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I wouldn't make that statement about the Eastern Front.

Kanluwen wrote:

Ketara wrote:It's quite easy to tell whether you have an y sympathy for the 'average wehrmacht man' or not. There are a lot of soldiers/ex-soldiers in this forum. Here's a question. If one of your superiors told you to round up people and gas them to death on an industrial scale, would you do it? If they told you to line up and shoot civilians standing in front of trenches you just made them dig, would you do it?

If the answer is no, then consider this. If they told you to look the other way whilst someone else did it, would you?

That point is kind of moot.

The "average Wehrmacht man" wasn't involved with the death camps or the atrocities in general.

The concentration camps, perhaps. As for atrocities in general....Look at Russia. 'Nuff said.

Stormrider wrote:MGS, don't have a coronary. I didn't say you couldn't be critical of me, just don't misrepresent what I say. I never expected people to accept what I collect as normal either, you're the only one that's having some emotional problem with it. Calm down.

I did have relatives involved too, my great grandfather on my dad's side was a Major in the OSS. He debriefed bomber crews after they came back from their bombing runs.

I also visited the Holocaust museum in Washington DC several years ago, a very sad but important place.

Again with the Passive Aggressive. Don't deflect or belittle what I've said because it's not what you wanted to hear by the implied allusion to me losing my temper or being reactionary to this.

I am having neither an emotional problem nor a coronary, I pointed out that I (as in me, since you were gauging opinion...) would not care to have this stuff around. That I would make judgements about you based on your ownership of Naziabilia. If you'd said 'I have some Nazi stuff as part of my WW2 collection, that's dilution and alleviates the preconception I may take about you.

I myself have an interest in the Mongolian Empire and the Samurai of Japan. I have no doubt there was savagery and cruelty about those eras in those parts of the world but there is not the association with 'evil' and 'genocide' that there are with the Nazis and, as I mentioned, both are far far more distant in time.

So, let me give you a conclusive run-down:

1. No, I don't think you collecting Nazi memorabilia is evil, however, I do believe there are many who collect that stuff, who do so out of admiration for what it stands for. The act of purchasing and owning trinkets isn't evil, it's what those trinkets mean to you, why you are motivated to collect them. If it's purely aesthetic or part of a larger collection or something like that, then that's fine.

2. If I met you and you said 'hey, let me show you my Nazi shrine in the basement' then I'll be out through your front door faster than you can say 'That Falling Down movie was reasonably good!'. It has too many odd associations and I'd assume sympathiser before I thought 'person interested enough in the nazis to spend large sums of money on antiques but in no way in agreement with them and their 'shenanigans'...

3. People who talk about how 'well, Hitler did a lot of other things which weren't so bad so maybe we could...' NO, He exterminated millions of people, he led his country into the most destructive conflict the world has ever seen, there is no justification for that. EVER. We don't get 'silver lining' from Nazism.

4. You've spoken about the poor soldiery and 'average joe' troopers. I simply said they were less in need of sympathy than the people they helped exterminate. For every brave eyed trooper who did his bit for Germany and Gretel waiting back at the farm, there was some bastard flamethrowering and bayoneting Polish country peasants or raping a French girl or stood in a guard tower overlooking Auschwitz, firing rounds into lined up elderly Jews who could not work.

5. By your rather ardent responses I sense a romanticising on your part, of the Nazis and how you can get over the 'unpleasantness' to focus your admiration on how nice their uniforms were and how good they were at blowing stuff up and shooting the enemy. Then you claim 'you can't say, you weren't there' which, given your want to own items which once belonged to the most evil order on earth, seems entirely hypocritical.

You were not there, your grandfather talked to pilots after they returned from bombing runs and you visiting a block of concrete separated from either theatre of war by 2 oceans does not qualify you in any way, shape or form. You haven't watched your family murdered or your nation invaded by that terrifying and brutal regime, not seen your city turned to rubble or your friends tortured or been starved or mutilated by a foreign order that believes you a lesser form of life.

Not you nor I get to say what is acceptable to those who have survived that, nor tell them that it's because you admire 'some bits' about what the Nazis did to the world and the people that live in it.

Collect your memorabilia, don't come wandering onto a forum and ask if it's evil, don't ask that slanted question so that you can justify it. Either you collect them as a historian, in which case crack on and enjoy yourself, or you collect them as a sympathiser, in which case, stay well out of my way.

Wait you didn't like Fallen Down? Ok you have to have lived in LA for it to really strike home, but come on who hasn't wanted to go berserk after sitting in LA traffic?

MeanGreenStompa wrote:

Stormrider wrote:MGS, don't have a coronary. I didn't say you couldn't be critical of me, just don't misrepresent what I say. I never expected people to accept what I collect as normal either, you're the only one that's having some emotional problem with it. Calm down.

I did have relatives involved too, my great grandfather on my dad's side was a Major in the OSS. He debriefed bomber crews after they came back from their bombing runs.

I also visited the Holocaust museum in Washington DC several years ago, a very sad but important place.

Again with the Passive Aggressive. Don't deflect or belittle what I've said because it's not what you wanted to hear by the implied allusion to me losing my temper or being reactionary to this.

I am having neither an emotional problem nor a coronary, I pointed out that I (as in me, since you were gauging opinion...) would not care to have this stuff around. That I would make judgements about you based on your ownership of Naziabilia. If you'd said 'I have some Nazi stuff as part of my WW2 collection, that's dilution and alleviates the preconception I may take about you.

I myself have an interest in the Mongolian Empire and the Samurai of Japan. I have no doubt there was savagery and cruelty about those eras in those parts of the world but there is not the association with 'evil' and 'genocide' that there are with the Nazis and, as I mentioned, both are far far more distant in time.

So, let me give you a conclusive run-down:

1. No, I don't think you collecting Nazi memorabilia is evil, however, I do believe there are many who collect that stuff, who do so out of admiration for what it stands for. The act of purchasing and owning trinkets isn't evil, it's what those trinkets mean to you, why you are motivated to collect them. If it's purely aesthetic or part of a larger collection or something like that, then that's fine.

2. If I met you and you said 'hey, let me show you my Nazi shrine in the basement' then I'll be out through your front door faster than you can say 'That Falling Down movie was reasonably good!'. It has too many odd associations and I'd assume sympathiser before I thought 'person interested enough in the nazis to spend large sums of money on antiques but in no way in agreement with them and their 'shenanigans'...

3. People who talk about how 'well, Hitler did a lot of other things which weren't so bad so maybe we could...' NO, He exterminated millions of people, he led his country into the most destructive conflict the world has ever seen, there is no justification for that. EVER. We don't get 'silver lining' from Nazism.

4. You've spoken about the poor soldiery and 'average joe' troopers. I simply said they were less in need of sympathy than the people they helped exterminate. For every brave eyed trooper who did his bit for Germany and Gretel waiting back at the farm, there was some bastard flamethrowering and bayoneting Polish country peasants or raping a French girl or stood in a guard tower overlooking Auschwitz, firing rounds into lined up elderly Jews who could not work.

5. By your rather ardent responses I sense a romanticising on your part, of the Nazis and how you can get over the 'unpleasantness' to focus your admiration on how nice their uniforms were and how good they were at blowing stuff up and shooting the enemy. Then you claim 'you can't say, you weren't there' which, given your want to own items which once belonged to the most evil order on earth, seems entirely hypocritical.

You were not there, your grandfather talked to pilots after they returned from bombing runs and you visiting a block of concrete separated from either theatre of war by 2 oceans does not qualify you in any way, shape or form. You haven't watched your family murdered or your nation invaded by that terrifying and brutal regime, not seen your city turned to rubble or your friends tortured or been starved or mutilated by a foreign order that believes you a lesser form of life.

Not you nor I get to say what is acceptable to those who have survived that, nor tell them that it's because you admire 'some bits' about what the Nazis did to the world and the people that live in it.

Collect your memorabilia, don't come wandering onto a forum and ask if it's evil, don't ask that slanted question so that you can justify it. Either you collect them as a historian, in which case crack on and enjoy yourself, or you collect them as a sympathiser, in which case, stay well out of my way.

Score 1 Man point for MGS.

Ketara wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:

Ketara wrote:It's quite easy to tell whether you have an y sympathy for the 'average wehrmacht man' or not. There are a lot of soldiers/ex-soldiers in this forum. Here's a question. If one of your superiors told you to round up people and gas them to death on an industrial scale, would you do it? If they told you to line up and shoot civilians standing in front of trenches you just made them dig, would you do it?

If the answer is no, then consider this. If they told you to look the other way whilst someone else did it, would you?

That point is kind of moot.

The "average Wehrmacht man" wasn't involved with the death camps or the atrocities in general.

The concentration camps, perhaps. As for atrocities in general....Look at Russia. 'Nuff said.

Oh please.

Again, Waffen-SS were actual military units deployed on the Eastern Front, along with the Western Front. The SS pretty much ran mobile extermination squads behind German lines, executing partisans and anyone lending aid to the partisans.

It's no different than what the Vichy French did to the French resistance, the Dutch did to Nazi sympathizers, etc.

And as an aside, there was also the issue of the NKVD and the massacres they orchestrated alongside the Red Army regular infantry prior to the onset of Operation: Barbarossa.

Do you think I'm not cognizant of the existence of the SS as legitimate military formations? The Wehrmacht still committed plenty of atrocities on the Eastern Front. It wasn't just the SS.

The Wehrmacht wasn't doing the massacring though.

You're mistaking Wehrmacht for the SS, which makes you -wrong-. The worst thing I can think of that remotely comes close to being a Wehrmacht "massacre" is Stalingrad, and that's more because of the fact that the SS started taking command of Wehrmacht units that were proven to party loyalty and bringing them into the Waffen-SS.

Kanluwen wrote:
Oh please.

Again, Waffen-SS were actual military units deployed on the Eastern Front, along with the Western Front. The SS pretty much ran mobile extermination squads behind German lines, executing partisans and anyone lending aid to the partisans.
It's no different than what the Vichy French did to the French resistance, the Dutch did to Nazi sympathizers, etc.
And as an aside, there was also the issue of the NKVD and the massacres they orchestrated alongside the Red Army regular infantry prior to the onset of Operation: Barbarossa.

Are you seriously playing 'top trumps' with who did what?

Are you seriously belittling the real life events that took place, the human suffering that occurred, to win some 'oneupmanship' contest you've just invented for yourself on this forum?

Have you neatly condensed the barbarism committed on the Eastern Front to the 'guys in black, not those brave and noble guys in grey'?

You're either autistic or an idiot.

Kanluwen wrote:The Wehrmacht wasn't doing the massacring though.

You're mistaking Wehrmacht for the SS, which makes you -wrong-. The worst thing I can think of that remotely comes close to being a Wehrmacht "massacre" is Stalingrad, and that's more because of the fact that the SS started taking command of Wehrmacht units that were proven to party loyalty and bringing them into the Waffen-SS.

Hooboy. You know, I could go up to my academic library this very minute, and pull out half a dozen academically accredited sources of regular Wehrmacht units raping, looting, burning, and killing indiscriminately across Russia. But you know what? I genuinely cannot be bothered to argue this point. I know what happened from the exam I wrote on it three days back. Believe what you will.

MeanGreenStompa wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:
Oh please.

Again, Waffen-SS were actual military units deployed on the Eastern Front, along with the Western Front. The SS pretty much ran mobile extermination squads behind German lines, executing partisans and anyone lending aid to the partisans.
It's no different than what the Vichy French did to the French resistance, the Dutch did to Nazi sympathizers, etc.
And as an aside, there was also the issue of the NKVD and the massacres they orchestrated alongside the Red Army regular infantry prior to the onset of Operation: Barbarossa.

Are you seriously playing 'top trumps' with who did what?

Are you seriously belittling the real life events that took place, the human suffering that occurred, to win some 'oneupmanship' contest you've just invented for yourself on this forum?

Have you neatly condensed the barbarism committed on the Eastern Front to the 'guys in black, not those brave and noble guys in grey'?

You're either autistic or an idiot.

Listen up before you speak again, you insulting heathen.

Read what you want into it about "belitting the real life events for oneupmanship", but you're wrong about that.

The Eastern Front was a fething mess. There were Wehrmacht units that were coopted by the Waffen-SS. Those units were considered SS, NOT Wehrmacht by the organizational terms of battle. They were also die-hard Nazi party members who were basically considered 'too important' to lose to frontline combat. It doesn't help that at the same time this was happening, the NKVD and Red Army were massacring any German POWs they captured--which led to retaliation against partisans who were doing the capturing for the NKVD/Red Army.

Partisans, however, do not equal civilians under rules of engagement. They're non-uniformed combatants are not afforded the same "courtesies" as uniformed soldiers of a nation.

And Ketara, I'd honestly like to see those sources. Everything I've seen points towards it being SS and their coopted units, not Wehrmacht.

Kanluwen wrote:The Wehrmacht wasn't doing the massacring though.

You're mistaking Wehrmacht for the SS, which makes you -wrong-. The worst thing I can think of that remotely comes close to being a Wehrmacht "massacre" is Stalingrad, and that's more because of the fact that the SS started taking command of Wehrmacht units that were proven to party loyalty and bringing them into the Waffen-SS.

Van Lewuen er kanluwen your statement is wrong. There are plenty of recorded instance of wholesale massacres and other atrocities on the Eastern Front by normal landsers. The fact they stood by and did nothing is itself incriminatory.

Now having said that, this is somewhat if a different topic than historical knicknacks.

On the hand I can understand the reticence by some about this. Anything in living memory runs that risk.


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Sigh this one is closed. Lets just leave it that oen answer is yes it can bug some people.

No warnings on my part. You all suck, but so do I muahahah!