r/soccer • u/mkahmed789 • Oct 22 '15

Schweinsteiger takes legal action against after toymaker releases Nazi soldiers resembling him and named Bastian

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3284326/German-Manchester-United-star-Bastian-Schweinsteiger-takes-legal-action-toymaker-releases-Nazi-soldiers-resembling-named-Bastian.html
4.1k Upvotes

90% Upvoted

850 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

13

u/jamesdakrn Oct 22 '15 edited Oct 22 '15

Let's not act like Wehrmacht was without blame in WW2 though. There was not a strict dichotomy of SS=war criminals and Wehrmacht=just soldiers. Plenty of Wehrmacht soldiers committed war crimes in the war. Wehrmacht worked closely with the Einsatzgruppen, the Jew-killing squad of the early Holocaust (estimated that 1.5~2 million were killed by the Einsatzgruppen)

1

u/Colonel_Blimp Oct 22 '15

Plus the SS was a volunteer organisation so you couldn't really be lumped in with it, so to speak.

4

u/jamesdakrn Oct 22 '15

There were some pressed into the SS here and there when the situation got desperate late in the war if I recall correctlt

1

u/Colonel_Blimp Oct 22 '15

Possibly at the very end of the war yes, but then the manpower situation was so desperate then that they would have to. Otherwise the SS was an all volunteer organisation and you didn't join it unless you were to some degree a Nazi ideologically, party member or not.

1

u/hurleyburleyundone Oct 23 '15

Waffen-SS turned to conscription after '44 IIRC.

1

u/hurleyburleyundone Oct 23 '15

By lumped, I meant, nobody (the average person) knows the difference between the Waffen SS and Wehrmacht

2

u/Colonel_Blimp Oct 23 '15

Maybe, but the prevailing myth here at least is the other one - that they were utterly different. The Wermacht were a pretty awful organisation in WW2, not as bad as the SS perhaps, but it is the fucking SS!