Historical Debate Regarding the WWII

[StetsonHomburg]

Hello,

I just thought I'd post this little tid-bit of a story and hear your opinions:...

Well one day in my school I decided to pay a visit to my history teacher, and history teachers of other grades who teach or at least touch on the topic of the second world war, here is the choking part..... Teachers are told to teach kids that all Third Reich Soldiers (Kriegsmarine, Wehrmacht, and Luftwaffe) are Nazis! For one most of them are very "dull" in the topic and haven't a clue about it besides the text book what happened, Besides the HUGE events that everyone knows like D-Day. I actually asked one the definition of Nazi and answered it with a litterally Ten minute speach about Hitlers rein and the TR, Most of which I didn't even know where they were getting this... It realy aggrivates me when an Intelligent person like me or you, or anyone that has a TR collection/intrest that then "society takes out their hot branding iron and presses the word Nazi into you." But what realy makes me laugh is most people don't even know the definition of Nazi it is very sad that most people are uniformed about the TR or even the German Empire and so then the people that are informed get the wrath of piling questions like are you a nazi? I belong to an exclusivly TR group also powered by Vbulliton- Wehrmacht Awards Forum and I am always hearing storys of when they "come out of the closet" about their collection (because I know alot of people don't tell any one about their Collection) and then their lover, friend, co-worker, boss, what ever are choked and think you are a nut!

 

[Dixon Cannon]

SH, hang in there!...it only gets worse!! :eusa_doh:
Our Luftwaffe group goes through the same thing and at CAF events many people don't want us in there group photos. On the other hand, in conversations with some, I'm able to discuss the TR and the NSDAP as the political 'gang' that they were - separate from the Wehrmacht und Kriegsmarine military branches. The Luftwaffe was in fact the only military branch created by the NSDAP on 26 February 1935 in violation of the WWI treaty. The Luftwaffe was headed by Herman Goering who was an ardent Nazi and Hitler's designated successor. Of course, many officers and enlisted men of the LW were not Nazi party members.

I myself am a Libertarian and a staunch advocate of small government and individual rights. I know what totalitarianism is and want no part of it. That being said, I have a deep fascination for how a society can embrace such an authoritarian regime as the Third Reich and the cult of personality that surrounded Adolf Hitler. That it existed and that is lasted for twelve years is historical fact - learning about it and studying it's effects is not a crime, an acceptance, an apology, or embrace. As you allude, it is intelligence fired by curiosity. Keep up the good work and study, study, study.

You have come to the right place for historical fact and elucidation on all things WWII, TR, NSDAP and military. Some of the cats in this bar are veritable professors on the subject. Just ask and you will get loads of response. Just tell and you'll get a lot of feedback.

You are a welcome asset here my friend.

Regards,
Dixon Cannon

 

[Silver Dollar]

Hoo boy. This is one subject I was hoping wouldn't come up but I can't keep my mouth shut on this.

First of all, I'm Jewish from Eastern European ancestry. My father's side is Hungarian and my mother's side is Polish. The only family members of mine that got out of Europe were my father's parents, one uncle, my mother's parents and one cousin. Just 6 people. Fortunately, they all came over to America before 1920. All the rest that stayed were exterminated by what is termed state sponsored annihilation or the Final Solution. I don't care if you were in the Kriegsmarine,, the Wehrmacht, the Luftwaffe or the SS, if you wore the swastika or the hakenkreuz as it was called, you stood for state sponsored extermination of a whole people. The SS may have been the most visible but they were not alone in their feelings. Antisemitism in Germany festered in all the services both military and paramilitary and in a large part of the civilian population. It's an inescapable fact and I didn't get that from Family Guy. I got that from witnesses, people who were in the camps and had to undergo terrible treatment and torture. I was able to hear these horror stories from survivors more than 45 years ago when I was about 15 up close and personal. I also have done a lot of reading on the subject over the years from recognized and trusted sources. Try to remember what the TR fought for, i.e. total European domination just like the Emprire of the Sun fought for total Asian domination. In my opinion, you can't separate the TR into who were good guys and who were bad guys and who were really bad guys. The Nazis or Nazional Socialistische Deutscher Arbeiter Partei ran the whole show and gave the orders. Everyone else followed suit.

Now, I'm not saying that you shouldn't collect TR memorabilia. I'm also not saying not to study accurate TR history. No one can afford to forget this part of history. Just make sure you keep it in the right context and recognize it for what it is. I hope you don't wear the stuff to school and around town. People will definitely get the wrong idea about you. I also have a small collection of SS memorabilia but I use it to teach young (and sometimes older) folks what these things look like and what they represent so when they see it they'll know the signs, recognize them for what they are and hopefully prevent something like the TR from ever happening again. I teach young folks that TR memorabilia isn't cool or radical, to use some over used words. I try to teach them that the TR philosophy and objective was dangerous, destructive and a host of other things. The trouble is if you look at many regions in the world today, you'll see that in too many cases, we haven't been too successful yet but I try to do my part.

In conclusion, I hope I've given you a different perspective on this subject of the TR. Please don't be upset because I find TR memorabilia offensive. I've just seen it from a different perspective.

 

[StetsonHomburg]

Hoo boy. This is one subject I was hoping wouldn't come up but I can't keep my mouth shut on this.

First of all, I'm Jewish from Eastern European ancestry. My father's side is Hungarian and my mother's side is Polish. The only family members of mine that got out of Europe were my father's parents, one uncle, my mother's parents and one cousin. Just 6 people. Fortunately, they all came over to America before 1920. All the rest that stayed were exterminated by what is termed state sponsored annihilation or the Final Solution. I don't care if you were in the Kriegsmarine,, the Wehrmacht, the Luftwaffe or the SS, if you wore the swastika or the hakenkreuz as it was called, you stood for state sponsored extermination of a whole people. The SS may have been the most visible but they were not alone in their feelings. Antisemitism in Germany festered in all the services both military and paramilitary and in a large part of the civilian population. It's an inescapable fact and I didn't get that from Family Guy. I got that from witnesses, people who were in the camps and had to undergo terrible treatment and torture. I was able to hear these horror stories from survivors more than 45 years ago when I was about 15 up close and personal. I also have done a lot of reading on the subject over the years from recognized and trusted sources. Try to remember what the TR fought for, i.e. total European domination just like the Emprire of the Sun fought for total Asian domination. In my opinion, you can't separate the TR into who were good guys and who were bad guys and who were really bad guys. The Nazis or Nazional Socialistische Deutscher Arbeiter Partei ran the whole show and gave the orders. Everyone else followed suit.

Now, I'm not saying that you shouldn't collect TR memorabilia. I'm also not saying not to study accurate TR history. No one can afford to forget this part of history. Just make sure you keep it in the right context and recognize it for what it is. I hope you don't wear the stuff to school and around town. People will definitely get the wrong idea about you. I also have a small collection of SS memorabilia but I use it to teach young (and sometimes older) folks what these things look like and what they represent so when they see it they'll know the signs, recognize them for what they are and hopefully prevent something like the TR from ever happening again. I teach young folks that TR memorabilia isn't cool or radical, to use some over used words. I try to teach them that the TR philosophy and objective was dangerous, destructive and a host of other things. The trouble is if you look at many regions in the world today, you'll see that in too many cases, we haven't been too successful yet but I try to do my part.

In conclusion, I hope I've given you a different perspective on this subject of the TR. Please don't be upset because I find TR memorabilia offensive. I've just seen it from a different perspective.

Well In some alot of cases I believe you are right (and that just my point of view) And it's okay if you find TR memorabilia offencive. But There were "good people" maby if you saw the movie Valkyrie you'd knoww Claus von Staffenberg, And there were good generals that wern't ruthless in the war, Erwin Rommel many people loved/respected him (BRITISH/GERMAN)! Know the extermination of jew was a very very terrible tragity, but that wasn't run by your average heer or KM soldat, It was the youth and old of the Waffen-SS emersed in Nazi propoganda that were so twisted well we all know the rest. If you look in ANY and EVERY picture of germans (soldiers) in concentration camps you don't see a wreath on their Schirmmütze you see a smiling DEATH HEAD. And when you look at their waffenfarbe you see light brown (Consentration Camps) . Dixon what's your take on this?

 

[BaggyPants]

My daughter is doing WWII in year six at the minute. They were being told about the park railings being cut down so the metal could be used to make weapons, vehicles and bombs etc. Now, having an interest in WWII myself from an early age, I had pointed out the stumps of the old railings many times before, and also told her that it was mainly propaganda that the metal was to be used for the war effort, a ruse to help pull the population together, as the iron used in railings is useless for just about anything else and it was easier and cheaper back then to use iron ore than to process the scrap. In fact, hundreds of tons of this scrap metal went to the bottom of river estuaries or sat in scrap yards until at least the 1980's. The real need was for copper and aluminium, not iron. When my daughter put her hand up and mentioned this in class, she was told that she was completely wrong! Two minutes on google would have shown the teacher that what she was teaching was erroneous, but instead, the myth continues

 

[Silver Dollar]

Don't get me wrong about one thing. I never believed that teachers are always right, never make mistakes and always speak the truth They make oodles of booboos and many times don't know what the heck they are teaching. It depends alot on what books or films they get their info from.

It's also true that alot of the atrocities were commited by the SS but even though men like Rommel and Von Stauffenberg seemed like decent men, their uniforms still carried that swastika. That's my sticking point. I just can't glorify a symbol I know stands for a lot of things that shouldn't be. SH, I know you are young and haven't had much experience outside of what you've seen in movies and textbooks. You are not wrong in collecting TR memorabilia, even the SS stuff. Like I said before, if you keep it all in the proper context, then your intentions can never be mistaken and you'll be on a good track. TR memorabilia must be preserved to serve as an example of a philosophy gone whackoid. We'll never eliminate prejudice in this screwed up world but at least we can speak out against it and help keep it in check the best we can. You sound to me like a very smart student. Keep up the good work and don't get sidetracked.

 

[Corto]

I'm a history teacher. I do not teach that all Germans were Nazis, but I also teach that you didn't have to be a Nazi, or serve in the Schutzstaffel to commit war crimes or participate "obliquely" in the Holocaust. Check out this link for some documents to that effect:http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/wehrmacht.htm. Wikipedia also has a good site on the same: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_of_the_Wehrmacht

Mostly I teach a "banality of evil" type of thing. But I don't teach that all Germans were bad.

 

[Silver Dollar]

Corto, that's exactly what I was talking about. Not every German was a Nazi. Still, that hakenkreuz just turns me off altogether.

 

[Corto]

Corto, that's exactly what I was talking about. Not every German was a Nazi. Still, that hakenkreuz just turns me off altogether.

I feel exactly the same way. That symbol strikes a very visceral chord with me as well.

 

[StetsonHomburg]

I'm a history teacher. I do not teach that all Germans were Nazis, but I also teach that you didn't have to be a Nazi, or serve in the Schutzstaffel to commit war crimes or participate "obliquely" in the Holocaust. Check out this link for some documents to that effect:http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/wehrmacht.htm. Wikipedia also has a good site on the same: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_of_the_Wehrmacht

Mostly I teach a "banality of evil" type of thing. But I don't teach that all Germans were bad.

Well I have to agree with that. But the Wehrmacht is the Kriegsmarine/Luftwaffe/Heer all put together Like you have the military then the army and so and so. And yes you didn't have to be in the SS to commit those things but it was throught Hitler's twisted propaganda through which he took inoccent little boy and turned them into Fanatical Hitlerjugent. I do however think you have to give some generals and soldats a break because some were just fighting for their fatherland to protect it... And I am just a 13 year old but I do know my stuff when it comes to places like afrika and the atlantic. They may have carried the swastica but that dosen't mean it is their believe, I am not sure if this is a proper example but in Vietnam americans carried the Flag on their sleeve, It dosen't mean they wanted to fight... because they were drafted. If I had to say one thing though it is that there were many decent men fighting for their lives and country who fought just as honourably as the British or Canadians, and to remind people that Germans wern't the only ones commiting war crimes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_war_crimes_during_World_War_II even thought it dosen't come close to the german ones they still commited them to.

 

[Atinkerer]

Don't look in the mirror!

The scary thing about the Nazis and their state sponsored extermination, is the fact that they were people no different than you are, or I am.

That's why I say we should vilify the Nazis and make them out to be two dimensional comic book monsters, so that they don't resemble real people. The only problem with that is, that by making people like Hitler out to be two dimensional characters, we let our guard down and fail to see the monsters we live with in our world today.

Tony

 

[ukali1066]

An interesting comparison would be the war in Iraq now...

A war started on highly dubious reasoning by corrupt politicians with their own agendas..

But we don't vilify the US/UK troops for their part in it all...and rightly so, they're just doing a job that they've been sent to do...and which many of them don't agree with...

There were German troops doing exactly that in WW2 also

 

[Atinkerer]

ukali1066, could you please give me an example of a war, any war, where the publicly stated reason to justify a nation of people going to war and the real political reason for war were one and the same?

Maybe you think the American Civil War was fought to free the slaves???

Also, "corrupt" is a relative term, especially when used in reference to us humans. The Greek Gods made war, I hear, so maybe they weren't corrupt because they were Gods? But as for everyone else...?

And as for agendas, all people have the same one.

Tony

 

[Phantomfixer]

An interesting comparison would be the war in Iraq now...

A war started on highly dubious reasoning by corrupt politicians with their own agendas..

But we don't vilify the US/UK troops for their part in it all...and rightly so, they're just doing a job that they've been sent to do...and which many of them don't agree with...

There were German troops doing exactly that in WW2 also

That is a can of worms better left unopened in this forum as it has nothing to do with WWII.

 

[dhermann1]

(I can see a padlock looming on the horizon . . . . . )

 

[Bingles]

I wasn't going to post to this either.. but I couldn't resist. I am a certified Social Studies teacher, but work as a substitute until a position opens up (which is unlikely any time soon with the US economy).

Keep in mind that just because someone is a history teacher doesn't mean he/she is an expert in all things from the past. When I was taking my certification exam, I was tested on questions from Mesopotamia to Current events.. and everything in between. Sometimes, newer teachers have to re-learn material before they teach it to their classes...

And don't get me started on time constraints. There is just not enough time in the year to get as in depth into material as we would like. We always seem to be playing catch up.. so sometimes we "stick to the curriculum" in order to make sure our behinds are covered. ie: If the state doesn't mandate much time on said topic, usually teachers won't either.

Lastly, the Holocaust/WWII/TR is a very touchy subject... While it is wrong to demonize all people in the Nazi party, it would be wrong to paint them as innocent. The Nazi party leaders (and by extension the leaders of the TR) were horrible people, and the party has been linked with their legacies. Just google Nazi today and see what kinds of hate groups that come up.

I have a friend who has some interesting artifacts from post WWII when a friend of his was in Germany during its fall... even has a Nazi banner. The artifacts are cool.. and the TR had a great sense of style.. but those pieces of history are as much chilling as they are fascinating.

 

[Chainsaw]

Whether it is Nazi SS soldiers or Communists, these are topics that are perhaps best left alone. Not every German soldier was a "Nazi", and the most brutal Nazi's weren't even German. Unfortunately there were even great leaps forward accomplished by the Nazi's, and the amount of Knowledge they had was amazing. They weren't civilised long enough, to have so much pride, I suppose the same can be said of my Poland. As for the Communists? They were far worse than Hitler.

The only proper use of a swastika, is by Buddhists or the like.

I believe that I had this conversation with an Itlian friend, he wanted to know why Musolini couldn't be respected.

 

[StetsonHomburg]

I wasn't going to post to this either.. but I couldn't resist. I am a certified Social Studies teacher, but work as a substitute until a position opens up (which is unlikely any time soon with the US economy).

Keep in mind that just because someone is a history teacher doesn't mean he/she is an expert in all things from the past. When I was taking my certification exam, I was tested on questions from Mesopotamia to Current events.. and everything in between. Sometimes, newer teachers have to re-learn material before they teach it to their classes...

And don't get me started on time constraints. There is just not enough time in the year to get as in depth into material as we would like. We always seem to be playing catch up.. so sometimes we "stick to the curriculum" in order to make sure our behinds are covered. ie: If the state doesn't mandate much time on said topic, usually teachers won't either.

Lastly, the Holocaust/WWII/TR is a very touchy subject... While it is wrong to demonize all people in the Nazi party, it would be wrong to paint them as innocent. The Nazi party leaders (and by extension the leaders of the TR) were horrible people, and the party has been linked with their legacies. Just google Nazi today and see what kinds of hate groups that come up.

I have a friend who has some interesting artifacts from post WWII when a friend of his was in Germany during its fall... even has a Nazi banner. The artifacts are cool.. and the TR had a great sense of style.. but those pieces of history are as much chilling as they are fascinating.

Well you see there you go you are an informed teacher, and I do understand that you have very little time to touch on this delicate topic of interest but there is some basic knowledge that seems knowone besides people like historians, collectors, reenactors, enthusiests know and because no one is informed that is the problem. I find it hard to reply to alot of these because I have to think through these very carfully on what I say. I am not sure how to end this... And I think I will bring this up to my other friends on the forums "sister" Wehrmacht Awards also powered by vBullitun. I will post a link and see what they say because these are the real experts in the TR and so and so. Here is a link to the thread I created on there: http://www.wehrmacht-awards.com/forums/showthread.php?p=3989909#post3989909 I am Panzerarmee Afr....

 

[Corto]

(I can see a padlock looming on the horizon . . . . . )

Yes, please. HURRY. I'm really trying to hold back.

 

[Widebrim]

I believe that I had this conversation with an Itlian friend, he wanted to know why Musolini couldn't be respected.

Although I have an interest in early-20th century Italian militaria, and know that there were many servicemen of the Royal Army, Air Force, and Navy (as well as colonial troops) who wanted nothing to do with fascism, it is true that any link with Mussolini is usually regarded as guilt by association. And whatever "good" may have come out of fascism, Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia, his involvement in Spain, and his alliance with Hitler preclude, in my opinion, any true "respect" being showered on the man.