# Review: For Volk and Fuhrer by Erwin Bartmann



## Brian G Turner (May 3, 2016)

This is the fourth memoir I've read from a serving WWII German soldier - and the first from someone in the SS.

I have to admit to a slight sense of trepidation in doing so - we all know the SS were the worst of the German army in WWII, loyal to Hitler, and responsible for death squads and various atrocities.

However, I added it on the grounds that - as research for a future writing project - the insights here might be valuable from an historical perspective.

The worst criticism I imagined before reading it was that the writer, Erwin Bartmann, would cowardly try to personally disassociate himself from any kind of association with Hitler and the Nazi party the SS served.

Instead, the memoir served as a revelation.

For the most part, it was simply a concise and well-written account of the war - training in Germany, joining the SS in 1941, taking part in the invasion of Russia, the occupation of France, re-assigned to the Eastern Front and withdrawal from Russia - before being wounded in 1943, leaving him sitting out much of the rest of the war as an instructor.

But the memoir was especially interesting for a couple of other reasons.

Firstly, Bartmann never shies from his admiration of Hitler as the leader of the country. He points out that Hitler came to power when he was 9 years old, and therefore both he and his generation could not avoid looking up to the man they grew up with. 

Secondly, Bartman underlines the point that the SS company he was in saw themselves as like Teutonic knights, devoted to honour and loyalty for their country, who never committed atrocities, and were fair and dutiful in their treatment of everyone.

That may already make him sound like a Nazi apologist - but he makes a clear distinction between the SS (the ordinary soldiers fighting on the front lines) and the SD (the SS security service recorded as hunting down Jews, committing atrocities against civilians, and setting up death squads).

Additionally, his notes at the end argue that the SS became a scapegoat - sacrificed so that the rest of Germany, especially its armed forces, could shrive themselves of national guilt. If the SS was guilty for all the horrors of Nazi Germany, then everyone else must be innocent.

As a standalone argument I'd raise my eyebrow and question the man's motives. And yet, when I think of Von Luck's account, he never suggested anything untoward or unpleasant about the SS officers he describes in his own autobiography.

Wryly, Bartmann notes that as a SS officer, he saw his duty as one of protecting Germany from Bolshevism - a duty America and Western Europe took up in their long, Cold War with Russia. In that Bartmann clearly suggests that the SS he knew was plainly no different to the West that sought to demonise it.

Overall, Bartman's account of his experiences in WWII are compelling. But it's his refusal to distance himself from the Waffen SS he served that provide it with a particularly poignant sense of honesty.


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## svalbard (May 3, 2016)

Interesting. The book The Forgotten Soldier by Guy Sajer also has something similar to say about the SS. He served in the Gross Deutchland Division, a Wehrmacht unit. In his memoir he had nothing but praise for the SS. It was like a US grunt looking up to Navy Seal, Delta or a Ranger.


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## aThenian (May 3, 2016)

Brian Turner said:


> Secondly, Bartman underlines the point that the SS company he was in saw themselves as like Teutonic knights, devoted to honour and loyalty for their country, who never committed atrocities, and were fair and dutiful in their treatment of everyone.
> 
> That may already make him sound like a Nazi apologist - but he makes a clear distinction between the SS (the ordinary soldiers fighting on the front lines) and the SD (the SS security service recorded as hunting down Jews, committing atrocities against civilians, and setting up death squads).


Interesting.  Is he claiming not to have known about the atrocities, or simply not to have taken part?

I read Antony Beever's _Stalingrad_ a while back, and its strongly suggested in that that many (most?) serving on the Eastern Front, even just as part of the army, did know about the atrocities, and even talks about soldiers taking photos which the high-ups tried to stop.  There was one officer mentioned who was absolutely disgusted by what he saw, and disenchanted with the Third Reich as a result - there are some moving quotes from his letters, he was captured and died in imprisonment in the USSR after the War.  However, the general impression I got was that the Eastern Front was incredibly brutalising, and so a lot of humanitarian instincts went out of the window.  So maybe there was an impulse on the part of the Army to try and dodge their own complicity.



Brian Turner said:


> Wryly, Bartmann notes that as a SS officer, he saw his duty as one of protecting Germany from Bolshevism - a duty America and Western Europe took up in their long, Cold War with Russia. In that Bartmann clearly suggests that the SS he knew was plainly no different to the West that sought to demonise it.



Hmm.  It is different though, isn't it?  Although certainly a lot of appeasers/Nazi sympathisers in the West pre War were motivated by their fear of Bolshevism.


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## Brian G Turner (May 3, 2016)

aThenian said:


> Is he claiming not to have known about the atrocities, or simply not to have taken part?



That's a good distinction to make - he complains that after securing the Ukraine, the SD moved in hunting for Jews and stealing from civilians, making many locals turn against the German 'liberators'.

So the inference is that SS personnel may have been aware of violence being committed, though not necessarily anything about frequency or scale, and that it was something the regular SS were never involved with. He denies outright about knowing anything about death camps.

He also accuses some Western historians of trying to sensationalise the SS because the evil image sells. For example, after the capture of Taganrog, it's reported that the SS massacred all the Russian wounded at the town hospital. Bartmann says he was there just after the capture, was in the hospital, and neither heard of any such thing, nor any signs of violence.

He does make the observation that Russians routinely tortured captured SS soldiers, and had not signed up to the Geneva convention. He also refers to an English historian quoting Churchill as actively preventing any Red Cross investigations into Russian atrocities on German soil.


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## Ray McCarthy (May 3, 2016)

Brian Turner said:


> So the inference is that SS personnel may have been aware of violence being committed, though not necessarily anything about frequency or scale, and that it was something the regular SS were never involved with. He denies outright about knowing anything about death camps.


I'd take none of it at face value.

It's true many ordinary Germans stuck head in sand and didn't want to know.
it's true the scale of slave labour and death camps wasn't publicised.

But people knew in a general sense.  Perhaps he was naive and focused on his soldiering and didn't listen.

There were non-jews and Evangelical Christians sent to the camps or executed for trying to object. Lots of people did know. Even outside Germany, though Allied command even refused to bomb the rail links to the camps and censored reports in Allied Press.

The persecution in earnest started in 1933. A high point before the war, 1938, known to every German:
Kristallnacht - Wikipedia

Certainly there is some element of truth that Waffen SS are scapegoats. But they were involved. Not just the SD.
Not having the book, I can't say how honest it is, but either the writer is naive, had his eyes blinkered or is being disingenuous.


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## svalbard (May 3, 2016)

Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing and Dying by Sönke Neitzel and Harald Welzer – review

I just finished this book last month. A sobering read. It blows the myth wide open that the normal German soldier knew nothing about the darker side of the Nazi war machine.

It could also be a reflection of what man in general will do in war. Guy Sajer recounts how at the end of WWII he was moved from the Eastern Front to the West. He recalls his astonishment when men started dropping their weapons and surrendering. You just wouldn't see it in Russia. He also writes that as he was surrendering a comrade warned him to remove his Gross Deutchland insignia. The allies were executing members of elite units on sight. Sajer was 19 in 1945. He had being fighting on the Eastern Front since 1942.


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## aThenian (May 3, 2016)

svalbard said:


> It could also be a reflection of what man in general will do in war.



Yes, and in the case of the Eastern front, there seems to have been massive brutality far beyond what happened in the West, even leaving aside what was happening in the death camps - huge brutality towards POWs, Russians shooting their own POWs if they recaptured them, Germans allowing Russian POWs to starve or freeze to death - all this is mainly stuff I'm remembering from the Stalingrad book.  Then when the Russians moved west, atrocities also including rape of German women on an enormous scale.  I wonder if it was partly the severity of conditions - huge distances, very severe climate, ferocious winters and food shortages - which in themselves ratcheted up the suffering, and so maybe made the participants more brutal?  I mean, taking food or housing from civilians, for example, was quite likely to lead to them freezing or starving which wouldn't have happened in a different environment - so maybe the inhumanities were easier to commit - and then to become hardened to - and also to wish revenge for?


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## Ray McCarthy (May 3, 2016)

svalbard said:


> It blows the myth wide open that the normal German soldier knew nothing about the darker side of the Nazi war machine.



Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing and Dying by Sönke Neitzel and Harald Welzer – review


> This attitude extends to their view of the Holocaust. The transcripts prove once and for all that "practically all German soldiers knew or suspected that Jews were being murdered". The traditional argument, that it was only the SS who had any knowledge of the genocide, is simply untenable. However, the authors conclude that ordinary soldiers had strikingly little interest in the Holocaust, preferring to swap stories about medals and comrades.


Also


> The transcripts also suggest that some of the best-known cliches are unfounded: most of the soldiers needed no period of "brutalisation" – they simply transferred their work ethic to their new tasks.


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## svalbard (May 3, 2016)

As I said a sobering read and reinforces the phrase "the banality of evil".


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## Brian G Turner (May 3, 2016)

svalbard said:


> I just finished this book last month. A sobering read.



How representative were the Germans involved? Just that the Guardian piece makes sweeping statements, and I tend to be quite cynical about those. Was it all POWs, or just a company, for example? The Amazon page suggests the book is more academics making statements on human nature that exploring historical context.



aThenian said:


> Yes, and in the case of the Eastern front, there seems to have been massive brutality far beyond what happened in the West,



I haven't read any accounts that linger in the East as yet - Bartmann says he missed most of the Russian campaign because of his injuries. I've got Sajer coming up soon, though.


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## Ray McCarthy (May 3, 2016)

Brian Turner said:


> and I tend to be quite cynical about those.


I'd be very cynical about anything in a newspaper too.
But I'm very sceptical of the claims of Erwin Bartmann, they contradict much of what I've read since starting with "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" (William L. Shirer) that I read in the 1960s. I've read a lot since, including library research on WWII and German partition for my German module at College.

It's quite in his own interest to whitewash.


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## Brian G Turner (May 3, 2016)

Ray McCarthy said:


> I'm very sceptical of the claims of Erwin Bartmann,



It is just one person's account, and there's always the danger of revisionism to make the person look better. 

What was interesting in his memoirs was the lack of this - he didn't try to distant himself from adoration of Hitler, and spoke freely of his pride in painting the SS insignia on his room in a French hotel. That sort of detail lent a sense of honesty to his account. 

However, I will be reading a lot more memoirs, and will be interesting to see the context I develop.


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## Ray McCarthy (May 3, 2016)

Brian Turner said:


> he didn't try to distant himself from adoration of Hitler, and spoke freely of his pride in painting the SS insignia on his room in a French hotel. That sort of detail lent a sense of honesty to his account.


I can't see how that creates a sense of honesty about the rest of the account. Quite the reverse. I've lived where people very "honestly" paint gunmen on gable ends. But they are deluded that their attitudes do anything for Unionism or Nationalism.
I've encountered people very honest in their support for UVF, IRA, Hamas, Ayotolla Komeni etc.



Brian Turner said:


> I will be reading a lot more memoirs,


They can be interesting and give background. But memoirs tend to be universally unreliable about any issues touching the writer.


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## svalbard (May 3, 2016)

Brian Turner said:


> How representative were the Germans involved? Just that the Guardian piece makes sweeping statements, and I tend to be quite cynical about those. Was it all POWs, or just a company, for example? The Amazon page suggests the book is more academics making statements on human nature that exploring historical context.
> 
> 
> 
> I haven't read any accounts that linger in the East as yet - Bartmann says he missed most of the Russian campaign because of his injuries. I've got Sajer coming up soon, though.



The study is quite representative across all POWs and comes from both British and American POW camps. What they found is that although a majority knew of the atrocities only 5-10 percent actively participated or even reveled in the acts. One example that stands out is two soldiers discussing the beauty of the area around Kharkov. One then comments on how the women of region were put to work maintaining the roads. He then goes on to say how they take a couple into their armored car, rape and throw them back out again. He mentions in an offhand way how the women would curse them. The conversation then continues about normal everyday stuff like any of us would have.

These men in their everyday lives were farmers, butchers, shopkeepers, businessmen etc. It makes you wonder what you would do in such circumstances.


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## aThenian (May 3, 2016)

> most of the soldiers needed no period of "brutalisation"



Sounds a bit like the Milgram experiments - they tried to work out if some people were especially vulnerable to mistreating others if told to, and found that practically everyone was vulnerable if they were told to do it by a figure in authority.



> the decisive factor in making atrocities possible was "a general realignment from a civilian to a wartime frame of reference"



So I'm taking from the article that in a particular situation, most people are capable of extreme actions.  Best to avoid wars then, when possible.


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## Lew Rockwell Fan (May 3, 2016)

There is a very good bio of Reinhard Gehlen, who spent a good part of the war on or near the E front, originally pub'ed in German, later trans to Eng. I looked at Amazon, trying to remind myself of the title and there are several. I think, but can't swear, the one I'm thinking of is "The General Was a Spy".

Gehlen was for a portion of the war head of the German Intelligence efforts directed toward the USSR. A lot of people will reflexively claim it's a white wash, and it could be, but I got a strong sense of a man trapped in a nightmare between the rock of Hitler and the hard place of Stalin, who saw both as enemies of civilization. He was responsible for equipping, organizing and maintaining a group of White Russian anti-Bolshevist troops. They were never deployed because Hitler wouldn't allow it. Maybe Hitler thought they were plants or maybe he figured them as anti-socialists, not merely anti-Bolsheviks or maybe he never made up his mind as to whether Gehlen himself could be trusted. Hard to second guess a mad man's reasons.  Anyway the Russians sat out the war. The Russian CO and Gehlen were in each other's confidence. When the Staufenberg affair came down Gehlen feared he might get arrested, because he had indeed known about it ahead of time, and it had his blessing, even though being posted near the E front he had nothing to contribute as an active participant. People were being arrested, possibly talking, and being executed, not all at once, but serially.  Pro'ly the only part the book that stuck with me sufficiently to quote verbatim, I believe accurately, from memory was the advice the Russian offered him:
"You did not know the dead men. This, I learned in Stalin's school."

After the war, the Russians wound up in custody of the US (or maybe it was the Brits but I don't think so). One of the more shameful episodes of the occupation was that these men were refused asylum and turned over to the Russians, and then executed.

One of the most remarkable things about WWII Germany was how widespread, but how ineffective resistance to Hitler within the armed services was. Hundreds of Germ officers were arrested and executed in connection to various plots against Hitler. Only a handful of resistors actually survived the war. I gather that these arrests and executions were not at all like Solzhenitsyn says Stalin's were - for the purpose of making examples where actual guilt was a minor consideration - but that those executed were, in fact, for the most part, actually guilty.

I say "ineffective" but perhaps that isn't totally fair. It is the ambitious plots like those of Staufenberg and Rommel and Canaris that all failed. A lot of the small plots with very limited ambitions did too, but some of those succeeded. There are several accounts of crypto-Jews and various enemies of the state that were successfully hidden throughout the war, by people for who otherwise kept their heads down, including at least one submarine captain.

I suspect there are a heck of a lot of different stories of WWII Germ experience, some profoundly evil, some heroic martyrs, some knowing, some suspecting, some just plain stupid, and a lot just trying to survive.


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## WaylanderToo (May 3, 2016)

Lew Rockwell Fan said:


> After the war, the Russians wound up in custody of the US (or maybe it was the Brits but I don't think so). One of the more shameful episodes of the occupation was that these men were refused asylum and turned over to the Russians, and then executed.




it is one of the most shameful acts that has ever disgraced this country

Repatriation of Cossacks after World War II - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


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## Ray McCarthy (May 4, 2016)

WaylanderToo said:


> it is one of the most shameful acts that has ever disgraced this country


Yalta was another evidence of Churchill's perfidy. Certainly he wasn't anywhere near as bad as Hitler or Stalin, but he was a war criminal (e.g. bombing) too and dealt shamefully with refugees and asylum seekers (Jewish, German, Russian etc).
In Austria and other countries too, the Allies handed over anyone of German or Russian origin to the Russians.

[Yalta was the second of three wartime conferences among the Big Three. It had been preceded by the Tehran Conference in 1943, and was followed by the Potsdam Conference in July 1945, which was attended by Stalin, Churchill (who was replaced halfway through by the newly elected British Prime Minister Clement Attlee) and Harry S. Truman, Roosevelt's successor. The Yalta conference was a crucial turning point in the Cold War.

Even the Korean War was the result ultimately of those evil conferences]


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## Lew Rockwell Fan (May 4, 2016)

WaylanderToo said:


> it is one of the most shameful acts that has ever disgraced this country
> 
> Repatriation of Cossacks after World War II - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Thank you, WaylanderToo, for the link. There is quite a bit more there than I knew about.



Ray McCarthy said:


> Yalta was another evidence of Churchill's perfidy.


Indeed, sir. The veneration of Churchill, so nearly universal on the right and darn near as ubiquitous on the left, is most unjust.

Pat Buchanan's name often provokes such intense vituperation from the left, and occasionally the right  as well, that I can't speak approvingly of any of his books without acknowledging that the man is, indeed, rather a retard about economics and about sexual morality issues (the second I attribute to to his Catholicism). But he is a truly independent thinker who totally ignores the both the right and left wing versions of PC, and the best illustration I know of the idea of "islands of ability". His grasp of the history of international relations is superb. I can not recommend highly enough his book "Churchill, Hitler, and an Unnecessary War" which has the most honest appraisal of Churchill I've read. Despite the title, it is as much about WW I as WW II. Churchill was an evil influence then as well. I think you'd both find it an interesting read.


Ray McCarthy said:


> Even the Korean War was the result ultimately of those evil conferences]


I'd be very interested if you'd expand on your reasoning about that.


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## Ray McCarthy (May 4, 2016)

Lew Rockwell Fan said:


> I'd be very interested if you'd expand on your reasoning about that.



The probably slightly inaccurate summary:

USA & USSR agreed how they would split Korea (which is where it is now) before the Japanese  left /defeated. That was bad. (The Japanese had occupied *since 1910* and had even been suppressing Korean language)

But worse! The Russians sent almost no-one and the Americans sent very few.
North Koreans decide to invade and very nearly take it all.
USSR is boycotting UN security council, because the Chinese Nationalists that took over Taiwan are in UN as "China". The PRC not there.
UN decides on a Korean action (it wasn't supposed to be a USA show) (only possible because PRC aren't there and USSR is boycotting it!).

Most of Korea is taken back by UN (mostly USA led by MacArthur).
Chinese say stop at (where ever it was, I forget*), which would have allowed a buffer zone and most of Korea under UN, or we fight.

MacArthur speculated there was little risk of Chinese intervention in Korea and convinced US President. They continued to advance
Chinese did attack and eventually the fighting stopped when UN forces forced back to original line agreed between Russians and USA.
So Korea as it is today is the fault of USSR - USA agreements during WWII (either Yalta or Potsdam or both)  and USA stupidity, TWICE; once not sending enough troops after Japanese left and SECOND the stupid arrogant way MacArthur regarded Chinese threats.

Today the Chinese are fed up. Since 1948 PRC policy is predicated on the idea that anyone might invade them, so they prop up the NK regime to have a "buffer" and annoy ALL their neighbours with the claims of all the sea ways and islands in South China Seas.
China deploys folk singer to disputed Spratly Islands - BBC News

If you look at how UK and others treated China in 19th C. and invasion of Japan in 1930s you can understand their paranoia.

[*Edit: Perhaps 38th parallel was one warning and maybe there was another?]


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## Lew Rockwell Fan (May 4, 2016)

Thank you. Sounds to me like you have it totally right.


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## Brian G Turner (May 7, 2016)

Interestingly enough, I've just come across a section in the autobiography of Hans Sturm, a highly decorated German soldier in WWII, who spends a page clarifying the difference between the SD and the SS. He makes the point that the SS is multi-faceted, and although the SD and SS for all intents wear the same uniform, "would be a mistake to tar all SS men with the same brush".


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## MWagner (May 17, 2016)

Brian Turner said:


> I haven't read any accounts that linger in the East as yet - Bartmann says he missed most of the Russian campaign because of his injuries. I've got Sajer coming up soon, though.



The Eastern Front and Western Front were almost two different wars. To a German soldier, being transferred from the Eastern Front to the Western Front was the next best thing to getting leave. The rules of war still applied on the Western front, for the most part. The Eastern Front was total war. The Germans treated it much the same way European colonial soldiers treated a campaign in Africa or Asia - a dirty war far from home in a horrendous climate, surrounded by sub-human savages. They behaved in ways that would have been unthinkable in France or the Netherlands. And of course, for the Soviets it was a desperate battle for survival, under the iron command of an absolutely ruthless regime. Casualties were appalling. No quarter was given, and none was asked. The massacre of civilians and prisoners was routine on both sides. In comparison, the war on the Western front was a courtly joust.


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## aThenian (May 18, 2016)

MWagner said:


> The Eastern Front and Western Front were almost two different wars. To a German soldier, being transferred from the Eastern Front to the Western Front was the next best thing to getting leave. The rules of war still applied on the Western front, for the most part. The Eastern Front was total war.



Agree with you. Is it also relevant though that there wasn't so much actual war on the Western Front?  Germany defeated France, the lowland countries, Norway etc with amazing speed (something like six weeks to defeat France.)  It aimed to do the same in Russia but it didn't happen and it became a long and enormously brutal campaign.  I suppose what I'm wondering is if the war in the west had been equally drawn out would it also have been as brutal?  Or would the issues of ideology, climate and distance always have made the Eastern front more brutal?  Poland, of course, did fall quickly to the Nazis but nevertheless was the scene of terrible brutality - but then there are maybe reasons for that.  For the Jewish population it was just as bad to be in occupied France as in the east.

Of course this is in the realm of "what if" because we just don't know, but worth considering.  War in itself is brutalising.  The Allies' decision for whole scale bombing of German cities (e.g. Dresden) arguably shows how the years of war also made the West more brutal (not exactly a "courtly joust").


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## Ray McCarthy (May 18, 2016)

aThenian said:


> For the Jewish population it was just as bad to be in occupied France as in the east.


Especially bad to be in Vichy France, which was hardly invaded / never really saw war till the allied counter attack. For a long time the only "war" in the west was North Africa.
D-Day was 6th June 1944, UK had declared war in September 1939 (the actual start of WWII depends on your POV, and can be be set between 1933 to 1941 for different groups and countries).
Italy was invaded by the Allies on 3 September 1943, about four years after the start of the war.
Germany, supported by Italy and Romania, invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, so the War in the East was very much longer than real fighting in the West.
Most Americans regard anything happening in USA before December 1941 as "before the War." They were supplying Italy while Italy was Germany's ally, till 1941!

Animated map
File:Second world war europe animation small.gif - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


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## aThenian (May 18, 2016)

aThenian said:


> For the Jewish population it was just as bad to be in occupied France as in the east.



Actually, my apologies, I don't think that's right - just checked and survival rate was much higher in France than in the East.


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## MWagner (May 18, 2016)

aThenian said:


> Agree with you. Is it also relevant though that there wasn't so much actual war on the Western Front?  Germany defeated France, the lowland countries, Norway etc with amazing speed (something like six weeks to defeat France.)  It aimed to do the same in Russia but it didn't happen and it became a long and enormously brutal campaign.  I suppose what I'm wondering is if the war in the west had been equally drawn out would it also have been as brutal?  Or would the issues of ideology, climate and distance always have made the Eastern front more brutal?  Poland, of course, did fall quickly to the Nazis but nevertheless was the scene of terrible brutality - but then there are maybe reasons for that.  For the Jewish population it was just as bad to be in occupied France as in the east.
> 
> Of course this is in the realm of "what if" because we just don't know, but worth considering.  War in itself is brutalising.  The Allies' decision for whole scale bombing of German cities (e.g. Dresden) arguably shows how the years of war also made the West more brutal (not exactly a "courtly joust").



The Eastern Front was fundamentally different from the outset. Germans had been raised to believe the Slavs were untermenschen. Even when peoples oppressed by Stalin greeted the Germans as saviours, they were soon subjected to inhuman brutalization. Stalin proved to be the lesser of two evils, which is astonishing when you consider how many Ukrainians, etc. died under the Soviety regime. Remember, Nazi ideology declared that Eastern Europe was to be cleansed of sub-humans and re-populated by German stock. Civilians in the East were treated like animals, to be used and then slaughtered.

The Germans subjugated Western Europeans, forced the men into slave labour camps. But they didn't indulge in wholesale slaughter and brutalization. I remember speaking to an elderly Dutch lady about her experience during the war, and she commented that while it the Allies were fighting the good fight, she was much safer on the streets of Rotterdam during the German occupation than she was in the immediate aftermath of liberation. 

And the war in the West wasn't short. Many Germans fought in North Africa and Italy (which were effectively Western Front) from Nov. '42 onwards, so the Western Front was active for much of the war. Many of the participants on both sides of the struggle in the desert between Rommel's Afrika Corps and the British 8th Army commented on how honourable their opponents were. 

And yes, the Allies did unleash fearsome firepower on the Germans in the West. But it was still a different war from the East. Unlike their counterparts in Germany and the Soviet Union, the citizen soldiers of the democracies were not raised under totalitarian regimes that treated war as a cleansing ideological struggle, and where absolute obedience was drummed into their skulls. Western Allied commanders often pulled their hair out in frustration over the lack of offensive spirit of the soldiers under their command, and their reluctance to put themselves in harm's way. Their Soviet counterparts had few such problems. And where they did, the summary execution of troops in the field would get the ball moving again. 

By the final weeks of the war, when discipline in Germany finally broke down, soldiers and civilians were fleeing to the West en masse in a desperate effort to escape the monstrous retribution of the Soviets in the East. 

A couple books I'd recommend on the subject:

The Fall of Berlin by Anthony Beevor
Armageddon by Max Hastings


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## Ray McCarthy (May 18, 2016)

aThenian said:


> Actually, my apologies, I don't think that's right - just checked and survival rate was much higher in France


The Vichy authorities rounded up Jews. Jews in France didn't have their own villages like in Eastern Europe. The absolute percentage survival rate has nothing to do with the point I was making.


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## Lew Rockwell Fan (May 18, 2016)

aThenian said:


> Actually, my apologies, I don't think that's right - just checked and survival rate was much higher in France than in the East.


Thanks for being punctilious. It is an admirable trait that I wish was the human norm.


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## Brian G Turner (May 18, 2016)

MWagner said:


> Many of the participants on both sides of the struggle in the desert between Rommel's Afrika Corps and the British 8th Army commented on how honourable their opponents were.



This came up in von Luck's memoirs, when he spoke of his reconnaissance group keeping in regular radio contact with the British to avoid losing men and equipment to the desert. Although at war, he also reported they agreed on no action against one another after 5pm. 



> Eastern Front



Another big difference here to the rest of the war appears to be that the Russians made no allowance for the Geneva Convention, and reportedly treated German medics as ordinary combatants to be targeted.


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## aThenian (May 18, 2016)

MWagner said:


> The Eastern Front was fundamentally different from the outset. Germans had been raised to believe the Slavs were untermenschen. Even when peoples oppressed by Stalin greeted the Germans as saviours, they were soon subjected to inhuman brutalization. Stalin proved to be the lesser of two evils, which is astonishing when you consider how many Ukrainians, etc. died under the Soviety regime. Remember, Nazi ideology declared that Eastern Europe was to be cleansed of sub-humans and re-populated by German stock. Civilians in the East were treated like animals, to be used and then slaughtered.
> 
> The Germans subjugated Western Europeans, forced the men into slave labour camps. But they didn't indulge in wholesale slaughter and brutalization. I remember speaking to an elderly Dutch lady about her experience during the war, and she commented that while it the Allies were fighting the good fight, she was much safer on the streets of Rotterdam during the German occupation than she was in the immediate aftermath of liberation.
> 
> ...



I'm not disagreeing with you at all.  I was speculating really, about whether a prolonged war on the Western front might not have ended up a lot more brutal than what was, instead, in the main a short conflict followed by occupation.  Occupation is also brutal and brutalising but surely not to the same extent as full scale war.  (I'm going to freely admit that I wasn't thinking about Italy/North Africa, only Western/Northern Europe, and I know very little about the Italian/North African campaigns.)

I've read some of the *The Fall of Berlin*, as well as *Stalingrad*, by Anthony Beevor, and yes the ferocity and level of suffering is incredible and overwhelming.  I think it should be more taught in the West (think British school children's impressions of World War II are mainly of evacuees setting out for the countryside and hiding from bombs in air shelters).



Ray McCarthy said:


> The absolute percentage survival rate has nothing to do with the point I was making.



I was just correcting myself, Ray, not taking issue with you.


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## Ray McCarthy (May 18, 2016)

aThenian said:


> I was just correcting myself, Ray, not taking issue with you.


Yes, I know and very worthy. I was just pedantically making a slightly different point.



aThenian said:


> I've read some of the *The Fall of Berlin*, as well as *Stalingrad*, by Anthony Beevor, and yes the ferocity and level of suffering is incredible and overwhelming. I think it should be more taught in the West (think British school children's impressions of World War II are mainly of evacuees setting out for the countryside and hiding from bombs in air shelters).



In general UK has a quite different view of EU to rest of Europe, because although there was the Blitz etc, the UK suffering and shortages where nothing compared to the zones with war on ground or carpet bombing after power of Luftwaffe was broken. They can't understand why after 2008 people are STILL joining the Euro and queueing to join Euro and EU. Those mainland countries feel the EU ideal, not NATO is why there has been 70 years of western European "bliss".

Ireland is a European Enthusiast (Euro and EU) for different reasons to the Dutch, Germans, Belgians, French, Spanish, Italians and East Europeans.  Some days I wonder if De Gaul was right


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## WaylanderToo (May 18, 2016)

Ray McCarthy said:


> Some days I wonder if De Gaul was right


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## MWagner (May 18, 2016)

aThenian said:


> I'm not disagreeing with you at all.  I was speculating really, about whether a prolonged war on the Western front might not have ended up a lot more brutal than what was, instead, in the main a short conflict followed by occupation.  Occupation is also brutal and brutalising but surely not to the same extent as full scale war.  (I'm going to freely admit that I wasn't thinking about Italy/North Africa, only Western/Northern Europe, and I know very little about the Italian/North African campaigns.)



Sorry, I misunderstood. I'm still doubtful that the war in the West would have gotten as vicious as the Eastern Front if prolonged. The war in the East was brutal right from the outset. While the Allied citizen-soldiers fighting in the West became heartily tired of war in a short period of time, and commanders had great difficulty getting them to press forward with vigour after the initial momentum of '44 slowed. Ironically, their decency and value of life prolonged the war and resulted in far more civilians being killed than if the war had been brought to decisive close in '44. (which is pretty much the theme of Hasting's book).


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## Lew Rockwell Fan (May 18, 2016)

Brian Turner said:


> This came up in von Luck's memoirs, when he spoke of his reconnaissance group keeping in regular radio contact with the British to avoid losing men and equipment to the desert.


Interesting. Historically, naval warfare has been said to have often been accompanied by an attitude like "We are enemies, but the hostile environment is our common enemy." If war ever takes place in space it wouldn't be surprising if a similar attitude might emerge.



Brian Turner said:


> Another big difference here to the rest of the war appears to be that the Russians made no allowance for the Geneva Convention, and reportedly treated German medics as ordinary combatants to be targeted.


The Russians hadn't signed those treaties of course, so in a narrow legalistic sense you can't blame them. But in a broader sense, little if anything in those treaties was new. They merely codified what had already been custom among the nations of Christiandom for centuries. So, on the other hand, yes you can blame them.


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