British Free Corps/Freikorps

Discussion in 'Axis Units' started by spidge, Jul 31, 2005.

  1. Gnomey

    Gnomey World Travelling Doctor

    Where do you think it belongs and I will move as I am not so sure?
     
  2. No.9

    No.9 Senior Member

    Perhaps in 'General' Gnomey?

    No.9
     
  3. Gnomey

    Gnomey World Travelling Doctor

    That is properly the best place, not sure though as it is a topic that could go in many places.

    *Moderation* Moved to General - Gnomey.
     
  4. No.9

    No.9 Senior Member

    Thank you.

    You could always move it again, or, like some new posters, repeat it in several sections. :)

    Then, it still won't elevate them to the realms of Otto Skorzeny, 'Blondie' Hasler or 'Mad' Jack Churchill.

    No.9
     
  5. spidge

    spidge RAAF RESEARCHER

  6. Gnomey

    Gnomey World Travelling Doctor

    *Topics Merged* - Gnomey
     
  7. Kiwiwriter

    Kiwiwriter Very Senior Member

    I guess this jerk Courlander got time off from prison for good behavior.

    Amazing...stepson of a Jew...I guess his anti-Semitism was really hatred of his stepfather, a typical evil figure in all of our myths and legends.

    He obviously kept a low profile after release.
     
  8. debra

    debra Member

    Does anyone know or have a list of names of military personnel who was in the British Free Corps.

    Thank you!!

    Deb
     
  9. Saracen

    Saracen Junior Member

  10. Saracen

    Saracen Junior Member

  11. spidge

    spidge RAAF RESEARCHER

  12. Harry Ree

    Harry Ree Very Senior Member

    I have to agree with the previously posted comment in the thread of 2005 of being a publicity stunt.Some POWs joined from an extrinsic motivation,a skive and never intended to take up arms.But there were others who had been turned and were drawn into the spirit of their captors and were seduced by the uniform and so called eliteness of the SS and their equipment.

    Whether these people would have fought is a different matter.Some did and were renegades from continental countries which the Nazis had overrun and despite the treatment meted out by the Nazis to their fellow counrtymen, served their new masters to the end.
     
  13. debra

    debra Member

    Thank you all for the information. Deb
     
  14. von Poop

    von Poop Adaministrator Admin

    Worth a look:
    www.bills-bunker.de*
    (It apparently won't link direct to the article on the BFC, just enter and it's about 1/3rd of the way down the left menu)

    Some interesting stuff on allied nationals serving in the SS too.

    I was once in email contact with the daughter of one hyphenated 'gent' mentioned in the above site (she runs a WW2 related site but I can't think of the name of it). Having no illusions about the character of her father she said one of the biggest problems with researching them was that they were near all of a certain shady type to begin with, and it was thus hard to believe anything they said about any subject.

    Cheers,
    Adam.
     
  15. uksubs

    uksubs Senior Member

    I read the book Hitler's Bastards about the British SS
    Of all the extraordinary individual accounts that have come out of World War II and its aftermath, few can compare with that of Eric Pleasants, a member of the "bastard" British wing of Hitler's SS. In this book, Pleasants writes of the bizarre and traumatic years he spent as a prisoner of the 20th century's most notorious dictators. A life-long pacifist, Eric Pleasants was forced to kill in order to survive. From a vagabond life alongside infamous Triple Cross agent Eddie Chapman on occupied Jersey, Pleasants was taken by the Nazis to a series of prison camps in France. The years that followed held a whirlwind of unexpected turns: he lived a life on the run in occupied Paris, was captured and recruited into the British Free Corps of the Waffen-SS, found love with a young German woman, witnessed the bombing of Dresden and attempted to hide from Soviet troops along the sewers of Berlin. When the war ended, Pleasants found himself on the Communist side of the Iron Curtain. By now a strong man in a travelling circus, he was arrested by the KGB on charges of espionage and sentenced to 25 years' slave labour in the notorious camps of Arctic Russia. Only with Stalin's death in 1953 was Pleasants finally released from his unique kind of purgatory, after nearly half a lifetime of peripatetic nightmare. Pleasants died in 1998 at the age of 87.
     
  16. soren1941

    soren1941 Living in Ypres

    Hi,

    This is interesting, I wonder if the occupied channel Islands had any trials/hangings of the officials/Police who rounded up the Jewish populace when the Germans requested it.

    From memory I understand that they were told to attend specific Police stations and the transported as opposed to the police booting the door in getting them, still not palatable thoughis it? - I suppose this detracts from what the thread was initially about- just a thought.

    I suppose what I'm saying is that the 25 or so Brits that joint the British SS from an account recently on TV they were mainly getting drunk and putting it about with the German women - whereas the Police and authorities in the Channel Islands were compliant to the Germans in their round ups.

    Either way I would have thought that the Police/Officials were in a difficult position
     
  17. spidge

    spidge RAAF RESEARCHER

  18. Ron Goldstein

    Ron Goldstein WW2 Veteran WW2 Veteran

    Spidge

    Anything printed under the auspices of the Wiener Library must be taken very seriously and I thank you for bringing this file to our attention.

    Regards

    Ron
     
  19. jason taylor

    jason taylor Junior Member

    Did anyone join from hope of a chance to escape or to make a nuisance to the Germans? Obviously they would say that after words, but was there anyone who clearly did so.
     
  20. uksubs

    uksubs Senior Member

    Did anyone join from hope of a chance to escape or to make a nuisance to the Germans? Obviously they would say that after words, but was there anyone who clearly did so.
    Eric Pleasants in his book Hitler's Bastards about the British SS that he only joined to get prisoner of war camp & that he was a nuisance to the Germans :unsure::rolleyes:
     

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