SS Officer?

[smiffyraf1]

Re: SS Officer?

yeah it didnt make sense to me either though, i thought they would be catching on each other and tripping me up but no

[Gadge Europa]

Re: SS Officer?

I think if you did a lot of drill in them (as intended) they probably would snag and catch but skirmishing you're not doing the same movements.

[smiffyraf1]

Re: SS Officer?

prince harry didnt seem to get in too much grief. i did take a lot of effort and researched divisions finding the 'wiking' to hold no war crime records as other divisions thats why i chose them as they seemed less offensive to the educated but as you pointed out unfortunately i think the layman just see the SS and thinks concentration camp. i know quite a few serving guys whi re enact and they have never had a problem. but take your point.

[colinjallen]

Re: SS Officer?

From the Axis History forum, concerning Wiking:

This division was for a long time regarded as one of the few larger Waffen-SS units not involved in war-crimes however research made public in recent years have shown this to be incorrect.

Soldiers from the division took part in the murder of hundreds of Jews in the castle at Zloczow (Zolochiv) during the first days of July 1941 together with Ukrainian militia. The massacre was put to an end by soldiers from 295. Infanterie-Division at the order of Oberstleutnant Helmuth Groscurth. (7)

On 9 July 1941 soldiers from the division took part in the massacre of Jews in Lviv in revenge of the death of Hilmar Wäckerle, commander of SS-Infanterie-Regiment Westland. (9)

In Zhitomir soldiers from the division took part in the rounding up and killing of commissars and officials July 1941. (6)

Einsatzkommando 11 of Einsatzgruppe D and a mobile gassing van was travelling together with the division in 1942 murdering people seen as undesirable. (3)

Sonderkommando Jankuhn led by Dr Herbert Jankuhn of the SS-Ahnenerbe was attached to Wiking and the division supported them in their plunder of artifacts from the Black Sea area in 1942. (4)

General der Gebirgstruppen Karl Eglseer, commander of 4. Gebirgs-Division, complained about indiscipline and widespread looting by soldiers from Wiking in April 1942 when the divisions served near each other in the River Mius area. The Slovakian Generals Gustav Malár and Jozef Turanec, commanders of Slovak Mobile Division that served next to Wiking during this period, also raised the same criticism. (5)

The Finnish volunteers distributed among the units of the Wiking divisions instead of serving in the Finnisches Freiwilligen-Bataillon der Waffen-SS wrote in letters home and in their diaries about how the Soviet POWs and civilians were treated badly or even killed by soldiers from the division during the early phase of the war on the Eastern Front. (8)

Soldiers from the Wiking division were involved in the killing of Hungarian Jews in March/Aril 1945. (10) On 17 November 2009 Adolf Storms was charged with the murder of 58 Hungarian Jewish forced labourers near Deutsch Schuetzen in Austria on 29 March 1945 but he died before he could be brought to trial. (11)

[Gadge Europa]

Re: SS Officer?

9th SS are pretty 'safe' for the 'war crimes' angle, to my knowledge they had a good track record and at Arnhem behaved better than UK troops according to Kershaw's 'never snows in september'

[colinjallen]

Re: SS Officer?

Hohenstaufen had no significant accusations of crimes against them, possibly because their combat service was rather short; they were not particularly good either though.

However, 22 Hohenstaufen officers also served in concentration camps and 2 in einsatzgruppen.

[Gadge Europa]

Re: SS Officer?

I'd argue the 'not very good', they did a pretty good job of mashing up the elite 1st airborne division at Arnhem.

Also if you consider they were an 'anti invasion' division and formed to counter an allied invasion then their 'life span' of 43 - 45 isnt much of an issue for airsoft... few games feature ss units and are set before d-day

90 per cent of wwii games are NWE 1944/45 so its a pretty reasonable and sensible choice.

[smiffyraf1]

Re: SS Officer?

as i said in a previous post elsewhere i certainly don't condone what atrocities the SS committed during the war but i also know just the same was happening with POW's in the allied hands. And the Soviets seemed to be worse than anyone for it but these actions are never bought to light.

[Gadge Europa]

Re: SS Officer?

Bang on.


A friend of mine I worked with in the 90s, her father was a chindit. One christmas having dinner with them he had a rare moment of talking about the war

He said they never took prisoners, just couldn't, they just killed them as they were miles behind the lines.

He told me he once hearded a load of Japanese conscripts into a bunker and threw in grenades 'until the screaming stopped'... you wont find that in a hisotry book about the British chindit expeditions.

The canadians were also notorious for shooting SS prisoners out of hand.

- - - Updated - - -

I think the difference here. I'm not being an 'apologist' either. is that these things happen in the heat of battle or in desperate struggles behind the lines.

BUT... the 'political' SS have no excuse, it was systematic murder. They were not combat troops with strained nerves making very bad snap decisions about their prisoners... they were selecting people to be slaughtered based on whether they were jews, gay, communist etc etc.

There is a big difference between 'malmedy' and a concentration or extermination camp, and i dont just mean in terms of 'scale' its more the intent and way it was carried out.

It doesnt make it *right* but you can understand why Oradour sur Glan or Malmedy (or that bunker in burma Mr Davies threw grenades into) happened, I cant find a reason or way to understand Auschwitz

[smiffyraf1]

Re: SS Officer?

yeah i did read the ss were particularly hated by troops, though stories and partial truths i expect and that they were more often than not shot rather than taken prisoner

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oh yeah course i completely agree. it still happens today but due to media things cannot be covered up. but combat troops completely different to political. agreed

[colinjallen]

Re: SS Officer?

"Mashing up" 1st Airborne became relatively easy as their ammunition was very limited and their position was a poor one with little room to manoeuvre or disperse, leaving them highly vulnerable to artillery and mortar fire. Hohenstaufen's poor tactical performance and high casualty rate at Arnhem are hardly indicative of a high quality unit. Apart from the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 5th and 12th, most SS divisions were not of high quality.

[Gadge Europa]

Re: SS Officer?

Reference for that chap?

I'm not using my personal opinion here I'm referring to dozens of books i've read on my regiments fight at Arnhem against the 9th.

[colinjallen]

Re: SS Officer?

Reference about which part, chap?

Which was/is your regiment? A relative of mine fought at Arnhem.

[Gadge Europa]

Re: SS Officer?

Staffordshire Regiment. We got two VCs, only British battalion to get two VCs in one operation in WWII.

*was* my regiment in every sense of the word, I'm no longer with those colours and then again they don't really exist after we were shafted by the government.. we have a shadow of the regiment as part of three mercian... sad end for a 500 year old 'colour'

As for 'reference' I just mean do you have any source you can cite that states that said SS units were below par or is it just your opinion. I've personally always felt the 9th to be above average for a late war German unit.

I mean consider that 1st SS in 41 were a totally different beast to 1st SS of 44... very ground down, lots of 'fillers' in the ranks... a far cry from when having too many fillings in your teeth would bar you from pre war SS service. If you consider that then most German units after three years of attrition on the Russian front were pretty poor compared to the early entirely volunteer SS divisions.

and ammo supply was just one of a dozen issues during 'market', it's not possible to pin the ops failure to one thing there are just too many variables.

Radios, bad intel, denying 'tetrarch' use to the recce unit, multiple day drop a poor 'coup de main' plan etc etc and lets totally leave out browning using gliders that could have carried fighting men to carry his personal kit...

However I still maintain that if 9th and 10th SS had not have *deliberately* made their vehicles temporarily unservicable by removing parts to stop them being farmed off to other units on the russian front the op would have had a greater chance of success.

2 South Staffords and a large part of the airlanding contingent (which had the real 'fighting power' of the division) were torn to pieces by 20mm from 9th SS's 250/9 half tracks on the high route into the town and it prevented them getting to the bridge via that route.

Sorry, Arnhem is a battle honour of ours, i'm quite passionate about it.

[colinjallen]

Re: SS Officer?

Do you have a primary source for the South Staffordshires being hit by fire from 250/9s? Hohenstaufen's 250/9s were with Grabner and German records indicate that the unit engaging the South Staffordshires with 20mm fire was SS-Flak Abteilung 9.

I agree that ammunition supply was just one of the reasons why the operation failed; however, my point is that it is relatively easy to overcome an enemy that is running out of ammunition and is pinned in a small pocket.

As for the quality of SS units, again I agree that some (most?) were generally of better quality than most Heer units by late 1944, and I also agree that the physical quality of the recruits had deteriorated since the early days. However, being better than a range of generally poor units does not make them of high quality, which was what I stated.

For books discussing the quality of SS units, I would recommend:

Heinz Hohne: The Order of the Death's Head: The Story of Hitler's SS
George Stein: The Waffen SS: Hitler's Elite Guard at War, 1939-45
Marc Rikmenspoel: Waffen-SS Encyclopedia.