German poster campaign launched to find surviving Nazis

[Manter]

You learn about one thing, which leads you to another, which leads you to another...
Imagine getting paid to do that!

Sadly to get decent pay it seems you have to be photogenic and willing to go on TV these days.... I may just have to figure out how to breastfeed with one hand and research with the other and get the most out of my mat leave

 

[frogwoman]

The SS had less excuse than regular soldiers. They were a select formation of ideological/political as well as military soldiers. They knew what their loyalty oaths entailed in a way that a lot of new recruits to the three services didn't.

As well as the military training the SS also went through political/ideological training and there were elite schools which could "fast-track" people to be SS officers like "Adolf Hitler Schools" and so on where they learnt about the evils of "the jew" and "racial science" and how they were part of an elite Aryan race and all that nordic shit Himmler was into with the runes. The fucking hippy chicken-farmer. How did he get to hold such power.

 

[ViolentPanda]

So if they were forced to under threat of death then hopefully the investigations will establish this (assuming they're not going to fit someone up obviously and let a real cunt get away with it) and if somebody was forced to do it and has spent their whole life a broken man because of it then hopefully the case won't go to trial. And determine who ordered these deaths and whether they are still alive.

The prosecutors even at Nuremburg were well aware of the distinctions between service in the state military and the SS (although they chose not to take them into account to any great degree - "victor's justice" and all that), so yeah, any modern prosecution should be able to discern whether an individual was subject to compulsion under a degree of duress.

 

[Manter]

As well as the military training the SS also went through political/ideological training and there were elite schools which could "fast-track" people to be SS officers like "Adolf Hitler Schools" and so on where they learnt about the evils of "the jew" and "racial science" and how they were part of an elite Aryan race and all that nordic shit Himmler was into with the runes. The fucking hippy chicken-farmer. How did he get to hold such power.

some of that occult stuff he was into was seriously odd- Hitler even made a very pointed speech in ?1938 saying national socialism was based on scientific, rational thinking, not mysticism and such rubbish.... but then let the SS get on with running round Europe looking for magic objects! Again, not an area I know much about- I can't read much about mystical stuff without grinding my teeth at the best of times, and the crap that is written about the nazis and mysticism....

 

[ViolentPanda]

I'd be right in saying that post victory for the allied forces it was the SS who were branded specifically a criminal grouping right? as opposed to tank reg, footsloggers and so on who were while not absolved, were not under a blanket criminal charge for being part of the org? I may have that wrong, I'm no expert but it rings a bell

e2a

and by 'not absolved' I mean not immune from answering for shit if they did it whereas the SS were up on a charge because they were ss

I think the most generally used term was "forbidden organisation", and w/r/t membership, for "other ranks" stuff such as whether your regt was "rolled up" into an SS formation, or membership became compulsory for your profession within the military etc, was taken into consideration. Your name was still on a list, though, if only so that Gehlen and his cockroaches could squeeze maximum benefit from you.

 

[frogwoman]

some of that occult stuff he was into was seriously odd- Hitler even made a very pointed speech in ?1938 saying national socialism was based on scientific, rational thinking, not mysticism and such rubbish.... but then let the SS get on with running round Europe looking for magic objects! Again, not an area I know much about- I can't read much about mystical stuff without grinding my teeth at the best of times, and the crap that is written about the nazis and mysticism....

Well there began to be a bit of a "power struggle" between Himmler and Hitler in the latter stages of the war but like you say it was probably present a bit before that. The SS began to be a bit of a law unto itself and a "state within a state" even within the Nazi state especially in the final stages of its disintegration. I did read some speculation a few years ago when I was doing History A Levels that if the war had continued a bit longer Himmler could well have launched some sort of attempt to sideline Hitler and take over the country.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Sadly to get decent pay it seems you have to be photogenic and willing to go on TV these days.... I may just have to figure out how to breastfeed with one hand and research with the other and get the most out of my mat leave

Or you can be a right-wing twat like Starkey or Ferguson, then the media will lap you up however homely you are!

 

[Manter]

I think the most generally used term was "forbidden organisation", and w/r/t membership, for "other ranks" stuff such as whether your regt was "rolled up" into an SS formation, or membership became compulsory for your profession within the military etc, was taken into consideration. Your name was still on a list, though, if only so that Gehlen and his cockroaches could squeeze maximum benefit from you.

Also easier to identify 'real' waffen SS due to the tattoos... tho you have to feel a bit sorry for a wehrmacht man who ended up in an SS hospital....

 

[ViolentPanda]

As well as the military training the SS also went through political/ideological training and there were elite schools which could "fast-track" people to be SS officers like "Adolf Hitler Schools" and so on where they learnt about the evils of "the jew" and "racial science" and how they were part of an elite Aryan race and all that nordic shit Himmler was into with the runes. The fucking hippy chicken-farmer. How did he get to hold such power.

Germanic shit, of which "Nordic" was one sub-group. The Adolf Hitler schools, in a move I've always thought rather prophetic of the decline of civilisation, also taught "management studies" as a basic subject.

 

[Manter]

Or you can be a right-wing twat like Starkey or Ferguson, then the media will lap you up however homely you are!

Not sure I can manage rabid right wing male.... my career as a historical guru on t'telly may be doomed before it has started
As it happens I always said I would do what I do for a decade or so and then take a sabbatical to write a book about the 'Tsar liberator' and the end of serfdom.... I figured I could investigate so much fascinating stuff about the barking orthodox cults (self castration, anyone?), the revolutionary movements that started/took off round then, the development of the Russian bourgeoise, etc etc.

Having a baby and a mortgage may have put paid to that pipe dream

 

[frogwoman]

some of that occult stuff he was into was seriously odd- Hitler even made a very pointed speech in ?1938 saying national socialism was based on scientific, rational thinking, not mysticism and such rubbish.... but then let the SS get on with running round Europe looking for magic objects! Again, not an area I know much about- I can't read much about mystical stuff without grinding my teeth at the best of times, and the crap that is written about the nazis and mysticism....

The Nazi/occult stuff is often mixed up with conspiraloonery and there is as far as I know, little evidence that Hitler himself went for much of it. I think that he liked to think of himself as rational and of National Socialism as a "science" and that this mystic shit was a distraction. Many high-ranking or influential Nazis were very into what we would now think of as mysticism and crackpot "alternative medicines". For example Julius Streicher who owned the Der Sturmer newspaper which was devoted to hate propaganda and calls to exterminate the Jews also founded a "medical journal" called "German People's Health Through Blood and Soil!" during which he promoted alternative cures and opposed vaccinations among other things. This journal was eventually shut down by the Nazis after a few issues and Streicher got in trouble with the regime over it, because of the possibility of public health risks.

Alfred Rosenberg and his "myth of the 20th century" and attempts to be "the reich philosopher" was another one who was into mystical bollocks and Goering was another one too iirc.

 

[Manter]

The Nazi/occult stuff is often mixed up with conspiraloonery and there is as far as I know, little evidence that Hitler himself went for much of it. I think that he liked to think of himself as rational and of National Socialism as a "science" and that this mystic shit was a distraction. Many high-ranking or influential Nazis were very into what we would now think of as mysticism and crackpot "alternative medicines". For example Julius Streicher who owned the Der Sturmer newspaper which was devoted to hate propaganda and calls to exterminate the Jews also founded a "medical journal" called "German People's Health Through Blood and Soil!" during which he promoted alternative cures and opposed vaccinations among other things. This journal was eventually shut down by the Nazis after a few issues and Streicher got in trouble with the regime over it, because of the possibility of public health risks.

Alfred Rosenberg and his "myth of the 20th century" and attempts to be "the reich philosopher" was another one who was into mystical bollocks and Goering was another one too iirc.

are there any decent books on it that aren't conspiraloon territory? Would be interested to find out more, but even the covers make me cringe- anything that says it uses the secret diaries of Hitler's satanic mentors (!) makes me face palm lots

 

[ViolentPanda]

some of that occult stuff he was into was seriously odd- Hitler even made a very pointed speech in ?1938 saying national socialism was based on scientific, rational thinking, not mysticism and such rubbish.... but then let the SS get on with running round Europe looking for magic objects! Again, not an area I know much about- I can't read much about mystical stuff without grinding my teeth at the best of times, and the crap that is written about the nazis and mysticism....

I don't think there's any mystery about Hitler's claims to rational thinking - he told people what they wanted to hear, then carried on ploughing his own furrow.
The mysticism was actually quite rational in some ways too, given the mixed messages the Nazis sent to those Germans who were Christian and religious - it gave a "spiritual outlet" for those who bought into the mythos of the third reich, and the accumulation of "objects of power" was no different to the 1st reich's acquisition of Catholic relics insofar as it fed the belief of the spiritual types and helped bind them to the state.
The (mostly Himmler-motivated) mysticism of the war years is a slightly different story. His near-obsession with the Teutonic Knights and the various mystical and magic(k)al accomplishments and occurrences attributed to them meant that he came to view the SS as a modern incarnation of the Teutons, as evidenced by the various ceremonies and rites he envisioned Wewelsburg as being the site for.
IIRC Butchersapron recommended Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke's "Black Sun - Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity" as a bearable read on the subject.

 

[butchersapron]

I don't think there's any mystery about Hitler's claims to rational thinking - he told people what they wanted to hear, then carried on ploughing his own furrow.
The mysticism was actually quite rational in some ways too, given the mixed messages the Nazis sent to those Germans who were Christian and religious - it gave a "spiritual outlet" for those who bought into the mythos of the third reich, and the accumulation of "objects of power" was no different to the 1st reich's acquisition of Catholic relics insofar as it fed the belief of the spiritual types and helped bind them to the state.
The (mostly Himmler-motivated) mysticism of the war years is a slightly different story. His near-obsession with the Teutonic Knights and the various mystical and magic(k)al accomplishments and occurrences attributed to them meant that he came to view the SS as a modern incarnation of the Teutons, as evidenced by the various ceremonies and rites he envisioned Wewelsburg as being the site for.
IIRC Butchersapron recommended Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke's "Black Sun - Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity" as a bearable read on the subject.

Well worth the read, his previous one Occult Roots of Nazism is better (despite the double naff title).

(I can do pdfs if anyone wants)

 

[Manter]

Thx- will try them

 

[ViolentPanda]

Not sure I can manage rabid right wing male.... my career as a historical guru on t'telly may be doomed before it has started
As it happens I always said I would do what I do for a decade or so and then take a sabbatical to write a book about the 'Tsar liberator' and the end of serfdom.... I figured I could investigate so much fascinating stuff about the barking orthodox cults (self castration, anyone?)...

The much-banned Skoptsi and their various imitators? Wasn't Rasputin accused of being one (somewhat in contradiction to the legend around his pickled dick)?

the revolutionary movements that started/took off round then, the development of the Russian bourgeoise, etc etc.

Having a baby and a mortgage may have put paid to that pipe dream

or not. If you've got the book in you, it'll invariably fight it's way out.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Well worth the read, his previous one Occult Roots of Nazism is better (despite the double naff title).

(I can do pdfs if anyone wants)

Please!!!

 

[butchersapron]

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[frogwoman]

I'm not sure how much is out there that's specifically out there about Nazi mysticism - I could try and find out for you though. There is a book called "Black Sun" which Butchers recommended a while back but I haven't read it and that is supposed to be the most reputable work on the topic.

a lot of these are books I read years ago and haven't read since so I may well be missing stuff etc. And I am sure that someone will be along to tell me why they're crap

If you are looking for a book about the ideology of fascism and the role of "faith" and pseudo religious fervour in it that he describes, then John Weiss's "fascism" is very very good, anything by Roger Griffin and Mark Neocleous also cover the same ground.

Ian Kershaw's "Hitler: Hubris" and "Hitler: Nemesis" as well as, I think, both very reputable, well-researched biographies of Hitler which do a very good job of demolishing some of the crap that has built up around it (that he was gay, that he was jewish etc).

I have also read Michael Burleigh's "Death and Deliverance" which was about Aktion-T4, how it was implemented and the ideology behind doing it. I think his other books are also meant to be quite good but I get the feeling he may be a bit of a tory - not sure though.

Mason's "Nazism Fascism and the German Working Class" about working class Resistance in Germany and Saul Friedlander's "years of extermination" which is quite good as an account of the Shoah but from what I can remember (maybe I missed something while reading it) it doesn't really go into the detail of why anti-semitism became so popular in Germany and doesn't really give much "back story".

There's a book about Nazi doctors in Auschwitz with interviews of ex war criminals by Robert Jay Lifton which is all right, I do think that at times he may be a bit too sympathetic to his subjects though and it annoyed me how they spent loads of time pontificating about their moral dilemmas. It's quite interesting though but some of the descriptions are quite distressing.

There's plenty of propaganda material from the Nazis on this page (if you can stomach it) and you can read their mystical bollocks for yourself. He has also written a book on Streicher which I haven't read but which is meant to be good.

Joachim Fest who wrote a book about Nazi war criminals including a chapter on Alfred Rosenberg who he describes as somebody who was a misfit among the nazis and who launched some half hearted protest and appeared not to fully realise what his philosophies about "the jew" led to when he actually had any real power because he had spent most of his life up to his neck in shit books and never realised what his pseudo intellectual bullshit led to in real life.

There's another one I read ages ago about economics in the Third Reich, I can't remember the title though!

 

[Manter]

The much-banned Skoptsi and their various imitators? Wasn't Rasputin accused of being one (somewhat in contradiction to the legend around his pickled dick)?

They are the ones. I read a book that contained a very detailed description of how one castrated oneself without catastrophic bloodloss. Can't remember the book, but remember the chapter very, very clearly <<shudder>>
Rasputin was rumoured to be a Khlysty- they (rather fabulously) believed that the way to grace was through forgiveness, and you couldn't be forgiven unless you had sinned- ergo, to get to heaven you should sin more so there was extra to forgive

 

[Manter]

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thankyou!

 

[frogwoman]

Just been reading that Alfred Rosenberg essay again. I think this may be the sort of thing you're looking for Manter

Rosenberg followed life to Munich, where to begin with he lived laboriously by taking odd jobs. He quickly found his way into Russian emigre circles and made contact with the Thule Society, a nationalist secret society with an occult tinge that practised a sectarian Aryan and Germanic cult — chiefly against a background of sinister horror stories and shabby 'revelations' about Jews, Freemasons and Bolsheviks — before becoming for a time the centre of counter-revolutionary activities in Bavaria. Both encounters left an indelible impression in the soft wax of Alfred Rosenberg's personality. Soon after his meeting with Hitler, arranged by Dietrich Eckart, and his entry into the party, he fostered emigre discontent through theLebensraum idea, the basic foreign policy concept of the Hitler movement, while the impressions received in the Thule Society marked the direction and style of his secondary philosophical undertaking. The very titles of his first publications make this clear enough: 'The Tracks of the Jew Through the Ages' and 'Immorality in the Talmud' (1920), 'The Crime of Free-masonry' (1921), 'The Morass, or Plague in Russia' (1922). He was also one of the main disseminators of the famous forgery 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Jewish World Politics' (1923), which with all his naive-courageous readiness for self-committal he had republished in 1940. (15) In this and all his subsequent writings he revealed himself as a man of profound half-culture, acquainted with countless apocryphal sources and theories and all the cranky tract literature of pathological nationalist fanaticism, a reader who assimilated his mass of reading rapidly, uncritically, and inaccurately, so that the result was always in line with his preconceived opinions. His growing literary output, which brought him the over-valued status of 'chief ideologist' of the NSDAP, culminated in The Myth of the Twentieth Century in 1930 — according to a contemporary bibliography

[...]

The whole work, in its vehemence and attempted profundity, was based on emotional arguments like these, safeguarded against any objective, logical refutation. Consistently with this, Rosenberg evolved his theory that cultural and state-creating genius was peculiar to Nordic man, not by demonstrating the presence of Nordic blood in the peoples distinguished by such achievements, but by the opposite method, which is difficult to contest; wherever he saw an important culture-creating force at work, as in Greek antiquity, he took this as proof of his incontrovertible initial thesis. In his basic pessimism he saw Germanness, the priceless sediment in the bowl of Nordic blood, and thereby the whole world, as threatened by downfall and destruction. As a symptom of disintegration he lamented the 'psychic bastardisation of our people' and linked with it the 'loss of natural good sense' as well as of 'will-determined Nordic aesthetics'. (18) In a cosmic system of evaluation and devaluation he proclaimed the dissolution of the Christian-Syrian-liberal world idea and contrasted it with the new values which naturally required for their full development the acquisition of new Lebensraum. Action and struggle took the place of compassion and humanity, the 'beautiful' was contrasted with the 'good', 'love' was displaced by the masculine Germanic concept of 'honour', and all this in turn was placed under the heading of a blood-determined interpretation of existence:

 

[frogwoman]

Today a new faith is stirring: the myth of blood, the faith that along with blood we are defending the divine nature of man as a whole. The belief, incarnate with the most lucid knowledge, that Nordic blood represents that mystery which has replaced and overcome the old sacraments. (19)​

 

[ViolentPanda]

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Thank you.

 

[ViolentPanda]

They are the ones. I read a book that contained a very detailed description of how one castrated oneself without catastrophic bloodloss. Can't remember the book, but remember the chapter very, very clearly <<shudder>>
Rasputin was rumoured to be a Khlysty- they (rather fabulously) believed that the way to grace was through forgiveness, and you couldn't be forgiven unless you had sinned- ergo, to get to heaven you should sin more so there was extra to forgive

"So, Tsarina, by sucking this you will help me get to Heaven!".

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I'm very uneasy about this. As the trials of Demjanjuk showed, establishing any facts at such a distance in time is massively difficult, both for the prosecution and the defence. The possibilities of mistaken identity are huge, and even where identity can be established, the ability of the defence to put forward any kind of case is pretty much zero - it's not just most of the potential witnesses for the prosecution that are dead; so are most potential witnesses for the defence. As unpalatable as the idea may be to some, I think it's just too late. I also doubt the German state's right to do such a thing. On whose authority? Again, another problem with the distance in time - imo it is anachronistic for the German state to prosecute anyone for Nazi atrocities.

 

[frogwoman]

well they've certainly demonstrated that it's anachronistic to them in the past.

 

[frogwoman]

there's always excuses for criminals protected by the establishment. "he's too old". "he's a national treasure". "he ran loads of marathons for charity". "he's pissed off the US". Not saying you're doing this lbj. but this shit makes me sick.

 

[Manter]

Today a new faith is stirring: the myth of blood, the faith that along with blood we are defending the divine nature of man as a whole. The belief, incarnate with the most lucid knowledge, that Nordic blood represents that mystery which has replaced and overcome the old sacraments. (19)​

that picture is quite amazingly gross!

 

[frogwoman]

I'm very uneasy about this. As the trials of Demjanjuk showed, establishing any facts at such a distance in time is massively difficult, both for the prosecution and the defence. The possibilities of mistaken identity are huge, and even where identity can be established, the ability of the defence to put forward any kind of case is pretty much zero - it's not just most of the potential witnesses for the prosecution that are dead; so are most potential witnesses for the defence. As unpalatable as the idea may be to some, I think it's just too late. I also doubt the German state's right to do such a thing. On whose authority? Again, another problem with the distance in time - imo it is anachronistic for the German state to prosecute anyone for Nazi atrocities.

Why have any trials about anything then?