Who supports who?

Is it still in print, do you know?

That's true, some German prototypes in the final stages of the war were remarkable, but without being able to put such designs into action and in quantity they're just pipe-dreams.

 

pipe-dreams that came into fruition in the modern day...........think about it.

Martin is very correct. Peter is and was no Nazi neither were my cousins that fought and died for the right of their homeland/familie not for some ridiculous little turd that called himself an Austrian and the representative of the of the German people.........what a bloody joke.

ok enough of me, on to other threads.......

 

Ich verstehe. But if you don't remember, Erich. Half of my blood is German and it is the country were I was born and where I grew up. The same country that voluntarily destroyed its democracy, supported the nazis and committed many, many horrible crimes.

This is not about saying who's worse than x. The point here is that WWII Germany was NAZI Germany.

 

To make myself clear.

Germany was not a nation that lived terrified under the threat of the omnipresent Gestapo and therefore a nation of innocent good working and patriotic people who were opressed by a couple of illiterate pigs and dragged into disaster.

No, no and no. The average German —of low, middle and high class, from the country and the cities— did know of the atrocities committed. And most of them did not remain quiet about the subject, they applauded the atrocities and that's not all, since many, many ordinary patriotic, good working Germans contributed substantialy to it.

They may not have known of gas chambers in Auschwitz and Majdanek, but they did know of thousands of people who were sent to camps and were tortured and executed. They knew and glady assisted to public executions of foreign slave workers, they smiled at the sight of deported Jews and Gypsies and they went to the Gestapo every time they saw something they didn't like.

 

Yep, Friedrich,

and I guess you´re glad that the cold war stopped the people from believing all Germans were bad and should be eliminated. Wonder how far the world really was from sending Germans to the ovens after the war ended?

 

Gottfried go back to Germany and interview more of your countrymen please. many of the German people did not know of the atrocities committed to the Jewish peoples. Are you talking about the aristocracy Gottfried... ? Your statements are false. I've interviewed enough familie members and veterans that had no clue what was going on in the interior. Maybe your Opa agreed with this while fighting in the suburbs of Berlin in the last days but I hardly beleive that either. In such secrecy this was the Heer soldat did not know of these hideous crimes while serving on the Ost front while in the air, on land or beneath the waves. As I said it was a total wake up call for many familie members and vets when the war was over and they heard of the Nürnberg trials. It was so horrific that many wanted to leave Germany for good and could not believe that their own people could do such horrible acts.
I can also attest from fact of good friends living in Ost Preussia that they were quite scared of the Gestapo and feared a totaltarian police state sometime in the future. the German people were duped it is plain and simple........

E ~

 

Yes, the technology (or its derivatives) developed to fruition in peacetime, but when discussing warring regimes, that's irrelevant - wartime technology is only as good as it is practical and useful. Allied technology could be delivered in quantity and implemented on the battlefield, German technology on paper, or in inefficient production, could not, and thus is inferior.

 

Some knew, some didnt. Cant see your average german would know. Some may have a vague idea that something was goin on, some may know and others would be oblivious. Surely it depends on your position at the time.

A soldier in the Wehrmacht would surely know little, maybe he has seen a group being rounded up here and there but it would mean little to him. The man that runs a factory next door to a work camp would certainly have a clearer view of the picture.

Some did, some didnt. That seems the most likely.

 

I did try and do that. Both the Germans and Allies had some amazing stuff on the drawing boards late in the war. The US for example had designs in the works for jet bombers up to 200,000lbs in weight capable of intercontinental flight in various design stages. Certainly in aircraft the Germans did have, as I mentioned, an edge in high speed flight regimes as they had more experiance both theoretical and practical than the Allies in this field. The Allies were more pedesterian in their research opting for producable products that would win the war rather than the pipe dream of a wonder weapon.
Oh, one area the Germans were clearly ahead in was rocketry. The V-2 was far ahead of anyone else in that field. Problem was it cost Germany about the same amount of its GDP to develop as the US put into nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons...V-2 rocket....I think nukes were a better investment.

 

Greenjacket -

Yes, Peter Spoden's book is available right now on Amazon for the absolute bargain price of about £7 !

I recommend it very highly.

 

Can you please provide names and addresses of those who weren't? Or at least provide a general indication of their wherabouts? I'd be most interested.

Thank you in advance.

J.V.Stalin

 

When made real by others. When we look at the "pipe-dreams" made true by the "home team" what do we get? Flops! Flops like the Argentinean Pulqui, the Indian Marut, a couple of Egyptian prototypes that got nowhere, the Spanish Saetta. These are the post-war works of the great Kurt Tank and others of the same ilk.

Why didn't he go to work for the Americans like the Peenemunde team (or was invited, for that matter), and instead went to work for all manner of third world crackpots like Peron and Nasser?

Now of course when you see German basic research but developed by appropriate engineering design and production methods you can start with the F-86, which for a while was the backbone of the reborn Luftwaffe.

 

Or MiG 15.....

 

Actually Rommel did not support Hitler. As history shows he himself was involved in the Stauffenberg bomb plot to assasinate Hitler. So I highly doubt they were the best of friends. Also many of Hitlers officers didn't believe in what he was doing. Adding to your comment about the soliders, yes some of them did support Hitler and they also believed that his extermination of the Jews was right but others didn't. Also there were more than likly other factors that made them feel this way.By this I mean that if they didn't at least act like they supported Hitler they would be killed.

 

Erich, with all due respect this time it is not a matter of opinion. It is what happened and there are lots of evidence of this, whether we like it or not my statements are true.

To start you should definately read Sir Ian Kershaw's "Hubris" and "Nemesis" to find out who Hitler and how Germany really were. In fact, you don't have to read such modern studies. Read some 1950s studies like W. L. Shirer's or T. L Jarman's, even the first III Reich novel, "Mefisto" by Klaus Mann —son of the Nobel Prize Winner Thomas Mann. Not to mention Gisevius, Speer, etc. The voluntary nazification of Germany is clearly there.

I'll provide some examples:

1) The public burning of books of May 10th 1933 —which is a major attrocity, since it means the intellectual suicide of Germany— was NOT started by Goebbels. It was an initiative of the non-nazi Deutsche Studentenschaft to compete and defeat the Nationalsozialistischer Deutsches Studentenbund. So, average, knowledged, middle-classed ordinary students voluntarily went into libraries and burnt the 'degenerate and un-German' books, helped in great shape by ordinary beureaucrats and uniformed-policemen. You can see in the images of the books burning not many nazi uniforms. Just many civilians smiling at the sight of destruction of their own culture, which at least had been able to defeat France as the vanguard country.

2) The Gestapo was mostly formed by professional detectives and policemen who had the knowledge and experience acquired before WWI and during the Weimar Republic. Himmler didn't replace Gestapo officials with SS members, his 1934 purge is a complete myth, not more than 5% of the criminal and secret political police corps were purged. And during 1933 and 1934, when the Gestapo sistematically destroyed the German penal code and sent to prison thousands of people for no cause, without legal representation and for indefinite time, its officials were not members of the party. The German police then started slowly to become members of the NSDAP and the SS. But it was not until 1937 when Himmler openly made the Gestapo part of the SS that the majority of its agents became members of the SS or the party. The most important case would be Heinrich Müller, who would become C.-in-C. of the Gestapo, who did not become an officer nor a party member until 1937. Before 1933, Müller, as most of the Gestapo officers, had had very little contact with national socialism. But they gladly and professionally became the Nazi's most dreaded arm because of their traditional authoritarian, anti-Jewish and anti-communist views.

Now, how did an organisation of barely 32.000 men (1939) could watch so detaily to 60.000.000 Germans? How the Gestapo found out about every thing the Germans said, did or didn't do, even behind closed doors in the bedroom? Because of gossip and anonomous informs provided by 'ordinary' Germans. In the same way the NKVD arrested indiscriminately in totalitarian Russian, so did the Gestapo in Nazi Germany. The Gestapo was so efficient because of consense and active collaboration of the average German.

3) The T-4 programme. In 1939, the Secretary of the Chancellery, Philip Bouhler showed Hitler a letter of a farmer who requested permission to kill his retarded 5-year-old son. Hitler immediately agreed and even signed an order —which he never did— and this gave incentive to the German Medics Associations, which, by the way, had adhered to the party voluntarily in 1934.

So, average, 'good' professional German doctors, not illiterate peasants, men with PhDs, from middle and high classes procceeded to administrate euthanasia to people mortally-ill in terminal phases, then to patients in vegetative state, then to patients with brain-paralysis, then to schizofrenics, then to paranoids, then to retarded, then to people sick with Alzheimer, then to retarded, then to children with Downe syndrom, then to children with low mental capabilities, then to deaf, blind or physically 'defectuous' people, and so on… The result? 400.000 people ASSASSINATED, not by SS, not by SA, not by 'Nazis', they were murdered without any direct order from Hitler or Himmler by "average, good, wise German professionals".

P.S. How many German generals were court-martialed before July 20th 1944 for refusal to carry-out genocide orders? Some did refuse, but most of the "average soldiers and officers" DID pass the "commissar order" and carried it out.

[ 02. July 2004, 11:19 AM: Message edited by: General der Infanterie Friedrich H ]

 

He DID. At least until November 1942 when he got the order "To stand or die".

Rommel may not have liked nazis but he did like Hitler and what he had done to Germany. He was his bodyguard corps' chief during the Polish campaign.

Or what about Rommel deliberately using Hitler's favour to eliminate the Army's chain of command and ignoring orders from his superiors?

 

From 'The Rommel Papers' : -

3rd June 1940

The Fuehrer's visit was wonderful. He greeted me with the words : 'Rommel, we were very worried about you during the attack'. His whole face was radiant and I had to accompany him afterwards. I was the only division commander who did...'

 

You seem to be prevailing a myth that was propounded by liddell hart in the 50's. while rommel may not have been a supporter of his racial ideas. He certainly supprted what he was doing for germany. It was until his arrival in france and the realisation that the war was militarily un-winnable that he turned against hitler.

 

[/QUOTE]You seem to be prevailing a myth that was propounded by liddell hart in the 50's. while rommel may not have been a supporter of his racial ideas. He certainly supprted what he was doing for germany. It was until his arrival in france and the realisation that the war was militarily un-winnable that he turned against hitler. [/QB][/QUOTE]
Of course! Eveyone in the military supported what Hitler was doing for Germany. But Rommel caught sight early that Germany could not win because, as the facts show, Germanys resources and equipment were only suitable for a short blitzkrieg on one front. And Hitler started 3! Also, hitler should have know that he couldn't take on the Soviets during their winter! The Soviet winter is what stoped Napolion from taking the Soviet Union for godsake! Hitler made many huge tactical mistakes like this whitch cost him the war.

 

Yeah he did. We are not having a debate about Hitlers generalship or lack there of. We are talking about support for the regime. It is irrelevant what sort of support it was be it ideological of nationalistic. the simple fact remains that up until 1944 rommel was a supporter of hitler. That is fact. There were many other german commander who did not share hitler ideological aims but because he was willing to offer them what they wanted they were willing to support him. Note the use of the word support. To support someone does not have to mean you agree with them on everything you just have to getting something out of it which is what the majority of the german military hierachy were getting. Therefore, they were willing to support him.

A good example of this was Von Rundstedt, a man who has been describe as the eptimone of the Great German General Staff traditions. He was tied into supporting him even after he realised the war was over because his oath. An oath he had made when he was willing to supprt hitler becasue money was being spent on the military.