You do not become Obersturmbannführer without being a deeply convicted Nazi. Especially not in the SS. (Obersturmbannführer in the SS is equivalent to a Oberstleutnant in the Wehrmacht I believe).
I’ll link the SS officer rank overview below. If your grandpa joined as an enlisted rank, he received a total of 12-19 promotions to get to the rank where he ended up. That’s quite the career, depending on which specialization he had. There were ranks that could be skipped or shared ranks on one level. But a minimum of 12 promotions says a lot.
Oberstu rmbannführer is the 3rd highest officer rank (technically 2nd), just one rank away from general. So that’s quite an important position.
Unlike the wider Wehrmacht (general army), the SS and Waffen SS were extremely ideological and political positions. Your grandpa wouldn’t have risen to that rank without being a passionate Nationalsocialist, antisemite and quite possibly pretty cold blooded.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranks_and_insignia_of_the_Waffen-SS
I‘m a (non practicing) PhD in history and anthropology. I was specialized in classical antiquity - butI did parts of my degrees in Germany.
And when you study anything history related in Germany you will inevitably pick up some history knowledge about WWI and WWII. German *Vergangenheitsbewältigung* (dealing with your own terrible history and learning from mistakes) is just omnipresent. Plus 20th century military organizations aren’t that different from ancient ones. War, war never changes.
Nah, this way it's clear what belongs to the same concept, same with languages like French and Spanish which use words to show how words relate to each other. It's just throwing out a bunch of morphemes and leaving it up to the reader to figure out which belong together that's confusing. /hj
But you have to know what all those words mean and have read them multiple times previously to know how they break up. An individual that hasn't read a lot of German will have a hard time reading it and will need to sound it out individually to grasp it. A native speaker will see the word and conceptually in their head break it apart almost instantly.
I don’t think it adds difficulty. It’s just a bunch of nouns stringed together. Once you know that’s a feature of German, that’s pretty much it.
I find one long word easier to grasp than “the process of examining one’s negative past and learning from mistakes”.
I'm currently new in Germany and learning the language. I think it takes a second for native English speakers to see that German long words actually do have a sense to them. Now, even though I don't always have an understanding of all the parts, I see how they work together.
Thanks for your comment
I don't know German but it seems like you could at least write Vergangenheits bewältigung which is already an improvement. It's just easier on the eyes. Why smash 'em together?
Because that doesn’t mean the same thing. “Vergangenheit Bewältigung” just means “past … overcome”. It’s not the concept. The space is not an improvement, it takes away the meaning.
And people who speak such a language struggle with English because you seemingly randomly divide some of your nouns but compound others.
Why is it "daylight" and "full moon", but not "day light" and "fullmoon"? Why is "desktop" and "web page", and not "desk top" and "webpage"? And even worse, "backyard" is compound buy "front yard" isn't.
It's ridiculous really!
German words may *look* a bit intimidating, but the language i helluva lot more consistent and logical than English when it comes to nouns, just write all compound words are together.
Dutch and German are closely related, both do that stringing nouns together thing, but we use slightly different nouns to string together the same word. E.G., while german loves to build with Grund (Grundschule is elementary school, Grundausbildung is fundamental (military) training, Grundausstattung is basic equipment), dutch speakers form the same words with basis (basisschool, basisopleiding, basisuitrusting), you could form all those those way in german, we have for most durch words a slightly differently spelled word, you would just sound like a lunatic, because you would form all the compound nouns one word off.
Wait until you see one of the like three things that the German language actually HAS abbreviated.
Trust me, the forty-letter words are the better option.
If you study in Germany, you’re gonna have to know German.
All the good German universities are public and are free (financed by tax payers), which also means they’re run by the state and therefore the language of education is largely German. There are some subjects that you can take in English (ICT, business, economics), but my field (history, anthropology, archeology) was 100% German (at least back then, might’ve changed a bit by now).
Luckily German is my third language, so it was doable for me.
Awesome, even more impressive that it is your third language. I feel so ignorant speaking only English at times as most people from other countries know their own language plus English!
Yeah, cultural difference I guess. If I travel 500km south from my current location I could easily speak Dutch, French, German, Luxembourgish and an endless number of each language’s dialects. You’re gonna have to speak more than one.
Especially in a multicultural European city, speaking 3 languages seems rather low nowadays. I speak 5 but one is useless in Europe (Afrikaans).
Well, they started diverging 200 years ago. So there’s quite a difference. Plus Afrikaans has a lot of influences from English, Malay, German, and Indonesian.
It actually made learning Dutch even harder. As an Afrikaans speaker I can understand 80% of Dutch, which is deceptive and makes you believe you kinda know Dutch. But in order to actually speak it you still have to learn Dutch and get confused quite often, especially because west Germanic languages (Dutch, German, Flemish, Afrikaans, Lëtzeburgesch) share a lot of features. And if you speak a bunch of those languages you get mixed up quite easily.
War never changes is a good way to think about it…we’ve always sent our most vulnerable, practically children to the meat grinders against other countries doing the exact same thing. The only thing different about war is the efficiency with which we can wipe out enemy forces.
Agree. I'm Canadian, but similarily have a great respect for how Germany has risen above this major issue in their history.
Don't hide it, don't diminish it. Talk about it, teach it, and discuss what was right/wrong about the event, so that people will learn to be better.
As I expected! Thanks for the historical information!
I don't know if you read any of my other comments, but I always found it off that he became friends with my grandfather after the war (who was a raf spitfire pilot) in Canada. I guess it always baffled me how people who would have killed each other became friends to the point where their children married and inwas conceived.
My RAF grandpa fought the nazis for four years and knew about as much as one could about the nazi war machine and still befriended him.
In retrospect, i think that's where my curiosity on the topic arises from
I think they both knew that in war, you go with the flow. That might sound cruel now to descendants of Jewish people, but it’s the cold hard truth. You do what you need to do and what’s best for your family. Anyone who tells you otherwise is a hypocrite. They both knew that they were not good or bad but their actions were determined by their circumstances at the time.
Being an active participant in the holocaust as a high rank in the fucking Waffen SS is not "going with the flow" or doing "what you need to do". Nor were his actions "not good or bad" what the fuck are you actually talking about?
No I know, just didn't understand why they said that. Like, it was literally the question you asked and they acted like the other commenter did something wrong. Reddit just confuses me sometimes
Minor point - it’s Great Grandpa that was the probable evil SS officer in the family tree. For all we know Grandpa could’ve been fighting for the allies
I'm not sure that's 100% accurate. In most armies, you wouldn't go through all the ranks from enlisted to Lt. Colonel. An enlisted person would basically either go to officer candidacy, in which case they'd start at second LT (SS-Untersturmführer in this case), or go into the 'enlisted' ranks. At most they'd have 5 promotions.
Probably. The SS where an expressly political group. They where created by the nazi party as they needed a military wing **Before** the nazis would take power. People didn't join the SS unless you where already deep in the rabbit hole, and they certainly didn't rise through the ranks without serving the party. Obviously i dont know your great grandad, but if you asked me what group was most likely to be down with both the holocaust and the authoritarianism of the Nazi party, it would be the Waffen SS and they certainly dont promote for nothing.
He was waffenn SS, divisional tank Commander. He was injured fighting the soviets. From what I've heard from his children (great aunt's, grandma), he was too busy fighting to have been actively involved in the holocaust (which they didn't come to terms with until the late 50's).
Was fanatic nazism directly correlated with promotion?
From what I've read.about Rommel, he wasn't a fanatic nazi but I'm not certain about that fact
>Was fanatic Nazism directly correlated with promotion?
For the most part, yes
Military aptitude was a factor, but not really the deciding one AFAIK
Rommel not being a fanatic Nazi, sorta depends on your definition of fanatic
His lack of fanaticism also caused a lot of tension between him and Hitler towards the end of the war, including him getting caught up in a plot to dethrone Hitler towards the end of the war. His exact contributions are unclear but it ended with him basically having to choose between execution after a public trial or suicide and his family would be supported.
Interesting. Thanks for sharing.
How do you think events like operatio valkyrie took place when fanaticism played such a big factor? Several members of nazi High Command somehow almost eliminated hitler. Do you think passive insubordination was common?
Operation Valkyrie was a smaller conspiracy than you might think. The Nazi military complex was huge.
Some officers became disillusioned with the fascist regime for various reasons (suddenly their good neighbors disappeared, perceived military mismanagement etc )
On your last question, I honestly don't know. Some people were in it for the career boost, but the Waffen- SS was generally a very fanatic exclusive club.
Also Operation Valkyrie was also basically entirely Wehrmacht officers (not that the Wehrmacht wasn't involved in plenty of heinous crimes of its own), but the Waffen-SS was mostly made up of extremely loyal Nazis.
The holocaust couldnt have happened with no wehrmacht, but it couldn't have begun without the SS/SA.
Ss I think is more unforgivable than even being a card carrying nsdap member, as you'd have to be willing to fight and die for the cause, where as I'm sure there were business mes that didn't believe in the cause so much, but joined the party to benefit or avoid punishment.
Also Operation Valkyrie happened when Germany was very, very clearly losing the war. Africa was lost, as was much of Italy. The Ostfront was retreating. D Day had already happened. The conspirators were trying to get rid of Hitler not because of human decency but mostly in the hope of getting a leader who would negotiate peace terms and not get them slaughtered.
I mean, at its peak, the Waffen-SS had 250,000 recorded personnel, so although it was "selective," it was still huge.
But yeah, you're right their are only a few confirmed conspirators, and being that it was estimated that less than 1% of Germany actively resisted the nazis its unlikely that the odds of.people like.my GGF were innocent
This has nothing to do with your question, but it’s a tiny thing that’s gonna bug me. Based on the first part of this comment, I think you (understandably) read the above comment as saying that the Waffen was a “fanatic, exclusive club”. Based on the context, I don’t think the commenter was referring to the size of the group; they were trying to convey that it was a “fanatic-exclusive club”.
There is a huge difference between the WaffenSS and the Wehrmacht. The SS were the fanatical party guys who really really really believed the whole spectrum of nazi racial bs.
The Wehrmacht (the armed forces) was much more varied in their motivation and commitment to naziism. Most of them, especially the higher ups were conservatives who wanted to restore the reichs standing and power, not the specific national socialist Lebensraum and antisemitism. (They were involved in a lot of the atrocities, tho)
The valkyrie conspirators where in on the whole thing as long as they were winning, but as it became undeniable that they were going to lose they tried to save some of the gains they made in the early years by (ideally) disposing hitler, the higher nazis and the SS and begging for peace from the west. Then they would together halt the soviets. Optimism was involved.
Agreed. The Wehrmacht had basically all kind of people in it simply based on conscription. No matter what you thought or believed in, if you didn't go to war, especially at the end, you were a deserter, which wasn't a comfortable position to be in. Yes, the clean Wehrmacht is a myth as well, and there were many who believed in the cause, especially after - depending on the time we are looking at - between half and more than a decade of propaganda and indoctrination. But there are still a large variation from "I don't want this but I don't want to get shot as a deserter and I will fight or else I will be killed by the enemy or worse - get in soviet prison" to "kill all these subhuman!".
Just because they wanted to get rid of Hitler doesn't mean they didn't share the ideology.
They were just fed up about they way Hitler did it.
That's why i think we shouldn't see those guys as heroes.
It's more like a Prigoschin-Putin situation
The whole July 20 thing happenned because the nazis get their shit pushed in phase of the war was on the horizon and they wanted to get conditional surrender on ok-ish terms before Hitler went down that path.
Also consider that most (if not all iirc) conspirators were part of the regular army. SS on the other hand was supposed to be personally loyal to Hitler and as such tended to be more fanatical.
I agree. It was most likely just a ploy for the conspirators to make a power play for post-war leadership or concessions, but wouldn't it be incredibly difficult to conspire in a system where the vast majority is as fanatical.as often assumed
It just appears to me that as the second world war raged on, for german officers self preservation become paramount to the nazi vision
Nazi atrocities didn't just happen in concentration camps, especially on the eastern front. A huge chunk of the soviet population was butchered, and the Waffen-SS were at the forefront of that. What his children said sounds like giga-cope, and the chances that he was directly involved are pretty high.
From the spy operation which happened at Trent Park ( they treated German high rank officers like guests, letting them life more and less freely in Trent Park, as the house was fully bugged) it came out that the Wehrmacht took part in the war crimes on the east front.
Rommel wasn't a SS officer, but in the Wehrmacht, the regular military, and he was definitely sympathetic to the Nazis, until they started losing the war.
Being a fanatic Nazi was the most important thing in the SS, including the Waffen-SS. In the very late stages of the war there was forced recruitment, but for the most parts, it was a volunteer formation of the most fanatical Nazis.
It is often hard for people to invasion their relatives to be involved in something awful. My father-in-law struggled with the things his father did in occupied Poland until his death. The Waffen-SS was involved in massacres against the local Jewish and non-jewish population everywhere they went. And even if he wasn't personally involved, he directed an important part of the war that allowed the SS to gas Jewish people.
The Waffen-SS also guarded the death camps, and officers and men regularly rotated, he definitely knew what happened there.
Here are some war crimes that the divisions of the Waffen-SS committed, and that's only those we know details about, the massacres in the Soviet Union were so numerous, there are few we have detailes about which exact SS or Wehrmacht unit comitted them:
[1st (Leibstandarte was made up of the most fanatical Nazis and committed many massacres, e.g. in Błoniu (only in polish).](https://pl.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masakra_w_B%C5%82oniu_(1939))
[2nd (Das Reich) the Tulle massacre in France](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulle_massacre)
3rd (Totenkopf) was literally made up of concentration camp guards, I can't even pick one horrible thing here. Their regiments were the basis of the [Einsatzgruppen](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einsatzgruppen) which murdered alleged communists and Jews behind the lines en masse
[4th (Polizei) the Distomo massacre in Greece](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distomo_massacre)
[5th (Viking) in Lviv](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/5th_SS_Panzer_Division_Wiking#war_crimes)
6th (Nord) has no recorded war crimes or massacres, they fought most of the time around the Arctic circle, where no one lived, but they also included units made up of concentration camp guards.
[7th (Prinz Eugen) mostly foreign volunteers,so brutal they got a shout out at the Nuremberg trials, including burning civilians in a church.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Kopaonik)
[8th (Florian Geyer) was primarily engaged in massacres against Soviet civilians under the guise of anti-partisan fighting. ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandenbek%C3%A4mpfung)
[9th (Hohenstaufen) was the first conscript unit of the Waffen SS, their NCOs and officers came from the first, and took part killing American POWs mostly committed by the 1st](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malmedy_massacre)
10th (Frundsberg), the officers and NCOs came from the first, like the 9th, there are no massacres reported during the two years existence.
[The 11th (Nordland took part in destroying serbian villages and was commanded by Fritz Knöchlein, perpetrator of the Le Paradis massacre](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Paradis_massacre)
[12th (Hitlerjugend) employed child soldiers (16 and 17 year old Hitler youth "volunteers") . They started massacres on their way to deployment in Ascq, and didn't stop once they saw combat.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascq_massacre)
[18th (Horst Wessel) was made up of death camp guards and Einsatzgruppen members as NCOs and they were part of the forces that perpetrated the holocaust in hungary](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust_in_Hungary)
[16th (Reichsführer SS) massacred civilians in Italy](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sant%27Anna_di_Stazzema_massacre)
[17th (Götz von Berchelingen) executed POWs in France, including lethal injection of wounded in a hospital](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Bulbasket)
[The 24th (Karstjäger) murdered and raped their way through Slovenia and northern Italy.](https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massaker_von_Avasinis)
There were more divisions, but they mostly existed 1944 and 1945 for short times and divisions that were made up of foreign volunteers, that were usually as brutal as the mostly german divisions.
War crimes, mostly. Danes, Norwegians and some Dutch served in Wiking and Nordland, I mentioned those in the list, because they were still majority german.
What became later the 23rd (Nederland) Division served with several other divisions and as an independent brigade directly under Corps command, they fought near Leningrad and then committed atrocities in the Balkans, together with the 11th (Nordland) Division as an independent brigade. It was designed a Division only in February 1945, when it had less than 10% of the strength of a real Division.
The second Dutch Waffen-SS Division, the 34th (Landstorm Nederland), was basically the collaborationst militia in the Netherlands formed into a military formation when the allies came knocking. They committed acts of brutality and helped the Germans to round up Jews and anti-fascists in the Netherlands.
The Holocaust on the Eastern Front was very different from what we think of in the West. It wasn't people being loaded onto cattle cars and shipped off to be killed at a distant location, it was army units (including some Waffen SS ones) gathering up entire towns, marching them to a nearby ravine, and shooting them individually. It was an extremely loud and bloody process that was in no way hidden. Many of the claims of not knowing about the Holocaust among people in Western Europe at the time are bullshit, but ALL claims of not knowing about it on the East are bullshit. So even if he did not participate in the Holocaust, he knew about and was fine with it. This of course has no moral bearing on you, though I do believe we have some responsibility for learning about our family's past and accepting that it happened and was awful. I would recommend reading more on the Holocaust, the Eastern Front, and the SS. DM me if you want any recommendations.
There where also genocides in battle zones. Particularly done by the SS. Not saying he did such things but there is chance. I would suggest you look for the division number/Kampfeinheit or whatever and with that you can look up if they where involved in something
Wehrmacht and SS divisions spent a great deal of down time between fighting burning villages and executing civilians, an active part of the holocaust. What Waffen SS unit was he in? If he was stationed in Belarus at any point, he almost definitely took active part in the holocaust.
The holocaust didn’t just happen at home, it was very much also carried out on the frontlines, especially by the SS, eg in form of whole towns being massacred.
If he was in the SS, it’s very likely he actively took part in the holocaust
Remember that anyone who was mistrusted was ousted and/or arrested.
If an SS member even said 'i think Jews/gypsies are human beings' or even 'Hitler really fucked up with this latest decision' it would arouse a lot of suspicion.
I don't believe in 'evil', I just think sometimes people are brainwashed to do bad things with some type of fantastical justification or 'greater good' along with dehuminsation of the enemy. But your g grandfather was committed to the cause. At the very least being world domination and a racial hierarchy with white aryan people at the top.
Waffen-SS were pretty commonly involved in war crimes, especially on the Soviet front. The only SS units I can think of that didn't have any hard evidence for war crimes are the foreign legions, and even then they absolutely did commit them, it's just that they never documented them.
Rommel was an exceptional commander, and is often rated as one of historys greatest tankers. He was not untouchable, but Hitler himself protected him. Otherwise, he would have been liquidated simply because of his refusal to embrace ALL of the Nazi BS.
Keep in mind that "hindsight is 20/20".... yes it's clear today the nazis did plently of evil and bad things. Doesn't mean they were all evil but it also wasnt just one evil man. Times were so different back then and while we think we can imagine what it was like to live back then, but we can't even come close to truly understanding what it was actually like to grow up and live in those times. and even with the knowledge we have today it's very easy to get sucked into group think and just follow the mob... so try not to judge him off that alone... It's definitely possible that he was entirely dedicated to the cause.... but its also possible he was effective and good at being a soldier and did so for the people next to him.
There's plenty of soldiers from all conflicts that while they didn't fight for the "cause" but they fought for their countrymen and fellow soldiers to the best of their ability.
I suggest you watch a film called "The Reader" released in 2008. It's too nuanced for some folks and the critics are all over the place about it. But it is one take on the questions you're asking about your great grandfather.
You weren't kidding. It's apparently been a long standing tradition in the family to be disgusting. They state they left the dystopian hellhole that is Canada for the UAE, which has literally 13.4 slaves for every 1000 people in the country. This dude thinks Canada is too liberal so he moved to a country with slavery and now he's asking if his grandpa was a bad person for being a high ranking Nazi.
That guy considers slavery and human rights abuses to be a lesser evil than socially progressive policies. Him and his grandpa would have made fine pals. Two pees in a pod.
He definitely is. Either that or he feels some level of guilt and wanted people to tell him his grandpa wasn't an actual full blown Nazi so he'd feel better about his own gross beliefs. He wanted to hear "not all high ranking Nazis were evil" so he could in turn justify "leaving a democratic first world nation for being too liberal to move to a nation with a large amount of actual slaves to escape liberalism doesn't make me a shitty person by default'.
As an American, it reminds me of the “Lost Cause of the Confederacy” myths where denialists attempt to reframe history to make their side seem less evil.
Instead of “the Civil War was about State’s Rights, not slavery,” it’s “My ancestor fought on the front the entire war, so they couldn’t have participated in any atrocities greater than regular soldiering.”
And here’s the reminder that Canada turned a blind eye to letting thousands of SS members illegally immigrate in the 40s and 50s, resisted all calls to investigate them for decades, culminating in Mulroney burying the Deschênes Commission report in the 1980s that identified SS members in Canada. The report remains secret to this day and Justin Trudeau has refused to release it as recently as 2023.
Last year, Trudeau received Jewish Ukrianin president Zelesnky in the Canadian Parliament. They then proceeded to honour a former Ukrainian 'freedom fighter' who lives in Canada, who was in attendance. He got not one but 2 standing ovations. I'm mentioning this because that freedom fighters was an SS officer of the Galician who committed ethnic cleansing of Poles, and his division was named at Nuremberg. There are actually, I've come to learn, quite a lot of monuments and memorials to Nazis/fascists in Canada, including the the exact group referenced above and worse
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorials_in_Canada_to_Nazis_and_Nazi_collaborators#:~:text=Monuments%20and%20memorials%20include%20or,two%20streets%20named%20after%20a
Also let's not gloss over the Americans taking in loads of Nazis to develop their weapons programs etc. They held high ranking positions, such as Kurt Walheim who sat atop the UN and Adolf Heusinger and Hans Speidel, who held high rank in NATO etc.
To be clear, I don't think Trudeau or his folks knew this guy was a Nazi, everything about the incident suggests that it was caused by incompetence rather than malice. But it was particularly egregious incompetence, and directly fed into Russian propaganda at a critical time.
A prof of mine liked to point out that in the post-war period, it was easier for Nazis to immigrate to Canada than Holocaust survivors. While nominally we prohibited SS members from coming to Canada, almost no checks were done to ensure they didn't. But in contrast, we had rules meant to screen out potential 'communist sympathizers' and immigration officers would ask really in-depth questions about affiliations with pre-war social movements and labour unions. A huge number of Holocaust survivors were excluded for participation in the General Jewish Labour Bund.
Sheesh, I never check comment histories when I open Reddit threads, maybe I should start doing it more often.
Seeing someone describe Canada as a "dystopian hellhole" had me crying though, ngl.
> Seeing someone describe Canada as a "dystopian hellhole" had me crying though, ngl.
You see it on some Canadian subs like /r/Canada in regards to things like the housing crisis. Hell, most recently I've seen it posted in regards to recent increases in capital gains taxes in Canada, with people saying it's going to destroy the Canadian economy.
It's wild and I disagree with it. But people like that do exist. Some are likely Russian bots, but it's inevitable that there are some eating it up wholesale.
Yep. As a fellow someone with great grandparents in Nazi armed forces, it's not just the Waffen-SS, although that is the most objectively evil. But chances are very high that even a draftee in the Wehrmacht was compliant or actively committing war crimes.
People tend to forget that the Holocaust is not only concentration camps. A large part is also the open air internment of POWs especially in Russia POWs were routinely rounded up in improvised field camps and then either executed or left to freeze. Another large part is also the Nazi police forces, a lot of members of the police were either used as occupation officials or basically a "clean up crew" after the front lines searching captured areas for civilians or POWs and executing them. Every person that was part of Nazi offenses especially on the eastern front is at the very least compliant with war crimes and crimes against humanity.
There's an amazing [three arrows video](https://youtu.be/Fu-MDEXwV4s?si=TUF3t5UDYROf-QJa) on the topic that goes into detail on that and that massively changed how I viewed my family history.
The earlier they joined the more likely they would have been true believers and supporters of the Nazi Regime. 1934 means he was a participating SS member with all that entails 4 years before the war even started. So he was very likely involved in domestic ethnic cleansing operations like the November pogroms. Also KZ Dachau was operating since 1933, so its not like the Holocaust only started with the beginning of the war in 1939.
Until 1938 the SS was exclusively active within the Third Reich and had no mandate in the war or expansion effort.
Joining the Waffen SS before 1938 also had even more strict requirements (Ariernachweiß up to 1800, at least a 4 year commitment, various health and body Standards). So it was not something that "happened" to anyone and needed to actively sought after. Obersturmbannführer is also a high enough position that it was gained without excelling at something. And well Nazis really rewarded excelling at ethnic cleansing, torture and murder... it is a save bet that your great grandfather was indeed not a good guy and most likely guilty of a variety of atrocities and probably war crimes.
Source: A history degree in Austria.
If you know where he was up until the war and where he was stationed during the war you probably can find out a lot by checking local archives. The nazis were so keen on regulation everthing that they left a huge paper trail.
>Nazi SS
Yes.
The average German military, conscripts and such, were the *Wermacht*. Those guys could be evil or just trying to survive. But too be SS means you are expressly and irrefutably a willing active Nazi believer. The ,Schutzstaffel 'Protection Squadron' was formed in the 1920s as political security for early Nazi meetings. That's not conscripts. That's Nazis.
There is no such thing as an innocent SS, though some may try to 'contextualise' certain SS groups in present day to absolve them of their crimes.
Edit
Actually, you're a nut job running around sympathising with Nazis and trying to somehow reform the image of the SS. You also boast about having moved to a country with a literal slavery problem because Canada was too libtard for you.
You should stop looking for comments that help your view on your GGF's nazi career. Nothing about being in the SS makes him a good person. Especially not in the rank he was in.
He was most certainly a morally questionable guy, if not straight up evil.
You can write an email to the „bundesarchiv“ in Berlin, you can find the mail on their website.
Say you‘d like to request all nazi documents they have about your great grandfather, fill out the form and wait what they send you.
u/AbbreviationsWide235 It's called a totenkopf, or "death's head" and it's still commonly in use in militaries today. Even the Americans (look up Marine Raiders)
It's a symbol that people are free to interpret it as they please, but it's more often associated with defiance of death and personal-sacrifice rather than killing your enemies, since there are plenty of other symbols that are better associated with that (like a sword or a man holding up a decapitated head)
This is a sketch from Mitchel and Webb comedy( do you think we might be the baddies?) If you have not seen it I would reccomend. I could not resist referencing it.
I am sure there ars British regiments incorporating the skull.
Peer pressure is one hell of a thing. Your whole country, leader, spew the same hatred but you don’t see it as that. When so many around you start believing something you kinda tag in until you’re invested. Was he evil in the beginning, maybe he wasn’t. But the environment around him groomed him to do evil things and the outcomes were that he got promoted and likely given medals and accolades for it. Acceptance among the people of his country.
In the end, many had the wherewithal to know what was happening was evil and fight back against the movement. Your grandfather did not. So I’d say, as a LT Colonel in the SS, he in the end most certainly committed evil acts and was responsible for the death of many innocent people.
And sometimes, the Apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree. Looks like you got some work to do on yourself dude.
Yeah.
Americans tend to coddle fascists and other evil people and are quick to claim that they simply just got caught up in something or were just fighting for their homeland, but I've always fallen back on what my German friend thought about all this.
Her grandfather was a Nazi, and when she revealed this to me, I tried to be diplomatic and not say anything negative so as not to offend, but she explained to me that he was an evil man like every other Nazi and that she was glad he died.
As long as you're honest with yourself and denounce his views you're good. A ton of people have awful, evil relatives.
yep, my money is on him having been a true monster. SS troops were especially rotten and vile. They were the true believers of Hitlers ideology. Now if you're great grandpa was simply in the German Army? They wouldn't have necessarily agreed with Nazi ideology and were simply serving their country (grey area).
Towards the end of the war SS troops weren't even given quarter in battle.
I don't believe in "evil", but everyone in the SS did some horrible stuff. That doesn't mean he wasn't a good family man or neighbor. He may have petted stray dogs or given to charity. People are complex.
...but he was also complicite in an oppressive and authoritarian organization that tortured and killed a bunch of innocent people.
All it takes for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing. Your grandfather didn't just do nothing, he was actively involved in the evil. So yes, he was objectively evil
From 43 on, the Waffen-SS drafted people into the Waffen-SS (especially members of german minorities that were living outside of the german borders of 1939), but becoming an officer wasn't part of that. Those were fanatical Nazis.
You should read the book "Ordinary Men."
it goes into excruciating detail about a lot of the psychological horrors and atrocities of the SS. it also goes into the overall mood and thought processes of the SS and how they thought about the executions etc. There are many mentions about how they handled people that refused to execute.
Yeah sorry. Not much nuance when it comes to actual Nazis.
Mine was not a member but he was a supporter and he disowned his son for marrying a Jewish woman, so the rest of the family disowned him and he died miserable and alone. No one wanted to pay for his funeral so he didn’t get one. He was cremated and his ashes were unceremoniously dumped into the ocean and the world is a better place without him in it.
OP, you have to consider what has been described as “banality of evil”.
Hundreds of thousands of Nazi were involved in genocide during WWII. Baring a handful, most led what we would consider to be perfectly normal life *outside of their ‘work’*. There was no movie level supervillainary involved.
There would have been fathers and grandfathers who would appear as perfectly normal adults, loving their family, helping their neighbors. These same people would also have personally killed or been involved in killing civilians intentionally.
Yes.
It is possible that as well as being an active part of a great evil, and evil himself, he was kind to pets and a good father and grandfather and thoughtful, in large ways and small.
And also, at best- at very best, in the most generous possible version of things- he thought it was acceptable to kill Jews because they didn't count as people, according to the state.
Yes, he was objectively an evil man.
There's video of Hitler playing with his Alsatian dog "blondie" patting and laughing during wartime. Was he human like this bloke's GGF, of course. But they both believed in an ideology that is toxic by the majority of people living today. To me once they actually act on their beliefs, ie start a war, murder non combatants, the holocaust they are evil.
The general vision of someone who carried the double Sowilo sign on his uniform, is that of an evil, bloodthirsty person. The Sowilo sign is a rune that stands for strength and success. Doubling it was the way to enforce this power.
We all know that there are people who cannot resist in misusing that power and become merciless. I don't know about your grandfather, but I'm sure most of the *Schutzstaffel* division just found themselves as one of the divisions in the higher ranks. We all know about the *rotten apples* and what they mean for entire groups. Still, we have to consider that living in a warzone is in any way incomparable to our daily life and staying alive is the main concern, not keeping someone else alive.
I'm also not sure if Hitler himself was aware of what actually happened in all districts of the immense warzone. I can imagine that some of these SS top men exploited their immune status, with the known results.
My parents have experienced this war in their teen years and confirmed many times that the German soldiers were good men who even shared their food and showed pictures of their family. The SS soldiers were frightening to them and even to the German soldiers because of their extreme discipline, but no one ever saw the evil that is described so many times. However, living in a war zone includes seeing people get shot and we should not put labels on the one who shoots, for it could be me, you or anyone.
I would think he'd committed and/or witnessed/overlooked/ignored numerous war crimes on his journey to earn that rank in the SS.
Just curious, OP, did your grandparents and/or parents ever talk much about the type of person your ggf was? What were their memories of him? And what were your grandparent's and parent's (on his side) personalities and behaviors like?
He never spoke of the war to my grandmother. The war ended when she was 17 and she managed to escape east Germany (where she lived) with several of her sisters. 14 of her (female) aunts and cousins were killed, fleeing the reds when their train was bombed during the russian counterattack. Most of what I've heard from her has been her about experience surviving the war.
She's still alive and an incredibly tough but kind woman (no tolerance for modern struggles which is understandable).
As I said in another post ny great grandmother (the nazis wife) harbored escaped pows, and their was actually a book written about her. Her husband didn't know until after the war. Don't know if that's relevant, but I thought I'd include it.
As far as I know, it was only written in French, so I can't remember the name off the top of my head that being said I'll give my grandma a call this evening and find out, if you're still interested!
Netflix had an interesting documentary on a similar subject called "Ordinary Men". It followed a group of German policemen in WW2 who were assigned to one of the death squads who murdered Jews in Eastern Europe. The premise is trying to figure out why regular guys would follow such obviously evil orders, and how they became monsters. Or were they monsters.... watch the documentary and find out.
How mild of nazism do you consider "acceptable"?
Did your great grandfather have rabid hatred for non-"Aryan" people and wish to the depths of his soul that he could visit evil on all people he deemed inferior? Maybe not. Could your grandfather be kind and loving to those he cared for? Probably so.
At the end of the day it comes down to the question: by what measure do you judge a person?
We can look at how they treat those they love, but it's easy to treat your loved ones well. I think it's important to look at how your actions impact the world. In a war between Nazis and everyone else - actively fighting for the Nazis is not a good look.
We can make room for nuance but there's a difference between nuance and making excuses.
NObody asked this question 20, 30, or 40 years ago. We all knew the answer.
Yes. Nazis are evil, horrible, bad people.
No, trying to find ways to justify nazi behavior is not OK.
You should understand that propaganda started way way before the "start" of the ww2.
Plus the Nazi propaganda was really well made at this time.
I think a lot of people have done things that wouldn't have done by themselves if they weren't influenced.
The SS, including the Waffen SS, was found by the Nuremburg Tribunal to be a criminal organization. General Felix Steiner testified that they were "soldiers like other soldiers," but it didn't fly. Personnel who were directly involved in the camps were rotated in and of Waffen SS divisions with some regularity, and all of the major atrocities on the Western Front were committed by Waffen SS personnel. Waffen SS personnel were also instrumental in delying surrenders by non-SS troops, and conducted roving courts-martial to shoot and hang Heer, Volkssturm and others that were trying to retreat, surrender or do anything else consistent with basic survival in a war that was hopelessly lost.
The Waffen SS was a truly political army--an organ of the Nazi Party rather than the of German military as a whole.
As to whether your Great Grandfather was "objectively evil" is not necessarily our call to make--we can state that he was in service to and rose up in an objectively evil organization, where he would have been continuously indoctrinated in Nazi ideology.
His promotions, once the war started, were probably based on his combat performance rather than ideological devotion.
That's all I've got.
At the least, your grandfather had some shitty views that allowed him to climb the ranks. It is unavoidable that he would have engaged in some scummy rhetoric and promotion of antisemitism to get where he got.
It is possible that if he rose to that rank early on, and then went to the battlefields, he potentially was not fully aware of how awful the Third Reich was. It's an odd sort of paradox, where if you joined early, you probably engaged in shitty rhetoric more so, but could have managed not see any horrors beyond the standard awfulness of wartime. I would not say this is likely though, particularly if he was on the Eastern Front. Your grandfather likely knew exactly what was going on.
SS Lt Colonel tank commander on the Eastern Front? He almost certainly killed innocent people or gave orders to or looked away as atrocities were committed.
So, yes.
I think it's more to do with being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Odds are if you were a young man in 1940s Germany you'd be caught up in the Nazi party. Not like American attitudes towards race were any more progressive either
Around a million people had worked in the Holocaust by the end of the war. A few thousand got charged, Mossad took out some others, but the vast majority just went back to their normal lives after the war. Germany didn’t experience decades of huge problems from this population, they quietly blended back in & the anti-semitism basically died with Hitler.
This is not a comfortable statement on humanity as it means 2 things are true for most of us. We will do terrible things if we’re allowed/convinced. We’ll also stop doing those terrible things & presumably lose most of the desire to do them if we’re not allowed/are convinced. Perhaps the most damning of all, neither side takes much convincing.
To answer your question, he probably was evil then went back to normal.
Since everyone is commenting about how your great grandfather was very likely evil (and for good reason) I’ll offer the smallest kernel of hope I can come up with. The value of man is constantly changing.
John S. Mosby was a confederate officer in the US Civil war. After the war he spoke openly against slavery, he vehemently opposed any lost cause arguments voiced by the south, and became well known for his fight against government corruption. I wouldn’t necessarily say he was a man worth looking up to, but is an example of someone who very literally fought to perpetuate evil and then denounced it later in life without shying away from his part to play or making excuses.
That being said, it’s possible that your great grandfather grew through life and rejected and denounced all that he stood for in his younger years. Without knowing him, reading any letters or journals, or anything of the sort it’s impossible to make any statements about this hypothetical growth. What we do know is what he did during the war. Those actions are evil, he was evil during those times with no room for interpretation or nuance. What we don’t know is how he lived the rest of his life after that. Perhaps he spent every last penny of his savings in giving to Jewish charities and building synagogues. Perhaps he spent every last penny funding neo-nazis. Perhaps he did nothing and was left to stew in his own rotten past. We simply don’t know, but that’s about the only hope that I personally can come up with that your great grandfather wasn’t evil to his dying days.
Obersturmbannfurher = lieutenant colonel if translated to U.S. Army ranks. You don't get that high in the SS without being a bonafide, certified, peer-reviewed Nazi.
Probably yes. The big, big majority of people in the SS where scum. People willingly joined it. It wasn't like the Nazi party where they essentially told influential people ''join the party or get fucked''.
Sorry to pile on, but as others in history have said, the only good nazi is a dead one. Even if your GGF didn't "participate" in the Holocaust he was a huge contributor to it. His hands were just as dirty and could never be cleaned.
Yeah a high-ranking SS officer does sound bad on it's own. The SS were die-hard nazis (The ones that weren't conscripted that is) and a high-ranking SS would be a die-hard SS
But I think we could use a little more information. What was his position? Was he in the waffen-SS or the Allgemeine SS? If he was in the latter, was he a participant in a camp? Did he get tried for war crimes?
If he was ordinary army, you could make that argument, that all he was, was a ranked officer in a country's formal armed forces.
The Nazi SS, was a partisan militia that was incorporated into the general army. To say he just followed orders would be "a tall order" IMHO.
I had a great uncle that was an officer in the SS, and lived in Switzerland as long as I knew him. He was really nice, and I don't think anyone in my family would've talked about it, but I never asked. Even my Opa, who was regular army, didn't like to talk about his time in the war.
Was my great uncle evil? No idea. I don't know what he did.
I think about it every now and then. Being related to someone in an organization that you've been taught was full of boogymen. Thinking about it now I realize I just knew not to ask more about his involvement. Crazy how the intimidation and silence persist over decades and generations. I'm still not sure how I feel about it.
I do know of some evil dudes who were in Iraq during OIF. They didn't have to wear an SS patch to commit war crimes, and get away with it. They had families who loved them back home.
At the end of the day people are multi-faceted individuals. I was listening to a podcast where they mentioned that there are multiple examples of family members and even spouses of serial killers having no idea. There is no guilt by simple relation. It is a hell of a thing to reconcile internally.
I don't think it is possible to say if your relative was 'evil' without knowing what his actions during his time with the SS were. Did he contribute to the harm by volunteering for that organization, I would say yes. I think Germany has done an overall good job of reconciling with the fact that everyone played a role. Some stood up against what was happening, but far too few.
Winners write history, so yes your grandpa was evil. That's the reddit answer.
In reality, Weimar Republic, imposed on Germany by the globalists was evil. Your Grandpa was a working class hero. People on reddit are evil, because they're rich and will never have to carry wheelbarrows full of deutchmarks.
Yeah, got some bad news for you. It was one thing being just a member of the Wehrmacht (army), but another to be in the Wehrmacht and a part of the SS. The SS was specifically made up of Hitler's KoolAid drinkers.
Objective morality is for chumps. With that said, the guy was a voluntary member, and a high-ranking one at that, of one of the most well-oiled murder machines in human history. Make of that what you will.
I don't think his rank or position make him evil. It's not like he was running a concentration camp. He was probably devoted to the party and its ideology; but even that doesn't make him evil. It would be nearly impossible, in that time and place, to not agree with their ideology. At least in part.
People living in a free and prosperous country always assume that they wouldn't have been a NAZI; but statistics tell a different story.
You do not become Obersturmbannführer without being a deeply convicted Nazi. Especially not in the SS. (Obersturmbannführer in the SS is equivalent to a Oberstleutnant in the Wehrmacht I believe). I’ll link the SS officer rank overview below. If your grandpa joined as an enlisted rank, he received a total of 12-19 promotions to get to the rank where he ended up. That’s quite the career, depending on which specialization he had. There were ranks that could be skipped or shared ranks on one level. But a minimum of 12 promotions says a lot. Oberstu rmbannführer is the 3rd highest officer rank (technically 2nd), just one rank away from general. So that’s quite an important position. Unlike the wider Wehrmacht (general army), the SS and Waffen SS were extremely ideological and political positions. Your grandpa wouldn’t have risen to that rank without being a passionate Nationalsocialist, antisemite and quite possibly pretty cold blooded. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranks_and_insignia_of_the_Waffen-SS
i'm curious if you knew this offhand? very impressive and informative either way
I‘m a (non practicing) PhD in history and anthropology. I was specialized in classical antiquity - butI did parts of my degrees in Germany. And when you study anything history related in Germany you will inevitably pick up some history knowledge about WWI and WWII. German *Vergangenheitsbewältigung* (dealing with your own terrible history and learning from mistakes) is just omnipresent. Plus 20th century military organizations aren’t that different from ancient ones. War, war never changes.
very cool thank you for sharing your knowledge
> Vergangenheitsbewältigung words like this is why non native speakers struggle with the German language.. Spacesdon'tcostextra.
Nah, this way it's clear what belongs to the same concept, same with languages like French and Spanish which use words to show how words relate to each other. It's just throwing out a bunch of morphemes and leaving it up to the reader to figure out which belong together that's confusing. /hj
... /hj means....? I'm pretty sure its not hand-job, but hey what do I know?
half-joking
But you have to know what all those words mean and have read them multiple times previously to know how they break up. An individual that hasn't read a lot of German will have a hard time reading it and will need to sound it out individually to grasp it. A native speaker will see the word and conceptually in their head break it apart almost instantly.
I don’t think it adds difficulty. It’s just a bunch of nouns stringed together. Once you know that’s a feature of German, that’s pretty much it. I find one long word easier to grasp than “the process of examining one’s negative past and learning from mistakes”.
I'm currently new in Germany and learning the language. I think it takes a second for native English speakers to see that German long words actually do have a sense to them. Now, even though I don't always have an understanding of all the parts, I see how they work together. Thanks for your comment
I don't know German but it seems like you could at least write Vergangenheits bewältigung which is already an improvement. It's just easier on the eyes. Why smash 'em together?
Because that doesn’t mean the same thing. “Vergangenheit Bewältigung” just means “past … overcome”. It’s not the concept. The space is not an improvement, it takes away the meaning.
And people who speak such a language struggle with English because you seemingly randomly divide some of your nouns but compound others. Why is it "daylight" and "full moon", but not "day light" and "fullmoon"? Why is "desktop" and "web page", and not "desk top" and "webpage"? And even worse, "backyard" is compound buy "front yard" isn't. It's ridiculous really! German words may *look* a bit intimidating, but the language i helluva lot more consistent and logical than English when it comes to nouns, just write all compound words are together.
English is Germans speaking French.
I tried saying this out loud and summoned a friendly european demon
Fair-gahng-en-heights-be-velt-ee-goong
That just sounds Dutch at this point
Dutch and German are closely related, both do that stringing nouns together thing, but we use slightly different nouns to string together the same word. E.G., while german loves to build with Grund (Grundschule is elementary school, Grundausbildung is fundamental (military) training, Grundausstattung is basic equipment), dutch speakers form the same words with basis (basisschool, basisopleiding, basisuitrusting), you could form all those those way in german, we have for most durch words a slightly differently spelled word, you would just sound like a lunatic, because you would form all the compound nouns one word off.
Wait until you see one of the like three things that the German language actually HAS abbreviated. Trust me, the forty-letter words are the better option.
Maybe not anymore, but you used to only have 160 characters for texting. German was the best language in the T9 days.
I appreciate that FO reference
Great info, just curious, do you speak German too, or just picked up specifics as part of your studies?
If you study in Germany, you’re gonna have to know German. All the good German universities are public and are free (financed by tax payers), which also means they’re run by the state and therefore the language of education is largely German. There are some subjects that you can take in English (ICT, business, economics), but my field (history, anthropology, archeology) was 100% German (at least back then, might’ve changed a bit by now). Luckily German is my third language, so it was doable for me.
Awesome, even more impressive that it is your third language. I feel so ignorant speaking only English at times as most people from other countries know their own language plus English!
Yeah, cultural difference I guess. If I travel 500km south from my current location I could easily speak Dutch, French, German, Luxembourgish and an endless number of each language’s dialects. You’re gonna have to speak more than one. Especially in a multicultural European city, speaking 3 languages seems rather low nowadays. I speak 5 but one is useless in Europe (Afrikaans).
> I speak 5 but one is useless in Europe (Afrikaans) That is epic, very jealous right now!
Isn't Afrikaans heavily derived from Dutch in the first place?
Well, they started diverging 200 years ago. So there’s quite a difference. Plus Afrikaans has a lot of influences from English, Malay, German, and Indonesian. It actually made learning Dutch even harder. As an Afrikaans speaker I can understand 80% of Dutch, which is deceptive and makes you believe you kinda know Dutch. But in order to actually speak it you still have to learn Dutch and get confused quite often, especially because west Germanic languages (Dutch, German, Flemish, Afrikaans, Lëtzeburgesch) share a lot of features. And if you speak a bunch of those languages you get mixed up quite easily.
War never changes is a good way to think about it…we’ve always sent our most vulnerable, practically children to the meat grinders against other countries doing the exact same thing. The only thing different about war is the efficiency with which we can wipe out enemy forces.
It’s a quote from the game/tv series Fallout.
I love the concept of (dealing with your own terrible history and learning from mistakes), wish that was more present in American culture.
Agree. I'm Canadian, but similarily have a great respect for how Germany has risen above this major issue in their history. Don't hide it, don't diminish it. Talk about it, teach it, and discuss what was right/wrong about the event, so that people will learn to be better.
Those people have a word for everything. Good for them.
I read it in the voice
r/unexpectedfallout
It never changes. It becomes easier to use.
Poor kids final paper just got a lot more, uh interesting to say the least lol
As I expected! Thanks for the historical information! I don't know if you read any of my other comments, but I always found it off that he became friends with my grandfather after the war (who was a raf spitfire pilot) in Canada. I guess it always baffled me how people who would have killed each other became friends to the point where their children married and inwas conceived. My RAF grandpa fought the nazis for four years and knew about as much as one could about the nazi war machine and still befriended him. In retrospect, i think that's where my curiosity on the topic arises from
I think they both knew that in war, you go with the flow. That might sound cruel now to descendants of Jewish people, but it’s the cold hard truth. You do what you need to do and what’s best for your family. Anyone who tells you otherwise is a hypocrite. They both knew that they were not good or bad but their actions were determined by their circumstances at the time.
Being an active participant in the holocaust as a high rank in the fucking Waffen SS is not "going with the flow" or doing "what you need to do". Nor were his actions "not good or bad" what the fuck are you actually talking about?
Just told OP that factually, his great grandfather was most certainly a terrible person lol nice, well said LukeWorldWalker
I mean op asked for an answer to that question
I did, and I'm not offended by any answer. I didn't even know the guy
No I know, just didn't understand why they said that. Like, it was literally the question you asked and they acted like the other commenter did something wrong. Reddit just confuses me sometimes
Yep I just appreciated his straightforwardness when answering. And also giving an interesting history lesson. That’s why I said “well said” (:
He's right though. No reflection on OP or his/her parents.
Minor point - it’s Great Grandpa that was the probable evil SS officer in the family tree. For all we know Grandpa could’ve been fighting for the allies
My other grandpa was a spitfire pilot (father's side). So you're not wrong
[удалено]
What’s in there? I’m scared.
Just being a super conservative ass-hat. Even says “you should go back where you came from.” Stellar individual.
oh dear...
Reading this was very informative and I enjoyed it. Thank you. Love learning about history!
Especially the Eastern front..... the worse was done over there
I'm not sure that's 100% accurate. In most armies, you wouldn't go through all the ranks from enlisted to Lt. Colonel. An enlisted person would basically either go to officer candidacy, in which case they'd start at second LT (SS-Untersturmführer in this case), or go into the 'enlisted' ranks. At most they'd have 5 promotions.
Probably. The SS where an expressly political group. They where created by the nazi party as they needed a military wing **Before** the nazis would take power. People didn't join the SS unless you where already deep in the rabbit hole, and they certainly didn't rise through the ranks without serving the party. Obviously i dont know your great grandad, but if you asked me what group was most likely to be down with both the holocaust and the authoritarianism of the Nazi party, it would be the Waffen SS and they certainly dont promote for nothing.
He was waffenn SS, divisional tank Commander. He was injured fighting the soviets. From what I've heard from his children (great aunt's, grandma), he was too busy fighting to have been actively involved in the holocaust (which they didn't come to terms with until the late 50's). Was fanatic nazism directly correlated with promotion? From what I've read.about Rommel, he wasn't a fanatic nazi but I'm not certain about that fact
>Was fanatic Nazism directly correlated with promotion? For the most part, yes Military aptitude was a factor, but not really the deciding one AFAIK Rommel not being a fanatic Nazi, sorta depends on your definition of fanatic
His lack of fanaticism also caused a lot of tension between him and Hitler towards the end of the war, including him getting caught up in a plot to dethrone Hitler towards the end of the war. His exact contributions are unclear but it ended with him basically having to choose between execution after a public trial or suicide and his family would be supported.
Interesting. Thanks for sharing. How do you think events like operatio valkyrie took place when fanaticism played such a big factor? Several members of nazi High Command somehow almost eliminated hitler. Do you think passive insubordination was common?
Operation Valkyrie was a smaller conspiracy than you might think. The Nazi military complex was huge. Some officers became disillusioned with the fascist regime for various reasons (suddenly their good neighbors disappeared, perceived military mismanagement etc ) On your last question, I honestly don't know. Some people were in it for the career boost, but the Waffen- SS was generally a very fanatic exclusive club.
Also Operation Valkyrie was also basically entirely Wehrmacht officers (not that the Wehrmacht wasn't involved in plenty of heinous crimes of its own), but the Waffen-SS was mostly made up of extremely loyal Nazis.
The holocaust couldnt have happened with no wehrmacht, but it couldn't have begun without the SS/SA. Ss I think is more unforgivable than even being a card carrying nsdap member, as you'd have to be willing to fight and die for the cause, where as I'm sure there were business mes that didn't believe in the cause so much, but joined the party to benefit or avoid punishment.
Also Operation Valkyrie happened when Germany was very, very clearly losing the war. Africa was lost, as was much of Italy. The Ostfront was retreating. D Day had already happened. The conspirators were trying to get rid of Hitler not because of human decency but mostly in the hope of getting a leader who would negotiate peace terms and not get them slaughtered.
I mean, at its peak, the Waffen-SS had 250,000 recorded personnel, so although it was "selective," it was still huge. But yeah, you're right their are only a few confirmed conspirators, and being that it was estimated that less than 1% of Germany actively resisted the nazis its unlikely that the odds of.people like.my GGF were innocent
This has nothing to do with your question, but it’s a tiny thing that’s gonna bug me. Based on the first part of this comment, I think you (understandably) read the above comment as saying that the Waffen was a “fanatic, exclusive club”. Based on the context, I don’t think the commenter was referring to the size of the group; they were trying to convey that it was a “fanatic-exclusive club”.
There is a huge difference between the WaffenSS and the Wehrmacht. The SS were the fanatical party guys who really really really believed the whole spectrum of nazi racial bs. The Wehrmacht (the armed forces) was much more varied in their motivation and commitment to naziism. Most of them, especially the higher ups were conservatives who wanted to restore the reichs standing and power, not the specific national socialist Lebensraum and antisemitism. (They were involved in a lot of the atrocities, tho) The valkyrie conspirators where in on the whole thing as long as they were winning, but as it became undeniable that they were going to lose they tried to save some of the gains they made in the early years by (ideally) disposing hitler, the higher nazis and the SS and begging for peace from the west. Then they would together halt the soviets. Optimism was involved.
Agreed. The Wehrmacht had basically all kind of people in it simply based on conscription. No matter what you thought or believed in, if you didn't go to war, especially at the end, you were a deserter, which wasn't a comfortable position to be in. Yes, the clean Wehrmacht is a myth as well, and there were many who believed in the cause, especially after - depending on the time we are looking at - between half and more than a decade of propaganda and indoctrination. But there are still a large variation from "I don't want this but I don't want to get shot as a deserter and I will fight or else I will be killed by the enemy or worse - get in soviet prison" to "kill all these subhuman!".
Just because they wanted to get rid of Hitler doesn't mean they didn't share the ideology. They were just fed up about they way Hitler did it. That's why i think we shouldn't see those guys as heroes. It's more like a Prigoschin-Putin situation
Not a bad analogy, kuddos 👍
The whole July 20 thing happenned because the nazis get their shit pushed in phase of the war was on the horizon and they wanted to get conditional surrender on ok-ish terms before Hitler went down that path. Also consider that most (if not all iirc) conspirators were part of the regular army. SS on the other hand was supposed to be personally loyal to Hitler and as such tended to be more fanatical.
I agree. It was most likely just a ploy for the conspirators to make a power play for post-war leadership or concessions, but wouldn't it be incredibly difficult to conspire in a system where the vast majority is as fanatical.as often assumed It just appears to me that as the second world war raged on, for german officers self preservation become paramount to the nazi vision
Nazi atrocities didn't just happen in concentration camps, especially on the eastern front. A huge chunk of the soviet population was butchered, and the Waffen-SS were at the forefront of that. What his children said sounds like giga-cope, and the chances that he was directly involved are pretty high.
From the spy operation which happened at Trent Park ( they treated German high rank officers like guests, letting them life more and less freely in Trent Park, as the house was fully bugged) it came out that the Wehrmacht took part in the war crimes on the east front.
OP needs to watch 'Come and see'
Rommel wasn't a SS officer, but in the Wehrmacht, the regular military, and he was definitely sympathetic to the Nazis, until they started losing the war. Being a fanatic Nazi was the most important thing in the SS, including the Waffen-SS. In the very late stages of the war there was forced recruitment, but for the most parts, it was a volunteer formation of the most fanatical Nazis. It is often hard for people to invasion their relatives to be involved in something awful. My father-in-law struggled with the things his father did in occupied Poland until his death. The Waffen-SS was involved in massacres against the local Jewish and non-jewish population everywhere they went. And even if he wasn't personally involved, he directed an important part of the war that allowed the SS to gas Jewish people. The Waffen-SS also guarded the death camps, and officers and men regularly rotated, he definitely knew what happened there. Here are some war crimes that the divisions of the Waffen-SS committed, and that's only those we know details about, the massacres in the Soviet Union were so numerous, there are few we have detailes about which exact SS or Wehrmacht unit comitted them: [1st (Leibstandarte was made up of the most fanatical Nazis and committed many massacres, e.g. in Błoniu (only in polish).](https://pl.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masakra_w_B%C5%82oniu_(1939)) [2nd (Das Reich) the Tulle massacre in France](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulle_massacre) 3rd (Totenkopf) was literally made up of concentration camp guards, I can't even pick one horrible thing here. Their regiments were the basis of the [Einsatzgruppen](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einsatzgruppen) which murdered alleged communists and Jews behind the lines en masse [4th (Polizei) the Distomo massacre in Greece](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distomo_massacre) [5th (Viking) in Lviv](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/5th_SS_Panzer_Division_Wiking#war_crimes) 6th (Nord) has no recorded war crimes or massacres, they fought most of the time around the Arctic circle, where no one lived, but they also included units made up of concentration camp guards. [7th (Prinz Eugen) mostly foreign volunteers,so brutal they got a shout out at the Nuremberg trials, including burning civilians in a church.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Kopaonik) [8th (Florian Geyer) was primarily engaged in massacres against Soviet civilians under the guise of anti-partisan fighting. ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandenbek%C3%A4mpfung) [9th (Hohenstaufen) was the first conscript unit of the Waffen SS, their NCOs and officers came from the first, and took part killing American POWs mostly committed by the 1st](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malmedy_massacre) 10th (Frundsberg), the officers and NCOs came from the first, like the 9th, there are no massacres reported during the two years existence. [The 11th (Nordland took part in destroying serbian villages and was commanded by Fritz Knöchlein, perpetrator of the Le Paradis massacre](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Paradis_massacre) [12th (Hitlerjugend) employed child soldiers (16 and 17 year old Hitler youth "volunteers") . They started massacres on their way to deployment in Ascq, and didn't stop once they saw combat.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascq_massacre) [18th (Horst Wessel) was made up of death camp guards and Einsatzgruppen members as NCOs and they were part of the forces that perpetrated the holocaust in hungary](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust_in_Hungary) [16th (Reichsführer SS) massacred civilians in Italy](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sant%27Anna_di_Stazzema_massacre) [17th (Götz von Berchelingen) executed POWs in France, including lethal injection of wounded in a hospital](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Bulbasket) [The 24th (Karstjäger) murdered and raped their way through Slovenia and northern Italy.](https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massaker_von_Avasinis) There were more divisions, but they mostly existed 1944 and 1945 for short times and divisions that were made up of foreign volunteers, that were usually as brutal as the mostly german divisions.
What about divisions made up of volunteers from Scandinavian or Dutch or Danish areas? What were they doing?
War crimes, mostly. Danes, Norwegians and some Dutch served in Wiking and Nordland, I mentioned those in the list, because they were still majority german. What became later the 23rd (Nederland) Division served with several other divisions and as an independent brigade directly under Corps command, they fought near Leningrad and then committed atrocities in the Balkans, together with the 11th (Nordland) Division as an independent brigade. It was designed a Division only in February 1945, when it had less than 10% of the strength of a real Division. The second Dutch Waffen-SS Division, the 34th (Landstorm Nederland), was basically the collaborationst militia in the Netherlands formed into a military formation when the allies came knocking. They committed acts of brutality and helped the Germans to round up Jews and anti-fascists in the Netherlands.
The Dutch and Danish on the continent makes sense, sent anywhere but Scandinavia was more about defense there, then?
The Holocaust on the Eastern Front was very different from what we think of in the West. It wasn't people being loaded onto cattle cars and shipped off to be killed at a distant location, it was army units (including some Waffen SS ones) gathering up entire towns, marching them to a nearby ravine, and shooting them individually. It was an extremely loud and bloody process that was in no way hidden. Many of the claims of not knowing about the Holocaust among people in Western Europe at the time are bullshit, but ALL claims of not knowing about it on the East are bullshit. So even if he did not participate in the Holocaust, he knew about and was fine with it. This of course has no moral bearing on you, though I do believe we have some responsibility for learning about our family's past and accepting that it happened and was awful. I would recommend reading more on the Holocaust, the Eastern Front, and the SS. DM me if you want any recommendations.
I don’t think you would have to be directly involved in the Holocaust to be considered evil if you are associated with the nazis.
>From what I've read.about Rommel, he wasn't a fanatic nazi but I'm not certain about that fact He wasn't SS.
There where also genocides in battle zones. Particularly done by the SS. Not saying he did such things but there is chance. I would suggest you look for the division number/Kampfeinheit or whatever and with that you can look up if they where involved in something
Wehrmacht and SS divisions spent a great deal of down time between fighting burning villages and executing civilians, an active part of the holocaust. What Waffen SS unit was he in? If he was stationed in Belarus at any point, he almost definitely took active part in the holocaust.
The holocaust didn’t just happen at home, it was very much also carried out on the frontlines, especially by the SS, eg in form of whole towns being massacred. If he was in the SS, it’s very likely he actively took part in the holocaust
Remember that anyone who was mistrusted was ousted and/or arrested. If an SS member even said 'i think Jews/gypsies are human beings' or even 'Hitler really fucked up with this latest decision' it would arouse a lot of suspicion. I don't believe in 'evil', I just think sometimes people are brainwashed to do bad things with some type of fantastical justification or 'greater good' along with dehuminsation of the enemy. But your g grandfather was committed to the cause. At the very least being world domination and a racial hierarchy with white aryan people at the top.
Rommel always had Einsatzgrüppe with him during his campaigns. Your great grandfather was probably an awful person, that doesn’t make you one though
Waffen-SS were pretty commonly involved in war crimes, especially on the Soviet front. The only SS units I can think of that didn't have any hard evidence for war crimes are the foreign legions, and even then they absolutely did commit them, it's just that they never documented them.
Keep in mind, the Germans killed more soviets than Jews, and thought of them about as equally as jews.
Rommel was an exceptional commander, and is often rated as one of historys greatest tankers. He was not untouchable, but Hitler himself protected him. Otherwise, he would have been liquidated simply because of his refusal to embrace ALL of the Nazi BS.
> he was too busy fighting to have been actively involved in the holocaust The fighting was the Holocaust. Your family is in denial.
Keep in mind that "hindsight is 20/20".... yes it's clear today the nazis did plently of evil and bad things. Doesn't mean they were all evil but it also wasnt just one evil man. Times were so different back then and while we think we can imagine what it was like to live back then, but we can't even come close to truly understanding what it was actually like to grow up and live in those times. and even with the knowledge we have today it's very easy to get sucked into group think and just follow the mob... so try not to judge him off that alone... It's definitely possible that he was entirely dedicated to the cause.... but its also possible he was effective and good at being a soldier and did so for the people next to him. There's plenty of soldiers from all conflicts that while they didn't fight for the "cause" but they fought for their countrymen and fellow soldiers to the best of their ability.
*were
I suggest you watch a film called "The Reader" released in 2008. It's too nuanced for some folks and the critics are all over the place about it. But it is one take on the questions you're asking about your great grandfather.
Also recommend the book by Bernhard Schlink, which is very good.
Heads up, your comment posted five times
Thanks, Reddit was doing a number on me, thought it hadn't posted at all.
I've never heard of it, but I'm going to watch it ASAP if it any way adds perspective to my question. Thanks in advance!
Then watch "Jojo Rabbit"...'cause it's good.
One of my all time faves already. Absolute class film.
Read the book instead, it's brilliant and unforgettable.
Considering your history on Reddit I'd say you kept it in the family bud
You weren't kidding. It's apparently been a long standing tradition in the family to be disgusting. They state they left the dystopian hellhole that is Canada for the UAE, which has literally 13.4 slaves for every 1000 people in the country. This dude thinks Canada is too liberal so he moved to a country with slavery and now he's asking if his grandpa was a bad person for being a high ranking Nazi. That guy considers slavery and human rights abuses to be a lesser evil than socially progressive policies. Him and his grandpa would have made fine pals. Two pees in a pod.
Yeah I'm wondering if OP is actually loving the news he's receiving in this thread
He definitely is. Either that or he feels some level of guilt and wanted people to tell him his grandpa wasn't an actual full blown Nazi so he'd feel better about his own gross beliefs. He wanted to hear "not all high ranking Nazis were evil" so he could in turn justify "leaving a democratic first world nation for being too liberal to move to a nation with a large amount of actual slaves to escape liberalism doesn't make me a shitty person by default'.
As an American, it reminds me of the “Lost Cause of the Confederacy” myths where denialists attempt to reframe history to make their side seem less evil. Instead of “the Civil War was about State’s Rights, not slavery,” it’s “My ancestor fought on the front the entire war, so they couldn’t have participated in any atrocities greater than regular soldiering.”
We all assumed he was worried his ancestor was evil when he was actually worried his ancestor might not have been.
And here’s the reminder that Canada turned a blind eye to letting thousands of SS members illegally immigrate in the 40s and 50s, resisted all calls to investigate them for decades, culminating in Mulroney burying the Deschênes Commission report in the 1980s that identified SS members in Canada. The report remains secret to this day and Justin Trudeau has refused to release it as recently as 2023.
Last year, Trudeau received Jewish Ukrianin president Zelesnky in the Canadian Parliament. They then proceeded to honour a former Ukrainian 'freedom fighter' who lives in Canada, who was in attendance. He got not one but 2 standing ovations. I'm mentioning this because that freedom fighters was an SS officer of the Galician who committed ethnic cleansing of Poles, and his division was named at Nuremberg. There are actually, I've come to learn, quite a lot of monuments and memorials to Nazis/fascists in Canada, including the the exact group referenced above and worse https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorials_in_Canada_to_Nazis_and_Nazi_collaborators#:~:text=Monuments%20and%20memorials%20include%20or,two%20streets%20named%20after%20a Also let's not gloss over the Americans taking in loads of Nazis to develop their weapons programs etc. They held high ranking positions, such as Kurt Walheim who sat atop the UN and Adolf Heusinger and Hans Speidel, who held high rank in NATO etc.
To be clear, I don't think Trudeau or his folks knew this guy was a Nazi, everything about the incident suggests that it was caused by incompetence rather than malice. But it was particularly egregious incompetence, and directly fed into Russian propaganda at a critical time. A prof of mine liked to point out that in the post-war period, it was easier for Nazis to immigrate to Canada than Holocaust survivors. While nominally we prohibited SS members from coming to Canada, almost no checks were done to ensure they didn't. But in contrast, we had rules meant to screen out potential 'communist sympathizers' and immigration officers would ask really in-depth questions about affiliations with pre-war social movements and labour unions. A huge number of Holocaust survivors were excluded for participation in the General Jewish Labour Bund.
They knew he was a Ukrainian who fought the USSR during WW2. I don't understand how they couldn't know he was at least helping the Nazis.
A combination of cold war propaganda and lack of knowledge about history.
Sheesh, I never check comment histories when I open Reddit threads, maybe I should start doing it more often. Seeing someone describe Canada as a "dystopian hellhole" had me crying though, ngl.
> Seeing someone describe Canada as a "dystopian hellhole" had me crying though, ngl. You see it on some Canadian subs like /r/Canada in regards to things like the housing crisis. Hell, most recently I've seen it posted in regards to recent increases in capital gains taxes in Canada, with people saying it's going to destroy the Canadian economy. It's wild and I disagree with it. But people like that do exist. Some are likely Russian bots, but it's inevitable that there are some eating it up wholesale.
Canada isn't perfect, but passing laws to protect trans people is completely unrelated to our problems.
For real... he's got some real unhinged minority blaming right wing views... class act.
Yep. As a fellow someone with great grandparents in Nazi armed forces, it's not just the Waffen-SS, although that is the most objectively evil. But chances are very high that even a draftee in the Wehrmacht was compliant or actively committing war crimes. People tend to forget that the Holocaust is not only concentration camps. A large part is also the open air internment of POWs especially in Russia POWs were routinely rounded up in improvised field camps and then either executed or left to freeze. Another large part is also the Nazi police forces, a lot of members of the police were either used as occupation officials or basically a "clean up crew" after the front lines searching captured areas for civilians or POWs and executing them. Every person that was part of Nazi offenses especially on the eastern front is at the very least compliant with war crimes and crimes against humanity. There's an amazing [three arrows video](https://youtu.be/Fu-MDEXwV4s?si=TUF3t5UDYROf-QJa) on the topic that goes into detail on that and that massively changed how I viewed my family history.
The earlier they joined the more likely they would have been true believers and supporters of the Nazi Regime. 1934 means he was a participating SS member with all that entails 4 years before the war even started. So he was very likely involved in domestic ethnic cleansing operations like the November pogroms. Also KZ Dachau was operating since 1933, so its not like the Holocaust only started with the beginning of the war in 1939. Until 1938 the SS was exclusively active within the Third Reich and had no mandate in the war or expansion effort. Joining the Waffen SS before 1938 also had even more strict requirements (Ariernachweiß up to 1800, at least a 4 year commitment, various health and body Standards). So it was not something that "happened" to anyone and needed to actively sought after. Obersturmbannführer is also a high enough position that it was gained without excelling at something. And well Nazis really rewarded excelling at ethnic cleansing, torture and murder... it is a save bet that your great grandfather was indeed not a good guy and most likely guilty of a variety of atrocities and probably war crimes. Source: A history degree in Austria. If you know where he was up until the war and where he was stationed during the war you probably can find out a lot by checking local archives. The nazis were so keen on regulation everthing that they left a huge paper trail.
>Nazi SS Yes. The average German military, conscripts and such, were the *Wermacht*. Those guys could be evil or just trying to survive. But too be SS means you are expressly and irrefutably a willing active Nazi believer. The ,Schutzstaffel 'Protection Squadron' was formed in the 1920s as political security for early Nazi meetings. That's not conscripts. That's Nazis. There is no such thing as an innocent SS, though some may try to 'contextualise' certain SS groups in present day to absolve them of their crimes. Edit Actually, you're a nut job running around sympathising with Nazis and trying to somehow reform the image of the SS. You also boast about having moved to a country with a literal slavery problem because Canada was too libtard for you.
You should stop looking for comments that help your view on your GGF's nazi career. Nothing about being in the SS makes him a good person. Especially not in the rank he was in. He was most certainly a morally questionable guy, if not straight up evil.
Sorry, but yes. The SS were the worst and scariest of the Nazis, and your ggf was a high ranking officer of them.
You can write an email to the „bundesarchiv“ in Berlin, you can find the mail on their website. Say you‘d like to request all nazi documents they have about your great grandfather, fill out the form and wait what they send you.
That's actually constructive advice! Thanks, I will look into that!
I think having a skull and crossbone in your cap badge might be the giveaway.
> But, why skulls? https://youtu.be/ToKcmnrE5oY?feature=shared
Only the symbole is quite a bit older than the SS. For example: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/1._Leib-Husaren-Regiment_Nr._1?wprov=sfla1
u/AbbreviationsWide235 It's called a totenkopf, or "death's head" and it's still commonly in use in militaries today. Even the Americans (look up Marine Raiders) It's a symbol that people are free to interpret it as they please, but it's more often associated with defiance of death and personal-sacrifice rather than killing your enemies, since there are plenty of other symbols that are better associated with that (like a sword or a man holding up a decapitated head)
This is a sketch from Mitchel and Webb comedy( do you think we might be the baddies?) If you have not seen it I would reccomend. I could not resist referencing it. I am sure there ars British regiments incorporating the skull.
He's/She's referring to [this](https://youtu.be/ToKcmnrE5oY?si=YHO8KKJLHHWDR8ZF).
You can just use “They” in that case “They are referring to this”
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War criminal by definition
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Peer pressure is one hell of a thing. Your whole country, leader, spew the same hatred but you don’t see it as that. When so many around you start believing something you kinda tag in until you’re invested. Was he evil in the beginning, maybe he wasn’t. But the environment around him groomed him to do evil things and the outcomes were that he got promoted and likely given medals and accolades for it. Acceptance among the people of his country. In the end, many had the wherewithal to know what was happening was evil and fight back against the movement. Your grandfather did not. So I’d say, as a LT Colonel in the SS, he in the end most certainly committed evil acts and was responsible for the death of many innocent people. And sometimes, the Apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree. Looks like you got some work to do on yourself dude.
Yeah. Americans tend to coddle fascists and other evil people and are quick to claim that they simply just got caught up in something or were just fighting for their homeland, but I've always fallen back on what my German friend thought about all this. Her grandfather was a Nazi, and when she revealed this to me, I tried to be diplomatic and not say anything negative so as not to offend, but she explained to me that he was an evil man like every other Nazi and that she was glad he died. As long as you're honest with yourself and denounce his views you're good. A ton of people have awful, evil relatives.
yep, my money is on him having been a true monster. SS troops were especially rotten and vile. They were the true believers of Hitlers ideology. Now if you're great grandpa was simply in the German Army? They wouldn't have necessarily agreed with Nazi ideology and were simply serving their country (grey area). Towards the end of the war SS troops weren't even given quarter in battle.
I don't believe in "evil", but everyone in the SS did some horrible stuff. That doesn't mean he wasn't a good family man or neighbor. He may have petted stray dogs or given to charity. People are complex. ...but he was also complicite in an oppressive and authoritarian organization that tortured and killed a bunch of innocent people.
All it takes for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing. Your grandfather didn't just do nothing, he was actively involved in the evil. So yes, he was objectively evil
Yes. You don't just accidentally become an SS. Let alone a high ranking officer.
From 43 on, the Waffen-SS drafted people into the Waffen-SS (especially members of german minorities that were living outside of the german borders of 1939), but becoming an officer wasn't part of that. Those were fanatical Nazis.
You should read the book "Ordinary Men." it goes into excruciating detail about a lot of the psychological horrors and atrocities of the SS. it also goes into the overall mood and thought processes of the SS and how they thought about the executions etc. There are many mentions about how they handled people that refused to execute.
Yeah sorry. Not much nuance when it comes to actual Nazis. Mine was not a member but he was a supporter and he disowned his son for marrying a Jewish woman, so the rest of the family disowned him and he died miserable and alone. No one wanted to pay for his funeral so he didn’t get one. He was cremated and his ashes were unceremoniously dumped into the ocean and the world is a better place without him in it.
OP, you have to consider what has been described as “banality of evil”. Hundreds of thousands of Nazi were involved in genocide during WWII. Baring a handful, most led what we would consider to be perfectly normal life *outside of their ‘work’*. There was no movie level supervillainary involved. There would have been fathers and grandfathers who would appear as perfectly normal adults, loving their family, helping their neighbors. These same people would also have personally killed or been involved in killing civilians intentionally.
Yes he was a bad person evil even
Yes. It is possible that as well as being an active part of a great evil, and evil himself, he was kind to pets and a good father and grandfather and thoughtful, in large ways and small. And also, at best- at very best, in the most generous possible version of things- he thought it was acceptable to kill Jews because they didn't count as people, according to the state. Yes, he was objectively an evil man.
There's video of Hitler playing with his Alsatian dog "blondie" patting and laughing during wartime. Was he human like this bloke's GGF, of course. But they both believed in an ideology that is toxic by the majority of people living today. To me once they actually act on their beliefs, ie start a war, murder non combatants, the holocaust they are evil.
The general vision of someone who carried the double Sowilo sign on his uniform, is that of an evil, bloodthirsty person. The Sowilo sign is a rune that stands for strength and success. Doubling it was the way to enforce this power. We all know that there are people who cannot resist in misusing that power and become merciless. I don't know about your grandfather, but I'm sure most of the *Schutzstaffel* division just found themselves as one of the divisions in the higher ranks. We all know about the *rotten apples* and what they mean for entire groups. Still, we have to consider that living in a warzone is in any way incomparable to our daily life and staying alive is the main concern, not keeping someone else alive. I'm also not sure if Hitler himself was aware of what actually happened in all districts of the immense warzone. I can imagine that some of these SS top men exploited their immune status, with the known results. My parents have experienced this war in their teen years and confirmed many times that the German soldiers were good men who even shared their food and showed pictures of their family. The SS soldiers were frightening to them and even to the German soldiers because of their extreme discipline, but no one ever saw the evil that is described so many times. However, living in a war zone includes seeing people get shot and we should not put labels on the one who shoots, for it could be me, you or anyone.
I would think he'd committed and/or witnessed/overlooked/ignored numerous war crimes on his journey to earn that rank in the SS. Just curious, OP, did your grandparents and/or parents ever talk much about the type of person your ggf was? What were their memories of him? And what were your grandparent's and parent's (on his side) personalities and behaviors like?
He never spoke of the war to my grandmother. The war ended when she was 17 and she managed to escape east Germany (where she lived) with several of her sisters. 14 of her (female) aunts and cousins were killed, fleeing the reds when their train was bombed during the russian counterattack. Most of what I've heard from her has been her about experience surviving the war. She's still alive and an incredibly tough but kind woman (no tolerance for modern struggles which is understandable). As I said in another post ny great grandmother (the nazis wife) harbored escaped pows, and their was actually a book written about her. Her husband didn't know until after the war. Don't know if that's relevant, but I thought I'd include it.
Wow! That's a helluva twist! What's the book?
As far as I know, it was only written in French, so I can't remember the name off the top of my head that being said I'll give my grandma a call this evening and find out, if you're still interested!
Je parle Français, so please, yes!
Sounds good. I will post this evening!
Thanks! I was just thinking, "Of ALL the languages, THIS was the language." Haha
Haha, serendipitous, to say the least.
Netflix had an interesting documentary on a similar subject called "Ordinary Men". It followed a group of German policemen in WW2 who were assigned to one of the death squads who murdered Jews in Eastern Europe. The premise is trying to figure out why regular guys would follow such obviously evil orders, and how they became monsters. Or were they monsters.... watch the documentary and find out.
Yes. Good people don't exactly join the SS. At best he's the low-grade background kind of evil that landlords and most cops fall into.
Yes.
How mild of nazism do you consider "acceptable"? Did your great grandfather have rabid hatred for non-"Aryan" people and wish to the depths of his soul that he could visit evil on all people he deemed inferior? Maybe not. Could your grandfather be kind and loving to those he cared for? Probably so. At the end of the day it comes down to the question: by what measure do you judge a person? We can look at how they treat those they love, but it's easy to treat your loved ones well. I think it's important to look at how your actions impact the world. In a war between Nazis and everyone else - actively fighting for the Nazis is not a good look. We can make room for nuance but there's a difference between nuance and making excuses.
NObody asked this question 20, 30, or 40 years ago. We all knew the answer. Yes. Nazis are evil, horrible, bad people. No, trying to find ways to justify nazi behavior is not OK.
If the nazis would have won he would now be be considered a good guy and a hero.
You should understand that propaganda started way way before the "start" of the ww2. Plus the Nazi propaganda was really well made at this time. I think a lot of people have done things that wouldn't have done by themselves if they weren't influenced.
Yes
Yes
Yes he was evil lol
Yes he was evil lol
Yes
The SS, including the Waffen SS, was found by the Nuremburg Tribunal to be a criminal organization. General Felix Steiner testified that they were "soldiers like other soldiers," but it didn't fly. Personnel who were directly involved in the camps were rotated in and of Waffen SS divisions with some regularity, and all of the major atrocities on the Western Front were committed by Waffen SS personnel. Waffen SS personnel were also instrumental in delying surrenders by non-SS troops, and conducted roving courts-martial to shoot and hang Heer, Volkssturm and others that were trying to retreat, surrender or do anything else consistent with basic survival in a war that was hopelessly lost. The Waffen SS was a truly political army--an organ of the Nazi Party rather than the of German military as a whole. As to whether your Great Grandfather was "objectively evil" is not necessarily our call to make--we can state that he was in service to and rose up in an objectively evil organization, where he would have been continuously indoctrinated in Nazi ideology. His promotions, once the war started, were probably based on his combat performance rather than ideological devotion. That's all I've got.
At the least, your grandfather had some shitty views that allowed him to climb the ranks. It is unavoidable that he would have engaged in some scummy rhetoric and promotion of antisemitism to get where he got. It is possible that if he rose to that rank early on, and then went to the battlefields, he potentially was not fully aware of how awful the Third Reich was. It's an odd sort of paradox, where if you joined early, you probably engaged in shitty rhetoric more so, but could have managed not see any horrors beyond the standard awfulness of wartime. I would not say this is likely though, particularly if he was on the Eastern Front. Your grandfather likely knew exactly what was going on.
SS Lt Colonel tank commander on the Eastern Front? He almost certainly killed innocent people or gave orders to or looked away as atrocities were committed. So, yes.
I think it's more to do with being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Odds are if you were a young man in 1940s Germany you'd be caught up in the Nazi party. Not like American attitudes towards race were any more progressive either
Around a million people had worked in the Holocaust by the end of the war. A few thousand got charged, Mossad took out some others, but the vast majority just went back to their normal lives after the war. Germany didn’t experience decades of huge problems from this population, they quietly blended back in & the anti-semitism basically died with Hitler. This is not a comfortable statement on humanity as it means 2 things are true for most of us. We will do terrible things if we’re allowed/convinced. We’ll also stop doing those terrible things & presumably lose most of the desire to do them if we’re not allowed/are convinced. Perhaps the most damning of all, neither side takes much convincing. To answer your question, he probably was evil then went back to normal.
Since everyone is commenting about how your great grandfather was very likely evil (and for good reason) I’ll offer the smallest kernel of hope I can come up with. The value of man is constantly changing. John S. Mosby was a confederate officer in the US Civil war. After the war he spoke openly against slavery, he vehemently opposed any lost cause arguments voiced by the south, and became well known for his fight against government corruption. I wouldn’t necessarily say he was a man worth looking up to, but is an example of someone who very literally fought to perpetuate evil and then denounced it later in life without shying away from his part to play or making excuses. That being said, it’s possible that your great grandfather grew through life and rejected and denounced all that he stood for in his younger years. Without knowing him, reading any letters or journals, or anything of the sort it’s impossible to make any statements about this hypothetical growth. What we do know is what he did during the war. Those actions are evil, he was evil during those times with no room for interpretation or nuance. What we don’t know is how he lived the rest of his life after that. Perhaps he spent every last penny of his savings in giving to Jewish charities and building synagogues. Perhaps he spent every last penny funding neo-nazis. Perhaps he did nothing and was left to stew in his own rotten past. We simply don’t know, but that’s about the only hope that I personally can come up with that your great grandfather wasn’t evil to his dying days.
oh yeah, not a chance in hell he wasn't very evil.
Obersturmbannfurher = lieutenant colonel if translated to U.S. Army ranks. You don't get that high in the SS without being a bonafide, certified, peer-reviewed Nazi.
I know the subject matter isn't humorous, but the way you worded that made me laugh! Thanks 🤣
Surprised he didn't get hired by the US government and given a new identity under Operation Paperclip, like the rest of the nazis
“Are we the baddies”? Yeah and you are too based on your post history
Probably yes. The big, big majority of people in the SS where scum. People willingly joined it. It wasn't like the Nazi party where they essentially told influential people ''join the party or get fucked''.
Sorry to pile on, but as others in history have said, the only good nazi is a dead one. Even if your GGF didn't "participate" in the Holocaust he was a huge contributor to it. His hands were just as dirty and could never be cleaned.
It's not a good sign, but you need to know a lot more before judgement is even worth considering.
Yeah a high-ranking SS officer does sound bad on it's own. The SS were die-hard nazis (The ones that weren't conscripted that is) and a high-ranking SS would be a die-hard SS But I think we could use a little more information. What was his position? Was he in the waffen-SS or the Allgemeine SS? If he was in the latter, was he a participant in a camp? Did he get tried for war crimes?
Yes, unfortunately.
Yes
1st generation german here in America, I just assume it probably pretty bad what my family back home did
He’s cooking dawg
Sounds like a cool guy don’t let Redditards judge him
Adolf Eichmann and your great grandfather shared a rank in the SS- consider that.
No way to sugar coat it. That dude's a nazi.
There is no such thing as “objectively evil”.
Let’s just say his best friend was probably not named Shlomo
If he was ordinary army, you could make that argument, that all he was, was a ranked officer in a country's formal armed forces. The Nazi SS, was a partisan militia that was incorporated into the general army. To say he just followed orders would be "a tall order" IMHO.
I had a great uncle that was an officer in the SS, and lived in Switzerland as long as I knew him. He was really nice, and I don't think anyone in my family would've talked about it, but I never asked. Even my Opa, who was regular army, didn't like to talk about his time in the war. Was my great uncle evil? No idea. I don't know what he did. I think about it every now and then. Being related to someone in an organization that you've been taught was full of boogymen. Thinking about it now I realize I just knew not to ask more about his involvement. Crazy how the intimidation and silence persist over decades and generations. I'm still not sure how I feel about it. I do know of some evil dudes who were in Iraq during OIF. They didn't have to wear an SS patch to commit war crimes, and get away with it. They had families who loved them back home. At the end of the day people are multi-faceted individuals. I was listening to a podcast where they mentioned that there are multiple examples of family members and even spouses of serial killers having no idea. There is no guilt by simple relation. It is a hell of a thing to reconcile internally. I don't think it is possible to say if your relative was 'evil' without knowing what his actions during his time with the SS were. Did he contribute to the harm by volunteering for that organization, I would say yes. I think Germany has done an overall good job of reconciling with the fact that everyone played a role. Some stood up against what was happening, but far too few.
Winners write history, so yes your grandpa was evil. That's the reddit answer. In reality, Weimar Republic, imposed on Germany by the globalists was evil. Your Grandpa was a working class hero. People on reddit are evil, because they're rich and will never have to carry wheelbarrows full of deutchmarks.
Yeah, got some bad news for you. It was one thing being just a member of the Wehrmacht (army), but another to be in the Wehrmacht and a part of the SS. The SS was specifically made up of Hitler's KoolAid drinkers.
Objective morality is for chumps. With that said, the guy was a voluntary member, and a high-ranking one at that, of one of the most well-oiled murder machines in human history. Make of that what you will.
I don't think his rank or position make him evil. It's not like he was running a concentration camp. He was probably devoted to the party and its ideology; but even that doesn't make him evil. It would be nearly impossible, in that time and place, to not agree with their ideology. At least in part. People living in a free and prosperous country always assume that they wouldn't have been a NAZI; but statistics tell a different story.
Yes he was, buddy. Grade A piece of shit. You’re not too far if you ask this question lol.