Valhalla's Warriors - A Review.

A place to relocate messages and threads that should be deleted.
sid guttridge
on "time out"
Posts: 8055
Joined: Thu Oct 10, 2002 4:54 am

Valhalla's Warriors - A Review.

Post by sid guttridge »

Valhalla’s Warriors: A History of the Waffen-SS on the Eastern Front 1941-45.

By Terry Goldsworthy.

Dog Ear Publishing, Indianapolis, 2007.

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


Valhalla’s Warriors, despite its populist title, is an academically-based survey of its subject. It has grown out of the author’s PhD thesis, but is more accessible. It is both footnoted and contains integral source details within the text for all the many quotations used and propositions made.

Valhalla’s Warriors is reader friendly in that it is written in plain English and sub-headings break the chapters down into convenient segments. Its academic origins should not deter anybody, because it is readable and well organized.

The sub-title, "A History of the Waffen-SS on the Eastern Front 1941-45", is somewhat misleading, as Valhalla's Warriors is really devoted to only particular aspects of the Waffen-SS's activities in Eastern Europe - its crimes and atrocities.

The book draws on a 22-page bibliography that ranges across a broad spectrum of opinion, including the works of several Feldgrau contributing authors. It lacks some recent published sources, but as these both reinforce and contradict its thesis, these absences do not particularly skew its conclusions.

An organizational weakness in the bibliography is to include original unpublished source material alongside published material, thus making it difficult to detect the degree to which Valhalla’s Warriors is primary research. This reviewer calculates that only about 5% of the bibliography consists of unpublished material, all of it apparently from the ETHINT series of the US Army. Thus the book breaks comparatively little new ground in terms of sources.

However, it does make a fairly representative survey of published English language literature, ranging from academic works by the likes of Yale and Princeton University Presses, to populist publications from the likes of Schiffer and J. J. Fedorowicz. It thus has a broad foundation on which to base its conclusions.

So what does it say?

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


Valhalla’s Warriors jumps in feet first with the proposition that “This book is an exploration of the Waffen-SS, and by necessity of evil.”

Does the author make good this proposition in terms of the Waffen-SS as an institution? With some reservations, Yes.

(Please note that the following notes are no more than an appetizer of the contents of each chapter.)

In Chapter 1 Goldsworthy deals with “The Origins and Ideology of the Waffen-SS”. In it, he cites sources (pp.31-32) that at least 83% of Waffen-SS officers above the rank of Brigadefuhrer are known to have been members of the Nazi Party, that one survey of 105 senior Waffen-SS commanders shows that 97% joined the Nazi Party before 1933, that 90% of them were in the wider SS before joining the Waffen-SS and others had been in the SA. This not only aligns the Waffen-SS leadership with Nazi political philosophy and the wider SS, but confirms that there were very high levels of mutual membership between the Nazi Party, the SS generally and the Waffen-SS leadership in particular.

Chapter 2 covers “The Structure of the Waffen-SS”. In it (p.44) we learn that political indoctrination was given the same weight as tactics at the top of the curriculum of officer candidates. We also find out (p.47) that the same SS administrative organization that oversaw the camp system, the WVHA, also oversaw the Waffen-SS budget. There is some confusion about the origins of the Waffen-SS officer corps, one source (p.49) stating that an (unlikely?) 90% of them were of peasant background in 1938, whereas an appendix on p.240 indicates that only between 3.4% and 5% of officers surveyed between Sturmbannfuhrer and Obergruppenfuhrer were even farmers.

(The same appendix also states that 23.8% of the ranks between Obergruppenfuhrer and Standartenfuhrer were ex-Army officers, 21.9% were from academic professions, 15.8% were ex-businessmen and 14.7% were ex-Police officials. By contrast ex-Army NCOs made up only 8.7% of these two ranks and a similar proportion (8.8%) of Obersturmbannfuhrer and Sturmbannfuhrer, whereas only 1.9% of these last two ranks were former Army officers. If true, it rather undermines the proposition that the Waffen-SS offered fast track promotion to high rank for significant numbers of Army NCOs and others from the civilian working classes. According to Valhalla’s Warriors, the Waffen-SS senior officer corps was dominated by ex-Army officers and their social equivalents from the civilian middle classes.)

Chapter 3 is entitled “Combat Operations of the Waffen-SS”. This actually deals with excesses committed by Waffen-SS divisions in the immediate combat area, often far behind the Eastern Front itself. It largely concerns reluctance (sometimes refusal) to take prisoners, reprisal killings and actions against Commissars, Jews and the Polish Home Army by a wide range of Waffen-SS field units. Even the 6th Nord Mountain Division doesn’t entirely escape implication. It is the weakest chapter, in that the author’s lack of Soviet sources has left a massive area unexplored.

Chapter 4 covers “Anti-Partisan and Einsatzgruppen Operations”. To this reviewer, there seems no obvious dividing line between anti-partisan operations and similar operations covered in the previous chapter. However, it is significant for quantifying Waffen-SS penetration of Einsatzgruppen on pp.114-117 and the presence of former Einsatzgruppen officers in Waffen-SS formations. For example (p.114) a chart shows that 34.4% of Einsatzgruppe A were Waffen-SS men and argues that this was typical of other einsatzgruppen because a formula was used in their composition. Former Einsatzgruppen officers are also known to have gone on to serve in 15 Waffen-SS field divisions, including almost all those raised of Reich Germans, and a variety of other Waffen-SS units, albeit in very small numbers. The evidence of overlap between the Einsatzgruppen and Waffen-SS is shown to be rather more extensive than this reviewer had previously suspected.

Chapter 5 covers “The Concentration Camps”. This chapter details evidence of links between the camp system and the Waffen-SS. It contends (p.127) that from 1940 to 1943 at least 2,500 men were transferred from Auschwitz to Waffen-SS units and some 1,500 from Sachsenhausen over 1942-45. A chart (p.132) lists the number of past or future camp officers known to have served in each Waffen-SS division. The Totenkopf, unsurprisingly, hosted well over a hundred and fifty. Every single Reich-raised Waffen-SS division (except the Hitler Jugend) hosted several tens. Only three late creations (28th, 37th and 38th) are not known to have contained any former camp officers.

Chapter 6 deals with “The Waffen-SS as a criminal organization”. It opens with Adenauer’s quote “Soldaten wie die anderen auch” and contains a useful section on the legal wrangling at Nuremberg that led the tribunal to conclude of the Waffen-SS that, unless personally implicated in the commission of acts declared criminal, membership alone was not enough to come within the scope of the tribunal’s proceedings. In rebutting Adenauer’s statement, the author seems to take a harder line than the Nuremberg trials. Nuremberg separated the Waffen-SS as an institution (criminal) from the individual member (not criminal unless directly and personally implicated). The author, however, seems to move beyond this strictly legal differentiation when he states (p.153) “As a moral concept I see the issue of group responsibility being acceptable”. It is on this point that most controversy seems likely to arise.

Backed by the weight of evidence he has brought in previous chapters of extensive cross fertilization and institutional overlap between the Waffen-SS and the agencies charged with carrying out genocide, he contends, “The members of the Waffen-SS had much more than just passing or innocent knowledge of the evil acts being committed, they had intimate knowledge”. To this point this reviewer believes that the author makes a plausible case.

However, he then contends that “They (the Waffen-SS) were responsible for the concentration-camps….”, a formula that seems to overstep the evidence, even taking into account the Totenkopf Division’s strong connections. The strongest statistical case made for the Waffen-SS and camp system being one is that over 40% of camp officers also served at some point in the Waffen-SS. However, the flow seems to have been far more heavily from the camps to the Waffen-SS field formations than the other way around. The camps seem to have been a useful secondary source of officers and men for the Waffen-SS, or, to put it another way, the Waffen-SS was a primary drain on the manpower of the camps.

Of the Waffen-SS divisions, only the Totenkopf received enough former camp officers to have made up a third of its officer establishment, even if they had all served simultaneously. In fact, given that the division suffered over three times its establishment in casualties, the camp officers are likely to have amounted at most to 10% of those officers who passed through it. Waffen-SS/camp connections were certainly robust and longstanding, but the proposition that the Waffen-SS were responsible for the concentration camps seems a leap too far. The author would, perhaps, have been better advised to go with the form of words he offers when he says that “….they contributed to the Einsatzgruppen.”

Chapter 7 seeks to show “why the Waffen-SS were capable of committing the evil crimes they did”. In this and the previous chapter, the author begins to move into areas of mass socio-pathology that this reviewer is not well equipped to assess. In essence he proposes that the problem with the Waffen-SS was not one of aberrant individuals but the result of five main factors embracing the entire institution:

1) Learning to Hate: Seeing the evil enemy. The Nazi regime legitimized criminal orders and actively devalued the target groups that were to become victims of genocide.
2) Loyalty is my Honour: Obedience to evil. The Waffen-SS were primed by the regime to accept this devaluation of the intended genocide victims.
3) Just following orders. The ethos of unquestioning obedience within the Waffen-SS made its men unusually useful tools for executing criminal orders.
4) The SS Mentality. The ethos of “hardness”, both on themselves and their foes, also made them more robust instruments for executing criminal orders.
5) Difficult Life Conditions. The extreme nature of the fighting on the Eastern Front, to which their enemy contributed in full measure, brutalized all participants.

In conclusion the author contends that the Waffen-SS’s brutal campaign was intentional, served no legitimate military goal, but rather an ideological one, caused massive harm and was unnecessary or disproportionate to any instigation or provocation. In short, “evil”. The author does not source his definition of “evil”, so one presumes it is one developed by himself in his PhD.

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

Valhalla’s Warriors is persuasive that the SS agencies directly charged with genocide and the Waffen-SS were continuously cross-pollinating at a number of levels, mutually aware of each other’s roles, functions and activities, and supportive of them. It is therefore impossible to divorce the one institution completely from the other.

However, what Valhalla’s Warriors seems to claim, but does not adequately establish, is that the SS agencies directly charged with genocide and the Waffen-SS were functionally one and the same, with the latter dominant within the former. While accepting that artificial distinctions are often made between the Waffen-SS and the SS’s genocide agencies, this reviewer still sees room to plausibly maintain that they were, in fact, two closely related and overlapping agencies with different primary functions in the pursuit of a common politico-strategic goal, rather than one monolithic agency. The SS was a continuum, within which the Waffen-SS was certainly numerically by far the largest segment, but it was not dominant within it. It did not make policy for other segments

Strangely, the author has accepted uncritically the proposition that the Waffen-SS was “without doubt a remarkable fighting formation” without bothering to investigate the unremarkable performance of most of its non-German higher formations, the difficulty in differentiating between the combat performance of Reich-raised Waffen-SS mechanized formations and similarly equipped Army formations, and the role of both wartime propaganda and post war publications in boosting this reputation. But then, Valhalla’s Warriors does not primarily claim to be a military history book. It is an institutional study of the unsavoury underbelly of the Waffen-SS, and it is there that it scores a number of good hits.

So, who should buy Valhalla’s Warriors?

For a start, anyone with a specialist interest in the Waffen-SS can hardly avoid it and still maintain a claim to full expertise. For Waffen-SS apologists it will be useful to “know thy enemy”, as they are liable to be ducking shots drawn from its locker for some time to come. For those of a more hostile disposition towards the Waffen-SS, it will provide ammunition that will considerably reinforce their existing prejudices.

The great mass of general readers in between will get a sourced, readable and useful survey of the case against the Waffen-SS that comes down firmly in condemnation of its fundamental ethos and the numerous actions of its members that went beyond any military requirements.
User avatar
Tom Houlihan
Patron
Posts: 4301
Joined: Mon Sep 30, 2002 12:05 pm
Location: MI, USA
Contact:

Re: Valhalla's Warriors - A Review.

Post by Tom Houlihan »

Interesting review, Sid. Thanks for it!
TLH3
www.mapsatwar.us
Feldgrau für alle und alle für Feldgrau!
phylo_roadking
Patron
Posts: 8459
Joined: Thu Apr 28, 2005 2:41 pm

Re: Valhalla's Warriors - A Review.

Post by phylo_roadking »

Sid, would it be a fair comment then, going by some of your statements, that unless it's to be taken as a general reference to W-SS atrocities and war crimes - the more specific idea of the Waffen-SS being institutionally and individually "evil" doesn't stand on the book alone, but requires being read in association with the author's PHD?
"Well, my days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle." - Malcolm Reynolds
sid guttridge
on "time out"
Posts: 8055
Joined: Thu Oct 10, 2002 4:54 am

Re: Valhalla's Warriors - A Review.

Post by sid guttridge »

Hi Phylo,

The book contains its own definition of "evil" on p.215:

".....an evil act can be said to consist of: A serious intentional act or omission; which causes severe mental or physical harm; and this harm is unnecessary or disproportionate to any instigation or provocation."

To me, this could be a description of War generally, as viewed, for example, by a Pacifist. I consider the concept of "evil" to be subjective and personal to the individual. I would therefore leave it to the individual reader to decide whether the book clinches the case that the Waffen-SS was evil in the author's own terms, or by the readers' own definitions, which may be different.

The book makes a good case that a significant minority of SS men were deeply involved in a large number of atrocious things, before, during and after their service in the Waffen-SS, and that knowledge of these things must have been pretty generalised within its ranks. I think the author would have been better advised to let such evidence speak for itself.

Cheers,

Sid.
phylo_roadking
Patron
Posts: 8459
Joined: Thu Apr 28, 2005 2:41 pm

Re: Valhalla's Warriors - A Review.

Post by phylo_roadking »

A serious intentional act or omission; which causes severe mental or physical harm; and this harm is unnecessary or disproportionate to any instigation or provocation
I'm tempted to say - what of the driver in a crashed car that has to have have his mangled leg amputated at the scene by medical or paramedical staff in attendance...

BUT on the actual definition - the "disproportionate" element is covered by the post-war Hostages Case - WITHOUT any expression of it actually being evil ..."just" criminal. Terry does seem to hold opinions that step beyond expressed legal definitions of and judgements on various events.
"Well, my days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle." - Malcolm Reynolds
Paddy Keating

Re: Valhalla's Warriors - A Review.

Post by Paddy Keating »

That's a well-written review. Thanks, Sid. Having read the thesis, I shall certainly read the book if I find it in a remainder store for five bucks. But I tend to share Phylo's misgivings, especially in view of Terry's general attitude and behaviour here. This isn't a case of playing the man or anything like that but some of his antics seriously undermined his credibility. The one point I'd pick you up on is your point about Waffen-SS apologists. Not everyone disinclined to write off the Waffen-SS as an 'evil' or "criminal' organisation on the say-so of a body flagrantly dispensing victors' justice is a Waffen-SS apologist. Some of us merely have a less rose-tinted view of politics than others.

PK
sid guttridge
on "time out"
Posts: 8055
Joined: Thu Oct 10, 2002 4:54 am

Re: Valhalla's Warriors - A Review.

Post by sid guttridge »

Hi Paddy,

Point taken.

Your time may be not far off. There is a copy on ebay at £3.65 with one day to go.

I think Goldsworthy's behaviour here was OK, given the nature of some of the attacks upon him. However, his initial multiple posts were not a good idea. If he was more familiar with Feldgrau he would have known that a single drop of blood in the water on this subject would have been quite sufficient to set off a feeding frenzy!

Cheers,

Sid.
Paddy Keating

Re: Valhalla's Warriors - A Review.

Post by Paddy Keating »

This isn't really the place to discuss Goldsworthy's behaviour but since you bring it up, he got precisely what he asked for. He got feedback based on his publishers' previews of the book and the thesis on which he based it. He was the one who cried "foul!" as soon inconvenient questions were posed and he also started hurling implicit but very clear accusations of anti-semitism around, to the point where he was warned for it. Someone brought up a very interesting point in asking why Goldsworthy apparently confined his canvassing to this website, although he is clearly familiar with the Axis History Forum. Perhaps this is relevant in the light of hostile references to this website and some individuals involved with it by the two academics with whom Jason Pipes is currently corresponding. And then there is the assault upon the well-known and apolitical photography-led website managed by Robert Noss, who had to close it down and ended up with a stiff fine because of a complaint from someone in Israel. It does rather lead one to wonder if, as all the old paleo-Nazis finally die off, we are seeing a shift in focus by people keen to keep the "anti-Nazi" machinery running, come what may. OK, so I have tactlessly pointed out the elephant in the room here but there does seem to be a distinct pattern emerging. And here you are, with your hyperbole about blood in the water and feeding frenzies. Serious writers are not savaged here, Sid. Goldsworthy was not savaged because he suggested that the Waffen-SS committed war crimes. He was taken to task for his ignorance and, in turn, for trying to cover that ignorance with offensive bluster.

PK
sid guttridge
on "time out"
Posts: 8055
Joined: Thu Oct 10, 2002 4:54 am

Re: Valhalla's Warriors - A Review.

Post by sid guttridge »

Hi Paddy,

On a point of information:

No, I did not bring Goldworthy's behaviour up here. In fact you did in your Mon May 19, 2008 11:06 am, when you brought up, "Terry's general attitude and behaviour here."

He was certainly naive in expecting a tempered reaction here, but that doesn't excuse us from behaving politely and rationally.

Cheers,

Sid.
Paddy Keating

Re: Valhalla's Warriors - A Review.

Post by Paddy Keating »

You're just trying to get a rise out of people, Sid.

PK
User avatar
Tom Houlihan
Patron
Posts: 4301
Joined: Mon Sep 30, 2002 12:05 pm
Location: MI, USA
Contact:

Re: Valhalla's Warriors - A Review.

Post by Tom Houlihan »

Leave us keep things on the review.
TLH3
www.mapsatwar.us
Feldgrau für alle und alle für Feldgrau!
Hans Weber
Enthusiast
Posts: 457
Joined: Wed Oct 09, 2002 11:48 am

Re: Valhalla's Warriors - A Review.

Post by Hans Weber »

Hello

"As a moral concept I see the issue of group responsibility being acceptable".

The same moral (and legal) view was shared by the Nazis and was called "Sippenhaft". It's generally accepted as being not tolerable. I find it remarkable that a writer on evil can accept such an evil concept. Nürmberg didn't.

Cheers
Hans
sid guttridge
on "time out"
Posts: 8055
Joined: Thu Oct 10, 2002 4:54 am

Re: Valhalla's Warriors - A Review.

Post by sid guttridge »

Hi Hans,

It was also the basis on which Jews were persecuted in Christian societies in the Middle Ages.

I think group responsibility is only reasonably applicable when all are demonstrably involved. In the case of the Waffen-SS this is not demonstrable. For example, most of the Volksdeutsche and a good proportion of late war Reich Germans were conscripted into the Waffen-SS, while all the non-Germanic foreigners were allocated to it by political decree. In my opinion, the Waffen-SS was constructed in too varied a way to allow for reasonable applicability of group responsibility.

Cheers,

Sid.
Paddy Keating

Re: Valhalla's Warriors - A Review.

Post by Paddy Keating »

sid guttridge wrote:Hi Hans,

It was also the basis on which Jews were persecuted in Christian societies in the Middle Ages.

I think group responsibility is only reasonably applicable when all are demonstrably involved. In the case of the Waffen-SS this is not demonstrable. For example, most of the Volksdeutsche and a good proportion of late war Reich Germans were conscripted into the Waffen-SS, while all the non-Germanic foreigners were allocated to it by political decree. In my opinion, the Waffen-SS was constructed in too varied a way to allow for reasonable applicability of group responsibility.

Cheers,

Sid.
Quite a lot of non-Germanic foreigners volunteered. Furthermore, the status of a Waffen-SS man as volunteer or conscript does not have much bearing on the question of group responsibility. Many volunteers, including old hands from the prewar SS-VT, found themselves at odds with what they felt to be questionable orders and activities. And most of those who expressed concern or doubts about this were punished in various ways, from being degraded and sent to labour camps to ending up in disciplinary units or, effectively, suicide units. Indeed, the whole question is too complicated to permit consideration of group responsibility.

PK
phylo_roadking
Patron
Posts: 8459
Joined: Thu Apr 28, 2005 2:41 pm

Re: Valhalla's Warriors - A Review.

Post by phylo_roadking »

In my opinion, the Waffen-SS was constructed in too varied a way to allow for reasonable applicability of group responsibility.
But that's not a good argument for claiming that there was an individual level of responsibility replacing it - JUST that there was an absence of responsibility at group level. Extrapolating further beyond an absence would be a step too far.
I think group responsibility is only reasonably applicable when all are demonstrably involved. In the case of the Waffen-SS this is not demonstrable
This I agree with - but in THIS case then, responsibility goes UPWARDS to the next common denoninator - command level - not downwards to each individual. And this is in effect what Nuremberg confirmed.
It's generally accepted as being not tolerable. I find it remarkable that a writer on evil can accept such an evil concept. Nürmberg didn't.
Nuremberg AND many other war crimes trials since. As I said - the writer's concept of evil and it's role in the actions of the Waffen-SS seems to step far beyond established judicial precedent.
"Well, my days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle." - Malcolm Reynolds
Locked