From: Douglas Greville (dgrev@iinet.net.au)
Date: Thu Jan 13 2005 - 20:40:43 PST
All
> ******* Entire Armys. The regular Army (NOT the SS ), the Heer was NOT
> all NAZI's. To paraphrase Gen. G. Patton ( US Army) "Being a member of
> the NAZI party over there @ that time was almost like being a member of
> the Democratic Party back in the US".
> I believe the SS was the most closely associated branch of the German
> WWII military to the NAZI party. They were more of a politically
> developed Army & swore their loyalty to Adolph Hitler, rather than to
> Germany.
> Steve ( who also attended public shcools, including 2 years in Berlin
> Germany).
A bloke I know grew up a German in Berlin in the 1930s. He says that
they were given no choice they HAD to be in the Hitler Youth. On his
17th birthday he received a letter telling him to report for military
training in Munich, again no choice. He became a member of the 12th
SS Panzer Division (Hitler Yugend) and was a Tiger I and Tiger II Fahrer
from Normandy thru the Ardenne and then to Austria. As he says, nobody
dared not do as they were told by their country - there was no such out
as "concientious objector". He said that although it was not stated as
such, it was generally known that to dodge call up meant either a
firing squad or penal servitude of the worst type.
As a 17 year old, would you have bucked officialdom in that era?
They didn't ask whether you wanted to be in the Wehrmacht, SS,
Luftwaffe, Kriegsmarine etc, you just got sent where they wanted to send
you.
He does state that the Waffen SS were another case altogether and he
stresses very heavily that he was never part of the Waffen SS.
His entire unit surrendered to the US in Austria after negotiating
terms with Eisenhower, the key part being that they had never
fought against the Russians so they would not be handed over to
the Russians. Once assured of this they surrendered. They were then
handed over to the Russians and tried as enemies of Russia. He did five
years breaking rocks in the Yalta region of Russia before being
repatriated, he is one of the lucky ones as a huge number of German POWs
never returned.
The above doesn't excuse anything or change anything, but it does
give some insight. They were the agressors and had to be stopped.
War is war, there is no justice in it, no fairness and as much
as people want it to be black and white it isn't. The ordinary person
has very little to no say as to what those in power do in their name.
We weren't there.
Regards
Doug
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