Waffen-SS och die Wehrmacht

I slutet av sept 1944 började kriget i Lappland. Den 25 april 1945 var tyskarna utdrivna och Finlands krigsår var slut.

"---TEXEL MASSACRE (April 1945)

On the island of Texel, just off the coast of Holland, some 800 Soviet soldiers from Georgia (drafted into the Red Army and who volunteered to join the German Army after being taken prisoner during the German advance into the Soviet Union) decided to mutiny against their German masters. They had been formed into the 822nd Infantry Battalion, and were led by around 400 German officers and NCOs. One night at the end of April, the Georgians, led by a Lt. Shalva Loladze, stealthily entered the German quarters and killed 246 German soldiers as they slept. German battalions were sent from the mainland to secure the island and hunt down the rebels. Summary justice was then dispensed to the Georgians, four or five being tied together and grenades placed between them. Only 235 were left alive out of the original 800 when the Canadians occupied the island in May. Unfortunately, during the hunt, 117 Texelers were also killed. A total of 476 Georgians lie buried in unmarked graves in the Georgian War Cemetery on Texel.---"

"---CEFALONIA MASSACRE ( September, 1943)

Almost unknown outside of Italy, this event ranks with Katyn as one of the darkest episodes of the war. On the Greek island of Cefalonia, in the Gulf of Corinth, the Italian ‘ACQUI DIVISION' was stationed. Consisting of 11,500 enlisted men and 525 officers it was commanded by 52 year old General Antonio Gandin, a veteran of the Russian Front where he won the German Iron Cross. When the Badoglio government announced on September 8, 1943, that Italian troops should cease hostilities against the Allies, there was much wine and merriment on Cefalonia. However, their German counterparts on the island maintained a stony silence and soon began harassing their Italian comrades, calling them 'traitors'. The German 11th Battalion of Jäger-Regiment 98 of the 1st Gebirgs (Mountain) Division, commanded by Major Harald von Hirschfeld, arrived on the island and soon Stukas were bombing the Italian positions. The fighting soon developed into a wholesale massacre when the Gebirgsjäger troops began shooting their Italian prisoners in groups of four to ten beginning with General Gandin. By the time the shooting ended four hours later, 4,750 Italian soldiers lay dead all over the island. But that was not the end for the Acqui Division, some 4000 survivors were shipped to the mainland for further transportation to Germany for forced labour. In the Ionian Sea a few of the ships hit mines and sank, taking around 3,000 men to their deaths.

The final death toll in this tragic episode was 9,646 men and 390 officers. Major Harald Hirschfeld was later killed by a bomb splinter during the fighting at Duklapass in Warsaw in 1945 after he was promoted to Lieutenant General. General Hubert Lanz, commander of the Gebirgsjäger troops, was sentenced to 12 years imprisonment at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials. He was released in 1951. In the 1950s, the remains of over 3,000 soldiers, including 189 officers, were unearthed and transported back to Italy for proper burial in the Italian War Cemetery at Bari. Unfortunately, the body of General Gandin was never identified. In 2002, the investigation into this massacre was reopened in Germany and ten ex-members of the 1st Gebirgs Division, of the 300 still alive, have been investigated and may be charged. The youngest is 81 and the oldest is now 93. There is no Statute of Limitations for murder.---"

"---Accordingly, a report from the Laeder for POlitical propaganda of the 5th Army from Rovno dated May 4, 1941, on the "Morale of the Population of the General Gouvernement" noted the "first indications of a collapse in morale in the German Wehrmacht" [Source: BA-MA, RW 4/v. 325, 4.5. 1941]. The German soldiers were said to be unsatisfied, and this dissatisfaction was said to find expression in "open and covert opinions against the war and against Hitler's policies", "in hostile statements", in "the distribution of Communist propaganda literature", in "drunkenness", "Quarrelsomeness", "suicides", "lack of enjoyment in doing service", and "desertion". In plain language, the "Plan for POlitically Securing Military Operations during the Offensive" says:

'It is necessary to deal the enemy a very hard, lightning-like blow, in order to quickly shatter the morale and strength of resistance of the soldiers......a lightning-like blow by the Red Army will undoubtedly have the consequence of a growing and deepening of the phenomena of decomposition already becoming perceptible in the enemy army...'

The "concentration of the army, the capture of lines of departure, and preparation to traverse the Bug [River]" were viewed as the "first" stage, and this formulation alone shows the preparation of an offensive war.---"

Kanske någon har lust att diskutera synen på och värderingen av de stridande tyska förbanden under andra världskriget? Ska de "fördömas" mer än andra soldater, ska alla misstänkliggöras för krigsförbrytelser, är det berömvärt att som sker i så gott som alla Hollywoodfilmer med krigstema tyska soldater (och frivilliga anti-bolsjevikiska européer i Waffen-SS) framställs som klumpiga och onda karikatyrer?