4 April 2017
Today, I was reading The Iron Cross, A History 1813-1945 by Gordon Williamson. As happens most of the time, I began a 'Wiki-chain': I looked up 'Iron Cross' on Wikipedia which led me to the Wikipedia page for Gordon Williamson. I was shocked to see some remarks by an "S. P. Mackenzie" which floored me. I almost threw my book across the room!
A revisionist?? Gordon Williamson is a revisionist?!?! How can someone who wrote, "The SS: Hitler's Instrument of Terror" be a revisionist???
From Wikipedia:
Forgive the straight copy/paste but I wanted to have the entire text at my disposal...and the formatting on this blog for quotes....ugh. Mea culpa.
Being the researcher that I am, I knew to go to primary sources to get information; that led me to Simon Mackenzie's Wikipedia page to find out who he is and what he wrote. This in turn led me to his page on the University of South Carolina website. During this trek, I found a copy of the primary text via Google preview on the routledge.com website.
On page 140 of his book, Revolutionary Armies in the Modern Era: A Revisionist Approach, he names Williamson and has this to say:
Reading his entire paragraph made me feel a bit better about reading Williamson since I think the point he makes is that Williamson lets 'veterans tell their own stories' while continuing to have a healthy scepticism [sic] in his approach.
My relief came from the fact that I am a WWII history buff, I collect military medals and I have a healthy (sarcasm) hatred for the Nazis and all they stood for. Thinking that I had been duped into reading a revisionist and not recognizing him as such gave me a start. I deplore Holocaust deniers but am ambivalent about those who allow the veterans to speak for themselves. My reasons my be subjective but here they are:
1. I remember speaking to my father who was a B-25 bomber pilot in the Pacific in WWII. While patriotic to a fault, I remember him speaking about when he got older and saw the images from Vietnam, he began to wonder about those that he had bombed and the effects upon them. Remorse blossomed. The 'enemy' had become human and he had to admit that he had caused injury and death to other human beings regardless of the fact that we were at war and they would have killed him if they could have.
2. Which brings up another point: in training for war, one is indoctrinated to think in terms of generalities engendered by perjorative names and terms such as 'enemy', 'Nazi', 'Jap', 'Gook', etc. to depersonalize combatants. Hindsight and age brings the realization that labels such as these are describing actual human beings rather than faceless automatons. This is a necessary part of combat training to be able to carry out the most inhumane actions upon those designated as the enemy. Later, one may realize that the 'enemy' was just as human and just as scared as any other soldier in battle. So, after some time passes, I see no reason to listen to others and their experiences in an objective manner. Whether corporately this constitutes revisionism, especially towards the SS, is questionable in my mind.
3. Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it. This quote is a cornerstone in my way of thinking. If we cannot realize that not every SS man was an ardent Nazi then we are doomed to fail to see the change that is inherent in humans. It stands to reason, as is illustrated in Hans Sturm by Gordon Williamson, that some who became SS members did so due to peer pressure as well as the enormous pressure of the time. Since the SS as a whole has been deemed 'criminal' by the Nuremburg tribunal, it stands to reason that even within that framework there were some non-criminals within it. Example: To say that all United Methodists believe in gay marriage or divorce or any other point of doctrine just because the greater body of the UMC declares that as part of their polity is overreaching. The same is true for the SS or any other organization.
Don't get me wrong: I agree wholeheartedly that the SS was criminal if not the embodiment of evil; however, I don't believe that everyone within the SS was evil. Corporate sin vs. Individual sin. I believe that everyone has to account for their actions regardless of what uniform they wear, period.
4. There is no way that any thinking person can justify what the Nazis and/or the SS did. To think that someone can change their spots is disputed by Mackenzie's discussion of HIAG and their failure to raise the image of the SS as a whole. Continuing to research this organization led me to see that the more some members tried to tone down the rhetoric, others remained true to their ardent Nazi roots and were quite verbal about it. The same is true with individuals. 'By their fruits you will know them' is a wise quotation to keep in mind. While some people change over time, others remain the same or become more virulent. Trust but verify as Reagan was wont to say. Think the best until you can no longer ignore the fact that some Nazis were just as ruthless, vile and evil as they have been portrayed in history.
Now as to why any of this matters....
In the main scheme of things, it doesn't. I don't know either gentleman. I have some of Williamson's books that I use for study of medals and the SS, I don't have any of Mackenzie's. I have not spoken to either one. But it concerned me that when I did a Google search of George Williamson, these same quotes came up almost every time. I think the scribe for Wikipedia may have cut and pasted the remarks of Mackenzie to make Williamson appear more revisionist than even Professor Mackenzie implied. That concerned me. That is why it is so important, especially when reading things on the internet, to research and research and research before drawing conclusions. That is why I feel comfortable keeping my Williamson books rather than burning them as revisionist trash.
Today, I was reading The Iron Cross, A History 1813-1945 by Gordon Williamson. As happens most of the time, I began a 'Wiki-chain': I looked up 'Iron Cross' on Wikipedia which led me to the Wikipedia page for Gordon Williamson. I was shocked to see some remarks by an "S. P. Mackenzie" which floored me. I almost threw my book across the room!
A revisionist?? Gordon Williamson is a revisionist?!?! How can someone who wrote, "The SS: Hitler's Instrument of Terror" be a revisionist???
From Wikipedia:
Williamson has authored over 20 books on the Waffen-SS and the Wehrmacht.[4] The military historian S.P. MacKenzie describes Williamson as a writer who attempts "to restore the tarnished reputation [of the Waffen-SS] and reiterate its superb fighting qualities" by relying on veterans' narratives, with "predictably positive results".[5]
MacKenzie includes Williamson's books among the works that perpetuate the myth-making, revisionist tendencies in the treatment of the Waffen-SS, first advocated by HIAG, a lobby group founded by former high-ranking Waffen-SS personnel in West Germany in 1951. MacKenzie notes that Williamson "at least approaches his subjects with a degree of skepticism", but is nonetheless an "admirer" whose works tend to romanticize the Waffen-SS. Commenting on this contemporary trend, Mackenzie writes: [5]
As the older generation of Waffen-SS scribes has died off, a new, post-war cadre of writers has done much to perpetuate the image of the force as a revolutionary European army. The degree of admiration and acceptance varies, but the overall tendency to accentuate the positive lives on, or has indeed grown stronger.
Forgive the straight copy/paste but I wanted to have the entire text at my disposal...and the formatting on this blog for quotes....ugh. Mea culpa.
Being the researcher that I am, I knew to go to primary sources to get information; that led me to Simon Mackenzie's Wikipedia page to find out who he is and what he wrote. This in turn led me to his page on the University of South Carolina website. During this trek, I found a copy of the primary text via Google preview on the routledge.com website.
On page 140 of his book, Revolutionary Armies in the Modern Era: A Revisionist Approach, he names Williamson and has this to say:
"England also has had its share of admirers, the focus here being more on the qualities of the German units. In the 1990s two popular writers, Gordon Williamson and Edmund L. Blandford, sought to restore the tarnished moral reputation of the Waffen-SS in the West and reiterate its superb fighting qualities by letting veterans tell their own stories. The results are predictably positive. While Williamson approaches his subjects with at least a degree of scepticism, Blandford is unquestionably partisan. He appears to believe that the Waffen-SS has been unjustly maligned and its revolutionary achievements as a 'New Model Army' underplayed."
Reading his entire paragraph made me feel a bit better about reading Williamson since I think the point he makes is that Williamson lets 'veterans tell their own stories' while continuing to have a healthy scepticism [sic] in his approach.
My relief came from the fact that I am a WWII history buff, I collect military medals and I have a healthy (sarcasm) hatred for the Nazis and all they stood for. Thinking that I had been duped into reading a revisionist and not recognizing him as such gave me a start. I deplore Holocaust deniers but am ambivalent about those who allow the veterans to speak for themselves. My reasons my be subjective but here they are:
1. I remember speaking to my father who was a B-25 bomber pilot in the Pacific in WWII. While patriotic to a fault, I remember him speaking about when he got older and saw the images from Vietnam, he began to wonder about those that he had bombed and the effects upon them. Remorse blossomed. The 'enemy' had become human and he had to admit that he had caused injury and death to other human beings regardless of the fact that we were at war and they would have killed him if they could have.
2. Which brings up another point: in training for war, one is indoctrinated to think in terms of generalities engendered by perjorative names and terms such as 'enemy', 'Nazi', 'Jap', 'Gook', etc. to depersonalize combatants. Hindsight and age brings the realization that labels such as these are describing actual human beings rather than faceless automatons. This is a necessary part of combat training to be able to carry out the most inhumane actions upon those designated as the enemy. Later, one may realize that the 'enemy' was just as human and just as scared as any other soldier in battle. So, after some time passes, I see no reason to listen to others and their experiences in an objective manner. Whether corporately this constitutes revisionism, especially towards the SS, is questionable in my mind.
3. Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it. This quote is a cornerstone in my way of thinking. If we cannot realize that not every SS man was an ardent Nazi then we are doomed to fail to see the change that is inherent in humans. It stands to reason, as is illustrated in Hans Sturm by Gordon Williamson, that some who became SS members did so due to peer pressure as well as the enormous pressure of the time. Since the SS as a whole has been deemed 'criminal' by the Nuremburg tribunal, it stands to reason that even within that framework there were some non-criminals within it. Example: To say that all United Methodists believe in gay marriage or divorce or any other point of doctrine just because the greater body of the UMC declares that as part of their polity is overreaching. The same is true for the SS or any other organization.
Don't get me wrong: I agree wholeheartedly that the SS was criminal if not the embodiment of evil; however, I don't believe that everyone within the SS was evil. Corporate sin vs. Individual sin. I believe that everyone has to account for their actions regardless of what uniform they wear, period.
4. There is no way that any thinking person can justify what the Nazis and/or the SS did. To think that someone can change their spots is disputed by Mackenzie's discussion of HIAG and their failure to raise the image of the SS as a whole. Continuing to research this organization led me to see that the more some members tried to tone down the rhetoric, others remained true to their ardent Nazi roots and were quite verbal about it. The same is true with individuals. 'By their fruits you will know them' is a wise quotation to keep in mind. While some people change over time, others remain the same or become more virulent. Trust but verify as Reagan was wont to say. Think the best until you can no longer ignore the fact that some Nazis were just as ruthless, vile and evil as they have been portrayed in history.
Now as to why any of this matters....
In the main scheme of things, it doesn't. I don't know either gentleman. I have some of Williamson's books that I use for study of medals and the SS, I don't have any of Mackenzie's. I have not spoken to either one. But it concerned me that when I did a Google search of George Williamson, these same quotes came up almost every time. I think the scribe for Wikipedia may have cut and pasted the remarks of Mackenzie to make Williamson appear more revisionist than even Professor Mackenzie implied. That concerned me. That is why it is so important, especially when reading things on the internet, to research and research and research before drawing conclusions. That is why I feel comfortable keeping my Williamson books rather than burning them as revisionist trash.
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