Waffen SS foreign volunteers.

Roel/anybody,

Thought you might be interested in these Waffen SS recruitment posters of the time as appeared in Holland.

 

Another one. As you can see the focus is certainly against the 'Bolsheviks'.

 

dutch ss troops

it surely doesnt matter who the dutch ss volunteered to fight the point is that they joined the armies and the political wing at that of an occupying power, which ever way you tart it up they were traitors both to their country and also to the thousands of dutch jews rounded up by the same ss and sent to the gas chambers, once a traitor always a traitor

 

Who is 'tarting it up' ? Not me. I'm just showing how it was. Read my explanations in the thread entitled Most Decisive Battle of WW2.

It's all very well looking back with hindsight but many people were not affected by what happened to jews and were not fully aware. Commusnism was seen as a greater evil and many were persuaded to fight aginst the Bolsheviks.

 

Re: dutch ss troops

Do your homework. The Waffen SS were frontline troops that had nothing to do with rounding up jews and gassing them to death. 'Waffen' means simply 'armed'. They were soldiers plain and simple. That was their job and that was their duty. It was set up and fashioned in a military manner.

Even the SS Einzatgruppe (the killing squads who roamed the town and cities of occupied countries) were nothing to do with the Waffen SS. The Einzatgruppe were never at the front.

Do not confuse the Waffen SS with the Killing squads or the concentration camp guards. Totally different. The SS was a racial organisation in the beginning but it eventually devoloped to include almost everyone including Muslims and eastern races.

 

Ricky and Corpcasselbury asked about 'Arab' or 'Muslim' volunteers. Yes these were from the Balkans. The 13th Waffen Gebirgs Division der SS 'Handschar' (Kroat. Nr.I) were recuited from Muslims in Croatia and was speciffically raised for anti partisan duties in the area. It was actually a failure and didn't prove very capable in it's anti partisan duties and was disbanded in Nov 1944 in order to free it's German commanders and NCOs to fight elsewhere.

 

waffen SS

Some time ago I decided that I was not going to get involved in hypothetical arguments in this Forum, stick to facts that I know (hopefully)
and submit photos from my files that I hoped would be of interest.
So, tbe "Baron" said that persons who joined the opposing armies were traitors, this I must agree with. When I "took the Kings shilling" I took an oath to King and Country.To his Heirs and successors etc. This I still stand by.
Next, most of my generation did not see the SS (of any kind) as Teutonic Knights. I remember the massacre of the 80 men of the Warwickshire Regiment on May20th. 1940 by members of SS Liebstandarte commanded by Wilelm Mohkne, nor the killing by the same unit of Canadian prisoner a few days later. I have been to the Warwicks site at Esquelbecq near Wormhoudt about 15 miles from Dunkirk, fact.
I also saw the first published photographs of the American bodies coming through the melting snow at Malmedy.
In my humble opinion this thread should be closed before it becomes too bitter.

 

He guys,
The second poster is without question a dutch one. But i have my doubts about te first one.The language looks , to me , like south african.

 

Re: waffen SS

Come on now. We are all adults aren't we? I have to say if we can't discuss this kind of thing here then I will leave this forum totally. I have started this thread but I have never given any indication that I have agreed with anything in it. I do not. I have just presented facts and pointed out the way it is or was. Some people would do well to become more enlightened on the subject. If the very mention of the words 'Waffen SS' is enough to upset some people then I shake my head in dismay.

Wilhelm Mohnke surely was an evil SOB and quite rightly you should be upset at the actions that took place there and elswhere. However it is true to say that these type of attrocities by Waffen SS units in the west can be counted on one hand. All of them are known and often talked about.You are aware that allied soldiers also commited attrocities are you not? What about what happened shortly after Malmedy? Over 60 captive German soldiers were shot in cold blood by the Americans. The Canadians butchered and mutilated almost 100 Hitlerjugend in Normandy. Details of both are unclear and sketchy because the winning side always hides that kind of thing and the full accounts have never come out. In the case of the Belgian incident it was witnessed by a local member of the community. I'm sure many other incidents on both side occured which we'll never know about.

 

Is it? I wouldn't know. As it reads where I got it from the poster features a Boer leader (Paul Kruger) so I would imagine the propaganda was focusing on this aspect of the Netherland's past.

 

How would a soldier be a traitor, if the gouvernment supported the enlistment?

Christian

 

The Boers were actually the first true South African colonials, who moved way from the coast for the first time to settle in the inlands for life. They had to fight the native tribes whose land they stole, and the British empire whose interests they interfered with. But these people were not Dutchmen; they saw themselves as true South Africans.

"Alles sal reg kom" is rather flat, in a South African dialect/language derived from Dutch (alles zal recht komen), meaning "it'll all be right". The rest of the poster reads "Fight along against Bolshevism with the Waffen-SS". The other poster reads "Show that you are a true Dutchman! On against Bolshevism! Sign up with the Waffen-SS".

 

Re: waffen SS

That depends on which end of the telescope you are loking from. Tank park may have personal reasons for his views.

I could talk abvout terrorism and make your hairs curl very quickly, it doesn't bother me too much to talk provided people listen, maybe tank park just doesn't want to be reminded.

 

Re: waffen SS

I guess I can understand that and I also can understand if I was promoting the Waffen SS which I am not. No doubt some attrocities were commited by the Waffen SS units which were terrible but I was only making the point that on the whole these acts were out of character (on the western front at least) for these front line troops and it was never as if the whole divison was involved in each act. Many troopers of the units responsible would never have been aware of what had happened especially those that joined afterwards. Those that did hear about them were on the whole not proud of them.

There were a couple of incidents in 1940 against British troops, one incident in 1944 aginst civilians in response to anti partizan actions, one or two others against allied troops in Normandy 1944 I believe, the Malmedy Massacre and very few others. It's not as if the Waffen SS made a habit of going around doing this sort of thing and there were a great many of them fighting against the western allies at some points. The Normandy battles, though bitter, were not characterised by this brutality and the battle for Arnhem is well known for the Waffen SS acting with decency to the British paratroopers. I'm not saying they were all saints but neither should they all be tarred with the same brush as other branches of the SS who were despicable and rightly condemned. By the way I am not aware of anything in particular that tarnished the reputaion of SS Wiking where the majority of Dutch and the Scandinavians served.

As I said before, I'm sure our side did more things than we know about. If there are no witnesses and no survivors then who is to know? Attrocities commited by allied troops were never going to be widely publicised like the German ones were. More to the point, they would very quickly have been forgotten.

We've seen with this present situation in Iraq our side is not above some horrible acts and I don't for one minute think it was any different back then unfortunately.

 

You call Oradour sur Glane a incident!
"We were attacked by the civil ones",has allways been the usual excuse of the nazi.
Oradour sur Glane had nothing to see with the partisant action .
It was only an act of pure and simple cruelty pepetred by the WAFFEN SS.
Some usefull links.
http://oradoursurglane.free.fr/
http://www.geocites.com/wolfram55/warcrimes.html
Patrice.

 

waffen SS

I do not need to be reminded of things that happened in ww2.
What I do not understand is , the present day adoration of the SS (in any
form) by some people, who, in most cases were not around to know the feeligs aroused.Do not forget that,all SS personel took an oath of allegence to Adolf Hitler.Yes, I do know that members of a certain American Airborne Division took few prisoners after the discovery at
Malmedy.!

 

Re: waffen SS

I fully understand that although I don't feel in any way that I have shown any adoration of the SS. I have barely even written about the SS here and have mainly mentioned only the 'Waffen' SS as a fighting force. I just have an interest in the Waffen SS as I have other military forces. No adoration. Just a different take on things and how volunteers 'might' have seen it. I have never even said these volunteers were right. I just gave an objective view of how it might have looked to them. I have no interest whatsoever in any political aspect of the Waffen SS. In my posts I hope I haven't given that impression.

 

In the Oxford English dictionary the word 'incident' is classed as an 'event' or 'occurence'. Where did I go wrong with my classification of Oradour sur Glane as an 'incident'??


Oradour sur Glane was a dispicable and horrific attrocity carried out by SOME members of 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich. There is and there can be NO excuses whatsoever. I have never said anything different. I even mentioned this incident myself in another post.

Das Reich did indeed encounter much partizan activity during it's march from southern France up to the Normandy battlefront and saw some disgraceful sights themselves. At the town of Tulle the division saw first hand the dead bodies of 62 German soldiers (regular German soldiers) who had surrendered to the Resistance but were killed out of hand and brutally mutilated. 99 Frenchmen suspected of links to the Resistance were hanged.

Shortly after this at Oradour sur Glane, SS Sturmbannfuhrer Helmet Kampf of Das Reich was abducted and killed by the Resistance. This lead to the reprisals at Oradour although there was no doubt whatsoever that none of the villagers could have been responsible for Kampf's death. It was a totally brutal and disgusting attrocity. There were some SS troopers from this unit who were on the edge of the village warning returning villagers to go and hide and save themselves however and very few actually took part in this terrible thing so they can't ALL be damned. Many troopers from Das Reich were appalled and shamed that this occured in their name.

With regards to the Resistance, one man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist. Seasoned German front line troops (particularly those with eastern front experience) viewed the partizans as little more than cowards who never showed their faces and hid behind bombs and booby traps. They were not looked upon as freedom fighters at all but were looked upon with hatred, pretty much in the same way that we now look at terrorists. Oradour sur Glane was surely one of the most awful acts commited by Waffen SS troops. The fact remains though that after this the French Resistance bothered Das Reich hardly ever again. But nothing at all can excuse the actions there.

 

Re: waffen SS

There was also supposed massacres of German soldiers by American troops around the Hurtgen Forest region in the autumn of 1944 but this has never come out and it's unlikely that it ever will. Details are extremely sketchy for obvious reasons. Nethertheless, it would maybe appear that the numbers killed were many times those at Malmedy. It's said that the U.S troops were frustrated at the heavy casualties and toughness of the fighting there and took it out on Germans soldiers who had surrendered.

It's pretty unlikely that the Malmedy massacre was in response to this though. The Germans troops there wouldn't have heard of it.

 

ss murders

So once again we fall back on the old chestnut of " of course the ss did some wicked things but lets not forget our lads did the same thing its just that I cant say where or when , the massacre at aroudour sur glace had very little to do with military resisitance its cause was that the french resisitance just happend to ambush a supply coloumn of the second panzers which unfortunately contained vast quantities of looted gold from italy, the massacre was part of the german attempts to get it back, have we forgotten lidice, or was that just a mistake as well, the ss made its sole authority adolf hitler, not germany, my honour is my loyalty, nothing about right or wrong. wether allamagne ss, totankopf ss, or waffen ss, they were all ss AND AS SUCH MEMBERS OF THE NAZIS PARTY, you couldbt be one with out the other. every member of the german armed forces had the right to receive a direct transfer to a combat posting, the fact that they stayed in cushy billets is no defence for their actions, but whilst on the subject of atrocities I hear little being said about the systematic rape of virtually every german woman by the russian forces,or did we do that as well," But I just cant remember where or when,

GUNS NOT BUTTER