i dig the instant and brazen conflation of "SS Officers" with "german soldiers", Jim Wayne, Duke University alum. more like Dooky University.
in war time Germany, officers were like 3% of all military personnel; a 33-to-1 ratio of not-officers to officers. 50,000 SS officers would mean the SS was officer heavy compared to regular army, which is very on-brand for a highly-political and tightly managed military group, representing >6% of the total SS force. today's bloated US officer corps is around 19% for reference, and people write white papers about how it's either an organizational crisis or cool, actually.
anyway, SS as an organization had 800,000 individuals, while the ww2 german army had 13.6 million members. those 50,000 criminals would represent the hardened core of ideologically committed and experienced killers. no doubt they were crucial in western containment of socialism.
Bigger ratio of officers and especially NCO's to rank soldiers is normal in peacetime, it gives army room to rapidly expand in case of war, though 19% officers is still very excessive. It is a crisis which is characteristical for armies losing their military proficiency and turning into bloated bureocracies. What's unusual in this particular case is that they are in constant war, but they only do one sided agressions against weak victims so majority of the army is free to wallow in corruption and stagnancy while minority is responsible for carrying the abovementioned acts - therefore this minority is the real military and the rest are likely just ballast - again characteristical thing for decaying colonial empires, compare especially with post-WW1 France.
My mental gymnastics: nazis should die and stalin wisely knew this
Stalin feared opposition to being a dictator mental gymnastics: that shit ^
Please think about how much harder Stalin made it to defend the USSR to British people in light of this ๐ญ๐ญ๐ญ the USSR is gone but socialism in one Britain can still happen!
Churchill opposed it because he was totally cool with Germany doing N*zi shit up until it threatened Western Europe. He was an ardent anti-communist and had his generals draw up a plan to attack the USSR at the end of WW2 "to impose upon Russia the will of the United States and the British Empire".
Stalin was joking, but really, they had been invaded twice in a few decades, just lost 20M people, and engaged in all-out total war for multiple years. Even with 50K officers executed, it wouldn't come close to the scale of the USSR's losses. If Stalin was truly concerned, Zhukov would've been taking afternoon tea in London.
Whenever I occassaionally try to remove some of the brainworms of the people around me, whenver they talk about "stalin and hitler being the same", i mention the fact that if Stalin had been as brutal/genocidal as Hitler had, there would have been no Germans left in any of the Soviet occupied territories. Nazi Germany killed more than 20 million civillians, and if Stalin had actually sought revenge there would not have been anything left of Germany east of the occupation line.
He's right that SS officers would go on to oppose the Soviets (after they were put in charge of NATO and West Germany)
If the SS oppose you, you're probably doing something right
I wonder why anti-communist leaders didn't want to kill the most credentialed anti-communist troops on the planet
I took this thing into Quora and it exploded
Wow how interesting
Imagine escaping justice by the skin of your teeth after taking the biggest L in history only to find yourself on the frontlines of taking two more massive L's afterwards.
I recall a documentary a (French?) person did who secretly filmed an ex-Nazi who served in (I believe) Africa admitting to atrocities committed as a mercenary after WW2. These people got to escape being hanged for war crimes and had the opportunity to reflect and repent, but ultimately Nazis only ever deserve to be .
Nah German, they went under cover in west germany to do it
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
some French Foreign Legion guys told me about how former SS officers tried to help them prevent communist revolution in Vietnam and it really changed my perspective
changed your perspective.. about anti communism right?
More likely he had his first fond thought about French ever.
Nazifascism won WWII and the cold war
stalin shouldn't have stopped at berlin
I kind of wonder if Quora should be disallowed cause it's just easy pickings
yeah its a cesspool so if people started posting Quora regularly it'd literally fill up your whole feed. there's single question threads that could lol. but apparently we're too well adjusted and self-loving to torture ourselves so, we love our beautiful hexbeariens don't we
Alex Ptak in shambles.
Or, or, hear me out, Winston Churchill was a Nazi. He did kill 6 million bengalis after all
Didnโt Stalin suggest this only jokingly?
Yes, as a response to Roosevelt joking in fact. The (likely apocryphal) anecdote goes, while meeting at the Tehran conference in 1943 Roosevelt suggested unseriously that after the war they should execute 10,000 Nazi officers, Stalin replied 10,000? Why not 50,000?
Then Churchill stormed out in a huff because "they were just honorable men defending their nation".
Britain's enemy's would use it to justify killing British soldier who are in their control.
Huh, well when you put it like that, maybe those imperialist foot soldiers should die
Duke University and graduated in 1967, producing such shitty arguments. That's ameriKKKan's top education right there.
the only thing worse than being a nazi, is killing one that's being nice! ๐คก
Nazis murdered THREE MILLIONS Soviet PoW's, not to mention 19 million civilians. Stalin and Red Army were a literal saints of patience, discipline and humanity for not leaving Germany wasteland.
Love too do vibes based historiography
So we're not just talking about soldiers conscripted to fight for Nazi Germany. We're not even talking about the small fraction that joined the SS. We're talking about people who joined the worst org of literal Nazi Germany, and then were so willing and good at that job that they got promoted to officer. We are basically talking about the worst of the worst of the worst.
I'm rarely for violent or deadly punishment where it's not immediate and necessary, but it's hard to question the validity and practicality of wanting them gone.
Quora is just new age yahoo answers but without any of the comedy
'Churchill opposed the idea of executions of SS officers because... rule of law' from the stupid quora chatbot answer
Was it following the rule of law when he ordered the military to fire on striking miners in Tonypandy?
I kind of wonder if Quora should be disallowed cause it's just easy pickings
There's a whole podcast by two comrades dedicated to the stupidity of Quora.
Sounds fun, what's it called?
Quorators
the_dunk_tank
It's the dunk tank.
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