Could someone help me identify the army divisions of these photographs?
Article about: This is an image of Sipo/SD unit in Russia, but not necessarily at the time of "Barbarossa." The point here is this: these men had helpers, drawn from what today are called "l
Could someone help me identify the army divisions of these photographs?
Hello... I was told by someone else on another thread that if I posted some WWII photographs, someone experienced here would be able to tell me about them. I'm just concerned with what branch of the military the soldiers re in--Kriegsmarine, Luftwaffe, etc... If any of them are involved with the Einsatzgruppen (which, from my understanding, takes a very trained eye to spot) or other obscure branches. I just want to understand the history of them. I've tried to identify them myself but I'm very confused--the triangle arm badge is on several branches, and the lines on the neck flaps are also, and sometimes there will be a distinct hat but nothing else on the uniform will match up.
I'm uninformed in etiquette here, so if I am posting too many or in the wrong area please tell me. This is a fairly new interest of mine, so I'm very excited to have these photographs along with the possibility of knowing what is actually going on in them... Some have writings on the backs, which I am also posting. I can read most German, but am not so talented when it comes to old-fashioned cursive, so if anyone could help me, I'd be very grateful! Thank you!
(Note: I'm also going to attach a few from WWI. I don't expect anything of it, because I think I'm in the wrong forum, but if there is anything you know about them, please tell me!)
Re: Could someone help me identify the army divisions of these photographs?
by Zaitsev
Hello... I was told by someone else on another thread that if I posted some WWII photographs, someone experienced here would be able to tell me about them. I'm just concerned with what branch of the military the soldiers re in--Kriegsmarine, Luftwaffe, etc... If any of them are involved with the Einsatzgruppen (which, from my understanding, takes a very trained eye to spot) or other obscure branches. I just want to understand the history of them. I've tried to identify them myself but I'm very confused--the triangle arm badge is on several branches, and the lines on the neck flaps are also, and sometimes there will be a distinct hat but nothing else on the uniform will match up.
I'm uninformed in etiquette here, so if I am posting too many or in the wrong area please tell me. This is a fairly new interest of mine, so I'm very excited to have these photographs along with the possibility of knowing what is actually going on in them... Some have writings on the backs, which I am also posting. I can read most German, but am not so talented when it comes to old-fashioned cursive, so if anyone could help me, I'd be very grateful! Thank you!
(Note: I'm also going to attach a few from WWI. I don't expect anything of it, because I think I'm in the wrong forum, but if there is anything you know about them, please tell me!)
What follows refers to your 1st post. the top left is either an air force or navy band in concert in a S. European locale in wartime. Such a place could have been from so. France to the Crimea, though the natives look well organized. The middle image is of recruits in Munsterlager (at Munster, which is still a major Bundeswehr base...) at the end of basic training or a deployment there plainly in the year 1937 in the p.t. kit---this is a very typical kind of class picture; the blurry picture of the soldier with some kind of fire arm is too indistinct to describe; the picture with the Luftwaffe soldiers in front of the cinema is likely not in Germany, since there a cinema is a Kino, but maybe I am wrong; the picture of the Luftwaffe officer and child shows the summer wear peaked cap and I think a sword, which suggests peace time and maybe in Germany itself. Others know if this order of dress was permitted in occuppied territory. The inscription on the back of one of the images: Kameradschaftsabend, i.e. evening with comrades, night out with chums, as it were---very German and still a custom to this day.
Happy collecting.
Last edited by Friedrich-Berthold; 08-04-2008 at 03:00 AM.
Re: Could someone help me identify the army divisions of these photographs?
by Zaitsev
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This comment on the 2d post Left to right, top row: A winter scene in what I would wager to be Russia, somewhere in the rear, granted the lack of steel helmets; army engineers with bridging equipment on the march somewhere in Germany; Luftwaffe recruits in the drillich uniform with a sergeant, maybe in garrison at home, maybe sometime later in the war; 2d row, again, l-r, Army private in what is likely an early war image in a 1936 model blouse; image of Lw soldiers of enlisted rank with family; inscription on verso: " In love and gratitude, Gebhardt," with the stamp of a foto studio in Uetzehoe, which I think is in Schleswig Holstein (but look in Google)3d row, scene of an army officer, NCO and enlisted troops with a woman and a truck...my wild guess is this Russia, Poland, or somewhere eastwards, but again not in the front line, since no one is dressed for combat (these front images tend to have been developed in a more rough and ready way, but I may totally wrong there); the same kid as in the description above, and likely without much combat experience, since as these people fought more, they lost this kind of hopeful look you see on this young man's face; two army soldiers in Germany, and without shoulder boards, which others here will describe their status.Final image 4th row, as it were: cute girl and army NCO in what I would wager is a later image, with a later model of tunic and the use of the neck tie with same, i.e. later in the war, but in Germany.
Last edited by Friedrich-Berthold; 08-04-2008 at 03:20 AM.
Re: Could someone help me identify the army divisions of these photographs?
The question here is also whether any of these people were in an SS Einsatzgruppe, which I assume is meant here in the Soviet campaign. This question raises issues that are likely to provoke controversy among some readers as regards various branches of state and party and the ethnic cleansing-genocide goals of the regime.
I do not think that any of the figures here were prima faciae in an SS Einsatzgruppe in 1941, since none of the figures here is in SS uniform, especially that of those units engaged in this kind of operations. While the written record of these units is well preserved, there are not a lot of photos of them. And, in certain cases, these units employed other organizations in the rear area to mount mass executions. Furthermore, in Operation Barbarossa, non SS units also engaged in ethnically motivated killings or mass killings in well documented cases.
This statement makes no judgment on the figures you have shown here, whose names are unknown to us, and who resemble for all the world hundreds of thousands of identical photographs of members of the German armed forces without any taint on their record whatsoever.
If you look at the US Holocaust museum website, they have a pretty good pictorial section of SS officers, NCOs and enlisted men, some of whom were exclusively engaged in mass killing. I enclose here one of the images from the album of an adjutant of the commandant of Auschwitz which was discovered a year ago. This image includes Mengele, Hoess, Kraemer and others in what is truly remarkable. Yet, there are also hundreds if not thousands of similar images of relaxing SS men in happy poses elsewhere in the internet. However, these were especially important individuals in the climax of the Holocaust/Shoah/Endloesung der Judenfrage in the summer of 1944. The SS Einsatzgruppen in operation Barbarossa were three years earlier. A superb literatrue in detail exists on these organizations, mostly in German. Of course, attached to the Einsatzgruppe were German police units in a paramilitary role, too.
The Axis History forum is the premiere site in my mind for research in the kind of people you are seeking, but images of them are infrequent. There are also central and eastern European websites devoted to the genocide with excellent photo material. I am thinking of one for an SS Sicherheitspolizei school in the High Tatras at Zakopane in so. Poland.
I shall try to identify more of this material later and enjoin my colleagues to help out.
dare to be enlightened....
Last edited by Friedrich-Berthold; 08-04-2008 at 05:01 AM.
Re: Could someone help me identify the army divisions of these photographs?
Nope no Einzat G hear just Army and Luft if you like to see any items from theas units go to Hatikvah Holocaust Education Center click on to artifacts you will see a poster/armband and other item on lone from my collection.Any thing from theas unit's are out of this world rear.Thanks Darrell
Could someone help me identify the army divisions of these photographs?
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by Zaitsev
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