A history of Waffen-SS war crimes on the Eastern Front

Objective research on factual information regarding German military related warcrimes.
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valhalla
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A history of Waffen-SS war crimes on the Eastern Front

Post by valhalla »

Hello,
I am keen for feedback from any readers on my first offering "Valhalla's Warriors: A history of the Waffen-SS on the Eastern Front".

It was recently put out on Amazon etc by DogEar Publishing.

I choose the self-publishing route as it was just too difficult to break into the traditional publishing houses.

http://www.waffen-ss-book.com/book.html


The book deals specifically with war crimes committed on the Eastern Front.

In this book, I set out to describe the actions of the infamous Waffen-SS, a branch of Hitler’s army that earned the reputation of being the most fierce, capable and murderous army during the Nazi’s campaign into Russia.
Over the years, the Waffen-SS has been admired by some as being an elite and effective fighting force, but I caution that there should be no confusion about the involvement of the Waffen-SS in atrocities committed outside the battlefield against Jews, Communists and other civilians.I also set out to dispel the myth that the Waffen-SS was not connected to Hitler’s concentration camps. In telling this story I attempted to draw on the best of military and Holocaust scholarship.
What sets Valhalla’s Warriors apart from other books of its kind is that I attempt to explain what circumstances make ordinary men become capable of committing extraordinary acts of evil. The most disturbing point made is that the Waffen-SS, although an extremely evil as an entity, was made up of normal human beings.

I would be grateful for any feedback

Regards


Terry Goldsworthy :[]
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sid guttridge
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Re: A history of Waffen-SS war crimes on the Eastern Front

Post by sid guttridge »

Hi Terry,

Where did you find information on specifically W-SS warcrimes on the Eastern Front?

As has been discussed on Feldgrau before, such material seems to be hard to come by either because such war crimes did not much occur, or the Germans covered them up, or because the USSR didn't differentiate W-SS from other crimes, or because the enormous scale of Soviet losses made detailed investigation of most incidents difficult, or because almost all such information is presumably in old Soviet archives and accessible only to those who read Russian.

Have you managed to unearth some new primary sources?

Cheers,

Sid.
Paddy Keating

Re: A history of Waffen-SS war crimes on the Eastern Front

Post by Paddy Keating »

From the publisher's blurb:
The conventional wisdom that the Waffen-SS in World War II fought a relatively clean fight, unsullied by the atrocities committed by the Nazis, is challenged—and largely demolished. Focusing on the Eastern Front, the book contends that the Nazi vision of a racial-ideological death struggle against Slavic hordes and their Jewish-Bolshevik commissars resonated with soldiers of the Waffen-SS, steeped in traditional anti-Semitic and racist dogmas. In doing so this book clearly shows that the Waffen-SS was an organisation that committed widespread atrocities, and were truly soldiers of evil.
I don't think one can describe Adenauer's image of soldaten wie andere auch as "conventional wisdom". Nor would anyone with even a shallow knowledge of Waffen-SS history try to suggest that the Waffen-SS had a clean war record. Some units managed to maintain an unsullied record whilst other committed atrocities. Hitler's War in the East was really a post-imperialist venture informed by classic European imperialist and racist attitudes of the period. Had the victims been Black or Brown or Yellow, we would not still be talking about it so much. As Hitler himself remarked, who remembers the Armenians? And for that matter, who remembers all of the other people subjected to attempted genocide and democide? The premise of your book seems a tad simplistic, although I qualify that by saying that I have not, of course, read it. The publisher's blurb doesn't inspire me to rush out and get it, to be frank, and to carry that frankness across the line into brutality, I hope that your post here isn't an example of the standard of your prose.

PK
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Re: A history of Waffen-SS war crimes on the Eastern Front

Post by phylo_roadking »

Closing this thread. Please continue any discussion on the similar thread in the Books and Reviews section. This thread is outside the very strict remit of the War Crime Section.

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