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Most decisive European battle of WWII??

Discussion in 'World War 2' started by Zhukov_2005, Feb 19, 2004.

  1. Ricky

    Ricky Well-Known Member

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    Maybe they reasoned that Communism was the greater evil.
    Remember, WW2 was as much about political idealism (at least it was out East) as anything else. None of these volunteers fought their own countrymen, or even other western nations (with the exception of Vichy France). They fought the 'communist menace'.

    They were liberating the whole world from Stalin.
    Try seeing things through their eyes. ;)
     
  2. Lyndon

    Lyndon New Member

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    Ricky makes the point I was getting at. It wasn't neccessarily the fact that these foreign volunteers were fighting and dying for Germany and the Nazi cause. It was the fight to keep back the communist hordes. The SS Wiking never did fight against western European nations so therefore in actual fact they never took up arms against their own countrymen. SS Wiking fought solely on the eastern front from 1941 to 1945. It was never transferred to the west at any point and it never would have been. It fought against Soviet forces. This was the rallying cry and this rallying cry was what brought in so many volunteers.

    In some respects the Waffen SS was a forerunner for NATO . Many foreign volunteers joined from all over Europe. The Walloons were an excellent SS Division from Belgium. Again, they fought solely on the eastern front.Remember, the spread of communism was just as much a threat in the the minds of many Europeans in the 1930s and 1940s as the threat from the Nazis. Many actually saw communism as the greater evil. These people didn't have the hindsight benefit of the concentration camps or the Einzatgruppe killing squads or whatever. Neither did the majority of ordinary German volunteers who were also persuaded to join the Waffen SS. For most of these people they really did believe the fight to stop the Bolsheviks from taking over Europe was a noble cause.

    Many many many civilians in the occupied countries willingly turned a blind eye to things and didn't care. Don't just blame volunteers as traitors just because they signed up to fight for what they believed in. Civilians made money out of the occupations. It's ridiculous how 'this' person is a traitor while 'that' person isn't. Were the cafe owners in France traitors for keeping their businesses going by selling food to German officers etc etc??

    It's strange how all these millions upon millions of people under German occupation were under the thumb so much considering the Germans had their hands full on the front lines fighting the war. Sometimes I wonder if the repressed and occupied populations actually did enough to try to extricate themselves from the situation. No doubt that many of them tried and did so with great bravery but was is really eneough in the grand scheme of things? The partisans and resistance fighters in western Europe were not nearly as effective or as large as perhaps they could and should have been. Just my own opinion.
     
  3. Ricky

    Ricky Well-Known Member

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    I think you may get a bit of a response on that opinion!
     
  4. Lyndon

    Lyndon New Member

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    Apologies if that kind of thing upsets you Roel. In Britian it's not such a big deal so I was unaware it would mean anything. The Celtic countries like Scotland and Ireland are forever blowing their own trumpets about being Celts and it doesn't bother anyone. The Afro/Carribeans and Asians are the same. Good luck to them. Likewise there are many people who are proud to be Anglo-Saxon (although I'm not even sure if I know what that means anymore haha) so I didn't see it as a problem for mentioning that we are all of certain racial strains. We are. I don't see that as anything to hide but I'll not mention things like that again if it offends people. My last word on the subject. :(
     
  5. Ricky

    Ricky Well-Known Member

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    I always thought the Dutch were more 'Germanic' than 'Scandinavian'.
    But the Nazis viewed Scandinavian as good, Germanic stock, and obviously the Dutch (not being quite German) were lumped in with them!
     
  6. Lyndon

    Lyndon New Member

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    Well, to me the northern Germans are similar to the Danes and Dutch. I don't understand Scandinavia anyway. I mean the Finns are almost Russian. And now THIS is were it gets complicated........the Danes are called Scandinavian. So technically is a Lapp. The Danes are more similar to the northern Germans and Dutch than they are the Lapps but the Germans are NOT Scandinavian haha. Phew, this is madness.

    Roel, I think you are right. All this racial stuff is nonsense. :D
     
  7. Castelot

    Castelot New Member

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    [/quote]

    A great majoroty of people did not do resistance but did not collaborate with the germans either.You cant blame people for trying to live a normal life in troubled times.
    Those who did resist can only be seen with great admiration if you consider the risks they took by doing so.And seeing the tens of thousands dead resistants indicates they were not so few.
    In 1943 resistance activities became more and more numerous, and were much more efficient than the germans ever had expected.

    On the other hand do you really believe those foreign people entering the SS did not see that around them more and more Jews(or other minorities)were slowly disapearing, that all political opponents were being killed, their country being more and more exploited....
    If they did not close their eyes deliberately this was evident.
     
  8. Lyndon

    Lyndon New Member

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    Who knows what they did or did not see? Obviously the 'brainwashing' or whatever we want to call it was great enough for people to be persuaded. I don't think people were actually aware of the extent of what happened to the jews and other unfortunates. Even the allies with all their intelligence and spies were totally unprepared by what they found so you can't blame the average man in the street to know what was going on. The average German couldn't go anywhere without having to 'show their papers' and anybody caught poking their nose around was dealt with. Many were.

    The same things were happening in the Soviet Union but that didn't stop the people from willingly fighting for Mother Russia, nevermind what Stalin did in the 1930s.
     
  9. Christian Ankerstjerne

    Christian Ankerstjerne Member

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    Castelot
    Then what about those soldiers which were encouraged to join the Waffen-SS by their gouvernment, and afterwards thrown in prison because they did so?

    Lyndon
    How would you think a persno from Scotland, Northern Ireland or Wales would feel about being called an Englishman - or an Irishman being called British?

    It primarily has to do with the Kalmar union, which was a coalition between Denmark, Norway and Sweden under Queen Margrethe I.

    Regarding the whole racial thing
    Interestingly enough, it was the Wikings which more or less helped Russia survive (the wikings, known as 'Rus'er helped restoring the wholoe country, and because what could best be compared to knights or samurais in terms of wealth and influence). I guess Hitler forgot to consider this...
     
  10. Castelot

    Castelot New Member

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    Yes but those russian soldiers did not fight for communism but for their motherland.
     
  11. johann phpbb3

    johann phpbb3 New Member

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    Did the majority of Russian soldiers truly believe the party line and fought to protect thier motherland, or did they fight because of the commisar's gun to thier head?
     
  12. Lyndon

    Lyndon New Member

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    Christian,

    Well, I would think that is a bit different because then you are calling somebody from another 'country' an Englishman. I wouldn't have called a Dutchman a Dane or Swede. It was just an oversight on my part to refer to the Dutch as Scandinavians. I did it without thinking (as usual). I still find the whole Scandinavian thing doesn't make sense to me. How can a Finn or Lapp be Scandinavian when a German from Flensburg right next to Denmark cannot when the German has a lot in common with the Dane? My girlfiend is from Hamburg and her father from Schleswig Holstein up near Flensburg. The surname in Sonksen. They are German through and through but the surname doesn't sound very German to me. Do you see what I mean? :D

    Thanks for explaining about the Kalmar Union. I wasn't aware of that.
     
  13. Lyndon

    Lyndon New Member

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    Hitler forgot many things when it didn't suit him. :roll:
     
  14. Lyndon

    Lyndon New Member

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    True. Very true. But also many of the volunteers did not see themselves as particularly fighting for Nazism but rather against the Communsits. Of course they had to take the Waffen SS oath and all that but I'm sure they wouldn't have been happy if the Nazis told them to fight against their own country. I don't think they would have joined if the Nazis told them to do this.

    As for the volunteers 'not seeing' what was going on in their own countries I don't think it's true to say that EVERYBODY in occupied countries had experience of seeing jews and other minorities rounded up and carted off. I'm sure there were many who had never even known or met a jew. I'm sure there were a great many who were simply unaware and not up with things. A great many would have come from rural quiet places such as farms, small villages etc. A lot of these young men would have spent minimal time in big towns and cities and T.V and radio wasn't widely available to everyone. The Nazis made sure they heard only what the Nazis wanted them to hear (propaganda against the Soviets etc) and neglected to widely broadcast that many minorities were being gassed to death in concentration camps. As I said, even with all the intelligence and spies this wasn't really known to the Allied powers so how could a country boy know about it? Likewise I'm sure many people in occupied countries DIDN'T face brutality at the hands of the occupying forces. That's why a lot of people just carried on as they did and didn't take up arms or become partisans.
     
  15. Ricky

    Ricky Well-Known Member

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    Actually, they created Russia!
    Rus = Swede
    Russia = Land of the Swede

    Kiev, for example, was founded by the 'Rus'

    Good call Christian - I'm always happy to see people who know history. 8)
     
  16. Roel

    Roel New Member

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    Lyndon, I wasn't upset by your racial theory. I just don't see the necessity of formulating one, where I can see from history what a racial theory can bring about. If you want to get racial, we all migrated from Africa some 100,000 years ago and went our separate ways. After that, humans from all over the globe simply adapted to their new environment, becoming physically similar in areas with similar conditions. This isn't a racial likeness, it's a natural thing to look like what suits best to the circumstances. I would call it environmental rather than racial.

    Considering it that way, the Dutch are indeed more environmentally linked to the Scandinavians because our country like theirs is wet and cold, and our main source of life is the sea. But of course the environments differ all over even this small area of the world, and therefore you'd much easier call Northern Germans Scandinavians (wet, cold, sea, anyone?) than Lapps. They live in a different area, with mountains and forests and extreme cold; of course they're different physically! That's why racial theory doesn't make sense to me. It's not countries that determine your 'racial' background.

    Your point on the foreign volunteers is very good, and it gave me some hidden insights into the matter, but I still can't quite respect those who go to fight who they believe is evil, while they can see what the other evil does to their country. How can a Dutchman, thousands of kilometers away from the nearest Russian, believe that that Commie is the bigger evil when the German is ravishing his country?
     
  17. Skua

    Skua New Member

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    Scandinavia is, as Christian has allready pointed out, in a historical context a political idea. But there´s more to it than that. Historical documents has shown that the people of Sweden, Norway and Denmark viewed themselves, at least in a larger context, as one people, a view which still prevails. And finally; Swedes, Norwegians and Danes speak more or less the same language. The language spoken by the Finns and the Lapps belong to entirely different groups. Swedish/Norwegian/Danish is a Germanic language, just as English, while Finnish belongs to the same group as Hungarian. I´m not sure about the Lapps, but their language is not Germanic.

    Sonksen doesn´t sound very Scandinavian to me, but I could be wrong. Schleswig-Holstein was in any case originally a part of Denmark.

    Hope this have made Scandinavia a bit more sensible to you. ;)
     
  18. Ricky

    Ricky Well-Known Member

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    Scandinavia sensible?
    ;)
     
  19. Lyndon

    Lyndon New Member

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    A little bit but I wish I hadn't started the whole thing now. Me and my big mouth (or fast typing keyboard) haha :D .

    Apologies again for any offence caused.
     
  20. Lyndon

    Lyndon New Member

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    Well, like I said I suppose that not everybody was personally touched by German forces ravishing their country and many might have been right wing inclined anyway. There was a big anti communist feeling long before WW2 even began.

    Anyway, it wasn't as if millions volunteered for the Waffen SS from these countries. As far as I can get the figures it was the following:

    50,000 Dutch

    40,000 Belgians (split half between the Flemish and Waloons)

    20,000 French

    6,000 Danes

    6,000 Norwegiens

    There was even a 58 strong British contingent but they never actually fought much except for brief action in Berlin I think. There were also Muslims in the Waffen SS and many members form the occupied eastern countries.

    SS Wiking, where most of the Dutch AND Scandinavian (see, I wrote it properly this time :D ) volunteers ended up was a very powerful unit that became a full panzer division in 1943. It really was one of the top 4 most powerful Waffen SS divisions and many say it was second to none in combat and SS Wiking excelled itself in combat at Barbarossa, Caucasus, Cherkassy, Kowel, outside Warsaw and finally around Balaton in Hungary in 1945.
     

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