Ghost of a flea

What's this about "ship projects," Flea? Sounds like it could be an interesting story...

I'm a little more interested in the SS-Kriegsmarine connection you seem to be referencing?

Nick was formerly a history lecturer at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis. While guest-lecturing at the Royal Naval College in the UK, he inadvertently thwarted an Irish republican terrorist plot to assassinate members of Britain's Royal Family.

Nick later went to work as an analyst for the Deputy Director for Intelligence at CIA HQ in Langley, VA. Not long after, he helped engineer the capture of a newly-commissioned Soviet ballistic missile submarine and the defection of its senior officers.

Oh wait, I might be confusing him with someone else...

N.P.: "I am not so sure I accept this distinction between regular military units and the SS."

Do you mean specifically the distinction Bound makes or any moral distinction whatsoever? From what I've read about the Nazi-era German military and the SS in particular, ordinary Bundeswehr units were far more reluctant (and sometimes refused) to have anything to do with genocidal actions.

N.P.: "That ship was still used to murder in the service of Nazi race and empire and I am delighted it was removed from action."

Yes, but you're missing the point. Military service under the supreme command of a genocidal war criminal doesn't ipso facto make one a genocidal war criminal. And enemy soldiers needn't be conscious servants of evil for us to be "delighted" when they're "removed from action." In other words, individual enemy soldiers (perhaps the majority of them) may be perfectly "honorable" people whom we nevertheless want to kill in order to thwart their leader's aims.

I don't imagine that you believe "enemy soldier = evil," so I'm puzzled by your apparent belief that the officers and crew of the Graf Spee were necessarily dishonorable.

Hmm... I opened a kettle of fish (and a mixed metaphor) with this one. Actually, I am curious mainly about stealth profiles of modern surface combatants.

The Jack Ryan story was in my mind when I jumped at the contract. Unfortunately, I was never flown out to sea for superspy purposes.

As for the moral culpability of non-SS units... Much of that decision I leave to the men who fought them. Perhaps it is the Quaker-thinking coming out.

N.P.: "As for the moral culpability of non-SS units... Much of that decision I leave to the men who fought them."

Respectfully, it doesn't sound as though you do when you implicitly write off all German soldiers as dishonorable. Nothing I've read about Allied (at least American and British) commanders and soldiers indicates that they generally shared your view of enemy troops.

It's an ordinary and ancient phenomenon for war-time adversaries to regard each other as individually honorable even though they're bent on killing each other. This can't be any kind of revelation to an anthropologist.

I have many relatives who fought on the German side in WW2 (big shock, eh?)

Some volunteered out of a sense of duty, some were conscripted. Some were in conventional Army, Navy, Air Force units, some were in the nastiest of the Waffen-SS units.

I DO accept the distinction between regular military units and the fanatical fucktards who populated the SS. I've met some of the latter. I'm related to them. It's something I wished wasn't so, but there it is.

And they scare the hell out of me. Because many of them still believe in their glorious Fuhrer...They are quite different than the regular veterans (even though some of them are quite thick-headed about fighting on the morally-wrong side)

R.K.: "I DO accept the distinction between regular military units and the fanatical fucktards who populated the SS."

But do you accept that sometimes demonic teddy bears just need killing?

Hey... let's leave the demonic teddy bears to the experts!

There is a romantic talk that gets directed toward the Graf Spee and its captain that I am calling into question. I think some of this comes from the same romanticization of samurai warrior codes or talk about the chivalry of the Confederacy. I can understand how the technocratic, industrial side of these fights is less romantic than the notion of a doomed warrior ethic fighting for honour, a code, etc. but I think the swords and the uniforms and the snappy salutes and so forth can obscure the fact these codes were in the service of evil regimes and evil ideas. Would I rather be captured by a regular army unit than the SS or its equivalents? Of course. Would this stop me from being shipped off to a death camp? Of course not.

But I see this as being beside the point. The SS heirarchy thought of themselves as medieval knights expressing chivalric virtues. This was equally true for the "samurai" gleefully beheading Allied prisoners of war. We could produce a list of people acting with honour who were also acting badly and I believe that to be true for many parts of the Hitler regime who acted in its interests whether they were party members or not. I feel an absolute horror for the fate of people conscripted to fight for the Nazis. Those officers who retained their commissions, status and livelihoods as the Hitler government rearmed and invaded one country after another do not deserve the same sympathy.

I have never faced the task of the men who hunted down the Graf Spee and can only imagine what that experience must have meant and continue to mean to them long after the fact. It is in that sense I can only respect their judgement as to the character of the men they fought. Their common experience in war, and in a particular battle, unites them in ways that transcend the side they were on and perhaps the ability to share that experience in any meaningful way with people who did not share it (or anything like it). But it isn't these men who are writing the websites I am looking at celebrating the honour of the captain of the Graf Spee (and am now going to google around to see if we can bring some of those immediate perspectives into the discussion). I was watching a show about the search for the wreck of the Bismarck and another by the same fellow after the Yorktown. Both told the story of particular engagements with little attempt to place them in a broader historical or political, let alone moral, context. We were instead shown images of German and Japanese veterans of those engagements presented as men of honour who tragically lost their fellows in the needless tragedy that is war. In fact, this is way the story of the Great War is often (almost always) told complete with poppies and Christmas songs and a friendly game of football between trenches. I can accept a moral equivalence amongst the warring empires of the first world war and a common human suffering amongst the men who fought in that cause. Tales of tragic heroism as waves of men are sent pointlessly into machine gun fire evoke feelings of pity and horror. I think comparable tales of galantry in the service of Nazism - by way of warrior honour or not - need to be placed in a context of the mass murder of which that gallantry was in the service.

And another thought along the lines of Ray's comment... I have relatives who mourn the loss of the British Empire. I do not believe there is a moral equivalence between British and Nazi imperialism and I think someone would be mad to imagine Ghandi's tactics would have worked against Hitler. But I also think placing large parts to the world under military rule in the service of the British aristocracy is not a project to be celebrated. This is the difference in belief that prevents many of my relatives from understanding why the Yanks let them down over Suez or, indeed, why even someone as clever as John Keegan implies the Americans have yet to work out Arabs are incapable of democracy. The British imperial version of race and soil was not as histrionic or vile as the Nazi version but it lives on.

Ok, now is the time for someone to remind me of my positions on the Elgin Marbles and Gibraltar!

And as I am leaving multiple comments I want to remember to add something else. I was curious about Michael's question arising from the Going to Heaven? quiz. He said he knew how Catholics got their answers to those sorts of questions but wondered how the rest of us did. It seems to me this relates to his cogent questions about my Gospel of Thomas post and I have been remiss at addressing either of them... I will see about posting something tomorrow along those lines. I want to plea exam-writing as a preemptive excuse in case I don't!

Michael: Snuggle was just trying to help!

(seriously though, my discomfiture with this skit was the thought of my two-year old daughter asking "Why Snuggle bleeding dada?" and trying to tell her it was funny. I'm not trying to breed sociopaths.)

Nicholas: I'm still trying to ascertain your views regarding regular veterans vs. fanatics. Is it your view that ordinary sailors following orders on the Graf Spee (or the Bismarck or the average U-Boat for that matter) are as guilty as Goebbels or Himmler? I'm not saying that they are blameless, but there is a matter of degree.

Is it your view that the average artilleryman in the Wehrmacht is as evil as the commandant of Auschwitz? Or in more modern terms: is the average Iraqi soldier under Saddam, in service to an evil regime, as evil as the most fanatical Imperial guards?

There is a difference in my view, but if I'm reading you correctly you seem to be taking an absolutist point of view, which would condemn anyone born into a dictatorship country as evil if they are in service to that country. Am I reading you correctly?

Hi Ray, the Snuggles massacre is not something I would want to watch every day either...

No, I do not mean to take an absolutist position vis a vis the complicity of people working in the service of tyrannical regimes let alone those with the misfortune to be born into them. It is, rather, those would would absolve German officers of responsibility and cast them in a romantic light who are taking an absolutist position. I do not believe an absolute distinction is supportable given it is these same officers who planned and carried out the multiple invasions leading up to Poland and the war.

Nazi Germany's conquest of Europe was not the act of the party and its military auxiliaries alone. The sailors on the Graf Spee are not the monsters of the camps but this is a fine line to walk. Everyone from the camp guards right up to Eichmann claimed to be just doing their jobs. So, no, there is no absolute equivalence between an enlisted sailor and a camp guard at Birkenau but neither is there an absolute distinction in their participation in genocideal war aims. Those sailors were still trying to starve out the last free country in Europe to oppose them. To my mind that makes them more culpable than say, a bus driver in Berlin. But it isn't the enlisted guys, let alone the conscripts, that the paeons to the Graf Spee are written. It is to her captain. Photos of him offering a naval salute as everyone around him gives the Nazi salute (even the priest) are moving in that they suggest a personality ashamed to be involved in the forces that overtook Germany. The officer's plot is only one piece of evidence than many would risk their lives to do the right thing. But there were plenty of other officers - the majority in fact - who captained their submarines in the hunt for Allied passenger ships and who spent the war fighting for the Nazi government. Gallantry? Heroism? I am still delighted that ship went down.

The other side of this is that same repellant nationalism I mentioned originating with some of my own relatives. Some of them seem to think the fight for Britannia, rather than a fight for freedom, was at issue. The next time one of them tries it on I am going to quote something I read at John Hawkins' blog.

Who was the greatest German general of World War II?

The answer was obvious once I read it:

Dwight D. Eisenhauer.

I seem to be having problems at my host provider so I will add this conclusion to the last note quickly... My original remark was an aside meant to express my discomfort at the way the captain of the Graf Spee is romanticized. It was not something I thought about terribly carefully and clearly I should have. There are plenty of my subjects for which my sweeping asides are inappropriate and this was one of them.

Thanks for the clarification and I am in agreement (eventually!) with your extended point of view. The defeat of the enemies of freedom, even if they are honourable men, should be celebrated.

As for Captain Hans Wilhelm Langsdorff, did he shoot himself because he could no longer reconcile his honourable conduct in advancing the cause of an evil empire or did he know how his failure would be received in Berlin and decided to take a shortcut to the inevitable.

It's easy to give Hitler the finger if you know that you're a dead man anyway...

Hey Flea, have you ever thought of putting a "most recent comments" script in your sidebar? That way people visiting can see your most active discussions. It's also a fast way to track and kill the comment spam that can sneak through.

If you want the MT script let me know and I'll email it to you.

Auf Weidersehen

Neat feature! Yes, please do send me the code and I will see how it looks. The Flea is going to go through a major overhaul in the next couple weeks so this is a timely experiment.