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Waffen-SS vs. Einaatzgruppen

Discussion in 'Eastern Europe' started by Hummel, Jan 30, 2011.

  1. Vanir

    Vanir Member

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    Thanks mate, I appreciate the personal window of insight. It is a crazy thing we do with politics sometimes. Seems insane how obviously people seem to leap down the wrong path, as if for all the world their whole life they were searching for it. All I can say is some political systems simply can't see the light of day in an enlightened age.

    The Swiss and French seemed to get socialism right, don't see why all this personality cult stuff people love.
     
  2. belasar

    belasar Court Jester

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    I have no wish to defend the indefensable, and as a totalitarian state the USSR was one of the most restrictive created. It is entirely possible that Stalin caused the demise of more Soviet citizens during his reign than Hitler did of German's and Russian's during his. That being said there was a distinct difference between both empire's. Hitler crossed the Austrian, Czech, Polish, Dane, Norwegian, Dutch, Belgian, French, Yugoslave, Greek and Soviet Borders to Pillage and Oppress the civilians of these countries. Further he insisted that his race policies were carried out in his erstwhile allies homeland as well.

    The USSR did attack Finland and Poland, occupy the Baltic states and parts of Romania. Certainly those opposed, or believed to be opposed, suffered under Soviet occupation. The difference was that Hitler would have not negotiated a peace with any nation it invaded or settle for a piece when whole pie was available, reguardless of who might object. Stalin would never attack a nation that was prepared to defend itself, or had powerfull allies prepared to fight on its behalf.

    I have never lived under a totalitarian police state, so I cannot speak from first hand expierence, but judging from VonKoniegsburg post you still had to first violate the law to have the secret police come to your door. People under Nazi occupation mearly had to comit the crime of being born to be the subject of oppression. You can choose not to speak out, read banned books, listen to banned music or watch prohibited films, but you cannot choose your race or parents.
     
  3. Vanir

    Vanir Member

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    You might want to talk to some Ukrainians about Russians and the race thing Belasar, or some Georgians.


    I should clear up another popularism, although doing it properly would be more formal. I've an annoted study copy of Mein Kampf (both original versions and academic breakdown of the text), nowhere does Hitler mention a race war. He wasn't racial, it wasn't about race. He doesn't talk about race. Just that simple.
    Racism was common to the day, in political systems and laws. The US had legislation that restricted black servicemen roles unless overturned by the brass. These were just old rules that were in place because nobody particularly challenged them before, everyone just accepted them, you grew up thinking like that. Everyone did.

    It was the school teacher, Himmler, who equated Hitler's ideological emphasis with Eugenics. It was a popular pseudoscience at the time, scientifically falsified but many politicians continued to lobby on its behalf. Himmler asserted the Nazi ideal was racial. Hitler asserted that it was political, but politics must be cultured.
    Hitler describes his view of Jewry at length. He is concerned about the corruption of parliamentary systems largely at the hands of industrialism and marxism in bipartisan conspiracy to pervert average quality of life. He identifies the conspiracy as it stands in modern europe as directly the result of Russian-Jew mass exodus into central/western europe at the hands of the Czar.
    He believes it is a zionist and jewish conspiracy, industrialism and marxism tools of their trade. He thinks it is a biblical thing. He thinks Germans have always fought this. He also thought he was a reincarnated teutonic saint, he had a 19th painting of the one...honestly I've seen it they could be twins.

    It was religious and about creating a personal monarchy to Hitler. For Himmler it was racial. I can document that assertion. In particular all the race associated Nazi anthropological expeditions was 100% Himmler. Hitler would've blown a gasket if he knew how much his subordinate spent on them.



    You know, my own personal opinion, many like Alexander the Great were just Hitlers of another time. Civilisation used to be, and perhaps still is a half a horror story, half an action-romance. Perhaps that was his lesson, and how to avoid a repeat episode in some unknown future. I wouldn't be surprised if you found dark ages battlefields commonly no different to the Holocaust is what I'm saying but hey, those were our governments too. A time ago.
     
  4. urqh

    urqh Tea drinking surrender monkey

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    2 Questions....Hitler was misunderstood then? He didn't have any thing against Jews?

    Three, I lied..Nazism was much preferable to Sovietism?

    I get it now...thanks for all that.
     
  5. urqh

    urqh Tea drinking surrender monkey

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    I don't know....Any of these not real quotes from the same book then?


    The black-haired Jewish youth lies in wait for hours on end, satanically glaring at and spying on the unsuspicious girl whom he plans to seduce, adulterating her blood and removing her from the bosom of her own people. The Jew uses every possible means to undermine the racial foundations of a subjugated people. (Book 1 Chap 11)
    -Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)

    the personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew.
    -Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)

    And so he [the Jew] advances on his fatal road until another force comes forth to oppose him, and in a mighty struggle hurls the heaven-stormer back to Lucifer. Germany is today the next great war aim of Bolshevism. It requires all the force of a young missionary idea to raise our people up again, to free them from the snares of this international serpent...
    -Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)

    Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: 'by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.'
    -Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)

    Was there any form of filth or profligacy, particularly in cultural life, without at least one Jew involved in it? If you cut even cautiously into such an abscess, you found, like a maggot in a rotting body, often dazzled by the sudden light - a kike!

    Blood mixture and the result drop in the racial level is the sole cause of the dying out of old cultures; for men do not perish as a result of lost wars, but by the loss of that force of resistance which is continued only in pure blood. All who are not of good race in this world are chaff.
    Adolf Hitler
    Mein Kampf

    Any alliance whose purpose is not the intention to wage war is senseless and useless.
    Adolf Hitler
    Mein Kampf

    Armies for the preservation of peace do not exist; they exist only for the triumphant exertion of war.
    Adolf Hitler
    Mein Kampf

    Their sword will become our plow, and from the tears of war the daily bread of future generations will grow.
    Adolf Hitler
    Mein Kampf

    What we have to fight for is the freedom and independence of the fatherland, so that our people may be enabled to fulfil the mission assigned to it by the creator.
    Adolf Hitler
    Mein Kampf

    "What we must fight for is to safeguard the existence and reproduction of our race and our people, the sustenance of our children and the purity of our blood, the freedom and independence of the fatherland, so that our people may mature for the fulfillment of the mission allotted it by the creator of the universe. Every thought and every idea, every doctrine and all knowledge, must serve this purpose. And everything must be examined from this point of view and used or rejected according to its utility."

    The black-haired Jewish youth lies in wait for hours on end, satanically
    glaring at and spying on the unsuspicious girl whom he plans to seduce,
    adulterating her blood and removing her from the bosom of her own
    people. The Jew uses every possible means to undermine the racial
    foundations of a subjugated people. In his systematic efforts to ruin
    girls and women he strives to break down the last barriers of
    discrimination between him and other peoples. The Jews were responsible
    for bringing negroes into the Rhineland, with the ultimate idea of
    bastardizing the white race which they hate and thus lowering its
    cultural and political level so that the Jew might dominate. For as long
    as a people remain racially pure and are conscious of the treasure of
    their blood, they can never be overcome by the Jew. Never in this world
    can the Jew become master of any people except a bastardized people.
     
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  6. belasar

    belasar Court Jester

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    Well said, even if it was Adolf doing the saying. Unfortunately this debate is a little like argueing which pile of manure is more desirable to step on during a warm summer day. One side may be more right than the other, but once you have stepped in it you are still left with a god awfull mess on your shoes.
     
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  7. Vanir

    Vanir Member

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    Listen this isn't a game, if you have to approach it competitively instead of sensibly then there's little point discussing unfalsifiable hypotheses such as opinion.

    Clearly Hitler was not an alien, he was just like you or anyone. You could be a serial killer, the neighbour could, anyone can be Hitler. There's nothing to it so why don't we just grow up a little on that one and leave the cartoon channel "bad men with black hats" thing for the kids. Are you saying serial killers aren't bad? I'm not saying Hitler isn't bad.

    And he doesn't talk about race, he talks about ideology. What you need to do is read a copy yourself rather than rhetoric with select quotes, why not ask the man himself instead of any third party? Hitler explains in detail, repetitiously in point of fact exactly what he's talking about. The Holy Roman Empire, and he wants to bring it back declaring himself King, Lord and Emperor. His whole take on "Jewry" is ideological. The SS interpreted it as racial, the blanket assertion was blood born cultural political tendencies.
    However Hitler called you German after three generations in Germany, or one part Jew among so many divisions German, ideologically speaking.

    Look you really want to read and study it yourself if you're going to make sweeping statements of any intimate nature about someone you obviously simply don't know very well personally. Not saying you can get to know someone completely from a biography, but you can at least get a handle on what's going on in their head, and what they see or the words they vocalise what they see, with. Gives you insights.



    that aside, if we're just doing a Hitler bash I could've done that too, hell I was much better at it than you two. Look up his public speeches if you really want to go wtf. some wacko wacky wackjob stuff there.

    You know, what's his face secretary that got jailed in britain, he said when Mussolini visited he expressed a concern to Hitler about his offensive speeches, more hate mongering than patriotism he thought and initially didn't like the Nazis much, the story goes Hitler replied, "I say what I need to say to the public, I don't give them my personality."


    Hey and if you're interested, Dr Martin Kitchen gives a good breakdown of the mechanics of how the Nazi Party became itself, creating its very foundations from its own doomed future. How it all worked. The whole Hitler-Svengali thing is crap.
     
  8. belasar

    belasar Court Jester

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    What's his face was Rudolf Hess, the man who took down every word of Mein Kampf as Hitler dictated it at Landsburg Prison. Yes I have read it, as a teenager I checked it out from my school library earning me a stern look from the spinster librarian and a visit to the vice-principles office to see if I was a nutjob. A turgid, incoherent pile of horse manure is the kindest thing I can say about it.

    I judge historical figures by what they say, what they write, and most of all, by what they do. The Nazi Reich was in life and death a faithfull reflection of Adolf Hitler in all his malingnent glory. A person can say or write anything, but when you commit yourself to act, you lay your basic nature open for all to see and understand. Yes Himmler, Goering and Goebbles all play a part in this tradgedy, but they existed, only because Hitler existed.

    This debate is not a game, but then again, the fate of western civilazation does not hinge on what we say or write on this forum. It is a forum for the expression of ideas, and yes opinions. My opinion, is that while the Nazi and Soviet states shared much in common, there were subtle, yet distinct differences between them. The most glaring of which was that Nazi Germany was prepared to destroy the world to create its 'Utopia' and Stalin for all his faults, and they were many, was not.


    You can survive a evil world, but not one filled with madness.
     
  9. urqh

    urqh Tea drinking surrender monkey

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    Listen this isn't a game, if you have to approach it competitively instead of sensibly then there's little point discussing unfalsifiable hypotheses such as opinion.

    Stop prevaricating and making smoke clouds. Are the quotes I posted from Mein kampf or not, I dont need your opinion or your own interperatation of the quotes I can read them for myself as can anyone else Vanir. Answer my question. Are the quotes real. I dont need you to educate me or others on their meaning. If anyone is playiing a game its you.
     
  10. urqh

    urqh Tea drinking surrender monkey

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    Vanir this is a ww2 forum, we debate and discuss...We dont accept blindly others statements as the real thing.

    You stated this:

    He wasn't racial, it wasn't about race. He doesn't talk about race. Just that simple.

    Dont get out your tree when you are then challenged. He did have lots to say on race. Either my quotes are really in Mein Kampf or they are not. If they are then you are wrong in your statement. You can go off on tangents all you like but address the issue you yourself raised. Then we can move on.

    No one on here needs you to interperet Mein Kampf. They can do that for themselves. Dont demean folk on here by telling anyone to do any research. The quotes are real or are they not real? This is not a game it about providing sources to back your statements. Your own interperatation is just that, your interpretation. You dont get away with bland statements on this forum. Simple.
     
  11. Sloniksp

    Sloniksp Ставка

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    As I have been away for the last week (Mexico getting married :D) I have not been on here to comment so I do appreciate members here who defended my posts...

    To those who perhaps seem to be confused or in doubt as to my contribution on this forum I will say this: I have always tried my best and will continue to post as un-biased as possible. I try to leave feelings and emotions aside when speaking of historical events and try to encourage others to do the same. I also make sure all involved are respectful, constructive and stay on topic. This seems, however; to become more difficult for all when speaking on sensetive issues and topics.

    As for Red Army crimes, I will state the following. Yes, they occurred, yes they were bad, sad and unfortunate, yes they are inexcusable but before passing judgment so quickly as some on here try to do, perhaps these same members should first try to understand as to why they occurred.

    I have said this before and I will say it again:
    Had the Red Army conducted itself in Germany in the same fashion in which the Wehrmacht had in Russia, the population of East Germany would have been 0.
    Had the Red Army been following orders from the very top in the crimes being commited, the population of East Germany would have been 0.
    Had Hitler conducted himself in Russia in the same matter in which Napoleon had, the Red Army would have conducted itself in Germany as it had when it marched in Paris.

    Squads such as Eitzengruppen did not exist in the Red Army.

    I am unaware of any Red Army units entering a German village, herding its entire population into a church or barn and then setting it a light. German POW's were not systematically starved for the simple purpose of extermination (which they could have been and no one would have made a "peep" about it).

    The level of brutality conducted by the Waffen SS and other death squads on the Eastern fronts populations was simply unheard of and even today difficult to comprehend. It is precisely for this reason why the Russian population despised the German people as a whole. All in Nuremburg understood this.

    The Nazis were the most evil to walk this earth. The attrocites commited by this regime against others were second to none. To compare all other nations crimes in history (with the exception of Japan in China) to what the Nazis accomplished in less than 2 decades would not be equal.

    That is not whitewashing ;)
     
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  12. belasar

    belasar Court Jester

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    Congrats on the wedding! (you poor bugger!), but havn't you got it backwards, Vegas for a quick wedding, Mexico for a quick divorce?

     
  13. LRusso216

    LRusso216 Graybeard Staff Member

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    While I believe that both the Nazis and the Soviets under Stalin were evil, nowhere do I see examples of Soviet instances of Einsatzgruppen. They existed solely for the purpose of extermination. It didn't matter if the victims were Jews, Soviets, or non-combatants. In every case they were slated for eradication. There was no similar organization among the Soviets. Were they brutal toward the invaders? Sure, but they didn't set out exterminate those who were a "danger" to them. There was no excuse for either the Waffen-SS (which Nuremburg deemed a criminal organization) or the Einsatzgruppen.

    By the way, Slonik, congratulations on your marriage.
     
  14. Triple C

    Triple C Ace

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    Volga Boatman,

    I understand your repugnance of Stalin and Soviet Russia. My criticism is not directed at you personally, but I think your view of the Soviet contribution to the war is biased for the same reasons that apologists of the Soviet Union is biased: Soviet contribution to the victory was down played, while Soviet responsibility for its outbreak was emphasized beyond what can be ascertained reasonably. Gross mismanagement of the war happened in every Allied state from GB to France to the USA, while faulting the Soviets for the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact overlooks western European impotence before Nazi Germany throughout the thirties. I have it on good authority that the USSR was attempting to buy time to prepare a struggle against Hitler, badly executed as that preparation was.
     
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  15. lwd

    lwd Ace

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    While I agre that there was no Soviet equivalant of the Einsatzgrupen. The Soviets did manage to kill about as many of thier own citizens as the Germans did. Furthermore the following is a bit over the top.
    Certainly there were Russians left in the occupied zones and the Nazis didn't plan to exterminate all the Russians furthermore many of the crimes that the Russians commited would necessarily have resulted in dead Germans so both of the above are more than a bit off the mark.
    Possibly but I doubt it.
    But there were KNVD officers spread throughout it were there not?
    Certainly not unheard of. You just need to look back a bit in history. Indeed compared to some of the Mongol conquest the Nazi occupation was almost benign.
    Really? Or did they just understand there was essentially no chance of trying the Soviets for their crimes?

    I'm not at all certain of that. They were one of the worst combinations of insane and evil that we've seen. How do you judge the magnitude of evil though? The various communist regimes have certainly killed more people.
    Or not.
    I think you could make a case for the Communist regimes of the Soviet Union and Cambodia as being on a par with them. Of course they picked on their own citizens for the most part but does that make them any better? The aforementioned Mongol campaigns or some of the activities of say Vlad Sepish would on the surface anyway appear compareable.

    I guess that depends on your POV.
     
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  16. Triple C

    Triple C Ace

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    The Soviets did not have a policy eradicate an ethnic group based on their racial heritage. It was inconceivable to have such a policy because it was heresy to Soviet communist dogma to state that biological causes can make one group of people superior to another. It was economic forms that determine human life, nurture not nature if you will. Stalin went as far to suppress Darwinism because it was unsocialist. However, the Soviets did deploy specialist execution squads when the liquidation of an economic or political class was deemed necessary. For example, a single NKVD team was documented to have been responsible for the Katyn massacre.

    It is for me hard to say the Nazis were benign compared to any group. They did manage to wipe out more people on a year to year basis in history that could be matched against good records. Besides, it was not as if the Nazis did not leave behind their own kind of pyramids of skulls.
     
  17. Volga Boatman

    Volga Boatman Dishonorably Discharged

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    I have no axe to grind against the newly married.....only sympathy. Good onya Slonik!!! May your union produce many children and prosper till the end of your life.

    Down to business. I freely acknowledge that without the Soviet Union, in the form that it took from Stalinism, our struggle to rid the world of Fascist dictatorship was going to be longer, harder, and far more costly to Western democracies than it already was. I also acknowledge that the very nature of the Stalinist 'system' made this possible. Even Max Hastings states this quite openly in "All Hell Let Loose". He makes no bones about where the greater majority of the fighting and deaths occured. The Soviet Union suffered 65% of all military deaths in WW2. These are figures you cannot argue with.

    What I DON'T accept is the very modern Russian ideas about their own role in the creation of this stupendous contest of national survival. I feel that Soviet politics played a VERY large role in bringing on the circumstances that guaranteed the occurance of the Great Patriotic War. I also believe that modern Russians are slow to comprehend the role of their own government in this process, prefferring to view this war in the manner that it transformed itself into AFTER June 22, 1941. It's this 'flip-side' to Soviet involvement that makes postwar complaints about the Western powers failing to give the Soviets credit where it was due for defeating the Nazi's that I find the most galling.

    Furthermore, the excessive casualties suffered by the Soviet military are not to be blamed on the lack of Western involvement in the 'shooting match' on the Ostfront. They are a product of Soviet methods alone. Callling the Soviet 'style' of warfare anything other than what it was, (shamefully excessive in the cost of human lives) really is excuse mongering. Yet, I also acknowledge the words of John Hill, (wargame designer), who pointed out that "Had the Soviets put into practice any other form of training regime, they would have been totally unable to recover from the severe beating the Red Army suffered in 1941". Touche, Mr Hill. I think this sums up the soviet war effort as a whole. It was mismanged, but more expensive methods would have sacrificed the mass that the Soviet system was built around, and would have left little room to rebuild.

    In summary, thank GOD for the Red Army, and for Stalinism. I will also say "Damn the Red Army, and Stalinism." You could and should hold both opinions simultaniously, and believe in both as accepted fact.

    In doing so, you will be parralelling Bertrand Russel's interpretation of true intellectual capacity.

    "The ability to hold two diametrically opposed ideas in mind, and believe implicitly in both of them."
     
  18. Volga Boatman

    Volga Boatman Dishonorably Discharged

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    BTW....I have heard that Soviet Soldiers were primed for battle with the phrase "Mother Russia has sons enough". Was this an attempt by the regime to prepare Red Army soldiers for the type of warfare practiced by their leaders? Or was it cynical propaganda from a leadership trying to justify their tactical bankruptcy? Was this phrase traditional in Russian warfare, or was it invented by the Party?

    It really is mind boggling to send soldiers in uniform who are not members of 'punishment units' to suffer almost exactly the same fate. I've read German accounts that speak of total awe at the sight of these 'damned Russians' throwing themselves over barbed wire, or rolling forward "arm-in-arm", trampling minefields as they went, taking no cover from artillery or machine gun fire.

    The other thing is, did Siberian soldiers have any higher reputations for ferocity and brutality inside the ranks of the Red Army itself? When you read Sven Hassel, you can feel the FEAR leap off the page at the very mention of the word "Siberian". He describes them, "The Siberians fought like robots, showing total contempt for casualties, trampling over their own wounded."

    Was this something that the Russians acknowledged themselves? Were Siberian soldiers actually seen to be more ferocious than their more Westerly counterparts? I know for a fact that Siberians could and did, lie motionless in the snow for hours on end after a failed attack, only to leap up in the middle of a snowstorm and attack with the same vigour as they had previously. Truely superhuman!

    So much for Nazi racial "ubermenschen". What a perverse and shocking way to find out that their precious racial 'theory' was a load of cobblers!
     
  19. urqh

    urqh Tea drinking surrender monkey

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    Of course they picked on their own citizens for the most part but does that make them any better?

    Lwd, mate...As a pov I'd say yes it does. Not the any better bit but the picking on their own citizens. Citizens have a choice. Take it or fight it.
     
  20. Sloniksp

    Sloniksp Ставка

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    This thread is starting to morph into something else (as I suspected it would). Please lets remain on topic and not discuss Russian crimes in this thread...


    LWD,

    I will address your post in the "Russian Atrocities" thread as to not highjack this one. ;)
     
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