Rob - wssob2 wrote:If we want to learn the story behind the photograph, we will need the information I asked about earlier.
N "Steel Inferno", Michael Reynolds devotes a whole chapter to allied warcrimes in Normandy.
Having read
Steel Inferno multiple times, I would counter that Reynolds as an author and researcher tends to whitewash Waffen-SS warcrimes and close affinity to Nazi ideas. His claims WRT to allied war crimes tend to be heresay allegations more than documented facts.
I cannot remember in which text I mentioned above it is in, but the author stated that anyone caught wearing camouflage might not make it back to the prisoner collection pens.
But most SS troops captureed at Normandy did make it to POW collection points.
BTW practically all 12th SS "Hitler Youth" troops were issued cammo fatigues.
The fact that they were fighting SS troops seems to be common knowledge at least down to the Allied battalion staff level, so why would Canadian troops assume that all Germans wearing camoflauge were snipers?
IN one of the references above they also mentioned that anyone carrying some sort of allied war souvenier or a sniper RARELY was taken prisoner.
I assure you that GI accounts of the ETO also mention the danger of being captured with souveniers. It is a bad idea to get captured by a guy when you have his dead buddy's rank tabs and girlfriend photo in your fatigue jacket.
That eye swelled shut looks more like a rifle butt or fist/boot type wound as opposed to shrapnel...but since we do not have definitive proof one way or the other, I guess we can believe whatever we want about how he received his wounds.
The panzergrenadier could have walked into a barn door or had the barrel of a 88mm gun clock him on the head. Snookie is right - unless we get the background information, we're just speculating.
And then I must ask you Rob, doesn´t you think that Allied soldiers could and committed warcrimes against
German Soldiers and espeacially SS Soldiers?
As I mentioned earlier, most accounts of Canadian war crimes against SS troops tend to be hearsay and they tend to be brought up in context of arguments attempting absolve 12th SS CO Kurt "Panzer" Meyer for the execution of Canadian POWs during the first week of the Normandy campaign.
Whatever war crimes committed by Allied troops during the Normandy campaign - either by Canadians or 101st AB troops as documented by historians like Reynolds and Bando - tend to be spontaneous, unpremeditated acts committed immediately after combat actions against a prisoner or small groups of prisoners, and I am certain that those same type of crimes of passion were committed by 12th SS troops as well.
However, what you will not find on the Allied side is the deliberate execution of POWs after they have been interrogated by the regimental staff - as you do with "Panzer" Meyer and the SS-PGR 25 at the Abbaye Ardenne on June 7th-8th, 1944.
BTW - 12th SS troops are documented for killing at least 40 Canadian POWs within 48 hours of the landings on the Normandy beachheads. You will have a hard time convincing me that these killings were in reprisal for Canadian war crimes.
Little fishes - we'll throw them into the sea - right?
When I read your post you are always defending Allied soldiers
and in you point of view they must have been angels,
Not angels, but the "good-guys" of WWII. They fought to liberate Europe.
I have a photo of two SS-soldiers who after the war was brought to the former KL Dachau as POW´s and they on the photo also
badly beated, fate of those two SS-soldiers is unknown, the is held in a very small room where they even can´t stand on their
feet, and the capture of the photo is saying that he SS-men had to stay attention every time the door opened, but they had to
do on their knees. The photo is taken in May 1945. I wonder what the Geneva konvention is saying about
that kind of treatment. I know that many will say that the SS got what they deserved, but I think that´s wrong to justify the allied treatment
Having reseached the liberation of Dachau exhaustively, I assure you that whatever mistreatment US troops and former KZ inmates meted out to Germans captured at the installation pales in scale to the massive crimes committed by the SS at the installation in the fortnight preceeding the camp's liberation.
I can name how many incidents as ever, but one is on April 29, 1945 in Weibling were 43 SS-soldiers (regular Troops) was sumaliry
shot by members of the 42 US Div.
I already wrote a thread on it in the Warcrimes section. It's an unsubstantiated allegation based on a 1980 article by Andrew Mollo.
I have always thinked about those to SS-men and wondered what the
US Officers did to prevent that kind of treatment of German POW´s. Did they had to learn the "Rules of Engagement" and the
Geneva Convention at West Point or which Cadettacadamy they entered.
You know Georg, on Sept 6th, 1944 Belgian partisans captured "Panzer" Meyer - they literally hauled him out his hidey-hole in a chicken coop at Spontin. They were all ready to string Meyer up on the nearest lamppost but it was US troops who protected Meyer from summary execution and got him safely to a POW collection point. (BTW this is all documented in Vol II of H. Meyers history of the division. Hubert Meyer,was, as you know, the IA of the 12th SS division and Panzer Meyers chief of staff.)
Shouldn't the GI's get credit for that?
BTW maybe this young panzergrenadier is one of the triggermen at Ascq.
Care to discuss what the 12th SS did on April 1, 1944?
