Latvian Iron Crosses

[Kev in Deva]

Kevin,

As for flaunting the most hated symbol in the world, fascism is on the rise in Russia. How would you explain that?

Lastly, Democracy is having the ablility to do as you like. With responsibility for ones actions of course. That is one of the benefits of a true democracy. Freedom of choice and action. On the other hand, in a democracy one has the choice to not partake in any actions that they are morally opposed to. Unfortunately people in many countries with a history of strong central rule have a hard time adjusting to this type of personal freedom. Remember that Democracy is positive and constructive while anarchy is negative and destructive. There is no comparision.

All the best, Tony

Hi Tony

in western Europe especialy since the 1960's the youth have looked for ways to show signs of rebellion against what they perceive as the "Control by the State" and it's laws and regulations, student groups have alligned themselves with all sorts of canpaigns, such as the Anarchists, Anti-War, Anti-Establishment, Neo-Nazi groups to have tended to attract students as well as the young un-educated, poor working class types (the type who made the NSDAP what it was at the begining,)

there is also a sprinkling of people who have a good back-ground, well educated, who have had an admiration for the policies of the nazi party and Fascism, either through the family history going back to the 1930's. The people who thought Adolf and Benitto had the right idea, throw into this mix, the anti-semetic ingrediant, the anti-Non White ingrediants, the social misfits, the out and out mentals and you end up with a potent mix.

The USA contribute with its "White-Power" Aryian Nation and KKK" groups who since the use of the internet have no problem setting up their hate web-sites.

In many countries, (including the former Communist controlled ones) now we can see the emergence of the Far-Right Parties who believe their turn for power is coming, actively recruiting the unemployed youth to use as a power base, and to be used as muscle.

A couple of years ago I saw an interesting documentry about for the want of a better word "neo-cossack" groups in Georgia, guys dressing up in the old costumes, singing the old songs, spouting hatred against the Jews ("Remember they killed Christ") being a very common line, they also proudly boasted of their ancestral service with the Germans in WW2 and the honour it had brought them.

Fascism is on the rise all over, the youth are wearing the symbols which they percieve to "P%*@ Off" the authorities.

Racial attacks are on the rise all over even in Russia.

I saw in Budapest, Hungary when the recent disturbances took place, swastika-tattooed youths throwing stones at the police, others with the s.s. runes tattooed on their arms doing the same thing as well, side by side with teenagers in the hoodies wearing the anarchist symbols. I have seen at a collectors meeting in Targu-Mures, Romania a guy dressed in U.S. chocolate-chip camo, with red para boots, on his arms very tastefully tattooed a portrait of Adolf and a depiction of the Iron Cross with swastika, buying up anything, fake or real with a swastika on it!! Probably a fan of the old "IRON GUARD" the Romanian Fascists.

At the dedication of the monument to fallen SS men in one of the Baltic States, a large group of youths, wearing what they percieve as the new uniform of the fascism, Para boots, black combat jacket & pants, stood and chanted, and gave the nazi salute. (how cool )

In Germany the Neo-nazi skinheads do the same, in a couple of years we will have the new, re-packeged "neo-communists" and I have to ask myself has anything at all been learned from the horrors we inflicted upon ourselves between 1936 and today, be it Nazo or Communist.

I myself was born in England, raised in Ireland, my parentage is an Irish father, English mother, and I have heard for years the Anti-British crap from the mouth of youngsters, nearly all starting with. . . . well my Grand-father said the Brits did this... and that..... all over 200 years ago and bearing little relevance to today. I served over 21 years in the Irish Defences Forces and with the U.N. in South Lebanon, so I have seen what, intolarance can do.

But, do we really have to equate power, with total control of others, who differ from us in Race, Religion, Politics?

Will ignorance always offered as an altenative to inteligence and understanding.

Lets hope not.

Kevin in Deva.

Edited April 28, 2007 by Kev in Deva

[Tony J]

Kevin,

We are certainly living in an interesting time.

All the best,

Tony

[ilja559]

The only people who would want to sport such pieces are supporters of the Nazi and the moronic neo-nazi racists of today.

Kevin-

[Tiger-pie]

Crikey!! All I wanted was some info, it wasn't meant to start the "Sh#t-fight at the Baltic Corral".

Regards;

Johnsy

[Kev in Deva]

Crikey!! All I wanted was some info, it wasn't meant to start the "Sh#t-fight at the Baltic Corral".

Regards; Johnsy

Hallo Johnsy

sometimes a simple request for information can spiral out of control, depending upon whom is doing the replying, subjects like this one can bring out some "hot, emotional" respomses depending where the replyer is located, and the associated history of the location, we can all be passionate about our countr'ys history even to the point of ignoring the wrongs commited by it. (and that applys as much to the west as east).

Hopefully such requests can be full-filled without to much hassle, one of the main reasons for having a strict No-Politics rule, perhaps we should have a "No Praising Past Regimes Rule" as well

Kevin in Deva.

[PKeating]

Hallo Gents,

Personally I find it disgusting that Estonian & Latvia to name but two of the former Communist states, totaly disregard regulations concerning the Nazi awards, it seems Fascism is alive and well and promoted in these countries.

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.

Quite recently there was a statue dedicated to Latvian ss scum and a Latvian Army Band was sent along to play some music for the large crowd of old Latvian nazi veteran & young Latvian neo-nazi's who attended.

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.

Ok, so they were occupied by the Russians and controled by Communisum, but you dont rewind the clock back to 1944 and continue like nothing happened.

They are simply honouring their fallen comrades, Kevin. Just as German veterans honour their fallen comrades.

And whats with the "plonker" at WAF "Quote Theodor: Great pictures!!! And I find it wonderful to see German WWII awards been worn today, something extremely rare to see, I believe! After all these are not political, but real bravery awards... End of Quote.)

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

[PKeating]

Hopefully such requests can be full-filled without to much hassle, one of the main reasons for having a strict No-Politics rule, perhaps we should have a "No Praising Past Regimes Rule" as well

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

[PKeating]

The ss were brainwashed political robots who enforced the nazi doctorine on their own people first, then onto the other nations of Europe.

What do you mean by the "SS"? How much do you know about the "SS"?

I must ask did Estonia and Latvia offer any resistance to the German occupation of their county? or, did they do what they did when the Soviets arrived, stayed quite and said nothing.

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.

Coming from a country who lost many people fighting against the nazi's and its allies, I like many in Europe feel an intense dislike to this symbol because of what it represents, to the many victims of nazi tyrany.

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".

Because they were allied with the losers of WW2, Estonia and Latvian WW2 veterans could show some sympathy to the victims of the nazi's by wearing versions of the awards that have been de-natzified.

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.

Just because your countries have seperated from Communist control, does not mean you rewind the clock back to pre-communist occupation, and carry on like nothing has changed since 1945.

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

[Kev in Deva]

PK

you can dress it up any way you want, rewrite European history to convince yourself the iii reich did no wrong, but you are convincing nobody, especialy not me.

Kevin in Deva

[PKeating]

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

Edited May 8, 2007 by PKeating

[Kev in Deva]

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

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

If at any time the Chairman or Vice-chairman or Moderator feel I have overstepped the line then they will surely contact me with regards the issue, I wont be stand idely by listening to you ranting and raving of imagined vendettas, its an old trick when confronted with ones mistakes to shout and scream, hoping to distract the attention away from your own faults and misdeeds, its not the first time I have seen this particular tactic tried on but it does not phase me one bit.

This thread and my posts have been here for weeks, only now in a fit of spite at getting your knuckles rapped over what you posted in the Lounge, did you bother to post so much with regards the "Heros of the iii reich" Seeing how this is a democracy I posted my views, especially when it concerns the admiration of the fascists by the old guys proudly wearing there nazi medals, As I have posted here and else wear we in the west have moved on beyond the point of pro-communist and pro-fascist, we may be pro-capitalist but many people can live with that.

How you can mention the Old I.R.A. in the same context with the S.S. is beyond me, The Old I.R.A were fighting for the freedom of their country, as I recall, The SS on the other hand were spear-heading the invasion of Europe on the pretext of fighting Comminisum and eradicating the Jewish race, and the sub-human species of the east. (Or was that all Allied Propaganda)??

As for the blueshirts, what few survived the Spanish Civil War, were no threat to the stability of Ireland, and had not the political clout to invite hitler to come and join them.

So you had Uncles who took the King's shilling, (like you took the Queens) but they went off to fight Fascism this I can respect.

It seems that you cannot bear anybody to post anything contra-keating, without ranting and raving about alleged past spats, or members of the GMIC out to get you, andwhat has happened on other forums.

Then deliver threatening emails and P.M.'s to the perceived offenders, very paranoid actions Mr. Keating, very paranoid.

Mr. Kevin Ryan.

[PKeating]

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 you had Uncles who took the King's shilling, (like you took the Queens) but they went off to fight Fascism this I can respect.

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

[Kev in Deva]

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

Wrong again Mr. Keating, I am not Irish, I was born in Nottingham and have a nice big crown on my Birth Certificate, futher more my mother was of English blood, the only connection prior moving to Ireland to live was my mother married an Irishman.

And I am proud to have served in the Irish Defence Forces for over 21 years 174 days.

Mr. Kevin Ryan

Edited May 8, 2007 by Kev in Deva

[Paul R]

The man on the far left in this photo is wearing an East German Air Force Officer's jacket, without insignia.

[PKeating]

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

[PKeating]

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

[Tony J]

PK,

Very astute observations that are well written.

Tony

[Nick]

I think this thread has run its course and rather than see another bout of deleted threads like the last thread I just had to delete from Theodor I am going to lock this subject.