially facing stiff resistance from Vichy forces, entered Casablanca on November 11.

In Algeria, underground resistance forces staged a coup d’état in Algiers and were able to neutralize the French XIX Army Corps. The Algiers coup was led by Jews Bernard Karsenty and Dr. José Aboulker as well as the “Committee of Five,” prominent Vichy supporters who were hostile to the Germans. Of the 377 participants in the coup, 315 were Jews. Although U.S. officials had promised arms to the resistance leaders, these were never delivered. U.S. officials, acting on Roosevelt’s orders, negotiated a deal with Admiral Jean Francois Darlan, Vichy High Commissioner for North Africa, for the cessation of Vichy resistance to the Allied landings on November 10-11, 1942. Sacrificed in the deal were the leaders of the Gaullist resistance in North Africa, who did not gain power.

Immediately after the Allied landings in Algeria and Morocco, the Germans occupied Tunisia. On November 23, 1942, the Germans arrested Moises Burgel, the president of the Tunis Jewish community, and several other prominent Jews. Resistance to the German persecution of Tunisian Jews came from the sympathetic Vichy resident-general Admiral Estéva, the mayor of Tunis, Sheikh al-Madina 'Aziz Jallouli, and the Italians, who requested that any measures against Tunisian Jews exclude those Jews who were Italian citizens.

In early December, the Germans demanded that Burgel and Chief Rabbi Haïm Bellaïche dissolve Jewish community institutions and ordered the Chief Rabbi to provide Jewish workers for the Axis forces. By this time, the Germans had notified Vichy and Tunisian authorities that they could no longer interfere with German dealings with the Jews. Two days later, the Jewish leaders supplied a list of 2,500 Jews; only 128 Jews showed up for work. The Germans conducted a sweep of the Jewish neighborhood of Tunis and sent those Jews they captured to a camp at Cheylus, near the city. At the same time, the SS arrested one hundred Jewish notables in the Tunis community headquarters in order to compel them to provide Jewish workers for forced labor.

Approximately 5,000 Tunisian Jewish men were conscripted for almost forty detention camps and forced labor areas near the front lines. These camps were run by both the Germans and the Italians; the most important one was the military port at Bizerte, under German control. Conditions in the camps were awful, particularly those run by the Germans. The Jewish notables set up committees to improve the lives of the internees by classifying workers as sick and helping them escape. This became progressively easier because discipline in the camps broke down as the Axis hold on Tunisia weakened.

Despite being worn down by the Allied land and air strikes in spring 1943, German authorities continued to persecute the Tunisian Jews. For example, the Germans imposed fines on Tunisian Jewish communities, ostensibly to compensate civilian victims of Allied bombings. In March 1943, rightwing antisemitic French colonists robbed Jewish homes and stores and denounced twenty members of the anti-Vichy resistance, some of them Jews, to the German authorities. The Germans transferred those arrested to concentration camps in Europe.

Sarah Sussman
Stanford University
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10007312

#14

Who can say?

Pogrom is a Russian word which came into English following various anti-Jewish pogroms (being riots against and massacres of Jews) during the 19th century, including in places which by WWII were Poland and the Ukraine. Hitler tapped a deep vein of anti-Semitism in Europe, but he didn’t create it.

Persecuting the poor bloody Jews had been a major sport in Europe for centuries. Indeed, the ancestors of some of the Tunisian Jews you are so concerned about ended up there only because Spain expelled the Jews it had not burnt at the stake at the end of the 15th century after running the Spanish Inquisition to challenge Jewish influence in Spain.

Really? :confused: :rolleyes:

Confronted with people in nations other than Germany who participated in the Holocaust, you then raise the absurd notion that it was due to their German ancestry.

And there I was, thinking that such conduct was related to Nazism rather than German ancestry. Which is the difference between your position and mine, because you can’t allow the German people any good among them. And your claim that it was often people of German ancestry who participated in bad actions outside Germany just demonstrates how virulent and bizarre your anti-German opinions are.

Apart from assisting the Germans as mentioned in your earlier quote in rounding up and imprisoning the Tunisian Jews (who became Italian Tunisian Jews when the Italians added Tunisia to Italy’s colonial possessions in 1942). Or did your eyes film over with anti-German racism and blind you to that inconvenient sentence preceding your quote to prove that the Germans in North Africa were alone responsible for persecuting the Tunisian Jews.

Could you expand on this for each occupied territory, including details of the former Waffen SS soldiers who formed these militias and the magnificent powers of persuasion they used to convert local innocents into brutal murderers? I’d be particularly interested to have details of the Waffen SS retirees who were responsible for the Croat actions in Yugoslavia. I’d be even more interested to know how and why those agents of the Nazi state, which was hostile to Catholicism, persuaded the Croats to impose forced conversions to Catholicism on Serbs, when they weren’t just butchering Serbs or wiping them out in Croat (not German) concentration camps.

And I’ll happily keep defending Germans as a people from your highly selective persecution, as distinct from prosecution, of them on the basis of national collective guilt for everything that happened in Europe from the start of the war which deprives every German alive during WWII of any credit for any good they did.

You will not allow that there was any good in any Germans during WWII, nor will you allow that there was any good in the German armed forces. Your position is as bad; irrational; bigoted; and prejudiced as the Nazi position that all Jews and all Russians were bad and deserving of condemnation, which laid the foundation for the crimes committed against them.

I don’t like bigotry or prejudice of any kind, the Nazi kind or your anti-German kind. If that makes me a troll, then I am bloody proud to be one.

#15

Well here we go again and again , first of all from my little knowledge ( i admit some guys here have more ) Wehrmacht forces often were filled with guys from SS by order from Gestapo just to see what is going on there and to have control over them although the army was officially independant from SS and Gestapo . Second I don’t see why germans always till the end of world have to walk with their heads down because they fought a war which was in 20 century and guys please now it’s 21 wake up . You may feel envy hate them but they are again on the top in the leading nations with good economy so that it is get used to it . As for the SS it was allies responsibility to make charges against anyone who did crimes . My question why so many wasn’t charged and killed or made prisoners ?? The allies had full control over the process instead the Nuremberg trials was one fiasco . So if you were in court and wasn’t made prisoner afterwards why you have always to feel like criminal ? i don’t think that’s fair . And what you will do if you were in SS and a general give a order to kill ? You wouldn’t do it ? you will go directly to punishment battalion like many guys from Wehrmact did and that in the best case , so most of the low ranked soldiers didn’t have a chance even they had to do what is ordered that is what it mean to be in army , you do whatever your superior order no questions , any disagreement is met with punish . Even if you now go in the army it is the same you will do what your commander order otherwise you will take the punishment .
When speaking of germans and their crimes don’t ever forget that the commies wasn’t better , they made NKVD the GULAG and other things which they used far more than the Nazis and killed much more people . So i will say germans walk up proud and forget about this shit things and the stupid shame that some countries try to put on you for all life the year is 2009 not 1945 and there is no need for more shame , 50 years were enough slavery . If i was german i would be proud to be one .
BTW the Holocaust made by the Red Army in the 30s did we forget about it and the famine then ? Because the Ukranians didn’t .

#16

You are not defending any real Germans by comparing them with, or by measuring Ustasha crimes to those of the Wermacht, in contrary. As I told you, most Germans I know agree 100% with me and my opinions on the their role in ww2.

And with all respect, I think those people are balanced and successful Germans (also some Bundewehr officers), many whom I met due to working 10 years in the German arms industry.

Off course I can’t speak for all of them, but I guess they would rather be without your kind of support. Most Germans of today seek identification with the new Germany, and not the past, and that’s what I love about them.

But truly, both bigotry or uncritical defense of the German past, will make it harder some Germans to reach that new identity. But I am not having any prejudice against Germany, I am just describing the fact about some of the Wehrmacht crimes.

And again, this is not anti German behavior because most Germans of today do not identify themselves with the Third Reich, the Wehrmacht or Heer anymore, but with the Bundewehr or BDR(if any of those at all).

So beware, of those people in English speaking forums who claims ownership
of Germanity, because there are a reason why they are posting here, and not in a German forum.

Read my last post again please(about the Danish Jews)

QUOTE=Rising Sun*;153693]Your position is as bad; irrational; bigoted; and prejudiced as the Nazi position that all Jews and all Russians were bad and deserving of condemnation, which laid the foundation for the crimes committed against them.

I don’t like bigotry or prejudice of any kind, the Nazi kind or your anti-German kind. If that makes me a troll, then I am bloody proud to be one.[/QUOTE]

OK, then we are both proud to be Trolls, and maybe not so different at all :wink:

#17

Now you made me curious (and the other German members of the forum as well I guess), what reason would that be? I’m all ears!

#18

Me too!

To give everybody who didn’t have a conversation with a non-history interested German a perspective of how something like that would work out (Semi-fictious*):

Somehow, the subject came to WW2. The German looks awkwardly at the Ground

Foreigner: So… World War 2.

Awkward Silence

German (mumbles): Fucking Nazis, they were all bastards…

Foreigner (feels sorry): Well, you kicked France’s ass…

German (mumbles): And then the Nazis fucked up our country…

Foreigner (very uncomfortable): Ok… Um… Soccer World Cup next year, right?

German (happy at subject change): Oh yeah, we’re totally gonna win that one!

Englishmen jump out of the closet, singing

Brit: Two World Wars and
One World Cup!!..**

Congratulations. You just witnessed your first typical WW2 Discussion with an average German age 30 - 60! Your Experience might vary.

I know this seems like a pathetic attempt at humour, but it actually happened. Including the Drunken Brit…

*Names changed
**Happens only occasionally :wink:

#19

Mate, only for one first month of occupation of Kiev in 1941 there were killed more the jews that for all 19 centure.
This is also well known fact.

Persecuting the poor bloody Jews had been a major sport in Europe for centuries. Indeed, the ancestors of some of the Tunisian Jews you are so concerned about ended up there only because Spain expelled the Jews it had not burnt at the stake at the end of the 15th century after running the Spanish Inquisition to challenge Jewish influence in Spain.

Persecution/expultion of poor (or rich) jews in middle-age Europe and in Russian empire was NOTIGH compared to TOTAL executions of jews on some areas of Ukraine and Belorussia( or planns of their total execution out of Europe) in occuped territory by Germany.
This is official point of JEwsih Holocaust centre.Yad-Vashem.
That’s why they have called that period 1933-1945 as Shoa( Holocaust)

Your position is as bad; irrational; bigoted; and prejudiced as the Nazi position that all Jews and all Russians were bad and deserving of condemnation, which laid the foundation for the crimes committed against them.
.

i think this is EXACTLY position of Ivaylo( see his last post).
You have nothing told him ?

#20

This is what Goebbels exactly inspired to German Wermach to justify their own behaviour in poor Ukraine late , in 1941:)The total execution of Jews as the "Bolshevics-sympatizers’ and terror agains civils was a legitime resaul of such propogand.

If i was german i would be proud to be one

If i was germans , i would to despise the all sort of such a “comeraden” llike Bulgarians ones who , when it was profitable for them attacked Yugoslavia alongside Germany, but when Germans retreated , betrayed them and turned out against GErman army in 1944:D