THE WAFFEN-SS: Divisional Service History, Brigade/Battalion Unit List + Unit Notes.

I would just like to emphasize the above points made.....historical accuracy demands that we examine the distasteful side of the many faceted thing that is modern war, and of necessity, it sometimes means that we delve into subject matter that people would not normally look at.....history, and posterity, deserves the sort of fate that we can leave as a leagacy for those that want to know 'how' and 'why' and 'who' without suffering the stories and myths that form around history of all types.....we try to explode as many of these myths as possible, to get the best out of historical research, so that any possible decision based on that said information is made with the correct info in mind....

Our future children and leaders of earth will need it....and they won't want the wool pulled over their eyes...

Truth will-out!

 

guys, Im trying to track down German magazine "Signal" and any photos or books that may be recently published dealing with this aspect of Goebbels Propaganda Korps....Thanks for your help!

 

I think the book by S.L. Mayer that you refer to is probably the one that I'm after....it's the only collection of 'Signal' that I was aware of...as for actual copies of 'Signal' or 'Der Adler', I would consider myself lucky to have even ONE!

Any help would be appreciated at this point in time!

 

makes me want to soil myself reading about them ss lot.i seen a couple of those animals on t.v as well,we were in the waffen ss,we knew nothing of the death camps,they said.damned liars.yours,lee.

 

Many people lied about their knowledge of the death camps.....many people all over Germany that had nothing to do with the SS...Waffen or otherwise....

I have actually met and talked to Waffen SS vets while I was in the UNITED STATES.....they were no more monsterous than I was......

Germany in 1933 - 1945 was an unusual place to live....I'm not sure that if I lived back then that my opinion would be any different to the people of the day....

YOU....4th Wilts...are in NO position to criticize any of these people, particularly NOT German people...having, yourself, never lived under a totalitarian regime, you really have no idea what it was like....So, your qualifications to criticize are ZERO....

For a SENIOR member of our hierarchial structure here, you should know better......

IF you were living in Germany in 1944, and you heard about something monstrous like those camps....

WOULD YOU MAKE A PUBLIC SONG AND DANCE?...

I think not....

Someone like you would be to busy saving their own skin....and keeping their mouths shut......Show a little intelligence, will you?

By the way....just as an aside.....If you are familiar with Germany of the period, you will also know of a resistence group of students called "The White Rose".....these kids handed out leaflets...thats all, scattered them from building, handed them out anywhere they could get away with....do you see yourself as some kind of latter day "White Rose" afficiendo?...I doubt you would even have heard of these students......or know what their fate was...

They were hanged.....So, crusader for moralism that you are....what would you have done when the "Stapo" came for YOU?

 

Initially, the camps were not meant for killing. That came later. People understood the camps to be places for holding legitimate criminals and society's malcontents. Most people didn't have an issue with that. Granted, the camps weren't nice places, but death wasn't an expected result.
It wasn't until later that the camps started turning out more corpses than reformed citizens. That manner of activity was kept hidden for the most part. I do believe that most people in Germany weren't fully aware of what was going on, including the majority of the men in the Heer and Waffen-SS. Specifically, Johann Voss, author of Black Edelweiss, with whom I have spent time, supports this. They knew about prison camps, but not death camps.
Here's another way of looking at it. Everyone knew about propaganda. How many people would have believed such reports? How many would have accepted it as propaganda? Even today, with all the evidence, how many people have trouble believing that a nation such as Germany could have committed such acts?
You can't let your understanding of the 1940s to be flavored by today's values. Things wer a lot different then.

 

Tom is talking sence.....I'm very sure there are German vets out there that are SICK AND BLOODY TIRED of this tired old historical line......
Most people that criticizew, do so based on their own value sustems, without attemptring to place themselves in the shoes of the people they are so critical of.....I tire of reading book after book that paints the German Armed forces in a manner that suits the thesis of the book....

Those that wish to learn what was in the minds of the 'Einsatzgruppe' of the Eastern Front, I would sincerely recommend a book called "Hitler's Willing Executioners', a ground breaking book that took a good look at the psychological motivation for what occurred, and the type of people recruited for this 'work'.....

As I stated above, it's up to us, three generations on to see that EVERYONE now gets to tell their story of World War Two....the good and the bad, and all the other stuff in between.....TRUTH is the important thing.....yes, I acknowledge that these atrocitiews were committed, but it is not my intention, as it is with others, to superimpose my own moralism on the whole issue...plenty have done this before me....I just want to know the FACTS.....

Other literature recommended....

MAUS I & II by Art Speigelman.....CAGED by David Landau.....Read this stuff to find out how the 'Death Camps' were organized, staffed and 'run'....it's revealing to learn that most camp guards were people not suitable for any other service....their training was minimal to non-existent, and they used the situation to impose their insane predjudices on the situation......A lot of these monsters were tracked down after the war, and a lot of them got awawy, too.....
But AS ALWAYS, informed debate is the key to understanding that which is intellectually incomprehensable.

 

I wouldnt say that all the Germans knew about the Death Camps Lee. Certainly no-one knew of the Wannsee Conference where the decision was made to "efficiently" pursue the answer to (as they put it) the Jewish Question.

 

bloody scum,all of them.i hope they all burn in hell.they all knew,civillians and soldiers.they just turned the other cheek.murdering millions of jews,russians and half a hundred other races,can you imagine what children saw,all over europe, all by men with ss on their uniforms.scum.lee

 

Please Lee....I have nothing against you at all.......discontinue your comments....I really have not got the time for disscussions of this nature....if you wish to discuss something in a manner appropriate to this website....come on in and I'll listen and reply to it all...but if you continue to simply make unwarranted and unhistorical staements...I AM going to be forced to complain....as a fellow member of this site, this is NOT something I wish to do....

You have a grand day now!

 

do we have any stats about the ss einzatsgruppen,you know the ones,what were their strengths and weakness,s.were they company,battalion sized,did they get first rate equipment,tanks etc.did they fight well,what colour should they be in your list.were they an elite.how well did their commanders get on.do we have accurate figures of any casualties they suffered after the battles.the fact remains that they were all ss to a man.lee.

 

Lee, Yes they were all SS but you should realise that there was a difference between the Einsatzgruppen and the Waffen SS. The einsatzgruppen were the ones in charge of the Camps and were responsible for the Systematic implementation of the Camps and the mass killings. The Einsatzgruppen did not receive equipment in the form of tanks as their work was done behing the Frontline. The waffen SS however were the combat formations that fought on the frontlines.

Having said that, the Waffen SS stands indicted as the perpetrator of atrocities especially in the East. If I may, I'd like to quote a piece from this website about the SS: Waffen-SS: Atrocities

None of these actions in themselves were unique to the Waffen-SS. German police and army units, as well as locally recruited auxiliary forces, have also been implicated in atrocities on the Eastern Front. The SS, however, threw themselves into the war against the Soviet Union with a zeal that was unsurpassed in other branches of the German occupation forces. If there was a tough job that needed doing, the Waffen-SS would be there. The Waffen-SS clearly believed in its cause and did not flinch from carrying out its orders no matter how murderous. The point was that the war in Russia was above all a racial struggle between the Aryan Germans and the "inferior" Slav races. The Waffen-SS was the racial vanguard of the National Socialist movement, staffed with pure Aryan recruits. Prior to Operation Barbarossa, Waffen-SS commanders went to great lengths to indoctrinate their men with Hitler's racial ideology to prepare them for the coming struggle. It was not surprising that when they were unleashed into battle, the Waffen-SS carried out its orders to kill and murder Hitler's "race enemies" with ruthless efficiency.
After the war, several former Waffen-SS officers tried to distance themselves from the SS mass-murder campaigns in occupied Russia, saying that they were only "simple soldiers who just fought at the front". This defence does not really hold water, given that few Wehrmacht or Waffen-SS units did not participate in some sort of rear-area security duty (which inevitably involved the routine mistreatment of civilians) at some time during their service in the East. Even if they did not participate in the murders of civilians themselves, cross-posting of Waffen-SS men between the various divisions and units of the SS organization meant its members were all aware of the true nature of German rule in occupied Russia.
Atrocities in Russia

No Waffen-SS officer would ever contemplate refusing to serve in Russia out of moral scruples, and only one SS officer is documented as ever refusing to participate in a mass killing in the East. Several senior Waffen-SS officers and ordinary soldiers did suffer mental breakdowns as a result of their service in murder squads in the East, but that was after they had participated in the slaughter. It is hard to feel sorry for these butchers. Towards the end of the war, as defeat began to loom ominously over them, an increasing number of Waffen-SS officers and men tried to get out of serving in the East for fear of being captured by the Soviets. In the light of the brutal behaviour of the SS in Russia, captured Waffen-SS soldiers could expect little mercy. The attempts by senior Waffen-SS officers to escape Berlin in May 1945, after they had forced the city's citizens to endure its destruction at the barrel of the gun, were particularly distasteful.
Some Waffen-SS apologists try to lay the blame for the atrocities in the East at the door of rogue elements, such as locally recruited militia troops in the Baltic states and the Ukraine. Although it is true that these units at first were not part of the Waffen-SS, officers of the Waffen-SS did play a key role in recruiting these units because there were not enough SS men of German origin to man all the murder squads needed by the Einsatzgruppen. Then the Waffen-SS officially sanctioned many of these units by incorporating them into the organization from 1943 onwards. In any case, Waffen-SS units were committing atrocities almost from the start of Barbarossa, well before local units had been raised. For example, only two weeks after the start of the Russian campaign, the Wiking Division massacred 600 Galician Jews in "reprisal for Soviet cruelties".


It has also been claimed that the Waffen-SS played no part in the Holocaust and the industrialized killing of Jews. The concentration camp system was set up in the 1930s by Theodor Eicke of the SS-Totenkopfverbönde that was incorporated into the Waffen-SS in 1940. Thousands of Waffen-SS men were also drafted to help the Einsatzgruppen's murderous campaign to exterminate the Jews of Eastern Europe, participating in mass killings or guarding ghetto districts where Jews from the west were concentrated before being sent to death camps. Waffen-SS units played a major role in the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943, which was little more than a exercise in mass murder.

Even the supposed Waffen-SS combat units participated in the mass killing and deportation of Jews as part of the infamous "Final Solution". Jews were routinely executed or maltreated in areas controlled by Waffen-SS units. The Totenkopf, Das Reich and Wiking Divisions were all documented joining in the mass killings of Jews in Poland and Russia. Albanian Waffen-SS troops were also involved in loading Jews onto rail cars bound for the death camps.

 

i sincerely believe that not one member of the ss could hold their head up and say,i knew nothing of the death factories,in an organization that size.but they do,and this is the problem.they are denying the truth.yours,lee.

 

I cant vouch for whether they all knew individually but as an organisation they certainly knew about it. But it is important to state that there is a distinction between einsatzgruppen and Waffen SS in terms of roles.

 

Tom Hulihan.....

Tom buddy......I have an order of battle for the Ardenns offensive, dated 16 December, clearly showing the 6th SS Mountain division NORD as part of "High Command RESERVES for the Ardennes........THEY MUST HAVE been shipped to Germany....there is no other way they can appear as part of the Reserve batch of divisions available....

 

i sincerely believe that not one member of the ss could hold their head up and say,i knew nothing of the death factories,in an organization that size.but they do,and this is the problem.they are denying the truth.yours,lee.

You are entitled to your belief. However, since it's the unit I'm researching, let's take a look at Nord.

When all this crap was going on, the division was in Finland. How many death camps were up there again? How many Jews were 'relocated' from Lappland?

Yes, there were officers that I know had been transferred from the camps that knew. How much did they talk about it? We'll never know.

Read Black Edelweiss. See if that doesn't affect your opinion.

Christos, when Wacht am Rhein launched, they were still in Denmark. They made it to France just in time to jump off the trains and march into Unternehmen Nordwind. It's entirely possible that someone planned/hoped they be in the Ardennes in time for the party, but they didn't walk out of Finland in time! Long walk, don't ye know...

 

The intention of this article was to rate these divisions as COMBAT ENTITIES, and to mention atrocities in relation to their combat role.....nobody is denying these things occurred....but as I said, other lierature deals with this.......And the combat value of the murder squads was excreble to say the least when facing a well equipoed and trained foe.......


If others wish to feel that this somehow is an apologists article, read the text....


I dont think this kid has actually read any of this article...

He seems to have some kind of axe to grind.....not here.....thats not what we are all here for....

And if we want to mention atrocities, for gods sake, give it a bit of balance....

SOVIETS massacred Jewish people too, and Germans, and Poles, and their own peopl....

Are you going to sit here and defend that?

 

In 1946, A Soviet train appeared at the Border of the New German East Democratic Republic....The train was full of old women and men, and every one of them was Jewish....
As the Reich government had done on occasion, The Soviet government was ridding it's regime of unwanted mouths to feed in the hard and lean postwar years...

A lot of the old Jewish people on this train were DEAD before the train reached Germany....
Katyn Forrest 1943....Soviet officers of the Secret Services (Organs), the NKVD AND THE RED ARMY execute thousands of Polish officers captured in the previous fighting in Poland. Most are despatched with a single NAGAN bullet to the back of the head, a style favored by Soviet secret service officers, and buried in mass graves in the Forrest. Blaming this atrocity on the Germans was a natural step for a totalitarian regime as the Soviet's were....
1945...Supposedly in reprisal for atrocities to Russian civilians (The SOVIETS ought to talk about massacreing RUSSIANS) Red Army Soldiers embark on a three week rampage of rape, murder and looting of the German city of Konigsberg....Soviet authorities, in the grand ol' style, have to execute or deport an unknown number of their own soldiers...Officially, this was to "restore dicipline", but as Alexander Sohlzenytsin records, his arrest and sentencing was in the same period and area, and his only crime was to be separated from his unit, and fail to link up with the basic elements of his artillery brigade......How many other people were simply arrested at the conveniance of the regime?

And that was not the first time, not by a wide margin...that Soviet authorities had arrested their own people on a QUOTA basis....a quota, yes, simply a number of arrests that the security forces were given that had to be kept for deportation and exile to the nightmare camps of the open steppe country, where the Soviet Union was expanding it's material and resource base, on terrain that had nothing BUT steppe country. No support facilities in Siberia meant no foreign investment and the free industrial 'goodies' that that would bring with it...so they shipped prisoners off to icey fields in the middle of a howling steppe, and instruct them to build camps from the materials that had been dumped at railway sidings, no matter what it may cost in prisoner labor...

The Soviet Great Industrial Move of 1942 was supposedly some kind of 'miracle' achieved by Soviet planners to move a large proportion of heavy industrial machinery from the Ukraine and the fighting front, to factory areas further East, mainly by rail....The enormous materials needed for this move and the construction of new factory floor space took first priority. People unfortunate enough to be caught up in the move found themselves dumped at these sites in deep Eastern Russia in the same manner that their materials and limited supplys were...at a point on the railway with nothing but open 'steppe' to greet them on arrival.....tens of thousands of these people died...but the factories were built, often by workers who had not started on shelter for themselves....


There remain many atrocities to uncover in WWII.....and not all of them were AXIS....but wait!....weren't the RUSSIANs part of the AXIS at the beginning of the war?....There would not have even been a World War II without the Nazi- Soviet Pact of 1939......think on that one!

 

Lads, before anyone "ramps" up about whether the SS were absolute butchers or not kindly remember that we are dealing with a very emotive issue here. It is very easy to throw labels around such as "butchers" and "apologists" and in reality neither are very helpful to the direction of the discussion. I would ask that if you are going to make a sweeping statement please remember that it can provoke all manner of posts, some not positive at all. Providing evidence that backs up your statement can only help matters. Its a good discussion lads but lets make sure that it stays the course as I am really enjoying it.