Servants of evil & A sailor of austria

[cody6]

Hi all,watched a interesting documentary the other night on the history channel.It was part of the Servants of evil series.It was about the u-boat war in ww2,some good scenes of u-boats in action & interviews with Kreigsmarine vets.One question,the closing scene showed a type 1x9 with two deck guns one fore one aft,anybody know of that deck gun arrangement?
-Stopped by the local bookstore the other day & picked up a book by John Biggins called A Sailor of Austria.The book is part fiction part fact about the Austrian u-boat service in ww1.I found it to be a good read.
-Thanks to The Munster & Von Halley for their advice re my xp 1608 error,finally took the plunge & reinstalled windows Cody

[Uncle Goose]

I always hated the fact that they picture the U-boat crews as evil demons, these guys just fought for their country, they believed in their leaders without questions.

[Nuoz]

Originally Posted by Uncle Goose

I always hated the fact that they picture the U-boat crews as evil demons, these guys just fought for their country, they believed in their leaders without questions.

Servants of evil means evil ws Hitler and the regime, the servants were the soldiers and U-Boat crew members are included. Being pictured as demons when they are serving is controversial. You see how all terrorist suicide bombers are percerved as evil when they explode in Iraq for the same reasons the Nazis fought, all over the world? Or the Ruhanda massacre were genocide was almost effective, were they following orders too? Imagine a few decades from now people start to defend that was wrong, they were just following orders and their bosses were the only ones to blame! Outrageous, right? Oh father time, what can't you do for bad reps...:rotfl: This discussion is a minefield and my personal oppinion and feeling is that they were all evil in the way that in the end of every action is a personal decision, and the decision makers were even more evil. Two wrongs don't make a right they say.
One thing is certain, 30 years ago noone even dared to claim they were not all evil and even the Allies considered summary exectutions, prevented by Churchill when they captured the "guilty" officials.
But we have rules and they make sense, the heads went down the german people was left with heavy shoulders. Not everyone was punished (well in a way they all were) but when people realized Hitler was nuts, wrong and evil i bet many germans had that what have i done feeling..

[Uncle Goose]

Well, the sad thing is that some of the worlds cruelest people in the world get streets named after them, here in Ghent, Belgium we have streetnames named after King Charles V (not the english one, the spanish one) who butchered several thousands of people and several other kings and queens who were responsible for starving and murdering the Flemish people. Maybe in a few hundred year we will have the "Adolf Hitler square" and the "Heinrich Himmler boulevard".

[Morts]

Originally Posted by cody6

Hi all,watched a interesting documentary the other night on the history channel.It was part of the Servants of evil series.It was about the u-boat war in ww2,some good scenes of u-boats in action & interviews with Kreigsmarine vets.One question,the closing scene showed a type 1x9 with two deck guns one fore one aft,anybody know of that deck gun arrangement?
-Stopped by the local bookstore the other day & picked up a book by John Biggins called A Sailor of Austria.The book is part fiction part fact about the Austrian u-boat service in ww1.I found it to be a good read.
-Thanks to The Munster & Von Halley for their advice re my xp 1608 error,finally took the plunge & reinstalled windows Cody

the aft one is a 37mm AA

[FIREWALL]

Servants that refused to follow orders that were moraly wrong in the kriegsmarine died of LEAD poisoning.

[Graf Paper]

@FIREWALL : :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

Well, it's funny 60-some-odd years after the fact, anyways.

Time does have a way of dulling even the sharpest memory and it's easy to say, "They weren't such bad guys.", when WWII is no more real to you than a documentary on TV or a chapter in a history book.

The rise of the Third Reich is proof of the warning, "If you shout a lie often enough, people will eventually come to believe it as truth."

The Allied powers have crimes and atrocities staining their own record, but these were usually actions committed by individuals or groups in violation of the law.

What made the Axis powers "evil" are the crimes, atrocities, and genocides on their part were not only sponsored by their governments, but an expression of the core tenets of their ideology that reduced the rest of mankind to a sub-human status. It was no more wrong to torture or kill one of "them" than it was to slaughter a cow. The Japanese culture looked upon anyone not Japanese as not even human at all.

At the Nuremberg trials, many Nazi officers and government officials tried to defend their actions by pleading ignorance of what was happening around them or that they were "just following orders".

I strongly recommend all of you to read the transcripts of that trial. It presents a picture of the mindset in Germany during WWII that will chill your soul.

Auschwitz, Poland, Bataan, Nanking... just to name a few.

I wonder how we would have been judged if the Axis had won the war?

"Forgive but never forget, lest it happens again."


Still, I enjoy SH3 a great deal because it's just a game and the side I'm "fighting for" is something I take with a grain of salt.

[deepboat]

Originally Posted by cody6

Hi all,watched a interesting documentary the other night on the history channel.It was part of the Servants of evil series.It was about the u-boat war in ww2,some good scenes of u-boats in action & interviews with Kreigsmarine vets.One question,the closing scene showed a type 1x9 with two deck guns one fore one aft,anybody know of that deck gun arrangement?
-Stopped by the local bookstore the other day & picked up a book by John Biggins called A Sailor of Austria.The book is part fiction part fact about the Austrian u-boat service in ww1.I found it to be a good read.
-Thanks to The Munster & Von Halley for their advice re my xp 1608 error,finally took the plunge & reinstalled windows Cody

Saw the same thing here in Langley, good program. I think the 2 guns were on the 'Milk Cow', were they not? Lots of interesting shots.

[Uncle Goose]

Originally Posted by Graf Paper

The Allied powers have crimes and atrocities staining their own record, but these were usually actions committed by individuals or groups in violation of the law.

I wouldn't say that, Russia eliminated a great deal of it's Waffen-SS prisoners and systematically starved the regular German army prisoners. Don't forget that out of the 90.000 German soldiers taken prisoner in Stalingrad only 10.000 got back to home alive

Also, Allied forces also systematically shot U-boatcrews who were already swimming in the water.

But if you say things like this you are seen as a Nazi yourself because hé, the Allies were the "good" ones.

[Captain Nemo]

Originally Posted by Uncle Goose

Also, Allied forces also systematically shot U-boatcrews who were already swimming in the water.

Not sure if that was the Allies actual intention. The reason they opened fire on a u-boat after it had surfaced through depth charging, was to stop the crew from scuttling it i.e. abandoning it. The objective was to capture the u-boat and anything of use on board like the Enigma machine.

Nemo

[Captain Nemo]

Originally Posted by Uncle Goose

I wouldn't say that, Russia eliminated a great deal of it's Waffen-SS prisoners and systematically starved the regular German army prisoners. Don't forget that out of the 90.000 German soldiers taken prisoner in Stalingrad only 10.000 got back to home alive

Stalin and Hitler had a lot in common in this respect, but their political beliefs were at complete odds with each other.

Nemo

[Graf Paper]

Although Russia was nominally considered part of the Allied forces, both Churchill and Roosevelt privately considered Stalin as a "necessary evil" for winning the war.

I suppose the old Arab saying that goes, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend.", was what governed this decision but Russia was never trusted by the Allies and this was proven out by Stalin's conquest of Eastern Europe.

Stalin was a butcher that made Hitler look like Mary Poppins. He killed far more of his own people in the Purges than the entire Nazi regime ever managed with all their concentration camps. Being labeled as "disloyal" during the reign of Stalin was especially hazardous to your health and Beria's NKVD was more than happy to send men knocking on the doors of these "traitors". Entire families would simply disappear in the night, never to be seen again.

The only difference between a Nazi and Soviet Communist is mere semantics.

Russia had already made itself an enemy of Britain and the United States. The only thing that prevented WWII from continuing, with Russia as the new Axis, was the simple fact that all parties concerned were just too worn out and depleted from whipping Germany, not to mention the fact that Japan still remained to be defeated.

On the whole, Axis POWs were treated far better than their Allied counterparts, especially in the Pacific theater.

As for the machine gunning of u-boat crews, there was only one reported incident of a British commander ordering that surrendering u-bootsmen be fired upon and killed. Again, this was in violation of the law and not an act that was endorsed by the Crown as a standing order.

I suppose he felt he was getting payback for the civilians and fellow sailors that had been sunk by u-boats. The bloodlust of revenge is an overwhelming force for even the most sane man, in an insane time, to resist.

Men from both sides did shameful things but what seperated most of us from the Nazis and Imperial Japan is we did not endorse these things as a people or as a nation.

Uncle Goose, I can perfectly understand why you'd think being critical of the "good guys" would label you as being sympathetic to the Nazis.

Just try to remember that not everyone is so blindly patriotic they will lable anyone a "Nazi" for pointing out a very real fact of war... There is no such thing as innocence for anyone who has spilled another's blood.