SS Komandant living in Minesota since 1949, JA?

[TrondK]

You cannot get a fair trial when you are on the losing side.

The winners write the history, just look at the Roman Conquests, the said everyone non-roman was a Barbar. This is the picture we still have long time after their empire vanished and turned into dust themselfs.

[Doppelgänger]

any officer (the term officer is specificially used to differentiate from enlisted man) who was a member of a unit that committed war crimes, as determined by the victors, can be tried, convicted, and sentenced even though the officer was not directly involved in the action itself. Simply being a member of the unit in any capacity is sufficient to constitute guilt.

Officers are responsible for their men, for better or for worse, are they not? And often times if the officer in charge is actually in control of his men, the men are following orders. So blame usually if not always goes up the chain of command, not down.

Godwin's law dictates than any talk of the SS will inevitably lead to the Nazis.

This is really naive...

The SS rightfully represent for most people the most brutal and despicable faction of Nazi Germany's armed forces (and they weren't, why is an SS peaked cap worth $6500, or a helmet $7500?). It's nice to see the SS whitewashed almost daily on this board, or whenever the subject comes up, and how offended certain members are when they are called Nazis.

It was called Nazi Germany. The SS were a Nazi fighting and exterminating force of that regime, Nazi Germany.

German fighting forces across the board were in fact "Nazis" in WWII, Churchill called them Nazis, Zhukov called them Nazis in nearly every page of his account of the battlles for Moscow, Stalingrad, etc... Eisenhower called them Nazis. Partisans fought "Nazis". I'm sure they could give a flying sh*t about who and which ones weren't true ideologues...

Was Auschwitz a Nazi concentration camp?

I get a chuckle out of this soft pedal PC bs that pops out everytime the SS are mentioned. After all, they were mostly a bunch of good guys who were trying to avoid a bullet... and some had no Nazi ideology? Unfortunately for them, people who were fighting them at the time didn't have the time or luxury to find out who was truly good or bad, but it's good that 70 years on, people are finally coming to their defense and sorting out the good from the bad.

And exactly which SS weren't actually Nazis.

[TrondK]

I get a chuckle out of this soft pedal PC bs that pops out everytime the SS are mentioned.

What does this mean? Sorry but english is not my language

[Doppelgänger]

"soft pedal" means playing down something, trying to make something sound nicer than it really is... it is a musical term, named after one of the pedals on the piano, but this is what it means;

Music; To soften or mute the tone of by depressing the soft pedal.
Informal; To make less emphatic or obvious; play down: soft-pedal a potentially explosive issue.

PC stands for "political correctness", which in most cases would be not calling someone what they really are, for fear that it could offend someone.

It wouldn't be very politically correct to call a "vicious murderer" a vicious murderer. Instead you can things like "the alleged perpetrator", or "the suspect" (or in the case of this SS Kommandant, "the victim") usually then accompanied by a mention that they had a bad childhood... so that you can feel sorry for them.

I suppose it isn't politically correct to call the SS Nazis, or say things like Nazi SS in print. That is what Doug B calls "garbage journalism"?


PS BS is something that bulls leave on the ground ;-)

[TrondK]

Thank you for the translation Sir

[Doppelgänger]

You're very welcome ;-)

Or should I say; Ver så god!









PS I very much agree with you on the Romans having designated everyone else "Barbarians"... Good excuse to invade, pillage, and murder untold numbers of people. Have you watched Michael Palin's show on the "Barbarians"?

[drmessimer]

Doppelgänger: You are correct that in war crimes cases the commanding officer is responsible for the actions of his men. But the way the Germans have written their law makes any officer who was a member of an offending unit guilty of the crime even though he was not there and took no part. For example, an engineer officer who was a member of an infantry regiment, a rifle company of which committed a serious war crime, is outed fifty years later as an officer in the infamous regiment. Under the law as the Germans have written it, the engineer officer, who had no command responsibility and was no where near the action, can be found guilty simply because he was a commissioned officer in the regiment. While I agree with you that the SS, and I mean the Allgemeine-SS and Waffen-SS, generally represent the worst aspects of the NSDAP, not all of them are guilty of war crimes. I don't believe that simply belonging to a group is sufficiently good evidence to bring a conviction for a crime some members of the group committed. There has to be solid evidence to prove either actual participation or actual aiding and abetting the specific crime. The idea, that the concept of they also serve who only stand and wait, is implicit evidence of guilt, is in my opinion entirely wrong. Dwight

[TrondK]

PS I very much agree with you on the Romans having designated everyone else "Barbarians"... Good excuse to invade, pillage, and murder untold numbers of people. Have you watched Michael Palin's show on the "Barbarians"?

Yes i have. That is a very good program. When i was living in Norway i was watching all these History related Shows. Very very interesting for us history addicts.

[hassiman]

To my mind there is NO gray area when describing an armed soldier shooting unarmed women and children. These are war crimes... period. The SS were indoctrinated to believe in their racial superiority as a part of their training. Anyone who did such things inn time of war is by definition a war criminal... no matter the color of their uniform. As such this is a double edged sword.

[37Webbing]

You cannot get a fair trial when you are on the losing side.

The winners write the history, just look at the Roman Conquests, the said everyone non-roman was a Barbar. This is the picture we still have long time after their empire vanished and turned into dust themselfs.

In all fairness. Barbar doesn't mean the same thing today, as in ancient times. It is actually a term coined by the Greeks, not the Romans,
and it simply means a person that either doesn't speak Greek, or isn't native to ancient Hellas ("Greece" or more specific Thessaly).

As with all such words, it changed meaning during the centuries, and it was the Romans that made the word mean what it means today.
Although it was already turning into a negative word after the wars between the Greek city states, and the Persians, but still not as we think of it today.
We can thank the Romans for that .