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You'd be surprised how successful Waffen SS vets have been at 'redeeming' the image of the SS. There's still people who insist the WSS didn't know anything about the Holocaust.

Oh, hello Godwin!

I knew you'd be along sooner or later.

 Monster Rain wrote:
Oh, hello Godwin!

I knew you'd be along sooner or later.

It is supposedly inevitable

it would make it easier on the rest of us

it really is funny how you can look at where all the technology and $$$$$ is in America, and it ain't with the red states


only problem is America would have something right in the middle of it, guess we could attack from both sides though.

There is a rumor going around that the FBI is going through the petitions and revoking security clearances for anyone who signed the petition.
I hope so.

 LordofHats wrote:
You'd be surprised how successful Waffen SS vets have been at 'redeeming' the image of the SS. There's still people who insist the WSS didn't know anything about the Holocaust.

For that matter, there are still people who claim the Holocaust never happened. Including an economics professor at Northwestern University.

More proof that credentials != always right.

 Frazzled wrote:
There is a rumor going around that the FBI is going through the petitions and revoking security clearances for anyone who signed the petition.
I hope so.

Still holding on to mine sir! Ironic that I post in a thread about secession? Not at all? Ironic that I in no way support their hilarious shenanigans? Absolutely!

While it will fail to tear apart the fabric of our union, it will result in funny jokes and pictures...

 LordofHats wrote:

Seriously. Its not going to happen.

We both know stranger things have really happened. I can say from my own experiences that pissed off Texans do stupid things. (To this day my favorite is still 'What the hell is THAT?!!' and he really did look up.)

So, ultimately, it gets down to how many Texans are pissed off, and if they're each going to convince the minimum of three pals with no necks they all seem to have to go along with them.

 BaronIveagh wrote:
We both know stranger things have really happened. I can say from my own experiences that pissed off Texans do stupid things. (To this day my favorite is still 'What the hell is THAT?!!' and he really did look up.)

So, ultimately, it gets down to how many Texans are pissed off, and if they're each going to convince the minimum of three pals with no necks they all seem to have to go along with them.

People in general do stupid things. In the words of the Immortal Gregory House: "People are idiots."

But 100,000 don't make a revolution, especially not without some serious $$$ behind them. I see no such event being at all plausible within the next 50 years, and given the record of younger voters supporting Obama, we're likely looking at a primarily older demographic being behind these petitions. A demographic that won't be around much longer (no offense senior members ).

This isn't the first time secession petitions have popped up their head in the last eighty years and it won't be the last. People are idiots and this is just an idiotic thing that they do. I think the vast majority of Americans are too invested into the system to bail out. Even if we hit the fiscal cliff and taxes go up radically I just don't see this as a likely outcome. People will need the government more than ever in that situation.

 LordofHats wrote:

Depends on where they were. The North had reached the point of practicing 'total war' and Sherman made it clear he considered civilians a legitimate military target. Given the situation, civilians would be looking for someone to blame. Plantation owners and the government made for good targets.

And defecting made it less likely that the North would move on to simply exterminating the civilian populace.

To add to this its also not entirely clear just how much support the Confederate government really had. Southerns certainly seemed willing to fight the North, but how much stock they put into the new government is up for debate.

Lone Cat wrote:1. The cornerstones of the earliest Republicans mainly consisted of abolitionists. before the Republicans there were a failed "The Free Soil Party". they. however, presented a concepts that the slavery prevents 'social mobility' through the farmer's viewpoint. a slave owners, which consisted of a very few percentages of the 'southerners' are wealthy and they can make best of their wealths purchasing the most fertile plots of land as much as they can and then worked the land with a 'band of slaves' ...

The Free Soil movements believed that the Slavery is bad because it is not only inhibits social mobility (both of the slaves, and those free farmers who can't afford to bid for any), it also economically inefficient. they however articulated their anti-slavery on the grounds of economics development (in the newly annexed territories) rather than moral standards. and the articulations limited their manpower resources.

Partially. The Free Soilers formed the bulk of early Republican support and political ideology. The Republican party ultimately formed up of politicians from the Whigs, Free Soiler Democrats (Democrats from the New England states mostly) and a hodge podge of American party, Know Nothings, and Free Soil party. 'Free Soil' refers to the desire of Northerns to give out land in the territories freely. This idea eventually became the Homestead Act.

What has gone unmentioned thus far in this thread are some of the stupid paranoid delusions the North had about the South. The biggest one and the primary one behind the Free Soiler movement was that rich slave owning plantation owners would buy up all the land in the territories and force free men out. This isn't something that could have happened as most slave owners weren't that rich. Most of their wealth was tied directly into the land they already owned and their slaves. Buying up swathes of land in the territories wasn't something they'd likely be able to do.

But yes. The Free Soil movement was not a moral opposition to slavery so much as personal one. Abolitionism didn't have that much support before the war. There were the Radical Republicans, a small group of Republicans who wanted to abolish slavery outright, but before the war they were few and had little support.

- John Brown. tried to stage a 'slave revolts' in Harrisburg, too bad he did not have enough public support to keep his cause so his intended revolts fails, and he was publicly hanged. funny enough, troops that suppress his intended revolts in the 1860 fought for his cause in 1861

Yep. History is full of that stuff

- The Beechers, a pair of 'hardcore' abolitionists siblings. while Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote The Uncle Tom's cabin. Henry Ward Beechers took the 'books' further. instead of just distributing the books/Holy Bible to Kansas folks, he trield to smuggle Sharps rifle to a group of abolitionists in Kansas. I only know that the slave problems will end in an armed conflict. but did he actually instigate the war?

The Civil War? Not really. He helped contribute to the conflict of Kansas' state hood called Bloody Kansas but I don't know if the weapons he acquired for that conflict were actually used. Bloody Kansas itself I don't really see as a cause of the Civil War so much as a early sign of what was coming. His sister's book however did ignite a wave of tensions between North and South.

one might said that the Confederacy actually dissolved 'internally' they can't actually fund their war efforts and thus resulting in a high rate of inflation, and followed by a wave of desertions which ruines the efforts to stave off the sieges laid by the 'Yanks' correct?

Yes. The Confederacy found itself in heavy debts because Northern blockades were crippling the Southern economy.

I don't know how severe desertion was. The thing about the Confederate Army is that there really wasn't one. One existed on paper, but effectively there was not organized command until very late in the war. The army had no unified goals other than 'win the war' and the leaders like Robert E. Lee, Braxton Bragg, and Edmund Kirby Smith were all fighting their own wars. They never had the concrete strategic organization of the Union army or the support network. Robert E. Lee seems to have maintained a great deal of order and discipline in his army, but I'm not sure how bad the situation got for others as the war drew to a close.

IMO I think internal dissolution would have been the Confederacy's state war or no war. In the 1850's cotton prices spiked as a result of warfare in the Middle East between Egypt, the Saudi's, and the Ottomans and generally the gradual dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. Egypt wasn't a major source of cotton but the conflict did cause cotton prices to spike. This hurt the British textile industry as well as the US industry. The British in turn advanced rapidly their cotton production in India. This ended up having drastic ramifications for the South after the War because Britain no longer depended as heavily on US cotton supplies (and US cotton was deemed inferior to Indian cotton). The Boll Weavil also had a population explosion in the late 19th century greatly damaging cotton crops in the US.

Both these events would have happened with or without the Civil War. The South's economy was going to collapse either way in the 1870's and 1880's. Would have been interesting to see their reaction to that.

And defecting made it less likely that the North would move on to simply exterminating the civilian populace.

I find that suggestion hilarious.

1. By the 1860 The radical abolitionists could be 'faded away' and the war could be totally averted before it even broke out. too bad 'a few, and weak' hardcore abolitonists 'shouts' so loud that a group of slave owners heard their messages so clear. and some few politicians considered it is a provocation. One version of Civil War history books said that a group (or a number of groups) of Southern priests did regularly preaced another radical messages 'taken from The Bible' itself saying that slavery is a common good and abolitionism is a sin. If the european laws against Heresy has been enacted anywhere in the US those priests will face a hard legal case and will be eventually , and severly punished. But because heresy doesn't exists in any U.S. code of law. (I wonder how priests of different religious orders organizes and governs in such environments?) those priests continued to spread such 'teachings' every Mass day and thus the North-South polarizations aggregated further. (and since the Bible is a collection of religious scriptures that includes ones of Judaism (The Old Testament) and a set of collections regarding to Jesus (The New Testament), the pro-slavery preachings are likely derived from the Old Testaments where religious figures were also Kings of the old Israel) but. did the groups of pro-slavery priests really ever exists and spread the messages that favors those bands of southern politicians?
2. By 1860. Did the southern cotton planters and the Policymakers of the southern states recieves any messages regarding to the relationships between the Ottoman politics and cotton prices and other British cotton policy? Did they aware that British Empire successfully annexed India by 1820s and the Empire was slowly expanding eastward? or did they simply cares only a cotton prices which they can sell? they did have some guts to speculate. but by then, (southern) cotton planters did not seems to see the cotton market throughout the whole supply chain. Or by then was it possible to see that?
Southern states did grow other cash crops too! they also grew Tobacco and Sugarcanes. did the two crops also counts amongs southern economic policy? and who did they sell these produces to?
3. By the same year. Did the southerns even considered establishing domestic textile industry there instead of relying heavily on exports? At least 3 Southern states have access to Appalachian coals (I think) which could fuel their industry effort if they want to Industrialize. even if a group of Southern politicians considered domestic industrialization is a feasible option. did they ever have a chance to convince the mainstream southern politicians the merits if such investment (without even talking about Slavery politics to them). if so, did the mainstream southern politicians still considered the proposal 'Anti-Slavery politics'?
4. Was The CSA 'Army' actually a large chunck of militias? didn't CSA Armed forces have logistics corps?

did the groups of pro-slavery priests really ever exists and spread the messages that favors those bands of southern politicians?

Yes they did exist. In about the 1820's I think it was when the debate over slavery first really hit hard Southerns began looking for moral justifications of slavery. One of the justifications that appeared was religious where Southerns took the Bible and interpreted various sections to be in support of slavery (and honestly some sections of the Bible can easily be read that way). They didn't specifically target politicians per se, but they did preach it and politicians being part of society like everyone else heard it.

By 1860. Did the southern cotton planters and the Policymakers of the southern states recieves any messages regarding to the relationships between the Ottoman politics and cotton prices and other British cotton policy? Did they aware that British Empire successfully annexed India by 1820s and the Empire was slowly expanding eastward? or did they simply cares only a cotton prices which they can sell? they did have some guts to speculate. but by then, (southern) cotton planters did not seems to see the cotton market throughout the whole supply chain. Or by then was it possible to see that?

Hmm. That is a good question and I can honestly say I do not know XD If your familiar with the phrase "King Cotton" it refers to the South's belief that they could form an independent state based on the cotton trade which was until the later half of the 19th century extremely lucrative. I'm not sure if they saw its decline coming. They would certainly be aware of British control of India and the British were building a cotton industry there as early as the turn of the 19th century. How aware the South was of this or whether they saw it as a threat to their own industry I do not know.

Southern states did grow other cash crops too! they also grew Tobacco and Sugarcanes. did the two crops also counts amongs southern economic policy? and who did they sell these produces to?

Tobacco and SUgarcane were stables of the Southern economy but not as strongly as cotton. The thing about Sugarcane is that you need a very wet environment to grow it. Most of the South is fairly dry so outside of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Florida there wasn't much sugar growing. Sugarcane also quickly diminishes the nutrients in the soil where it grows making it long term cost ineffective as it just used up the land. EDIT: most sugarcane growing in the Americas happened in the Caribbean and South America (Brazil today has a huge sugar industry).

Tobacco had kind of fallen to the side for the US economy in favor of cotton. Tobacco wasn't big in the South during most of the 19th century until some guy whose name I can't remember invented a machine that sped up the production process of cigarettes and reduced the labor cost and revived the industry.

3. By the same year. Did the southerns even considered establishing domestic textile industry there instead of relying heavily on exports? At least 3 Southern states have access to Appalachian coals (I think) which could fuel their industry effort if they want to Industrialize. even if a group of Southern politicians considered domestic industrialization is a feasible option. did they ever have a chance to convince the mainstream southern politicians the merits if such investment (without even talking about Slavery politics to them). if so, did the mainstream southern politicians still considered the proposal 'Anti-Slavery politics'?

I'm not big on textile history (though interestingly some people are!). My knowledge on it comes from Eric Foner and his studies on American industry during the Reconstruction. There were industrialists in the South who wanted to boost a domestic industry and there were mills through out the south primarily located in Georgia and the Carolinas but the market drop of the mid 1850's hit them very hard because their mills were not as well established as those in New England.

As for coal, if you reference one of my earlier posts I mentioned the main problem. There was a lot of coal available in Alabama and Virginia (later West Virginia) but these deposits were not as easily accessible as those in Pennsylvania. A brief look at a US map will show the problem:



Focus on the east end of the US and that huge dark spot running through the Appalachian Mountains. Getting to that coal was very difficult in the 1800's, and Pennsylvania had a big geographic advantage. The Susquehanna River Basin. The numerous tributary rivers made moving the coal by water very easy and much much cheaper than mining in the south. The South certainly had the resource but it was not cheap to get to it. They certainly could have built their own industry (and eventually the textile industry did move into the southern states) but more likely they'd have just kept buying from the North had they not lost the war or had the war not happened.

EDIT: The other issue though is that the early textile industry did not use coal power. It used water from rivers. I'm actually not sure when coal power would have started to be used. The reason New England really kicked ahead of the South was because of geography (geography matters people!). The southern states population centers sat primarily east of the Appalachian mountains on a fairly even and wide coastal plain. Rivers were there but they moved slower. This mattered because faster rivers in the New England states (which have a steeper elevation incline) were more effective for early textiles mills once water power started to be harnessed.

EDIT EDIT: There's also the issue of competition for capital. Why would a successful cotton farmer take a risk and invest in textiles when he can just use his money to get a few more slaves maybe some more land and keep growing cotton? Textiles had their minor burst in the South during a price dip in cotton during the 1830's and 1840's. When cotton prices spiked in the 1850's this capital for investment vanished because cotton became so much more valuable for those years.

As a side note I am now remembering things I didn't even know I knew so these posts are getting more jumbled and clumpy than my posts already are

4. Was The CSA 'Army' actually a large chunck of militias? didn't CSA Armed forces have logistics corps?

Depends on who you ask. Some historians will say the entire CSA was one big militia others say it had a standing army. CSA was broken into two sections: the Provisional Army and the Confederate Army. The Provisional Army was militia while the Confederate Army was the actual standing army.

But like I said they didn't really have centralized command. The southern states themselves often managed their armies independent of one another (Georgia in particular is very famous for this during the war) and didn't like the troops leaving their home states. In this sense the CSA was more of a militia force thrown together by the Southern States than a true standing army. But of course by this is also true of the Union Army. The standing federal army was very small. Most of the forces that fought for the North were state units as well.

The CSA did not have a centralized supply chain. The states themselves equipped their troops. A great deal of the equipment used by the CSA during the war actually came from the North. Initial victories left them to scour the field and they acquired Union arms, munitions, rations, clothing etc.

As a note the Civil War is often regarded as the event that made the United States Army a true standing army rather than a skeleton force like it had often been and this was a huge expansion on Federal power.

 LordofHats wrote:

4. Was The CSA 'Army' actually a large chunck of militias? didn't CSA Armed forces have logistics corps?

Depends on who you ask. Some historians will say the entire CSA was one big militia others say it had a standing army. CSA was broken into two sections: the Provisional Army and the Confederate Army. The Provisional Army was militia while the Confederate Army was the actual standing army.

But like I said they didn't really have centralized command. The southern states themselves often managed their armies independent of one another (Georgia in particular is very famous for this during the war) and didn't like the troops leaving their home states. In this sense the CSA was more of a militia force thrown together by the Southern States than a true standing army. But of course by this is also true of the Union Army. The standing federal army was very small. Most of the forces that fought for the North were state units as well.

The CSA did not have a centralized supply chain. The states themselves equipped their troops. A great deal of the equipment used by the CSA during the war actually came from the North. Initial victories left them to scour the field and they acquired Union arms, munitions, rations, clothing etc.

As a note the Civil War is often regarded as the event that made the United States Army a true standing army rather than a skeleton force like it had often been and this was a huge expansion on Federal power.

Pretty much. The lack of central coordination among Confederate militias is often cited as a factor in their defeat. A decentralized military structure can be beneficial when fighting an asymmetrical war; not so much when fighting an industrial conventional war. With the Confederate Constitution specifically spelling out state sovereignty, the CSA ran into exactly the same problem that the United States did under the Articles of Confederation: the federal government being unable to get the states to act as a coherent whole. If the governor of NC was worried about Union forces invading and didn't want to send extra regiments to reinforce garrisons in LA, then that was that. Jefferson Davis had to go to great lengths to convince state governors to act in a semi-organized fashion, and got pushback from it within the CSA. Ironically, there were some fringe radicals calling for secession from the CSA over the "oppressive federal government".

Contrast this to Lincoln's wartime military powers in the Union, and it's not difficult to see a significant advantage.

 Monster Rain wrote:
Oh, hello Godwin!

I knew you'd be along sooner or later.

There aren't many nation states that have been founded on the idea of oppressing another group of human beings. Nazi Germany and the CSA are the only two that spring to mind.

 LordofHats wrote:
You'd be surprised how successful Waffen SS vets have been at 'redeeming' the image of the SS. There's still people who insist the WSS didn't know anything about the Holocaust.

Whoa really? They do realise that the SS were the Nazi elite, right? A representation of the "perfect nazi," and as such were put in charge of, say, executing political prisoners, rounding up of "undesirables," and other things that the Nazi party wanted .

Defending the German Army I could understand...but the SS? feth 'em.

 Testify wrote:

 Monster Rain wrote:
Oh, hello Godwin!

I knew you'd be along sooner or later.

There aren't many nation states that have been founded on the idea of oppressing another group of human beings. Nazi Germany and the CSA are the only two that spring to mind.

Though it was never part of their manifesto the soviets did a pretty spectacular job of it.


and any nation under sharia law would also count, so Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Iran, etc

 Testify wrote:

 Monster Rain wrote:
Oh, hello Godwin!

I knew you'd be along sooner or later.

There aren't many nation states that have been founded on the idea of oppressing another group of human beings. Nazi Germany and the CSA are the only two that spring to mind.

Ancient Sparta as well, but that's digging pretty far back.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:
You'd be surprised how successful Waffen SS vets have been at 'redeeming' the image of the SS. There's still people who insist the WSS didn't know anything about the Holocaust.

Whoa really? They do realise that the SS were the Nazi elite, right? A representation of the "perfect nazi," and as such were put in charge of, say, executing political prisoners, rounding up of "undesirables," and other things that the Nazi party wanted .

Defending the German Army I could understand...but the SS? feth 'em.

There's actually something to the argument that the Wafen SS was largely unaware of the camps. The leadership almost undoubtedly did but from field grade officers down its pretty likely were unaware of the Holocaust. You have to put it in perspective we know for sure that at least one of the thirty nine SS divisions knew about and operated the camps. The question is/was to what extent did personal bounced from the camps for various reasons back to combat duty spread thier knowledge of the atrocities. It's not inconceivable to believe that some, and arguably most of the Wafen SS' half million plus were unaware or dubious of the existence of the camps. What I categorically reject is the idea that the Wafen had NOTHING to do with the camps, and that only the Allegemeine and the Totenkampf division were involved.
The SS also didn't remain the "Nazi elite" not that they really were. The SS experienced a massive expansion from 1935-45; by the end of the war there were more non-Germans let alone non-Aryans in the SS than there were "perfect Nazis."

@Lordofhats
TLDR: there's a glimmer of truth in there, but having read a decent swath of the historiography you are referring to I know what you mean.

 Testify wrote:

There aren't many nation states that have been founded on the idea of oppressing another group of human beings. Nazi Germany and the CSA are the only two that spring to mind.

Yes, most nation states just end up oppressing other human beings incidentally.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:
You'd be surprised how successful Waffen SS vets have been at 'redeeming' the image of the SS. There's still people who insist the WSS didn't know anything about the Holocaust.

Whoa really? They do realise that the SS were the Nazi elite, right? A representation of the "perfect nazi," and as such were put in charge of, say, executing political prisoners, rounding up of "undesirables," and other things that the Nazi party wanted .

Defending the German Army I could understand...but the SS? feth 'em.

It's specifically the Waffen SS. I don't think anyone is insane enough to try and defend the Totenkompf SS. You know. Unless their position is there was no Holocaust which honestly is probably a less absurd position to me because at least then the SS is completely 'vindicated' because there were no crimes to commit

Way easier to say they were innocent when the crime didn't happen than admitting the crime happened and still decrying their innocence

codemonkey wrote:

 Testify wrote:

 Monster Rain wrote:
Oh, hello Godwin!

I knew you'd be along sooner or later.

There aren't many nation states that have been founded on the idea of oppressing another group of human beings. Nazi Germany and the CSA are the only two that spring to mind.

Ancient Sparta as well, but that's digging pretty far back.

Does Rome and the British Empire count as nation states?
I don't quite understand the meaning of nation state to be honest . How does it differ from a country, or an empire?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation_state

although I wouldn't get overly hung up on the specific definition.

 LordofHats wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:
You'd be surprised how successful Waffen SS vets have been at 'redeeming' the image of the SS. There's still people who insist the WSS didn't know anything about the Holocaust.

Whoa really? They do realise that the SS were the Nazi elite, right? A representation of the "perfect nazi," and as such were put in charge of, say, executing political prisoners, rounding up of "undesirables," and other things that the Nazi party wanted .

Defending the German Army I could understand...but the SS? feth 'em.

It's specifically the Waffen SS. I don't think anyone is insane enough to try and defend the Totenkompf SS. You know. Unless their position is there was no Holocaust which honestly is probably a less absurd position to me because at least then the SS is completely 'vindicated' because there were no crimes to commit

Weren't the Waffen SS the advance guard, the ones who would go forward and kill and oppress as many people as possible in preparation for the German Army and for the camps? It was in my understanding that they were similar in function to the Gestapo; to oppress and to spread terror.
I admit that I did not know there were variations of the SS; they all pretty much go under the "evil bastard" category.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:
You'd be surprised how successful Waffen SS vets have been at 'redeeming' the image of the SS. There's still people who insist the WSS didn't know anything about the Holocaust.

Whoa really? They do realise that the SS were the Nazi elite, right? A representation of the "perfect nazi," and as such were put in charge of, say, executing political prisoners, rounding up of "undesirables," and other things that the Nazi party wanted .

Defending the German Army I could understand...but the SS? feth 'em.

It's specifically the Waffen SS. I don't think anyone is insane enough to try and defend the Totenkompf SS. You know. Unless their position is there was no Holocaust which honestly is probably a less absurd position to me because at least then the SS is completely 'vindicated' because there were no crimes to commit

Weren't the Waffen SS the advance guard, the ones who would go forward and kill and oppress as many people as possible in preparation for the German Army and for the camps? It was in my understanding that they were similar in function to the Gestapo; to oppress and to spread terror.
I admit that I did not know there were variations of the SS; they all pretty much go under the "evil bastard" category.

The Waffen SS functioned more like an elite formation of German troops, shock troopers and line breakers thrown into the heaviest parts of the fighting. There's undoubtedly formations of the SS that are completely irredeemable like the SS-Totenkopfverbande (the ones who handled the camps) and the picked men who went BEHIND the German army to round up undesirables (Jew hunters basically) but out of any group of individuals wearing an SS uniform the Waffen SS is least likely to be evil fethheads. There's an excellent book on this subject titled Black Edelweiss that was written by a Waffen-SS machinegunner who served on the Eastern front against Russia, they eventually surrendered to the Americans towards the close of the war and after the camps had been discovered. They were confused as to why they were being treated so poorly, they hadn't seen camps, just waves of angry ruskies and had fought honorably, then someone showed them photos. The rest of the book is dealing with that and rationalizing it with the pride of fighting and serving one's country what they had thought of as honorably up till that point. A fun fact is that 60% of the Waffen-SS wasn't even German, so calling them the "Exemplar of the Perfect Aryan" is probably a bit off base, a good chunk probably wouldn't have qualified to join the full SS. For the record I'm not defending the actions of Nazi Germany here, but I am encouraging looking at things from a complete point of view. Units of the Waffen-SS certainly did commit war crimes and it's clear that some of them WERE evil fethheads.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Weren't the Waffen SS the advance guard, the ones who would go forward and kill and oppress as many people as possible in preparation for the German Army and for the camps? It was in my understanding that they were similar in function to the Gestapo; to oppress and to spread terror.
I admit that I did not know there were variations of the SS; they all pretty much go under the "evil bastard" category.

There were three branches of Evil Bastard:

Allgemeine (Standard SS and no one really cares about them because their history boring )
Waffen (Armed SS)
Totenkompf (these were the guys who guarded the concentration camps and no in their less than right mind tries to defend them)
Gestapo were the Nazi party's secret police. They worked within Germany and its conquered territories rather than out on the battlefield.

Waffen SS were the military arm of the Nazi party and not part of the Wehrmacht proper. Hitler wanted to ultimately do away with the Wehrmacht and replace them entirely with the Waffen SS.

Yes. They were essentially political zealots employed as storm troopers and as execution squads. They were going to clear out all the undesirables so that the German people could have their living space. The thing about the Waffen SS though is that as a group they were very divergent. Many of them weren't even from Germany. There's that famous scene from Band of Brothers where what's his name says "What Poles where SS uniforms?" The silly part is that there were German-Poles in the SS (and the SS division containing Poles did fight at Normandy) as well as Frenchmen, Belgians, Austrians, Fins, etc etc. Sep Dietrich is also well known for openly opposing the Nazi parties racist positions and many of the public policies of the rest of the SS. Their history is really very fascinating for numerous other reasons. Unfortunately there are people who take their fascination with the Waffen SS a bit too far.

Plus there were a fair number of dudes conscripted into the Waffen SS towards the end of the war - kind of a dick move to lump them in with the guys running the gas chambers.

The Allgemeine SS is fascinating just for all the Occult implications that have been connected to them over the years. Himmler's "Aryan Knights" etc and so forth. So if you're the kind of person who's interested in occultism and history that boring history has some interesting tidbits.

I have serious reservations about the SS and Occultism. Basically those reservations being that there is no evidence for any of it. It all stems back to a series of pulp novels from the 50's and 60's.

A historian from the UK named Nicholas Goodrich Clarke wrote a book back in the 80's about Nazi's and Occultism and ultimately concluded that it was all pseudo-history produced by people who did no real research and basically made the whole thing up (it's actually quite similar to the Satanism scares of the 1980's).

To my knowledge no serious historical scholars actually put any stock into Nazi Occultism.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

Does Rome and the British Empire count as nation states?
I don't quite understand the meaning of nation state to be honest . How does it differ from a country, or an empire?

It doesn't, really.

I would say Rome and Britain were not founded on the idea of oppression in nearly the same way as Sparta, Nazi Germany and the CSA. In each of those cases, the society was specifically and explicitly built for the purpose of suppressing their fellow man. Rome and Britain both implemented oppressive policies, but with different rationale and end goals (and because of this, arguably a lesser degree of oppression, although that's debatable)

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 LordofHats wrote:
I have serious reservations about the SS and Occultism. Basically those reservations being that there is no evidence for any of it. It all stems back to a series of pulp novels from the 50's and 60's.

A historian from the UK named Nicholas Goodrich Clarke wrote a book back in the 80's about Nazi's and Occultism and ultimately concluded that it was all pseudo-history produced by people who did no real research and basically made the whole thing up (it's actually quite similar to the Satanism scares of the 1980's).

To my knowledge no serious historical scholars actually put any stock into Nazi Occultism.

I think it depends on your definition of "occultism". If you include the Nazi Party's obsession with the supposed "mythic traditions of the Aryan race", then there's some substance to be found: Nazi party rallies and official events staged to resemble their vision of ancient rites, as well as at least one expedition to Tibet in search of their "lost origins". The idea that Hitler was trying to create an kampfgruppe of Nazi vampires, or summon edritch abominations to destroy the Allies...not so much.

The Thule Society might have something to do with the whole Occultism thing:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thule_Society

I do agree that the idea that the Nazis were trying to something demons/cthulu/whatever is a bit silly. Still makes for a fun bit of fiction though.

Holy Off topic tangent, Godwin! We seemed to have lost interest in the White House