Band of Brothers question

[WPG]

Gents,

I was watching the series for the umpteenth time tonight. In Part 5 "Crossroads", when they hit the Germans at the dike, they began to take prisoners and one of the prisoners said something in Polish. The E Co trooper translated that the prisoner was Polish. Did the Germans take Poles as conscripts
into the SS?

 

[Queequeg]

Re: Band of Brothers question

Very possible.

The borders of the world are fungible and serve to acts as mental boundaries as much as national. Germanic people live all over northern Europe and the Nazi's sought to unify them under the grand umbrella of the third reich. Protecting ethnic Germans from persecution was the pretext for the invasion of the Sudetenland, in west Czechoslovakia, in 1938. The rest of that nation fell soon afterward.

It's not difficult to believe that there were Polish people who were more willing to ally themselves to the Germans rather than the Russians. While Poland suffered horribly during the war, crushed first by the cynical dual invasions of the Nazis and the Soviets in 1939, the nation was then cruelly depopulated of the people most hated by both totalitarians. First by both of them jointly, then the Nazis until mid 1945, then by the Soviets for the next dozen years until good, solid, dependably vicious, Polish Soviets could be counted on to carry on the job until the coming of John Paul II


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidnapping_of_Eastern_European_children_by_Nazi_Germany

 

[WPG]

Re: Band of Brothers question

Thanks for the explanation sir.

 

[sirhrmechanic]

Re: Band of Brothers question

I had thought there was a Polish SS regiment, so went to look it up and found this on Yahoo! Answers. It's on the Internet... it must be true. (Though I suspect this is pretty accurate.)

"While there was no specific "Polish-SS" (there was a Waffen SS “Galizien” Division, Polish connections) unit if you look up the WIKING SS Unit, you will probably find mention of them, as the war progressed and the SS-Units got there collective a s s kicked and incurred large casualties they (Wiking) were mainly composed of Norwegians, Swedes, Finns, Danes, Dutch, Latvian's, Lithuania's, and even some Romanians."

And there were plenty of Polish conscripts in the Wehrmacht (sp?)

Cheers,

Sirhr

 

[Fenris]

Re: Band of Brothers question

I don't remember the scene but yes, more than 250,000 men from the occupied Poland served in the German Army. Even in the Waffen-SS.