Elem Klimov's movie 'Come and See'

Oh Wolfy do you really not remember what you wrote??

Let me help you out.

Then I ask...

And you keep avoiding the question.

If you dont think that that was not the common practice for villages and some town in the east, then offer me your version of what really occurred.

 

Your responses were in reaction to my statements, which answer the very question you're right now accusing me of not answering.

I just stated what I believe really occurred, more than once, in fact. Post 10, 12, 14. It was not "fun time" for the majority of German EG sonderkommandos and SS.

 

Once again more avoiding, followed by a shallow attempt at an insult......

Some reading is in order.


I think we are finished here.

 

I just gave you the post numbers where I answered that very question.

Yes, how about that. You should read my posts rather than repeatedly ask me a question that I've already sufficiently answered. Or accuse me of making statements I've never made.

 

Wolfy,

The mechanical efficiency of the holocaust is a myth.

You might consider reading the AARs of German Security & Infantry Division assigned to anti-partisan/bandit operations. The sweeps often claimed hundreds of partisans killed but recovering only a dozen rifles and almost no friendly casaulties. How do you recon that happened?

You might also want to investigate the careers of Dirlewanger Brigade and the quality and discipline of various German security units.

Take in mind that never in five years of brutal total war, no substantial number of German soldiers had ever been convicted in the East of rape, murder or robbery of Russians. Do you think that is reasonable?

 

How do you recon what happened? I'm familiar with the EG sonderkommando units and the tremendous psychological casualties they suffered. Many of these Germans either committed suicide or were institutionalized. The negative reception from the cannibalization of German death squads lead to the formation of the Holocaust institution as the men couldn't handle it.

The behavior of SS formations made out of Eastern European volunteers (who had an axe to grind with various minorities in their area) was wanton.

And I've mentioned the D-Brigade formed out of German criminals already. the K-Brigade was similarly awful, but accounts I've read of the behavior of the numerous German SS anti-partisan formations and how they killed people does not indicate they were doing it for "fun-time" as depicted in "Come and See". They had orders to purify an area, and they obeyed.

 

Wofly, you missed the operant prhases in my question.

I wrote Infantry and Security Divisions. Regular units were frequently pulled off the line and assigned to anti-banditry duty. Those actions were, report as combat unlike Einsatzgruppen operations.

The light German casualties suffered in those operations, the huge number of enemy KIA claimed, and the paucity of weapons collected has only one reasonable explaination: the troops flipped out and slaughtered villagers.

The American troops raped and shot innocents en masse in Mai Lai. That happend in an army fielded by a democratic nation, under a military code which condemns any violence against non-combatants as criminal.

The German Army in the East suspended military law and took the Russian theater out of ordinary military prosecution's jurisdiction.

Think about it.

How is that even relevant to the question whether massive, disorderly atrocity took place in the Eastern Front?

Paul Blobel who was responsible of the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in 1941 was sent to a SS shrink. He was declared "cured" in 1943, returned to the front that year and orchestrated many more extermination operations. He remained an unrepentent Nazi when they hang him.

That murders need psychiatric support does not mean the perpetrators regreted or repudiated their actions. It is human nature that a sane man would be disgusted and horrified by the slaughter of defenseless people. There is a world of difference clinically and legally between being disturbed by one's crime and recognizing the immorality of an act.

Come and See actually depicts the German scorched earth policy in 1943. The troops orders literally read that they should torch anything of value that they could not take, kill all potential enemies and to leave a waste behind.

 

Are you saying the German troops did not rob, rape and shot Russian civilians in a massive scale? You are aware that none of those are considered crimes in the German army, I hope?

In the log books of German troops there are numerous references to routine security sweeps and so-called wild acquisitions. Allied troops in the west were finding photographs of atrocities in German soldier's wallet. An intellegence officer stated that the three most common content in the wallets were pin up postcards, pictures of moms, girfriends, and photographs of hangings.

The conduct of a major Einsatzgruppe operation in a heavily populated area such as Kiev, Minsk or Oddessa would be by neccessity very different from the cleansing operations or dead zoning in larger, rural regions where the number of people to be linquidated is much smaller and therefore put less demand on efficiency and time table.

A partial reading of big massacres in say Babi Yar does not complete the picture of numerous smaller, less organized killings, including the orgiastic type of violence depicted in Come and See.

The claim that everybody else did it but not the German Army strains credulity. The US, UK and Red Army all reported crimes against civilians in occupied Germany in substantial scale. Why would the Wehrmacht be exempt in this, especially considering the total absense of legal protection afforded to Russian civilians by German military law and German official policy demanded atrocities?

 

I think you may have forgotten the blatant ridiculousness of the mass murder scene in "Come and See". View it again (should be on youtube somewhere). It depicts people having a great (and creative) and wasteful (in terms of material) time killing.

As were the Waffen-SS Anti-partisan divisions.

Several Waffen-SS anti-partisan divisions have incidence of the same thing- and the murder accounts I've read do not show "flipping out". More like cold and calculated. Tricking the population to gather somewhere, and then trapping them for extermination.

You're veering off course here. I was pointing out that the EG was not expanded significiantly due to high psychological casualties. And these were "special" men. The non-special Germans depicted in Come & See from a Waffen-SS anti-partisan formation seem to have a zero percent chance of having a psychological hangover.

 

I've never claimed this.

You've clearly not watched the cartoon that is Come & See or the scene in question recently.

 

In some ways Wolfy is right. Im sure the German soldiers didnt stand around laughing whilst they massacred women an children. But to too say there werent sporadic or perhaps quite common instances of regular German soldiers flipping out an annihilating a village would be incorrect. What do you think these regular German divisions or Battalions etc etc did when they found their comrades dead or mutilated, most likely found theyre revenge on the closest settlement.

I havent seen all of Come an See but it does show the German soldiers to be sadistic.

And how many Russian soldiers have ever been convicted for rape, robbery or murder. Even their allies were sick of drunk Russian soldiers raping anything with two legs.

 

The darkest corner of the savage and terrible war in the East for certain-the Partisan War was. And the subject provokes passions unto this day. So was the Klimov version historically accurate? Yes. Burning villagers alive in churches was a specialty of the Einsanztgruppens, but conventional Wehrmacht and Axis Allied forces practiced atrocities also. And the Partisans practiced atrocities. And the Red Army practiced atrocities. The savagery of the fighting was guaranteed by Hitler in his infamous "commissar order", and military discipline tossed to the wind when OKW let it be known that no German soldier would be prosecuted for acts against civilians. THe situation just spiralled out of control from there. If Hitler had hoped that unspeakable savagery would cow the native populations he was wrong-it had the opposite effect, and soon the Wehrmacht was fighting a two front war it could not win. As the Russkis saw it "Fritz" started the bloodbath and they intended to finish it. They should have known better after seeing what bloody minded insanity had done to galvanize resistance in their own lands. The massacres in East Prussia only served stiffen German resistance to fanatical heights, and the cost of pushing through to Berlin rose appreciably.
JeffinMNUSA

 

Actually Skywalker, the Red Army had strict orders against such actions. Dozens were shot on the spot in Berlin for raping and numbers of officers had reprimanded as well. Sure countless of rapes and murders occurred, but the Red Army did its best to prevent it and keep a good image.

I will try to find a couple of sources on this matter.....


I think we might have strayed off topic a little here.

 

Just from that scene:

1. German motorcyclist driving around the town with a machinegunned corpse tied to his combination.

2. German soldiers abusing their eastern european helpers.

3. German soldier dragging a girl by her hair in front of the entire unit so he can rape.

4. The commander is a creepy looking fella and has a hooker and an animal on his shoulder.

5. The entire company throws dozens of monotov cocktails at the church and laugh and clap as the church is on fire. The corpse tied to the motorcycle is driven around in circles.

6. The company opens fire while laughing and screaming manically at the church, wasting a lot of their ammunition.

7. The company starts using flamethrowers on the church for fun as they party, watch, and drink.

8. The German withdrawal is disorganized and out of control. The Germans are screaming and laughing. 20 germans gang rape a woman in a truck.

9. A few laughing Germans drag out an old woman tied to a bed and place her outside.

There's more from the movie but I'll stop here.

I agree with this, but this is a different type of crime and different from what was depicted in Come & See- killing for revenge rather than killing for a "jolly good time". US troops did this in Dachau. It's a different issue.

 

The estimates vary, but the Red Army is stated to have raped 1.4-2 million German women and between 95,000-130,000 rapes in Berlin. (from hospital records)

 

Not sure what your point is. Yes this occurred, however; there were also those which were punished for the crimes. The sentence was death by firing squad usually on the spot.


As horrific as these numbers may sound, they were after all only a fraction of what the Slavic people had endured.

 

'Come & See'? I agree wholeheartedly with JG Ballard's assessment, it's beautiful & disturbing art, a bit 'Russian' in it's whimsical drifting sometimes but surprisingly light on official propaganda for something made in that era.
One of the most harrowing films I ever saw, but undoubtedly one of the best.

Wolfy, mate, you are so far out of your depth on some of these statements you're making I'd seriously advise you step away from them before you swim way too far.
How would you describe a 'killing expedition' if you were asked to put something down in writing and knew what you'd really done that day?
The 'obeying of orders' defence was dismissed almost immediately at Nuremberg.

Any defense of the so called 'anti-partisan' actions that were carried out against villages is dangerous to find oneself positing. Particularly while accusing others of being Ill-read idiots.

The repellent Hans Frank, a man even his children despised, was overall master of these territories under German control. And while I'd not deny that the region suffered hard under the Soviet heel as well, here's a little quote from Mr Frank on the 14th of January 1944:
"Once we have won the war, then for all I care mincemeat can be made of the Poles and the Ukrainians"

One 'Erich Koch' was Gauleiter of the 'Reichskommissariat Ukraine', a man who described himself as 'a brutal dog'- some charming quotes from him:
"to suck from the Ukraine all the goods we can get hold of without consideration for the feelings or property of the Ukrainians"
"If I find a Ukrainian who is worthy of sitting at the same table as me, I must have him shot"

The territory was seen and treated by the Nazis as nothing more than a lebensraum area inconveniently plagued with 'Untermensch'. It was on the whole a free-for all of killing where one could get into more trouble shooting a dog than a family of peasants. The Village scene in Come and see may have been 'distilled' slightly, to tell a condensed filmic story, but it is not an unreasonable depiction of hundreds of similar actions carried out across that area.

Nobody sensible's going to vilify every German Soldier as 'demonic cartoons', but the extreme level of atrocity that the Einsatzkommandos and other 'special' groups carried out leave them open to just about every vile accusation that can be levelled at them, as most can be supported.
This is what Klimov focused his talents on, he had no obligation to tell a completely balanced view but I'm quite content that he wasn't too far off-beam with his treatment.

Obfuscation by attempting to find some kind of balance with the evils carried out by other armies means nothing. One atrocity does not make all the others any less horrific, not by one iota, it merely adds another event to the sad overall total of hate and foulness.

There is no moral connection, relevance, or justification, that can somehow 'balance' one atrocity against another. They are all, by their nature, atrocious.

Cheers,
Adam.

 

Here, let me help you.

My God, the Red Army tried so hard

 

Wolfy;
Actually the Red Army WAS trying to reign in the atrocities by the time of the Battle of Berlin. It was when the Reds moved into East Prussia that Pravda was publishing-and anything published by Pravda you could rest assured was State approved-articles like these;
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v08/v08p507_Weber.html

"In one leaflet headlined "Kill," Ehrenburg incited Soviet soldiers to treat Germans as sub-human. The final paragraph concludes: [2]

“The Germans are not human beings. From now on the word German means to use the most terrible oath. From now on the word German strikes us to the quick. We shall not speak any more. We shall not get excited. We shall kill. If you have not killed at least one German a day, you have wasted that day ... If you cannot kill your German with a bullet, kill him with your bayonet. If there is calm on your part of the front, or if you are waiting for the fighting, kill a German in the meantime. If you leave a German alive, the German will hang a Russian and rape a Russian woman. If you kill one German, kill another -- there is nothing more amusing for us than a heap of German corpses. Do not count days, do not count kilometers. Count only the number of Germans killed by you. Kill the German -- that is your grandmother's request. Kill the German -- that is your child's prayer. Kill the German -- that is your motherland's loud request. Do not miss. Do not let through. Kill.”

Ehrenburg's incendiary writings certainly contributed in no small measure to the orgy of murder and rape by Soviet soldiers against German civilians."

When they came to realize that they had made the same mistake as NAZI had earlier, the party sought to reign in the lawlessness.
Who was worse? NAZI by a long sight! But as someone pointed out "two wrongs do not make a right."

JeffinMNUSA

 

That was more of a political move rather than compassion for the Germans. Eastern Germans were a new edition to the Soviet bloc.