Romanian in Waffen SS

For a person living in Canada, you seem to have problems understanding plain English. You posted 100+ lines, without actually answering my simple question. Why are those few considered real men, while others who went through much more suffering, who did not enjoy a life in the West after the war, be considered less? Answer the question please, without starting a monologue.

These were only a few men. Even the members of the Iron Guard were only a few hundread, mostly used as part of the adiministration of the "National Army". The majority of the soldiers were from the 4th Infantry Division of brig. gen. Platon Chirnoaga captured on the Tisza, who took the chance t oget out of the POW camps, just like others did in the Soviet Union. The memories of that guys grandfather are not the exception, rather the rule IMO.

Yes, my respect for him will diminish. But I personally find the theory to be extremely far-fetched. There is no "conspiracy" to keep secret files away from the public, but you can always blame the Free-Masons and the Jews.
I never considered Toba, Chirnoaga etc. as "fascist collaborators" as they were not collaborating with Fascists, but with Nazis. I have nothing against presenting their actions, but it bothers me to see them glorified, while others who did their duty, despite all the BS they had to put up with, are despised and minimized. History should presented like it was, grey, with objectivity, not with embelishments that suit your agenda, especially since you still got a lot to learn about Romanians and WW2.

Now you know what I think? I never said that all had such ideas, but most of them
thought this way and couldn't care less about the ideals you dream they had.

You assume too much. First of all, most of the soldiers in the 4th Infantry Division had never seen Russia, as the vast majority were new recruits. They had no idea what was there and couldn't care less about it. Read the memories of simple Romanian soldiers. They and the NCOs formed the majority, not the officers, even though the officers get to write history. They weren't driven by any superior ideals during the campaigns in the Soviet Union, except for the first month of the 1941 campaign. As I said before the "Crusade against Communism" was just cheap propaganda. I am not sure what stimulated them in the fights in Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Austria, after Transylvania was reagained. Loyalty and the sense of duty they were brought up with for some, the will to survive for others, who knows? There were far too many men to say for sure what it was for all of them.

With all due respect to your grandmother, why would she think that those who did not respect their military oaths and honor, mostly to escape the POW camps, were "real men"? I suupose then that those who did respect them, who fought in a bloody campaign lacking many of the necesseties, having an ally that often treated them very badly and who were lucky to survive only to return home to be humiliated and imprisoned, without knowing why, should be considered "supermen", right? Or just because they fought against Germany they weren't as "tough"?

Let's clarify some things here. We were talking about Chirnoaga, about the Romanian officer of those days, not about the SS. No where did I suggest that those that fought in the anti german campaign were lesser men. My grandfather fought in that campaign too, he flew missions after switching sides too, and recieved a russian medal that looked like a red star, i never mentioned that before.
Many did not know what to expect after the war, had they known what was comming many more would have defected.
The desertion rate in the Romanian army was high in the 1944-1945 period. Those that could flee the country did.

So again, "real men", "real Romanians" like the Generals, Maiors, Captains of the Romanian Army in those days compared to;.. for example the politicians and bad folk in general of today - is a valid comment.
Go look on Evenimentul-Zilei website and read the comments made by many Romanians there to both articles. You'll see that many say the same thing. "Few men like these you will find today". It is not just me and my grandmother to think this way.

Haha, very funny.

There is a little bit of truth in everything you know.. and that comment above is neither 'gray' nor with 'objectivity' as you said. Most people (including teachers) have never heard of freemasons, others I see 'simply turn their brains off' when they hear the word 'conspiracy'. If one believes only what he sees with his eyes, then maybe Religion is an abstract thing, and God is "an invention of man", no?


I'm not naive to think that all archives of world war 2 are open and available to the public. Certainly one that has the potential to cause scandal or 'problems' with a 'minority group' should better stay where it is. I'm not talking about the Avramescu thing, (altough the circumstances regarding his death are very suspect to me )
In England most of the correspondence of Winston Churchill or that of the Windsor familly is not accessible to anyone, not even any historian has access to it.
(Maybe there is something regarding the royal familly and their nazi relatives that the public must not know.) In Germany too, like for example the propaganda movie 'Triumph of the Will' from 1934. It's locked behind doors, it's banned.
What is the reason behind that? - You tell me.
When Hamburg was bombed, a firefighter filmed the firestorm with color film and made a movie out of it. He filmed the flames, the rubble, and the "ash/dust" that was left of those the next morning, that had been in the air raid shelters
The British secret service after the war confiscated the film. Why's that?
The Russians - the most secretive -, they too have alot to hide. Everything from secret documents, to the list of executions or gulag statistics, to the 'Schlieman treasure'. It's not accessible to the public, there is no information on it, and it took them 46 years to admit they had it.

So in Romania too, for sure there must be "classified material", secret files, movies, photographs, documents that not only the public is not shown, but also historians have no access to. In every country there is.

Again, they are not considered lesser men, but they who fought on the western front were the only ones to be glorified for 45 years. Those that fought on the eastern front are barely remembered today, while those in the National Army (12,000 or so) are virtually non existent. If you have no problem presenting their "actions" why is there no mention of these on your site? Or maybe 'they couldn't wait to go home, as soon 'as they saw the russians, they threw their weapons and ran' ..'those romanian ss', so their contribution was not that important'.. And why is there no mention of these in Romanian schools?
(Teachers travell to 'other countries' to learn what to teach in Romanian ww2 classroom, that is outrageous. There is no place for alternative history (certain things must not be told) - so maybe my conspiracy theory is true.

This post has been edited by Der Maresal on February 25, 2005 01:02 am

So now you put the religion on the same level with the conspiracies. To believe in something without proof, with the excuse the same thing applies to religion...

But they are remembered in actual Romanian history books (see "Armata romana 1941-1945" - 1996). Of course, the level of interest is according to their importance in the general context. If one is interested only in history, and not in ideology, then his focus should lay in the majority of the troops and not in the stragglers.

Simply because they were not part of the Romanian Army in WW2, which is the subject of this site, not foreign volunteers of the Waffen SS, as there are plenty of them on the web.

But you are wrong when you insinuate that I am a hypocrit and even though I say that I would have nothing against presenting their actions, I didn't do it. You have here a link to an older topic on the forum: http://www.worldwar2.ro/forum/index.php?showtopic=44, which I am curious to know how come you missed it, since you were already a member of the forum (for a week) when it was posted. Furthermore the same text was posted on the old Feldgrau Forum (not the new phpBB version) before that (Florin can confirm it I believe) and was intended to cover the Romanian Waffen SS onm the Feldgrau.com site. Unfortunately, for reasons unknown to me, Jason Pipes has failed to add it to his site for two years now.

And yes, their contribution was not that important at all. One infantry regiment (roughly 3,000 men) involved in a battle of millions of men is a drop in the ocean.

I would not mind seeing a bit about them on your main site, just as I would not mind seeing something about the Tudor Vladimirescu or H,C&C Divisions.
Perhaps only a little, mentioned in the operations section.
The later were incorporated into the Romanian Army after the war, while the SS were lead by former Romanian Army officers that had served in Russia (so I think it relates to the army in ww2).

Mentioning something of both sides would not make your site appear like it favours one over the other. How about that ?

The level of interest will grow when more people will know more about it.
Some people reading those articles are hearing that for the first time.

This post has been edited by Der Maresal on February 25, 2005 11:29 pm

And why should they support crackpot theories and wild-eyed conspiracy tales? They are secret documents, so by definition you don't know what's in there, and your guesses are just about as good as the rest of your ideas.

This post has been edited by Curioso on February 26, 2005 11:28 am

Can't be worse then your Atomic Bomb theory.

Dear Maresal, mine is not a theory - it's the way the applicable laws at the time are. The fact that you can't spot the difference of that from your unsupported claims (=theories) speaks volumes about your mindset.

I have to remind to all of you that the fact that some Romanians fought in Waffen SS proves nothing and it is not such a big deal, eventually.

The questionable politics of the German leadership resulted in the German involvement in too many frontlines in the same time, with so many enemies in the same time (the talent of any superpower ). As a result, an acute shortage of human personnel was felt as early as 1942.

Himmler coordinated, supported and encouraged volunteers who wanted to enlist in SS, from any nationality.

There was a whole division made from French (Charlemagne), another division with Wallonians, led by Leon Degrelle, one with Spaniards (Azul), one having in it a lot of Scandinavians (Wiking).
100,000 Ukrainians were enlisted in SS. There were SS units made from British, in Waffen SS, but also in the branch "supervising" the prisoners in concentration camps (in Ravensbruck, for example). There were also attempts to create a SS unit from American prisoners, but it is not clear to me if this really resulted in an American SS unit.

There were whole divisions made from people from Baltic states (Latvia, Estonia, Lituania) or from the Muslims living in Bosnia and Albania. There were even units made from Indians, some of them acting in Europe, and one unit successfully arriving in India after hiking along mountains, across Iran, Afghanistan and today's Pakistan. These Indians, with their German style military training, were a very important asset for the Indian nationalists after 1945. (In 1947 India and Pakistan became independent. Later Pakistan divided into Pakistan and Bangladesh.)

So, to end, tell me who was not in SS...

This post has been edited by Florin on March 06, 2005 08:30 pm

The British Freikorps had about 18 members. A veteran of the 10th SS told me about his time with the division on the eastern front and in his unit were 2 Romanian SS translators who spoke russian and french. They were then transferred to France with Frundsberg to assist there as well. Just to be a pain, haven't read of anyone from Mexico in the SS. As for the book Romanian Volunteers in the SS by Richard Landwehr, I have a copy and can find them if needed. But after reading it, felt like the author was a true national socialist/fascist. As for the gentleman in the ministry office, come and get me!!! In the US and would love to see you at my door! Because to tell people to stop writing (whether you agree or disagree) is not democratic which means you are no better than the fascists or communists you state you are not a part of.

RHaugt : You are mistaken in some points :

Quote :"Just to be a pain, haven't read of anyone from Mexico in the SS."

Well actually it was at last one volksdeutsche (father german ,mother mexican) in the Waffen-SS (mentionned but not by name ,in "Forgotten legions" by Antonio Muñoz (www.axiseuropa.com)

Also it was a volksdeutsche from Honduras (whom I know personnally ) who served in the Sipo-SD and it was a 100% central american volunteer (guatemalan or honduran) ,his name was R. Monzon Toledo and he served in 1944-45 as correspondent of the spanish newspaper (phalangist ,pro-nazi and anti-Franco)
"Enlace" ,under the uniform of the Waffen-SS .This newspaper was printed in germany by the "Ibero-American Institute" of general Faupel and all its journalists
(mostly spanish veterans of the division Azul who stayed in Germany to keep on the fight after Franco repatriated the division Azul ) served under SS uniform .

Then it was at last 40 cubans serving within the division Azul in 1941-43 (but that was the Heer ,not the SS....) they belonged to the cuban chapter of the Spanish Phalange in La Habana .

About US citizen in the SS ,I was able to find about 9 of them ....

On other topic :"after reading it, felt like the author was a true national socialist/fascist."

So what ? It is surely not a shame !

No, it's a shame that people still think like this today, instead of finding other causes to devote themselves to, causes that don't promote hate. Read the forum rules and see that we don't tolerate nazism, fascism and communism here. try to respect the rules or you will eventually have the same fate as you had on AHF.

Please use the [QUOTE] tags when quoting other members.

You are getting over-emotionnal ,Viktor .

What I wanted to mean is that either if the author (which I know personnally and let me tell you that as a professor of history in a spanish university and also as a writer ,he is really respected by even the left-wing 'cause he is extremely documented ) is a fascist or not , this does not mean that he is wrong in what he writes ,or that he is mistaken . Period .

Talking about getting emotional.

I don't know the man, but as long as I am concerned, ideology and history don't mix well. A historian must be objective and such sympathies generally make him biased.

Fair enough ...Here I agree with you .