Germans Prisoners Scalped?

Discussion in 'The Lounge Bar' started by canuck, Sep 5, 2011.

  1. canuck

    canuck Closed Account

    The Canadian Press - ONLINE EDITION

    Native vets, historians outraged by book's claim of Second World War scalping
    By: John Ward, The Canadian Press

    OTTAWA - A French historian's claim that Canadian soldiers of native origin scalped prisoners during the Second World War has drawn outrage from aboriginal veterans and scorn from academics.
    The allegation has been described as "racist,'' "appalling'' and "garbage."
    The grotesque accusation is found in Olivier Wieviorka's book, "Normandy," an otherwise conventional account of the lead-up to D-Day and the eventual liberation of Paris. It was first published in France in 2007. Harvard University Press published a hardcover edition in 2008 and has just re-issued it in paperback.
    The offending passage comes in a segment discussing atrocities. After briefly outlining the 12 SS Panzer division's penchant for murdering PoWs (many of them Canadians) during the Normandy campaign, Wieviorka turns to what he says are Allied atrocities.
    Among them: "Some Canadian soldiers of native Indian origin scalped their captives."
    No source or footnote is given. Harvard University Press did not reply to an email asking for comment.
    Alex Maurice of Beauval, Sask., president of the National Aboriginal Veterans Association, is furious.
    "This is racism at its ugliest, and I can only assume that person watched too, too many John Wayne movies,'' he said when told of the claim.
    He said his uncle landed on D-Day with the Regina Rifle Regiments.
    "My uncle . . . and the rest of the Regina Rifles soldiers didn't insult their fellow soldiers by killing German prisoners of war, much less scalping them.
    "Regina Rifles, those that landed in Normandy, were comprised of many, many native soldiers who were trappers, hunters, fishers, labourers, and young men who walked out to join the Canadian military and served with honour and the racist comments (scalping) are doing them a disservice."
    Canadian historians scoff at Wieviorka's claim.
    Scott Sheffield, a history professor at the University of the Fraser Valley in Abbottsford, B.C., has spent 15 years researching the role of aboriginals in the Canadian army of the Second World War.
    "I have spoken to many indigenous and non-indigenous veterans, read widely across the literature, delved into virtually every archival source on the subject, and have never encountered such a case,'' he said.
    He said he was "stunned'' to see such an accusation made without supporting evidence.
    "I can imagine that such claims might have been imagined by military or media commentators of that day and age, given the racial assumptions about the Indian that prevailed in Canadian, and also German, society. But to reproduce that imaginative historical stereotyping in a supposedly objective modern historical work, especially without substantiation, is appalling.''
    Whitney Lackenbauer, an historian from the University of Waterloo who has also studied native participation in the military, was equally dismissive.
    "I have never heard any such allegations — and I presume that I would have given my extensive work on aboriginal people in the world wars," he said.
    "The unsubstantiated rumours peddled by authors like Wieviorka — who fail to even cite their sources — should be dismissed with the disdain that they deserve."
    Terry Copp, professor emeritus at Wilfrid Laurier University and author of two well-received books on the Canadian army in Normandy and northwest Europe, scorned Wieviorka's claim as "just garbage without evidence."
    "When I was working on the book on the Regina Rifles, who had a significant number of aboriginal and Metis soldiers, especially in D company, commanded by my co-author, the late Gordon Brown, there was not a hint of this and nothing but admiration for the behaviour of these soldiers.
    "Stories like these get handed around and embellished."
    Dean Oliver, director of research at the Canadian War Museum, said the lack of attribution for the claim is telling.
    "I’d be extremely wary, as anecdotal references often have legs that travel stubbornly disconnected from factual bodies,'' he said.
    "There are, of course, some documented instances of prisoner mistreatment by Allied forces in northwest Europe . . . but none that I’ve seen which demonstrate Canadian involvement or complicity in what your source appears to be describing."
    A spokesman for the Royal Canadian Legion laughed at the allegation, saying he'd never heard of such a thing.
    Wieviorka has written a number of books and articles on France under German occupation and on the wartime resistance movement.
     
  2. Za Rodinu

    Za Rodinu Hot air manufacturer

    Canuck, I find your post racist and offensive.

    "Alex Maurice of Beauval, Sask., president of the National Aboriginal Veterans Association, is furious.
    "This is racism at its ugliest, and I can only assume that person watched too, too many John Wayne movies,'' he said when told of the claim."

    You won't find a single documented instance of John Wayne scalping any prisoners. Now if the man had said Lee Marvin then ...
     
  3. Jedburgh22

    Jedburgh22 Very Senior Member

    Hmm - scalping was an interesting historic product of keeping tally, I have heard of ears being collected in some civilizations, and in others (more modern) hands - I suppose in future DNA samples of the dead will be taken before burial.
     
  4. canuck

    canuck Closed Account

    This can't be true!!

    From Military History @ Suite 101

    "Sgt John Fulcher was a full blooded Cherokee Indian in the US 36th Infantry Division landing at Salerno on September 8, 1943. Fighting up the Italian countryside, Fulcher became the head of a scout sniper section of ten men that operated in the gray areas between the US and German lines, ambushing small patrols and sniping Nazi officers. His sniper section included several other Native Americans, among them two Black Hills Sioux Indians who, besides being skilled marksmen, were very adept at the use of small army hatchets in close warfare. On one occasion they left a patrol of "nine [German] soldiers, all scalped, sitting neatly like ducks in a row alongside the road with their hands crossed neatly in their laps" Fulcher also stated that "When you go into combat you revert to the most vicious kind of animal that ever walked the earth. You become a predator. I got to where it hurt me more to kill a good dog that a human being."
    After World War II other Native American tribes including at least one group of Comanche and the Skidi Band of the Pawnee nation added authentic German scalps to their scalp dances for young men going off to war. How these scalps came to be in America is not known."
     
  5. martin14

    martin14 Senior Member

    Just more revisionist unsubstantiated white guilt self hate anti American garbage.


    I'm guessing Wieviorka just loves to write how 'bad' the Allies were, all supported by official orders I suppose.
     
  6. marcus69x

    marcus69x I love WW2 meah!!!

    This is not the first time I've heard of this.

    I have a book on first person accounts where an allied soldier describes an overwhelming desire to cut off the blonde scalp of a dead German soldier but decides not to and moves on.
     
  7. von Poop

    von Poop Adaministrator Admin

  8. Dave55

    Dave55 Atlanta, USA

    I'm guessing that a Cherokee Indian in 1944 would have about the same knowledge of how to scalp someone as I do in 2011. :)

    To paraphrase Cheech and Chong, "Sound like B.S. to me"

    Dave

    "HOW" to scalp someone! I made a funny!!!!
     

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