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2003-09-29 Europe

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Posted by Baba Yaga 2003-09-29 3:14:51 AM|| || Front Page|| [11134 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 The Latvians, like the Estonians, Lithuanians, Finns and others, considered the Soviet Union to be far worse than Nazi Germnay, so they were enthusiastic fighters in Waffen SS, which accepted volunteers from all over Europe.
The Balts have always been in a difficult situation, because the people who fought against Stalin were in many cases participants in the Holocaust.
However the Waffen SS was primarily an elite frontline force, while the acts of extermination were mainly committed by the Totenkopf SS. So even though the Waffen SS was responsible for many atrocities, and Latvians were among the volunteers in rounding up Jews and other uttermenchen, it isn't meant as a celebration of Nazism, but an ill advised commemoration of the tens of thousands of soldiers who died fighting against what they rightly or wrongly saw as the lesser of two evils.

Posted by Paul Moloney 2003-9-29 7:40:21 AM|| 2003-9-29 7:40:21 AM|| Front Page Top

#2 I agree with Paul.

Posted by Chuck Simmins 2003-9-29 8:48:25 AM|| [http://blog.simmins.org] 2003-9-29 8:48:25 AM|| Front Page Top

#3 However the Waffen SS was primarily an elite frontline force, while the acts of extermination were mainly committed by the Totenkopf SS.

Thanks, Paul.

To amplify: Man for man, the Waffen SS had the best trained, most fit soldiers in the world during WWII. Their lesser compatriots in Totenkopf who did murder seem to take away from the accomplishments on the battlefield the Waffen SS performed.

I have a theory about military forces, and it seems to be bourne out by every military organization in history, except for the Waffen SS. That theory is that every military force which takes part in atrocities such as firing on the unarmed, tend to lose their combat efficiency over time.

It should have happened to the SS, but it didnt. The SS maintained the highest standards for an military organization throughout WWII right until the end. The explanation, of course, is that the bulk of the Waffen SS didnt participate in the pogroms in the east. The men there were recruited to destroy communism through military means.

Posted by badanov 2003-9-29 8:55:03 AM|| [http://www.rkka.org] 2003-9-29 8:55:03 AM|| Front Page Top

#4 Just want to point out that the Totenkopfverbande (SS-VT) shouldn't be confused with the 3rd SS "Totenkopf" division, which was Waffen SS.

Additionally, while the Waffen SS may have been a combat arm and not associated with the SS-VT concentration camp personnel, it should be pointed out that they are responsible for their own atrocities, as the 2nd SS "Das Reich" performed at Oradour-sur-Glane, the 1st SS at Malmedy, and countless villages on the Russian Front.

Man for man, I'd have taken any of the 82nd, 101st, Red Devils, and Desert Rats any day!

Posted by Dar 2003-9-29 9:26:03 AM|| 2003-9-29 9:26:03 AM|| Front Page Top

#5 I disagree.

A book "History of the Waffen SS" (sorry don't remember author) tells the following. First: there was continuous movement of personnel between
both from Tottenkopfverbande to Waffen SS and the opposite.

Second: The Tottenkopf division was created as a way both to improve the status of the Tottenkopfverbande and its personel came mostly from the camps.

Third: There were many non-Germans and non-Aryans
in special units of the SS. Even Slavs, even
Yougoslav Muslims. The book documented the actions of the Hanschar (Muslim) division whose poor performance in combat was equalled only by its atrocities against Serb civilians. At one point even the SS were sickened by the Hanschar people and its leader was executed (partly for trocities and partly for diverting funds).

4) The book praised highly the performance in combat of the SS. However: a) the first German division who yielded significant ground in the war
was SS Viking against the Poles. b) After the russian winter offensive in 1942 Hitler began to
distrust the Army and new equipment was assigned to SS units. That meant SS got Tigers in 1942, Panthers in 1943, Konigs Tigers for the Bulge while even in 1945 most Wehrmacht Panzer units were still equipped with the Mark IV (that is those who still had tanks :-). Being equipped with a tank who is nearly invulnerable to enemy fire or one who can be defeated by about every allied AT weapon makes a lot of differnce both for effectiveness and for the morale.

5) It is wrong to tell SS bad/Wehrmacht good. One of the first war crimes was perpetrated by
Rommel against Senegalese soldiers belonging to
the French army. And the EinsatzGruppe who killed
hundreds of thousands of Jews in Russia was Wehrmacht.

6) Dar: Pitting the 82nd, 101st or Red Devils
against Gross Deutschland is not fair: those
were para units with mostly light weapons and
nothing effective against Tigers. Pick an elite armored allied unit, equip it with 17 pounders (the only allied gun really effective against the
frontal armor of the Tiger or Panther) and Sherman Fireflies, have some Typhoons overfly the zone and then let's play.

Note: A Firefly is a Sherman with a 17 pounder, unfortunately they were in short supply, unfortunately too some a...hole American official
told it was NIH and refused to equip American troops with the 17 pounder and Firefly. The result was many American soldiers unnecessarily killed.

Posted by JFM 2003-9-29 10:38:22 AM|| 2003-9-29 10:38:22 AM|| Front Page Top

#6 JFM:

4) Good point. I'd add the MP44 to that list of SS-first weapons.

6) Gross Deutschland, although elite, was a regular army (Heer) division, not SS. And I meant literally "man for man", as I think man for man the Allies fielded some first-rate soldiers. Even when said divisions were encountering armored German forces (Market Garden and Bastogne primarily), despite being lightly equipped they performed heroically.

In addition to the idiot who refused to consider the Fireflies, don't forget Patton and his hindering of the Pershing tank advanced deployment. Yet another reason so many American tankers died needlessly in their Sherman "Ronsons".

Posted by Dar 2003-9-29 11:37:14 AM|| 2003-9-29 11:37:14 AM|| Front Page Top

#7 Excellent thread. There has been so much bad information banded about regarding the Waffen SS (note the origin of this article) so it is good to see Rantburgers debating the facts...and not the fiction. Where's TGA? I am currently reading Storm of Steel: The History of the 1st SS Panzer Corp in Normandy. Highly recommended.

Posted by Rex Mundi 2003-9-29 1:32:34 PM|| 2003-9-29 1:32:34 PM|| Front Page Top

#8 I heard on a radio talk show -possibly Liddy - that The Foriegn Legion was actually winning in Vietnam until it was leaked to the press that most of the Legionaires were former Waffen SS. The public French outcry lead to the Legionaires being replaced by the regular French army with disasterous results.

Posted by Superhose 2003-9-29 3:02:09 PM|| 2003-9-29 3:02:09 PM|| Front Page Top

#9 The Foreign Legion is way too small to win wars: there are only four or five regiments of it AFAIK.

What is true is that the French communists, at that time important due to Resistance mithology (their motto was "the Party who had 75,000 members executed. The Germans only executed 25,000 French in total) did their best to sabotage France's war effort. It went all the range from
propaganda and spying ("SS in foreign legion" bears their fingerprints), to insults and agressions on the wounded soldiers when they returned to France. They also helped the Vietminh in making the prisonners speak. I think that meant torture.

Posted by JFM 2003-9-29 3:26:52 PM|| 2003-9-29 3:26:52 PM|| Front Page Top

#10 While it only saw limited combat, the 90mm on the Pershing was considered as effective against German frontal armor as the 17 lb'er. Pity it wasn't available sooner. Of course the little Sherman fit nicely into the cargo holds.

The Mark IV continued to take out Allied tanks to the end of the war... and to be identified as a "Tiger" by dismayed Allied troops (to be fair, there was a superficial resemblance). Partly due to the skill of the crews, and partly to the excellence of the Long 75 and its optics, the Mk IV was the Wehrmacht's real breadwinner in WWII (along with the "lowly" StuG) despite the attention lavished on the big cats (of which only Panther was really a practical MBT design, Villers-Bocage notwithstanding).

Mega-tanks look foolish stuck in mud and show up nicely in the bomb-and-rocket sights.

Posted by Mark IV 2003-9-29 3:51:30 PM|| 2003-9-29 3:51:30 PM|| Front Page Top

#11 Shermans did get a high-velocity 76mm gun before the end of the war. This was not quite as powerful of the 17-Pounder (of the same calibre) but the real difference was the US Army's scandalous failure to adopt APDS (armour-piercing discarding sabot) ammunition for it.
The British had APDS for the 6-Pounder by D-Day, and for the 17-Pounder by the early fall of 1944. The 17-Pounder's discarding sabot projectile (though not the cartridge case) was compatible with the American 76mm, and the British even furnished a large number of these for American use. They were apparently never mated with the appropriate cases and issued, at least not until after the war.
The 76mm gun, btw, was available for at least 2 years before it was incorporated into the Sherman, having been used on the Sherman-derived M-10 tank-destroyer from the time of its introduction.
The M-10 itself was upgraded into the 90mm M-36 in time to participate in the European war.
The 76mm gun used on the post-war M-41 "light" (25 tons) tank was virtually identical in performance to the Sherman version. With APDS ammunition, it proved quite capable of taking out T-54s in Vietnam.

Posted by Atomic Conspiracy 2003-9-29 4:30:49 PM|| 2003-9-29 4:30:49 PM|| Front Page Top

#12 I kind of find it disturbing that so many of you have 'in-depth' knowledge of the Waffen SS. Is the left right? Are we Nazis? Yes the Balkan states thought Germany the lesser of the two evils. I guess they came to this conclusion after they saw what the Red Army did in Poland and to a lesser extend Finland. Of course they paid dearly for choosing sides, some 40 years of occupation and oppression. Check me on this but the SS was more of a political Army as opposed to the Wehrmact was a professional Army? Also I believe that only Germans could serve in the Wehrmact, where as any âSocialist Brotherâ could serve in the SS? OMG! I know too much too!

Posted by Cyber Sarge (VRWC CA Chapter) 2003-9-29 5:08:30 PM|| 2003-9-29 5:08:30 PM|| Front Page Top

#13 Hmmmmm Cyber Sarge....i'm not saying a word (flashing back to Marathon Man, The Boys from Brazil, etc)

Posted by Not Mike Moore 2003-9-29 5:26:38 PM|| 2003-9-29 5:26:38 PM|| Front Page Top

#14 "I kind of find it disturbing that so many of you have 'in-depth' knowledge of the Waffen SS. Is the left right? Are we Nazis?"

Sorry, Sarge, but I find it disturbing that you would make a statement that seems to equate knowledge with approval. Personally, I would agree that there is an unhealthy streak of Germano-phile prejudice among many military history enthusiasts, but this is not the same as having some insight into the complexities of the period.
The SS is important as the prime example of a totalitarian political party's military arm. All totalitarian parties have such affiliates, though the connection is usually much less formal.
I believe that there are parallels in the radical parties of democratic countries. Besides the obvious example of Sinn Fein/IRA, we have the elite corps of "adventure sport" activists in the Greenpeace gang, and the masked blackshirt thugs who play such a crucial, and "plausibly deniable", role in providing muscle for Green Party events and other "peace" demonstrations.

Posted by Atomic Conspiracy 2003-9-29 5:43:06 PM|| 2003-9-29 5:43:06 PM|| Front Page Top

#15 Cyber Sarge,
First, it's the Baltics, not the Balkans.
Second, the sides were pretty well picked for them due to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Everybody remembers the part where Germany got Poland; most people forgot the part where Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia were put under the Soviet sphere. Stalin occupied those countries just weeks after Poland was invaded, and in the span of the year, killed thousands (about 2,000 in Estonia, where I'm living as an ex-pat).
I understand why people find this offensive, but from the Balts prospective, it was the lesser of two evils, and most of the Latvians were fighting against Russia and not so much for Germany.
Interestingly enough, the historiographies of the period show that it might have been much worse in the long run under Nazi occupation (Hitler wanted to kill all the Balts, form the Ostland territory for the Germans). But that doesn't mitigate the fact that the Russian invaded first, and the Balts knew what life was life under Stalin.
BTW, it should be noted that Latvians fought on the side of the Allies as well. The ships of the Latvian Navy that escaped (about eight of them) protected Allied shipping in the North Atlantic through the war.

Posted by Baltic Blog 2003-9-29 5:49:43 PM|| [http://balticblog.blogspot.com/] 2003-9-29 5:49:43 PM|| Front Page Top

#16 Mark IV.

The late models of Mark IV with the ultralong 75 (ie
the same gun than the Panther) carried a lot of punch. The difference was that about any allied tank or AT gun could punch holes in the Mark IV, while for the Panther the only gun who could reliably defeat its frontal armor was the 17 pounder (who was much more powerful than the American 76).

For the Tiger. I know about its slowness and its
tendency to bog (it was grossly underpowered for its weight) but one occasion (or was it two) a single Tiger ran through a column of Canadian Shermans, knocked out twenty five of them and escaped unharmed. You could not make this with a Mark IV.

The reason Mark IV stood as the main breadwinner for the Wehrmacht is the sae one who kept the Meserscmit 109 active despite the superiority of
FW190: its replacements were not available in big
enough numbers. Specially with the SS getting priority for the Tigers and Panthers while more experienced Wehrmacht tankers had to content with the with Mark IV (and until 1943, with the Mark III). Absurd if you want my opinion about this policy.

Posted by JFM 2003-9-29 6:11:26 PM|| 2003-9-29 6:11:26 PM|| Front Page Top

#17 The Waffen SS is the model for "Elite Republican Guards" of all totalitarian stripes, so there's a reason to be interested in their composition and employment. That doesn't imply approval. They're also much better documented than, say, the NKVD divisions the Soviets used.

They're also over and done with, set in amber, so to speak, so they're susceptible to being turned this way and that to be examined under a microscope. The German military of that period developed or refined many of the concepts we're still building on today, and battles like Kursk and Stalingrad and Bastogne will be studied for many years to come. Guderian was a brilliant general, regardless of his political leanings, just as Patton and Zhukov were. Dietrich was a pretty good one, too, independent of the fact that he was a thug.

Posted by Fred 2003-9-29 6:13:07 PM|| 2003-9-29 6:13:07 PM|| Front Page Top

#18 I kind of find it disturbing that so many of you have 'in-depth' knowledge of the Waffen SS. Is the left right? Are we Nazis?

I'm not a Nazi, but I do want to amplify my remarks.

I said man for man the SS fielded the best soldier during WWII, I want to also point out that the operational element of the Waffen SS were a fearsome force to be reckoned with: although not as well supplied or equipped as the Wehrmacht, their senior officer ranks had a number of old German Army trained officers recycled into the war. Their organization and operational elements of fighting those larger formations were second to none.

It is when we talk about squad and platoon tactics is where we find the SS was very much a poorly trained military fighting force. SS Units suffered heavier casualties, not because of their fighting spirit, but because of their lack of trained experienced NCOs within their ranks.

And having a well trained, well paid and motivated NCO cadre within your military organization makes all the difference between defeat and victory.

Now, I dont march around in jackboots or wear swastikas or any of that, but WWII is a subject of fascination with me, and I have read, read, read all I can about the subject, even going so far as to learn Russian and become involved in wargaming.

I seriously don't think that makes me a Nazi.

Posted by badanov 2003-9-29 6:13:23 PM|| [http://www.rkka.org] 2003-9-29 6:13:23 PM|| Front Page Top

#19 "...I seriously don't think that makes me a Nazi."

LOL badanov, no it would take a fair bit more than that.

Having an interest in, and appreciation of, military history does not make you a war-lover, or a political extremist. But I would say that it does give a person a knowledge and appreciation of the vital role that conflict has played in all our lives. It's when you have an unrealistic idea of war that people make mistakes, not from knowing too much about it.

I suspect that if you asked your anti-war protestor to give five facts about WWII, they would be stumped. Their ignorance is precisely what allows them to hold the conviction that war is something that is optional, and somehow unnecessary. It's a fool's idea of paradise.

Posted by Bulldog 2003-9-29 6:35:26 PM|| 2003-9-29 6:35:26 PM|| Front Page Top

#20 Hey Baltic Blog! (Love that site, by the way!) I hope I didn't imply somehow that Balts are Nazis or sympathizers. My 100% proud Lithuanian dad taught me better than that.
Thanks for bringing up what the Nazis were really hoping to do to them (kill them off to make room for Germans). I just have a hard time with fellow Balts commemorating people who fought on the wrong side, and who were responsible for sending some of my family members to the camps. Not everyone who ended up there was Jewish, ask TGA if you don't believe me. And to do this on Rosh Hashanah, of all days, seems even more insulting to the memories of their victims.
The SS were a very effective force, as noted by the previous posters. To pretty them up as "patriots" so you can justify memorializing them makes me sick.

Posted by Baba Yaga 2003-9-29 6:45:44 PM|| 2003-9-29 6:45:44 PM|| Front Page Top

#21 I'm probably expected to comment on that. Sorry I don't feel like it.

I had a good meal and I'd like to keep it.

Posted by True German Ally 2003-9-29 7:38:30 PM|| 2003-9-29 7:38:30 PM|| Front Page Top

#22 From a military standpoint, it pays to know about the German army and how they rolled up Western Europe in lighting fashion. If you think that Swartzkoff and Franks didn't study Rommel, you're kidding yourself.

Posted by Super Hose 2003-9-29 7:45:59 PM|| 2003-9-29 7:45:59 PM|| Front Page Top

#23 From a military standpoint, it pays to know about the German army and how they rolled up Western Europe in lighting fashion. If you think that Swartzkoff and Franks didn't study Rommel,

Or Guderian, Kleist, von Manstein, Model, Hoepner

Posted by badanov 2003-9-29 8:17:50 PM|| [http://www.rkka.org] 2003-9-29 8:17:50 PM|| Front Page Top

#24 TGA--no offense intended. Sorry to drag you into this, my bad.

Posted by Baba Yaga 2003-9-29 8:18:58 PM|| 2003-9-29 8:18:58 PM|| Front Page Top

#25 The Germans were the innovators of defense in depth, maneuver warfare, trench clearing, tank tactics, list goes on. We still study the hell out of them. It's easy to see hind sight w/perfect 20/20 vision. The Waffen SS did have great warriors, still doesn't negate the fact that they committed atrocities as did most militaries one time or another. War is a messy business. No one's condoning or absolving them of their treatment of the Jews and whole list of other peoples. Based solely on their feats on the battle field they are very impressive.

This subject will always be controversial due to the Nazi theme and anything to do w/Hitler.

Posted by Jarhead 2003-9-29 11:18:33 PM|| 2003-9-29 11:18:33 PM|| Front Page Top

#26 Badanov

About poorly-led SS. A french historian told about the way SS attacked his unit in 1940: bare torso, yell and charge. They were repulsed with heavy losses. He soberly commented: "This doesn't work when the opposite machine gunners keep their nerves". In 1940 SS units had a real leadership
and experience problem. In addition they were not better equipped than the Wehrmacht. In 1944
their cadre had had four years to gain experience and have some natural selection to weed out the idiots. It is possible that by 1944 some army people had gone to the SS due to better career perspectives. SS had also better tanks than Wehrmacht units.

However I am not aware of the SS ever getting a first class general a la Guderian

Posted by JFM 2003-9-30 1:57:51 AM|| 2003-9-30 1:57:51 AM|| Front Page Top

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