Baltic Peoples Join the SS - War Against Humanity 087
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- Опубликовано: 16 ноя 2022
- Hitler forces Himmler to betray his promise of independence for the Baltic states, despite giving the Waffen-SS 40,000 of their young men. Ion Antonescu of Romania decides to save the remaining Romanian Jews to save his own ass.
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Hosted by: Spartacus Olsson
Director: Astrid Deinhard
Producers: Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Executive Producers: Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Marek Kamiński
Community Management: Ian Sowden
Written by: Spartacus Olsson & Joram Appel
Research by: Joram Appel
Edited by: Karolina Dołęga
Artwork and color grading by: Mikołaj Uchman
Sound design by: Marek Kamiński
Colorizations by:
Mikołaj Uchman
Spartacus Olsson
Daniel Weiss
Dememorabilia - / dememorabilia
Norman Stewart - oldtimesincolor.blogspot.com/
Julius Jääskeläinen - / jjcolorization
Jaris Almazani (Artistic Man), artistic.man?ig...
Source literature list: bit.ly/WW2sources
Archive footage: Screenocean/Reuters - www.screenocean.com
Image sources:
Yad Vashem: 4613/525, 951, 90EO3, R4613/1094, 4086/2
Imperial War Museums: C 3921, TR 1093
Bundesarchiv
National Archives Nara
Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe
Picture of the HASAG - Pelcery labor camp sourced at United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Lola Tanzer
Soundtracks from Epidemic Sound:
Break Free - Fabien Tell
Document This 1 - Peter Sandberg
Dragon King - Jo Wandrini
First Responders - Skrya
Guilty Shadows 4 - Andreas Jamsheree
Last Point of Safe Return - Fabien Tell
March Of The Brave 10 - Rannar Sillard
Never Forget - Fabien Tell
Not Safe Yet - Gunnar Johnsen
Rememberance - Fabien Tell
Spy Game - Jon Sumner
A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.
I’ve gotten the question how we get such exact numbers, and information about some of the single events of the Holocaust. In this episode the buried manuscripts of Auschwitz give us a glimpse into the hard, meticulous work that has gone into that research by thousands of people in the past nine decades. Millions, literally millions of pieces of information have been compiled, researched, and cross referenced to get as close to the truth as we possibly can.
The sources are a compilation of the surviving German records, captured intelligence from the war, testimonies, cross referenced records from occupied countries - like tax records and death certificates, forensic findings from the sites, and much more. The findings have been compiled into databases, reference works, articles, and books ever since the investigations began already during the war. For instance; for Auschwitz there is a “bible” that contains all the data that exists day by day: the Chronicle of Auschwitz 1939-1945, by Danuta Czech, the late deputy director of the Auschwitz museum. She spent two decades tracking down every number she could. It’s one of the major reference works that all of us who research in this field use.
This effort continues, and we improve our collective understanding of the events a little bit more every year - it’s literally detective work, researching the biggest mass murder in known human history. Our part in that is to present as much of that as we can to a wider audience. Even at that surface level it means going through an immense amount of disparate information about millions of lost souls - and while that is excruciating and heart wrenching, that is also why it’s so important; documenting their deaths, every death, means that their memory is preserved, and honored. It means that the perpetrators ultimately fail in their goal to eradicate the identity of their victims.
Never Forget
Spartacus
Before commenting, please check out the rules of conduct which apply to this comment section: community.timeghost.tv/t/rules-of-conduct/4518
That is a mind blowing amount of information and research that has been done. It is inconceivable that in the face of so much overwhelming evidence, a phenomenon such as Holocaust denial can still exist.
14:11 Error. You don't mine Picric acid. It is an explosive created by nitrating phenol. The Phenol is very aggressive to the skin and lungs and this is most likely what happened without any sort or protective gear .
Maybe something for a special episode? TGA behind the scenes - In the archives.
@@F_Tim1961 yes that was sloppy - it should have been “mining phenol from coal tar deposits, and producing picric acid.”
@@spartacus-olsson good work Sparty! Never Again!
"morale in a totalitarian society is irrelevant so long as the control patterns function effectively." (Carl Spaatz) Ominous words that even today have not lost their relevance.
They function effectively in most developed nations, in fact.
I don't remember who it was but I saw an interview with a German officer asking about how could Germany continue to fight in 1944 he answered "moral was low, discipline was high"
so what was claus schwabs father doing in ww2?
It is happening in Russia today. Little boys in kindergartens are being dressed in military uniforms. Indoctrination and militarization as soon as they can walk.
Covid and the government crowd control policies they deployed offered us a stark reminder to the autoritarian temptation. Some unconsciously wish to lick the boot.
As much as all those episodes are horrifying, I usually try to keep my composure to properly learn and listen. But near the end I really broke down this time. I'm Polish but I never heard about this story of the resistance fighters in the gas chamber before. So hearing it as well as Spartacus's words deeply moved me. It might be because it reminded me once again how war is absolutely awful and how it's still happening so close to us, with people dying for their freedom. Not to mention the scare we had on Tuesday where I really thought we also will have to go through this again too. Once more I would like to thank the team for doing amazing work and especially to Spartacus for enduring the filming each episode which are so important for everyone to learn. Never forget.
I don’t know how you are able to end every single episode with such poignant statements that give me chills.
Spartacus, your War Against Humanity series contains the most detailed accounts of The Holocaust I have ever seen or read. It is both frightening and mind-numbing, but when I am asked why I endure it, I reply it is necessary to comprehend the past if we are to have any hope of avoiding a repeat of these horrors in the future. It baffles me each time I encounter someone who dismisses it all as false propaganda. For the last two days I have been engaged on another channel in a running argument with someone who is completely dismissive of these well-documented events. He makes such outrageous claims that I have concluded he is either completely deluded or a pathetic internet troll. The fact that such people exist only reinforces my desire to watch your series in its entirety. Thank you for the tremendous research that you and your team are doing so that the record of these crimes is maintained for future generations to understand and hopefully heed the lessons thereof.
You have been deluded.
@@frankhassle9366 I'll take my delusions over yours.
@@Paladin1873 Just a glutton for punishment, eh?😉
Those who preserved the memory of the events are heroes in their own right.
Hell yeah.
I remember when it was rough dealing with one WAH video a month 😭. Thanks for persevering through Sparty. We desperately hope with each episode that it surely can’t get darker and more insane, but it does. We will never forget 💔
The writing especially for the endings are always just phenominal, i dont undertand how you keep coming up with such power
Glad you're enjoying our writing! Thank you very much for the support.
When I first arrived in Australia, I worked with a number of guys from the Baltics, Croatia, Ukraine and Slovenia that served in the Nazi army. They had all come to Australia from holding camps in Western Europe and were able to live out their existence here. Later waves of immigrants from Greece and Yugoslavia were deeply suspicious of them and held them in deep contempt, as the majority had either parents who ha fought against (or suffered under) the Nazis, or had served with the partizans themselves. They had a special hatred of this Polish guy, who was said to have helped the nazis during the occupation. The rest of the workforce was comprised of people who served in the British, German, and Soviet Armies, the General Manager was Jewish and the Chief Engineer was of Polish parents, who had escaped to England during the war. Yet we all managed to get along just fine. When this German guy was complaining he got nothing from the government, while all the British men were receiving war pensions, this Yorkshire guy, who had served in Burma, said to him, "that'll teach you to fight in the wrong army". We all had a bit of a chuckle and carried on. It was live and let live at our little chemical plant!
Thank you for your your hard work Spartacus. You guys do amazing work👍
1 week ago, I visited Westerbork, a concentration camp in Drenthe, Netherlands. It most certainly left an impact
1 thing is saw were parts of a movie made by a camp inmate on orders of the camp commandant to film the work the other inmates were doing. They made it seem like such a normal workplace, yet you could feel a bit of melancholy. Especially if you knew what the place really was, behind the camera.
2 other monuments also left an impact. 1 was of a railroad track, with the end bent and shot up, meaning the end and capture of the camp by the Allies. The track had 97 wooden beams. 93 connected to the track signifying the trains from Westerbork to Auschwitz. To let the number sink in I counted them, twice. 93 full trains is simply too much of a toll in human lives. The other 4 were of trains that "simply" passed through from elsewhere on the way to Auschwitz.
But the one that left the largest impact was a small area where they put bricks standing up in the ground. 102.000 bricks, one for each victim. I was astonished simply by how much space these small bricks took up, even when mostly bunched together. To then know that each brick is larger, human sized, that all died in this camp (whether in or in transit), that didn't even take up that much room in the forest. One small patch of land, yet 102.000 dead. This war is cruelty above anything imaginable
And then to realise this was simply the transit camp
Thank you for all the hard work you and your team have done to make sure we never forget
Hopefully we'll get a update on how SS formation efforts failed in Lithuania in future episodes. Due to the failure in recruitment, Vilnius University was closed, leading intellectuals were sent to Stutthof concentration camp and in February 1944 Lithuanian Territorial Defense Force (LTDF) was established. Made up of Lithuanian volunteers and Lithuanian officers, it did not follow OKW commands and disbanded into the forests, forming the main spine of the Forest brothers partisan movemnt which was active until 1953 in resistance to Soviet occupationo. This is one of the few points in the dark pages of Lithuania's involvement in WW2 that can be a source of pride so hopefully it will be mentioned in the future.
Just little correction, while the main Lithuanian partisan organizations dissapeared by 1954, the small individual groups were still active up to late 1960s like A. Kraujelis-Siaubunas
The overlap between the Baltic SS and the forest brothers was high.
@@porksterbob
Not in Lithuanian case as the comment pointed out.
I agree, it is probably only thing I can be proud about in this very dark time - Lithuanians were the only nation occupied by Germans that did not form any SS legion during the war (sorry for spoilers later - I think nazis conscripted few hundred idiots). But there were self-defense battalions (not LTDF), of which some were sent to guard concentration and extermination camps, which is a disgrace, but very few were formed and very few know. I think one of them guarded Treblinka. I hope Spartacus will have time for it in 1944, there will be a lot of action and clusterfuck here when Plechavičius finds out that Nazis were to send LTDF outside of Lithuania - main reason Lithuanians went with LTDF is that it will be used only in Lithuania.
Fun tid bit - our president Valdas Adamkus (IMO our best one) fought in one formation of LTDF, i think in Samogitia, and after defeat he ran to the West with a lot of other people who ran from Soviets.
@@saslykasLT I think you’re confusing the different kinds of SS here… there’s the regular SS where the Totenkopfverbände run the camps. They recruited volunteers that were trained in the Trawniki camp to work with in the genocide and in the concentration camp system. People from all the Soviet Republics as they stood in 1940 volunteered for them, in all around 8,500. Most came from Belarus, then in order of magnitude: Russia, Ukraine, Lithuania and so on. They were indeed in the hundreds.
Then there were also the foreigners in the Einsatzgruppen who operated the murder pits. Between 13 and 14,000 Lithuanian policemen, and other Lithuanians served in these. Although people in all occupied territories participated, and the numbers were somewhat higher in Belarus and Ukraine, the Lithuanian cooperation was the most efficient resulting in in the murder of 97% of Lithuanian Jews.
Then there’s the Waffen SS which are the “regular military” of the Nazi party. Since the regular Army, the Wehrmacht couldn’t recruit foreigners, and volunteers under German law (and for that matter international law), foreigners fought with the Waffen SS. Some were volunteers, but far more were conscripted in occupied territory. Lithuania is an exception here… the conscription I speak of in the video indeed only raised around 300. In Latvia roughly 13,000 and in Estonia roughly 27,000 - this was due to a lack of cooperation of the Lithuanian administration. However, by that time around 8,000 Lithuanian who had served in the Einsatzkommandos were already serving as volunteers in the Waffen SS.
The LDTF is another story altogether, and we’ll get there in 1944.
NGL I started crying when you quoted the man who willingly sacrificed himself in the hopes of others escaping, and I lost it at the end with the speech and singing.
Thank you to all of you. When we get a gut punch from these videos I think it’s working even better. Yes you can sort of comprehend the numbers, but even then the sheer magnitude of them leaves you not necessarily numb to it but struggling to take in the fact that each of those numbers is an individual. Yes _intellectually_ we know that each of them is an individual, but beyond that it can be a struggle. But when you hear those individual accounts it brings it home. It puts a voice to them and yes it’s heart wrenching but that is a darn good thing. As it makes it all the more real, and all the more comprehensible.
9:30 that's a surprise from Antonescu, at least one good decision from the bad guys
even if it was for selfish reasons, to wash away their hands rather than out of empathy.
Very moving this week, but tattooing numbers onto babies is another heart rending detail. It is uplifting to know those two songs remain and we do memorialise them. Never forget.
As ever you elucidate with such sober narration that cannot fail to impact one deeply. The tragedy these people suffered is unspeakable, and unfortunately things wouldn't get much better when they are later captured and held by the soviet union until it's fall, so much suffering, for what? Thank you Spartacus, and the team, keep up the excellent work.
Thank you for putting it as complicated and unclean as it really was.
RIP Auschwitz survivor and Hogan's Heroes star Robert Clary who passed away Wed. Nov 16, 2022.
I had no idea he died! A tragic loss in more ways than one.
Thank you for your time and unwavering discipline in delivering these now weekly episodes, Spartacus and team. They have exceeded any of my highest expectations in terms of detail, scope, and above all in its humanity.
Thank you for your kind words :D
Dear Sparty, I am a fan of your work, which is grim & unsettling - yet absolutely necessary. Especially in a time like this.
The stark reality you show, brings me oft to tears. This is who we may turn into, if we're not careful.
Please keep reminding us all, since Humanity seems to need a kick in the head to remind it what it is to be civil and inclusive.
Thank you.
NEVER FORGET!!!
Thank you again for your hard work on this series. My daughter is in Poland this week as part of her gap year program in Israel. The trip was sponsored by Holocaust survivors who pay to keep the memory of this tragedy alive. Today, she visited Auschwitz and she sent me a photograph of a page of the book there that lists all of the 4.5 million Jewish victims who have been identified (roughly 1.5 million additional Jews died or were murdered by the Nazis without leaving any relatives or records, and so they currently are listed as just numbers). She carefully found the volume marked D, turned to the page for Dicker which was the surname of my maternal grandfather's family left behind in Poland, and sent me a photograph of the page. I was stunned at the number of different Holocaust victims who shared this last name. Some were relatives, others people I had never heard of. But all shared the same fate.
I am glad you mentioned the singing of the Polish national anthem and the Hatikvah together by the Polish and Jewish women about to die in the gas chamber at Auschwitz that sad day. There has been some friction between the Polish and Jewish people in the years leading up to and after the War. It is unfortunate, because our two peoples shared a similar fate at the hands of the same genocidal maniacs, with the Nazis seeking to eradicate the Polish nation alongside the genocide of the Jewish people. The choice of Poland as the killing fields for the Holocaust was no accident or coincidence: the Nazis were seeking to turn Poland into a graveyard for the Jews, while burying the national aspirations of the Polish people. This fact alone should unite us.
I always try to imagine the multi-ethnic country that Poland would still have been, where it not for these terrible events. Where you would frequently hear Yiddish and Hebrew next to Polish on the streets. I try to imagine that we resolved our tensions, and lived more or less happily together, the culture of our common country, of our commonwealth, all the richer for it. A fate wiped out from the map of possibilities by the Nazis' hateful hand. Forever.
As I'm writing this, I begin to think that I should have perhaps learned these languages as some sort of debt to our history (but unfortunately I'm learning French and German is next in line so that exhausts the capabilities of my brain...)
It boggles my mind that there still exist antisemite scum in here.
Thank you for this episode of the War Against Humanity team. As always, never forget.
The people stuck between Hitler and Stalin got screwed by both
I live in the UK and many years ago I had a girlfriend who’s uncle (he married her Auntie) had joined the SS to fight the Russians . He was originally a Latvian citizen . After the war he fled from his own country to come and live here in the UK . I was told that the Latvians hated Jewish people and hated the Soviets even more so he willingly joined the SS . My girlfriend had heard rumours about him that he himself had been very anti Semitic . Apparently he was a very much loved part of the family and my girlfriend thought the world of him . Before I met him I was told under no circumstances mention anything about the war as my girlfriend knew about my interest in studying WW2 so I was liable to ask him questions about fighting for the SS.
When I met him I thought he was a lovely old man , very sweet and thoughtful. You would never have thought that he had formerly been in the SS . Years later he got cancer and was told it was terminal , rather than waste away and suffer be drove off one day and killed himself by running a pipe from the exhaust of his car into the car itself .
We eventually broke up and she left England to emigrate to America and married a Jewish man . So although she loved her uncle very much she obviously didn’t share his world views .
There is a YT vid by the son of a n*zi. The son converted into the jewish faith. Well worth watching.
cringe
These were very brave women and men who faced death with such courage. 🤔👌
My grandfather was forcefully conscripted into the Waffen-SS during the German retreat from Estonia. He had no interest in fighting for an occupier and as such he jumped off the train leaving towards Germany. He was almost sent to Siberia for technically being in the SS but was spared (we assume this is why he was a communist party member). His friend managed to desert in Germany and escaped Britain post-war. They managed to stay in contact via letters despite the Iron Curtain.
I find it shameful that some of our people hold Waffen-SS fighters in such high honor. Specifically those who voulenteered for the 3rd Reichs cause. It's a barely grey part of our sad history during WW2.
Our people we're forced to suffer and fight under two occupiers. I will never honor our own people who supported their cause and voulenteered to fight for them.
Similar story, my great uncle was in the Estonian army as a major, and when the Germans can Houstonian military was forcibly conscripted into the Estonian SS division my grandfather was forcibly conscripted. Luckily, his uncle gave him a cushy position. He was a radio operator luckily didn’t have to go much out into the lines to set the communication cables but still he said he never had to kill anyone which is quite amazing but his older brother was a partisan as a forest, brother and in 1944 he was killed in action while fighting against the Soviets on the island of Sarreemaas somewhere
I am always shocked when I find various Baltic fascists/reactionaries. They are quite insane.
Although I have to add my grandfather and his brother never supported any cause, they just did what they had to do to survive, and then the case of my grandfathers brother he was a true part patriot, who wanted to defend his homeland sadly in vain, but that’s how I am in Canada today my grandfather came here well, that’s a whole other story some thing in the realm of illegal immigrant quite interesting to be honest.
@@OtterSam Sadly in vain failed to beat the Soviets? It turns out that it was not sad that the Nazis lost.
@@rring44 he was a partisan. He fought the Soviets, then the Germans, then then the Soviets a second time, clearly you don’t know your Baltic history, so don’t come out with stupid comments like that the whole point of a partisan is to fight any occupier of your country. That’s from my grandfather he escaped during the German retreat, and found his way to a displaced persons camp in the American sector in Germany, where he lived for two years before finding his way to Sweden when he worked for a Swedish shipping company as a deck hand. His father, my great grandfather used to own a taxi business with horse and buggies he used horses that were injured during the First World War and nursed them back to health. He also had a nice apartment, and the Soviets took all that away from him they shoved five families into that small apartment. Could you imagine that looks like not even liveable conditions. The NKVD asked would harass my grandfather‘s brother his wife who had no idea what happened to him or where he was at the NKVD kept questioning her and questioning her and brought her into a forced labour camp just because they could she spent two years there somehow before the same Estonian author of the book Spring, who she was friends with, managed to convince some communist officials to let her go. I heard a story from her back in 1988 when the Baltic Way was in swing, and the countries were fighting to regain their independence and flying the national flags. She was so worried that they would be deported and sent to the Gulag’s.
Sick fade bro. And excellent video as usual
we in the UK are not taught anything about the famine in Bengal. I knew nothing about it until now. The shame is palpable.
Same here in the US. We should teach the generations!
Funny how western colonial crimes across the 3rd world are so easily glossed over when talking about WW2 history, the message always ends up being nazis bad liberal western europeans good
@@BrezhnevStan yeah so true. we in the west are taught how we were the good guys, but no mention about how bad we were.
@@seedhillbruisermusic7939 Because when compared to German, Japanese, and Russians we are the good guys. Those three slaughtered woman and children by millions yet the US never sanctioned that. Here we are peacefully talking on RUclips, your welcome. We ain’t perfect but compared to those out there I’m sure you prefer us.
It is taught in appropriate history courses at University
I always found it amusing that "historical movies" would have one believe every French person etc. was an active member of the resistance during WW2 practically no collaborators.
Thank you for your comment Joe! This is a particularly interesting observation.
France has spent massive efforts since the war to build a narrative that describes a "resistant nation", and lived through a macabre period in the years following the war we now call the "epuration" during which collaborators and those believed to have associated with them were violently purged. These were part of the effort to conceal the unfortunate truth that many who survived to tell their story were if not collaborators, at least complacent. The phenomenon you're referring to is an integral part of France's modern national identity.
Robert Clary, RIP. The french willingly put the Jews on those one-way trains.
Every one of these episodes hits me like a sledgehammer... Never Forget..
Spaatz was right. Morale in a totalitarian society does not matter as long as the state repression apparatus keeps working and is loyal. We saw that in the USSR during the Holodomir and the German invasion, we saw it in Mao's China during the Great Leap Forward, we see it in North Korea to this very day. Hunger and the enemy may kill you, but if you resist the secret police will certainly kill you.
During the discussion of the Skarzysko-Kamienna camp and associated munitions factory, Spartacus said something that I don't believe is correct. Specifically, he talks about workers "mining picric acid without any protective gear" (paraphrasing). This does not make sense as picric acid is not a natural mineral that can be mined. Rather, it is produced by nitrating phenol using concentrated nitric acid, while sulfuric acid may also be utilized to minimize side reactions. I can certainly believe that the slave laborers were used up fairly quickly in the production process but using the word "mining" definitely seems inappropriate.
You’re right. This was a sloppy. It should have been “mining phenol from coal tar deposits, and producing picric acid.” My apologies.
Thank-you for giving voice to these ghosts of time.
Thank you, as always.
As a Lithunian, I am sure glad to know that I am only slightly subhuman!
Never forget. Keep teaching this history.
I love hearing the stories in this series of individuals like yehuda Goldberg, he may not of known it when he was alive but now ,79 years later all of us viewing this are reading his story in awe at his bravery and selflessness
I agree that we don't know how we'd behave in extreme circumstances, unless we've already been there and discovered who we are in the worst of circumstances - with everything on the line, including our necks.
Thank you for the lesson.
Hey Shawn, thank you for watching!
Considering the Soviets invaded the Baltic states it is a different situation i believe than collaboration. It was a way to stop the Soviets occupying their homelands again. There is a good film about this called 44 that shows the fates of Baltic troops in both the SS and the Russian army.
They were also deceived as you could see in this episode, they would not get any autonomy even if they fought. Also, there were a lot of antisemitism that mixed with the very real outrage of what the red army did during the annexations, and since there were many anti-communists, instead of joining the partisans or the red army at least thinking it's a lesser evil instead the thought somehow was on the nazis as a lesser evil.
Thank you Spartacus & team. Never forget.
Did Fritz Saukel look at Hitler and think “oh yea, I can have an even MORE ridiculous mustache”.
Thank you, never forget.
It is not easy watching this excellent documentary.
I force myself to watch it and digest it . Hoping others do the same if only to be grateful for our fortunate comfortable lives . And that we fight that others may be a fortunate and free as us .
The ending gave me chills
When first viewing Schindler's List, I was struck by the utter hopelessness of the plight of the victims. I have studied the War for many years and am not new to the topic of the holocaust by any means, but in most movies there is always a glimmer of hope. Spielberg offered none. No BBC broadcasts, no American or British air raids, no sound of Russian artillery.... nothing.
Hi. Wouldn't you say that the German - Axis occupation of Europe can be seen through a colonial lens? It's is certainly an extreme form of colonialism and imperialism just as the old school colonialism was. The German plans for the East, i.e., Poland and the Soviet Union involved replacing the indigenous Slavs with German settlers. And I might add, in Hitler's book Mein Kampf he said that " the Ukraine will be to us what India has been to the British".
I agree. National-Socialism is exactly the logic of Imperialism - the later stage of capitalism - but which has Europe itself as its object of exploitation instead of the global south
@@TheGuilhermetamara I would just clarify on one detail. It was Eastern Europe. Particularly the U.S.S.R
Thank you for your work. I will always remember.
It means a lot to us that you do. Thank you, Ben.
I had to pause this and just reflect on what sparticus was saying about the killings of these prisoners...
Not only were they killed, they were cremated, ground up and mixed in with the soil...
... My mind is struggling to comprehend the amount of hatred within someone to actually want to erase the complete existence of someone. . .
Timeghost army, thank you for your work and putting ALL the facts out there in an UNBIASED perspective
It hurts everytime.
Wow Sparty you are a very busy man this week and we all are the beneficiaries of it thank you Sparty good day
If you can find anywhere I highly recommend "Forest of the gods" by Balys Sruoga author was sent to Stutthof camp it's one of the first memoirs about Nazi camp.He was sent where because of the failed recruitment in Lithuania and Nazis blamed professor's and teacher's for that
I remember running into the part of Latvians joining the SS, around the time when Military History Visualized had a video: "Waffen SS Elite or Mass Army?"
Specifically for Latvia, they had some volunteers but it was enhanced by an ultimatum for a bunch of their males in service age: Join the Waffen SS, Wehrmacht, or get sent to slave labor, or something like that.
They were sent to work camps in Germany. About 80% were conscripted forcefully. About 10% were incorporated from local collaborationist police squads that were responsible for the Holocaust in Latvia earlier. And 10% were additional volunteers.
As the end of the war nears, the horrors seem to grow worse and worse.
As a young father myself, what happened to those babies hits way to close to home :/
There is so much history for the Baltic States during WW2 as it was an incredibly intense, bloody, tragic and desperate period. Some of the people who ended up in Hitler’s service were indeed die hard racists and believed in nazi superiority; some (or their families) were repressed by the Soviets in 1940-1941 and were REALLY itching to retaliate and to prevent another Soviet occupation; some were just dumb and easily duped by a small little national flag patch on their German army uniforms; and many were given a simple choice between a draft or a concentration camp. Some faught back, some duped the Germans (there was no “national” Waffen SS division in Lithuania, their local leaders sabotaged all attempts and men just buggered off).
Around this time in 1943, Latvian Central Council was also established to help dangle the carrot of autonomy. Germans were not shy to use it to propagate their mobilization efforts. But as the Council got bold and declared their political intention to declare full independence in early 1944 most of the leadership was promptly rounded up and sent to Stutthof. The commanders of the military branch of by then exiled-LCC later had a rather large shootout in November 1944 (AFTER the Courland pocked had formed - with German military all over the place).
Naive, valiant, stupid, reckless, sly, opportunistic, desperate, tragic, idealistic - all of it fits when talking about the Balts under German occupation.
Those cursed Nazi perpetrators of those revolting and wicked acts shall be remembered in infamy, reproach, and utter shame upon their names. That includes the SS, SD, and Einsatzgruppen murderers who abused innocent civilians in concentration camps in Germany and elsewhere in Europe. Thank you, Spartacus, for another War Against Humanity series. May we never forget, as you say.
Too bad less than 1% of the actual shooters in einsatzgruppen were ever held accountable in any court.
@@Mike-jw4xh Luckily many perished through the war. Those that got to live better burn fast
Well jews deserved it
You nail it every time S.O. Thank you‼️ #NeverForget✊🏽
Thank you ✊🏻
i would only expect a man named spartacus to have such a solid stache, props
Back in one of my history classes in college (it was the history of Europe from 1939 to the present day; at that time, spring 2014), a student who was from Kazakhstan brought up this one tidbit regarding the Baltic states while we covered WWII. He's a few yrs older than me (I was 21 at the time; he was likely born a few yrs before the Soviet Union collapsed). It was kinda, sorta touched on here and idk if it was covered to any extent in any past videos, but he told us that people in the Baltics viewed the Germans in a positive light when they arrived in the Baltic states. I was very surprised, even somewhat stunned when he said they viewed the Nazis as liberators during WWII and celebrated them.
When he shared that, I remember thinking "don't they realize the Nazis are gonna kill them?"
Remember, The baltic states had only been independent nations for a very short time in the interbellum. Throughout most of history from the 14th century onward they were alternately part of the territoriies of the Teutonic order and the Livonian order, Sweden for a bit or Russia all the while having their own cultures and languages (Interesting tidbit, the baltics were the last autonomous heathen states in europe when everything else was fully christianised hence the Teutonic and Livonian Knightly orders. The Baltic crusades are crusades not many people no about, and they should) The Soviet Union had just annexed them 6 or 7 years before 1943 and they experienced Stalin's Terror + forced russification in full force. I don't know the numbers off the top of my head but 10 of thousands of people from the baltics were sent to the Gulags. The Soviet Union was their number 1 enemy, so of course they would see the Germans as liberators (It similar story in Ukraine). Due to the nazi's insane race theories that view of them as liberators quickly dissapeared, but was not illogical that it existed (and if the Nazi's had had any sense they would have jumped on those feelings of goodwill, but of course they considered them untermenschen). And even then I do not know if the Germans considered the baltic peoples slavs (in this episode Himmler does not consider them slavs. Also, there is the romanticised link with the german templar orders, German descended Junkers were an existing minority) and the Nazi's had different levels of cruelty and inhumanity for different occupied territories. From what I understand they were less disagreeable to civilians in the baltics than, say, Ukraine, Notice I say less, because undoubtedly the people in baltics suffered horrifically too, the cruelty just wasn't as institutionalised as in, say Poland or Ukraine
As an Estonian, I feel can comment on that topic a bit and I'll try to give an unbiased understanding of it.
Yes, back in 1941 the nazis were viewed by many in a more positive light than the soviets. When the nazis marched into the Baltics, it was by many seen as a better alternative and the only way to get rid of the soviets.
Among the many reasons for it was the fact that the Baltics were first occupied by communists a year before, who carried out massive crimes against the local population (deportations of land owners to Russia; execution of potientially problematic people; in general eliminating the political, military, educational layers of society etc). In addition, hatred against soviets was especially prominent, because Estonia fought a war against them just twenty years before (1918-1920).
A personal example: in 1941, my grandfather's family was deported to Russia by the soviets, but he managed to avoid it (he was away from home at the time). Later on, he too joined the nazi labour battalion (though he deserted after a while and layed low for the rest of the war). Him joining the nazis isn't the proudest moment of my family history, but after losing his family to soviets as a teenager, I understand his reasoning...
Also, we have to remember, than the Baltics have a very strong cultural and historical relationship with Germany - in the 30s around 5-6% of local population was Baltic German and had been so for many centuries. So a lot of people had German relatives or at least knew them personally. Simultaneously, when the nazis entered Estonia, the number of jews was only around ~1000 people (less than 0.09% of population), which meant that there wasn't a lot of incentive to oppose nazis by the general population. Political opposition was also weak, as there wasn't much of a political elite left after the soviets. And as explained in the video, there was some hope of gaining independence, or at least autonomy.
Over time, the sentiment changed of course and the opposition grew stronger, especially after the forced mobilizations, food rationing and other repressions. History is never black or white...
Like Stalin didn’t
Man, that just got me right here ❤. Never forget.
Never forget.
Just a heads up, some of these videos it won't let me watch outside of my phone or PC (like on my Xbox). It says its age restricted even though RUclips knows I'm in my mid 30s.
The ending made me tear up.
Mr. Olsen, may I ask which brand of moustache wax you use? It appears to be excellent.
Captain Fawcette’s Expeditionary Strength Mustache Wax - it takes some training to use; it’s relatively hard, but it’s by far the best wax on the market.
3:10 how long were they constricted for? One year or the duration of the conflict?
Disgusting how humans did this to other humans. Anyone who did this should rot in hell and anyone who denies this should be ashamed of themselves
Spartacus vos épisodes " crimes contre l'Humanité" sont si précis qu'ils confortent notre point de vue sur le nazisme et ses horreurs sur les juifs, roms, résistants etc....Quelle horreur ce XXème siècle avec ces 2 guerres mondiales, l'Holocauste, les génocides, les camps ( nazis ou communistes) les bombardements sur civils ( côté nazi comme trop souvent côté allié -Bomber Harris) . Comme me dit un ami allemand de Berlin, ce fut l'Apocalypse ! Merci de relater cela Spartacus ,même si parfois j'ai des difficultés en langue de Shakespeare ! Oui, never forget, ne JAMAIS oublier, niemals vergessen,!никогда не забуду! Thank you for your work !
Merci!
as always, hard to watch, but still so necessary to tell the stories of the victims.
The period 1914-1945 (and add several more years for the reconstruction and economic renewal of the devastated areas) had to be an incredibly horrible time to be an ordinary person anywhere between the Irish Sea and the Urals, and particularly Central and Eastern Europe. I wouldn't even know where to begin in the Pacific and SE Asia and India, other than to say you'd have to stretch the time frame to at least the end of the Khmer Rouge regime. This series drives home this point, as well as a realization of how breathtakingly fortunate most living today (but not all) don't have to live through anything remotely similar.
Yehuda Goldberg. Not forgotten.
I wonder if any of those Dutch Jews were sheltered by my Oma in the Netherlands... after the Germans took them away, she never forgot about them until her dying day 5 years ago
NEVER FORGET
Never forget
never forget
Thanks Spartacus, for your reminders of the cruelty we humans can inflict & how easy it is to be the perpetrator or the victim.
How sad....
Never
11:23
it is soo refreshing hearing someone say something that is logical and makes sense
A very unfortunate fate for the Baltic countries. One dictatorship after another.
Spartacus, thank you for your moving tribute to those who fell victim to the various terrors of those terrible years around WWII. I hate saying anything that may be considered petty or not in keeping with the sacrifice of those victime, but at the same time I feel that accuracy in all things is a debt we owe those unfortunates. 17:37 : it's "Zigeuner", without the "t".
Well said.
Not petty at all. I was taken aback myself, and so sorry that this slipped through our spell check. I’m going to have the crew exchange the video file, but that takes a few days to go though.
...aaand I cried again (blows the nose noisily). Floodgates were to weak, goddammit. What a world. Everything feels so unimportant, compared to the incomprehensible scope of this.
Will we ever get an Episode about the Van Imhoff as well as its cover-up?
Detailing the Horror of the Nazi regime is all to telling. My guess is that the perpetrators got off relatively light, at least for now !!
Was " bomber Harris " or any serving RAF officer actually a member of the ` bomb aiming comity ` ? Seem difficult to find out who exactly the comity members were.
As a separate Sovereign nation, who declared war on Germany a full week after the British declaration, thereby affirming its independence, why would Canada not be allowed to ship food to India? Was it because of the draw off shipping that would likely happen if Canadian ships were diverted to the Pacific and not in the Atlantic delivering supplies to Britain? Or was it Britain pushing a "colony" to follow the dictates of Westminister?
The former, and that the destination, Bengal was British territory. It’s was up to the British government if they wished to accept the shipment.
@@spartacus-olsson thank you for the clarification. Growing up I'd always seen the British as the "good guys", but war is a cold blooded thing for most nations, more so for empires so it seems.
Churchill should have answered for his part in the famine.
I always adore your content, just want to add that it's weird that you said "the Ha'Tikva" because the term "Ha'" in hebrew is the equivalent of The.
Excellent historical coverage of this beast, ultra brutal phenomenon ( annihilation of innocence humans by Nazism regime during WW2)...excellent [ WW2] channel
Thank you for your feedback! Really glad you liked the video.
Please who is the josef? I would love to read the diary
In regard to the participation of Antonescu's administration in the crimes against the Jewish people some facts should be noted, even though they cannot expiate it's blame in general:
1) The Jewish population in the Old Kingdom of Romania, numbering between 300,000 and 400,000 people, survived the Holocaust almost intact. In these definitions, the Romanian Old Kingdom also includes areas of Transylvania and Bukovina still under Romanian rule after 1940;
2) Despite the massacres and persecution, the final situation of the Jewish citizens in Romania was milder than in neighboring countries (Hungary, Poland, Ukraine, Greece, Yugoslavia) or more distant countries (France, Holland, Norway, Germany, Italy, Austria) , Czechoslovakia, Baltic States). Foreign Jews or from Northern Transylvania (under Hungarian administration at that time) saved their lives by crossing into Romania in 1944;
3) The crimes to which Sparty refers were committed mostly against Jews of soviet citizenship found in Bessarabia and Transnistria, without the knowledge of Romanian political parties of the time or the average Romanians, actions for which Antonescu and his associates eventually stood trial and were shot.
NOT A WHOLE LOT OF DETAIL ON THE BALTIC SS LEGION.
Pamiętamy
And both Poland & Israel still live!!!
from what i learned here and from Mark felton, the SS couldnt conscript German manpower, that's why Himmler was always seeking manpower from occupied states, POWs, and from German prisons.....
They were running out of Germans to conscript. Also running out of manpower to run their factories, economy..etc.
With a trade embargo, they were running out of everything once US joined the war.
Well it worked at the end of WW1 to obtain Baltic independence
Of course the situation in 1918 was much different from 1943
once again I "like" something I hate...
never forget.
never again.
В общем другими словами прибалтам дали выбор: жить в большой стране которая не делит людей на сорта частью которой они итак были до Революции. Или же получить мнимую автономию от господ нацистов и ещё придется устраивать геноцид всех на кого покажут немцы. Ну и прибалты выбрали стать частью Оси Зла за что и поплатились. Настоящие герои тут только те Эстонцы, Литовцы и Латышы, которые сражались в рядах Красной Армии и мы не забыли их подвиг и не пытается стереть память о них в отличии от некоторых. И сегодняшние правительства этих стран готовы в бессильной злобе назвать героями тех кто участвовал вместе с нацистами в самой страшной бойне в истории чем тех кто эту бойню остановил.
Эти народы никогда не хотели жить в вашей нищебродской голодной СССР, поэтому они массово воевали против вас и сделали всё чтобы уничтожить СССР.
СССР была террористическим государством, которая за все время своего существования грабила и уничтожала целые страны и народы, развязала вместе с братским союзником Германией 2 мировую войну, установила советско-фашисткий империализм в Восточной Европе и Азии, убивала десятки миллионов собственнов граждан в нищете, концлагерях, голодоморах, массово ущемляля человеческие права и свободы и по сути проводила самую огромную работорговлю в истории человечества.
Россия как правопреемница СССР теперь несёт полную ответственность за все эти перечисленные преступления и по международному праву и Мировому Суду обязана вернуть все украденные земли, выплатить десятки триллионов долларов Польше, Германии, Эстонии, Финляндии, Великобритании (советско-германская бомбежка Лондона 1940), Латвии, Литве, Румынии, Венгрии, Чехии, Словакии, Хорватии, Словении, Венгрии, Молдавии, Украине, Казахстану, Китаю, Южной Кореи итд., ещё выплатить счёт по Американскому Ленд-Лизу за 2 мировую войну и провести полную денацификацию (десоветизацию) и демилитаризацию.
Эстонцы молодцы, что они как Финно-Угры - верные братья Финнов шли добровольцами в братскую Финляндию и вместе убивали миллионов ваших нищих голодных краснонацистких оккупантов и спасли Капиталистическую Финляндию от нищеты разрухи советской оккупации!
@@BaruchSpinozaOfficialмолодцы, молодцы, раньше дохли за нацистов, теперь будете дохнуть за англосаксов💀
Fewer and fewer Germans.