If you had fought an enemy for a year, came across many terrible death camps where the enemy had murdered thousands, and heard rumors of other camps to. Then came upon such a camp, capture the guards, and see rows and rows. No FIELDs of dead prisoners, human beings who had been starved to death, beaten to death, gassed, and those that were alive crying and thanking your for their salvation.
You see all of this, and these monsters that had done these things right there in front of you, well you tell me you would be a saint and just ask them their name, rank, and serial number.
I do not blame the ones that shot the SS. The SS hands were bloody from the many years they had done such deeds to the Jews, Russians, Gypsies, and others.
They are lucky we didn’t take Stalin’s proposal to erase Germany from the map.
Well, i do agree, the SS made a lot of dirty work, although THAT SS-guard possibly didn’t commite the crimes( they fled away otherwise ,together with other hight-rank criminals)
BTW what "Stalin’s proposal to erase Germany did you mean?
I know just one proposal so called “Plan Morgentau” - to separate post-war Germany on several lands. Forced partition of GErmany and “industrial disarmament”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgenthau_Plan
In the original proposal this was to be achieved in three main steps.
-Germany was to be partitioned into two independent states.
-Germany’s main centers of mining and industry, including the Saar area, the Ruhr area and Upper Silesia were to be internationalized or annexed by neighboring nations.
-All heavy industry was to be dismantled or otherwise destroyed.
Lucky Germans were.
The ONLY beginning of Cold war make US administration partly deny the plan of Germans Partition:)
The PBS had a special on Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin (and I respect Churchill far more than Roosevelt, and I’m American.) The special was called, “WWII Behind Closed Doors: Stalin, the Nazis and the West”.)
Stalin, at a dinner with Churchill and FDR, even proposed shooting at least 100,000 German officers at the end of the war. Churchill deflected it with a joke, but you could tell he didn’t like the idea at all. FDR just laughed.
FDR was Laughing coz it was indeed…famouse Stalin’s joke about 100 000 of germans officers that “would have been executed after the war”.
Churchill often didn’t know when exactly unce Joe joking or not.
Stalin , knowing that CHurch looks on him as at Dictator, sometimes made a joke with Church.
As later CHurchill recollected in his memours( “second world war”) - Stalin was absolutly serious.
But the son of FDR ,Eliot Roosvelt wrote detailts about that dinner - that Curchill didn’t endeed “deflected it with a joke” - but was pissed off on STalin and answer something kinda - “our people don’t admit such a brutality”
Churchill was really irritated - he didn’t get such Stalin joke.
Roosvelt , who much beter seen and understood the STalin’s humour, then try to save the situation , loudly laughting.
He better know STalin- that’s why i think he was much more importaint figure in Allied Coalition then the Brtitish premier…
It was Roosvelt who really has tied our coalition together.( well at least those two - Stalin and CHurchill)
To some points, i should agree that, event waffen SS should be blamed as any other SS formations be it SD, SA or the deathcamp’s guards,
as it is understood, the source of manpower for SS organization was limited and restricted, and priority was given to army/Navy/Airforce.
Therefor, concentration guards pool are become one of their main manpower resources. So by all means, for any waffen SS individuals, they were once a concentration camp themself before, definetely, they aware of what was happening inside the fence. (cases might be different if they are volkdeutsche or SS ‘foreign legion’)
But the moral story should stand still, small sin or big sin, they both are sins,
even those SSmen deserved to be hang, let the trial proof it. THIS make the cause of the fight different from the other side.
I saw one reply here mentioned about the Bali Bombers, it is true, that the lawyer play around with their right or justice towards those bastards, and this make most people sick of them. But let them be, simply becouse we are not as what they are, who were indiscrimately blasting peboms without concerning of the live of the innocents.
We have to set a different between us and them, irregardless, There were wise words from family of the deceased of the 1st Bali bom, when asked whether or not he wants to personally kill the bombers for the death of his brother, he replied." may God and Justice decide upon them of their fate, I was and still in grief upon my brother, I would gladly see them dead, but it is not my right to take their -the terrorist’- life"
The SA had nothing to do with the SS. The relation between both organisations can be described as problematic - to put it mildly.
Not at all. The only Waffen-SS unit which had undergone an exchange with concentration camp personnel was 3rd SS “Totenkopf”. Altogether we’re talking about ~6000 men here, app. one third of the division’s nominal strength.
[QUOTE=flamethrowerguy;156910]The SA had nothing to do with the SS. The relation between both organisations can be described as problematic - to put it mildly.
QUOTE]
ah yes,. sorry,. it is now 3am in my place,. keep typing without thinking :rolleyes:
sturmabteilung is definetely not part of anything but Ernst Rohm personal tool to pursue his own ambition
my book,. Waffen SS, written by Keith simpsons never mentioned on the ratio or numbers taken, when Himmler source the lack of manpower for his 3rd SS division.
it was about 6500 of them, :oops: i close my case,. and thanks for the correction, it was always in my mind, that concentration camp keep supplying troops to the waffen SS formation.
Actually the main character behind this was SS-Obergruppenführer Theodor Eicke, commander of 3rd SS “Totenkopf” and before that Inspector of the Concentration Camps.
BTW, Eicke was personally involved in the liquidation of Ernst Röhm in 1934.
I have to say something here in December of 1944 when my Grandfathers regiment came to the relief of the 2nd and 99th Divisons in the norther sholder of the bulge, they first hand saw the work of the 1SS this was in several towns the dead bodies of Civilians and American Airborne shot by the SS they Saw first hand the dead in Malmedy and Butebach and a few other small villages, after this it was open season on the SS, no mercy, no prisoners taken unless orderd so by HQ, if you cant understand the reality of being a front line soldier in war they you shouldn’t be so fast to make judgement on what is right or wrong because under those circomstances in the field when there is no government, just Military order, people are dying all around you and you don’t really want to be there fighting and you just want to get the damn war over with, you do horrible and somtimes in the eyes of the civilian world “wrong” Things to bring it all to an end.
On the other hand when you are the hand of justice in this chaotic world you on the spot decide the hand of Justice in a swift and short manner as there is little time and sometimes no way to get prisoners back to HQ, also to impress upon your enemy their fate, if you keep on using dirty tactics and methods to force the civilian poulation to do you will. As the SS did in WW II, you either did as you were told or you werte shot on the spot. So sometimes the return happens back its called Justice in many peoples eyes.
This was the way of the SS so any fool who thinks that by reading a book or 2 on the subject has the experience and knowledge to make such assumptions and judgements, first put yourself in the shoes of the SS and then of the Allies would you treat an enemy with kindness fairness and leagaees when they didnt at all? or just shoot them on the spot to prove a point?
I know for a fact that My Grandfather and his troops actions in WW II would in todays terms be deemed conduct unbecoming and probably be court marshalled and put in prison but those were very different times than today and hopefully because we have places like this to express our freedom of speach and debate we will never repete those mistakes again.
I’ll site a story told to me by a certain sargent from the regiment on this subject during an interview with him and his squad in 2005.
“see we had just come upon a fixed position manned by some hitler youth and an SS Officer we gave them the chance to surrender first before firing a shot they didn’t take the offer so after the little bastards fired every round fired every panzer fasust and grenade they came out of the the position yelling Nicht Shootzen kameraten nicht shootzen” I looked at the Lt and asked what do we do? He didnt say a word he just gave the slash across the throat and we killed every single one of them on the spot."
right or wrong this is what they did, I would have too under the circomestances do you want a bunch of fanatics runnning around germany after the end of the war? people who were so obviously so brainwashed that given the chance to surrender when completley outnumbered they would blindly follow the orders given to them when anyone in their right mind would surrender? or that they would fire all of their ammo and then surrender?
also rember that Pattons standing orders were that “any German caught doing an act of agression and then surrendering was to be shot on the spot” IE the mentality being if your going to surrender do it before not after doing a deed of agression…
Sure the slaughter of prisoners is a very bad thing but think of who they were killing were they honorable soldiers? who treated the civilian populations of the countries they occupied with decency and respect? NO they were arrogant monsters who treated them as slaves subserviants and this in my eyes and many many soldiers eyes is reason enough to justify the means.
remember it only takes one bad apple to ruin the bunch and as we are a sum of an whole not the sum of the Idividual in this world. hence why even today we make the same bad assumptions on a broad level.
Spoken like someone who’s never served his country, and who’s never had to deal with any type of combat stress. And as Cpt. Prahl so elequently put it, throwing mud on the memory of soldiers that you aren’t fit to shine their boots for, is petty, juvenile, and pathetic. You prate about injustice, and how “We” the U.S. sweep things under the rug, so too speak.All countries have their “dirty little secrets” but the U.S. has time and time again, acknowledged theirs, albeit not necessarily at the time they happen. And as far as ‘Schnelessy’ goes, why in Gods name should that have been required reading in any school curriculum? As far as my opinion on the whole Dachau incident goes; I think that it was wrong for the GI’s too have 'executed the SS men, if you don’t have a weapon in your hand, and your hands are raised, you should be considered a POW. Having said that, I can fully understand the dynamics involved that allowed that situation to disintegrate as it did. I also fail too understand Chevans prediliction for the “Jewish” in his posts, that is neither here nor there, Once again I’ll source Cpt. Prahl when he states “how about watching friends die in a war caused by the guys you are fighting,” as a personal reason. Chevans fixation on Jews highlights his own prejudices.
Whether or not anyone on this forum has served their country, or someone else’s country, is immaterial to their entitlement as a member of a historical forum to comment.
Some of the best, and best informed, contributors to this forum over many years were still at school.
WTF does that have to do with killing or mistreating people outside combat? Or do you think My Lai, or Abu Ghraib, were justifiable? If so, then Nazi events such as Oradour were equally justifiable.
And here I was, thinking that one of the factors which the Allies liked to think distinguished them from the Axis, or at least the Nazis and Japanese, was that the Allies didn’t engage in wholesale slaughter of POWs and civilians, with or without ‘combat stress’.
Exactly where did I do that?
Or maybe, by some curious twist of thinking, you think my comments at #14 and #15 constitute ‘throwing mud on the memory of soldiers you aren’t fit to shine the boots for, is petty, juvenile and pathetic’.
Do I?
Please specify the posts in this thread where I did that?
It would be interesting to see you specify how my flippant comment about Eicke helping get rid of Roehm supports your last post, because I’m ****ed if I can see the relationship.
The reason America, like every other country which did wrong, didn’t acknowledge its wrongs at the time was because they didn’t want them to come out.
It’s nonsense to try to make a virtue out of the failure of America’s, or any other country’s, officialdom to conceal bad things when the reality is that such things came out only because of the courage of individuals who swam against the current created by the national administration.
You seem a bit oversensitive to comments which haven’t been made which you choose to imagine as being anti-American. Which is precisely why that type of American-centric attitude pisses off a large part of the population of the rest of the planet.
Americans are less than 5% of the world’s population. The other 95% are as entitled to their opinion as are Americans.
Whom exactly are you talking about? This thread is years old and the last post in it was over a year ago…
And as Cpt. Prahl so elequently put it, throwing mud on the memory of soldiers that you aren’t fit to shine their boots for, is petty, juvenile, and pathetic.
“cpl.” Prahl was a troll ****bag that’s never served anything and claims to be an American that refuses to live in his own country (if that’s the case)…
I assumed it was me, given his reference to ‘you’ and me being the last post.
Then again, I might have been engaging in me-centric thinking similar to the American-centric thinking of which I accused HOSBandit.
However, his signature ‘Za Dom Spremni’ ain’t exactly a pro-American, or any American, statement. It’s the ‘Seig Heil’ of the rabid Yugoslav fascists in the Ustashe in WWII.
HOS might be a remarkable coincidence with Hrvatske obrambene snage, or HOS, being the Croatian militia during the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s.
I am sensing a troll of the feral neo-Nazi type sailing under the false colours of a proud American.
My comments weren’t directed at you RisingSun. I missplaced my reply somehow. I was commenting on something that Krad42 had said. I am no neo-nazi troll wearing the guise of an patriotic American. I didn’t realize at the time how old the thread was, and was only responding to Krad42’s use of “NOT” at the end of his sentence where he talked about soldiers and combat stress, and such. My intention wasn’t to kick up a shit storm, I also said in my post that I didn’t condone the summary execution of those SS soldiers. I rarely come into the forum because of situations like this. My signature is Za Dom Spremni, yes. For the homeland, i am ready. But it is my way of honoring my Fathers Uncles and Cousins who fought and died for Croatia in WW2. Were they on the wrong side, so to speak? Yes, I suppose they were. But that could be said for alot of members here. It doesn’t make me a neo-nazi troll, as you put it. And HOS has connatations that have nothing to do with 1990 Yugoslavia. And as far as my quoting this Capt. Prahl, who has apparently been outed as a fraud and a liar, weather he was or not, a couple of his posts had nuggets of info I felt were worth quoting. My doing so in no way should have been constued as any kind of an endorsement of the guy. In ending I just want to say once again, that my post wasn’t directed at you, and I apologise for inadvertantly placing it in the wrong place. And now, after hopefully explaining enough too get my name removed from the sinister troll list, I bid you all adieu for another six months or so.
