The relevance was dishonored veterans of unpopular wars. Vietnam veterans are no longer regarded as "dope-smoking Babykillers," however.Maple 01 wrote:I don't see the relevance, we're not talking about Vietnam, nor, unless life is getting too weird has anyone said US Vietnam vets = SS? Do you think they are one and the same? I wouldn't want to be you on veterans day.Scott wrote:But I guess because the CIA assassinated VC (or got the ARVN to do it)........etc.
No they are not the same. I never said they were. And I never made an argument of "moral equivalence" but one of context, historical comparison and contrast, which is absolutely part of the historical method. Even the Third Reich cannot be considered in a historical vacuum--apart from quasi-theological considerations, that is.
So what? Somebody has to guard prisoners, even Sheriff Joe's prisoners, like I said. And contrary to popular belief, not all criminals and political prisoners in KLs were nice people like Anne Frank. The Allies discovered that they were often too hasty in letting some of these guys go, and they should have kept them quarantined much longer anyway to keep epidemics from spreading."When the British liberated the Belsen concentration camp on 17th April 1945 they found it staffed largely with wounded and recuperating officers and men who had been transferred in on a tempory basis from various battlefield Waffen SS formations, and who continued to sport their unit insignia"
Robin Lumsden, SS Regalia
The SS became the "Alibi of a Nation." I would say that the Party was more powerful than the SS but that is a matter of opinion. Anyway, recent scholarship, especially from Leftist Germans, has tended to implicate the Wehrmacht just as much. Thus the emphasis is shifting away from concentration camps and Rube Goldberg factories of death and more toward massacres, security measures, occupation policies, labor conscription, etc."The SS became the most powerful state organisation. They saw themselves as an elite. In the war the SS was an organisation which carried out the extermination of European Jews."
Fragen an die Deutsche Geschichte
Would survivors of the Waffen SS be so keen to try and distance themselves from the general SS if they'd won - no
The Nuremberg charade declared the SS a criminal organization. That would be like declaring the Democratic Party a criminal organization because of Johnson's conduct of the Vietnam War. Lots of babies killed in that campaign destroying those villages to save 'em and such.The SS was a proscribed organisation, instant arrest after the war – can’t see why that isn’t still the case
There I guess we'll have to sharply disagree because most of them AFAIC were the good guys or at least no worse than the Russians. Democracy-Capitalist regimes exercise brutal policies too; they're just more dissembling about it. One might as well call the RAF a "criminal organization." Even General LeMay honestly admitted that he would be a War Criminal if the USA had lost the war. Their leaders knew exactly what they were doing with strategic bombing, and naval blockades are no better because the very young and vulnerable suffer the most. UN sources give over a half-million dead Iraqi children as a result of economic sanctions against Saddam. Secretary of State Albright said it was "worth it."Maple 01 wrote:FEW!? and yes, in this case I'm prepared to make an exception, I quite happily condemn the whole group, there probably were a few good SS men, mainly the ones drafted in as replacements 1944-45 but they are all tarred with the same brush IMOScott wrote:I thought democracy eschewed the condemnation of whole-groups for the faults of the few
But it never ceases to amaze me that some people who profess democratic values believe that they only apply thus and so. They believe in free-speech and association as long as they agree with the other fellow's views. And they believe in majority-rules as long as they are in the majority.
