PKeating

I think the one on the left is better. The one in the middle is a bit inbred-looking. As for the caps, not impressed. PK

For the benefit of younger readers or those readers who have seen media reports recently about rows over these Baltic WW2 veterans, I thought it might be germane to summarise the situation as it was back in the early 1940s. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania devolved into independent, democratic republics after the First World War and the advent of Bolchevism in Russia. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, these three countries were beacons of modernity and progressiveness. Late in 1939, the USSR bullied the Baltic republics into allowing the establishment of Soviet bases on their territory and in June 1940, Stalin annexed them by means of rigged "elections" stocked with local communists and pro-Moscow agents. The World did nothing, their attention being somewhat focused upon the end of the Battle of France and the looming Battle of Britain. The subsequent occupation lasted a year and was extremely brutal. The Red Army behaved despicably, as they always did in occupied countries, from the 1920s right up to Afghanistan. For an idea to which modern minds can relate of what Soviet occupation is like, read about Chechnya. Same people, different badges. The NKVD did as they did in Poland, slaughtering anyone who might pose a threat to the Sovietisation of the Baltic republics. On that score, the fact that many of the officers and NCOs of the NKVD death squads had Jewish names, like the head of the NKVD, and that many of the collaborators were of Jewish origin, was not lost upon Balts. I hesitated before bringing this up because it is a tricky subject. However, it explains the eagerness with which many Balts assisted the Nazis' persecution of the Jews in the East. The same applies to other eastern territories occupied by the Germans, like the Ukraine. It does not excuse what was done to Jewish people but it explains the ease with which anti-Jewish sentiment was inflamed by Nazi and pro-Nazi demagogues and propagandists. Moreover, one has to remember that in those days, there was little stigma attached to being what we now describe as racist or anti-semitic. From the viewpoint of eastern European Jews who had had quite a rough time under the Tsars and their puppet administrators, there was a brutal logic in becoming the secret police, torturers and executioners of the new Bolshevik regime: if you are the persecutors, you are no longer persecuted... When the Wehrmacht marched into the Baltic republics in the summer of 1941, the vast majority of Balts greeted them as liberators and the Germans, naturally, presented themselves as such. However, they occupied Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania for over three years and while "racially acceptable" Balts had a better time under German occupation than they had under the Soviets, the Germans implemented the Final Solution there with terrible efficiency, aided and abetted by locals, many of whom were easily incited for the reasons upon which I touched. Bolchevism was, of course, presented by Nazi propagandists as a Jewish plot in line with the paranoid anti-semitic book entitled The Protocols of Zion. It did not help that there were so many people with Jewish-sounding names involved in the Soviet apparatus, from Joseph Stalin n? Djugashvili downwards. Again, this is a touchy subject but if one is going to have threads discussing Baltic Waffen-SS veterans and related issues, an understanding of how people thought and saw things at the time is important. It is too easy to make judgements with hindsight and it allows us to pretend that we would not behave badly given the right circumstances. In fact, sit back now and ask yourself how you feel about Muslims in general. See what I mean? OK, so there's quite a gap between feeling as government and media wants you to feel where Muslims are concerned and wishing to see or condoning the mass-slaughter of Muslims. But the gap can easily be narrowed, with a bit of media spin here and a few spurious facts there, as the Nazis showed us sixty-odd years ago by inciting quite reasonable, normal people to commit mass-murder. However, where Baltic Waffen-SS volunteers are concerned, the majority of these men when youngsters were very focused in their reasons for joining up. They joined up to fight the Soviets and to ensure that the Hammer and Sickle never again fluttered over their cities and the torture chambers of the NKVD. There is often a confusion between Balts who served in ad hoc police and security units tasked with Final Solution-related duties and Balts who joined and served in combat units of the Waffen-SS, which was an arm of the Wehrmacht. Again, a good understanding of the actual structure of the "SS" is important here. This is not to suggest that Waffen-SS personnel did not take part in some horrifying atrocities. However, so did the Heer and the Luftwaffe. Atrocities were the order of the day and very few people had the courage to refuse to carry out questionable orders. Lithuania and Lativa were quite quickly overrun by the Soviets in 1944. In Estonia, Otto Tief formed a new national government when the Germans withdrew in September 1944 but the government remained in power for just a couple of days before the Soviets arrived. It is also worth pointing out, for example, that of the estimated 70,000 Estonians who served in the Wehrmacht/Waffen-SS between 1941 and 1944, just 20,000 were volunteers. The majority of these recruits entered service in 1944 when the Red Army was advancing on the Narva and revered patriots like J?ri Uluots, last Prime Minister of the Republic of Estonia before the Soviet invasion in 1940, finally endorsed German attempts to draft Estonians. Previous attempts had never been terribly successful. But terror of a known enemy is a great motivator. So these recruits were not traitors or collaborators. They served quite legally in the Wehrmacht, just like Danes and French recruits. But they didn't get the chance to defend Tallinin. Many Balts were fortunate enough to escape westwards, joining the German trek. Many Balts serving in the Wehrmacht/Waffen-SS ended up in western hands and thence to Britain and America. Throughout the long years of Soviet occupation, Baltic refugees maintained governments-in-exile in London, amongst other places. Most Western countries did not recognise the legality of the Soviet-sponsored puppet regimes in the Baltic states from 1944 to 1991, when Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania regained their sovereignty. This is an important point: the events of 1991 did not represent a "independence" but merely the end of a long, brutal and illegal occupation. The governments-in-exile, often condemned by Red propaganda as "Nazis", were nothing of the sort. I knew many of them these old Waffen-SS men in London as a teenager in the 1970s and they were not Nazis! Some of them were rabidly rightwing and a few were anti-semitic but the majority were simply angry, dispossessed patriots. This is borne out to some extent by the fact that the governments-in-exile declared themselves caretakers pending free elections in 1991 and then handed over power to the elected administrations without any fuss. The Soviet occupation carries very painful memories for many Balts, as the riots in Tallinin over the resiting of a Soviet war memorial and soldiers' mass grave shows. However, it is fair to point out that most of the violence has come not from Balts or even from "neo-Nazis" but from ethnic Russians objecting to the reassertion of Baltic values and traditions and the re-Balticisation of the three republics. In this, they are encouraged by Moscow and the neo-Soviet dictator in power there. The elderly veterans in the photos are not war criminals. The worst that can be said of them is that they are not wearing denazified awards. Big deal! When I go to Normandy to meet veterans of all sides, including the Fallschirmj?ger, quite a few of them are wearing original wartime awards, including Alexander Uhlig, who is no Nazi, of that I can assure you. He simply wears his country's highest award, like many Ritterkreuztr?ger, as it was awarded to him. The Allied veterans drinking beer with him don't jump up and down about the swastika. There are veterans who wear the 1957 pattern awards. I doubt that the men in the photographs are pro-Nazi. They are vehemently anti-Soviet! They take the simplistic but entirely undertandable view that if wearing the swastika offends a few lefties, Soviet apologists and revisionists, that is a good thing. But I think they understand that neither the Soviet nor the Nazi systems were good things! PK

Well-spotted, Paul. I was invited to one veterans' meeting in Sweden to celebrate the end of the USSR and a couple of the old gents were wearing original tunics with insignia and awards. One of them had a WIKING cuff title. These were walking-out uniforms they had sent home late in the war along with other personal effects. In the field, they seem to have been quite standardised in terms of regulation clothing and equipment but photos taken at home on leave show quite a variety of tunic types worn as walking-out dress. I suppose this tunic is close enough to what he wore sixty-odd years ago but he isn't wearing Waffen-SS insignia. He probably didn't want to offend sensibilities or unduly provoke any agitators as this appears to be quite a public occasion. One used to see Divisi?n Azul veterans as senior NCOs and officers in the Spanish armed forces well into the late 1970s, wearing German decorations with swastikas. They didn't worry about offending anyone. They wore the awards they had been given. I wonder if these old chaps would wear 1957 pattern awards if someone asked them to. PK

Blah blah blah. Getting away from your utter disingenuous and your apparent inability to think laterally, Mr Ryan, let's cut to the quick here, shall we? So that's what it's all about, eh? Kevin Ryan the Irish patriot has his knickers in a twist because I am Irish yet was in the British Army! That's why you seek any pretext to start trouble with me. You sad man. PK

How precisely do you manage to conclude that I am a pro-Nazi apologist, Kevin? I am simply engaging in quite an apolitical, dispassionate commentary upon the motives of Balts who volunteered for the Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS, based up historical fact as opposed to the kind of ill-informed, emotive hyperbole I read in this thread, which might have developed into an interesting and informative topic had you not weighed in. In what way am I rewriting European history? Was I incorrect in my mini-summary of the chronology of historical events related to the Baltic states from 1939 to 1945? I cannot be alone in noting that you seem to have a rather negative attitude towards anyone from former Communist countries who makes any critical statements about the Soviet regime and its collaborationist puppets. You were all over that thread about the Soviet war memorial in Tallinin. And when I post here to take issue with some of your gratuitously provocative remarks, which ruined this thread for quite a few members, your sole response is to try to label me as some kind of pro-Nazi apologist and revisionist. Is that really the best you can do? What a cheap shot! PK

What do you mean by the "SS"? How much do you know about the "SS"? There were people in the Baltic states who were against their countries' occupation by anyone! However, the majority of Balts greeted the Germans as liberators. That the Germans subsequently squandered this public relations advantage is merely typical of the brutishness and essential lack of mental agility of the National Socialist regime and the people running it. Fair point. A lot of my family went up to Ulster and enlisted. One or two deserted from the Irish Army to do so. However, many of young people from all over Europe who joined the Waffen-SS were standing up against Soviet tyranny, which was as bad as Nazi tyranny. In fact, it may even have been worse, if you base your evaluation upon the numbers of people subjected to genocidal and democidal treatment. However, the numbers are not the issue. People knew about Soviet murder policies a decade before the Nazis started their murder machine up in earnest. As I said before, you have to try to understand these issues within the context of the times in question and peoples' attitudes and circumstances. A middle class Danish lad who joined the Waffen-SS to fight Bolchevism did so because of his social and political conditioning. A middle class Estonian lad who joined the Waffen-SS shared those reasons but underpinned by firsthand experience of the barbarities visited upon Balts by the Soviet occupation forces and the political bootboys charged with forcing an accelerated "appreciation" of Sovietism upon these "new comrades". Maybe. There again, you would have to know enough about the subject in hand to understand why some of them might derive some pleasure from upsetting "victims of the Nazis" but this is not a discourse I am prepared to get into here and especially not with someone whose position is based on emotive posturing rather than historical fact. You really have no idea of the history of these nations, do you? They were sovereign, democratic states until the Bolshies invaded them in 1940. They were then liberated by the Germans as they advanced eastwards in 1941. They were reoccupied by the Bolshies at the end of the war and subjected to even more barbaric treatment than that meted out previously. The men in the photos are seen as freedom fighters, Kevin. They regard themselves much as the old IRA saw themselves. Yet how many people dismissed the old IRA as murderous terrorists? The IRA were quite happy to consider collaborating with Nazi Germany for the sake of their "war" against the Dublin government. Yet were I to post photographs of the veterans wearing their medals in 1966 in Dublin in a thread, many of them former Blue Shirts with O'Duffy, would you be so quick to derail that thread with impassioned criticisms of men who might have taken a Nazi Reichsmark or three "for the Cause"? PK

So it's fine for you to deliver splenetic rants about war veterans who happened to have fought with the Wehrmacht because of your disapproval of the Nazi regime despite the "strict No-Politics rule", is it? PK

How much do you actually know about the history of these countries, Kevin? They were independent countries, subjected to invasion and brutal occupation by the Bolsheviks and, like other countries, hailed the Germans as liberators from the Soviet yoke. Try to see things in the context of the times that were in it. How can you refer to all Latvian volunteers in the Waffen-SS as "scum"? Again, how much to you actually know about the events in question? I have elderly friends who fought in the German armed forces against Bolshevism and they are not "scum". Nor are they "Nazis" and nor were they Nazis at the time. The same applies to a lot of the young volunteers who flocked to the Waffen-SS from across Europe to fight the looming menace of Stalin's expansionist regime. They are simply honouring their fallen comrades, Kevin. Just as German veterans honour their fallen comrades. You're entitled to your opinions and to express them - even though you delete opinions or statements you dislike! - but what on Earth is wrong with elderly geezers wearing combat decorations won fairly in battle? PK

Thanks for posting those, Greg. That's a nice FRANCE armshield. Very, very rare. Okay, as the late, great Bill Stump would have said, time for crow pie! Je m'excuse, Michel! Il para?t que ton insigne est authentique. Pas "BeVo-Wuppertal" mais de l'?poque. PK

As I said, it doesn't resemble original BeVo badges I have seen. The reverse of original foreign volunteer armshields generally looks quite different. If this is original, Greg, I would be interested in learning about it. Perhaps you can expand? PK

That's a rare cross! I have only ever seen one of these zinc-cored, neu-silber-framed Juncker crosses. Congratulations, Marcus! Who needs an outer carton? This one appears to have been worn. Nice ribbon too. Paddy

I'm afraid it doesn't look like a real BeVo badge. PK

I think the version you've just posted is post-WW2. It has the Italian Republic obverse and bears no Nazi or Fascist symbols. As far as these medals are concerned, it seems that every source or reference that mentions or shows them gives different information! There were two or three types made before and during WW2, each with a different ribbon. And then there was this postwar type. It's quite confusing. PK

That's the colour scheme of the ribbon I now have on the cross. Thanks for showing this one, Hendrik. Nice, old ribbon. PK

Ah yes! The "ADOLPH HITLER MAN OF THE YEAR" cover of January 2nd 1939: the vanishing Hitler cover. When I was features editor of a certain men's magazine, I interviewed Leni Riefenstahl for an article dealing mainly with her cinematic work. In the end, we naturally discussed the Hitlerzeit. She brought it up. Anyway, I also asked other people for side comments, including Helmut Newton, Mick Jagger and various others. The point was made by Riefenstahl that her work for the German government was done before the mainstream demonisation of Hitler. I referred to the TIME cover and Hitler's acclamation as 1938's TIME Man of the Year. Some snotgobbler from TIME or the holding company publishing the magazine got in touch with our publishers, whining about how being nominated as a TIME Man of the Year did not necessarily mean that the recipient of the title was a good person or that TIME approved of them. The missive was duly passed down to us. When we finally stopped rolling about on the floor laughing like the hyenas we horrible journalists are, we sent TIME a tart response saying that the contents of their letter had been noted and asking them, for the record, when we could expect to see Ossama Bin Laden on the cover of TIME as Man of the Year. That was the last we heard about it from TIME... To be fair, the 1939 article did suggest that Hitler posed something of a threat to peace and stability. But he was a regular TIME coverboy from 1931 onwards. TIME only seem to have woken up after Kristallnacht. So, yes, it was quite surprising to find these two articles in TIME's archives. One can only presume that they were written by some Sacred Monster of a contributor whom the editors and their lickspittles were careful not to offend. Mind you, the writer isn't uncomplimentary about Hitler. He sticks it to the Latins. PK

Here's another good one, probably by the same writer. The best bit is the final paragraph, mentioning Neville Chamberlain: click here. Chamberlain seems to have been rather prone to taking dictators' words at face value... PK

A pleasure, gents. I was checking the url in order to post it here - click here to access the TIME article - and realised that I had only quoted the first page! Here's the second part: I wonder if the Spanish ever got their $200m in gold back from the French...or if the Germans purloined it when they entered Paris in June 1940! It is a pity the TIME website doesn't credit the author of the article but, then again, it was rare until comparitively recently for journalists and correspondents to be accorded name bylines so maybe his name is lost. It's a pretty robust commentary, though! PK

I came across this TIME piece whilst checking figures for the Italian presence in Spain and thought it merited a thread of its own for the historians here. It's quite a revealing article. PK

Although not widely known and appreciated, Mussolini actually supplied far more aid to General Franco than Hitler. Apart from ships, hundreds of aircraft, vehicles, cannon and other materials, between 60,000 and 70,000 Italians served in the Italian Legion sent to bolster Franco's revolutionary forces. Here's a TIME report from Monday, 22.5.1939, which is quite revealing: In fact, I think this article deserves a thread of its own. PK

The Italians issued some rather good-looking medals for Spain. Mind you, the one with the naked warrior is rather camp! The cross is quite rare and a member was very kind in sending me a length of the correct ribbon a while ago, incorrectly fitted to another medal. PK

My mistake. In fact, I have the caption on Page 145 of the Milius-Kunzmann book, which was published by the printing house of the HIAG. So it seems likely that the photograph was sent to the HIAG at some point by the Heer Feldwebel whose memory of the moment forms the caption in question. PK

Sure! SS-FJ-Btl 500 underwent parachute training at the Mataruska Banja aerodrome near the Serbian town of Kraljevo under the auspices of instructors from Fallschirmschule III. In other words, Fallschirmschule III was based in Kraljevo and used the neighbouring airfield. They moved to Papa, the Hungarian airborne base, in June and July 1944 with the battalion's Field Training Company but very little parachute training occurred due to shortages. I don't think any SS-FJ actually went near Konitz! PK

Interesting that they're in K?nitz. Probably not relevant but the depot unit for the SS-Jagdverb?nde and the SS-Fallschirmj?ger-Btl was located, nominally at any rate, in K?nitz, as the page from this paybook shows. PK

Sorry man! I just realised that I was in a different thread! Interesting that they're in K?nitz. It may not be relevant but the depot unit for the SS-Jagdverb?nde and the SS-Fallschirmj?ger-Btl was located, nominally at any rate, in K?nitz.

Actually, do you not think it merits its own thread? Why not start a new thread, with a link to this one, in order to get it in front of as many members as possible? PK