Jewish campaigners call for end to controversial German pulp magazine that 'glorifies Nazi SS butchers'
War comics are mostly for kids and kids want drama and heroics, not moralizing. If you want to moralize there is fault on both sides. Should American war comics agonise about the terror-bombing of Dresden and Hamburg?
Jewish campaigners are demanding a German pulp magazine be shut down for glorifying Nazi soldiers in World War II. Der Landser - translated literally as The Squaddie - is a small magazine published by the giant Bauer media group whose pages are filled with stories of derring-do, glory and chivalry.
But those it praises are foot soldiers in either the Wehrmacht - the Germany army during the Second World War which facilitated in numerous massacres of civilians - or the soldiers of the Waffen S.S. The Waffen S.S were seen as one of the main perpetrators of the Holocaust.
The Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Los Angeles, named after the death camp survivor who devoted his life after the war to bringing Nazi killers to justice, said it is time to call time on Der Landser. It called on the German government to shut the publication down.
Distributors for the magazine in Germany said they have no plans to halt production but the country's interior ministry, mindful of the harm done to Germany's image abroad through such works, has promised a full probe which will seek ways to possibly shut it down.
Source
German forces in fact had many great victories in WWII, victories of a magnitude that any nation would celebrate and remember. The campaigns by von Manstein, in particular, are still treated with awe in military staff colleges worldwide. Germany was crushed by weight of numbers, not by superior military skill.
Generalfeldmarschall Erich von Manstein
7 comments:
I disagree with the last sentence that: " Germany was crushed by weight of numbers, not by superior military skill."
While mass of equipment, supplies and troops obviously played a part, the skill of the troops undoubtedly played a critical part. If you look at historical accounts, the Germany Army was so rigidly hierarchical that it froze lacking the ability to adapt to fluid situations without order from above. A good example is their inability to release reserves on D-Day without approval from Hitler.
Compare that to the ability of the allied units at local unit level to adapt to the situation on the ground. A good example is the break through of the hedge rows came about because of a device made by a unit mechanic.
German forces in fact had many great victories in WWII, victories of a magnitude that any nation would celebrate and remember.
Yes they did … in service to a horrific and evil idea. Nazi Germany was an enemy to be respected as an effective and dangerous military force which needed to be destroyed, not celebrated.
It has often been said that the German military of WWII, it's soldiers and generals, not it's leader, was, at that time, the best trained and equipped fighting force ever assembled. The US military could not have beaten them in a one-on-one battle.
The US military defeated the Germans in battle after battle from Africa, through Sicily, through Italy, and through Europe after D-Day.
German rigidity is wartime propaganda
Prussian military doctrine stressed flexibility. Read Clausewitz -- or von Manstein for that matter
There is an undeniable fact, Germany had many great military leaders like Erwin Rommel. He was probably better than Patton, but it was the incompetence and stupidity of those above him that doomed them.
Is it wrong to praise Rommel for his military expertise? No! You can dislike the Nazis but admire the courage, skill and bravery of the men who fought for them!
BTW, the military strategies of these men are still taught at many military academies around the world!
11:51 Implies or believes that the US military did all that on its own without input from any Allies (British, Canadian, Australian and others). Maybe a false impression from Hollywood movies.
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