Moderator: maddog986
-The night fighter pilots who shot down Lancasters as they were industriously firebombing women and children.Which Germans would you describe as heroes?
Regards,
ID
ORIGINAL: Endsieg
-The night fighter pilots who shot down Lancasters as they were industriously firebombing women and children.Which Germans would you describe as heroes?
Regards,
ID
-the sailors who evacuated women and children from the Baltic ports in '45
-the individuals who pulled women and children out of burning buildings in Dresden Feb '45
I could go on....
with all due respect ID, but surely each of these individual Germans was not soldiering on to keep gas chambers running, even if some of them knew about it. Even you dont think that is true.ORIGINAL: IronDuke
EndsiegORIGINAL:
-The night fighter pilots who shot down Lancasters as they were industriously firebombing women and children.Which Germans would you describe as heroes?
Regards,
ID
-the sailors who evacuated women and children from the Baltic ports in '45
-the individuals who pulled women and children out of burning buildings in Dresden Feb '45
I could go on....
However, the real point is surely that each of these individuals was attempting to prolong a political system that was gassing people by the trainload several times a day.
the British night firebombing of german cities was never intended to stop the killing at the death-camps, it was more like "hey we got these Lancasters, too precious to use during daylight over the Ruhr, why not use them to burn the murderous sods at night, .....well at least their women and children"ORIGINAL: IronDuke
As for "industriously firebombing women and children", given the sheer dislocating and paralysing effects of the Allied bomber offensive on the Reich, it essentially comes down to what you are prepared to countenance (at the time or retrospectively) to bring an end to Belsen, Auschwitz-Birkenau etc etc etc.
ORIGINAL: SS Hauptsturmfuhrer
We've all heard that we should hate all the Germans and retyping it over & over doesn't teach us anything new.
Better, try reading about what really happened.
Do a Google search on 'Einsatz Groups' and you can learn about how secret police were carrying out the genocidal nazi policies against Jews and others while the regular Wehrmacht and Waffen SS (very different from SS Einsatz) fought the war without even knowing about death camps and other nasty things going on.
In order to ensure their victory, the Generals also helped lay the plans for Hitler's vision of an exterminationist war. Later they would claim that the SS were solely responsible for the crimes in the east, but in fact the Military's role was crucial. At the most basic level, the crimes could never have taken place if the Wehrmacht had not conquered the ground, but the General's culpability extends well beyond that fact. They encouraged their soldiers in an attitude that placed little or no value on the life of Soviet Civilians; in fact they ordered their men to use the harshest conceivable means to establish German dominance. They planned for the deliberate starvation of millions of people and for forced labour by millions more. they laid the groundwork for the fatal neglect of Soviet prisoners of war. and they played a key role in planning for the elimination of the Communist Leadership and intelligentsia including those in uniform, as well as anyone who resisted German rule.
The most important goal of the campaign against the Jewish-Bolshevik system is the complete crushing of the instruments of power and the eradication of the asiatic influence in the European cultural sphere.
In this connection, there also exists tasks for the troops that extend beyond the traditional one dimensial soldierly identity. In the east, the soldieris not only a fighter according to the rules of warfare, but also the carrier of an inexorable racial idea and the avenger of all the bestialities that were inflicted upon the German and related races.
therefore thesoldier miust have full understanding of the necessity for the harsh but just punishment of the Jewish sub humans. It has the broader objective of nipping in the bud any uprisings in the rear, which experience shows to have been instigated by Jews.
Jews: ...Because they are still making common cause with the Communists and Partisans, the complete eradication of these foreign elements is being carried out.
Most Wehrmacht and SS were against the killing of innocent Jews and the only policing orders they had were to ferret out communist political commissars and partisans.
The early Leibstandarte members did commit some atrocities and that is because they were made of about 3000 fanatical nazi people at that time, but as the war went on, casualites were replaced and the military expanded so the percentage of real nazies in the SS and army likely was under 1%.
as the war went on, casualites were replaced and the military expanded so the percentage of real nazies in the SS and army likely was under 1%.
Don't hate millions of brave soldiers because of what a secret police organization was doing. That's like hating all Americans for what the CIA does.
Before you have a massive knee jerk reaction and type up a long lecture on why I'm wrong, do some reading. Google is easy to use. Read about Einsatz Groups. Well researched books are also good.
However, the real point is surely that each of these individuals was attempting to prolong a political system that was gassing people by the trainload several times a day.
with all due respect ID, but surely each of these individual Germans was not soldiering on to keep gas chambers running, even if some of them knew about it. Even you dont think that is true.
ORIGINAL: IronDuke
As for "industriously firebombing women and children", given the sheer dislocating and paralysing effects of the Allied bomber offensive on the Reich, it essentially comes down to what you are prepared to countenance (at the time or retrospectively) to bring an end to Belsen, Auschwitz-Birkenau etc etc etc.
the British night firebombing of german cities was never intended to stop the killing at the death-camps, it was more like "hey we got these Lancasters, too precious to use during daylight over the Ruhr, why not use them to burn the murderous sods at night, .....well at least their women and children"
ID, we miss you at maddog, Lassie come home!
ORIGINAL: Endsieg
it was more like "hey we got these Lancasters, too precious to use during daylight over the Ruhr, why not use them to burn the murderous sods at night, .....well at least their women and children"
I disagree. Wars are fought by the young. The floods of replacements in 1939-45 would generally have spent their teenage years in the Hitler Youth, membership of which was compulsory after 1936. An 18 year old replacement in 1941 would have spent at least five years hearing how Jews and slavs were subhuman. Throw him into a fight for his life amidst the most terrible carnage imaginable and I think it isn't surprising how many Soviet civilians were killed during WWII.
Actually, both nazism and communism were elements of the left. Nazism may be considered more rightist of the two, simply because it got more credit for being militaristic and/or nationalistic. They were both types of socialism, something very far from a rightist mindset.Again, I'm forced to ask for evidence. the Army was drawn from society, and a third of voters in 1933 had voted for the NAZI Party. The Army was a more conservative and right wing organisation than most and would have expected to have been more to the right as a result.
ORIGINAL: SS Hauptsturmfuhrer
IronDuke, if you use stats of POWs killed to try and make the Germans look evil, then you should look beyond the bias of the propoganda you hear and look at the way all armies in WW2 handled POWs. Russia and the USA had the worst record for both killing and poor treatment of POWs. Russia tied up prisoners, removed clothes and cut them up for fun while drowning others in cesspools as early as the summer of 1941.
The USA was no better. Most SS were either shot out of hand or handed over to the french partisans for extermination. Every German town that showed any sign of resistance was approached by scared GIs who herded German civilians in front of them as a human shield, and then after taking prisoners, the POWs were repeated forced to view the collected American casualties all day until later being taken to a field or sidestreet where they were shot.
German civilians reported finding executed German soldiers in the forests and fields outside of every town. The cruel treatment of civillians by US looters is also another grim topic. Eisenhower added to the grief of German POWs when he took away their POW status to avoid Geneva convention rules stating prisoners must be fed. Eisenhower ordered the arrest of all German military personnel going back to WW1 and had them all put into concentration camps with no cover and all personal belongings including food were burned. Many Germans died from exposure and starvation in those outdoor prisons and weren't even allowed to dig holes to get out of the rain. Then there are the British forced labor camps that went on long after WW2, the countless murders commited by the French...etc etc...
Can you really say the Wehrmacht is a bad army?
Should we hate them?
Then hate every army of WW2 to be fair.
Read, learn what really happened... before retyping pages of the anti-German propoganda we've all heard all our lives.
When I was a kid, I used to think the Germans were the badguys and the allies were good until I learned. Now I know
there are no angels and devils.... just good and bad people on every side like there are still today.
I disagree. Wars are fought by the young. The floods of replacements in 1939-45 would generally have spent their teenage years in the Hitler Youth, membership of which was compulsory after 1936. An 18 year old replacement in 1941 would have spent at least five years hearing how Jews and slavs were subhuman. Throw him into a fight for his life amidst the most terrible carnage imaginable and I think it isn't surprising how many Soviet civilians were killed during WWII.
ORIGINAL: SS HauptsturmfuhrerIronDuke, read about the Hitlerjugend. It only fought in Normandy for the first time in 1944, not on the Eastern front.
They also had one of the best records for respecting both civilians and the enemy as they were careful not to shoot at allied ambulances which worked in full view of German lines. This is much unlike the German ambulances which had to be hidden in caves to avoid the rabid allied fighterbombers trying to kill every living thing whether soldier, civilian or animal.
I know someone will say the Hitlerjugend did this or that bad thing but there was a famous situation where some Canadian POWs were killed by SS and this was done by an angry member without orders and the postwar victors justice exploited the event to convict Kurt Meyer using false evidence trying to link him to the killing. Given this justice, all US commanders from officer to Eisenhower should have served life sentences. That is victors' justice.
ORIGINAL: Endsieg
good one EUB....damn, your sig is too small, can hardly read it.
not a bad translation of a joe g quote, btw.
still, with all due respect to your mate ID's previous valid points, he started this discussion by asking which germans were heros. A few banal answers were suggested.
Some did hide jews for 4 years. Some did try to kill Hitler and were willing to die for it, and did. Some just spread pamphlets and were guillotined. I could go on....
ID seems to think a moral, mass mutiny of several million men should have occured, ...he's actually right....but there was no internet, no email, no Twitter and no CNN and no perspective, just naked fear.
hey ID put on your reading glasses and check out EUB's sig
ORIGINAL: Charles_22
Actually, both nazism and communism were elements of the left. Nazism may be considered more rightist of the two, simply because it got more credit for being militaristic and/or nationalistic. They were both types of socialism, something very far from a rightist mindset.Again, I'm forced to ask for evidence. the Army was drawn from society, and a third of voters in 1933 had voted for the NAZI Party. The Army was a more conservative and right wing organisation than most and would have expected to have been more to the right as a result.
ORIGINAL: Endsieg
good one EUB....damn, your sig is too small, can hardly read it.
not a bad translation of a joe g quote, btw.
still, with all due respect to your mate ID's previous valid points, he started this discussion by asking which germans were heros. A few banal answers were suggested.
Some did hide jews for 4 years. Some did try to kill Hitler and were willing to die for it, and did. Some just spread pamphlets and were guillotined. I could go on....
ID seems to think a moral, mass mutiny of several million men should have occured, ...he's actually right....but there was no internet, no email, no Twitter and no CNN and no perspective, just naked fear.
hey ID put on your reading glasses and check out EUB's sig
ORIGINAL: EUBanana
I'm only commenting as I see the Dresden=War crime argument tentatively surfacing, and unsurprisingly this does kinda get my goat given my own home town was attacked by the Luftwaffe despite being of zero military or industrial importance - it was attacked solely for the crime of being considered pretty.
