Georgian Nazis!

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Shrapnel12


You get an for that. You mistake me if you think I'm taking the side of Nazis. My point is that I simply think that there should be a greater burden of proof other then guilt by association. I admitted once already my ignorance of this situation and I'm trying to get you guys to give me valid information, but all I'm getting is blind hatred, even if justified. Some people want revenge for wrongs done and rightly so, but sometimes our desire for justice or revenge has collateral damage. Our thread author has a credibility problem because of the emotion in his posts.

I suggest you stop assuming I know everything of what you are talking about. Start by showing me that this Waffen SS is what you say. Just because a few people in a unit do bad things doesn't make the whole unit bad. Show me that this was not an ordinary military unit and made especially for the bad guys. This is the first time I've even heard of the Waffen SS. I only know of the SS and indeed they have a bad reputation, so you won't have a hard time convincing me. In fact, it's because these guys are so bad that I'm having a problem. Just like terroists in the ME will kill and force compliance from the general populace, I have to believe that some people in Germany were forced to do things they did in WWII. Nazis are at least as bad as Islamic jihadists.

There were some relatively decent types in the SS, and this was documented by allied soldiers and civilians in several cases. Skorzeny and von Bittrich being two of the best documented examples.

Unfortunately for your point, they are best known for saving allied POWs or civilians from fellow SS.

Then, on the opposite extreme, you have types like Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski.

In the middle are the "damn the rules of war, and, oh, let's kill a few POWs or civilians while we're at it" types like Witt, Peiper and Lammerding.

[Shrapnel12]

So what was the exact criteria for entering the Nazi Party? Also I'm assuming that if you wanted to do anything in politics in Germany during this era, you had to join the Nazi party. So just being in the party makes you a war criminal? Also if the SS only picks people who agree with the hardline, how'd this Skorzeny and von Bittrich get in?

[germanos]

Originally posted by Shrapnel12
So what was the exact criteria for entering the Nazi Party?

Ehrrmm... Support the Nazi ideology?

Originally posted by Shrapnel12
Also I'm assuming that if you wanted to do anything in politics in Germany during this era, you had to join the Nazi party.

From the OP

The document says Henss admitted on March 13 that he served as an SS guard at Dachau and Buchenwald for two to three months each as a dog handler.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Shrapnel12
So what was the exact criteria for entering the Nazi Party? Also I'm assuming that if you wanted to do anything in politics in Germany during this era, you had to join the Nazi party. So just being in the party makes you a war criminal?

Nice strawman, since the issue is deportation, not war crimes charges, and the deportation is based upon lying.

Merely being a member of the Nazi party, per se, does not make one a war criminal (e.g. John Rabe, for an actual good Nazi), but that's not what's in question here. Being in the SS-TV is a little beyond being "a member of the Nazi party" and personally, I think SS-TV members should be and should have been systematically hunted down to the the last man and woman and made to stretch a rope, without exception.

Also if the SS only picks people who agree with the hardline, how'd this Skorzeny and von Bittrich get in?

They were both committed Nazis from very early days, but neither was in or anywhere near the SS-TV or SD. Von Bittrich later had vocal disagreements with Nazi officials and even believed he was marked for quite execution, so when he was repeatedly summoned to Berlin after Market-Garden, he kept evading these "requests" by stating that the situation at the front demanded his attention and he couldn't leave his post. There was nothing "official" on von Bittrich, just some people who wanted him dead.

Skorzeny was untouchable, as he had personally been praised and decorated by Hitler, so Otto felt free to interpret the rules his own way. Doing so saved his neck, figuratively and literally, at his post-war trial for his role in the Einheits-Stielau

They just had a higher personal standard of conduct than the norm for the Waffen-SS, which was, in turn, worlds above the SS-TV, SD and many other "special" organizations under the Nazi regime.

[Shrapnel12]

WTF? germanos

Skorzeny was untouchable, as he had personally been praised and decorated by Hitler, so Otto felt free to interpret the rules his own way. Doing so saved his neck, figuratively and literally, at his post-war trial for his role in the Einheits-Stielau

Tell me more if you don't mind. Also, Henss was Waffen-SS right? not SS-TV?

So he gets deported for lying. Understood. I wasn't really arguing that point. I was more arguing against this statement in the OP:

I hate those guys, the worst kind of Nazis!

I was also arguing against the implication that he should be sent to Israel as I don't think he'll receive due process or a fair trial. I think he should be sent to his home country and given an extradition hearing or whatever the process is to bring him before a war crimes tribunal. Facts should be used to convict him, not emotion, then we can string him up.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Shrapnel12
Tell me more if you don't mind.

Skorzeny had a nice pedigree for unconventional operations - rescuing Mussolini, "borrowing" the son of the Hungarian regent to force him to abdicate for a pro-Nazi prime minister to keep Hungary from flipping sides later in the war, etc.

He was selected to head the portion of the Ardennes offensive that dealt with false flag commando and combat operations - this consisted partly of Panzer Brigade 150 (false flag armor and motorized units) and Einheit Stielau (English speaking commandos and saboteurs in American uniform, attempting to impersonate American soldiers).

After the war, Skorzeny was tried (and subject to execution) for war crimes related to Einheit Stielau, but a number of American soldiers and a couple of officers testified on his behalf, that when they were captured by Waffen-SS during the early parts of the Ardennes offensive, they were in the process of being rounded up from the farmhouse they were kept in, and they expected to be taken out and shot imminently when Skorzeny showed up out of the blue.

Skorzeny went ballistic with the SS Schutze on the scene, ordered that the Americans be handed back to MPs to be processed as POWs, and then talked to the senior officer (I don't remember the name) in English to assure him that his men would be properly treated. Skorzeny went on and inquired if any of the prisoners needed medical attention. After making sure everything was squared away, he went on about his business.

At his trial, several of these former POWs testified for Skorzeny, and credited them with saving their lives.

The trial concluded (ironically, given the fairly retributive nature of the Dachau trials related to the Ardennes offensive) that although Skorzeny had ordered troops into American uniforms, it hadn't been proven that he actually ordered his men to fight in American uniforms, therefore there was insufficient evidence as to his guilt. This was really a bull**** rationale, but it fit the need to let him walk.

Also, Henss was Waffen-SS right? not SS-TV?

Henss was Waffen-SS when he joined LSSAH in 1941. Based on his time and location of service in the camps, (1942 at Buchenwald and Dachau) he was almost certainly accepted into SS-TV at that time. SS-TV had lost some manpower with the initial formation of the SS-Totenkopf division as part of the Waffen-SS, but made up its manpower with volunteer and recruited transfers from Algemeine SS and Waffen-SS.

They weren't grabbing poor reluctant schmucks and forcing them into guard duty at that point - the whole concentration camp system was something that its practitioners considered one of the great accomplishments and sources of pride of the Third Reich.

So he gets deported for lying. Understood. I wasn't really arguing that point. I was more arguing against this statement in the OP: I was also arguing against the implication that he should be sent to Israel as I don't think he'll receive due process or a fair trial.

There's no possibility of due process or fairness - for this asswipe to have lived a fairly full life free of harm for all these decades - there really isn't a level of hell adequate for these "people." It seems like the passage of time, plus lots of revisionists, saturation, disinterest, or what not, that the common perception of the scale, extent and nature of the Nazi atrocities in and out of the camps has been diminished.

In Israel, there are almost certain to be survivors - precious few by now, but almost certainly some, who would recall Henns the way others recalled the actions of Demjanjuk at Treblinka.

[Serb]

Originally posted by Shrapnel12
So what was the exact criteria for entering the Nazi Party? Also I'm assuming that if you wanted to do anything in politics in Germany during this era, you had to join the Nazi party. So just being in the party makes you a war criminal?

Being a SS member makes you a war criminal. SS is a criminal organization according to the Nurenberg trial. The end of story.

So, let me summarize:

**** the nazis and **** the nazi-sympathizers.


Have a nice day.

[Darius871]

Originally posted by Serb


Being a SS member makes you a war criminal. SS is a criminal organization according to the Nurenberg trial. The end of story.

So, let me summarize:

**** the nazis and **** the nazi-sympathizers.

Even the ones that only killed commies?

[Serb]

You are such a ************.

[Darius871]

I know you are, but what am I?

[Patroklos]

Being a SS member makes you a war criminal.

Those dasterdly SS baking companies, greasing their baking sheets with Joo blood.

Or those imfamous SS yeomen, using babies blood for ink

OH MY GOD TEH EVIL!!!

[germanos]

Originally posted by Shrapnel12
WTF? germanos

I'm puzzled why you bring up political activism (and specificly the 'neccesatity' of being a Nazi- party member to do that) under the Nazi regime when we are speaking about a concentration-camp guard.
That seems absurd.


More to the point: it appears you are arguing that in a one-party state / dictatorship someone cannot be held accountable for using violence on those interred by said state.
Ironicly those interred where the same who did politically oppose the Nazi regime. There were those who just did so by being part of some race (Jews, gypsies), by sexual orientation (gays) or other 'abbriviations' to the norm. But let us not forget that the Nazi's interred many political opponents as well. In fact, the very fist concentrations camps were set up for them: the commies, the social democrats, the labour union leaders etc.
I'm not sure on the exact timeline, but the systematic extermination of jews only started well into the war, from 1942 onwards. (well in camps at least, offcourse during the offensives in the east (Poland '39 and Soviet Union '41) the SS-einzatstruppen happily murdered jews and others on the spot).
Before that, the camps were mainly used for political opponents and Gypsies. In fact, the gypsie population of occupied Europe had allready been largely exterminated before the Nazi's embarked on their 'Endlösing' of the jewish 'question'.


Wikipedia (for all it's shortcomings) might be a good first step to some information on concentration camps, their purpose and use.

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

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

[Chemical Ollie]

Anyway, what happened to the guards from the camps "hosting" Japanese people in US during WW2?

[Riesstiu IV]

Given medals of honor for temporarily staving off the eventual intrusion of Naruto, Pokemon, and Digimon on American television.

[Chemical Ollie]

Yeah, that's what they deserve! And the Brits "hosting" Boers in the early 20th century?