Apparently the 14th Waffen SS was unique in that it was the sole branch of the Nazis that didn’t do anything Nazi like, and never attacked the other Allies. Nope, just fought the communists.

How convenient.

    • knfrmity@lemmygrad.ml
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      1 year ago

      Not being directly charged and found guilty isn’t the trump card they think it is. Most Nazis were never punished, many top brass went on to shape the west into what it is today.

      • PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml
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        1 year ago

        Even top ones. I wrote other post today about massacre of Warsaw and man who ordered it, SS Obergruppenfuhrer Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski. Forces under his command were responsible for murdering 1,5 million people in Poland and USSR, and especially Poles wanted his blood after war for what he did in Warsaw. West refused his extradition, so Poles asked Stalin for help, and he intervened personally and west still refused. Zelewsky was never tried for the worst of his crimes and got basically a slap on the wrist compared to what he should.

        West always defended nazis, even such absolute monster as this one. It is mindboggling how many less famous got away because of that.

      • Tankiedesantski [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Not being directly charged and found guilty isn’t the trump card they think it i

        Also, military divisions don’t have legal personhood so you can’t file charges against them like you could a company. You file charges against the commanders and the men, or in the case of the SS you declare it to be a criminal organization in it entirety.

    • CriticalResist8@lemmygrad.ml
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      1 year ago

      That’s the thing that also made the vote on deleting Yaroslav’s page irrelevant (now they’re debating in the edits if he was a fugitive). The entire organisation was considered criminal, ALL Nazis after the war were considered to be criminals, regardless of their personal involvement in atrocities or lack thereof. If you were in the Wehrmacht, you were a criminal. If you were in the Waffen-SS, you were a criminal. If you were in the SS, you were a criminal.

      What defines a criminal is being tried for their crimes. It doesn’t matter if Yaroslav or other 14th division nazis did not commit war crimes or they can’t prove that, just being part of it (especially as he bragged about it on his blog in the 2010s) is enough to convict him.