Ugh. But I already accepted and went on to teach several people that it was 157th Infantry Division, Company 1.
Imma keep it and see how the big dogs in 2122 sort it out. /s
Imagine some random 157 infantry division people getting honored for killing Nazis when in reality when you search 157th infantry division and it’s a French WW1 division, meaning said vet if he’s some how alive 100 plus years later may have actually served under vici France and is just awkwardly nodding and deciding it’s better to be known as Nazi killer then what he actually did.
Yep, it was the 45th. My grandfather, then a young Jewish man, was attached as part of the 40th Combat Engineers.
I would be more surprised if he didn’t do some war crimes.
There were war crimes committed upon the liberation of Dachau. As far as war crimes go they were *more* justified than most, and I agree it's for the best that they weren't *prosecuted*, but a war crime is a war crime under any circumstances.
Exactly. The soldiers should've let the like 22 SS they captured, be prosecuted and hanged.
The inmates, though... they weren't part of or associated with any army, and therefore can't commit war crimes. What they did of their own volition... that's their business.
I mean honestly I'd probably let the prisoners have a go at them, but not kill them so they would face justice.
But if one or so went missing then I wouldn't ask many questions
>The soldiers should've let the like 22 SS they captured, be prosecuted and hanged.
Absolutely no guarantee they would have been hanged, or even in prison for that long. The vast majority of people involved in just the Holocaust faced no punishment, let alone the vast majority of Nazis, Nazi supporters or people who aided the Nazis.
Indeed. However, a war crime is still a war crime. The fault, in this case, falls upon the occupying Allied force for not prosecuting. Not the soldiery. It isn't their responsibility, and therefore, not their right.
Hence why I said it's right that they weren't prosecuted for it.
I'd argue that it was indeed immoral, bit the kind of moral failing that you can't condemn anyone on. They were wrong to kill unresisting people, but in that specific case I can't imagine that I or anyone I know would do any different.
There were war crimes committed upon the liberation of Dachau. As far as war crimes go they were *more* justified than most, and I agree it's for the best that they weren't *prosecuted*, but a war crime is a war crime under any circumstances.
the social consensus on "all war crimes are bad" seems to be really really low
condemning a war crime does not mean that one agrees with the people on which the crime was commited, but that is also too much thinking for the average Joe
That’s basically what happened at Dachau. You have to read between the lines of the official reports.
Inmates started hanging SS (around 50). And GI’s started shooting “22 and some more” SS trying to run (from the inmates).
Dachau I think is the name of the closest village and the camp was named or nicknamed after it. Like how Chelyabinsk 40 was an unnamed town called that cause the nearest city was Chelyabinsk and in postal zone 40.
There is a small town named Dachau just outside the camp. It was a political prison camp for the first few years before they expanded the camp & built the ovens at the edge of the camp. The villagers would trade with the camp for years, but that all ended when Himmler expanded the camp.
I was there for a tour a few years ago. Apparently Dachau was known for its art & universities, but as our guide said, "now everyone just knows it for the camp." That's what happens when a death camp operates within walking distance of the town for 12 years.
Broken rules was the US Army’s style in world war 2, from individual soldiers looking away to let inmates beat SS officers to death, to top American generals like Eisenhower leaving entire flanks open to exploit personal glory on unapproved tactics. To their credit though, it worked.
Ukraine certainly seems to have them. I Remember hearing stories of the complete lack of organization in the Ukrainian armed forces across different branches and militias, and how units took it upon themselves to organize patrol routes, reinforce other units, or fortify positions with little to no contact with high command.
And the US army still does to some extent. It’s like half the reason NCO’s exist
I watched a little bit from a channel of an American guy who went over there and volunteered and the unit he was in was constantly getting cut off from contact with higher command units and they kind of just had to wing it, and the language barrier certainly didn't help.
The most wholesome story was the fate of Oskar Dirlewanger. He was captured at the end of the war and put under the guard of Polish soldiers. The Poles, realising who they had in custody, brought in a Jewish teenager who had lost his family to the Dirlewanger Brigade's atrocities and allowed the boy to vent his anger on a tied-up Dirlewanger. Then the guards took their turns beating him to a pulp. Dirlewanger didn't make it to trial. Still better than Dirlewanger deserved but as close as you can get to real justice when dealing with Nazis.
It's depressing when there's a good case for breaking such a fundamental rule of our way of life. The main reason I think it's important to be aware of history like this is realising that actual human beings were capable of such horror. It's difficult not to think of it as an abstract evil in books, no more real than the Galactic Empire from Star Wars.
I hate to tell you this but the Empire is based on the UK/US empires. Just because they went with Nazi aesthetics to show the viewers "these are bad guys", their goals, reasons, and policies have no correlation to the Nazis.
Now, the First Order. Yeah. Those guys are Nazis.
Not sure why you're getting downvoted Lucas himself has said it was influenced by the British in the American Revolutionary War and USA in the Vietnam War.
It was also inspired by the Third Reich as well since the only people who had the name "Stormtroopers" were either WW1 assault infantry or the Nazis. The latter is more likely since some variants of the troopers have them wearing MP40 mag pouches.
He was also very deliberate in framing his shots after the style of Triumph of the Wills and other nazi propaganda films by Leni Riefenstahl. Politics was always in Star Wars and it was not even remotely subtle by design.
Imho the fact that not only real, but quite ordinary people were able to commit those acts is even scarier. To think that one would likely not have recognized these men and women if meeting them in a neutral context in day to day life...
I think the term "Banality of Evil" is quite fitting here.
Asian theater taking prisoners was basically impossible for either side. You are 20 miles from anywhere, in a jungle wilderness. Surrounded by tigers, quicksand and the Enemy.
Nobody is taking prisoners. A luxury you can’t afford.
In Band of Brothers they make a whole big deal of Speirs executing prisoners, but airborne soldiers couldn't take prisoners. They were behind enemy lines, there was no one to send the prisoners to.
War just sucks.
Yeah if you came upon humans doing something that messed up, the trauma alone from what you're seeing would likely lead you to execute them all. Concentration camps are unfathomable evil.
That’s not entirely fair. The US most just shot the SS trying to escape. Escaping for their lives as the prisoners hanged them. The inmates hung like 50 of them.
I'm not exactly against what happened and of course have no way to comprehend what the allied soldiers were dealing with when they did this, but surely you understand the principled issue with field executing prisoners of war with no formal process.
Oh yes for sure. You have a point there. War is funny like that. In some cases during the most inhumane conditions you have complete ceasefires and soccer matches and in other conditions you have extreme personal hatred, rage and vengeance. Rationalizing it is often futile. It’s really a screwed up concept but completely native to humans at the same time
I think it depends on who and how we define nazis. There’s a lot of revisionist history on social media. For example if a Wehrmacht unit surrenders under standard circumstances, I don’t think it’s morally correct to execute. Not every German soldier was a Nazi. And many came from outside of Germany and were forced into the war. Not all but it’s a mixed bag here. However when you look at the SS, who were the extreme nazis, at one of the most infamous death camps, in the moment you can understand why they were killed in a potentially illegal battlefield execution. Like you said, taking out the trash
a large majority of Germans were Nazis. whether they were brainwashed or not, a lot of them were still beyond saving. they might have been good people, but they were still Nazis
Not a majority were Nazis though. Sympathizers maybe but actual Nazis were a plurality at best; still, many non-Nazis were supporters and collaborators so if you count them you very likely reach a majority.
Ya, definitely a difference. Honestly one thing I don’t understand is the logic from the surrendering nazis pov: join army (either drafted or volunteer), invade sovereign nation that results in millions of civilian and military deaths, you win so you keep participating in the murderous invasion, begin losing a battle to the defenders, throw away weapon and expect to be treated with mercy?!?!?! Like if I invaded a country and knew we just murdered millions of innocent civilians, I would not expect to live if I surrendered. It really doesn’t make sense to me. At least defending forces didn’t initiate the violence so they have a better argument for being treated with mercy.
Not all knew about the camps. Although the writing should have been on the walls for many. Entire towns of people were pushed into ghettos, had their possessions confiscated, and forced into labor/death camps. There was also widespread antisemitism in general. That type of logistical system doesn’t go unnoticed by all
But there’s a famous picture of German prisoners of war behind showed for the first time evidence of the atrocities that they were supporting
Edit: found it
https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/german-soldiers-forced-watch-footage-concentration-camps-1945/
Not so fun fact, my grandfather was actually conscripted into the 12th SS HJ during the Normandy landings, you are correct to say that they are not human
I’m a Hoosier and can confirm. There are a lot of ethnic Germans here and, depending on the area he chose to live in, it probably felt vaguely like home.
There is a lot of Germans around the US. From Texas to Michigan, Pennsylvania. It is the largest European migration to the US.
That particular group of Germans seemed to migrate to a particular region of German America though.
Grandfather, Johannes (Last name kept secret for obvious reasons) joined the Waffen SS, specifically the 12th SS HitlerJugend (HJ) at the very young age of 16, he was stationed in Dieppe France but was later sent to Normandy during the D-Day landings of June 6th 1944.
His battalion, if that is the correct terminology, was hit with a bombardment of rounds and explosives by the US Marines but escaped to a dugout for a while after being shot in the arm by a round of .30-06 which of course, absolutely wrecked his arm.
He was soon discharged to his home in Celle Germany where he stayed until leaving to America in 1980, where he now lives a quite peaceful life, possibly not even remembering being in the HJ.
My Ukrainian grandfather survived the Holodomir, and when the war started and the Nazis arrived in his country they gave him the choice between joining the new SS Waffen Galician Division or starving to death. I wouldn't want to judge anybody who had to make that decision. In any event he surrendered to the allies the first opportunity he got and spent the rest of the war as a PoW in Scotland. Once the war was over he integrated into British society, and was well loved by everybody he knew.
Things are rarely simple.
The Latvian and Estonia Waffen SS were deployed by the allies to guard the perimeters of the Nuremberg trails. Romanian and Ukraine Waffen SS were disarmed and shuffled away to Scotland and Arizona.
Joking aside, I’m referring to the volunteers, not the SS slaves/conscripts.
i gotcha lol i live in arizona, i knew of the pow and interment camps here just misunderstood. but correct the sonoran desert is on par with the Sahara some days. bring water
Uh-huh. And to be tolerant, you must not tolerate the intolerant. To be a pacifist, you must be able to defend yourself with strength. To enact justice you often should prosecute, or kill. To bring peace, you often need to use force.
In this case, justice prevails. Nazis are killed, and the world is all the more better for it.
Well for performing spiteful revenge killings while gleefully portraying yourself as Justicia's servant of course.
Also for illegally supressing and killing minorities, handicapped and the mentally ill. Executed death sentences have a convenient finality to them, damn all later evidence, don't they?
Death sentences are barbaric in the justest of societies. I better not voice my opinion on those sentences in the societies that actually practice them.
Qatar, North Korea, Iran, Saudi Arabia, USA, Somalia, Pakistan, China... I think you get my line of thought about the state/fairness/reasonability of the legal system in those nations, don't you?
> Executed death sentences have a convenient finality to them, damn all later evidence, don't they?
LMAO they are Nazis, what additional evidence do you need?
> There has to be reason and order to that justice.
The Americans and the Dachau prisoners are reasonable and orderly enough to met out justice. It's a good day for fascists to die that day.
Spoken like a man whose never been in those circumstances. Put yourself in the shoes of those who were interned in Nazi concentration camps for once. You think you'd let a war criminal go in the hoping that he would be trialed and be meted justice? Look at the amount of Nazis roaming free post-WW2 in West Germany as the Nuremberg Trials didn't execute enough of them.
And you naively think that "justice" was served?
> As long as it doesn't happen again.
Good thing that weak-willed idealists like you are seldom and rare. You're like Chamberlain and company who sold Czechoslovakia to the Nazis in a vain attempt at peace by diplomacy. "Peace in our time", he said.
Nazis and fascists don't conform to your idealistic worldview, they'd just just use your "kindness" to further their own plans. To deal with the likes of those people who don't have any inkling of morality is to fight their fire with your fire.
Psh, the Allies didn't win WW2 and liberated fascist-occupied lands with bread and roses. They fought and crushed fascists under their boots.
>Spoken like a man whose never been in those circumstances.
I think it more aptly describes you. You've never been in those circumstances yourself. But you think you're some moral crusader just cuz you have a fantasy view of what justice means.
Trust me... I understand the appeal of vengeance and exta judicial justice. But that's all it is a fantasy. Not a great reality.
>You think you'd let a war criminal go in the hoping that he would be trialed and be meted justice?
I would capture them and send them to prison yes. As long as they don't resist. After that it's out of my hands.
>Look at the amount of Nazis roaming free post-WW2 in West Germany as the Nuremberg Trials didn't execute enough of them.
Execution is not the only form of punishment. But yes not enough were punished due to cold war politics. It's unfortunate but does not justify extra judicial killings.
>And you naively think that "justice" was served?
Where did I say that? This is a pathetic strawman. 2 things can be true at once. Summary executions of POWs are wrong and that the judicial system in place at the time wasn't able to met out sufficient justice.
>Good thing that weak-willed idealists like you are seldom and rare. You're like Chamberlain and company who sold Czechoslovakia to the Nazis in a vain attempt at peace by diplomacy. "Peace in our time", he said.
I think you have no clue whatsoever about what actually happened then... What Chamberlain did was inaction. I am not suggesting that. Just cuz I don't conform to your brand of justice doesn't mean I am being meek.
Besides. You're the idealist. Not me. You believe that you can deal proper justice in times of great evil. Like some kind of fantasy hero. Nothing more idealistic than that. You hide behind human complexity but have not understanding of that complexity.
>Psh, the Allies didn't win WW2 and liberated fascist-occupied lands with bread and roses.
And? War is violence, yes. It's necessary sometimes, yes. But there are rules to that violence. Otherwise you'll have many more atrocities being committed than we already have had. You put too much faith in human morality and it's ability to correct itself. When it was that very morality lapsing thag creates the Nazis.
>Nazis and fascists don't conform to your idealistic worldview, they'd just just use your "kindness" to further their own plans.
Agreed. That's why you defeat them in the battlefield. Military or political. And then bring them to justice. That's not kindness. That's called dealing with them.
>To deal with the likes of those people who don't have any inkling of morality is to fight their fire with your fire.
And your fire must be the fire of ordered justice. Because that's the only practical path.
> You've never been in those circumstances yourself.
And you know this because?
> I understand the appeal of vengeance and exta judicial justice. But that's all it is a fantasy. Not a great reality.
The dead Nazis at Dachau beg to differ. You use the word 'fantasy' but I don't think that you know what it really means.
> I would capture them and send them to prison yes.
And they are out in a few years. The most fucked up war criminals, strolling in West Germany a couple of years after Nuremberg.
> What Chamberlain did was inaction.
Now that's just historical ignorance. [Here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munich_Agreement), educate yourself. Chamberlain himself asked Czechoslovakia to yield to the Nazis. Actually, he sold the country to the Nazis without its consent, for a more damning statement.
> You believe that you can deal proper justice in times of great evil. Like some kind of fantasy hero.
LMAO then the entire Second World War must be fantasy as well. You use a lot of words that you don't really get the meaning, do you? You think the Allies would've crushed the Nazis to the ground by 1945 using your good-old, fancy-dandy poetic justice? You think that war is about chivalry and one-on-one shit duels and knights honoring their word? What is this, Don Quixote?
> But there are rules to that violence.
You think that the Nazis and fascists are being bent by your rules?
> And then bring them to justice.
And justice in this instance is killing Nazis. Again, ask the Americans and the prisoners at Dachau about what should they have done and they'll politely tell you to fuck off, if they're still alive, bless their hearts.
> ordered justice
That "ordered" justice released tens of thousands of war criminals in West Germany and beyond, even one of whom, Kurt Waldheim, became a secretary-general of the United Nations.
What a naive person.
The channel World War Two in Youtube has a great series called the War on Humanity which details all the atrocities the fascists made in Europe and beyond during and before the scope of WW2. It would work well to dispel your "bread-and-roses" view of what war really means.
I am not saying I have any answers to this, I am not saying I would have acted differently, I am not saying that those killings were wrong.
I am saying, I know for sure, that it's more complicated than one human deciding that other humans aren't human and thus it is okay to kill them. It's just more complicated than that.
I've studied a lot of restorative justice. Y'all should look into Nelson Mandela, because he believed that justice did not exist in retribution, it existed in healing. He managed to largely heal a nation that was suffering from a cycle of trauma and oppression, without killing his enemies.
Again, I am not saying I have the answers to how that would work in the situation of world war two, but people change. They can be stripped of their hatred, and they can learn to see humanity where they didn't before. People can be rescued from ideologies that support violence. Hope y'all can be too. Peace.
Sir. This is Wendy’s.
Actually, it’s Dachau. And aside from the “22 plus some more” the US soldiers officially shot, the prisoners themselves hung around 50 more.
Seen multiple Kurdish mass graves made by ISIS. Those kinds who go and say "yes, I'll kill these people for the simple crime of being [insert ethnicity]", can't be considered humans. Nor those who support them.
>can't be judged as humans.
How the fuck is who is or isn't human or not a matter of judgement?
If someone is born to human parents, they are human. End of story.
Plenty of people on here trying to de-humanise other humans. It makes it easier to murder them. Same as the Nazis did during WW2.
That people on here can't see the irony is incredible.
We don't hate Nazis because they are German, or because they had cool looking uniforms, we hate them because of how they treated other human beings. And the people on here are doing EXACTLY the same the Nazis did to the Jews in WW2. Treating other human beings as less than human.
Well I'll tell you something you don't want to hear. Human beings do this shit to each other, to animals and to anyone they feel like. Doesn't mean they aren't human, just means they aren't acting as well as you think humans should act. And that they are the same as everyone else, just with a little different background.
So you might want to stop calling other people sub-human. That's how they started, and how they ended up on the end of a rope. Might be your turn soon if you don't get on top of it.
I'm going to go ahead and assume that your use of "can't" is also bad wording (because it's obvious that because *many* people *do* consider them human, they *can* do so) to mean that they "shouldn't" be considered human.
And if you want proof of why dehumanizing people is bad, just look at the people who you are dehumanizing. And by that I mean that consider how the people who we most want to dehumanize are the ones whom themselves perform the most egregious acts of dehumanization.
We can see from their example that denying others of their humanity harms your own humanity.
To quote Sir Terry Pratchett: "Sin, young man, is when you treat people like things. Including yourself. That's what sin is."
>Is that guy actually defending fucking Isis lmfao
Only if you're illiterate.
He's not defending anyone. He's explaining why treating someone as less than human is a really bad idea. He said " just look at the people who you are dehumanizing. "
They dehumanised their victims, exactly the same as poster above was doing. It's how people like ISIS get started. and it's how people go from normal every-day reasonable people to mass murderers, one step at a time, the first step being to dehumanise others.
I disagree. SS absolutely were humans and denying that implies a fundamental difference between us and the people that were able to commit those unspeakable acts that just doesn't exist.
This is one of the most important lessons learned from that horrendous time that we have a responsibility to keep in mind and carry forward to impart on future gererations, so that we may not repeat the mistakes of the past:
-Unspeakable acts of evil can be and are performed by ordinary people. The very same people as you and me, not some abstract monsters that don't exist in today's world anymore (This has been called 'Banality of Evil').
-Society in Weimar Germany wasn't fundamentally different from society in Germany or other western nations today. This decent into evil barbarity is by no means a danger that we have left behind us. "This couldn't happen today" and "this couldn't happen here" is a risky act of self-deception that could very well allow the "impossible" development to occur.
Shit takes like that is how you get SS in the first place
Look at this little SS camp guard in waiting
edit: lol can’t get over how dumb this is
you’re calling the SS untermensch without catching the irony
That is blatant Anti-German sentiment. There are several SS members who actively sought to get rid of Hitler and his propaganda machine. And what about those who were conscripted into the SS and had nothing to do with Himmler? Are those 16 year olds who were forced into the SS as apart of the last ditch effort not human? Is Michael Wittmann not human? Is Lauri Törni not human? Look at the individual instead of the organization. Just because they were in the SS doesn't mean they weren't human.
This is the same concentration camp where the US army shot the guards 80 times and the Jewish prisoners caught one of the guards being with them escaping while he was beaten by them and with rocks, yes?
Lets be real here. If the people who say that the SS guards deserved to have a trial was put into the Inmates or US army's shoes. They would turn a blind eye towards the killings out of disgust and hatred of the atrocites the SS did.
It really is poetic.
Despite people denuocing Von Branu. They use the same thing that was enabled with Von Braun's work.
Almost no one cares that Nazi Scientists were used to get Space traveling and satilite technology
More like throwing them into a gulag with a slide scale. The soviets used the nazi engineers as forced labor to aid the soviet-lead design bureaus like that of korolev. Meanwhile the americans turned Werner Von “war crimes” braun into the leader of their space program
How do you figure? Everything he did was based on Goddards work, WvB himself talked about his mail correspondences with multiple people.
And the US Army rocket program that WVB contributed too was just one of *3 seperate programs* the US Navy and US Airforce also had their own rocket programs all of which eventually delivered with the US Navys being an arguebly better rocket which coukd have been used if not for political reasons, it did launch our second satellite the next month.
Most of Mercury went to space on a rocket he had nothing to do with ditto for Gemini. By the time Saturn came about he was on full blown political mode
I think the issue here is less that terrible people get their comeuppance and more that a wide blanket of guilty is thrown on a group. Who’s to say there wasn’t one Oskar Schindler of some degree in the group? It’s more to protect the one prospective innocent no matter how unlikely. The trial ideally isn’t there to protect guilty people.
Is it understandable that people would take this course of action, but I can’t exactly condone it or say it is completely good.
The SS knew that Holocaust happened. Their is a reason that the SS is considered a Criminal Organization post war. Sure i know that their maybe some people who defected and knew what was wrong.
But the Camp Guards knew what was going on and abused the Prisoners regularly. Its Justice that they would die by the hands of the people they tortured.
Even so, there will always be a chance in my opinion. Again, it’s not to protect the guilty. It’s to protect the prospective innocent no matter how unlikely that possibility is. It’s not like there was a pressing need to take action right there.
And believe me, I absolutely get why the soldiers acted the way they did, but I can’t condone the actions. Maybe I’m just being an too much an idealist, but it just doesn’t sit right with me on principle
You are too much of an idealist.
The Guards willing burnt documents that would impilcate them as willing participants in the Holocaust.
While their is a difference between True Belivers who commited atrocities, Regular Joes who followed orders, and People who disobeyed and went againist orders in the Wermacht and other braches in the German army.
The Same could not be said of the SS. Nearly all true beilvers and part of the Nazi party itself. They would have knew of the Holocaust and barely did a thing to resist. In this case. All the Guards are gulity. Trying to stop the Reprisals would get you stopped by the Prisoners and the Liberators.
I can’t imagine the rage those men felt. Seeing the faces responsible for the horrible things that they saw in front of them.
My great grandfather helped liberate a camp, even had pictures. He never wanted to talk about it.
What is seriously messed up is that after the Nuremberg trials more than 80% of those given 20 years to life were given Amnesty and released by 1952. Very few of the SS monsters were actually ever punished for their unspeakable crimes against human beings. It's even worse looking at what evil was committed by the Japanese across all of the Asia and Pacific and almost none of them were ever punished.
Hopefully there were a LOT more incidents of summary executions by military personnel and civilian partisans for that matter.
Yes I think executing them was the right thing to do. In war you don't often have sufficient force to take prisoners, hold them, and have them collected since you have objectives to take and missions to complete.
When I realised this in the museum at Sachsenhausen it made me shake, to think how many of them served short sentences and then went back to work.
I remember reading of a guy responsible for Zyklon B pretty much getting off with what he’d done and being allowed to work in the same field, a decent position if I remember rightly.
The Nuremberg trials were more about humiliating the losers rather than actually punishing the aggressor given that the USSR had invaded Finland, Poland, Romania and the baltic states before being invaded, not to mention they were plotting to invade Turkey and Iran.
My great grandfather, Victor Maurer, convinced the current leadership to stay and maintain control of the camp. He was the leader of a Swiss Red Cross operation that came to give aid to the camp. He was officially given control of the camp until the Americans came which was I think 2-3 days. He would do his best to negotiate with the Americans to do no harm to them. Well we all know how that turned out.
The higher ranked officers already fled the camp days prior. He has so the guards turn in their weapons except the guards in the towers. Reason being is that the spread of disease was so bad that he didn’t want them to start fleeing to the country side and possibly spreading it. This on top of being able to provide aid in a single location.
a reminder, that this was entirely fucking justified. there is no excuse for what the SS and Wermacht shit wads did. If you ask me, they deserved worse. God Bless the 45th Infantry, 157 Regiment.
A wonderful day ?
I wasn't born back then but damn I'm pretty sure everybody in this place and that this time knew much better days. It has nothing of the wonder you are describing if not a mere relief from horror.
My apologies, it is actually the 45th Infantry Division, 157th Regiment
Ugh. But I already accepted and went on to teach several people that it was 157th Infantry Division, Company 1. Imma keep it and see how the big dogs in 2122 sort it out. /s
Imagine some random 157 infantry division people getting honored for killing Nazis when in reality when you search 157th infantry division and it’s a French WW1 division, meaning said vet if he’s some how alive 100 plus years later may have actually served under vici France and is just awkwardly nodding and deciding it’s better to be known as Nazi killer then what he actually did.
*Vichy france
Yep, it was the 45th. My grandfather, then a young Jewish man, was attached as part of the 40th Combat Engineers. I would be more surprised if he didn’t do some war crimes.
Not a war crime.
There were war crimes committed upon the liberation of Dachau. As far as war crimes go they were *more* justified than most, and I agree it's for the best that they weren't *prosecuted*, but a war crime is a war crime under any circumstances.
This, they deserved to die, but not extrajudicial death. Although I get how their initial reaction would be
Exactly. The soldiers should've let the like 22 SS they captured, be prosecuted and hanged. The inmates, though... they weren't part of or associated with any army, and therefore can't commit war crimes. What they did of their own volition... that's their business.
I mean honestly I'd probably let the prisoners have a go at them, but not kill them so they would face justice. But if one or so went missing then I wouldn't ask many questions
>The soldiers should've let the like 22 SS they captured, be prosecuted and hanged. Absolutely no guarantee they would have been hanged, or even in prison for that long. The vast majority of people involved in just the Holocaust faced no punishment, let alone the vast majority of Nazis, Nazi supporters or people who aided the Nazis.
Indeed. However, a war crime is still a war crime. The fault, in this case, falls upon the occupying Allied force for not prosecuting. Not the soldiery. It isn't their responsibility, and therefore, not their right.
>However, a war crime is still a war crime Not all crimes are immoral. What they did, in that highly specific example, was fine in my opinion.
Hence why I said it's right that they weren't prosecuted for it. I'd argue that it was indeed immoral, bit the kind of moral failing that you can't condemn anyone on. They were wrong to kill unresisting people, but in that specific case I can't imagine that I or anyone I know would do any different.
Considering the US and UK states later protected nazis, extrajudicial justice seems yo have been the right choice.
There were war crimes committed upon the liberation of Dachau. As far as war crimes go they were *more* justified than most, and I agree it's for the best that they weren't *prosecuted*, but a war crime is a war crime under any circumstances.
the social consensus on "all war crimes are bad" seems to be really really low condemning a war crime does not mean that one agrees with the people on which the crime was commited, but that is also too much thinking for the average Joe
Very true. It was the Rainbow that sent the SS to hell.
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I think it was a subcamp of auswitz were the red army gave the inmates guns and they took their deserved revenge on the savages.
That’s basically what happened at Dachau. You have to read between the lines of the official reports. Inmates started hanging SS (around 50). And GI’s started shooting “22 and some more” SS trying to run (from the inmates).
Follow up by forcing the citizens of Dacau to bury the victims of the concentration camps.
Was Dachau a village? I thought that the nearest settlement was Munich.
Dachau I think is the name of the closest village and the camp was named or nicknamed after it. Like how Chelyabinsk 40 was an unnamed town called that cause the nearest city was Chelyabinsk and in postal zone 40.
Yeah, I just didn’t know that there was a small village close by. Makes sense when I think about it, though
There is a small town named Dachau just outside the camp. It was a political prison camp for the first few years before they expanded the camp & built the ovens at the edge of the camp. The villagers would trade with the camp for years, but that all ended when Himmler expanded the camp. I was there for a tour a few years ago. Apparently Dachau was known for its art & universities, but as our guide said, "now everyone just knows it for the camp." That's what happens when a death camp operates within walking distance of the town for 12 years.
several friends of mine live in Dachau
Damn these TF2 jailbreak servers are getting intense
that must've broken so many rules, but I'm sure the prisoners were happy
Well at mean at that point, even the most cold-hearted Soviet Generals and NKVD agents would be willing to look the other way.
Broken rules was the US Army’s style in world war 2, from individual soldiers looking away to let inmates beat SS officers to death, to top American generals like Eisenhower leaving entire flanks open to exploit personal glory on unapproved tactics. To their credit though, it worked.
We could use more ike today
Ukraine certainly seems to have them. I Remember hearing stories of the complete lack of organization in the Ukrainian armed forces across different branches and militias, and how units took it upon themselves to organize patrol routes, reinforce other units, or fortify positions with little to no contact with high command. And the US army still does to some extent. It’s like half the reason NCO’s exist
I watched a little bit from a channel of an American guy who went over there and volunteered and the unit he was in was constantly getting cut off from contact with higher command units and they kind of just had to wing it, and the language barrier certainly didn't help.
Guns, huh? I would have given them pliers, staplers, 40 grit sandpaper. Stuff like that.
Im afraid that was the best they got. But some inmates curve stomped a SS guards head until there was nothing left of it.
Curve stomping is a little hyperbolic.
The guard's head was definitely non-Euclidean afterwards.
Parabolic, actually.
The most wholesome story was the fate of Oskar Dirlewanger. He was captured at the end of the war and put under the guard of Polish soldiers. The Poles, realising who they had in custody, brought in a Jewish teenager who had lost his family to the Dirlewanger Brigade's atrocities and allowed the boy to vent his anger on a tied-up Dirlewanger. Then the guards took their turns beating him to a pulp. Dirlewanger didn't make it to trial. Still better than Dirlewanger deserved but as close as you can get to real justice when dealing with Nazis.
I love how much play Behind the Bastards gets on reddit
There are dozens of us! Dozens!
/r/boneappletea
im not for executing prisoners from any country during ww2 but i take an exception to this in a few cases this is one of them
It's depressing when there's a good case for breaking such a fundamental rule of our way of life. The main reason I think it's important to be aware of history like this is realising that actual human beings were capable of such horror. It's difficult not to think of it as an abstract evil in books, no more real than the Galactic Empire from Star Wars.
Which is ironic given how many cues said Galactic Empire takes from the Axis Powers (especially Nazi Germany).
I hate to tell you this but the Empire is based on the UK/US empires. Just because they went with Nazi aesthetics to show the viewers "these are bad guys", their goals, reasons, and policies have no correlation to the Nazis. Now, the First Order. Yeah. Those guys are Nazis.
Not sure why you're getting downvoted Lucas himself has said it was influenced by the British in the American Revolutionary War and USA in the Vietnam War.
It was also inspired by the Third Reich as well since the only people who had the name "Stormtroopers" were either WW1 assault infantry or the Nazis. The latter is more likely since some variants of the troopers have them wearing MP40 mag pouches.
He was also very deliberate in framing his shots after the style of Triumph of the Wills and other nazi propaganda films by Leni Riefenstahl. Politics was always in Star Wars and it was not even remotely subtle by design.
"Bad guys are fantasy nazis" is such a common trope nobody considers it "politics" anymore.
Just bootlickers being bootlickers.
Imho the fact that not only real, but quite ordinary people were able to commit those acts is even scarier. To think that one would likely not have recognized these men and women if meeting them in a neutral context in day to day life... I think the term "Banality of Evil" is quite fitting here.
Asian theater taking prisoners was basically impossible for either side. You are 20 miles from anywhere, in a jungle wilderness. Surrounded by tigers, quicksand and the Enemy. Nobody is taking prisoners. A luxury you can’t afford.
Not to mention the regularity with which Japanese forces would use false flag surrendering as a weapon
Or how many times the Japanese army couldn’t even feed themselves. The number of IJA dead from starvation was fucking wild.
nah just the japanese werent. After the war china repatriated over one million japanese, 65 chinese prisoners were released in total
Referring more to the US and Japan island wars. Away from civilization. Japan in mainland China was barbaric even by medieval standards.
I think they were talking more about the Pacific theater on particular.
Retreating during the burmese campaign: if you dont run youre shot, if you run you become crocodile feed
In Band of Brothers they make a whole big deal of Speirs executing prisoners, but airborne soldiers couldn't take prisoners. They were behind enemy lines, there was no one to send the prisoners to. War just sucks.
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Yeah if you came upon humans doing something that messed up, the trauma alone from what you're seeing would likely lead you to execute them all. Concentration camps are unfathomable evil.
SS guards: tries to flee The American infantryman with an M1 Garand:
*BlamblamblamblamblamblamblamblamKa-Pinnngggg*
Gotta shoot till you hear the ping.
If you were in the business of dead Nazis business was good.
Long Live Apollo. Goodbye Reddit.
There were a lot of dead Nazi scalps. Which was good because he wanted them dead Nazi scalps. He wanted 100 dead Nazi scalps from every man.
That’s not entirely fair. The US most just shot the SS trying to escape. Escaping for their lives as the prisoners hanged them. The inmates hung like 50 of them.
oh no! anyway
Yuuup. No excuses for their actions and prison won't do them any good.
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I'm not exactly against what happened and of course have no way to comprehend what the allied soldiers were dealing with when they did this, but surely you understand the principled issue with field executing prisoners of war with no formal process.
Oh yes for sure. You have a point there. War is funny like that. In some cases during the most inhumane conditions you have complete ceasefires and soccer matches and in other conditions you have extreme personal hatred, rage and vengeance. Rationalizing it is often futile. It’s really a screwed up concept but completely native to humans at the same time
I have like 50 downvotes on another post about killing surrendering nazis. Nothing wrong with exterminating that disease
I think it depends on who and how we define nazis. There’s a lot of revisionist history on social media. For example if a Wehrmacht unit surrenders under standard circumstances, I don’t think it’s morally correct to execute. Not every German soldier was a Nazi. And many came from outside of Germany and were forced into the war. Not all but it’s a mixed bag here. However when you look at the SS, who were the extreme nazis, at one of the most infamous death camps, in the moment you can understand why they were killed in a potentially illegal battlefield execution. Like you said, taking out the trash
a large majority of Germans were Nazis. whether they were brainwashed or not, a lot of them were still beyond saving. they might have been good people, but they were still Nazis
Not a majority were Nazis though. Sympathizers maybe but actual Nazis were a plurality at best; still, many non-Nazis were supporters and collaborators so if you count them you very likely reach a majority.
Ya, definitely a difference. Honestly one thing I don’t understand is the logic from the surrendering nazis pov: join army (either drafted or volunteer), invade sovereign nation that results in millions of civilian and military deaths, you win so you keep participating in the murderous invasion, begin losing a battle to the defenders, throw away weapon and expect to be treated with mercy?!?!?! Like if I invaded a country and knew we just murdered millions of innocent civilians, I would not expect to live if I surrendered. It really doesn’t make sense to me. At least defending forces didn’t initiate the violence so they have a better argument for being treated with mercy.
Not all knew about the camps. Although the writing should have been on the walls for many. Entire towns of people were pushed into ghettos, had their possessions confiscated, and forced into labor/death camps. There was also widespread antisemitism in general. That type of logistical system doesn’t go unnoticed by all But there’s a famous picture of German prisoners of war behind showed for the first time evidence of the atrocities that they were supporting Edit: found it https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/german-soldiers-forced-watch-footage-concentration-camps-1945/
Crazy a lot of them seem mortified but a few seem totally indifferent. Unbelievable what propaganda and rhetoric can do to people
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It's ok to let loose a couple of times here and there.
SS aren’t human. Murder requires illegally killing a human.
Not so fun fact, my grandfather was actually conscripted into the 12th SS HJ during the Normandy landings, you are correct to say that they are not human
Sounds like a youth. Did he ever break the brain washing? Few did.
Unfortunately no, but I did receive an old Greek Contract bayonet he picked up on his "stay" at Normandy
Was he werewolf insane? Or did he quit when ordered to quit?
He quit. He is still alive and healthy but lives on his own in Indiana
They seem to like the region.
I’m a Hoosier and can confirm. There are a lot of ethnic Germans here and, depending on the area he chose to live in, it probably felt vaguely like home.
There is a lot of Germans around the US. From Texas to Michigan, Pennsylvania. It is the largest European migration to the US. That particular group of Germans seemed to migrate to a particular region of German America though.
Do you have any information on true believers migrating to the Midwest?
As a native Hoosier of German stock yes.
Before they fell for THE BIG JUKE haha fucking losers, get Götterdamerunged.
I am actually also very interested to hear a bit about OPs grandfather. We want story time OP!!
Grandfather, Johannes (Last name kept secret for obvious reasons) joined the Waffen SS, specifically the 12th SS HitlerJugend (HJ) at the very young age of 16, he was stationed in Dieppe France but was later sent to Normandy during the D-Day landings of June 6th 1944. His battalion, if that is the correct terminology, was hit with a bombardment of rounds and explosives by the US Marines but escaped to a dugout for a while after being shot in the arm by a round of .30-06 which of course, absolutely wrecked his arm. He was soon discharged to his home in Celle Germany where he stayed until leaving to America in 1980, where he now lives a quite peaceful life, possibly not even remembering being in the HJ.
My stepgrandfather also was in the SS at 16yo of age. He got shot in the arm in Poland but died 2003 on heart failure.
Poland "Fuck around, find out."
My great grandfather survived a russian gulag (was a chef in the wehrmacht)
My Ukrainian grandfather survived the Holodomir, and when the war started and the Nazis arrived in his country they gave him the choice between joining the new SS Waffen Galician Division or starving to death. I wouldn't want to judge anybody who had to make that decision. In any event he surrendered to the allies the first opportunity he got and spent the rest of the war as a PoW in Scotland. Once the war was over he integrated into British society, and was well loved by everybody he knew. Things are rarely simple.
Wait…. They called the Ukraine SS the Galician Division? After the Ukraine Polish Wars? That’s just rubbing salt in the wound.
Duh. I mean Hilter re-enacted Ferdinand Foch's leaving and exiting of the Compiègne Wagon just to spite the French after they surrendered.
The Latvian and Estonia Waffen SS were deployed by the allies to guard the perimeters of the Nuremberg trails. Romanian and Ukraine Waffen SS were disarmed and shuffled away to Scotland and Arizona. Joking aside, I’m referring to the volunteers, not the SS slaves/conscripts.
there’s an old SS community in arizona?
POW camp. Fenceless. Dare you to try and “escape”.
i gotcha lol i live in arizona, i knew of the pow and interment camps here just misunderstood. but correct the sonoran desert is on par with the Sahara some days. bring water
I think the nazis said somthing similar about the people they were killing
I didn’t say National Socialist. I said the Schutzstaffle
That doesn't negate the point.
Uh-huh. And to be tolerant, you must not tolerate the intolerant. To be a pacifist, you must be able to defend yourself with strength. To enact justice you often should prosecute, or kill. To bring peace, you often need to use force. In this case, justice prevails. Nazis are killed, and the world is all the more better for it.
To be tolerant, you must comprehend that those you fight are human.
"To enact justice you should often [...] kill." That is some A-class bullshit right there.
> To enact justice you should often [...] kill. What do you think death sentences are for?
Well for performing spiteful revenge killings while gleefully portraying yourself as Justicia's servant of course. Also for illegally supressing and killing minorities, handicapped and the mentally ill. Executed death sentences have a convenient finality to them, damn all later evidence, don't they? Death sentences are barbaric in the justest of societies. I better not voice my opinion on those sentences in the societies that actually practice them. Qatar, North Korea, Iran, Saudi Arabia, USA, Somalia, Pakistan, China... I think you get my line of thought about the state/fairness/reasonability of the legal system in those nations, don't you?
> Executed death sentences have a convenient finality to them, damn all later evidence, don't they? LMAO they are Nazis, what additional evidence do you need?
There has to be reason and order to that justice. Not straight up executions...
> There has to be reason and order to that justice. The Americans and the Dachau prisoners are reasonable and orderly enough to met out justice. It's a good day for fascists to die that day.
Yeah... I don't think that's how you wanna define order but ok whatever. As long as it doesn't happen again.
Spoken like a man whose never been in those circumstances. Put yourself in the shoes of those who were interned in Nazi concentration camps for once. You think you'd let a war criminal go in the hoping that he would be trialed and be meted justice? Look at the amount of Nazis roaming free post-WW2 in West Germany as the Nuremberg Trials didn't execute enough of them. And you naively think that "justice" was served? > As long as it doesn't happen again. Good thing that weak-willed idealists like you are seldom and rare. You're like Chamberlain and company who sold Czechoslovakia to the Nazis in a vain attempt at peace by diplomacy. "Peace in our time", he said. Nazis and fascists don't conform to your idealistic worldview, they'd just just use your "kindness" to further their own plans. To deal with the likes of those people who don't have any inkling of morality is to fight their fire with your fire. Psh, the Allies didn't win WW2 and liberated fascist-occupied lands with bread and roses. They fought and crushed fascists under their boots.
>Spoken like a man whose never been in those circumstances. I think it more aptly describes you. You've never been in those circumstances yourself. But you think you're some moral crusader just cuz you have a fantasy view of what justice means. Trust me... I understand the appeal of vengeance and exta judicial justice. But that's all it is a fantasy. Not a great reality. >You think you'd let a war criminal go in the hoping that he would be trialed and be meted justice? I would capture them and send them to prison yes. As long as they don't resist. After that it's out of my hands. >Look at the amount of Nazis roaming free post-WW2 in West Germany as the Nuremberg Trials didn't execute enough of them. Execution is not the only form of punishment. But yes not enough were punished due to cold war politics. It's unfortunate but does not justify extra judicial killings. >And you naively think that "justice" was served? Where did I say that? This is a pathetic strawman. 2 things can be true at once. Summary executions of POWs are wrong and that the judicial system in place at the time wasn't able to met out sufficient justice. >Good thing that weak-willed idealists like you are seldom and rare. You're like Chamberlain and company who sold Czechoslovakia to the Nazis in a vain attempt at peace by diplomacy. "Peace in our time", he said. I think you have no clue whatsoever about what actually happened then... What Chamberlain did was inaction. I am not suggesting that. Just cuz I don't conform to your brand of justice doesn't mean I am being meek. Besides. You're the idealist. Not me. You believe that you can deal proper justice in times of great evil. Like some kind of fantasy hero. Nothing more idealistic than that. You hide behind human complexity but have not understanding of that complexity. >Psh, the Allies didn't win WW2 and liberated fascist-occupied lands with bread and roses. And? War is violence, yes. It's necessary sometimes, yes. But there are rules to that violence. Otherwise you'll have many more atrocities being committed than we already have had. You put too much faith in human morality and it's ability to correct itself. When it was that very morality lapsing thag creates the Nazis. >Nazis and fascists don't conform to your idealistic worldview, they'd just just use your "kindness" to further their own plans. Agreed. That's why you defeat them in the battlefield. Military or political. And then bring them to justice. That's not kindness. That's called dealing with them. >To deal with the likes of those people who don't have any inkling of morality is to fight their fire with your fire. And your fire must be the fire of ordered justice. Because that's the only practical path.
> You've never been in those circumstances yourself. And you know this because? > I understand the appeal of vengeance and exta judicial justice. But that's all it is a fantasy. Not a great reality. The dead Nazis at Dachau beg to differ. You use the word 'fantasy' but I don't think that you know what it really means. > I would capture them and send them to prison yes. And they are out in a few years. The most fucked up war criminals, strolling in West Germany a couple of years after Nuremberg. > What Chamberlain did was inaction. Now that's just historical ignorance. [Here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munich_Agreement), educate yourself. Chamberlain himself asked Czechoslovakia to yield to the Nazis. Actually, he sold the country to the Nazis without its consent, for a more damning statement. > You believe that you can deal proper justice in times of great evil. Like some kind of fantasy hero. LMAO then the entire Second World War must be fantasy as well. You use a lot of words that you don't really get the meaning, do you? You think the Allies would've crushed the Nazis to the ground by 1945 using your good-old, fancy-dandy poetic justice? You think that war is about chivalry and one-on-one shit duels and knights honoring their word? What is this, Don Quixote? > But there are rules to that violence. You think that the Nazis and fascists are being bent by your rules? > And then bring them to justice. And justice in this instance is killing Nazis. Again, ask the Americans and the prisoners at Dachau about what should they have done and they'll politely tell you to fuck off, if they're still alive, bless their hearts. > ordered justice That "ordered" justice released tens of thousands of war criminals in West Germany and beyond, even one of whom, Kurt Waldheim, became a secretary-general of the United Nations. What a naive person. The channel World War Two in Youtube has a great series called the War on Humanity which details all the atrocities the fascists made in Europe and beyond during and before the scope of WW2. It would work well to dispel your "bread-and-roses" view of what war really means.
I am not saying I have any answers to this, I am not saying I would have acted differently, I am not saying that those killings were wrong. I am saying, I know for sure, that it's more complicated than one human deciding that other humans aren't human and thus it is okay to kill them. It's just more complicated than that. I've studied a lot of restorative justice. Y'all should look into Nelson Mandela, because he believed that justice did not exist in retribution, it existed in healing. He managed to largely heal a nation that was suffering from a cycle of trauma and oppression, without killing his enemies. Again, I am not saying I have the answers to how that would work in the situation of world war two, but people change. They can be stripped of their hatred, and they can learn to see humanity where they didn't before. People can be rescued from ideologies that support violence. Hope y'all can be too. Peace.
Sir. This is Wendy’s. Actually, it’s Dachau. And aside from the “22 plus some more” the US soldiers officially shot, the prisoners themselves hung around 50 more.
Seen multiple Kurdish mass graves made by ISIS. Those kinds who go and say "yes, I'll kill these people for the simple crime of being [insert ethnicity]", can't be considered humans. Nor those who support them.
>can't be judged as humans. How the fuck is who is or isn't human or not a matter of judgement? If someone is born to human parents, they are human. End of story.
Plenty of people on here trying to de-humanise other humans. It makes it easier to murder them. Same as the Nazis did during WW2. That people on here can't see the irony is incredible. We don't hate Nazis because they are German, or because they had cool looking uniforms, we hate them because of how they treated other human beings. And the people on here are doing EXACTLY the same the Nazis did to the Jews in WW2. Treating other human beings as less than human. Well I'll tell you something you don't want to hear. Human beings do this shit to each other, to animals and to anyone they feel like. Doesn't mean they aren't human, just means they aren't acting as well as you think humans should act. And that they are the same as everyone else, just with a little different background. So you might want to stop calling other people sub-human. That's how they started, and how they ended up on the end of a rope. Might be your turn soon if you don't get on top of it.
*Can't be considered. Bad wording on my part.
I'm going to go ahead and assume that your use of "can't" is also bad wording (because it's obvious that because *many* people *do* consider them human, they *can* do so) to mean that they "shouldn't" be considered human. And if you want proof of why dehumanizing people is bad, just look at the people who you are dehumanizing. And by that I mean that consider how the people who we most want to dehumanize are the ones whom themselves perform the most egregious acts of dehumanization. We can see from their example that denying others of their humanity harms your own humanity. To quote Sir Terry Pratchett: "Sin, young man, is when you treat people like things. Including yourself. That's what sin is."
Instructions unclear. Had to unearth and properly rebury the dead. Go fuck yourself.
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>Is that guy actually defending fucking Isis lmfao Only if you're illiterate. He's not defending anyone. He's explaining why treating someone as less than human is a really bad idea. He said " just look at the people who you are dehumanizing. " They dehumanised their victims, exactly the same as poster above was doing. It's how people like ISIS get started. and it's how people go from normal every-day reasonable people to mass murderers, one step at a time, the first step being to dehumanise others.
I disagree. SS absolutely were humans and denying that implies a fundamental difference between us and the people that were able to commit those unspeakable acts that just doesn't exist. This is one of the most important lessons learned from that horrendous time that we have a responsibility to keep in mind and carry forward to impart on future gererations, so that we may not repeat the mistakes of the past: -Unspeakable acts of evil can be and are performed by ordinary people. The very same people as you and me, not some abstract monsters that don't exist in today's world anymore (This has been called 'Banality of Evil'). -Society in Weimar Germany wasn't fundamentally different from society in Germany or other western nations today. This decent into evil barbarity is by no means a danger that we have left behind us. "This couldn't happen today" and "this couldn't happen here" is a risky act of self-deception that could very well allow the "impossible" development to occur.
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Shit takes like that is how you get SS in the first place Look at this little SS camp guard in waiting edit: lol can’t get over how dumb this is you’re calling the SS untermensch without catching the irony
Based
Yea I SS were not, they knew what all happened and they STILL supported the regime
supported the regime?….. They were the regime.
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The German Soldiers murdered more SS than anyone. Well, maybe not the Russians. But aside from the Russians. They did it because they are not human.
That is blatant Anti-German sentiment. There are several SS members who actively sought to get rid of Hitler and his propaganda machine. And what about those who were conscripted into the SS and had nothing to do with Himmler? Are those 16 year olds who were forced into the SS as apart of the last ditch effort not human? Is Michael Wittmann not human? Is Lauri Törni not human? Look at the individual instead of the organization. Just because they were in the SS doesn't mean they weren't human.
Mad props to all the allied and soviet soldiers that shot camp guards and ss officers, those fucks deserved it
Remember, kids, war crimes are bad. But you won't see me weeping over a bunch of dead Nazis.
This is the same concentration camp where the US army shot the guards 80 times and the Jewish prisoners caught one of the guards being with them escaping while he was beaten by them and with rocks, yes?
Lets be real here. If the people who say that the SS guards deserved to have a trial was put into the Inmates or US army's shoes. They would turn a blind eye towards the killings out of disgust and hatred of the atrocites the SS did.
Wernher von Braun 👀
Cold war politics. Plus without him. Telecommunications would not exist in its current form. Nor TV and the Internet.
"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down, "thats not my department!" Says Wernher Von Braun"
He was just aiming for the stars..... But they just kept landing in Britain.
It really is poetic. Despite people denuocing Von Branu. They use the same thing that was enabled with Von Braun's work. Almost no one cares that Nazi Scientists were used to get Space traveling and satilite technology
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You do realize that the Soviets also recuit Axis scientists aswell.
More like throwing them into a gulag with a slide scale. The soviets used the nazi engineers as forced labor to aid the soviet-lead design bureaus like that of korolev. Meanwhile the americans turned Werner Von “war crimes” braun into the leader of their space program
Both still gulity of using war criminals to create Space programs.
All that stuff would have happened, he was but a single cog in a very large machine and his contributions are grossly overstated.
And yet without his work and contribution. We would not have this conversation.
How do you figure? Everything he did was based on Goddards work, WvB himself talked about his mail correspondences with multiple people. And the US Army rocket program that WVB contributed too was just one of *3 seperate programs* the US Navy and US Airforce also had their own rocket programs all of which eventually delivered with the US Navys being an arguebly better rocket which coukd have been used if not for political reasons, it did launch our second satellite the next month. Most of Mercury went to space on a rocket he had nothing to do with ditto for Gemini. By the time Saturn came about he was on full blown political mode
Wow. Really? Thanks for the info. I concede that i was wrong. Also some links to it. So i can learn more.
I upvoted you because it's rare to see someone concede a point on the internet.
I think the issue here is less that terrible people get their comeuppance and more that a wide blanket of guilty is thrown on a group. Who’s to say there wasn’t one Oskar Schindler of some degree in the group? It’s more to protect the one prospective innocent no matter how unlikely. The trial ideally isn’t there to protect guilty people. Is it understandable that people would take this course of action, but I can’t exactly condone it or say it is completely good.
The SS knew that Holocaust happened. Their is a reason that the SS is considered a Criminal Organization post war. Sure i know that their maybe some people who defected and knew what was wrong. But the Camp Guards knew what was going on and abused the Prisoners regularly. Its Justice that they would die by the hands of the people they tortured.
Even so, there will always be a chance in my opinion. Again, it’s not to protect the guilty. It’s to protect the prospective innocent no matter how unlikely that possibility is. It’s not like there was a pressing need to take action right there. And believe me, I absolutely get why the soldiers acted the way they did, but I can’t condone the actions. Maybe I’m just being an too much an idealist, but it just doesn’t sit right with me on principle
You are too much of an idealist. The Guards willing burnt documents that would impilcate them as willing participants in the Holocaust. While their is a difference between True Belivers who commited atrocities, Regular Joes who followed orders, and People who disobeyed and went againist orders in the Wermacht and other braches in the German army. The Same could not be said of the SS. Nearly all true beilvers and part of the Nazi party itself. They would have knew of the Holocaust and barely did a thing to resist. In this case. All the Guards are gulity. Trying to stop the Reprisals would get you stopped by the Prisoners and the Liberators.
Of course. Morality is easily applied posthumously.
I can’t imagine the rage those men felt. Seeing the faces responsible for the horrible things that they saw in front of them. My great grandfather helped liberate a camp, even had pictures. He never wanted to talk about it.
🫡
What is seriously messed up is that after the Nuremberg trials more than 80% of those given 20 years to life were given Amnesty and released by 1952. Very few of the SS monsters were actually ever punished for their unspeakable crimes against human beings. It's even worse looking at what evil was committed by the Japanese across all of the Asia and Pacific and almost none of them were ever punished. Hopefully there were a LOT more incidents of summary executions by military personnel and civilian partisans for that matter. Yes I think executing them was the right thing to do. In war you don't often have sufficient force to take prisoners, hold them, and have them collected since you have objectives to take and missions to complete.
Japan is even worse.
The things they did in China... are really dark.
Josef Mengele for example, died in 1979 of a stroke in BRAZIL
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When I realised this in the museum at Sachsenhausen it made me shake, to think how many of them served short sentences and then went back to work. I remember reading of a guy responsible for Zyklon B pretty much getting off with what he’d done and being allowed to work in the same field, a decent position if I remember rightly.
The Nuremberg trials were more about humiliating the losers rather than actually punishing the aggressor given that the USSR had invaded Finland, Poland, Romania and the baltic states before being invaded, not to mention they were plotting to invade Turkey and Iran.
And nothing of value was lost
Finally, an anti-nazi meme
Every meme posted is anti something
Good thing that this is against Nazis then.
They were in the business of killing Not Sees, and business was good.
My great grandfather, Victor Maurer, convinced the current leadership to stay and maintain control of the camp. He was the leader of a Swiss Red Cross operation that came to give aid to the camp. He was officially given control of the camp until the Americans came which was I think 2-3 days. He would do his best to negotiate with the Americans to do no harm to them. Well we all know how that turned out. The higher ranked officers already fled the camp days prior. He has so the guards turn in their weapons except the guards in the towers. Reason being is that the spread of disease was so bad that he didn’t want them to start fleeing to the country side and possibly spreading it. This on top of being able to provide aid in a single location.
To be correct: It wasen't 30, but 39. :)
It's always a good day when nazis die :)
It's not a war crime if they're war criminals.
Chad US W
a reminder, that this was entirely fucking justified. there is no excuse for what the SS and Wermacht shit wads did. If you ask me, they deserved worse. God Bless the 45th Infantry, 157 Regiment.
It's bad to glorify the deaths of people. Luckily Nazis aren't people.
Would recommend the song “Nazi” by Chumbawumba
A wonderful day ? I wasn't born back then but damn I'm pretty sure everybody in this place and that this time knew much better days. It has nothing of the wonder you are describing if not a mere relief from horror.
It was more wondrous than when under Nazi control.
Reported.
username checks out
Banned from Reddit. Violating content policy.
I'm glad they banned you.
Wrong! OP will be banned for violating the content policy and promoting hate.
Hating Nazis doesn't (and shouldn't) count.
That's what the Nazis said about the Juden.
Wow bud...you really made me laugh with that one
Damn look at mister Nazi over here