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The Great Patriotic War: 1939-1943

Discussion in 'Eastern Europe October 1939 to February 1943' started by Comrade General, Mar 18, 2018.

  1. lwd

    lwd Ace

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    Does anyone outside of neo-Nazis and their ilk believe these (multiple myths in one). Certainly not a myth accepted on this board.
    I haven't even heard this one much less seen anyone even try to justify it. Are you making these up? Someone trying to make that argment here would get laughed off the board.


    There is some truth in this one although it's also well known on this board. Part of it is also that the US and British fought against the Germans so you'll naturally see more images and descriptions of their equipment. The attention given the German generals and their writing after the war is also know. Of course part of this was that their accounts were available and much of the Soviet material wasn't. The Cold War didn't help much either. In any case This trend started to be brought to question well before the USSR collapsed and that momentum had increased.

    I really wonder why you are posting this. This is a discussion board but you don't seam to want to discus it. Nothing you have posted is new to this board. You sensitivity to anyone critiquing your posts and you repeated references to your blog make me think you want to be recognized as some sort of authority on the topic but your reaction to questions points out a serious underlying insecurity. The attempt to claim ownership of the thread is also rather telling.
     
  2. Comrade General

    Comrade General Member

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    “The Tsarist capital of St. Petersburg, renamed Petrograd in 1914 in an anti-German gesture, and Leningrad on that great man’s death in 1924, has always had a unique character, to which the ‘900 days’ of the great siege which was about to begin have added a terrible gravitas. During the 900-day siege, from September 1941 to January 1944, the attacking German troops still often referred to it as ‘Petersburg.’ As Petrograd, the stunningly beautiful ‘Venice of the North,’ it had been the cradle of the 1917 Russian Revolutions – one reason why Hitler hated the place so much.

    [​IMG]

    “The first German long-range artillery shell fell on Leningrad on 1 September. By 8 September the Germans had captured Shlisselburg on the south shore of Lake Ladoga – more like an inland sea than a lake – to the east of the city. Leningrad was cut off by the Germans to the south and threatened by the Finns from the north. A German signal that day confirmed that there was no land communication with the Russian hinterland. The epic Siege of Leningrad had begun…

    [​IMG]

    “On 5 September Halder wrote that as far as Leningrad was concerned, ‘our objective has been achieved. Will become a subsidiary theater of operations.’ There was no point in expending men and material in a costly assault on a urban area, so the Germans decided to starve Leningrad into submission instead. Had they moved faster in late July, when its defenses were disorganized, they might have captured the city. But as they moved forward, they slowed down. In mid July, XLI Panzer Corps of Panzer Group Four was already within 120 kilometers of Leningrad but only had half its ammunition complement left. When General [Erich] Hoepner, commander of the Group, suggested racing for Leningrad with just this one force, Army Group North said it could not guarantee to supply it. Once again, as German supply lines stretched, Soviet resistance could become more concentrated. By 11 September the Leningrad Front had 425,000 men, about two-thirds of them deployed south of the city against a comparable number of Germans. On 9 September, the day after Leningrad was cut off, Zhukov was sent to command the Leningrad Front. For the Germans, there would now be another shift in priorities. The next day, 6 September, Hitler issued Directive No. 35, orders for Operation Typhoon, the assault on Moscow.”

    -Professor Chris Bellamy, Absolute War: Soviet Russia in the Second World War (2007), page 253-256
     
  3. lwd

    lwd Ace

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    Another pretty clear clue as to your position.
     
  4. green slime

    green slime Member

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    .... reserved for later comment....

    Some of us may be too old to reply to issues raised by posters, or too old to learn how to quote properly on a forum to which we post regularly; meanwhile the rest of us spring chickens have to do other stuff. Like work. And travel.

    Sadly, I must warn readers that my next post in this thread is likely to be a wall of text....
     
  5. lwd

    lwd Ace

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    Interesting that he found it necessary to mention in his sig that he's ignoring us. Of course he got my "handle" wrong. Makes us about as important as his blog in his eyes I guess.
     
  6. green slime

    green slime Member

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    Well, two can play that game... I've now got my own sig, Peculiar how his old-doggedness can't bother learning how to quote, but readily finds the time and effort to create a signature. :D ROTFLMAO
     
  7. green slime

    green slime Member

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    Where's Poppy when you need him?
     
  8. Comrade General

    Comrade General Member

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    The German-Soviet War Library

    After my considerable quote from Bellamy, I have decided to list those works that have greatly aided recent insights into the Eastern Front through (a) access to restricted former Soviet archives and (b) publication in qualified sources that must pass editorial review (i.e. are not self-published). I have also included some seminal works on revisionism and romanticism of the German approach to the war. I highly recommended especially those books published by university presses, as you can be sure that such work was subjected to rigorous review to be published by an academic institution.

    Obviously, when I quote Bellamy, Glantz, Merridale and the rest, I am quoting their work verbatim from their work. If you disagree with something they say, that is between you and them; hopefully you understand that if I do not quote them according to what they say, then it is plagiarism or putting words in their mouths.

    Books About the German-Soviet War

    Beevor, Anthony. 1999. Stalingrad. London: Penguin Books.

    Beevor, Anthony. 2002. Berlin: The Downfall 1945. London: Penguin Books.

    Bellamy, Chris. 2007. Absolute War: Soviet Russia in the Second World War. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

    Citino, Robert. 2017. The Wehrmacht's Last Stand: The German Campaigns of 1944-1945. Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press.

    Erickson, John. 1975. The Road to Stalingrad: Stalin’s War with Germany. New York: Harper and Row.

    Erickson, John. 1983. The Road to Berlin: Stalin’s War with Germany. New York: Harper and Row.

    Fritz, Stephen. 2015. Ostkrieg: Hitler's War of Extermination in the East. Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press.

    Glantz, David. 1998. Stumbling Colossus: The Red Army on the Eve of World War. Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press.

    Glantz, David. 2002. The Battle for Leningrad, 1941-1944. Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press.

    Glantz, David. 2005. Colossus Reborn: The Red Army at War, 1941-1943. Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press.

    Glantz, David. 2011. Operation Barbarossa: Hitler’s Invasion of Russia. Stroud, UK: The History Press.

    Glantz, David and Jonathan House. 1995. When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler. Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press.

    Mawdsley, Evan. 2005. Thunder in the East: The Nazi-Soviet War, 1941-1945. London: Hodder Arnold.

    Megargee, Geoffrey. 2007. War of Annihilation: Combat and Genocide on the Eastern Front, 1941. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

    Merridale, Catherine. 2006. Ivan’s War: Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939-1945. New York: Henry Holt.

    Overy, Richard. 1998. Russia’s War: A History of the Soviet War Effort: 1941-1945. London: TV Books.

    Stahel, David. 2009. Operation Barbarossa and Germany’s Defeat in the East. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

    Books About German Revisionism/Romanticism/The “Clean Wehrmacht” Myth

    Beorn, Waitman Wade. 2014. Marching into Darkness: The Wehrmacht and the Holocaust in Belarus. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

    Kay, Alex, Jeff Rutherford, and David Stahel, eds. 2014. Nazi Policy on the Eastern Front, 1941: Total War, Genocide, and Radicalization. Rochester, UK: University of Rochester Press.

    MacKenzie, S.P. 1997. Revolutionary Armies in the Modern Era: A Revisionist Approach. New York: Routledge. (Excellent chapter on the Waffen-SS)

    Pontolillo, James. 2010. Murderous Elite: The Waffen-SS and Its Record of Atrocities. Stockholm: Leandoer and Ekholm

    Rutherford, Jeff. 2014, Combat and Genocide on the Eastern Front: The German Infantry's War, 1941-1944. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

    Shepherd, Ben. 2016. Hitler's Soldiers: The German Army in the Third Reich. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

    Smelser, Ronald and Edward Davies. 2008. The Myth of the Eastern Front: The Nazi-Soviet War in American Popular Culture. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

    Wette, Wolfram. 2007. The Wehrmacht: History, Myth, Reality. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

    More coming soon, including documentaries and videos!
     
    Last edited: Apr 13, 2018
  9. lwd

    lwd Ace

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    Missed this:

    That's not your prerogative.

    The fact that you are ignoring our posts (or not) has nothing to do with their visibility. I note that you are not following the conventions of this board with regards to sourcing your claims.

    Except of course GS and I did so and were met with a lack or respect and good faith on your part.

    While you can accuse us of being German romanticist and apologist. In any case if the shoe fits you get to wear it. You attempted to gloss over some of those things and got upset when called to question on them.

    I don't think I've ever seen anyone do that. Perhaps equally bad but definitely not the same. That said:


    So attempting to exterminate one arbitrary group of people is not the same as exterminating another arbitrary group of people. I can see the logic in that ... not. Your premise is also suspect by the way. While labor was a key component of the gulags it is far from clear that it was ever intended for many to return from them.

    And what happened to those who disagreed with Stalin? I'm not sure who you consider to be Hitler's "inner circle" or who gave you time traveling telepathic powers. Early on there were certainly difference of opinion in the Nazi party to remove some of them Hitler purged the brown shirts. Many also questioned (al be it not very vocally) his policies throughout his tenure as dictator.

    I strongly disagree with this. Comunism as it was practiced under Stalin was inherently evil and killed more people than the Nazis did (although they took more time).

    Stalin's death count exceeds that of Hitler. I won't say he was the greater evil but I don't see much to pick from here.

    Defining your own logical fallacy now are you? It's not logical by the way and a bit of a straw man. The examination of war crimes of all parties is needed to put things in proper context. While the Western allies clearly fought wars of liberation the same can not be said for the USSR. There conquest stayed under their militant thumb until the USSR fell apart.

    You have yet to properly source a single point that I've seen. It's possible that I've missed one or two though.

    That's not the way this or any of the other historical boards I post on work.
     
  10. green slime

    green slime Member

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    'Plagiarism is the "wrongful appropriation" and "stealing and publication" of another author's "language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions" and the representation of them as one's own original work.'
    -wikipedia.

    Yet, as Comrade General does not adequately make explicit where his/her opinion starts, nor clearly express exactly what those authors listed in the extensive bibliographies say, with proper creditation in text, this is exactly what Comrade General is guilty of....
     
  11. lwd

    lwd Ace

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    I was unfamiliar with many of these so looked them up.
    Franz Kurkowski - only listing is someone who died prior to WW1 however Franz Kurowski is along with Landwehr at least according to Wiki definly in the Nazi apologist category.

    Nothing found that seams relevant of Antonioi Munoz on wiki. Did find this page on Amazon:
    Amazon.com: Customer reviews: Forgotten Legions: Obscure Combat Formations of the Waffen-SS
    The reviews don't make it look like it glorifies or apologizes for the SS but still an open question I guess.

    Bruce Quarrie - wiki has the following
    At:
    Bruce Quarrie - Wikipedia

    skipped to Yerger nothing on him in wiki but looking at his Amazon page very few reviews on his works so hardly looks like a prominent author. Could be just an author who details the SS or not.

    Anyone read any of these or seen reviews that would make you think one way or the other.
     
  12. Comrade General

    Comrade General Member

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    “‘As the Spanish Civil War was an international conflict on both sides, ‘neo-conservative German historian Ernst Nolte has written, ‘so also was the German war against the Soviet Union an international war.’ In his mind the multinational Waffen-SS fighting on the Eastern Front represents the mirror image (the ideological polarity reversed) of the International Brigades in Spain. Both were militant expressions of the ideas underlying a twentieth-century European civil war between Left and Right.

    “The validity of this frame of reference is, to say the least, debatable. Yet in some ways at least the comparison is quite apt. Whatever each force represented in reality, there can be little doubt that both the International Brigades and the Waffen-SS are seen by their respective champions (left leaning on the one hand, right leaning on the other) as embodying the soldierly qualities of commitment to the ideals of a transnational cause. Solidarity, idealism, physical courage, self-sacrifice, strength in the face of adversity: these are all virtues which have been attributed to both forces.

    “Moreover, while the image of the International Brigades undoubtedly enjoys a far greater degree of public empathy in the Western democracies (progressives having generally outnumbered those on the extreme right), the Waffen-SS possesses a surprisingly wide cult following among military buffs. The status of a military elite within the German armed forces, the camouflage uniforms worn by the men, the impressive combat record and aura of toughness that surrounded the force: all hold enormous fascination for modelers and collectors alike — as the huge volume of postwar photo graphic and illustrated material relating to the Waffen-SS attests. As one of the more perceptive purveyors of popular war history put it, the ‘glamour which that service undoubtedly had for the Germans of Hitler’s day has by no means been dissipated by the passage of time.’

    “The origins of what might be termed the Waffen-SS mystique lie in the way in which the force was portrayed within the Third Reich. In the latter 1930s the nucleus of what would become the Waffen-SS, the first few regiments of SS-Verfiigungstruppe and the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler (the Fiihrer’s bodyguard unit), had been vigorously promoted as an elite force. Though the number of regiments was kept small — Hitler deferring to the generals who feared that Reichsfiihrer-SS Heinrich Himmler was trying to build an alternative army — it was widely known that the SS-VT took in only the best men and was far more innovative and challenging than the Wehrmacht.

    “Physical fitness, speed, toughness, and ruthless aggressiveness were all emphasized in addition to weapons training. A conscious effort to eradicate traditional class-based barriers between officers and men was made, certain ex-Reichswehr officers such as SS-Sturmbannfiihrer Felix Steiner wanting to recreate both the Kamaradschaft and tactics of the 1918 Stormtrooper battalions and the later Freikorps. ‘NCOs and officers taught us the great value of two things,’ one prewar recruit recalled, ‘—speed and comradeship.’

    “The profile of the Waffen-SS (named in 1940) as a revolutionary force grew stronger as the war progressed. Hitler, always distrustful of aristocratic Wehrmacht generals, from 1941-2 onward grew increasingly suspicious of men who questioned his orders or might even disobey them. In his own mind the constant carping on the difficulties in the East, the repeated requests to withdraw, only exposed the cowardice and disloyalty of Wehrmacht generals. The Waffen-SS, on the other hand, especially those units led by old party comrades like Josef ‘Sepp’ Dietrich, commander of the Leibstandarte, could be relied upon to do their duty. ‘In sharp contrast to the leading gentlemen of the Army,’ propaganda minister Josef Goebbels noted in his diary in January 1942, ‘[for] the leaders of the Waffen-SS… difficulties exist only to be overcome.’

    “Aggressiveness when on the attack, tenacity when holding ground, and above all a willingness to obey the Fiihrer ‘s orders were rewarded by promotions, well-publicized awards of decorations, and a massive expansion of the Waffen-SS in the latter half of the war. From a strength of five divisions in 1941 the force would expand exponentially until by 1944-5 over thirty-five divisions existed. And it was in this expansion phase that the image of the Waffen-SS as a ‘European army’ can be first discerned.

    “Even before the war efforts had been made by Heinrich Himmler as Reichsfiihrer-SS to recruit suitable ‘Germanic’ volunteers outside the borders of Germany, and in the wake of the conquests of 1940, Danish, Dutch, Norwegian, as well as German volunteers formed the nucleus of what would become the Wiking division. In addition, restrictions imposed on the manpower of the Waffen-SS that could be drawn from within the Reich imposed by the Army led SS-Brigadefiihrer Gottlob Berger, the Machiavellian chief of Waffen-SS recruiting, to encourage volunteers from among the Volkdeutsche, the millions of ethnic Germans living in neighbouring countries.

    “It was the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, however, that really precipitated the transformation of the Waffen-SS into a multinational force. Proposals were quickly made by a number of far-right parties in occupied Europe to raise volunteers to fight in an and-Bolshevik crusade — offers which were accepted and resulted in the creation of Dutch, Flemish, Norwegian, Finnish, and Danish legions which fought in the East and eventually were transformed into divisions. As the manpower problems of the Reich grew more acute the net was cast even wider, and nationals previously considered insufficiently Germanic were invited to join over a dozen new volunteer units (brigades and divisions) between 1943 and 1945.

    “By the end of the war the Waffen-SS had created units composed of Frenchmen, Belgians, Dutchmen, Norwegians, Danes, Italians, Hungarians, Ukrainians, Latvians, Estonians, Russians. and even Bosnian and Albanian Muslims. Of the total of thirty-eight Waffen-SS divisions that had been established by May 1945 (at least on paper), twenty-one were based on foreign contingents.

    “As was to be expected, much was made of the foreigners’ contributions by the Nazi propaganda apparatus. Racial issues were played down in favour of European unity in the face of Asiatic barbarism. Those decorated for valour, such as the Dutch volunteer Gerdus Mooyman (who won the Cross), became symbols of the strength of the 'New Europe.'
     
  13. Comrade General

    Comrade General Member

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    “Such efforts cut no ice with anti-Nazis. As Albert Camus put it to the occupiers in an underground French Resistance newspaper issued in April 1944: ‘You never spoke this way until you lost Africa.’ Moreover, when the time of reckoning arrived at Nuremberg in the late summer of 1945, SS-Oberstgruppenführer Paul Hausser and other Waffen-SS witnesses were unable to convince the Allied tribunal that the Waffen-SS was an elite, multi-national force that had fought honorably and had been in no way connected with the activities of the regular SS. The Waffen-SS was condemned along with the rest of Himmler ‘s former SS empire as a criminal organization, and well-known figures such as Sepp Dietrich and SS-Brigadeführer Kurt ‘Panzer’ Meyer served lengthy prison terms for war crimes.

    “If this was not sufficient humiliation for those who believed that they had been fighting for a cause that would within a few years bring the West together under the North Atlantic Treaty Organization — making Waffen-SS men ‘premature anti-communists’ — there was also the way in which veterans were treated in their own country. As the Federal Republic began to take shape, the SS became the alibi of a nation, onto which all responsibility for past crimes could be shifted. As former members of a Nazi organization, Waffen-SS veterans were denied the war pensions issued to members of the Wehrmacht in 1951. Those Waffen-SS men who wished to join the new Bundeswehr when it was formed in the mid-1950s found the political screening process was quite discriminatory, especially towards ex-officers. By September 1956, only 33 of 1,310 applications by former Waffen-SS officers had been accepted (making them 0.4 percent of the new officer corps), as compared with 270 of 1,324 applications by former NCOs and 195 of 462 applications by enlisted men.

    “These were bitter pills to swallow, and the more aggressive chose to fight back. As early as the summer of 1951 Otto Kumm, last commander of the Leibstandarte, had established the Hilfsgemeinschaft auf Gegenseitigkeit der ehemaligen Angehorigen der Waffen-SS (HIAG), an organization of Waffen-SS veterans, to lobby Bonn and in general work to restore the tarnished image of the force. Through rallies, meetings with political figures of the center and right, a magazine, and a flood of memoirs and detailed unit histories, HIAG achieved its initial goal when in 1961 the Bundestag partially restored pension rights to Waffen-SS veterans. The wider aim of complete rehabilitation proved harder to achieve, in part because some of the more enthusiastic members of HIAG sounded alarmingly Nazi in their pronouncements. Only the extreme right— most recently in the form of the Republikaner Party led by ex-Waffen-SS man and TV personality Franz Schönhuber — has made no bones about embracing the HIAG version of history, and it has never more than slightly over 7 per cent of voters

    “Yet while HIAG itself continues to decline as members die off, the positive image of the Waffen-SS the organization has promoted has taken root — and by no means only in Germany. In an era of Cold War between the Soviet Union and the West, senior Waffen-SS personnel were not shy about suggesting that they had organized and led a NATO-like army (and an elite one at that).

    “Memoirs and histories by former SS generals, bulky ‘official’ unit histories (often in several volumes), as well as a few lavishly illustrated coffee-table books have poured forth from Munin Verlag in Osnabrück and Plesse Verlag in Göttingen in a steady stream since the 1950s. These volumes, which constitute the single largest and most detailed body of work on the subject, invariably portray the Waffen-SS men as misunderstood idealists who fought honourably and well (and had nothing to do with the concentration camps). Testimonials by former Wehrmacht generals praising the fighting qualities of the Waffen-SS are prominently displayed in these volumes.

    “Steiner and Hausser, for example, each wrote books defending both themselves and the Waffen-SS, once in the 1950s and again, for good measure, in the 1960s. The titles of the latter two books cut to the essence of how HIAG saw the Waffen-SS being treated and what its members believed was the truth: Army of Outlaws (1963) and Soldiers Like Any Other (1966). A brief review of the first two books among the first HIAG-sponsored volumes to appear, will suffice to indicate the tone and thrust of the corpus as a whole.

    “Hausser was first off the mark in 1953 with Waffen-SS im Einsatz, which had the double lightning bolt SS runes and motto (‘my honour is loyalty’) printed on the cover. The much-admired Wehrmacht panzer General Heinz Guderian was persuaded to endorse the Waffen-SS in a foreword as ‘courageous troops’ who did their duty like other soldiers and were in addition ‘the first realization of the European idea.’ Hausser himself went on to detail the growth of the Waffen-SS into a multinational force where foreign volunteers, including ‘our Muslims,’ fought and died heroically to the bitter end ‘as a militant example of the great European idea.’

    “Steiner went even further in Die Freiwilligen five years later. The Waffen-SS, it appeared, was nothing less than the ultimate expression of the kind of youthful and restless idealism which had caused men from distant lands to fight with Byron in Greece in the 1820s, Garibaldi in Italy in the 1850s, and Pilsudski in Poland in the 1920s. The foreign volunteers were men of spirit who, like their German comrades, saw the ‘diabolical’ threat to Western civilization posed by Bolshevism and ‘fought like lions’ against it under the banner of the Waffen-SS.

    “The memoirs of Steiner and Hausser, along with those of other high-profile field commanders such as Meyer (12th SS Panzer Division) were only part of a quadruple publishing effort. The HIAG journal, Der Freiwillige, propagated the same basic themes year after year, former SS personnel such as Ettore Vernier contributing articles with titles like ‘Volunteers for Europe’ into and beyond the mid-1970s. Glossy books such as Waffen-SS in Pictures (1957), Scattered are the Traces (1979), and Panzer Grenadiers of the ‘Wiking’ Division in Pictures (1984), all replete with propaganda photographs of Aryan-ideal volunteers from all over the Continent, blended elitism with pan-European idealism. ‘From all European lands,’ it was stated in the 1957 volume, ‘came volunteers as genuine comrades-in- arms. They fought for their Fatherland against Bolshevism.’ And, last but not least, there were the unit and formation histories: full of reprinted operational orders, letters of praise from Wehrmacht commanders, tales of valour and heroism by officers and men of the unit, and condemnation of treatment at the hands of both the Russians and the Allies. The older or more famous the unit, the larger the work — to the point where no less than five volumes and well over pages were devoted to the doings of the 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich.
     
  14. Comrade General

    Comrade General Member

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    “Adding to this chorus of self-justification were a smaller number of foreigners who had once served in the Waffen-SS. As among the German veterans, there were one or two foreign volunteers who were surprisingly frank about their wartime motives and actions; their voices, however, were swamped by the volume and dogmatic persistence of true believers. Léon Degrelle, for example, the Belgian leader of the fascistic Rex Party who had risen to command the 29th SS Volunteer Grenadier Division Wallonien and escaped to Spain at the end of the war, has given many interviews and written several highly partisan accounts of the Waffen-SS that were subsequently published in several languages.

    “This portrayal of the Waffen-SS as an idealistic band of brothers, as comrades-in-arms engaged in a noble crusade, was by no means acceptable to all in West Germany. Yet the prevailing tendency, at least until the 1980s, was to try and forget the past — to view the end of the Third Reich as ‘zero hour.’ This allowed Germans to evade the question of collective guilt, but at the same time also meant that instead of being a counter-memory fighting an uphill battle against a prevailing orthodoxy the vision propounded by HIAG was to some extent filling a void.

    “As the older generation of Waffen-SS scribes has died off, a new, postwar cadre of writers has done much to perpetuate the image of the force as a revolutionary European army. The degree of admiration and acceptance of the HIAG version of events varies, but an overall tendency to accentuate the positive lives on (and has indeed grown stronger as the war continues, to recede into history).

    “The most extreme admirers are, not surprisingly, to be found on the fringes of the far right. In the United States the single most prolific author on the Waffen-SS has been Richard Landwehr, who issues his own magazine on the subject (Siegrunen) and has published a volume on just about every foreign Waffen-SS formation through Legion Bibliophile Books. The basic thrust is always the same: a pan-European crusade fought by idealists with unprecedented valour against a cruel and remorseless foe. ‘They spoke different languages,’ Landwehr has written, ‘but they shared a common commitment: a love of their continent and a hatred of communism and international capitalism. Motivated by the call of conscience, they chose voluntarily to do battle against these predatory enemies.’ The Waffen-SS was an international phenomenon ‘unprecedented in history.’ In his view the men of the Waffen-SS — ‘a truly international European Army fighting for Western Civilization’ — were far superior in every respect to the ‘terrorist’ Resistance in occupied Europe.

    “Hinting of grand conspiracies to cover up the true facts and taking the same confrontational attitude to mainstream history as the revisionist tracts of the Barnes Review and Journal Of Historical Review (published by the neo-Nazi Institute for Historical Review), the works of Landwehr and other pro-Nazis have not achieved wide distribution or much academic acceptance (though it is worth noting that many colleges and universities have his volumes on their shelves). Yet many of the postwar generation of writers who are not quite as overtly sympathetic to National Socialism have accepted the idea of the Waffen-SS as an idealistic European army. Chief among these fellow-travelers and the most prolific author of all — well over fifty books — is Jean Mabire, a French paratrooper turned popular writer who has specialized in elite forces in general and la Waffen SS européenne in particular. In over a dozen works published since the 1970s Mabire has presented the officers and men of the Waffen-SS as comrades-in-arms from across Europe and clearly states the force as having been a premier fighting elite. Though not as dogmatic as Landwehr, Mabire also reproduces in large part the HIAG version of the Waffen-SS at war.

    “England also has had its share of admirers. the focus here being more on the qualities of the German units In the 1990s two popular writers, Gordon Williamson and Edmund L. Blandford, sought to restore the tarnished moral reputation of the Waffen-SS in the West and reiterate its superb fighting qualities by letting veterans tell their own stories The results are predictably positive. While Williamson approaches his subjects with at least a degree of skepticism, Blandford is unquestionably partisan. He appears to believe that the Waffen-SS has been unjustly maligned and its revolutionary achievements as a ‘New Model Army’ underplayed.

    “Then there are the large number of English and American popular historians who — though less willing to try and relativize Waffen-SS war crimes and often somewhat critical of the European army idea — appear to have been partially or even wholly seduced by the mystique of the premier German SS units. In the early 1970s, for instance, John Keegan — shortly to become the most famous military historian in the English-speaking world — wrote in a volume of the popular Ballantine war series that the best (or, to use the favoured term, ‘classic’ panzer units of the Waffen-SS altered the course of the war and were ‘faithful unto death and fiercer in combat than any soldiers who fought them on western battlefields.’ As one astute observer summed up in 1974:

    ‘It is not really the hard evidence of the SS that constitutes a problem, as much as the spread of its image through fiction, films, and folklore as tough, select, dedicated bands of men who stood off the world in spite of the foot-dragging of an apathetic or disloyal Wehrmacht. The SS upstaged the French Foreign Legion as a popular image of military elitism. Its fame has outlasted many of the forces that brought it down, and it continues to gain respectability as the generation who felt the direct horror Nazism fades away. It may well have a delayed impact, a deferred inheritance of the Thousand Year Reich. The tree was cut but the seeds are still on the wind.’

    “To judge by what has appeared since then this prediction was spot on. The opinions of James Lucas and Bruce Quarrie, popular authors who each wrote a series of books dealing with the Waffen-SS in the 1980s and early 1990s, are indicative of prevailing trends. The Waffen-SS, Lucas has asserted, was ‘revolutionary’ in terms of tactics, social inclusiveness, and supranational qualities. A ‘unique bond of comradeship between all ranks’ developed, along with a ‘warrior spirit’ which allowed them to achieve ‘spectacular victories.’ To Quarrie the elite units of the Waffen-SS deserve to be compared with the Israeli Defense Forces for sheer toughness innovation, and courage. In his view, ‘a much closer camaraderie existed between officers and men than was possible within the Wehrmacht;’ which, alongside a stress on aggressiveness and initiative, created a force which altered the course of the war. Moreover, Steiner and other Waffen-SS visionaries ‘were trying to create something like a pan-European precursor of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.’

    “Meanwhile, in the Reich itself, the rehabilitation of the Waffen-SS indirectly achieved greater success in the latter 1980s through the tacit support of right-wing academic leading journalists such as Nolte, and mainstream politicians seeking a usable past for Germany. In 1986 Andreas Hillgruber, a respected conservative academic historian, published a slim volume in which he appeared (among other things) to be arguing that both the Army and the multinational units of the Waffen-SS had been fighting desperately in 1945 to uphold a ‘European concept’ against the ravages of a barbaric Soviet enemy. Two years later Hillgruber — by then a central figure in the Hislorikersrreit that had broken out over the meaning of the Holocaust — almost wistfully admitted that efforts to achieve a pan-European partnership during the war had been rendered useless by Hitler’s ‘depraved’ racial ideas.

    “The debate over the relativization of the German past in the latter 1980s was fierce and the outcome far from inevitable, as the furor surrounding President Reagan’s visit to a war cemetery at Bitburg (which included graves of Waffen-SS men) indicated. Nevertheless, ideas which had previously been confined to the margins of popular culture have entered mainstream academic and political discourse. The unreconstructed war memoirs of Schönhuber, in which the Waffen-SS is portrayed as a misunderstood European ‘military elite,’ went through eight printings in under a year. Nolte’s book The European Civil War — a quote from which opens this chapter — became an instant best-seller that went through three printings in as many months.”

    --MacKenzie, S.P. 1997. Revolutionary Armies in the Modern Era: A Revisionist Approach. New York: Routledge, pages 134-141
     
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  15. lwd

    lwd Ace

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    So a post of almost all quotes. Rather interesting post. I think a key difference between the International Brigades and the SS though was in their origin the international brigades were not Ideologically bound as the SS was. Note it's also mentioned that the Generals didn't slavishly follow Hitler's lead which is in contrast to some of "Comrade's previous posts. It's also not clear who most of the quotes are from which puts the post in somewhat of a tenuous position with regards to copyright.

    *** edit for ***
    two more posts added almost all quotes ... or not...Each paragraph opens with quotation marks but no closing ones. Is this "Comrade's" work and he just like quotation marks to open paragraphs or is it someone else's?
     
    Last edited: Apr 13, 2018
  16. green slime

    green slime Member

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    This is not plagiarism. This has now reached the level of copyright infringement. This will be reported to the mods.
     
  17. Comrade General

    Comrade General Member

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    Somebody sent me a message saying one of the two ignored users is claiming copyright infringement.

    Everything in my previous three posts are attributed to MacKenzie, cited at the end. Note the use of quotation marks to close the very last paragraph. The forums have a character limit per post so hence my need to break up the quote in different posts.

    It's no different than my past quotes of Merridale and Bellamy, but longer. However, if you've ever taken a college course, what is important is not the length of the quote but whether you put quotation marks around the quote and cite the author and work.

    Also, what I posted was several pages from a single chapter, but not the entire chapter. According to U.S. copyright law, it is considered "fair use" to use copyrighted material for purposes of education, commentary, or parody if it is not for profit.

    Hence, why, if you've ever taken a college course, your professor may have handouts that are excerpts as part of your readings -- such as a single chapter from a book, an individual article from a journal, and individual news articles.

    As an academic myself, I take quotations, citations, plagiarism, and intellectual property issues very seriously. Fair Use and Other Educational Uses
     
    Last edited: Apr 13, 2018
  18. lwd

    lwd Ace

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    Your an academic? The why the weird quotation scheme. It's definitely not standard English. You should be referencing it at the end of each post as well. In any case I didn't see any commentary or parody so those exemptions are out and I believe the education exemption only allows limited quotes.
    Just looked it up and according to:
    Educational Exemptions in the U.S. Copyright Code
    Your not covered.
    From what I can see here:
    Educational Uses of Non-coursepack Materials
    Your not covered either.

    So an academic who takes "quotations, citations, plagiarism, and intellectual property issues very seriously" yet uses none standard punctuation, improper attribution, and doesn't understand the fair use laws. .... Right.
     
  19. green slime

    green slime Member

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    You wish you did. You'd fail the course in any respectable university.

    It is copyright infringement as this is a) not for personal use (the Forum is public) b) not for educational purposes (we are not asking you to enlighten us, and this is a public forum). Were there a need to debate the issue, far less text would be necessary to impart the prerequisite knowledge.

    Further the quoted text contains far more text than necessary to impart understanding, and is a significant portion of the original text (in excess of 3,500 words!!!), without paraphrasing or context: i.e. your purpose is neither to educate or entertain, but is for self-aggrandisement. You do not want any back-and-forth debates in the threads you start. You want to stand on a soap-box and deliver sermons.
     
    Last edited: Apr 13, 2018
  20. Comrade General

    Comrade General Member

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    Considering your use of "your an academic" and not the correct "you're an academic," it's interesting to hear you talk about "standard English."

    The criteria for a quote is for the quotation marks (") to open and close the quote, which is what I did.

    It is a "limited quote" -- it's not even the entire chapter, whereas professors will scan and share entire chapters as reading assignments.

    You'll forgive me if your apparent inability to use "your" versus "you're" correctly means I don't ascribe much to your "authority" on copyright law and fair use.

    Looking forward to a mod interjecting. In the meantime, you're both back on ignore.
     

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