An interesting book review from the National Post http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/11/04/thomas-harding-10-minutes-alone-with-the-butcher-of-auschwitz/
I remember back in 1994 on the 50th of the liberation of Belsen Channel 4 interviewed the officer who's unit had discovered the camp ,he was sitting in a chair at home being interviewed he stated as we were driving back to my HQ I felt sick ,I spotted a German asked my driver to pull over I got out the jeep walked over to the German and shot him with my pistol ! the interviewer was some what shocked at this ,then the old boy said yes I felt better after that , then he comments on the German he killed had been wearing his Hitler Youth uniform !
What's the deal with the exclamation mark ? a) you think he was right to shoot the hitler youth kid ? b.) After he said that, the BBC interviewer grinned and nodded apreciatively ? c) other ? Just remember.. that Nazi germany is just one example how an evil governance does murderous and illegal inhumane acts..after which its people that have nothing to do with it get to pay the price. If that shooting is allright, then surely you 'd be inclined to shoot the ordinary young american today for all the vile acts the US government has done up till today and going on, regarding killing innocent civilians (socalled "by-product") in places as Pakistan, and the NSA monitoring actions of all european citizens, to name a few. And f.y.i. all youth sporting and church collection clubs were FORCED to be part of the Hitler Youth in the mid 30's to be allowed to keep going on (and of course slowly be infiltrated by nazi propaganda). A hitler youth boy (8 years? 16 years?) is thus in effect NOTHING more than a BadenPowell boyscout. Same "militaristic" uniform. And that boy got murdered. Even if the boy was called to arms (which I suppose was not the case as he would be still in the POW camps), the fact that he walked freely SHOWS that he was not convicted or suspected form murdering jews or others. As an extra note: I have read more accounts of such ugly acts of western allies troops (even in Holland border towns..as mistaken for German towns). The above story is no exception.
Paraphrasing Freud, sometimes an exclamation mark is just an exclamation mark. With your circumlocution you are assuming the poster's intentions concerning said exclamation mark before he replies.
Over the years I've heard and read about similar occurrences to the one mentioned above and have come to the conclusion that 'a war crime is a war crime, unless it's committed by an Allied soldier'.
It's called ''victors justice" but that doesn't make it right and, as I am sure we are all aware, it still goes on. Most of us are also 'afternoon armchair experts' and not actually at the Sharp End....that's called hindsight and setting the standards by which others must live and is what politicians do. As far as the Belsen incident is concerned, we weren't there so don't know the full story and it's context. Not making excuses, just making a few observations.
We had an excellent thread where Hitler Youth types were involved in the murders of RAF air-crew so they weren't all innocent little boys. War is shit & shit happens.
True enough. How could it be otherwise. Do you see much appetite on the part of the Allies or the public, to be prosecuting Allied soldiers after the war? War is killing and it wasn't always tidy and according to the rules. Under the circumstances, a soldier killing a German after leaving Belsen isn't that great a shock to me. I agree with Za. Arnhem got a lot more than I ever realized could be interpreted from a single punctuation mark!!!!!
If you read the article in the original post you'll be more familiar with the context. Quite interestng, really.
As you say, good background albeit not in a precise Belsen context but which can also be interpreted in a more general manner and which no doubt applies to many/all similar circumstances and locations . My father suffered nightmares well into the 1960's because of Belsen and 'all' he did was drive past the entrance as part of the British 11th Armoured Division and deliver food parcels.
Hitler Youth. An appeal to The Guards Armoured Division from the good folks of Bützfleth: http://ww2talk.com/forums/topic/45781-the-news-guardian-gad-and-intelligence-report-may-45/?p=539567
The point of the exclamation mark was that very matter of fact the old boy siting in his very comfortable home in a very matter of fact way stated he stopped the first German he noticed in uniform and shot him ,it just happened to be a Hitler Youth lad , prior to this after leaving Belsen he had pulled in to a abandoned Luftwaffe officers mess ,he went in to the toilets which were immaculate and by each urinal he noticed a pair of handles ,he assumed that these were for holding on to whilst vomiting after a good nights boozing in the mess ,and this a mile or so from the camp where people were being worked to death ,not sure what I would do either in the circumstances ? The same documentary covered from the American angle when the infantry unit over ran a camp and chased the guards across a barrack area killing them as they ran away and then lining the survivors against a fence and machine gunning them ,all of this was detailed by the combat cameraman who was being interviewed, he stated that the unit was completely out of control and the officer commanding the section had lost control for a period of time ,if I recall its the incident that stills are taken from and used in quite a few books .
I am aghast! Schocked! The proper procedure would have been to summon a number of legal professionals commensurate to the number of people nominated as suspect of undefined offenses and then have them properly arraigned to form after having them removed from the scene of the alleged disturbance by qualified personnel for their safety.
Wearing an identifiable Nazi uniform, at that point in the war, and in close proximity to Belsen, could reasonably be regarded as putting ones self in harms way.
Whether or not this young Hitler youth was forced to wear his uniform or not is irrelevant !! many were still brain-washed enough to be proud of this. The Jews were FORCED to wear their striped clothing with the star of St David on in order to be recognised and murdered in their millions. It must have been a completely, terrible out-of-this-world experience for all concerned. As for the loss of one more Pro-Nazi?
Have you got a copy of that program on video at all? If so let arnhem44 have a copy & he can report the veteran for commiting a war crime.
Yes great idea ! very sorry do not have a copy ,but it was Channel 4 50th for the liberation of the camps and a major documentry so out there some where , also while hes at it the first half of the documentry follows the yanks in to the first camp they came across and showed the full film of the guards attempting to escape and being shot down ,then lined up and a few shot out of hand even had the camera mans interview so can use that for the legal team , i think the British old boy was quite proud of what he did .
There are several interviews of troops explaining how they had executed both SS and Wehrmacht POWs post the Liberation of some of the Camps in cold blood - rather amazed that the PC Police today are not boosting their figures with a series of arrests and show trials.
On the liberation of Dachau,US troops entering the camp shot a number of SS guards who it transpired years later were Hungarian SS.The Hungarians had been posted in to take the place of the usual SS concentration guards who had mysteriously been posted out only a few weeks before the Germans capitulated. I would have thought that the Hungarians would have been aware of the danger of being caught on a concentration camp amidst the many dead and dying...but they weren't and paid the price of the reaction of US troops entering the camp.
Ah yes, I remember reading about this incident many years ago, couldnt remember if they were SS or Wehrmacht. You've cleared that up Harry, cheers for that.
