My Grandfather was a soldier in the Waffen SS

Well said Scipio. My thoughts too...I hope I have not scared him off it was not my intent. He has a right to recount his grandfathers story as much as any one else has, and I want to hear it as much as anyone. I hope he returns. If I have scared him off I apologise, it was not my intent. I know his grandfather had nothing to do with the Dunkirk atrocitites. His division did though and I dont apologise for reminding all of what that division was capable of. Lest we forget. But that probably should have waited for any hero worshipers to arrive I suppose and was not aimed at the poster or his grandad. Again, if the original poster is still around, I'd love to hear his stories.

 

You can't blame children for the sins of their father. ~G

Whether someone's unit was in reserve or not present at a particular incident there is NO way to sugarcoat a person's service with the SS. Good or bad ALL these stories need to be told.

 

The Thread title is "my grandfather was a soldier in the Waffen SS" in the forum "what Granddad did in the War". This is my only contribution to this thread, and I keep it on topic.

One of my grandfathers was a Stug crewman. He was with LSSAH from mid 1941 to mid 1943. Nearly killed at Karkov in early Mar 1943. Lengthy recovery only to end up with transfer to the 12th Division HJ (Panzerjaeger Bn) in its formative stage Aug 1943. In May 1945, he was a "lowly" Rottenfuehrer, surrendering with the remnants of the 12th SS Panzer Division at the river Enns, and having served (and survived) 4 years of combat including Karkov, Normandy and the Ardennes. He was 22 yrs & 5 months old.

I never knew my G/F. However I don't consider him any more or less a murderer than those who were trying to kill him. I don't feel the need to "sugarcoat" his service, nor to apologise for it. I certainly do not feel any need to apologise for the fact that I'm his descendant, whether he had sins or not.

I don't think anyone "scared off" mattsage. I think he made his point in his one post.

My regards.

 

This is so full of BS I want to throw up. Hansen, born in 1908 joined the Party in 1931, the SS in 1933, at that time the SS was a purely political party militia, if you joined you were either a full bred Nazi or a cynical opportunist, I think his career shows taht Hansen was not an opportunist seeking advantage. LSSAH's way was plastered with massacres of innocent civilians. In my book it was a bunch of murdering pigs, calling those men "honourable soldiers" is disgracing all the other vets, from both sides!

 

I despise the SS as an organisation, but many who joined it (Waffen SS) were common everyday people and not homicidal maniacs. Yes let us condemn the truely guilty, but not all who wore the uniform. Would you lump all Vietnam vets with Calley? Or all Confederate vets with Quantrell? It is moments like these that make my closing line seem appropiate.

 

I think Skyline, and I talk for no one...is raising the point of his ss joining date. By the time of ww2 anyone in the SS as a senior soldier would have known what the orginisation was about.

 

A 17 year old Luftwaffenhelfer drafted into a SS unit in the fall of 1944 is as much a victim as a perpetrator, still he is the product of a well oiled system and at a certain moment he did have a choice. The crimes were not restricted to a single company, battalion or regiment. I guess you know as well how the military works as I do, scuttlebut runs fast everybody knew about the atrocities, if you stood in you were part of it.
Hansen was not pressed into the SS, neither was he an adventurer looking to fight with the best.

 

Fair enough, but We must be carefull not to tarnish every person within a division with the acts of a few or even the most. I mean if we judged every Bloddy good for nuthin lobsterback by BanisteTarlletan of the glorious American Revolution we would not have saved your bacon twice last century, now would we?

(The US State Dept. is not responcable for the content of this diatribe)

 

We're not talking about tarnishing a whole division for the acts of a few, crimes were systematic and not only tolerated but encouraged by the chain of command. That's the difference inbetween Peiper, Hansen and their SS Comrades and Calley and Quantrill.

This is the typical discussion inbetween anglo-saxons, who never experienced life under occupation and have a strongly romanticized view of the Waffen SS and the Wehrmacht as honourable soldiers while ignoring the political side of history, on one hand and continental europeans who had to endure the Nazi jug and who tend to know much more about how the structures of teh machine worked.

There were war crimes comitted on every side true, but there is a difference in the frequency, the events that triggered the atrocities and the reaction of the respective organizations.

 

we would not have saved your bacon twice last century, now would we?

The bacon was already saved. The export of the bacon and the resurecction of free bacon trade needed others to help with the export lines, but the bacon in Britain was firmly saved by its own folk who managed to get enough farmers home for the coming harvest...Germans would have been more than welcome to try and pinch our bacon butties but I doubt if they would have got past the land girls.

 

This is the typical discussion inbetween anglo-saxons, who never experienced life under occupation

The above lines do not travel well across the seas. I am always brought to book in my thoughts that even though we in UK were not occupied...Thank God...RAF fighter pilot recounting the Battle of Britain...Something along the lines of He was over my country, trying to enslave my people...I was not about to be merciful with the buggers.

 

I have seen pictures of your Land Girls and to mis-quote Wellington, "i don't know what effect they have on the enemy, they certainly frighten ME.!"

 

Very good start, but…

This isn't something to be proud of, quite modestly speaking. At least, he was in bad company for suspiciously too long time.

... and he was very successful in a unit which has been found guilty of war crimes in the Nuremberg Trials. Members of the LSSAH participated in numerous atrocities. They murdered at least an estimated 5,000 prisoners of war in the period 1940–1945, mostly on the Eastern Front.

There is a good reason for reasonable doubt, at least.

View attachment 15595

 

The problem I have is that this person has posted once, they quoted that their Grand Father was Hansen. Nothing in the post suggested anything that anyone of us didn't know or could have looked up. He never came back with anything that convinced me he was more than a troll. I'm happy to be proved wrong but I doubt it.

 

Sadly most who join us never post more than a few times so it can be hard to judge at times.

 

Indeed!

What a pity. Statistically, that troll was the best poster of all times: 10 salutes and so many likes just for copy-pasting from Wikipedia.

 

We will conscious any person biography then we will learn a lot of aspects and adopt those practice in life my grandfather having a direction in my life because he is a soldiers and having a great passion for victory.

 

I always believed the adage " better keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than open it and remove any doubt".

That said my maternal Grand-Father served in the German Army during the war. Born in Baden Baden in 1921, he attended art college (although was kicked out after they finished fish?!) and then went onto be a window dresser and an assitant in a Cologne art gallery. At the wars start he joined the Panzerwaffe (Oma Helga did not know which unit but had a photo of him in front of what appears to be an Sdkfz 222 so some sort of recce?). He served on the East front and was in France in the occupation forces where he was an aide de camp to a General. He received the Iron Cross 1st and 2nd class, the War Merit Cross 2nd Class with swords and the East Front medal. He finished the war as an Oberleutnant.

Stands back and awaits salutes and likes galore. Can anyone idenify him? If so I'll provide more.

 

Does somebody need a hug?

 

Always