The SS were declared a criminal organisation. That’s all we need to know to condemn them and anyone who whitewashes them from participants in this thread to the ‘re-enactors’ and this individual frack-wit.
Of course they weren’t, as the Waffen-SS was committing its war crimes at the front. I’m not going to bother to link to the POW massacres, civilian massacres, or genocidal massacres. They’re all in the historical record, and anyone who doesn’t know about them is being willfully ignorant.
The Waffen-SS was declared a criminal orginazation, and its members were for decades denied veteran’s benefits by the German government. That also is in the historical record.
I, for one, don’t give two shits if someone wants to dress up as Bill Anderson, Sepp Dietrich, or William Calley, but as soon as they start whitewashing those people’s bloody murderous hands, I’m going to call bullshit.
That’s what I figured since so far you’ve done a terrific job of missing the point so far. Let’s see if you can miss it again: Rich Iott was part of a group that praises these SS volunteers as brave and valiant men who were fighting for freedom and ignores the fact that they killed civilians for fun. I wasn’t. (Much more minor difference: I don’t know if my costume was period accurate, but the Nazis in the play wore actual swastikas. Given the conditions, obviously nobody was worried we’d be mistaken for people who were looking at the positive attributes of the SS. ;))
Really? Because I would take an M1 over any of the bolt-actions rifles the majority of the rest of the world’s soldiers was using any day.
I think a PPsh-41 looks cooler than any MP-40. The Germans seemed to think it worked better as well - they certainly used enough captured ones.
The Germans did have better Machine Guns, at least until you got to the .50 Caliber US models.
Tanks? They made some good ones, but why would that effect any decision as to what unit to join? The German WW2 reenactor units I have seen are lucky to get an Armored Car or halftrack running, forget getting a Panther or Tiger on the field.
Where did I say they were, idiot? Maybe a cite would be handy. I said they were a criminal organization. And they were. I said the volunteers were criminals. And they were.
Yes I will pass judgment on them, and on those who seek to exonerate them today.
You know I was totally with your on you attacks on the obvious obfuscating about the SS not REALLY being criminal commiters of atrocities, but then you go and do the same thing with “fuck you” and “fuck off” being not the same thing. Really.
I think they are exactly the same thing. I think the rules on language in the Pit are utterly stupid, but I do try to obey them given the fact I voluntarily post here.
I’m not trying to make a case there is a difference in meaning between them. Just the rules are, to be honest, an ass. I thought I was within them, and, given that I wasn’t, I apologized and provided the reason I erroneously broke them.
I think it needs to be remembered that the horrors of WWII’s Nazi atrocities doesn’t all fall on Nazi ideology. In the mind of turn of the century German generals partisans were an unacceptable combat contingency. Prussian efficiency, control, is what wins wars and deviation from that is failure.
Oh God, I just found out my dad knows this guy. They were in the Ohio Militia together. Not a paramilitary bunch like the Michigan Militia, but more of a “Dad’s Army” outfit that helps out as they can (they directed traffic during the Dayton Accords.), likes to dress up like soldiers, sit around at the American Legion bar & drink beer, watch Fox News.
Well, it’s clear that the ss would have to go, after the war. After all it was a political institution and definately criminal.
Somehow excluding the Waffen-ss would have been impossible. Quite a few had commited war-crimes and there was intermingling from personell guilty of taking part in the holocaust. Seperating those from the ones that were genuinely just soldiers would have been an enormous undertaking.
It doesn’t and shouldn’t. I wanted to point out this particular barbarisim is not confined to Nazi ideology and had history within the German army 20 year before. And not in just a kind of ‘unless we learn from history we’re doomed to repeat it’ kind of way but in a very real belief that this was how you win and that alone makes it ok.
Committing atrocities is hard on conscripted morale, better to let the resolute do it.
It certainly is a very real belief, but it’s not very successful in practice. The surest way to stiffen an enemy’s resolve to fight to the very bitter end even when faced with an untenable situation rather than surrender is to execute prisoners. Atrocities also lead to counter-atrocities and the fighting just becomes more brutal. For instance, after finding the bodies of prisoners murdered by the Hitlerjugend in Normandy the Canadians by and large simply stopped taking SS prisoners; any attempt to surrender on the battlefield was likely to be met with a bullet or the end of a bayonet.
Yes and no. For example from here on the massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane by the 2nd SS Das Reich
Lott did not glorify the SS in his statements and I don’t think, you will find any - that is the official line anyhow.
So for all intent and purpose, he was just re-enacting.
Now, that does not take from the fact, that it was a very stupid choice of costumes.
But when those re-enactment folks do South and North, well do these Southler still believe in slavery or just trying to have some fun.
Also, this would be the first time, that I heared of the US is forbidding people to have certain believes/choice of clothing etc, however retared these believes might be.
