Loyalty is My Honour by Gordon Williamson

[The Chief]

Loyalty is My Honour, by Gordon Williamson, is a fantastic book for those who are interested on reading personal accounts of Waffen-SS members. I've used this book to convince people that not all SS (Waffen-SS in particular) were bloodthirsty killers. This has accounts which range from deathly freightning to downright amusing. This shows that the Waffen-SS were merely soldiers who fought for their country, not Hitler.
Has anyone else read this, or has this helped you to purchase this book. Let me know!

[Richard Murphy]

I've had this book for some time, though it's not that useful in my speciality (Commanders of divisional level and above.), and, though it interesting to read the reminisces of the rank and file, I wasn't suprised to find no references to their participation in atrocities and wouldn't go as far as to say that

This shows that the Waffen-SS were merely soldiers who fought for their country, not Hitler.

after all, it was Hitler they (And the entire Wehrmacht.) swore loyalty to, not Germany. Having said that, it is just as innaccurate to portray the entire W-SS as muderous monsters as it is to think of them all as misunderstood angels.

Regards from the Park,

Rich

[The Chief]

Yeah, I'll agree that they are not misunderstood angels, nor the devils that history has made of them. All nationalities commited crimes on and off the battlefield, no doubt about it.

[Marc Rikmenspoel]

I found the book interesting, but I wish longer interview excerpts were reprinted, as most are quite short. And Williamson's comments are sometimes rather badly informed (however, I have heard privately that he took considerable unwarranted grief for being "pro-Nazi" after the book came out). This is also true of the captions, but then, he may not have written them (Chris Ailsby told me once that in his books, the publisher wrote all the captions, and since it is the same publisher for Williamson, this might apply to him too).

[sid guttridge]

Although many, perhaps most, Waffen-SS were probably not homicidal maniacs, the fact remains that they were voluntarily in an organisation that was disproportionately likely to be involved in war crimes and attracted and tolerated some particularly vicious characters. Thus simply being in the Waffen-SS was morally compromising. For example, of the four largest massacres of French civilians committed by the Germans in WWII, three were by the Waffen-SS, who can only have contributed perhaps 5% of the German manpower in theatre.

[Mark C Yerger]

Positive or negative opinions on the Waffen-SS should be based on each individual. The collective opinion is rather shallow and is equal to the love or hate expressed for various races, religous groups, etc. Each person is responsible for his or her actions, as well as to be credited for positive aspects.

Mark

[Frederick L Clemens]

I agree with Mark. Sweeping generalizations may have their place when it comes to judging inconsequential matters, but when it concerns whether or not someone is guilty of war crimes, then a more precise standard must be used - that is, what specific evidence exists which implicates a given individual for a given crime? There should be no blanket presumption of guilt or even innocence based simply on someone's membership in any organization.

[Tom Houlihan]

Sid, I've read a lot of your posts, and respected your opinions, but I wanted to take issue with one statement:

"...the fact remains that they were voluntarily in an organisation that was disproportionately likely to be involved in war crimes and attracted and tolerated some particularly vicious characters."

Is this really accurate, or is it the type of thought process that this forum is trying to defend against? How many 19-20 year olds in the late '30s to early '40s could possibly have anticipated everything that would eventually be associated with the SS when they enlisted to serve their country?
Does this mean that we should condemn everyone who enlisted in the US Army to fight in Vietnam, because of they were in the same organization as Lt Calley and his platoon?
I'm hoping that I either misunderstood your intent, or you just weren't feeling 100% when you wrote that.

[Sebastian Pye]

Well lets face it, many SS-men had been in the hitler-jugend, part of their military training was pure nazi-indoctrination, that is, learning to view the world the nazi-way. In short, many waffen-ss men must have been convinced national-socialists? That doesn´t mean that they commited atrocoties, but that they believed in survival of the fittest, hated jews etc or am I wrong?

[Tom Houlihan]

I still think that is going to be up to the individual. I'm an American, but there are things associated with America that embarass and anger me. Politically, I had to chose one major party, it would be Republican, but there are things about the Democratic stance that I'd agree with over the Republican. Hell, I was proud to be a US Marine, but I sure as hell didn't agree with everything we did, or how we did it. Maybe I just have a thing against mass-labeling.

[The Chief]

Well according to the book, most of the early SS soldiers joined the organization to become an elite, not nessasarily because they were dedicated national socalists. Most SS men didn't even like Himmler because he was not a soldier, merely a cadet (a situation I have been through). Hitler was respected because he got Germany back on it's feet, and because of his exploits in The Great War. The oath to Hitler was probably just taken as a "yeah, sure, whatever," to get into the prestigious organization. As Jan Munk states in the book "I fully admit that Nazi Germany had to go..." but then again, hindsight is 20/20.

[joscha]

What surprises me, when I read the above entries, is the fact that none of you apparenntly knew that the Waffen SS officially began drafting in early 1943 (just like the US MArine Corps, and for the same reason: not enough volunteers).

Mind you, the Waffen SS quite often raided Army replacement units in Poland, etc, even before 1943. I personally knew a draftee of the German Army, who, together with a few hundred other Army soldiers, was transferred from the Army to the Waffen SS (Das Reich), given a new Soldbuch and sent to the front.

He died in the following winter.

Weird things happen sometimes: the guy had been in the same school classes with me, was drafted after I was, and (of all the places) I ran into him in a tent city near Smolensk, just before I was send to the 3rd Panzer Division. His mother told me of his death in 1942 while I was on recuperation leave.

My best. Joscha

[sid guttridge]

I have read all the above.

My first point is that I have not stated that all Waffen-SS were guilty of warcrimes. Quite the reverse. As in all other armed services, most Waffen-SS men probably never even killed someone in combat, let alone in a war crime. What I wrote was that it was morally compromising simply to be in the Waffen-SS.

This was based on my earlier proposition that the Waffen-SS was disproportionately likely to be involved in war crimes. I gave the French example. It is interesting that not one of the subsequent postings took issue with this point.

Does this mean I can take it that we are, at least, agreed that the Waffen-SS were, indeed, disproportionately likely to be involved in war crimes? If so, it clearly had institutional problems and is therefore open to sweeping attacks on it as an institution.

To turn Frederick's point on its head, does it mean that because one army conscript was involuntarily drafted into the Waffen-SS and had a completely clean record, then the whole Waffen-SS as an institution is therefore disqualified from attack?

Is Mark Yerger really equating an attack on the Waffen-SS as an institution to racism? I think this would be a difficult argument to sustain.

On the evidence available to me, Lt. Calley was much more of an aberration in the US Army than were the Waffen-SS perpetrators of civilian massacres. Calley's action was not only aberrant and unendorsed from above, but was eventually exposed by US society and, I believe, punished by the US Army. (Can someone confirm that Calley was punished?) This cannot be said of his presumed Waffen-SS equivalents. They had institutional support for their actions and were never exposed or punished by their own side.

To pick up the chief's point. In the early years I don't think you could even join the Waffen-SS and its predecessors unless you were a member of the NSDAP. It was a Party organisation. I don't know about late war Alt-Reich conscripts, but I would imagine that there were still more than enough party members in the army's depots to allow some discrimination in selection even then.

Finally, a question for Joscha: I know the Waffen-SS began conscription of volksdeutsch minorities in the countries of Eastern Europe in early/mid 1943. I also know that Himmler plundered the Ersatzheer's depots for manpower for the Waffen-SS after he became head of the Replacement Army on 20 July 1944. But did conscription of Reich Germans into the Waffen-SS begin before this and, if so, when?