British Free Corps

[Foxbat]

In one of his books Albert Speer wrote that the UK Defence of the Realm Regulations allowed the country to adapt itself to war needs far better than he was able to in Germany when he took over as production minster. Even so, Speer's organisational abilities may have prolonged the war by some months.

Early German philosophy centred on Blitzkreig and didn’t see the need for a Total War footing, exemplified by the lack of winter clothing for the German army during the invasion of Soviet Russia, whereas the UK and other allies moved to a Total War footing pretty quickly. Speer was banging his head against a brick wall for too long, and when others in the Reich finally realised he was right, it was too late. It didn’t help that weapons production in Germany was all about quality whereas allied production was focussed on quantity.
Here are some numbers to illustrate my point. In WW2 there were 8500 Panzer MkIVs produced compared to 50000 Shermans.

The T34 was not only one of the best tanks in WW2 but one of the easiest to build in great numbers (84000), whereas the King Tiger (arguably the best with 492 manufactured) was difficult to build, gas hungry and overcomplicated. Even the superb Panther could only manage 6000.

 

[paranoid marvin]

In one of his books Albert Speer wrote that the UK Defence of the Realm Regulations allowed the country to adapt itself to war needs far better than he was able to in Germany when he took over as production minster. Even so, Speer's organisational abilities may have prolonged the war by some months.

Yes, if I recall correctly, Germany was producing more war materials in the latter years of the war than they were in the beginning, even though cities and facilities were under constant attack and more and more men were being drafted into the armed forces. A quick look on Wikipedia shows that more panzers were produced in 1943 than in the first 4 years of the war.

As I said in my last post, Britain has effectively been at a state of war-preparedness for the last 1,000 years and it was a relatively easy step to go from a peace to a war footing, which is what happened in WWII. Of course the fact that we had also maintained the best Navy in the world for the last 3-400 hundred years was almost certainly the reason why Hitler never attempted an invasion.

 

[mosaix]

Hitler planned early on to reuse captured equipment from early blitzkrieg successes.

A lot of equipment used by the Nazis on the Russian front, especially trucks, was French.

 

[HareBrain]

A lot of equipment used by the Nazis on the Russian front, especially trucks, was French.

For which of course they didn't have adequate spares. (Not that they ever could have, for the literally hundreds of different commandeered truck types they were using.)

 

[paranoid marvin]

For which of course they didn't have adequate spares. (Not that they ever could have, for the literally hundreds of different commandeered truck types they were using.)

And a little realised fact was that much of the German army relied on horsepower. Film reels (from the German perspective) understandably concentrate on the Panzers, but in the background doing the transporting were horses. It certainly came as quite a surprise to me when I found out.

 

[The Ace]

Yes. I knew about organisations like the Wiking Division and such but I’d never heard of the British Free Corps. We had traitors like William Joyce (Lord Haw Haw) so it shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me but it did. There was even the Spanish Blue Division on the Eastern Front, made up from volunteer spanish fascists even though Spain never entered the war.

Another snippet that I learned: Wallis Simpson had an affair with von Ribbentrop when he visited the UK pre-war. What was really interesting was the time period because this affair overlapped her affair with Edward VIII.

Joyce was an interesting character in some ways, but two points stand out to me;

* He was an Irish Citizen, and therefore a neutral during WW2. He lied to obtain his British Passport, but because he held it, he could be tried for treason, instead of being repatriated. It was his own stupid fault he went to the gallows.

* The story goes that, during his arrest, one soldier, "Accidentally," discharged his revolver - the bullet entering Joyce's left buttock and exiting the right. He literally had to stand trial, because he was unable to sit.

 

[BigBadBob141]

Later German (Panther, Tiger, King Tiger) tanks while fearsome in battle especially when fitted with the notorious 88 mm gun, but they were all over engineered and tended to break down a lot and were not easy to fix.
The Russian T34 while not the greatest was still a pretty good tank, it was very rough and ready, primitive compared to the Germans, but it had good sloping armour and would just keep going in all conditions and was easy to fix, it's 75 mm gun was later exchanged for a 85 mm.
Probably the best western tanks were the Sherman Firefly, the British took an American Sherman, fitted a slightly larger turret and a 17 pounder anti-tank gun which was a really good weapon, in one action a single Firefly took out three Tigers with just four shots, killing a famous German tank ace in the process, but the best by far was the Churchill- Crocodile, this one was one of Hobart's funnies and terrified the Germans and was 95 per cent effective in battle, it was a Churchill Mk7 with six inch armour plate at the front, the hull machine gun was removed and a powerful flame thrower was fitted in its place, with an armoured trailer behind carrying the napalm, when they saw this coming the Germans would either run away or surrender, relatively few were actually killed by it.
P.S. A distant relative of mine was in the Italian Army when he was captured by the British, he had a good time as a POW and loved the British for treating them all so well!

 

[Vladd67]

Wasn't just French equipment that the Germans captured and reused.

 

[BigBadBob141]

Well Galland did say he wanted a squadron of Spitefire's!

 

[Foxbat]

Wasn't just French equipment that the Germans captured and reused.

I once saw a photograph of a british tank crew manning a Panther. I can’t remember where I saw it and I’m sure I didn’t dream it

One thing that amused me recently. Panzerkampfwagen simply means armoured fighting vehicle and I was watching a war movie when one GI says to the other something like ‘German tanks coming our way.’ Then he says, ’it’s worse than that, they’re Panzers.’

 

[Foxbat]

Continuing my reading of this book, I’ve just finished a chapter on an interesting character that displays the very contrary nature within the SS. Konrad Morgen was a lawyer that worked within the organisation to root out corruption, theft and arbitrary killing. His work resulted in 800 trials with 200 convictions. Many of the guilty faced the firing squad. He also worked to bring an end to the death camps but hit a brick wall. He could not manage to organise a meeting with Himmler, the sergeant helping him disappeared without trace and a building holding many of his files mysteriously caught fire. He did, however, still have enough evidence on some individuals that proved to be of great use to the allies after the war.

I find it to be very surprising that he should work to end the camps and yet be allowed to live. He died in West Germany in 1976, still a practicing lawyer.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Continuing my reading of this book, I’ve just finished a chapter on an interesting character that displays the very contrary nature within the SS.

That sounds really interesting - what's the book title again, please?

 

[Venusian Broon]

I once saw a photograph of a british tank crew manning a Panther. I can’t remember where I saw it and I’m sure I didn’t dream it

You might have seen a picture of 'Cuckoo'. But there were others:

Repurposing German Vehicles by Allied Troops - Warfare History Network

Outright need and the perceived superiority of German armored fighting vehicles led to some very notable examples of their use—by Allied troops.

warfarehistorynetwork.com

.

 

[Venusian Broon]

Continuing my reading of this book, I’ve just finished a chapter on an interesting character that displays the very contrary nature within the SS. Konrad Morgen was a lawyer that worked within the organisation to root out corruption, theft and arbitrary killing. His work resulted in 800 trials with 200 convictions. Many of the guilty faced the firing squad. He also worked to bring an end to the death camps but hit a brick wall. He could not manage to organise a meeting with Himmler, the sergeant helping him disappeared without trace and a building holding many of his files mysteriously caught fire. He did, however, still have enough evidence on some individuals that proved to be of great use to the allies after the war.

I find it to be very surprising that he should work to end the camps and yet be allowed to live. He died in West Germany in 1976, still a practicing lawyer.

I have not heard of this man, however surely he's an outlier rather than pointing to the 'contrary nature of the SS'. I would suggest they were more likely to be on the brutal/genocidal side, surely?

I thoroughly recommend TimeGhosts's World War Two Youtube channel which has a 'Crimes Against Humanity' series that is documenting a great deal of the terrible things that happened in excruciating detail. (Also I recommend the main series - WW2 in Real time, where they describe the history of the war week by week. If you haven't been watching it, they started two years ago, so you've got ~104 episodes to catch up! The historians running the channel were part of the team that covered the Great War week-by-week, so they have had plenty of practice.)

World War Two

World War Two dives into the history of one of the most devastating wars in human history. Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson and their team of dedicated histori...

www.youtube.com

 

[Foxbat]

I have not heard of this man, however surely he's an outlier rather than pointing to the 'contrary nature of the SS'. I would suggest they were more likely to be on the brutal/genocidal side, surely?

I think my natural assumption was that he would never have been allowed to even come close to attempting to close down the death camps and probably would have been killed for doing so. The very fact that he was able to (and did) investigate Rudolph Hoss (Auschwitz commandant) and Maximilian Garber (Gestapo head and chief torturer at Auschwitz) amongst others, I find quite bizarre and contrary to what I would have thought before reading this. It would have been my opinion that such was the importance of Hoss’s job in the eyes of the likes of Hitler and Himmler that a blind eye would have been turned to any personal gains made during his time at Auschwitz and that Morgen would have been silenced one way or the other. Perhaps Himmler’s unavailability to Morgen was exactly the blind eye I assumed, but Morgen was still able to pursue his targets relatively unmolested despite being ignored by Himmler.

It seems to me that perhaps his sergeant was silenced as a warning to him. If so, this was a warning he appeared to ignore and still managed to survive the war. I think this is what I was getting at by contrary nature...if that makes any sense.

Thanks for the link. I’ll check it out

 

[Venusian Broon]

I think my natural assumption was that he would never have been allowed to even come close to attempting to close down the death camps and probably would have been killed for doing so. The very fact that he was able to (and did) investigate Rudolph Hoss (Auschwitz commandant) and Maximilian Garber (Gestapo head and chief torturer at Auschwitz) amongst others, I find quite bizarre and contrary to what I would have thought before reading this. It would have been my opinion that such was the importance of Hoss’s job in the eyes of the likes of Hitler and Himmler that a blind eye would have been turned to any personal gains made during his time at Auschwitz and that Morgen would have been silenced one way or the other. Perhaps Himmler’s unavailability to Morgen was exactly the blind eye I assumed, but Morgen was still able to pursue his targets relatively unmolested despite being ignored by Himmler.

It seems to me that perhaps his sergeant was silenced as a warning to him. If so, this was a warning he appeared to ignore and still managed to survive the war. I think this is what I was getting at by contrary nature...if that makes any sense.

Thanks for the link. I’ll check it out

It's a complex issue. I have certainly seen and heard of examples of Germans, for example - senior members of the Wehrmacht, making complaints and reporting massacres and war crimes. But then their efforts clearly had little influence.

But then, as the war was reaching the end - and ignoring a few madmen trying to snatch victory from defeat, most would have recognised it - it seems clear that a great many German commanders had an eye on what was going to happen afterwards. So they worked to obfuscate anything that could incriminate them, treated prisoners and civilians much better*, remove evidence etc.

Could Morgen have been set up by his commander to provide an alibi after the war?

-----------------------------------------


* Would the SS have recognised the Poles in the Warsaw uprising in 1944 as military combantants and taking the survivors as prisoners, if the uprising had taken place a year earlier? Or would they have treated them as partisans - i.e. mass executions?

 

[Foxbat]

Could Morgen have been set up by his commander to provide an alibi after the war?

After the war, he refused to testify to the allies against Ilse Koch (aka The Bitch Of Buchenwald), even though he suspected she was guilty, because he had not been able to gather enough evidence against her. I find it astonishing that such a hard headed man, so obviously driven by rules, could
a) survive the entire war without an SS bullet in the back of his head or
b) that he would allow himself to be manipulated beyond the rules he adhered to.

I suspect any commander guilty of crimes of any nature would not be able to count on Morgen to save their skin.

Merely my unqualified opinion of course

 

[Ambrose]

Lawyers are mysterious beings? Some are almost aliens. Or are they?

 

[Foxbat]

Lawyers are mysterious beings? Some are almost aliens. Or are they?

Reminds me of a scene from Young Sheldon where he ponders a dark future: ‘I could end up a drug addict or a lawyer.’

 

[CupofJoe]

I don't know the person and I haven't read about him... but...
He might not have tried to close the camps on ideological or compassionate grounds. Or at least not for the residents.
He might have seen them as an unnecessary drain on scarce resources.
One of the driving forces for the establishment of extermination camps was that soldiers were becoming too stressed by shooting people all-day.
A more humane way [for the soldiers] had to be found for killing people.
First came the Gas wagons and then the extermination camps [where many of the soldiers were not involved in the direct killing all that much* - but they got the inmates to do most of the dirty work].
An ardent Nazi might have not liked the way people were using the system for their own advantage.
* Brutality, rape, coercion, murder and a whole host of other things certainly.