Canadian Infantry in battle with the 12th SS
- Thread starter x westie
- Start date
Acceptable use of ammo.
Hypocrites. Both of you. Jumping on your soap box to denounce crimes perpetrated by some German soldiers and yet call for and praise the same done by Allied troops.
Like being a gun owner and voting NDP. You can't do both and hold a shred of credibility.
No one was.. There were enough atrocities to go around on both sides...
No prisoner of war was "safe" until they were handed off to units not directly involved in the fighting, reprisals against prisoners were commonplace on both sides of the conflict.
There was no moral high ground for anyone to stand on.
And.. tarring every German Soldier, SS or not with the broad brush of NAZI is simplistic at best.. the reality was and is far more complex.
profoundly heinous acts were conducted under the watch of Elements of the SS this much is FACT ... but it was a very large organization.. and to believe that the typical SS volunteer fighting and dying with their comrades were complicit in Deportations, and Genocide goes beyond reason.
Those that were, deserve every censure, Those that were literally nothing more than soldiers do not.
The SS was billed as a "elite fighting force" "The best of the Best" this attracted a lot of excellent men to their ranks, Men who served their country with Loyalty and fervor.
The fact that the state they served was both morally corrupt and politically misguided is not their fault, any more than it is the Fault of any US soldier who served in Iraq that the USA destroyed that state for no good reason, killed hundreds of thousands of people on false pretexts, and then walked away from the mess.
Britain and France declared war after Germany invaded Poland. To say Britain wanted WW is about the most retarded thing I've read on this site. Britain was counting on France, who at the time supposedly had the most advanced and largest army in Europe, to fight with them. The British didn't count on France f#cking up so badly and folding so quickly, hence the retreat to Dunkirk, and almost the fall of Britain. Yeah, they wanted that.
At the end of the war, Churchill wanted to free the Poles, as he had promised, but the Americans were unwilling to push the Russians back, and since Britain was broke, exhausted, and only counted as about one third of the Allied troop strength, they couldn't do it on their own.
I don't know if I'm being baited, or if you actually believe the above BS.
Great Britain and Poland had a mutual defence treaty in 1939. Germany had already annexed Austria, the Sudatenland(part of Czechoslovakia with a majority population of ethnic Germans), then Czechoslovakia in it's entirety. The British and French policy of appeasement was shown to be a failure and the only way to stop German aggression and expansion was war. You can twist the facts all you like, Germany was intent on absorbing all of Europe into "the Greater Reich". The division of Poland between the USSR and Germany occurred because Hitler realized that Stalin needed an inducement to stand by and do nothing towards Germany, and both countries had ambitions in Poland which had only been a soveriegn nation for 20 odd years. Poland remained part of the Soviet sphere of influence in 1945 because the West was war weary and had no desire to fight the USSR at that point.
By your logic Japan was forced the invade China, Burma, Indochina, Phillipines and hundreds of Pacific islands by the West. Both Germany and Japan were military dictatorships driven by hunger for the resources of others and a firm belief in their respective racial superiority.
By your logic Japan was forced the invade China, Burma, Indochina, Phillipines and hundreds of Pacific islands by the West. Both Germany and Japan were military dictatorships driven by hunger for the resources of others and a firm belief in their respective racial superiority.
I didn't denounce anything nor make a statement that was hypocritical. I just don't have a problem with Nazi's being killed the same way they killed out boys.
Half of my relatives are English. Many fought and died during the war and the survivors were very egar to tell me their stories. My point of view is likely different than yours.
Acceptable use of ammo.
I have no problem with the average German soldier in the Wehrmacht. I have read and been moved by accounts of the common German soldier because their plight was that of soldiers everywhere and from all time periods. The SS recruited individuals who believed themselves to be superior, part of the ubermenchen so-called elite. They were anything but. They gained notoriety by butchering Jews, Gypsies, civilians and prisoners of war. Some, not all, were rotated in and out of the death camps. Eventually some of the Waffen SS units became quite good at soldiering. They suffered in the beginning because many experienced NCOs from the Wehrmacht distanced themselves from these "elitists". So yes, some did become elite fighting forces.
Because many of the SS participated in the extermination system - Waffen, TV, Liebstandarte, whatever - they're all SS to me. Hunt the bastards down.
Never forgive, never forget.
Nemo Me Impune Lacessit
I think that "evil" is in all of us. The human animal can sink to levels of unspeakable depravity if he chooses. Combine this potential with a state sanctioned ideology of cold-blooded murder, some attractive uniforms (designed by Hugo Boss, a member of the SS) and you've got an unholy mix. I don't think the Germans were any more predisposed to carry out this evil than anybody else. Given half the chance I'm sure the French would have exceeded them (by some accounts the French police impressed the Gestapo with their utter ruthlessness).
What I will give the Germans credit for is that they didn't try to excuse their guilt after the war and are still trying to make good even to this day. I would expect nothing less from a culture that gave us Mozart, Beethoven and Kant. The same cannot be said of the Japanese.
I would actually go further back and say the treaty of Versailles started another war. Hitler did not want war with England .
Versailles was one of the leading causes of WW2, no doubt. The main component of the treaty seemed to be French vindictiveness towards Germany. Germany's industry was gutted by the treaty and outrageous reparations bills were expected to be shouldered by the German people. Hitler wanted it all but he was smart enough to know Germany could not fight everyone at once at the time. It's kind of odd that posters here with the warped interpretation of European history have Germanic handles. I hope some of you guys aren't thumbing through "Mein Kampf" every night before you go to sleep.
Apart from the SS conscripts. I encourage you to revise history, creativity is a great thing.
The SS can be a very gray area. Take the Viking division for example. They formed from nordic volunteers for the express purpose of fighting communism and trying to rid the world of Stalin. And they told their high command that they would ONLY fight on the Eastern front, and that they would turn on the Germans if they tried to send them to the Western front.
One of the only Nazi formations to fight their way INTO Berlin at the end was composed of French SS volunteers. They knew they were boned unless a last second peace was made. 20 000 French served in the Waffen SS.
20 000 from Croatia, 10 000 from Serbia. They even raisem Muslim formations, who said to be "adequate when protecting their own homes", and worse than nothing at any other time.
The SS started out as a purely evil organism, but in a global war when things get political, the waters get muddy fast.
One of the only Nazi formations to fight their way INTO Berlin at the end was composed of French SS volunteers. They knew they were boned unless a last second peace was made. 20 000 French served in the Waffen SS.
20 000 from Croatia, 10 000 from Serbia. They even raisem Muslim formations, who said to be "adequate when protecting their own homes", and worse than nothing at any other time.
The SS started out as a purely evil organism, but in a global war when things get political, the waters get muddy fast.
- Location
- Ottawa, ON
The best (and most difficult and saddening) documentary I've ever seen about France during wartime:
The Sorrow and the Pity
From 1940 to 1944, France's Vichy government collaborated with Nazi Germany. Marcel Ophüls mixes archival footage with 1969 interviews of a German officer and of collaborators and resistance fighters from Clermont-Ferrand. They comment on the nature, details and reasons for the collaboration, from anti-Semitism, xenophobia, and fear of Bolsheviks, to simple caution. Part one, "The Collapse," includes an extended interview with Pierre Mendès-France, jailed for anti-Vichy action and later France's Prime Minister. At the heart of part two, "The Choice," is an interview with Christian de la Mazière, one of 7,000 French youth to fight on the eastern front wearing German uniforms.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066904/
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Britain and France declared war after Germany invaded Poland. To say Britain wanted WW is about the most retarded thing I've read on this site. Britain was counting on France, who at the time supposedly had the most advanced and largest army in Europe, to fight with them. The British didn't count on France f#cking up so badly and folding so quickly, hence the retreat to Dunkirk, and almost the fall of Britain. Yeah, they wanted that.
At the end of the war, Churchill wanted to free the Poles, as he had promised, but the Americans were unwilling to push the Russians back, and since Britain was broke, exhausted, and only counted as about one third of the Allied troop strength, they couldn't do it on their own.
I don't know if I'm being baited, or if you actually believe the above BS.
Perhaps you should ask the obvious question, WHY did Germany invade Poland? On a whim? Lebensraum? Have you ever heard of Danzig? How about Jozef Beck? Remember that a good sized portion of the Polish population in western Poland was German, as parts of Germany had been both given to Poland by Versailles, and taken by Poland militarily. Methinks a little research is in order on your part.
