Radio War Nerd EP #410 — A Brief History of the Waffen SS, feat. Annibale
Guest: Annibale
After the Canadian parliament jumped from their seats to give a thundering standing ovation to a Waffen SS veteran, we at RWN vowed to Never Forget, and that means summoning our old friend Annibale to help us recover lost history & debunk post-WW2 whitewashing myths about the Waffen SS.
Books mentioned:
-Building a Nazi Europe: The SS’s Germanic Volunteers, by Martin Gutmann
-Valhalla’s Warriors: A History of the Waffen-SS on the Eastern Front 1941-1945, by Terry Goldsworthy
-Machete Season: The Killers in Rwanda Speak, by Jean Hatzfeld
*Photos from Waffen SS veteran & Canadian parliament rockstar Yaroslav Hunka's SS scrapbook:
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Check out these RWN series with Annibale:
-Italy's Years Of Lead (EP 134, EP 135, EP 136, EP 139);
-Italy On The WW2 Eastern Front (EP 226, EP 227, EP 228, EP 231, EP 236)
Total time: 1:49:04
Direct link to this episode's mp3 here
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Sound production by Telescope Audio
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*Buy John Dolan's comic memoir "Pleasant Hell" now available in both audio and ebook format.
Comments (46)
H hub hub ugh pop
i’m genuinely shocked at how similar the ss is to all the shit being done in gaza
A witness of the massacres of Babi Yar said "Slava Ukraini" was repeated after every firing squad salvo. And now, in NATO run countries but very prominently in Canada, you are told saying it is for the good of democracy. The Bandera Lobby is unchallenged here.
It’s interesting to note that a pulp novel that glorified the SS “the Devil’s Guard” was widely read by U.S. soldiers in the GWOT especially by special forces. According to the Intercept the novel may have inspired the war crimes of Seal Team 6. (“Slabinkski and others in the squadron had fallen under the influence of an obscure war novel, “Devil’s Guard,” published in 1971 by George Robert Elford. The book purported to be a true account of an S.S. officer who with dozens of other soldiers escaped Germany after World War II, joined the French Foreign Legion, and spent years in Vietnam brutalizing the insurgency. The novel, which glorifies Nazi military practices, describes counterinsurgency tactics such as mass slaughter and desecration and other forms of wanton violence as a means of waging psychological warfare against the “savage” Vietnamese. “These fucking morons read the book ‘The Devil’s Guard’ and believed it,” said one of the former SEAL Team 6 leaders who investigated Slabinski and Blue Squadron”)
I honestly didn't know about this. Of course I know about Devil's Guard, it's absolutely trash, seems impossible anyone in a real fighting unit could take it seriously. The whole myth of the "former SS fighting in Vietnam" it's fascinating in its tackiness, as it's the general fascination of the public for this kind of fictionalized memories, the most famous being "Forgotten Soldier". We should do an episode on the whole phenomenon
Is this the first mention of the SNP on RWN? If any war nerds happen to be in Banska Bystrica Slovakia, visit the museum of the SNP there.
Annibale is an international treasure! "It was easier and more comfortable for them to believe that the SS were all 10ft tall and bulletproof, than that the Russians fought magnificently." Oh, the irony.
If you want more information about the Waffen-SS I suggest the following sources: Heinrich Himmler: A Life by Peter Longerich and Nazi Death Squads from the American Heroes Channel.
Did he get to the end of the Italian Wars? I can’t remember any more
Not yet. Sometime in the future
We love Annibale! 🤘🔥
I think Frederick Forsyth fed into this view of the SS in the Odessa File when his Skorzeny character says that the Waffen SS took on all-comers and made mincemeat of them.
I don't know if this has been mentioned on the show before, but the reason the Ukrainian Canadian community is like that is that the Canadian government brought over a bunch of SS veterans after WW2 - it was the Cold War now and the Ukrainian Canadian diaspora was too left wing for their taste. Edit: I listened to the remainder of the episode the following day and Mark mentioned this
It was pretty interesting hearing about the attempt to cast the Waffen SS as a proto-NATO - as someone who had only really encountered the term via calling wannabe Nazis waffentwerps, it would never have occurred to me that it could have been a good thing.
The idea Germany had invented NATO before NATO became the central point of HAIG (the "ex W-SS" lobbying group) propaganda work until 1963. It was also supported by several ex-Wehrmacht generals, in particular Guderian, Manstein and Hermann Hoth. Their point is that NATO should have adopted the same model and (implicitly) used formed W-SS and Wehrmacht top brass as advisors. It was a big deal for few years, in particular, because HAIG began leveraging their potential vote basin (thought to be around 200.000 voters, even if itwas later demonstrated to have been inflated) with the Adenauer government in order to give W-SS personnel military pensions. Cold War histeria and more or less open sympathy from some section of US / UK political and military establishment (see Joe MacCarthy as a prime example) did the rest.
Hunka shit more like!
I'm not sure how the name of the division "Galizien" was meant to hide the fact that the members were Ukrainian. It was the name of western Ukraine under Autrian rule, it derives from the name of principality of Halych, a Kievan Rus statelet.
The naming of these units was always a mess, as it changed every few weeks (not just for the 14th Division). The name "Galizien" was a compromise because for some SS top brass (and for Hitler) it was difficult to swallow they had to allow "real" slavs into their ranks. It was used because it had an Austro-Hungarian, imperial feeling that was akin to the use of "Prinz Eugen" or "Marie Therese" for other units
I am not racist!
In the Netherlands, the SS were also the most loyal supporters of the German occupiers. To such an extent that a public rupture started to show between the SS and the more ‘nationalist’ regular nazi movement. The rupture became less pronounced because the Germans suppressed it and because so many of the SS were off to the fronts. No regular school education here will tell you that we were an important supplier for the W-SS btw
Did annibale record in a studio? He sounds amazing in this episode
Tell me if I'm wrong here but demographic makeup of the SS before "shit got real" with the German losses in the Eastern front... seems to be nerds. War nerds. Middle to upper-middle class guys who were raised on the idea of civilizational superiority of being "German" and just geeking out on it, loving the aesthetics of it utterly. Hope future episodes explore this dynamic more because you can see this legacy all over Western nerdery- another commenter citing Warhammer 40k & Marvel superheroes would not exist without the super-soldier myths of the Waffen-SS. SS can almost be seen as the "school shooter society"- at least in my head
Surprisingly, there were way more jocks than nerds. 12th SS "Hitlerjugend" was literally a jock's dream come true (everyone athletic, everyone showing off their girlfriend's name, even on the tank gun's barrel, and a quite competitive environment). Pio Filippani Ronconi (mentioned in the show) ended up as an academic erudite, but if you believe his autobiographical notes, he was raised both as someone obsessed by Eastern philosophies AND as a high school jock (and a bully, to some extent). Not sure about the Warhammer 40k comparison (it's at heart a parody of that ethos), and Marvel culture began and it's still to some extent deeply imbibed by liberal values. As I always say, individual stories in an 850.000 people large organization are bound to be all over the place, but I've never consistently met in my research any "nerd" in the current stereotype (the lonely obsessed incel outcast who ends up killing random people at school).
understandable to not want to record a waffen SS episode but tbh i think this is valuable because the term "SS" is so often used as a rhetorical floating signifier while relatively fewer of us know the tangible history. (always love to hear from annibale.)
Shorter pre-1945 German foreign policy: we can do a better job exploiting Eastern Europe than the Russians.
Better than the Russian aristocrats yes. Or better "doing what the Russian aristocracy was supposed to do before they were killed by the Jewish inspired Russian Revolution".
Himmler was making what a teenage boy thinks would be a great military unit to run. Himmler didn't get to see action in the Great War, and seems to have had a chip on his shoulder about this, having something to prove. So, he makes his own military unit. The uniforms? Stylish, because he had to look badass and impress someone. The soldiers? Tougher and nastier than any other soldier. (They were nastier, I'll give them that.) There's an element in this in just about everyone who becomes a soldier, of course, but in the case of the SS, that's pretty much all it really was, a way for some nerds to try to get attention for being tough guys.
Sort of. Himmler created the brand and the franchise, but a lot of important details weren't his working. Oswald Pohl created the economic empire (which did include holiday resorts, luxury shops and night clubs, btw) and Gottlob Berger, Paul Hausser and (in part) Sepp Detritch did their part in creating the "military" structure around the W-SS. But the real masterpiece they did (particularly Himmler) was how for years they funneled personnel, resources, money and weaponry away from the German military machine (where it was sorely needed...) and into a bloated private army
The Waffen SS were in fact as bad as the Nazis? Godwin's Law, anyone?
They were a key Nazi organzation / assett, then it's up to you to decide what you think of Nazi policies and actions. No relation with Godwin's Law, I'm afraid...
As currently planned the Memorial to the Victims of Communism will list names on its proposed Wall of Remembrance. Given the current vetting system it seems almost certain that Canada will soon be honouring more of these murderous pigfuckers.
The Ukrainian Diaspora has historically been a haven for ex-OUN types, and have spent decades whitewashing their history of being Nazi-collaborators. Rossoliński-Liebe covers this well in his book on Bandera, titled “Stepan Bandera: The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist Fascism, Genocide, and Cult”
call me crazy but I would argue there's a straight line from the Civil War slaveholders to the Nazis. Same war-time historical trajectory (repatriated and re-integrated into post-war politics as speedily as their enemy elite could manage, expats move to south america), Alabama U Alumni using their education to write the Nuremburg Laws, etc etc. I mean sure there's fingerprints all over the place to suggest it but I think it's more tangible than history lets on. I guess what I mean by that is *direct involvement*, like confederate progeny talking to nazis etc. and not just parallels.
great point, would love to see this avenue explored in detail
the next whitewash will be claiming SS stands for Silly Soldiers but yeah that whole 'super soldiers outnumbered' thing is still a real sexy concept to people or else Games Workshop would have gone bankrupt long ago, and Marvel would never have made a single film.
WAR NERDS BEWARE. The Napoleon movie we were promised is bad and is straight up British propaganda defaming the Corsican. The battle scenes look good but if you are a Napoleonic war fan it will make you very angry cause there are historical inaccuracies everywhere. Ridley Scott has been compromised, the inbred British deep state doesn't want the world to have a civil code and the metric system
I’ve been told listening to the age of napoleon podcast is a much more enjoyable experience
Very important detail of fascism that doesn’t necessarily create/identify the ideology on its own - but is important for understanding how fascism is already here in the US - the elite liberals’ love for everything having its place in society, workers being docile workers, etc ~42:40
If you listen to German propaganda between 1938 to 1940. you always get the same narrative: "Russia is a barbarous country ruled by a monstrous Jewish - Communist diarchy. At the same time, English-speaking countries (even those we're at war with) are basically fine places infected by the Jewish virus because they didn't get rid of them when they could, as we did. And so we built the perfect society (classes and racial differences engraved in stone, efficiency, and technocracy everywhere, the cult of the origins and of the nice provincial traditions, etc) they should emulate". It was difficult for a lot of the Anglo public not to get fascinated, at least before war broke.
Isn't the opposite of a revolutionary a reactionary?
Not necessarily. The Nazis were radicals, not revolutionaries, they wanted to deeply change the society to expel all the elements they considered against their views of racial purity and social hierarchies. They were of course allied with the true reactionaries / conservatives, but they felt themselves like a radical vanguard, not simple reactionaries.
This picture of Trudeau.. he really might be Fidel’s lmao
Very funny to hear Annibale refer to that Ukrainian Nazi as “cherished in Canada”
Annibale said he’s an expert on nazi occult and esotericism. Sounds like a great episode idea. Very similar to all of the war porn that exists about ww2 that seems to glorify the Nazis, the esoteric stuff is intriguing but difficult to determine fact from fiction. A major gap for my knowledge is how that cult aspect is carried through in almost all of the nazi post war neo nazi variations.
It's a fascinating subject but once you real primary sources (and there are a few both for German Nazism and for Italian Fascism) it goes in an unexpected way that is far removed from the "Morning of the Magicians" -type lurid tales- This is enough to disappoint a lot of fans of what you rightly call "war porn", but far from being uninteresting, as it explains some of the deeper roots of Nazism, and shows how in fact Hitler didn't invent much, and was tapping into a cultural atmosphere that had been there fro at least 50 years before his rise.
Annibale and WW2?! Christmas in November