Why the Waffen-SS

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BillHermann
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Re: Why the Waffen-SS

#136

Post by BillHermann » 27 Sep 2012, 09:28

What I don't understand is with the overwhelming evidence the "ones that were not guilty" argument still holds wait to some.

The Waffen-SS came from an organization that committed crimes, the concept and puropse of the Waffen-SS was brute force and policies that were inline with its parent organization. Trying to sugar coat them and make them a victim of some conspiracy or misunderstanding takes away from who they were. The their were good one so therefore the organization can't be bad does not hold any wait.

One could use that argument with any criminal organization, that still does not mean that the purpose, leaders are also not as bad or guilt free. It's quite simple. During this time they knew what they were doing and understood their purpose and role. The leaders and most members had no issue with their purpose and association.

Again trying to dilute the Waffen-SS only does them a disservice as their brutality is what made them.

The other point that needs to be made clear is the Waffen- SS was the driving force under the SS after 1941-42 they were not just the divisions from the 1st to the 38th but had many units and members that assigned outside of combat operations. The concept of compartmentalization of the SS into groups where members did not move around out side of combat it untrue.

Even Adolf Eichmann held a commission in the Waffen-SS. Simply put due to war the evolution of the SS and necessity the lines were blurred. The Waffen-SS became the major player in Nazi / SS policies and actions. It does not matter that some men were not guilty, the organization was.

The cool factor still baffles me.

But again this is not a defence / against argument but a question on why are they so appealing, why is there so much fiction believed as fact and would they be so appealing if they were the nice misunderstand guys that some want them to be.

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Re: Why the Waffen-SS

#137

Post by Sid Guttridge » 27 Sep 2012, 13:22

Hi Bill,

Some of this is answered in Vlahalla's Warriors, of which I wrote the following review:


Valhalla’s Warriors: A History of the Waffen-SS on the Eastern Front 1941-45.

By Terry Goldsworthy.

Dog Ear Publishing, Indianapolis, 2007.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Valhalla’s Warriors, despite its populist title, is an academically-based survey of its subject. It has grown out of the author’s PhD thesis, but is more accessible. It is both footnoted and contains integral source details within the text for all the many quotations used and propositions made.

Valhalla’s Warriors is reader friendly in that it is written in plain English and sub-headings break the chapters down into convenient segments. Its academic origins should not deter anybody, because it is readable and well organized.

The sub-title, "A History of the Waffen-SS on the Eastern Front 1941-45", is somewhat misleading, as Valhalla's Warriors is really devoted to only particular aspects of the Waffen-SS's activities in Eastern Europe - its crimes and atrocities.

The book draws on a 22-page bibliography that ranges across a broad spectrum of opinion, including the works of several AHF and Feldgrau contributing authors. It lacks some recent published sources, but as these both reinforce and contradict its thesis, these absences do not particularly skew its conclusions.

An organizational weakness in the bibliography is to include original unpublished source material alongside published material, thus making it difficult to detect the degree to which Valhalla’s Warriors is primary research. This reviewer calculates that only about 5% of the bibliography consists of unpublished material, all of it apparently from the ETHINT series of the US Army. Thus the book breaks comparatively little new ground in terms of sources.

However, it does make a fairly representative survey of published English language literature, ranging from academic works by the likes of Yale and Princeton University Presses, to populist publications from the likes of Schiffer and J. J. Fedorowicz. It thus has a broad foundation on which to base its conclusions.

So what does it say?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Valhalla’s Warriors jumps in feet first with the proposition that “This book is an exploration of the Waffen-SS, and by necessity of evil.”

Does the author make good this proposition in terms of the Waffen-SS as an institution? With some reservations, Yes.

(Please note that the following notes are no more than an appetizer of the contents of each chapter.)

In Chapter 1 Goldsworthy deals with “The Origins and Ideology of the Waffen-SS”. In it, he cites sources (pp.31-32) that at least 83% of Waffen-SS officers above the rank of Brigadefuhrer are known to have been members of the Nazi Party, that one survey of 105 senior Waffen-SS commanders shows that 97% joined the Nazi Party before 1933, that 90% of them were in the wider SS before joining the Waffen-SS and others had been in the SA. This not only aligns the Waffen-SS leadership with Nazi political philosophy and the wider SS, but confirms that there were very high levels of mutual membership between the Nazi Party, the SS generally and the Waffen-SS leadership in particular.

Chapter 2 covers “The Structure of the Waffen-SS”. In it (p.44) we learn that political indoctrination was given the same weight as tactics at the top of the curriculum of officer candidates. We also find out (p.47) that the same SS administrative organization that oversaw the camp system, the WVHA, also oversaw the Waffen-SS budget. There is some confusion about the origins of the Waffen-SS officer corps, one source (p.49) stating that an (unlikely?) 90% of them were of peasant background in 1938, whereas an appendix on p.240 indicates that only between 3.4% and 5% of officers surveyed between Sturmbannfuhrer and Obergruppenfuhrer were even farmers.

(The same appendix also states that 23.8% of the ranks between Obergruppenfuhrer and Standartenfuhrer were ex-Army officers, 21.9% were from academic professions, 15.8% were ex-businessmen and 14.7% were ex-Police officials. By contrast ex-Army NCOs made up only 8.7% of these two ranks and a similar proportion (8.8%) of Obersturmbannfuhrer and Sturmbannfuhrer, whereas only 1.9% of these last two ranks were former Army officers. If true, it rather undermines the proposition that the Waffen-SS offered fast track promotion to high rank for significant numbers of Army NCOs and others from the civilian working classes. According to Valhalla’s Warriors, the Waffen-SS senior officer corps was dominated by ex-Army officers and their social equivalents from the civilian middle classes.)

Chapter 3 is entitled “Combat Operations of the Waffen-SS”. This actually deals with excesses committed by Waffen-SS divisions in the immediate combat area, often far behind the Eastern Front itself. It largely concerns reluctance (sometimes refusal) to take prisoners, reprisal killings and actions against Commissars, Jews and the Polish Home Army by a wide range of Waffen-SS field units. Even the 6th Nord Mountain Division doesn’t entirely escape implication. It is the weakest chapter, in that the author’s lack of Soviet sources has left a massive area unexplored.

Chapter 4 covers “Anti-Partisan and Einsatzgruppen Operations”. To this reviewer, there seems no obvious dividing line between anti-partisan operations and similar operations covered in the previous chapter. However, it is significant for quantifying Waffen-SS penetration of Einsatzgruppen on pp.114-117 and the presence of former Einsatzgruppen officers in Waffen-SS formations. For example (p.114) a chart shows that 34.4% of Einsatzgruppe A were Waffen-SS men and argues that this was typical of other einsatzgruppen because a formula was used in their composition. Former Einsatzgruppen officers are also known to have gone on to serve in 15 Waffen-SS field divisions, including almost all those raised of Reich Germans, and a variety of other Waffen-SS units, albeit in very small numbers. The evidence of overlap between the Einsatzgruppen and Waffen-SS is shown to be rather more extensive than this reviewer had previously suspected.

Chapter 5 covers “The Concentration Camps”. This chapter details evidence of links between the camp system and the Waffen-SS. It contends (p.127) that from 1940 to 1943 at least 2,500 men were transferred from Auschwitz to Waffen-SS units and some 1,500 from Sachsenhausen over 1942-45. A chart (p.132) lists the number of past or future camp officers known to have served in each Waffen-SS division. The Totenkopf, unsurprisingly, hosted well over a hundred and fifty. Every single Reich-raised Waffen-SS division (except the Hitler Jugend) hosted several tens. Only three late creations (28th, 37th and 38th) are not known to have contained any former camp officers.

Chapter 6 deals with “The Waffen-SS as a criminal organization”. It opens with Adenauer’s quote “Soldaten wie die anderen auch” and contains a useful section on the legal wrangling at Nuremberg that led the tribunal to conclude of the Waffen-SS that, unless personally implicated in the commission of acts declared criminal, membership alone was not enough to come within the scope of the tribunal’s proceedings. In rebutting Adenauer’s statement, the author seems to take a harder line than the Nuremberg trials. Nuremberg separated the Waffen-SS as an institution (criminal) from the individual member (not criminal unless directly and personally implicated). The author, however, seems to move beyond this strictly legal differentiation when he states (p.153) “As a moral concept I see the issue of group responsibility being acceptable”. It is on this point that most controversy seems likely to arise.

Backed by the weight of evidence he has brought in previous chapters of extensive cross fertilization and institutional overlap between the Waffen-SS and the agencies charged with carrying out genocide, he contends, “The members of the Waffen-SS had much more than just passing or innocent knowledge of the evil acts being committed, they had intimate knowledge”. To this point this reviewer believes that the author makes a plausible case.

However, he then contends that “They (the Waffen-SS) were responsible for the concentration-camps….”, a formula that seems to overstep the evidence, even taking into account the Totenkopf Division’s strong connections. The strongest statistical case made for the Waffen-SS and camp system being one is that over 40% of camp officers also served at some point in the Waffen-SS. However, the flow seems to have been far more heavily from the camps to the Waffen-SS field formations than the other way around. The camps seem to have been a useful secondary source of officers and men for the Waffen-SS, or, to put it another way, the Waffen-SS was a primary drain on the manpower of the camps.

Of the Waffen-SS divisions, only the Totenkopf received enough former camp officers to have made up a third of its officer establishment, even if they had all served simultaneously. In fact, given that the division suffered over three times its establishment in casualties, the camp officers are likely to have amounted at most to 10% of those officers who passed through it. Waffen-SS/camp connections were certainly robust and longstanding, but the proposition that the Waffen-SS were responsible for the concentration camps seems a leap too far. The author would, perhaps, have been better advised to go with the form of words he offers when he says that “….they contributed to the Einsatzgruppen.”

Chapter 7 seeks to show “why the Waffen-SS were capable of committing the evil crimes they did”. In this and the previous chapter, the author begins to move into areas of mass socio-pathology that this reviewer is not well equipped to assess. In essence he proposes that the problem with the Waffen-SS was not one of aberrant individuals but the result of five main factors embracing the entire institution:

1) Learning to Hate: Seeing the evil enemy. The Nazi regime legitimized criminal orders and actively devalued the target groups that were to become victims of genocide.
2) Loyalty is my Honour: Obedience to evil. The Waffen-SS were primed by the regime to accept this devaluation of the intended genocide victims.
3) Just following orders. The ethos of unquestioning obedience within the Waffen-SS made its men unusually useful tools for executing criminal orders.
4) The SS Mentality. The ethos of “hardness”, both on themselves and their foes, also made them more robust instruments for executing criminal orders.
5) Difficult Life Conditions. The extreme nature of the fighting on the Eastern Front, to which their enemy contributed in full measure, brutalized all participants.

In conclusion the author contends that the Waffen-SS’s brutal campaign was intentional, served no legitimate military goal, but rather an ideological one, caused massive harm and was unnecessary or disproportionate to any instigation or provocation. In short, “evil”. The author does not source his definition of “evil”, so one presumes it is one developed by himself in his PhD.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Valhalla’s Warriors is persuasive that the SS agencies directly charged with genocide and the Waffen-SS were continuously cross-pollinating at a number of levels, mutually aware of each other’s roles, functions and activities, and supportive of them. It is therefore impossible to divorce the one institution completely from the other.

However, what Valhalla’s Warriors seems to claim, but does not adequately establish, is that the SS agencies directly charged with genocide and the Waffen-SS were functionally one and the same, with the latter dominant within the former. While accepting that artificial distinctions are often made between the Waffen-SS and the SS’s genocide agencies, this reviewer still sees room to plausibly maintain that they were, in fact, two closely related and overlapping agencies with different primary functions in the pursuit of a common politico-strategic goal, rather than one monolithic agency. The SS was a continuum, within which the Waffen-SS was certainly numerically by far the largest segment, but it was not dominant within it. It did not make policy for other segments

Strangely, the author has accepted uncritically the proposition that the Waffen-SS was “without doubt a remarkable fighting formation” without bothering to investigate the unremarkable performance of most of its non-German higher formations, the difficulty in differentiating between the combat performance of Reich-raised Waffen-SS mechanized formations and similarly equipped Army formations, and the role of both wartime propaganda and post war publications in boosting this reputation. But then, Valhalla’s Warriors does not primarily claim to be a military history book. It is an institutional study of the unsavoury underbelly of the Waffen-SS, and it is there that it scores a number of good hits.

So, who should buy Valhalla’s Warriors?

For a start, anyone with a specialist interest in the Waffen-SS can hardly avoid it and still maintain a claim to full expertise. For Waffen-SS apologists it will be useful to “know thy enemy”, as they are liable to be ducking shots drawn from its locker for some time to come. For those of a more hostile disposition towards the Waffen-SS, it will provide ammunition that will considerably reinforce their existing prejudices.

The great mass of general readers in between will get a sourced, readable and useful survey of the case against the Waffen-SS that comes down firmly in condemnation of its fundamental ethos and the numerous actions of its members that went beyond any military requirements.


Cheers,

Sid.


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Re: Why the Waffen-SS

#138

Post by tonyh » 27 Sep 2012, 17:20

Rob - wssob2 wrote:
The fact remains, whether people like it or not, that the vast majority of men in the Waffen SS committed no war crimes of any nature and the simple lumping in of everyone concerned is disingenuous, no matter who has claimed what.

...The men of the Waffen SS weren't given a fair assessment,
If it makes you feel better, plenty of SS men implicated in massive, multiple war crimes got away scott-free - Mohnke and Gustav Lombard immediately spring to mind.

Snide comment and one not worth a response.

People studying the history of the period should be able to distinguish the men with actual criminal cases against them with the ordinary Joes who where fighting to stay alive, like all other soldiers at the front.
tonyh, I know you've particpated in this forum for years and yet I am amazed that despite all the evidence posted here that you still claim to believe such a myth. The SS troops who machine gunned civilians at Ascq in April 1944 or at Pinsk in August 1944 weren't "fighting to stay alive" - they were killing defenseless civilians - in the case of the former due to an operational policy and in the case of the latter due to a specific ideological policy. It's not a question of opinion, it's a matter of fact - and to quote Waffen-SS war criminal Kurt Meyer, the facts are burdensome enough.
Cases SHOULD be taken on their individual merit, or lack thereof.

The idea that a huge group of men be classed as "criminal", because their organisation was classed as such, out of a move of convenience on behalf of their victors holds no water, whatsoever with me. It's just not good enough.

...AND AGAIN...the VAST MAJORITY of men who passed through the ranks of the Waffen SS committed NO crime at all.

That's a FACT.

But one which some people want to ignore, because it doesn't fit in with their particular bias.

People were drafted into the Waffen SS from 1944, like HaEn ( a poster on these boards). Are these people "criminals" too? Of course they're not.

In fact, the idea of collective guilt should be abhorrent to any fair minded and unbiased individual.

The allies classed the Waffen SS as "criminal" out of a cheap move, not out of a sense of justice. It was done so, to make things easier on themselves. But that certainly doesn't mean that that particular move on their behalf has to be taken at face value today. The IMT isn't gospel and it's precedents certainly haven't been upheld by any nation subsequently either and their is absolutely no reason why anyone studying the period the particular legal maneuver in question as the end of the story.

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Re: Why the Waffen-SS

#139

Post by Rob - wssob2 » 27 Sep 2012, 17:59

Snide comment and one not worth a response
Actually is is worth a response. You are essentially representing the pro-Waffen-SS faction on this thread and I would by very interested to hear more about why you believe the W-SS are so slandered and maligned. I suspect that you are attracted to the W-SS and would appreciate your articulating such attraction if that is the case.

I also note that I have pointed out two specific examples of SS men gunning down defenseless civilians, examples that completely undermine your "frontline fighter" excuse, and you declined to address them. Why?

Your take has always been the same Rob. You'll damn it and any men who served in it, regardless, but that's just not good enough.
It's like what Moriarty says of Sherlock Holmes in the BBC series; I'm boring because I'm on the side of the angels. ;)
Cases SHOULD be taken on their individual merit, or lack thereof.

The idea that a huge group of men be classed as "criminal", because their organisation was classed as such, out of a move of convenience on behalf of their victors holds no water, whatsoever with me.
A while back I posted a thread (see http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 3&start=30) that included the following passage. Tonyh, please read it and answer the rethorical question about who is the criminal:

In April and May of 1944 members of the 21st SS Division participated in the roundup and deportation of several hundred Albanian Jews to the death camps. (Sources: Noel Malcolm's Kosovo: A Short History and Raul Hillbergs The Destruction of the European Jews) Obviously, given the scale and complexity of the entire set of events labeled "the Holocaust," this is a pretty obscure incident. But who exactly was involved in the execution of this order? Here's a possible reconstruction:

An SD officer in charge of "Jewish Affairs" contacts the HSSPF for Albania regarding the need to "cleanse" Pristina of Jews. He needs a platoon of men to assist with the deportation.

The HSSPF contacts the local Wehrmacht commander about needing a platoon of men. The Wehrmacht commander says he can't spare any Heer troops, but try the 21st SS division, which is training in the area.

The HSSPF contacts the divisional commander of the 21st SS regarding the request.

The 21st SS divisional commander issues an order down to one of his regimental commanders.

The regimental commander passes the order down to one of his battalion commanders.

The battalion commander passes the order down to one of his company commanders.

The company commander passes the order down to one of his platoon commanders.

The platoon commander gathers his 30-odd men (who are happy at the chance to avoid a day of drill and get into town for a bit) at the appointed place and time and they all meet with several representatives of the SD and Gestapo, plus a few local policemen. The Jewish civilians are assembled and forced to walk to the train station without undue commotion. The Jews are forced into the railway wagons under the supervision of the locomotive engineer and the station master and the train leaves the station. All parties disperse. Just like Kurt Vonnegut wrote in "Slaughterhouse Five" - and so it goes. The entire affair probably wouldn't have made it to posterity if it weren't for the notations in the Wehrmacht unit diaries.

Who, then, is "responsible" for this deportation of Albanian Jews to the death camps?

The SD representative?
The HSSPF?
The Wehrmacht commander?
The Waffen-SS divisional commander?
The Waffen-SS regimental, battalion, company or platoon commanders?
The Albanian W-SS enlisted men?
The Gestapo?
The local constabulary?
The locomotive engineer?
Or the station master?

Who's the criminal?

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Re: Why the Waffen-SS

#140

Post by Dutto1 » 27 Sep 2012, 18:07

Hi tonyh,

I am looking at this from an objective view.The points i on which i agree with you are pretty straightforward.
I agree that not every Officer NCO,and OR of the Waffen SS were war criminals.I also agree that after the war the victors ie-the Western Allies made some judicial mistakes regarding the trials of ex Waffen SS soldiers.For example handing down a death sentence to Kurt Meyer for the shooting of Canadian POW's was unfair in as much an Allied soldier would not have faced a similar punishment had he been tried by his own side,so the sentence he did serve was probably fair for what the crimes he was convicted for.

Many Waffen SS enthusiats bring up Malmedy as being unfair but from what i have studied on the matter the sentences that were served in the end seemed a fair punishment bearing in mind that civillians were murdered too in December 1944 so some say that and with justification that the prison scentences served in the end were not enough.

On to the part of the Waffen SS being declared a criminal organisation at Nuremberg it was the only option open to them as the Waffen SS was a part of The SS which in turn was an apparatus of the Nazi Party.Until 1940 only a third of all Waffen SS soldiers were conscripts the rest volunteers,As the war progressed the margin of conscripts increased steadily.Many of these conscripts were members of the "Hitler Youth" generation.At the war's end there were still a substantial amount of Waffen SS troops who had volunteered as opposed to being conscripted.

Waffen SS Divisions like the Cavalry unit Florain Geyer went hunting supposed partisans in the Pripet Marshes but in reality they were not partisans but innocent Jewish civillians including women and children.Other Waffen SS Divisions participated in these sweeps in 1941 notably the Leibstandarte.The list goes on and on.

Waffen SS troops had a repuataion for killing POW's in Russia while i understand that the Russians were just as bad it does not excuse what happend.The Waffen SS Also had this reputation in Western Europe too and again the Allied troops were no angels themselves it still does not excuse that type of behaviour.

Here is the judgement of the IMT on The SS including the Waffen SS.

http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/judorg.asp#ss


Regards,

Ron

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Re: Why the Waffen-SS

#141

Post by BillHermann » 27 Sep 2012, 20:34

An essay on this thread and information on one book is not an objective discussion on the matter. There are many books regarding subject matters that are subjective and full of spin.

I remember receiving 15 years ago a book on the subject, even the title is subjective, painting the Waffen-SS as a cool organization. When you get into the details the facts have even been twisted.

I am not sure where the confusion is but I think 90 to 100 percent of us know that they all were not bad. That is not the issue nor is it a viable argument as a whole in the defence of the organization.

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Re: Why the Waffen-SS

#142

Post by j keenan » 27 Sep 2012, 20:53

I wonder how many would have stayed in if they had won,and gone on to carry out the Final Solution ?

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Re: Why the Waffen-SS

#143

Post by Harro » 27 Sep 2012, 21:13

All in all I think the whole discussion about all members of the Waffen-SS being criminals or not is not the big issue in this topic. In my opinion the Waffen-SS is to much tarnished by a combination of factors, being its background as the armed force of nazism and all nazism stood for, the political motivation of the Waffen-SS, and the active role almost every single Waffen-SS unit played in the planned extermination of the Jews and the murder of millions of others.

The fact that not every single member of the Waffen-SS actively took part in these crimes does not mean that they were not part of the system because "the Waffen-SS" was "the system". I can understand and to a certain point even respect some individual veterans of the Waffen-SS since back in those days before and during the war they did not always have the full picture of what could happen and what was happing. But I cannot understand or respect people who, despite the knowledge we have today about the nature and massive scale of the crimes of nazism and the part the Waffen-SS had in these crimes, still think the Waffen-SS was okay.

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Re: Why the Waffen-SS

#144

Post by BillHermann » 28 Sep 2012, 07:41

Indeed Harro,

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Re: Why the Waffen-SS

#145

Post by WorldwarBill » 30 Sep 2012, 19:42

Harro wrote:
WorldwarBill wrote:However, if you are going to criminalize an entire organization because of the acts of some of its members
Nope, the Waffen-SS is criminalized because it was a criminal organization, no matter how many members did not participate in its crimes. The Waffen-SS as a structure was rotten from the top...
Harro wrote:Once again I cite from one of the letters I recieved from SS-Sturmbannführer Rolf Diercks (DKiG), who passed away last February: he wrote that after the war it wasn't to difficult for him to open his eyes for the crimes of the system, including the Waffen-SS. And he believed that the the young soldiers who joined during the war - who believed in fighting the Bolsheviks - should have realized after the war that - as soldiers under the Sigrunen - "they were part of the organization that was the motor behind the racial madness and the imperialistic "Germano-mania" of the Third Reich."
You misinterpret what I said, but I'm not sure how to make it plainer. I said that if you are going to criminalize the Waffen SS then you must do the same to other 'Allied' formations that were designed for the same purpose. If not, then it is simply arbitrary and hypocritical and of no consequence other than retroactively applying morals and standards that were not then in existence. If you feel the same way about crimes committed by the victors, then we agree.

I am not, not, not defending the crimes of the Waffen-SS, as I thought I made quite clear. I am saying that if you are going to use one standard for the losing side you must apply the same standard to the winners.

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Re: Why the Waffen-SS

#146

Post by WorldwarBill » 30 Sep 2012, 19:47

Sid- Thanks for the long reply, I have read Valhalla's Warriors and am planning a second read. As I stated elsewhere, what I am more interested in is the same standard being applied to the crimes of the victors as those of the Germans and/or Japanese. I am an American, so I'm no Nazi apologist. But I think there is a lingering unfairness that can only be corrected if we apply standards equally.

A great example is that of the Waffen-SS volunteers of the Baltic states. They preferred neutrality and did not want war, but Stalin gobbled them up in 1940 and shipped tens of thousands to gulags. When the Germans came they saw a chance to fight for what they perceived as freedom. Why is it fair to condemn them when one of the Allied nations attacked them first?

Also, if membership in the Waffen-SS made you a de facto criminal, how is that fair to the men who were drafted into the Waffen-SS through no choice of their own? Especially those drafted very late in the war?

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Re: Why the Waffen-SS

#147

Post by WorldwarBill » 30 Sep 2012, 19:49

Harro wrote:All in all I think the whole discussion about all members of the Waffen-SS being criminals or not is not the big issue in this topic. In my opinion the Waffen-SS is to much tarnished by a combination of factors, being its background as the armed force of nazism and all nazism stood for, the political motivation of the Waffen-SS, and the active role almost every single Waffen-SS unit played in the planned extermination of the Jews and the murder of millions of others.

The fact that not every single member of the Waffen-SS actively took part in these crimes does not mean that they were not part of the system because "the Waffen-SS" was "the system". I can understand and to a certain point even respect some individual veterans of the Waffen-SS since back in those days before and during the war they did not always have the full picture of what could happen and what was happing. But I cannot understand or respect people who, despite the knowledge we have today about the nature and massive scale of the crimes of nazism and the part the Waffen-SS had in these crimes, still think the Waffen-SS was okay.
Based on this post, I think we are closer in agreement than may seem. For those who willingly or eagerly took part in crimes, then they were, indeed, criminals. The question in my mind is simply how to make the distinction between those who did so and they who did not.

Oh, and my thanks to all for the civil nature of the debate on this often prickly question.

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Re: Why the Waffen-SS

#148

Post by tonyh » 30 Sep 2012, 23:31

Rob - wssob2 wrote:
Snide comment and one not worth a response
Actually is is worth a response. You are essentially representing the pro-Waffen-SS faction on this thread...
"Pro Waffen SS" ? :roll:

Because I'm not buying into the collective guilt of nearly a million people?

That's just really stupid Rob, there's no other way to put it.

As far as being "attracted" to the Waffen SS, you're barking up the wrong tree again. The Waffen SS are but a part of the whole area of study. I am not "attracted" to them, nor do I have an axe to grind as you so clearly do. I have no dog in the fight.

I was going to flesh out a reply to the rest of your mail, but really I can't be bothered, based on what you written above, because you are clearly bring too much bias to the table and there is just no point.

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Re: Why the Waffen-SS

#149

Post by tonyh » 01 Oct 2012, 00:12

Harro wrote:All in all I think the whole discussion about all members of the Waffen-SS being criminals or not is not the big issue in this topic. In my opinion the Waffen-SS is to much tarnished by a combination of factors, being its background as the armed force of nazism and all nazism stood for, the political motivation of the Waffen-SS, and the active role almost every single Waffen-SS unit played in the planned extermination of the Jews and the murder of millions of others. The fact that not every single member of the Waffen-SS actively took part in these crimes does not mean that they were not part of the system because "the Waffen-SS" was "the system".
...and yet the majority were not members of the party, despite the ease with which they could have been. Also, we must remember, that a lot of the Waffen SS members were foreigners. Many of which joined, not because they were enamored with the nazi system, but because they simply shared an anti-Bolshevik/Communist stance. Plus, we have to take into account the young men who were drafted too. Many men of the Waffen SS had no political affiliation, one way or the other.

In addition, EVERY military group was part of "the system" The entire Wehrmacht was part of the system. The Waffen SS weren't any different. There's certainly a case to be made for the SS-VT being the nazi paramilitary organisation and the armed wing of the party and not the state, but by 1941/42 the Waffen SS had long since evolved into something much more complicated than that and for most people, it would have been very difficult to distinguish between the Waffen SS and the Heer.
Harro wrote:I can understand and to a certain point even respect some individual veterans of the Waffen-SS since back in those days before and during the war they did not always have the full picture of what could happen and what was happing. But I cannot understand or respect people who, despite the knowledge we have today about the nature and massive scale of the crimes of nazism and the part the Waffen-SS had in these crimes, still think the Waffen-SS was okay.
As I said, everything has to be taken on it's own merits.

Either polemic is rather silly. The people who are willing to lump a million men into either group are just as ridiculous as each other. Those that say the Waffen SS were all super cool elite formations are just as deluded as those who wish to paint them all a racist criminals.

In order to remain clear about the subject, one must try and remain unbiased and try to understand the men of the times and what their motivations were for joining the Waffen SS.

Sure, we have a much larger appreciation for complexities of the time with the information that is available to us today. But the young men who joined up certainly wouldn't have been privy to all the detailed information that people today have at their fingertips. It's far too easy to think that just because the people that served in Germany's forces were of their time, that they had a clear perception of everything that was going on. But the reality is very, very different.

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BillHermann
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Re: Why the Waffen-SS

#150

Post by BillHermann » 01 Oct 2012, 01:30

I am not sure why this comes up over and over again, it's nauseating. It's obvious that not every member is guilty, Harro did not say that, I am not saying that. But the organization, it's purpose, it's leaders and role was. Saying they were not all bad it not an argument in defence of the Waffen-SS.

This passion to defend the organization by isolating individuals within does not hold any water.
Last edited by BillHermann on 01 Oct 2012, 06:16, edited 1 time in total.

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