WW2

[Arminius]

Overigens zijn er wel zaken waarvan hij geen weet had of er pas later achter kwam.

De nacht van 23 op 24 maart 1945:

Hitler: One never knows what's floating around. I've just heard, to my surprise, that a Ukrainian SS-Division has suddenly turned up. I knew absolutely nothing about this Ukrainian SS-Division.
Göhler: It has been in existence for a long time.
Hitler: But it has never been mentioned at any of our conferences. Or do you recall otherwise?
Göhler: No, I don't remember.

Verder klaagde hij over het feit dat deze divisie beter uitgerust was dan hun Duitse tegenhangers. (vooral bij de Wehrmacht wellicht)

 

[Stephen Graham]

Geloof best dat er nog een staat in een staat was waar Ad niks van wist. En zelf hun gangetje deed. Hiet wou ook nooit de kampementen met eigen ogen zien.

Toen had je ook nog geen internet en social media enzo.

 

[Arminius]

Er was in ieder geval sprake van een polycratie onder Hitler.

Ik betwijfel soms of dit onder het mom van 'divide and rule' was. Ik kan me niet meer herinneren wat het was, maar er was een probleem tussen twee figuren. Denk dat het gerelateerd was aan de oorlog. Echter hakte hij geen knoop door, waardoor het probleem verder bleef sluimeren.

Dat neigt toch meer naar onkunde.

 

[Moraalridder]

Eigenlijk was het best een geschikte kerel

 

[Stephen Graham]

Ik zal morgen eens een mail sturen naar het nobelprijscomittee en hem aandragen voor een posthumous award.

 

[Arminius]

The 12th SS Panzerdivision "Hitler Jugend", for example, lost 80 per cent of the combat troops with which it had gone into action. Its support personnel also suffered unusually high losses as a result of air attacks. The division lost over 80 per cent of its tanks, 70 per cent of its armored vehicles, 60 per cent of its artillery, and over 50 per cent of its motor vehicles. At the beginning of September (1944) the fighting strength of "Hitler Jugend" amounted to only 600 men and no tanks.

War... It's fantastic!

 

[Arminius]

Eigenlijk was het best een geschikte kerel

Leuke gozer... Echt een leuke gozer!

Spoiler

Prima schilder ook.

 

[Arminius]

Overigens zijn er wel zaken waarvan hij geen weet had of er pas later achter kwam.

De nacht van 23 op 24 maart 1945:

Hitler: One never knows what's floating around. I've just heard, to my surprise, that a Ukrainian SS-Division has suddenly turned up. I knew absolutely nothing about this Ukrainian SS-Division.
Göhler: It has been in existence for a long time.
Hitler: But it has never been mentioned at any of our conferences. Or do you recall otherwise?
Göhler: No, I don't remember.

Verder klaagde hij over het feit dat deze divisie beter uitgerust was dan hun Duitse tegenhangers. (vooral bij de Wehrmacht wellicht)

Trouwens opgericht in 1943:

On April 28, 1943, a call went out for volunteers for a "Galician" SS division. The response was overwhelming: nearly 100,000 Ukrainians volunteered, fewer than 30,000 of whom were accepted. Although a special effort was made to limit recruiting to that part of German occupied Poland which had before 1919 been Austrian Galicia, the fact remained that the division was composed of Ukrainians; the euphemistic designation 14th SS-Freiwilligen-Division "Galizien" fooled no one, least of all the personnel of the division, who were mostly Ukrainian nationalists. But after years of Slav-baiting it was difficult for the SS leaders to admit that they had created an SS division of "subhumans".

Berger wou het al eerder:

It will be recalled that as early as April 1941 Berger had recruited Ukrainian volunteers from Poland in the hope of establishing the nucleus of a Ukrainian SS formation, but had been overruled by Himmler for racial reasons.

 

[Stephen Graham]

Auxilary forces in Ukraine hadden ze rond die tijd ook al. (Demanjuk en co.)

 

[Arminius]

Yes, Yes... Voor het vuile werk was de 'untermensch' blijkbaar wel uitermate geschikt om samen te werken met de SS. (o.a. schutzmannschaft en concentratiekamp personeel)

During the Warsaw rebellion, the Kaminski Brigade was officially incorporated into the Waffen SS at Himmler's personal order. The 6500 Russians under Kaminski's command composed the largest individual unit used by the Germans in suppressing the rebellion.

Verder:

The atrocious behavior of the Russians, many of them Ukrainians with a traditional antipathy toward Poles, was rivaled only by that of the 4000 men of the Dirlewanger Brigade. So shocking were the crimes they committed that Colonel General Guderian, chief of the Army General Staff, and SS Gruppenführer Fegelein, the SS Liaison Officer at Hitler's HQ, prevailed upon the Führer to order the withdrawal of both units. This was done; but neither formation was disbanded.

 

[Arminius]

Rapportje voor de Führer:

Spoiler

 

[Arminius]

First Lieutenant Gayer reported about his deployment on the Italian Front:

I was first sent into operation near Cassino, and we were in operation for a few weeks on the Orsogna front. Although in that case I noted as "Kompanie" commander and was in fact near Arielle (?) south of Pescara. We were completely wiped out by artillery fire. My "Kompanie" consisted of twenty-eight Germans and thirty-six Italians. The Italian "Lieutenant" was the first to go. We stayed there for about ten days.

The Germans, if Gayer is to be believed, held out for ten days before the unit was wiped out by murderous artillery fire.



Toch veel zwarte humor in de geschiedenisboeken.

 

[Stephen Graham]

"Mama, waarre benje?"

 

[Arminius]

Ik zou ook pampers nodig hebben.

 

[Stephen Graham]

Grootste moeite hadden de geallieerden in Italië met het terrein en weer.


(Kan spoken in de Apennijnen)

 

[Arminius]

The image of soldiers courageously fighting on under the most difficult, deadly conditions recurs throughout the surveillance protocols. Combat soldiers, especially those who had been part of elite units, told these sort of stories most frequently. One of the most drastic narratives came from SS Standartenführer Hans Lingner, one of the few high-ranking SS officers to be captured by the Allies during the war. He reported proudly about the deeds of an Untersturmführer in his division:

For three whole days he and eighteen men defended a locality which was being attacked from all sides by half a regiment. I actually experienced how one MG pinned down whole sectors. Then we carried out a counter-attack and rescued them. They were the remnants of a rescue "Abteilung" which was 180 men strong before and now had only those eighteen men left. Those were still the good old types.

Komt trouwens uit Soldaten van Sönke Neitzel:

Grootste moeite hadden de geallieerden in Italië met het terrein en weer.

De meer dan 200.000 soldaten die zich overgaven in Afrika, omdat Hitler de evacuatie te laat goedkeurde, waren ook nog van pas gekomen in Frankrijk en Italië.

Die overgave en Stalingrad kan wel tellen qua verliezen op een halfjaar.

 

[Arminius]

With few exceptions, German soldiers in all three military branches had an extremely negative view of Italians. Wehrmacht troops had difficulty understanding Italian behavior, which they perceived as tantamount to an unwillingness to fight. Their commentary was correspondingly dismissive. Italian behavior was a "tragedy". "If only those blasted Italians would do something," one POW carped. Other telling excerpts from the protocols: "They have no self-confidence", "They're in a blue funk", they "were a frightful lot!" "The dirty dogs," groused another German soldier, "give themselves up if they have the slightest trouble!" "They're so terribly soft," concurred someone else. Militarily, Germany's Italian allies were seen as useless. "You can only consider 130,000 Italians equal to about 10,000 Germans," reckoned one POW. Another joked that every Italian tank carried with it a white flag, while someone else quipped that "if our enemies were only the Italians then the B.D.M. and the old peasants from the Chiemsee would be quite enough. German soldiers mocked Mussolini's pretensions: "The Italians are supposed to be descended from the Romans, but the Romans would have achieved more with spears and shields than they have!"

 

[Arminius]

Spoiler: Berlin: Toen & Nu

 

[Arminius]

Those were some tough Russians.

 

[Arminius]

Mein ehre heisst swag