Is it just me ?

These days I seem to find that it doesn't take a lot for something I read to hit a raw nerve.

The posting regarding Pollux's grandfather was a typical example and the thread you are reading now is probably my way of blowing off steam.

By sheer coincidence, only this morning I came across a haunting piece of poetry by Jeremy Robson entitled simply "Vigil" and it so it was so much an echo of my own thoughts on modern day Germany that I made a point of scanning it and reproducing it below.

You need to understand that later in the year my wife and I are making a pilgrimage to my brother's grave in Durnbach.

This will be the first time I have been back to Germany since 1945 and I also know that it has taken much courage from my wife to visit the country.

When I arrive at Munich airport I know I shall be thinking about this poem, set as it is, in a modern railway station
.
Vigil

By Jeremy Robson

I don't accuse,
Am on my guard,
that's all.

I won't forget they tried
To wipe my broken
people
from the earth- no,
not them, of course, too
young, their fathers or their
fathers' fathers-not even
them, perhaps.
Be fair.

They might who knows,
have been among those
righteous brave who
in reaching out their hands
sealed their own fate,
or simply those who turned
away, afraid. Perhaps.
Impossible to conceive
the fear, the shadows of
the night, the bootsteps
on the stair.

Now a lifetime later,
alone beneath the Bahnhoffs
amber lights, incessant
rain machine-gunning the
roofs grim glass, I tell
myself the hordes
I watch there, fighting
their way towards the waiting
trains-achtung-late for
work or hurrying home,
that they could not

themselves have heard
the shots, the muzzled
cries, the dogs, the
clank, clank, clank
of the nightrnare trucks
departing on cue for their
one way journey to Hell
(from which of these Platforms
I wonder-one ,two?)

and that looking back
aghast, perhaps, at those black
Wagnerian scenes, history
to them, however obscene,
that they, contrite perhaps,
would wash their hands
in innocence at night-
not like some demented Lady
Macbeth, scrub scrub
scrubbing
to expunge the dead, as
those accursed others should.
Sins of the fathers
heavy on their head.
Be fair.

And yet, and yet..
It's seventy years since
That war began, but if
I, a Jew, scion
Of that haunted race,
forget, who will remember,
and if none remembers, the
dead are truly dead.

I don't accuse,
Am on my guard,
that's all.

 

@Peter G:
I have two things to add:
- What Himmler thought and said didn't necessarily reach his subordinates. For example, he demanded that every SS man should first consider himself part of the SS, and only then part of the respective branch. He also demanded that they should all respect each other. Clearly that wasn't the case; Allgemeine-SS wasn't very respected among Waffen-SS, just to name an example.
He was also against smoking and drinking (alcohol) but it can hardly be expected that the soldiers followed him on that.
Besides many also (secretly) laughed about others of Himmler's ideas (being an incarnation of King Heinrich I. for example) - without underestimating how dangerous the man was.

- Ref animosities between Brauchitsch and Himmler about children (among others): You have to keep in mind that there was a clash between two fundamentally different social systems, if you like. The Wehrmacht and it's (higher ranking) officers were part of the conservative elite; preaching things like making illegitimate kids and whatnot was an outrage to them. Of course there was much less turmoil among Wehrmacht officers about crimes committed in Poland - the degree to which they agreed with NS ideas (antisemitism, antibolshevism etc.) was very high. Indeed, there were some protests about killings in Poland by soldiers of the SS; however it wasn't the crimes themselves but rather that they were carried out in a manner which made the officers fear for the discipline of their troops.

@Ron: I think the reason for our clashes (or misunderstandings?) is that we come from two fundamentally different settings. You fought the Germans yourself during the war and you're Jew; that gives you two good reasons to having a hard time accepting anything that might relativise German crimes. I admit that I sometimes forget to keep that in mind when reading (and answering) your posts.
I was born way after the war and am a historian with focus on the Third Reich and the German Army. I have no emotional connection to the subject whatsoever (I'm not even German) so I have don't have problems seeing things from a different angle and taking up another point of view.
Just to make this very clear: Even though I try to occasionally see things from a different viewpoint (e.g. that of a member of the SS) that does not mean I make that viewpoint my own. It's my job as a historian. I have no affinity whatsoever to right (wing) and Nazi ideas, and no wish to whitewash anything.

 

Hello Peter,

May I ask if you know anything about how the candidates were winnowed down during training? Seems to me that the proof of ancestry process made them a select group but that alone doesn't make them elite, in my opinion, anyway.
We define an élite as 'the most powerful, rich, gifted, or educated members of a group, community, etc.' One has to try to get into the demented mindset of Himmler to begin to understand what he meant by a 'racial élite' and what he sought in an SS man.

The qualities he insisted upon were what he termed 'SS virtues': loyalty, obedience, and comradeship. He also emphasised bravery, honesty, hard work, fulfilment of duty, and total submission to the SS man's leader. He repeatedly insisted and demanded one thing from all SS men: decency (if you look at any of his speeches every few paragraphs the word 'decency' crops up).

All these 'virtues' were a question of race and could only be shown by a man, and to a lesser extent by a woman, of 'Germanic blood'. The SS man was naturally loyal, above all, to Adolf Hitler. 'Loyalty', for Himmler, was a magic power, not rationally based but, as Himmler put it, a 'matter of the heart'.

For Himmler his SS was engaged in a millennia-long struggle between a superior Nordic or Germanic race which as the leader of the 'white races' was the representative of humanity and the inferior races or to put it in Himmler's precise words 'between humans and subhumans'. In his speech of January 1937 he said the coming decades would mean a 'battle to the point of annihilation of those subhuman enemies I have mentioned throughout the world against Germany as the core nation of the Germanic nation, against Germany as the bearer of culture for humanity.' The 'subhuman Jews' (the common and eternal enemy of the 'decent' German) were responsible, as he said at the Reich Peasants' Rally of 1935, for all ills and in particular 'for the violent Christianization of the Saxons, the Spanish Inquisition, the witch hunts, and the outbreak of the Thirty Years war'.

Only convinced Nazis could apply to join the SS and, Himmler claimed, only 15 per cent of candidates were accepted into the SS. Applicants were mainly rejected on 'racial', physical, or age grounds. In 1939 Himmler introduced his special 'race chart' for assessing candidates. This assessed the amount of 'blood from another race' or negative characteristics, for example 'jet-black hair', near eastern nose, or a particular obsession of the Reichsfuhrer-SS, the 'Greek nose' ('no or only a slight indentation at the root of the nose'). Military training came way down the list, there was always need for camp guards.

As for SS discipline, Himmler was concerned about 'prosecuting those who shot Jews without authorisation'. On being consulted, he decided that the decisive point was the 'motives' of those involved in such incidents. 'In the case of political motives there should be no prosecution unless required for public order [...] In the case of selfish, sadistic, or sexual motives they should be prosecuted and, where appropriate, for murder or manslaughter'. As Peter Longerich neatly puts it "Thus, even in the face of unparalleled mass murder Himmler did not want to abandon the right to claim that his SS murdered 'decently'.

 

'No criminal record' is a bit of a laugh. Oskar Dirlewanger, to take but one example, was sentenced to two years' imprisonment in 1934 for indecent behaviour with a 14-year-old girl in his official car. Much later Himmler took him into the SS. His leadership was characterised by continued alcohol abuse, looting, sadistic torture, atrocities, rape, and murder.

 

We should also be mindful that the words "Criminal Record" have a different meaning in modern day society than it did in Hitler's Reich . Oskar Dirlewanger was a nasty piece of work and no mistake

 

'No criminal record' is a bit of a laugh. Oskar Dirlewanger, to take but one example, was sentenced to two years' imprisonment in 1934 for indecent behaviour with a 14-year-old girl in his official car. Much later Himmler took him into the SS. His leadership was characterised by continued alcohol abuse, looting, sadistic torture, atrocities, rape, and murder.

A quick net search on that nefarious cretin shows he met a just end.

Good,

Dave

 

Gordon williamson's 'SS Handbook' has the following criteria listed for the early Verfugungstruppe:
SSVT recruitment criteria. (1935-).

Perhaps an interesting contrast: in 1935, of 67,828 initial applicants to the British Army, only 25,681 (37%) were finally attested and approved - and this at a time when the War Office was desperate for recruits. Until 1937, when they were relaxed somewhat, the Army's dental and vision requirements were very strict.

So 'elite' status is very much a matter of opinion.

Best, Alan

 

Hello Ron,

If not too personal, are you able to talk about your need to make this pilgrimage to visit your dear brother's burial site in Durnbach when it's taking such an emotional toll on you?

You are very courageous knowing a flood of vivid memories of sights, sounds and emotions will be experienced. No wonder your nerves are raw. Only another vet can truly understand what you went through I feel.

So glad you have a supportive spouse and wish you all the best.

peaceful
Chrissie

 

Chrissie

I thank you for your good wishes.

I am fortunate in that I am going out as part of a small family group, including my nephew who has done this trip quite a few times.

I will also be fairly busy taking photos etc, both for AJEX and the odd forum member so that I like to think I can keep things under control.

Ron

 

@Peter G:
What Himmler thought and said didn't necessarily reach his subordinates. For example, he demanded that every SS man should first consider himself part of the SS, and only then part of the respective branch. He also demanded that they should all respect each other. Clearly that wasn't the case; Allgemeine-SS wasn't very respected among Waffen-SS, just to name an example.
He was also against smoking and drinking (alcohol) but it can hardly be expected that the soldiers followed him on that.
Besides many also (secretly) laughed about others of Himmler's ideas (being an incarnation of King Heinrich I. for example) - without underestimating how dangerous the man was.
Sorry Kate, I should have replied to this sooner. Made a note somewhere and then forgot it. To business:

Himmler didn't smoke, it is true, and only drank moderately, but he wasn't as you say "against smoking and drinking (alcohol)". What he was against was excessive drinking, although he tolerated the alcoholism of several senior SS personnel., Bürger and Kleinheisterkamp to mention but two. More than once he sent offenders the following note: "Either you show you can handle alcohol and follow our example, or a pistol will be sent to you so that you can put an end to things. So make up your mind; you have twenty-four hours to do so." It sounds pretty effective.

I've seen the story going round that Himmler thought himself an incarnation of Henry I, it was even in a recent TV documentary. Indeed the annual 'King Henry celebrations' were to become a fixture of the SS commemorative calendar, but he didn't see himself as Henry, what he saw were parallels between Henry and Hitler.

Peter Lonerich's monumental Heinrich Himmler, translated by Jeremy Noakes and Lesley Sharpe, is the source for this. It covers all aspects of his life and the SS. At 1,031 pages it's a hefty read, but I highly recommend it.

 

I don't know if I can answer Ron's "fairly simple question" but I'd like to share some thoughts:

591 Research states, "most soldiers committed acts which today in peacetime would not be tolerated". 591 actually undermines his own point when he says "you have to apply the law(s) applicable at that time", quite obviously then not peace time laws, where any killing is unlawful, but wartime where national laws, international conventions and a code of honour on the battlefield going back 100's of years form the "laws" in question.

I would go so far as to say that there are no modern laws of warfare which fundamentally change or go further than those existing prior to say 1914. What 591 seems to suggest is that the right or wrong of a action is relative to the current politic. I would reject this as being exactly the mind set of the nazi regime, what served the regime is deemed right.

War happens because man is imperfect and I would suggest that we must look to a morality that transcends mere utility for politics. The code of honour which has governed war for years is an attempt to recognise this reality and reconcile an imperfect world.

We should not out of hand condem an individual for mere membership of a group, that's nazism. Justice for harm seeks cause, and cause demands evidence.

Finally I think we should always reflect on our own actions, for example bombing of civilian targets.
Nick

 

I thought the purpose of a military was to prepare for when the sort of actions not tolerated (or permitted) in peacetime would be needed? Like bombing, mining, sabotaging, spying, assassinating, shooting, bayonetting, capturing, appropriating, et cetera, et cetera. In other words, what would be mayhem in peacetime becomes appropriate action when war is declared.

To say that "most soldiers committed acts which today wouldn't be tolerated in peacetime" is correct only in that if you attempted acts of war during peacetime, you'd be up in front of the beak pretty sharpish. But today has nothing to do with it - yesterday, today, tomorrow, it doesn't matter; soldiers commit acts under wartime conditions which of course they don't commit during peacetime. They commit them during war, when a very different set of rules and regs apply - the Rules of Engagement, not civil law.

But if the author is trying to compare what are taken as normal wartime ops to the singularly abnormal ops of the SS, then he might as well compare the honour of the Samurai to the extraordinary sadism of WWII's Japanese invading troops.

In both cases, the SS and the invading Japanese believed themselves to be a superior race to those who had the worst of misfortunes to be exposed to their incomprehensible cruelty. The SS quite blithely and without any pangs of conscience at all lay waste to entire villages as retribution, justifying these actions as a need to teach the lowly natives a lesson in obedience and deference to the Aryan masters. Japanese officers cheerfully engaged in beheading contests, oversaw the live burials of helpless Chinese, and both factions thoughtfully set up 'comfort stations' ('Joy Divisions' for the Germans, 'comfort women' for the Japanese) to take care of the carnal desires of their men, using easily-disposable girls from local areas.

Okay, soldiers do 'commit acts' which they wouldn't do in peacetime - that, I'd have thought, was a rather obvious and simple truth - but I am proud to say that apart from the Nazi and the Japanese army's 'special' treatment of those whom they overran, no soldiering by any other countries brought such enduring disgrace upon their homelands.

 

No Ron it's not just you. I will stand shoulder to shoulder on this one with you. Thank God a vet is answering back.

I saw this posting on the entry date. People keep all manner of tributes because they are proud of what they represent. When I saw that this former SS kept his badges that told me without a doubt he was proud of himself and of the SS, as are the family, otherwise they would have been thrown into the fire.

Unfortunately the nazi mentality was not stamped out in 1945 and is alive and well. I think the war crime trials were closed too quickly which didn't help things.

The comments of all service people committing atrocities floored me because my father was an upstanding person. How does someone make a statement like this ?? I never criticize anyone on forum but I think the vets need to be supported. People can be armchair theorists but until you have been in the boots of the veterans these opinions are worthless.

best wishes
Chrissie

 

Yes Diane I really read the post. It's becoming blatantly obvious and quite frankly a bore how you react to everything I post. Are you aware that when you bold your answer it is equivalent to shouting and poor etiquette - unless you mean to shout at me. Try to be a little more gracious to me and others.

peaceful

 

Peaceful -we all have views, I knew my father well, a regular airman from 1935 until 1949. communications post war (government) with 24 years service as a Special (unpaid) Constable thrown in - a lifetime of service -it would never have crossed his mind that anyone, his country included owed him anything. It is probably where I got my views on life, I was in uniform from 14 until my 55th birthday. Some people I have known for a few years do not know that, I have been to parties and listened to anti war Afghan and Iraq war tirades. Only once have I felt the firm grip of my wife who encouraged me to 'circulate'. There are many enthusiasts and researchers on here that know more than I do on some subjects. The second love of my life the Scots Guards, Diane is in my humble opinion an awesome historian on Her Majesty's Foot Guards. I am a veteran of a different era, and yet I learn from this site - armchair theorists or no!

 

People can be armchair theorists but until you have been in the boots of the veterans these opinions are worthless.

best wishes
Chrissie
Peaceful, you're joking right? Seriously? Our opinions are worthless? Would you like perhaps to reread that and maybe reconsider the above opinion? .

When I saw that this former SS kept his badges that told me without a doubt he was proud of himself and of the SS, as are the family, otherwise they would have been thrown into the fire.
I disagree with you. First of all the former SS didnt keep his badges, he died before the end of the war. Now, whatever about the motives regarding Pollux's Grandmother, Pollux has only recently received them and he posted them up here for all to see, not because of any underhand motives (if you reread the thread you would see his posts are neutral in tone) but because he felt that we might find the discovery interesting. And it is interesting to see things from the "other side of the hill". Personally I think that a thread like the one Pollux opened is a really interesting thread and shows that this forum is well capable of discussing all points of the conflict in a neutral and dispassionate way, two elements of any good history discussion. In my view Pollux is to be congratulated for the way the thread was opened as opposed to being judged over his ideological views.