""You have to respect them for their fighting skill"?" Topic

Perhaps I should offer the opinion of a friend of mine, who saw some of the worst abuses of the Imperial Japanese Army in WW2.

You see, my friend Jess was in the Philippines, and survived Bataan. He held absolutely no hate for the Japanese. He understood their hatred of the Americans. After all, it's a pretty rough way to go when someone puts a shotgun shell on the end of a bamboo stick with a nail behind it. American steps out from behind the bushes and plants that bang-stick square in the chest of the Japanese soldier. Up close and personal death is pretty hard to deal with.

Why were the Americans using bang-sticks? Because when "that son-of-a-bitch who left us to die" left the Philippines, he took all the weapons and left the men behind with a supply of gunpowder.

The views of people who were in the trenches are quite fascinating. Some developed a great deal of respect and even admiration, others developed a burning hatred. Sometimes a bit of both, I imagine.

The SS with armour and air support struggled against British paratroopers at Arnhem, even though the latter were substantially green troops.

Circumstances matter.

I understand the SS troops in Arnhem were just a shadow of what they should have been by TOE. Very few tanks, and few armoured vehicles of any type and quite low on manpower.

Also, the bulk of the Germans in Arnhem were an NCO training unit.

Given the balance of forces in and around Arnhem the result is not remarkable really. The Germans lacked the strength to eliminate Frost's forces at the bridge any earlier than they did – and once reinforced the defenders had no chance to hold out.

Enormous courage notwithstanding – the results were pretty much in line with what you would expect.

I think we all get caught up on the political side when the SS are mentioned. What we forget is from a military perspective, they trained from the start for combat. They used lived and breathed war from the start.

They never bothered with military skills that detracted from honing their combat skills, such as endless rounds of parade ground drill.

Skill at arms field craft map reading all of these were honed and tested to the full in as a realistic setting as possible with live ammunition.

In the late 80's i very rarely went anywhere near live ammunition for field exercises, it was always blank.
CQB training and live fire exercises were rare.

The SS training establishments were training recruits for one and one thing only, to kill other human beings, this is the dogma for ALL Infantry/Armour…
"see without being seen, kill without being killed".

Notice the Kill part…

Back in medieval times recruits (Squires) were trained in all aspects of war, and martial skills it was their life. And atrocities were carried out throughout history. The Wars of the roses was about wiping out family lines not about taking ground or land.

You look at Towton or Bosworth were no quarter was given for the loser, this was all out war. Yet nobody seems to class either side as the bad guy.

So you look at the combat skills, the combined operation skills, these same skills that the modern day Bundeswher carried over from the 40's.

Dear Lion in the Stars

I had a friend who survived Bataan too!

She was an army nurse. She never used a bang-stick on anyone. For four years she survived beatings, multiple, rapes, mutilations, and torture just for the fun of it at the hands of the Japanese. She watched three of her unit raped to death, one disemboweled as well.

I do not recall the United States forces doing that. I recall them pleading with the Japanese not to kill themselves needlessly and giving them good treatment when captured.

So you are saying the Japanese were justified because the Americans'fought with Japanese methods and with whatever they could to defend themselves to the last? Just like the Japanese? So that's honorable for the japs but not for us?

OK, I see, so what's sauce for the goose isn't sauce for the gander? OK. we've taken your measure.

People inevitably argue at cross purposes when these kind of threads come up. I try not to get involved for that reason but sometimes I lack the willpower…M-U-S-T H-A-V-E M-O-R-E S-E-L-F C-O-N-T-R-O-L….

BF Andy,

One thing that the Bundeswehr did not carry over from the 40s is the massacring of prisoners and civilians as official policy. If you really do not think that the SS as an organisation were the "bad guys", then I suggest that you need to think a little more.

Jurgen

"They never bothered with military skills that detracted from honing their combat skills, such as endless rounds of parade ground drill."

Well apart from the parade ground drill the SS had in their training regime…

"A combination of rigid physical selection, extremely tough military training, ideological indoctrination and parade-ground spit-and-polish"

Flecktarn.

Bomber Harris comes to mind….good guy really?
How many innocent Civilians died under his tactics, flooding the Ruhr, not to mention Caen etc…..that was offical policy.

I do not condone politics i was emphasisng their ability to do the job in hand and that is combat at the basic level…and i certainly do not class the SS as good guys, especially when the aspect of ethnic cleansing comes up.

People do what they believe is right at the time…both sides killed prisoners, and probably still do even to this day without our known it.

Is any one nation "good guys", this glorious nation of mine invented the concentration camp and supported the slave trade…

OSchmidt – I think he was relaying the views of his friend, not stating his own preferences.

BF Andy,

Your moral equivalence argument does not stand up to serious scrutiny.

The land forces of the Wehrmacht (both SS and Heer) carried out deliberate massacres of civilians based solely on their nationality, ethnicity or religion. That had nothing to do with trying to win the war.

Allied bombing, on the other hand, was aimed at winning what their enemy had declared to be a Total War by destroying Germany's productive capability, transport system and the willingness of its population to continue the war. The deaths of civilians were a necessary outcome of trying to win the war.

I would rather hope that you can see the difference.

As for Bomber Harris, I certainly do not regard him as a bad guy; he was fighting a ruthless campaign against a ruthless enemy that had to be beaten.

With regard to the capabilities of SS units, most of them were average at best and even the quality of the better units deteriorated rapidly after reaching a peak in about mid 1943.

You may be unaware that many inmates of, and independent inspectors of, British concentration camps in the Boer War praised their treatment of the inmates; they were utterly different from those used by the Nazis and existed for a completely different purpose. As for slavery, you should probably stop beating yourself up over that as it was pretty much universally accepted at the time and Britain did more to stop it than virtually any other country.

Just to give you some context for my views, I am German and a serving Bundeswehr officer, my paternal family came from in and around Dresden and my maternal grandfather was an SS general who was personally responsible for between 3-4% of Jewish deaths in Nazi occupied Europe.

Jurgen

Dear Weasel

Ah, but in relaying the views of his friend he Is advancing it as proof of his own point-- therefore he makes it his own.

You cannot put your friends bullet in your gun and fire it at someone and kill him and claim "It wasn't my bullet!"

He is saying that all atrocities committed by the Japanese were justified by a few desperate attempts to resist on the part of the Americans. As I said, it's an argument that only works on those who do not know the truth.

It's like once I was going training as a teacher in a class, and one girl said she didn't think Japan did anything wrong when they bombed Pearly Harbor by surprise, after all we bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Arguments to causality and chronology had no effect on her. When a person has an idea fixe on a lie, he has to hold on to it for dear life to avoid admitting it's a lie.

You will notice that he did not say his friend was American.

One must not only pay attention to what someone says, but how they chose to say it, and just as important what they have chosen NOT to say and how they have chosen NOT to say it.

Dear BF Andy

Ummm… Why did Bomber Harris and Curtis Lemay kill all those civilians? It was to destroy the German and Japanese War Effort by attacking workers and civilians to end the war. While terrible and regrettable it is collateral damage and crates chaos and destruction in the enemy war effort and civil society which supports the war effort.

The aim of le May and Harris was to win the war. When it ended the bombing stopped. That was always the plan, and when they surrendered the bombing stopped.

The aim of the SS was to exterminate the Jews (among others). It was never anything other, and had they won they would have continued slaughtering the Jews (and lots others).

There is a difference.

The

So I generally don't hold the SS in that high regard, because they weren't all that good until mid-1942/1943, when they stared getting preferential treatment with regards to equipment, etc.

But then I think about the HitlerJugend division. Fanatical Nazis, to be sure. But National Socialism was pretty much all they'd ever known, it was what they thought of as Germany's "normal." And having been raised in the Hitler Youth, they'd been totally immersed in the philosophy from a very young age.

How can we judge them for being "evil Nazis" when they never knew anything else? They had no basis for comparison that might have led them to doubt that all was not well with National Socialism. How can we judge them as evil when they had no experience of what we would consider "good?"

When you come down to it, having a healthy respect for your enemies isn't such a bad thing since if we don't we're more likely to get ourselves killed for underestimating them.

Dear Weasel

As proof of what I said, note this quote from his argument.

"Why were the Americans using bang-sticks? Because when "that son-of-a-bitch who left us to die" left the Philippines, he took all the weapons and left the men behind with a supply of gunpowder"

Really? Last time I checked Bugout Doug left in PT boards. which had to pack on extra fuel for the trip. I don't think there was much space on them for the weapons he allegedly took out with him.

Obviously putting things like this in an assertion makes it absurd.

Acknowledging an enemy's fighting prowess and even studying it closely is one thing. However the word 'respect' connotes a degree of admiration or at least a willingness to tolerate such behaviour and this to me seems folly. Savage warriors and soldiers who have shed themselves of any empathy for their foes or subject populations are monsters and should never be respected. They must be put down and then shown as examples of what not to be.
Mserafin:
The Hitler Youth may have had little choice in becoming what they became and that could be seen as tragic. But they were fanatical Nazis who regularly broke the widely accepted rules and conventions of war and committed regular atrocities against soldiers and civilians alike. You may feel sorry for these young, brainwashed, killing-machines and you may show some empathy for them being forced into such a diabolical niche, but I would caution all not to respect them. To respect them gives some measure of legitimacy, and that perpetuates the diseases of National Socialism and Aryan Supremacy. You may love a dog which has gone rabid but you still must put the animal down to stop the spread of the virus. Ideologies and belief systems which underpin such evil movements like Nazism or the Pol Pot Khmer Rouge must never be accepted and giving respect to the foot soldiers of such regimes only lends credence and some legitimacy to their wicked and monstrous ways.
Rod Robertson.

I think the problem here lies in the definition of the word "respect" when conjoined with the military.
I doubt there have been very many combat veterans from any army in history who felt the same the day they took their uniform off from the day they put it on, and unfortunately, I would venture, very, very few of those men could say that in their time in combat that they did not perform, were party to, or witnessed some act, they were not in some way ashamed of.
That,I'm afriad, is what war is about.
What actually commands the notion of respect for a soldier?
Obedience? Definitly not.
Ability to survive? Not enough.
Ability to kill? Same.
Self-sacrifice? Possibly, but again, maybe not enough.
It's too complex, far to complex for someone who has not been through it to understand, yet too personal, painfull and conflicting for those who have to retain much degree of objectivity.
Kill or be killed… Its a simple thing to write, more difficult in practice, and a choice the vast majority of us never have to make.

Simply being a member of the SS didn't make for a murderer of civilians, but it did make it more likely, but was it as likely as a myriad of other soldiers? My old RAF dad never really talked much about the attacks he made on French trains,but I've always had a suspicion he was never reconciled to knowing he had killed civillians, but, as has been said previously, when the job was done, it stopped, and that didn't happen with the SS, as an organisation it embraced a culture which sanctioned such acts, acts which would be continued after the fighting stopped, so yes, there is a difference.

Most soldiers do their time as young men,in extraordinary circumstances, personally, I think those worthy of respect are those who learn from their experiences to develop into rounded human beings, and perhaps, that could include some former SS men.

As an aside,This morning I saw a newspaper article about the New Brad biopic. It showed Mr Pitt on the red carpet in Leicester Sq with a 90 year old former tanker from the 13/18 hussars.
I know which of the two garnered most respect from me, and always will.

Another story:
I met an SS vet once.
In 2000, there was a massive (possibly the biggest table-top game ever) refight of Kursk, Spearhead rules, a week long game, every unit represented at platoon level, about 50 players, extraordinary event.
Late in the week, the organisers rolled out this old boy to come down and have a look and give a bit of a talk about the battle, he had been a 37mm flak gunner in Totenkopf…Tottenkopf!… and he'd lived out his life in rural Devon for the next 55 years….The mere fact that he had survived the eastern front for 3 years was in itself pretty remarkable, he went through the whole process of being a potential war crimminal, did a few years in a camp, got released, married and settled in England, lived out his life..
The fact was though, in the end, he was a fairly unrepentant old Nazi, still thought Theodore Eicke was a good commander, God alone knows what he did, saw, allowed his mates to do, if not himself….
It was quite bizarre, meeting him, at the game of the battle in which he had been a participent, he only said one thing to me, whilst pointing at a sdkfz 7 flak gun. He just said "Don't get me killed!"…which I thought, was a reasonable reaction…

But did I respect him?

No, no, I didn't. I was glad he had had the chance to live out his life, when so many others hadn't, but I could find no empathy with the man, he didn't seem to have any real idea of the enormity of the responsibility that the rest of the world placed upon his actions by being a member of that organisation.
If he had been some kid given a pzrfaust in 1945 it might have been different, but he wasn't, we are talking about a man who joined 3rd SS in 42, and 58 years later didn't seem to appreciate how that made him, and how he was perceived…
As I said in my previous post, it just seems way to complex to understand

No respect for the fighting "abilities" for any of the vicious "bad guy" armies like the boers, SS, Imperial Japanese, Zulu, religious fanatics and the like.

I can accept that they may have been brave, and sometimes first rate military men. Still a pack of Gits.

Other people can collect them. (I've never met any nazis, boer white supremacists, Zulu philes though I've met plenty who collect their figures).

Christot?

Was his name Rudi?

I remember an old German fellow who turned up at the Kirby Hall history in action re enactment in his old SS gear. Quite unashamed of his SS career.

In Spain in 1999 I took part in the first Napoleonic re enactment in Spain at Corunna. One of the Spanish re enactors was a former hit man for Franco. Quite friendly but the other Spaniards have him a wide birth.

Wow, this certainly went off the rails. Not unprecedented here on TMP, but I thought we were going to pretend to be a bunch of wargamers arguing about which units should get +1 on their die rolls for morale, etc…

A quick side note: respect does not equal admire.

But I'll hop in, just because I can't really stomach the self-righteousness and lack of empathy, which I (mistakenly) thought was part of what we didn't like about the bad guys. Once again I find myself in quite a strange situation, in this case, standing up for the men of the SS combat units (AKA Waffen SS, which, in my limited understanding, is different from the concentration camp personnel with regards to military formation and duties; additionally, though they were not concentration camp personnel, I am aware of atrocities committed by Waffen SS personnel).

What follows is an attack on the reasoning of everyone here saying 'men from that organization/military/country are evil' (and deserve to be put down, as noted in a post above), simply for being a member of said organization/military/country.

So, for those of you condemning every man that served in an SS combat formation, let's get a sense of proportion. Did you know that the Waffen SS fielded approximately 40 divisions at its peak? For those of you that play wargames but don't realize what that means, if we average it out (big divisions vs. small divisions) we can call each division in at about 10,000 men. That's each division; 40 of them. That's not including Corps/Army level HQ and support personnel.

I wasn't able to find a solid number for casualties or total personnel that served in the Waffen SS during the war, but I did see the number 750,000 for casualties in a few places here on the internet. So let's take a guess, and be conservative about it: 400,000 troops in combat divisions at the high point not including HQ/support at higher echelon, 750,000 non-ambulatory casualties during the war, I gotta figure a minimum number of 1.5 million men served in the Waffen SS at some point during the period Sep 1939 to May 1945.

Quite a few were old men and kids by the end of the war, and from 1943 on, quite a number were conscripted into service. But all of them were evil, right? Everyone one of them burned down villages, raped, and pillaged?

None of them were men, like you or I, doing their best to defend their homeland against foreign invaders, and never, ever, killed a civilian or murdered an EPW, etc? None of them deserve our empathy, or a minute of our time, to figure out what HIS story is, and not assume he's a mass murder because he happened to come of military age in Germany between 1939 and 1945?

I just think it's a little ridiculous; first, that we're doing this on a wargaming website, and second, that folks could look at a simple soldier and expect that, simply because he's a soldier, he's not as human as you are.

None of what I have said is in the defense of evil, nor is it to deny that evil exists, both at the individual and the institutional level. I've got no problem with hating the SS ('Waffen' or otherwise) as an institution because of its collective service in the name of evil, but I could never damn every German who fought in WWII.

If you think you're better than that, ask yourself this question: it's summer of 1943, you were born in May 1924, the jig is up. The German borders have not yet been pierced, but news from the front is not good: the 'happy days' are long gone, but the German military is losing on every front (Russia, Italy, the Atlantic, and in the air). What do you do?

Are you going to refuse to serve (as if that was an option)? Keep in mind, eight, and probably nine out of every ten of you are going to be ground-pounders. Might you have ended up in the Waffen SS? Possibly conscripted in, but you might have even volunteered! Why? Why do men of every nation throughout time join units such as the the Airborne, or the Marines, or Special Forces?*

If you then go on to rape, pillage, and burn, I've got a problem with you. But if you took up arms for your country and fought honorably, as most soldiers do, I've got no problem with you…

*It was brought up in a previous post that no one could have possibly joined the Waffen SS because they wanted to be a member of an elite unit. I'm not expert:

link

but I don't recall seeing any 'sign up to commit genocide, kill prisoners, and level villages.' Looks like your standard fare of 'defend your nation,' 'be a man amongst men' type stuff that's suckered young men for centuries ;)

Ditto for the German propaganda films I'm aware of; SS troops are shown as dashing young men fighting for Ma, Pa, and schnitzel. I know you're all geniuses, but are you going to tell me there's not a teeny, tiny, little chance that you might not have taken the bait and served your country honorably, even if not everyone else in your division did? Come on, you play with toy soldiers!

Enough rambling. I say all that to say this: (in my humble opinion) there are evil men to be found in every walk of life (why do we have prisons?), to include the ranks of the soldier. But most of the time a soldier is just a soldier, just like a grocery clerk is a grocery clerk. Is the German grocery clerk in Berlin evil too, because he sold canned goods to Nazi Party members?

V/R,
Jack

Just Jack and all TMP:
After reading Just Jack's analysis and rereading my post above, I feel I must first clarify my post and then apologise to you all. I used the words 'put down' twice in my post. The first time I used it in relation to warriors and soldiers who have lost all empathy. The second time was in relation to rabid animals. I was way over the top in my first use of the phrase and I regret my words. My extremism was a textual version of the kind of violent extremism which I was declaiming against – a bitter irony which I now see clearly. I was wrong to write what I wrote and I want to make it clear that I do not condone my own extremism. What I wrote was wrong and it was stupid of me to say what I said.
I apologise to you all for my shameful excess and hyperbole.
Rod Robertson.

Rod,

No sweat man, and I wasn't trying to single you out, there are a few folks getting a bit worked up about this. I was only trying to make the point that, while evil certainly exists, generally speaking a soldier is a soldier, meaning most of the men out there (in any era) doing the fighting are just like you and I (assuming we both hold ourselves as one of the 'normal' guys), just doing their part for what they believe in (as a normal guy; back to our WWII German example, I've never heard that any significant portion of the population joined the military to perform ethnic cleansing).

Even regarding the current world situation with IS/ISIL/ISIS/DAESH, I think it's probably very similar to the Nazi regime. You've got some real choice folks running the show (at least the public face), but I'm sure there are a whole lot of basic trigger pullers fighting for a wide variety of 'normal' reasons (I'm an Iraqi Sunni betrayed by the Shia, I'm an Iraqi that lost everything/was abandoned by the West, I'm a Syrian that lost everything to/trying to protect my family from Assad, etc…).

I've mentioned previously that I fought in Iraq and Afghanistan; I don't hate the people we fought, despite the fact there is a goodly number of truly evil ers in their ranks (if anyone doesn't believe me, just check Youtube). Even so, I still believe there are a great many that fought us because they were defending their homes, or were patriots (from a national, regional, or tribal standpoint), or simply had the young man's romanticized view of war and was looking for adventure. And whatever one thinks of their politics/religion/worldview, they still suck with regard to martial skill ;)

In any case, this is the quintessential reason why TMP should follow it's own rules about 'no politics,' and simply talk about what happened, what is happening, and what is going to happen when our tables are adorned with tiny little troops. We could easily have stuck to debating whether organization 'X' should get a +1 or not, or only in years 1, 2, and 3, or maybe units A and B of organization X, but not units C and D, unless it was when Colonel Y was their CO. But we got worked up and off track again.

V/R,
Jack

"I met an SS vet once… he had been a 37mm flak gunner in Totenkopf… he was a fairly unrepentant old Nazi."

I remember him. I think his name was Werner. He joined the Hitler Youth, he said, at 18 in order to get free glider lessons. He had many stories about stealing things from stores and bartering them to locals in eastern Europe for meals and booze. Of course, he had 55 years to make up stories that lessened his culpability. He saw his first boobs in a Russian sauna. He caught the clap from a German nurse. He defended his 37mm flak gun against an advancing T34 when the rest of the crew ran off (the T34 crew bailed out – through panic probably). Prior to the battle of Berlin he said he, as a lance corporal, gathered together a few men to defend a bridge.

He told me that today people are soft and that a eugenics program would be a good thing. I gave him the analogy of the modern western orange. It looks great on the outside but tastes like nothing. In comparison I told him about oranges I had in Greece which were orange, green, and generally weird on the outside but tasted great. I explained that human intervention in breeding selected for superficial traits and let everything else go to hell. His eyes went wide and he nodded in agreement. No one had ever bothered to discuss his views seriously before.

Who owns the media? No friends of the Germans. Now we see daily Nazi stories in the news. Films like "Inglorious Bastards" celebrate torture of random German soldiers. Anyone who says "Nazis bad" gets a pat on the head. That just polarises people without serious discussion.

BF Andy

Which 'glorious nation' are you refering to as the one which invented the concentration camp? Obviously you are not talking about Great Britain, as it was not the Brits that first came up with this, so I think you need to be a little more specific.

Also, in any way seeking to equate a British concentration camp (which, however flawed some may have been for a time, was essentially nothing worse than a refugee camp) and a Nazi death camp is highly disingenious.

This thread has gone slightly off topic, understandable when it comes to the likes of the ss. However, I'm not going to comment on the good and the bad of the forces imentioned, but simply pass on what I was told a few years ago.

I know two WW2 veterans from Belfast who fought both the Germans and Japanese.

On strictly martial skills, they say they had a great deal of respect for the German soldier, and in this instance I'm including the ss in this. The vets. considered the Germans highly trained and professional in all forms of combat, including hand to hand.

I was surprised that their opinion of the Japanese soldier was the exact opposite. They had absolutely zero respest for "the soldiers of the Emperor" Although powered by an extreme fanaticism, they considered the Japanese undertrained and not in any way equal to their German counterparts.

They said respect has to be earned, and at least to them, the Japanese never deserved any respect from the allied forces.

And as I thought, this thread has devolved into everyone's opinion of the SS the IJF … Yes, they were BAD … got it !

Gurkhas.

B

So you are saying the Japanese were justified because the Americans'fought with Japanese methods and with whatever they could to defend themselves to the last? Just like the Japanese? So that's honorable for the japs but not for us?

OK, I see, so what's sauce for the goose isn't sauce for the gander? OK. we've taken your measure.

No, Otto, I do not think that the Japanese were justified in their actions during and prior to WW2. I'm pretty sure they were signatories to the Geneva Conventions, and failed to abide by them.

Just because the rules don't make sense to you culturally does NOT give you carte blanch to ignore them.

Personally, I have only a little respect for the Japanese during WW2, the same respect I extend to anyone fighting for the betterment of his home country. I believe that is the respect old Jess gave to the Japanese as well.

As far as the line about MacArthur evacuating weapons instead of men, that is a near-verbatim quote from when we got Jess a little drunk and a young lady asked him about his pointed teeth.

Just Jack

As the person that pointed out that the 'waffen' SS were not just a military elite thought I would reply to you. I hope my initial post was fair minded, as I hope this one will be. I would say accusing people of 'a lack of empathy' and being 'self righteous' is probably not best designed for encouraging open and honest debate.

First off you stress that there were 40 SS divisions, and estimate an average of 10,000 men in each, seems a bit high for mid late war German divisions but ah sod it, I will give you that. That makes 400,000 members of the SS. Fine, yes, and your point is? Nazism had spread wide in Germany, 400,000 does not seem that large a number to me considering the population.

Yes I will grant you there were some, perhaps many men that were co opted into SS either against there will or at best with apathy and I will quite happily say there were in a rubbish place. Not as rubbish as a lot of other people that were on the receiving end of SS ideology but again it does not really matter when considering what the Waffen SS was. As an aside, I would also say that the argument that many in the SS were reluctant to be there is opposed to the thesis that the SS were a fighting elite and should be respected for that. The assumption that the 40 divisions of the Waffen SS were a military elite I would also doubt by the way. There were a few armoured division that were effective that can probably be accounted for due to preferential treatment for equipment.

But to as how we should regard the Waffen SS and its membership. No, it was not a separate organization from the rest of the SS. It was a differing part of the same organization under Himmlers control. Yes the Waffen SS were in a separate line of reporting to Himmler than the Death Camp organisation, as was the Gestapo. They were all SS however, part of the same organisation and sharing the same ideology and personnel. As a clear example, the 3rd 'waffen' SS panzer Division 'Totenkopf' (Deathhead) division were recruited form concentration camp guards. I presume we can agree that these individuals are 'bad guys'. If you agree with this but still argue 'we need empathy for other members of the SS' you are in a position of arguing that some members of the SS bad, but others, hell, we should give them the benefit of the doubt.

I would also say that your link to SS recruiting posters, pointing out they just show 'defending the nation' and your argument around it is deeply flawed. You are taking Nazi propaganda at face value. Are you sure this is a position you want to put yourself in? As the most charitable interpretation of this would be that you have no idea what you are talking about and are not able to think through the issues in any meaningful way. And that is me being as charitable as possible about what you are saying.

To be clear on SS (and Nazi) imagery. Yes, they did always use images of upstanding German manhood fired by patriotism and high ideals. They were not openly honest about just what they were. There never was an SS poster along the lines of 'are you the kind of guy that wants to commit mass murder and the killing of innocents?', Nazi propaganda is not famed for its rigorous intellectual honesty. However, the SS were a nazi elite, this the one thing that they aimed to be and were most proud of. Any German joining the SS would have been clear on this. And although there is still debate of just how much was know by the general German population about the Nazis crimes, we can be clear that it was well known about their aims and a large amount of their methods. No German joining the SS would have been unaware of what they were and what they did (one of their divisions was called the 'Deathheads' for Daves sake, the clues in the name).

So please lets not have any fuzzy thinking that the SS (waffen or otherwise) was a patriotic organsiation looking to defend the homeland. Yes, many crimes were committed by the 'good guys' as well. When war is unleashed, evilness and terror always follow. Bit no, not all crimes and ideologies are the same. The Nazi regime is possibly uniquely evil and the SS was it standard bearer. I do not feel self righteous in condemning the organisation, its actions and membership. And no ISIS is not similar. This may be where a lot of confusion comes from,the idea that ISIS / the communists / insert your own favorite bad guys were as bad as the Nazis. Which read the other way is 'the nazis were no worse than other bad guys…..' Well, they were. This needs to be remembered or we get to a position of people defending members of the SS on the grounds that SS recruitment posters were not that bad.

Now, that was a bit of a rant. And for those who say 'on a wargames / military history board we should separate out the SS military record from everything else about the SS'; I would disagree. If you try, you very quickly end up saying the same things as ex SS members trying to cast the SS is a positive light. This is I feel a position that needs to be challenged – wherever it arises.

You have to respect them for their fighting skill

Yes, but more importantly, regardless … you have to kill them …

"one of their divisions was called the 'Deathheads' for Daves sake, the clues in the name"

The "Totenkopf" motif dates back to the Prussian cavalry in the early 18th century War of the Austrian Succession and was in use as a elite unit honorific for two centuries in the Prussian and German armies. It was not a creation of the National Socialists as implied in the quote above.

B

Had written a post, but previous posts are right, this topic just goes around in circles after a while. But I for one am glad that fellow gamers put some thought into their hobby, irrespective of which side you argue for.

Durrati,

I still disagree with your premise that everyone that joined the Waffen SS (or even the SS writ large) knew what they were getting into, and pretty much everything else you wrote.

Having said that, this is all really pretty simple:
1) any man, at any point in human history, that slaughtered innocents (whether in the military or not), is evil.
2) any soldier that joined up to serve his country, and did not do evil things, is not evil.
3) you can't call everyone from a given state or organization evil because men in said state or organization did evil stuff.

"I would say accusing people of 'a lack of empathy' and being 'self righteous' is probably not best designed for encouraging open and honest debate."
Perhaps. If it makes you feel better, it wasn't only directed at you, though I'll point out your comment about "post hoc " didn't do much to engender civil debate either. My issue is with your broad brush approach.

"That makes 400,000 members of the SS. Fine, yes, and your point is?"
First, I didn't say 400,000 total, I said 400,000 in the combat divisions as of 1943, with probaly 1.5 million men having past through (with 750,000 KIA/WIA unable to return to duty) from 1939 to 1945. My point is that I have a hard time believing that a million boys aged 17-20 signed up to commit atrocities. I find it far more likely the vast majority signed up to defend their country, looking for adventure, to be in a 'cool' unit, because their buddies did it. You know, kind of the reason boys have joined militaries and sought out 'elite' units throughout time. Perhaps I'm an idealist…

"As an aside, I would also say that the argument that many in the SS were reluctant to be there…"
I never said anyone was reluctant to be there. My point was that men were being drug in as cannon fodder for the East Front as infantrymen, i.e., to defend their country, not joining up to go slaughter innocents. And I must admit to chuckling about your "they're in the SS and not different, but they had a different chain of command and a different mission." Whatever you say buddy…

"The assumption that the 40 divisions of the Waffen SS were a military elite I would also doubt by the way. There were a few armoured division that were effective that can probably be accounted for due to preferential treatment for equipment."
Excellent!!!! You see, this is actually what we were supposed to be talking about on our wargames website.

"There never was an SS poster along the lines of 'are you the kind of guy that wants to commit mass murder and the killing of innocents?', Nazi propaganda is not famed for its rigorous intellectual honesty."
You're making my point. You're a 17-year old kid sitting in a movie theater watching a German propaganda film showing Panzers racing ahead and guys in cool camouflage uniforms fighting a war of extermination against your homeland's enemies. You walked here past bombed out schools, homes, and libraries, from your home where your mother was crying because your older brother just died in some place called the Crimea.

Have you ever heard a combat veteran say something to the affect of, "if I was going to be in combat I wanted to be with the best, plus they had all the best equipment, and got extra pay"? But you're going to tell me that a million boys joined the Waffen SS to slaughter innocents, and not for any of the numerous reasons (or combination of reasons) I just listed above, which have proven to be pretty universal throughout time?

"I would also say that your link to SS recruiting posters, pointing out they just show 'defending the nation' and your argument around it is deeply flawed."
Negative, you're missing my point.

"You are taking Nazi propaganda at face value."
I'm doing nothing of the sort. I'm simply stating that a German kid in 1943 probably didn't know his regime was in the midst of killing 6 million Jews, that he almost certainly didn't join the military to kill Jews (or other innocents), that he joined the military to defend his homeland.

"Are you sure this is a position you want to put yourself in?"
Yes.

"As the most charitable interpretation of this would be that you have no idea what you are talking about and are not able to think through the issues in any meaningful way. And that is me being as charitable as possible about what you are saying."
How charitable of you. It couldn't possibly be that you're painting in broad brush strokes again, could it? Looks like, instead of thinking through the issues in a meaningful way you jumped to your pre-conceived notions that fit nicely into your closed, biased mind.

"As a clear example, the 3rd 'waffen' SS panzer Division 'Totenkopf' (Deathhead) division were recruited form concentration camp guards."
Or, more precisely, concentration camp units. I must admit that this is making me feel very yucky inside, but someone has to show you the flaw in your way of thinking. Your way of thinking (condemning scores of real-life humans because of an association, as opposed to their actions), which is what caused the Holocaust to begin with.

"I presume we can agree that these individuals are 'bad guys'."
No. See above, 'people that do evil are evil, people that don't aren't.'

"If you agree with this but still argue 'we need empathy for other members of the SS' you are in a position of arguing that some members of the SS bad, but others, hell, we should give them the benefit of the doubt."
Bingo!!! That is exactly what I am arguing! It may well be that every man in the SS actually committed an atrocity, but that doesn't change the premise of my argument. I am indeed saying whomever committed evil is evil! But you're not evil because you wore a uniform.

"However, the SS were a nazi elite, this the one thing that they aimed to be and were most proud of."
Again, you alone have the ability to be in their heads and hearts. Is this '1984'?

"Any German joining the SS would have been clear on this."
I disagree. Again, the Holocaust doesn't seem to have been well advertised, as you allude to here: "And although there is still debate of just how much was know by the general German population about the Nazis crimes, we can be clear that it was well known about their aims and a large amount of their methods."
Although here is perhaps you're strongest point. I agree to stipulate that most (nearly all) Germans probably had to know about the regime's distaste for Jews, due to very public mistreatment, i.e., Jewish property being vandalized (by the regime) and Jews being required to wear Stars of David.

The question then becomes, how far did it go (i.e., how much did the populace know), and what could reasonably be expected of them (that is, it's easy to sit here in 2014 and say "the moment I saw the Nazis rounding them up, I would have taken up arms against the regime")? I would submit the answer is unknowable, there are simply to many variables to discern to be able to label everyone evil. For example:
-I saw the Nazis vandalize the Jewish store, but I thought the Jews moved away to get away from the regime (didn't see the Nazis round them up).
-I saw some Jews wearing Stars of David, which I thought was odd, then I didn't see them anymore.
-I knew there were concentration camps, but I heard they were simply being relocated.
-I only knew of one Jewish family, and they were put in a camp, but it's because the authorities said the patriarch was a communist and plotting against our country.

And then let's assume you knew exactly what was going on. Human nature is what? Survival, to look away and pretend you didn't see anything so the Nazis don't come for you too. Should you take up arms against the regime? Some certainly did. But what if you're an 80-year old grandma? How about a father with a sickly wife and five children?

Like I said, lots variables, and I don't pretend to know the answer. I certainly wouldn't automatically proclaim everyone evil that knew what was happening but didn't do something about it. I'd have to know that specific person's circumstances. Life sometimes presents us with impossible choices, you do the best you can. Maybe the best he could do was to get out of a concentration camp unit ("what the hell is this? I didn't sign up for this") by volunteering for a combat unit, not because you supported the regime's goal of annihilation of the Jews, but because you didn't want your home to be destroyed. Let me see about keeping the foreign invaders out, then I'll see what I can do about this concentration camp stuff. Is that evil?

"No German joining the SS would have been unaware of what they were and what they did (one of their divisions was called the 'Deathheads' for Daves sake, the clues in the name)."
I still disagree, and if one is evil because they were in a unit that called itself "Totenkopf" (or some such militaristic jingoism), there's a whole lot of us in big trouble.

"So please lets not have any fuzzy thinking that the SS (waffen or otherwise) was a patriotic organsiation looking to defend the homeland."
Sorry, I'm still fuzzy as can be. I appreciate your tone though, spoken as if you were there, so confident.

"Yes, many crimes were committed by the 'good guys' as well."
Now what is this doing in here? I haven't said anything about anyone else; I hope you're not trying to trap me into some sort of moral equivalence game, because Germany as a nation got what was coming to them, which is somewhat unfortunate as I believe there were a tremendous amount of innocents that suffered for their country's sins. And I think the Nazis as an institution got what they deserved. The only unfortunate aspect is that there were evil men within the Nazi regime that escaped, or were not treated as harshly as they should have been at Nuremburg.

"When war is unleashed, evilness and terror always follow."
I'm familiar.

"Bit (sic) no, not all crimes and ideologies are the same."
Yeah, I get it.

"The Nazi regime is possibly uniquely evil and the SS was it standard bearer."
I disagree on both accounts. I'll deal with the second here: the entire German state apparatus, and the people that voted for it and/or allowed it to occur were its standard bearers. Does that make every one of them evil? Again, I'm back to my standard 'if you do evil you're evil, if not, you're not.' I will not condemn every German because of what some of them did.

"I do not feel self righteous in condemning the organisation, its actions and membership."
Regarding the membership, I think you're off base. It's not a great leap from "all members of the SS are evil" to "well something needs to be done about them then."

"And no ISIS is not similar. This may be where a lot of confusion comes from,the idea that ISIS / the communists / insert your own favorite bad guys were as bad as the Nazis. Which read the other way is 'the nazis were no worse than other bad guys…..' Well, they were."
With all due respect, you're out of your gourd. I'm assuming (hoping) it's out of ignorance. Maybe you're got something personal in this fight (i.e., an innocent relative that was murdered by the Nazis), and I get that, but it's certainly coloring your judgement. You're only saying that because they haven't killed 6 million people yet; it's not for lack of trying (and yes, I'm conflating AQ with IS under the umbrella of 'Sunni Extremists'), it's simply a matter of means. Evil is evil, whether 1 or a million or killed. Hell, I'll even throw out the fact that you don't have to kill someone to be evil!

I don't even know what you're getting at with your comment "'the nazis were no worse than other bad guys…..'" What is the point with that statement? Let me break it down for you: evil is evil, the Nazis were evil, Stalinists were evil, hell, there's a whole lot of evil people/institutions in human history. Are you trying to rank them? To what end? I honestly don't get it.

"This needs to be remembered or we get to a position of people defending members of the SS on the grounds that SS recruitment posters were not that bad."
Come on man, that's just childish. If you really believe that, you need to take a break and go re-read my post. You've gotten so caught up in what you thought I said/what you wanted me to say, that you failed to read what I actually said.

"If you try (to get politics off a wargaming site), you very quickly end up saying the same things as ex SS members trying to cast the SS is a positive light."
Who did this? It certainly wasn't me. I'm not trying to paint anyone in any kind of light (politically/ideologically). Several of us were trying to have a discussion regarding respect for martial skill and ability, and perhaps even its applicability to the gaming table.

"This is I feel a position that needs to be challenged – wherever it arises."
See, this is what always sets me off on TMP: we can't have a reasonable discussion without someone getting huffy in an attempt to show how tough they are on the internet. And what is it your afraid of anyway? Is anyone here pushing to get the SS a holiday, or a parade? Maybe someone's trying to form an SS PanzerArmee that I was unaware of? Such are the life-changing, crucially important stakes of posts on a wargaming forum.

"And for those who say 'on a wargames / military history board we should separate out the SS military record from everything else about the SS'; I would disagree."
Well, that's me, so obviously I disagree with your disagreement.

With that being said, I appreciate you taking the time to put your thoughts here, and I bear you no ill will. I believe you are incorrect, and I'm sure you believe the same about me, and there's really nothing more to say. I'm not trying to deprive of your right to rebut my statements, I'm just letting you know my response parameters: if you give me a specific question or two that just takes a minute, I will do my best to explain myself. But I won't be replying in kind to another long post, this has already taken up way too much of my limited time, and this is not why I come to TMP.

V/R,
Jack

I'm doing nothing of the sort. I'm simply stating that a German kid in 1943 probably didn't know his regime was in the midst of killing 6 million Jews, that he almost certainly didn't join the military to kill Jews (or other innocents), that he joined the military to defend his homeland.

The existing evidence does not support that opinion anymore. The widespread use of slave labor IN THE TOWNS AND CITIES could not have been unseen. There were concentration camp prisoners working in all sorts of shops out in the towns. Not at factories inside the camps, at factories and shops out in the neighboring towns. Everyone knew or should have known that those prisoners were not being paid for their work.

But because that painted the entire German population with a black brush, it's been swept under the rug for 70 years.

Lion,

Please tell me you're joking, or that you wrote that just to see if you could get me to post on this garbage again.

First, what you wrote does nothing to change what you quoted from me with regards to the young man going to serve his country. It's hard to address the folly of 'could have known/should have known,' there's so many variables it could be its own topic.

Second, swept under the rug, eh? Yeah, I see where you're coming from, the world really took it easy on the Germans from 1939 to present…

I will submit this to you: evil is unambiguous. As the Judge said, "I'll know it when I see it." Sticking babies on the end of your bayonet, evil. Sawing heads off, evil. Gassing people because of their religion/ race/sexual orientation/etc, evil (notice I didn't say gassing people is evil, because we do that here to people who commit capital crimes, and I agree with it). I could go on for awhile, but I think you take my point.

Let's focus on what evil is and what evil is not (in my humble opinion). Let's assume, as you stated, that every single German "…knew or should have known that those prisoners were not being paid for their work." Where does that leave us with regards to evil?

Take our 17-year old: did he see anyone you're describing (you believe he would have or should have)? Did he see a Jew impressed into labor, or was it more likely he saw an enemy POW impressed into labor (to me that's a huge issue; impressed German Jew=evil, impressed Polish/ French/British/American/Russian POW, not so much; war of extermination, remember?)? At which point does he become evil?

If you're our 17-year old and you went and tortured (I'm picturing a rock throwing, kicking or hitting as they're being marched by sort of thing), I'd say you're evil (see, because you did something evil).

Now, if you saw those guys being frog-marched back and forth everyday on your way to school, but you didn't do anything to them, are you evil? You didn't do anything for them either. Why didn't you do anything for them? Is it because they were Jews and you hated them, but you were too cowardly to go beat them yourself? Evil.

Did you not do anything to help them because you thought they were being mistreated, but hey, this is war? Probably not evil. Did you not do anything for them because you were scared the Nazis would hurt you or your family? Certainly not evil.

My position remains that you are not evil if you didn't do something evil, though I'll stipulate, 'do something' includes aiding and abetting an evil act. But the question here becomes, at which point does the act become evil? I will admit that I don't know, but I try to look at each case individually, understand the context of it, and apply the 'reasonable man' approach, combined with my patented "evil is unambiguous" saying.

Cowardice to act (because the evil ones might kill your family) might be shameful, but it's not evil, and I'm surprised none of you can empathize with someone placed in an impossible situation. All I'm seeming to find are folks with the what seems to me to be the outlook on the world of a five year-old.

I asked everyone once, and I'll do it again: you're the 17-year old that's just come of military age in 1943 Germany. The war is going badly, casualties are tremendous, you're city is being bombed everyday/night, your brother was just killed on the Eastern Front, your father is long dead from being gassed during WWI, your mother looks tired and feeble, and you've seen government personnel marching prisoners too and fro.

What would you have done?

From the responses I'm getting, it would seem the only non-evil thing to do is to take up arms against your own government. Some of you might even say that's what you'd have done, but history, psychology, and sociology tells us that's possible, but not probable.

The good news is, it's not too late. Does anyone here think IS* is evil? If you do, I assume you're reading this from Iraq or Syria, because if you're not over there fighting them, you're evil ;)

*Feel free to substitute whichever cause moves you: Delta Smelt, Global Warming, Boko Haram, Narco-terrorists, conservatives, liberals, communists, Wall Street, lawyers, come on! You can't tell me you don't find something/someone on this planet evil! And if you have yet to take up arms against them to eradicate them from this planet, you're as bad as Hitler…

V/R,
Jack

Think Jack's point is that regardless of what our German Volksgrenadier kid knows, it likely won't change what he can do about it, even if he was inclined to do so.

Don't forget the general ability of people to rationalize what they see. I mean, on a very banal level, how many homeless people do you walk past on your way to work?

We could fix life for every one of them. We have more empty houses than homeless people and it would probably cost less for society.
Yet why don't we?

"They would get something they don't deserve"
"It's not really my place"
"It'll breed dependence"
"They're probably criminals"
"Someone else will do it"
"Maybe next week"
"They might not actually be homeless"

If we can do this so easily, what happens when the same question is raised in a totalitarian regime?

In the end, I guess it's arguing about the definitions of "evil".

I suppose in the absence of everything else, we have the definitions of Nuremberg.

I suppose in the absence of everything else, we have the definitions of Nuremberg

Yale put the trial documents online:

Avalon Project

I always assumed that respect, when used by soldiers about their enemy, meant treating them seriously. IDF soldiers, I knew, respected the Syrian Commandoes fighting abilities because if they got complacent they'd end up in a body bag. They did not extend that 'respect' to the Syrian Government they fought for, or generally any of their opponents personal traits.

As for the SS and their self-awareness.

YouTube link

I think that some of the members posting in this discussion have a rather romanticized view of the Waffen-SS. Brave soldiers in dashing uniforms fighting to defend their country.

Nonsense!

Any reasonable scholarship on the subject reveals quite a different story.

Think you know about the Waffen SS because you've read about Kursk? Try searching for and reading about:
- Marzabotto (Italy)
- Lidice (Czech)
- Kl'ak (Slovakia)
- Oradour-sur-Glane (France)
- Ochota (Poland)

These are some of the better known occasions when Waffen SS units raised towns or villages to the ground and exterminated all (or almost all) of the inhabitants.

Now, if we wanted to look at a similar list for towns and villages in the Soviet Union … well it's a pretty long list.
- Slowdka
- Borki
- Zbyszin
- Timkowiczi
- Studenka

This is a list from one month, June of 1942, in one Soviet Republic, Belarus. To put together a list of all the massacres by the Waffen SS in the whole Soviet Union during the war would be too tiresome for this board's membership to suffer. And difficult, because there are thousands of towns and villages who's names no longer appear on maps or on Wiki pages or anywhere in modern writings, towns and villages that were taken off of the maps of the Soviet Union by the Waffen SS. 40 divisions, thousands of towns and villages, an average of about 100,000 civilian deaths per week (from all sources, not just Waffen SS atrocities … but guess who provided the main source of manpower for the extermination efforts?) while the Germans were in the Soviet Union -- what are the odds that a given Waffen SS soldier was not involved in at least 5 or 10 massacres? Per year.

Brave soldiers of elite combat formations rounding up all the women and children for extermination. How dashing!

Let us not forget that the Einsatzgruppen (the death squads) were formed, as needed, throughout the war, from Waffen SS formations. Hey, you starry-eyed 17 year old patriotic guys, go murder a few thousand gypsies, jews and communists in defense of your poor dejected mother. When you're done come back, we'll need you for our next combat operation.

For the Waffen SS, killing was not a by-product of combat operations. Combat operations were necessary to ensure continued killing. The SS was an instrument of the Nazi party, not the German army. Nazi policy in the east was depopulation, and those pesky enemy armies and militias and partisan bands kept getting in the way, so combat was necessary. Anyplace they weren't distracted by combat operations the SS killed more people, not fewer.

If you don't understand this, you don't understand the Waffen SS. I suggest some well researched recent scholarship on this particular bit of history:

MURDEROUS ELITE: The Waffen-SS and its record of atrocities – by James Pontolillo, 2010, ISBN: 978-9185657025

From one reviewer on Amazon:

With the addition of this book the evidence against the Waffen-SS becomes insurmountable and the apologists will now be hard pressed to defend the Nordic warriors nobly fighting for family and country.

This book leave no doubt to the murderous involvement of the Waffen-SS in the final solution and also their general attitude to the acceptance of the commission of war crimes.

Noble warriors, patriots fighting to defend their homes, skilled elite military forces …

Nonsense.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

I asked everyone once, and I'll do it again: you're the 17-year old that's just come of military age in 1943 Germany. The war is going badly, casualties are tremendous, you're city is being bombed everyday/night, your brother was just killed on the Eastern Front, your father is long dead from being gassed during WWI, your mother looks tired and feeble, and you've seen government personnel marching prisoners too and fro.

But those weren't anonymous prisoners from God only knows where. Those were the Webers, from down the street, or on the other side of the tracks. And the Katz, from down by the town square.

They were watching their neighbors and other people they knew getting marched from the Ghetto or the camp to their assigned workplaces at the factories, and even the small shops.

The treatment of the Jews and the Gypsies and the gays was not something hidden. Everyone saw what was happening. No one was willing to stop and say, "hey, wait a minute".

"First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me." – Martin Niemoller

Had I been in Germany in WW2, I probably would have been shot by now. "The only thing necessary the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."

100,000 Russian civilian dead per week? 12 million per year? 36 million by June 1944? I must admit having a bit of trouble accepting such figures; they are in contradiction to both Soviet and post-Soviet scholarship.

And all implied as exclusively attributable to the "Final Solution"? Hmmmm.

B

I'm going to keep this short and sweet, as my attempts to provide context about what someone might have felt in 1943 are being used disingenuously in rebuttal posts as if they were my views.

Here is how reasoned, rational, enlightened folks think:
I judge each person by his or her actions.

Here is how evil folks think:
Everyone in this (family/tribe/country/organization/
religion/race/ethnicity/sexual orientation) is (greedy/
dirty/ugly/evil/traitorous/backward/infidel/apostate).

Combine this line of thinking with capability and the will to carry it out, and this is how genocides happen.

Hitler: Everyone that is a Jew is dirty.
Stalin: Everyone that is a Ukrainian is worthless.
Pol Pot: Everyone that is an intellectual is traitorous.

Jack

100,000 Russian civilian dead per week? 12 million per year? 36 million by June 1944?

Might want to check your math there.

100,000 dead per week. That's a bit more than 5 million per year (it's that old 52 weeks in the year trick!).

And yes, the Soviet Union suffered, by most of the best recent estimates, about 20 million civilian deaths during WW2. Very few of those were after the Germans had been pushed out of Soviet territory (perhaps 100,000 or 200,000 total from June 1944 to May 1945?).

It's hard to be very specific, as so many who escaped the round-ups died in the woods from starvation or exposure after the Germans had burned their villages to the ground and taken their crops and livestock. And a lot of civic records were lost with each village burnt. So no one knows where or when they died, or even where or when the lived!

But in terms of census data pre-war and post-war, adjusted for shifts in borders and the movements of populations, the best estimates I've seen put it at about 20,000,000.

If you feel 96,153 per week would be more accurate I will concede the point. I just picked a round number that seemed about right. And that number does not include the quantities of Poles that were killed.

To object that this quantity was not due exclusively to "the final solution" is entirely off the point. The "final solution" was a policy explicitly regarding Europe's jews. Nazi evil was not limited to the jews.

In Hitler's own words:
I have issued a command – and I will have everyone who utters even a single word of criticism shot – that the aim of war lies not in reaching particular lines but in the physical annihilation of the enemy. Thus, so far only in the east, I have put my Death's Head formations at the ready with the command to send man, woman and child of Polish descent and language to their deaths, pitilessly and remorsely …. Poland will be depopulated and settled with Germans.

The Nazi's had a deliberate policy of trying to exterminate all of Europe's jews, but they also had a policy of depopulating eastern Europe. In the west it was mostly jews, but in the east many races were scheduled for elimination, it was only a question of how urgently it was to be accomplished (50% of the slavic population was to be exterminated during the course of the war, with the rest being pushed into central Asia and left in a pre-industrial state, other races in eastern Europe, such as the poles, were to be extinguished within a 10 year timeline IIRC).

Certainly a significant portion of civilian deaths came because they got caught up in combat zones or in the many big sieges (in Leningrad, for instance, about 1,000 people died per day if you average the total civilian losses over the time of the siege). Most of those should more reasonably be placed at the feet of the Heer than the Waffen SS. And the Heer participated in many massacres … I do not suggest that their hands are clean in any of this. But by any reasonable reckoning, the slaughter, mayhem and deliberately induced famine behind the lines was at a level that boggles the mind. And the Waffen SS was the principal source of manpower for doing that.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

Thinking about this (I know, I know…), but I wonder if the problem here isn't semantics. "Respect them for their fighting skill" may not be what we're getting at, which (maybe) is:

"Respect their fighting skill"

I can accept this for soldiers serving even the most evil of regimes. "Yep, they're good, let's make sure we kill all of them." It doesn't mean you respect them in any other way, but if they're good at their job, it's best to recognize this whilst making plans to destroy them.

Here is how reasoned, rational, enlightened folks think:
I judge each person by his or her actions.

Here is how evil folks think:
Everyone in this (family/tribe/country/organization/
religion/race/ethnicity/sexual orientation) is (greedy/
dirty/ugly/evil/traitorous/backward/infidel/apostate).

I am leaning towards disagreeing with that.

"All jews are greedy." That's not evil. It's closed minded, it's un-enlightened, it's prejudiced, and I might put it into the gray zone between good and evil. But I would not put it clearly on the other side of the divide.

Allow me to describe a personal example. When I was young, my family would often invite my cousin from Dallas, Texas to vacation with us. His father (my father's brother) had passed away when my cousin was rather young, and his mother was raising him on her own. We were the only family she had, as her own family had dis-owned her and broke all contact with her when she married a Jew.

My brother and I were always rather shocked at the way my cousin spoke about black people. Being raised in California, we had more progressive, tolerant and I might even say more enlightened view of differing races and cultures. My cousin from Texas freely used words I would not repeat to this day, and even sang them in kid's songs to amuse himself (and us, he assumed).

Was my cousin evil? I don't think so. I've known him all my life. To my knowledge the closest he has ever gotten to hurting anyone was probably by voting.

But if he had put on a white robe to march around with the KKK I would have called him evil. Of course the KKK would have been just as likely to lynch him as any black, but that's beside the point.

Assume for a moment that he was not a Jew. If he chose to pursue adventure, express his sense of national identity and protect his poor over-worked mother by putting on white robes, burning crosses, and finding some innocent teenager to hang from a tree, I would to this day not excuse his behavior as anything less than evil, nor suggest that while I rejected their intentions I respected the way they kept their robes so clean and white or chanted in unison while they marched.

I view the Waffen SS the same way, except perhaps a few orders of magnitude worse.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

I think my viewpoint most closely matches that of mserafin when he says" respect their fighting skill"

…It does NOT mean that respect for them personally comes with it.

Respecting their fighting skill keeps me alive by knowing what they are capable of and bringing everything I have to end it as soon as possible or getting out so that I can fight them when I have the advantage

It keeps me from getting killed by underestimating what they are capable of…

Frank

Respect is brutally honest…it takes out the emotions of good or bad and focuses squarely on the ability or danger of the person or group.

At NO TIME does respect necessarily equal admiration.

However contempt and underestimation can get you killed… the proper amount of respect can guide your actions and focus your efforts to give you the best chance to survive and defeat your enemy…

Frank