ARmy Rumour SErvice

**Crash** · 18-05-2012, 10:06

I ahd hoped to post this on the German War Dead thread but I see it is locked. I just received this from my old university:

Inside Hitler

On a related issue, I recently re-read Richard Overy's book on the Nuremburg Interrogations. He deftly describes how the post-war 'narrative' about the German Army just did the fighting and the SS did the Brutality emerged. Well worth reading.

**alib** · 18-05-2012, 10:22

...
Neither MacCurdy nor Abrams could have known the appalling repercussions Hitler’s mental state was to have, but they clearly saw it in development. “Hitler is caught up in a web of religious delusions,” MacCurdy concluded. “The Jews are the incarnation of Evil, while he is the incarnation of the Spirit of Good. He is a god by whose sacrifice victory over Evil may be achieved. He does not say this in so many words, but such a system of ideas would rationalise what he does say that is otherwise obscure.”
...

I'm just glad the Führer never heard about this Creeping Sharia business, he might have gone a bit strange.

**Pigshyt_Freeman** · 18-05-2012, 10:28

I can remember reading a book many years ago called something like SS - Germany's Alibi which argued that the 'decent' German soldier and the savage SS man were just convenient myths when we wanted to feel better about recruiting Germany to the struggle against the Red Menace.

Death camps aside, the Wehrmacht were for the most part as enthusiastic a bunch of war criminals as the SS.

**LancePrivateJones** · 18-05-2012, 17:51

Originally Posted by Pigshyt_Freeman

I can remember reading a book many years ago called something like SS - Germany's Alibi which argued that the 'decent' German soldier and the savage SS man were just convenient myths when we wanted to feel better about recruiting Germany to the struggle against the Red Menace.

Death camps aside, the Wehrmacht were for the most part as enthusiastic a bunch of war criminals as the SS.

The SS: Alibi of a Nation by Gerald Reitlinger (1961).

One of the first books to examine the theory that the German people happily let the SS et al take the blame for all the nastiness that happened 1933-1945.

'It had nothing to do with us it was those nasty SS men sir', that type of thing.

Apparently it went down like a lead balloon in the former Fatherland.

Bloody good read.

**guzzijon** · 18-05-2012, 18:15

Here's a cracking quote from Max Hasting's All Hell Let Loose, 'On the battlefield Allied soldiers, reflecting the societies from which they were drawn, prided themselves on behaving like reasonable men. The Wehrmacht showed what unreasonable men could do' (p61).
He is refering to the soul-searching which went on after the fall of France regarding the gulf between the capabilities of the Germans and the Allies.