Americans in the Waffen SS

[rgaraymd]

Hey guys how are you? Well Im new to the forum and this is my first post here. Anyway, I just wanted to contribute that I came across a few years back a list of SS members that were American-born. I mean from Canada all the way to Argentina. There were volunteers from all nations. It was a very interesting list. If I come across it I will definitely post it here. Cheers, Raul

[Dick]

Hey guys how are you? Well Im new to the forum and this is my first post here. Anyway, I just wanted to contribute that I came across a few years back a list of SS members that were American-born. I mean from Canada all the way to Argentina. There were volunteers from all nations. It was a very interesting list. If I come across it I will definitely post it here. Cheers, Raul

It would be an interesting list to see. However it could never be trully complete for several reasons. Each country would have to have kept their own records, and when a lot of Germans as an example went back to Germany before the war started, the German government did not exchange that info with us. When we won the war, and interviewed prisoners, we might know then, but only the ones we interviewed that were alive, or telling the truth, and ones killed we might know who they were, but only if we picked up some name from one enrolment list, that happened to matched some other list. There were millions of men, and inspite of the Germans being the best of record keepers, we bombed the hell out of a lot of places were those records were kept. Other country's where war was raged, also had a much greater task to discover who served where, the men lost might not even be realized if a whole family were killed, or repatriated, moved, etc., plus any records lost about those men and or families. A daunting task even in this computer age of ours.

[OKW]

In reply to spacemans query, there was an allied radio station which used to broadcast black info aimed at the ordinary enlisted personnel of the wehrmacht. They included such things as pay and allowances, rationing and a general dig at those in charge. This was so successful that many Germans were convinced it was an official military station, radio Calais or some such. The propaganda was very subtle unlike Joyces who took delight in naming towns to be visited by the luftwaffe. And having early information about damage caused. He seemed to beable to give information at quite a local level such as a clock in a public building not working which kept the myth of a 5th column alive in Britain when the reality was that all German spies were picked up very early on and either, turned, imprisoned or executed. Amery was the one i couldn't remember, thanks Ade, his brother had a distinguished career in the RAF

[Brian Childress]

Thank you OKW, that is very interesting indeed.

[Dick]

OKW, that is a good one, never heard of that before. Do you know who ran that operation?

[BOB COLEMAN]

This is a very interesting thread. As all of the listed American Waffen SS men were KIA, the thought occured to me that possibly there were others who survived and not listed. 100% KIA seems to me to not be a reliable statistic. Does anyone know of any other confirmed American citizens who served in the SS and survived?

[Richard Kimmel]

My intention is not to condemn or condone however, I can only speak from my personal experiences as a youth growing up in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood during early 1940's. My being of German decent, I took some pretty nasty comments from neighborhood individuals during the wartime period, as did my parents and grandfather. Both my parents and I were born in the U.S. At one point my grandfather wanted to go back to Germany. Prior to his coming to the U.S. he, as a young man, was an officer in the Royal Prussian Army and all of the nonsense that had been directed toward himself and our family only made his feelings stronger.

Richard

[Rick]

Hi All,
IMO those that went back to fight for there country cant be classed as traitors but patriots, however Mosley and Mitford and there like, tried to undermine the fight from the inside, and what i would class as traitors.

Just my opinion though.

Rick

[Jonesy]

Some of the BFK ended up in the Front area in Pomerania at the HQ of III SS Panzer Korps , the Commanding General Felix Steiner sent them packing as he considered them to be useless although i think one of them after the war said he had been involved in combat.

Initially they were i think to be assigned to SS Panzer Auf Abt 11,

regards

Paul

If I remember correctly, the man who claimed to have seen combat, and decorated in the process, was called Thomas Cooper. he was brought up in the East End of London and had a German mother.

regards

Mark

[Paul D]

Your right Mark i think it was Cooper.