Emphasis on SS just an "Anglo-Saxon" phenomenon?

[Soldat7128]

I was rereading some old threads and I came across a claim that the relative overabundance of books on the W-SS vs. the Heer was an "Anglo-Saxon phenomenon", the author citing in part the fact that in Germany there are many more books on regular army units, and relatively fewer on the SS. I have two questions for the forum in response (the thread was so old that it was locked):

1) Couldn't this be explained to a large extent by the fact that many Germans, after the war and even now, would prefer not focus attention on SS units insofar as they are reminders of Nazism and wartime atrocities? I am reminded of the book "SS: Alibi of a Nation" by a German historian whose name I forget (I think the argument was similar to the one expounded in an American work a few years ago about how the U.S. allegedly allowed blame for Japan's militant nationalism and expansionism to be heaped entirely on Tojo's shoulders as opposed to the emperor [who was also allowed to keep his throne]).

2) Does anyone have any experience with the book publishing/historical level of interest in non-Anglo-Saxon countries (other than Germany)? I am thinking in particular of France, the Netherlands, and Russia, although those are just the first ones that come to mind.

tia

[Liam]

Germany is also an 'Anglo-Saxon' country. Angles are from what is now Denmark/North West Germany and the Saxons were from...Saxony. Maybe 'English-speaking countries' is a better way of putting it!

[Soldat7128]

Germany is also an 'Anglo-Saxon' country. Angles are from what is now Denmark/North West Germany and the Saxons were from...Saxony. Maybe 'English-speaking countries' is a better way of putting it!

I understand your argument but is there *anyone* in England or Germany who would describe Germany as an Anglo-Saxon country? (Not in my experience.) And I believe the Saxons came from what is now Lower Saxony FWIW, also there were the Jutes who came from Jutland but whose name was left out of the group's name for some reason.

Actually here is the first line from the Wikipedia article: "Anglo-Saxon is the term usually used to describe the peoples living in the south and east of Great Britain from the early 5th century AD to the Norman conquest of 1066."

So even calling the U.K. an Anglo-Saxon country could be quibbled with if you wanted to, since the original A-Ss intermingled with Celts, Normans, Vikings, etc. etc., not to mention the current demographics.

To be truly accurate one should probably say "countries where English is the native language" since English is spoken practically everywhere to a certain extent these days, but that starts to get cumbersome (it also brings to mind South Africa—are their military historians overinterested in the SS? I have no idea.)

How about "structurally ethnopolitically Anglo" countries?

[Andy H]

I think the over emphasis on WFSS books in 'Western' publishing mirrors how these countries focuses only on a relative narrow spectrum of its own military units in WW2. The plethora of books dealing with the USMC, 82 & 101st AB, 1st 2nd & 3rd ID's or the more sexy armoured divisions in the US at the exclusion of the run of the mill units is very noticeable. Whilst in the UK they tend to focus on the 7th Armoured, SAS, Parachute, Gurkha's and RM's, again leaving other units in the publishing deep freeze.

Regards

[Soldat7128]

I think the over emphasis on WFSS books in 'Western' publishing mirrors how these countries focuses only on a relative narrow spectrum of its own military units in WW2. The plethora of books dealing with the USMC, 82 & 101st AB, 1st 2nd & 3rd ID's or the more sexy armoured divisions in the US at the exclusion of the run of the mill units is very noticeable. Whilst in the UK they tend to focus on the 7th Armoured, SAS, Parachute, Gurkha's and RM's, again leaving other units in the publishing deep freeze.

Regards

Interesting point. I wonder if books on Guards units are "overproduced" in Russia?

[sid guttridge]

Hi Liam,

I think it would come as something of a surprise to Germans to be described as "Anglo-Saxon". The reverse is the case. The Angles and Saxons were German tribes. So were the Franks, after whom France is named but, unlike the Angles and Saxons, they were absorbed into France's prevailing Latin culture. Lombardy in Italy is named after another German tribe, the Lombards. Burgundy after the Burgundii. The French name for Germany, Allemagne, is after yet another German tribe, the Alemani. The King of Sweden's full title is "King of the Goths, Wends and Swedes", the Goths being yet another German tribe. The name "Dutch" is derived from the German word for themselves - Deutsch. And so on. The trunk of the tree is German, the branches are Angle, Saxon, Frank, Alemani, etc.

Cheers,

Sid.

[sid guttridge]

Hi eurasiacan,

France has quite an active Waffen-SS publishing industry. There are at least five books on the French division of the Waffen-SS and itys predecessors. The publisher Heimdal has produced some others on other Waffen-SS units. France also has the most prolific uniform and militaria magazine industry and these feature the Waffen-SS regularly.

But yes, if one looks at book titles, the Waffen-SS publishing industry is heavily Anglo-Saxon, being particularly popular amongst those of a decidedly anti-Communist bent already. They are perhaps fertile ground because their attitude seems to be "my enemy's enemy is my friend" and tend to cut the Waffen-SS a lot of slack.

Cheers,

Sid.

[Paddy Keating]

The people of North-Western Europe are best-described as Nordo-Celts. The Anglo-Saxons are part of this group. We have beaten off quite a few incursions down the centuries and, like any family, we have gotten ourselves involved in sibling fights, the most recent being the European War of 1939-1945. The majority of young volunteers in the Waffen-SS who came from countries all over our common homeland certainly shared a bond in their desire to confront Communism, a belief system that sucked a few Nordo-Celts into its maw but which is decidedly alien to our concepts of community and civilisation.

"We" do not think, as Sid suggests, in terms of "our enemy's enemy being our friend". Many indigenous North-Western Europeans, when thinking about the European aspect of WW2, regret the war with Germany, feeling that the energy should have been devoted exclusively to smashing Communism for once and for all and consolidating Europe's hold over her Empires by forging strong alliances. Had "we" not "won" WW2 - LOL! - we would not now be the United States' pet charity case. That war bankrupted us, the "aid" from the US being one of the most expensive aspects, and opened the gates of Rome, so to speak, to the barbarian hordes, which is why Europe is the way she is today.

Some people call this progress. Sentient people see it for the disaster it really is. And anyone with half a brain knows that the secret services of the cabal running Europe swing into action if maverick nationalist or "folkist" political movements seem to be attracting too much support, fiddling election results, smearing candidates and generally making it hard for the beleagured indigenous peoples of North-West Europe to use the system to bring about any real change. Look at Italy, where there is also keen interest in the Waffen-SS, Italy having had its own, quite effective Waffen-SS units: one might say that the administrative dysfunctionality of that country rendered it impossible even for their spooks to fix the recent elections, allowing the Italian people to register vocal protests in electing neo-fascists to national and local government.

The majority of people with an interest in the Waffen-SS, those people who buy the books, are not Nazis or neo-Nazis. Most of them are responding to a common if rather unformed feeling of nostalgia for what they perceive as the last time North-Western Europeans stood shoulder-to-shoulder against our enemies and those who would applaud the degradation of what used to be called Christendom. Whether or not they are misguided is somewhat beside the point. That is how they feel. If asked to name a single North-West European politician since 1945 who has stood for the rights and interests of our people, very few perfectly ordinary, apolitical Europeans can come up with a single name. That's a failing to be laid at the door of Europe's ruling clique rather than the people themselves.

If people have a skewed perception of what the Waffen-SS was about, then that is not a reason to try to use law to batter them into toeing the line but surely a chance to explain all of the wonderful benefits of the community in which we live and which we would not be free to enjoy today had the regime deploying the Waffen-SS prevailed. Until that happens, books about the Waffen-SS will continue to be moneyspinners...for their publishers rather than their authors. Unless they address ugly questions like war crimes. It's not that people don't want to believe that this happened. It's that people are, in the main, quite comfortable with the idea of snuffing out "the enemy" as long as it isn't happening in their backyards.

Ask many civilised white people if they would feel bad about half the populations of India and China disappearing, thereby cutting pollution, freeing up natural resources and reducing inflation, and they would turn the other way as you pressed the big red button. That, my friends, is why so many people remain stimulated by books, magazines, documentaries and movies about "the Nazis". Because, when it all comes down to it, we actually don't really care how many people they killed because most of the dead weren't our people and "the Nazis" were very much "our people", our kith and kin. They sure as Hell didn't arrive from Mars. LOL! And had they confined their genocidal initiatives to victims from the East, we would hear as much about it today as we hear about all the other genocides. But they killed assimilated people from Western countries, which made us all feel rather queasy because, as I said, we don't mind nasty stuff as long as it doesn't affect us adversely and as long as we don't have to see it.

PK

[Paddy Keating]

I was going delete this after realising that there just isn't any point, the remarks about Nordo-Celtic tribal links aside, because it comes a bit close to the knuckle, the sun is shining, the birds are singing and the world is prostrate in a hardcart at the gates of Hell, but I left it too long.

PK

[Soldat7128]

I was going delete this after realising that there just isn't any point, the remarks about Nordo-Celtic tribal links aside, because it comes a bit close to the knuckle, the sun is shining, the birds are singing and the world is prostrate in a hardcart at the gates of Hell, but I left it too long.

PK

Well it's not *that* bad, just a little rambling and psycho-theorizing but the question didn't preclude that (not that I fully agree with everything you said). If I understand you, you think there is a fascination around the SS for many Westerners (for lack of a better term) because it triggers in them a kind of nostalgia for pan-Caucasian (or at least the northwestern European segment of it) solidarity. I don't *really* buy that because I think for many people they don't even realize that the SS wasn't made up entirely of Germans, so I don't think that applies in that case. And among those of "us" (e.g., people here at Feldgrau) who know more fully how the membership of the SS was actually constituted, I think there is a recognition (or at least should be) that the motives of the non-German members, insofar as they went beyond concrete things like getting a job, possible liberation for one's Baltic homeland, etc., were purely political (i.e. defeating Communism). I'm not sure that really exemplifies NW Europeans standing shoulder-to-shoulder against their enemies though, for a couple reasons: 1) the percentage of peoples in those countries who joined was miniscule compared to the overall population, and 2) many people in NW Europe (who have long-standing roots there) have socialistic leanings, thus they may be if anything more sympathetic to communism than they would be to fascism/national socialism (if for some reason they had to choose between the two extremes).

I know what you're saying about non-German NW Europeans feeling like WWII was a waste of resources combatting a European neighbor rather than consolidating their position in the world, I've gotten that vibe before but I'd always chalked it up to a generalized desire to reintegrate Germans into the European community and not engage in belligerent nationalism because of it where it can lead (I think these reasons still exist but the one you mention is also definitely a part of it).

And I think you have a point about the SS (or maybe "Nazis" more in general) being on our radar screens because their victims were members of our own "civilization", as an analogy there was a book a few years ago claiming that the Belgians killed something like eight million people during their colonization of the Congo, I have no idea if the author's findings were accepted as credible (nor did I read it myself) but I think part of his argument was that the West doesn't really care about this piece of history because we don't really care about sub-Saharan Africans. Having said that, do people in sub-Saharan Africa really care about the Holocaust, or even know about it?

I could go on and on…and since I can, I will.

Two more theories on interest in the SS/Nazis among Westerners (these aren't strictly related to books or publishing but I think are close enough to the subject to be considered germane):

1) I think (post)modern Western civilization puts so much emphasis on nonviolence (outside of sports), humanitarianism, tolerance (in the sense of not discriminating against outside groups) and so on that SS/Nazis represent a sort of latent fantasy for many people of an existence in which one has no inhibitions about hurting or even killing other people, nor any need to censor one's prejudices, whatever they may be.

2) the visual element—similar to how Catholic priests are the clergymen of choice in movies in part because they are more identifiable as such (they wear collars, unlike ministers or rabbis); SS in practically every movie I've ever seen are wearing the bright-red armbands with a swastika on them—makes for a very arresting impression (no pun intended). Unlike historical photographs, of course, where they seem to wear armbands only when on parade.

Ok now I'm done.

[pzrmeyer2]

1) the percentage of peoples in those countries who joined was miniscule compared to the overall population,

I'd be curious to know if the number of "people who joined" or otherwise collaborated or even just felt comfy under occupation was greater than or less than those "brave, heroic" souls who volunteered in the Resistance in say, France, Holland, or Belgium. And I mean actual numbers , not those who claimed to after the war.

2) many people in NW Europe (who have long-standing roots there) have socialistic leanings, thus they may be if anything more sympathetic to communism than they would be to fascism/national socialism (if for some reason they had to choose between the two extremes).

fascism/national socialism IS a "socialistic leaning" movement, organic to indiginous NW/W Europeans, as opposed to Bolshevism/Communism, which was imposed by a chosen few outsiders.

[pzrmeyer2]

I think the over emphasis on WFSS books in 'Western' publishing mirrors how these countries focuses only on a relative narrow spectrum of its own military units in WW2. The plethora of books dealing with the USMC, 82 & 101st AB, 1st 2nd & 3rd ID's or the more sexy armoured divisions in the US at the exclusion of the run of the mill units is very noticeable. Whilst in the UK they tend to focus on the 7th Armoured, SAS, Parachute, Gurkha's and RM's, again leaving other units in the publishing deep freeze.

Regards

well...books are made to sell, right? books about elite forces with distinguished combat records (mythical or true) sell.

How many folks are waiting in line for "In Rain and Sleet, They Delivered: The operational history of the 1136th Postal Company (Reserve) in World War II"

[michael kenny]

I'd be curious to know if the number of "people who joined" or otherwise collaborated or even just felt comfy under occupation was greater than or less than those "brave, heroic" souls who volunteered in the Resistance in say, France, Holland, or Belgium. And I mean actual numbers , not those who claimed to after the war.

a starter for 10

http://artsweb.bham.ac.uk/vichy/resistance.htm

[Soldat7128]

I'd be curious to know if the number of "people who joined" or otherwise collaborated or even just felt comfy under occupation was greater than or less than those "brave, heroic" souls who volunteered in the Resistance in say, France, Holland, or Belgium. And I mean actual numbers , not those who claimed to after the war.

Well it would have to be qualified since joining the Resistance was probably a lot riskier proposition than joining the SS, plus it also brought one's friends and family into immediate danger and thus represented a harder decision to make.

Of course many who joined the SS wound up losing either life or limb, but most who joined probably didn't imagine that fate was in store for them personally, especially during the early years of the war when it was commonly believed that Germany would win. (Also you have to compare [at least to me] the fear of being killed or wounded in combat versus the fear of being apprehended, tortured, and executed—the latter would presumably discourage many more people than the former.)

In any case I think the numbers of *both* categories would be relatively small—which wouldn't change (my) overall point that the argument that the SS fascinates so many Westerners because it reminds them of a time when NW Europeans stood shoulder-to-shoulder against outsiders is highly questionable.

fascism/national socialism IS a "socialistic leaning" movement, organic to indiginous NW/W Europeans, as opposed to Bolshevism/Communism, which was imposed by a chosen few outsiders.

Sure, that's why I added "national socialism" rather than just calling it "fascism" as many people tend to do. Having said that, fascism was also quite powerful in southern Europe (Mussolini came to power long before Hitler, and I believe Spain was technically fascist until the 1970's).

But how do you mean communism was imposed by outsiders in Western Europe? Eastern Europe I understand, but this discussion was about NW/W Europe. (Unless you're referring obliquely to the fact that Marx and many of his followers were Jewish and thus their ancestry was not indigenous to NW Europe, which I think has some *very* limited validity but is *not* a topic I want to pursue here [nor will I].)

[pzrmeyer2]

Well it would have to be qualified since joining the Resistance was probably a lot riskier proposition than joining the SS, plus it also brought one's friends and family into immediate danger and thus represented a harder decision to make.

Not so sure it was a lot riskier. what happened to to the surviving soldiers and family members of European Waffen SS volunteers post war? and many of them volunterred post Stalingrad, when future victory was far more doubtful than had they joined in say 1940. I'd say that made their decision much riskier at the time.

But how do you mean communism was imposed by outsiders in Western Europe? Eastern Europe I understand, but this discussion was about NW/W Europe. (Unless you're referring obliquely to the fact that Marx and many of his followers were Jewish and thus their ancestry was not indigenous to NW Europe, which I think has some *very* limited validity but is *not* a topic I want to pursue here [nor will I].)

then we can't talk about it.