Why the Waffen-SS

[Jan-Hendrik]

Claims, claims, but still NO sources...

Jan-Hendrik

[ML59]

Jan-Hendrik, the source for the posts about Totenkopf is "Hitler's Death Head Division" by Rupert Butler, first edition in 1985, second revised edition published in 2004 (I own the second one). Of course there are many other reference book on the subject but this one is one of the few that do not concentrate only on the strictly military history of the unit but investigate also its role in the Holocaust and the connection of the unit with the KL system.

[helonational]

The problem is that some people can only view the Waffen SS through the limited prism of the holocaust (like the war itself in many cases) and this colours the perception badly. The vast majority of men who passed through the ranks of the Waffen SS had nothing whatsoever to do with the nazis, or the final solution. But, interest in the Waffen SS is viewed by some as some sort of an endorsement of sorts of national socialist policies, although that sort of bogus attitude isn't limited to interest in the Waffen SS. Interest in the German armed forces of WWII comes in for that flak too.

[Jan-Hendrik]

Rupert Butler

Serious ?

Jan-Hendrik

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi ML59,

I met Rupert Butler about 25 years ago. He was a journalist and the grandson of the well known Victorian painter Lady Butler.

I gave him some original material for one of his books, which I do not think he used well.

My feeling is that he was a journalist, not a historian, and was mainly intent on producing light weight, derivative, popular books to publishers' deadlines.

I would not consider him a useful source.

Cheers,

Sid.

[ML59]

Hi Sid,

thank you for sharing your experience, I'll take care of not trusting blindly any more his books.

[ML59]

The problem is that some people can only view the Waffen SS through the limited prism of the holocaust (like the war itself in many cases) and this colours the perception badly.

Dear Helonational,

I'd dare saying that the opposite is true, too many people are used to look at the W-SS myth exclusively from a purely "military" point of view, completely disregarding their ideological function and their more than willing and active role in the nazi racial and extermination war. This kind of "selective" approach does not allow any thorough comprehension of the W-SS history and its role in what was supposed to be the creation of the Nazi empire.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi ML59,

I tend to agree. I wrote the following on another thread last year:

"Nor was there any firewall between the SS in the camps and the W-SS. Every single W-SS division, barring three short-lived and incomplete late war creations, are known to have contained officers who had served in the camps. Furthermore, there was a regular rotation of manpower between the camps and the W-SS. For example, thousands of Auschwitz guards served in the W-SS and a third of the Einsatzgruppen that killed hundreds of thousands of Jews and others in late 1941 were, by order, made up of W-SS recruits."

That said, I also wrote:

"However, it is entirely fair to say that the great majority of W-SS men, most of whom were only notionally volunteers, or simple conscripts, almost certainly never took part in any war crime. Indeed, it is likely that most of them never killed anyone in combat either, as most of the casualties they suffered and inflicted were probably due to indirect fire weapons such as artillery."

Cheers,

Sid.

[ML59]

Hi Sid,

I'm on the same page with you about the connections between the W-SS and the SS as a whole, including the camps system. However (there is always one "however"!) even if I cannot do anything else than agreeing with you that the majority of the W-SS never fired a shot against any jew, PoW, civilian, partisan or whatever, it doesn't mean that they did it for humanitarian reasons. Almost all the W-SS members (forget the poor young boys conscripted in 1945 or some foreign volunteers transfered for burocratic reason to the W-SS) shared roughly the same ideological background and were ready to do whatever necessary to achieve the goal of eliminating all jews and bolsheviks from earth. Obviously, a cook or a driver or a clerck had much less opportunity to kill enemy of the nazi state than a member of a Einsatzkommando. The chance of actually partecipating to massacres and other killings was uneven, not necessarily the will to do it.

[Praetor98]

The reason I think people are interested in the Waffen-SS is because they are one of the few forces of evil in history that is utterly unapologetic and even glories in the villainy they commit. Their naked sadism, their night-black uniforms call up visions of Sauron's orcs, or hordes of the living dead. So very rarely are such people ever seen. The Soviets couched their crimes in 'saving the workers and peasants' but the SS openly declared that they were not interested in the good of others.

[Westphalia1812]

The Soviets couched their crimes in 'saving the workers and peasants' but the SS openly declared that they were not interested in the good of others.

Well, after the war they weren't particularly keen on bragging about their crimes.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi praetor98,

You may be to some extent right in perception, but not in reality.

Most W-SS members were not mature Nazis. Most "volunteers" were only so in a loose sense of the word, being subject to heavy pressure to enlist while under the age of legal maturity and conscription. During the last year of the war most were reluctant conscripts. The nationalist causes of many of the foreign W-SS men are now judged to have been worthy and the national states they wanted now exist following the break-up of the USSR. It is thus difficult to throw a blanket of "evil" over all, or even most, of them.

The Nuremberg Trials certainly did not. While the Waffen-SS was adjudged a criminal organization, mere membership of it was not a crime. To be adjudged a war criminal, a W-SS man had to be convicted of a specific war crime himself. Very few were thus convicted, though doubtless rather more avoided this by virtue of being already dead, or through insufficient available evidence.

I see no reason to believe that "naked sadism" was much more in evidence amongst most W-SS men than other more conventional armed forces.

I think you imagination is a little fevered in your references to Sauron's Orcs and the Living Dead!

Nor were the W-SS "not interested in the good of others", though admittedly the number of "others" whose welfare they espoused was somewhat limited!

Cheers,

Sid.

[Maxschnauzer]

Nor, IIRC correctly were the "night-black uniforms" a wartime feature, most certainly not among the Waffen SS.

[nocnilovec]

um festzustellen, wem diese Marke gehörte? Ich fand sie in der Nähe von Rokycany in der Tschechischen Republik auf einer Mission in einem ehemaligen Gefangenenlager.
Laut den gezupften Löchern in der Schnur muss es ein langjähriger Träger gewesen sein, der sogar das Ende des Krieges erlebt hatte.
Es geht darum, die Einheit und vielleicht sogar den Namen des damaligen Trägers zu bestimmen.

[Georg_S]

um festzustellen, wem diese Marke gehörte? Ich fand sie in der Nähe von Rokycany in der Tschechischen Republik auf einer Mission in einem ehemaligen Gefangenenlager.
Laut den gezupften Löchern in der Schnur muss es ein langjähriger Träger gewesen sein, der sogar das Ende des Krieges erlebt hatte.
Es geht darum, die Einheit und vielleicht sogar den Namen des damaligen Trägers zu bestimmen.

Hello
First of all, we are a English speaking forum. Even if I understand german many of our members dont.

Second. When you found this Erkennungsmarke did you dig for it or was it laying on the ground? Why I ask this is that this is Broken which indicates that the soldier is KIA .

The soldier who had this was from the start of His service member of SS-Regiment "Der Führer"

Georg