Valkyrie

[The Wingnut]

Indeed, I find myself somewhat put off with the constant referral to Germans in the Second World War era as Nazis. Those in military service at the time were primarily citizens who joined to support their country, explore career possibilities, or later joined under duress, and the officer corps was made up mostly of the traditional Prussian and Bavarian military families for whom life service was common and point of honor. Sections of the military and government such as the Sturmabteilung, (SA), Schutzstaffel (SS), Sicherheitsdienst (SD) and Gestapo were the exception and not the rule, and were considered arms of the party. Even these were not made up entirely of party members, and the Allgemeine-SS(black-uniformed party members and officials originally part of Hitler's elite guard) was a completely different animal from the Waffen-SS(elite military troops).

Try to think of 'Nazi' as not so much German and more as what it actually was, a political party; the NSDAP, National Socialist German Worker's Party.

 

[griffer]

Well put, wingnut, well put.

 

[J. M. Stovall]

Actually, I like that he's short, and falls far short of the Aryan male body ideal - I'm not certain how alike the real guy he's playing that he is, but it seems to me pretty much none of the top Nazi boys fit the Aryan ideal that Hitler espoused. He at least looks believable to me. I'm definitely not a fan of Tom Cruise, but I am looking forward to seeing what they do with this film.

 

[Naphtali]

Wingnut:

According to German government documents, more than ninety percent (90%) of the adult German-Austrian population were members of the National Socialist Worker's Party after 1938. What's to be put off about?

No one claims party members were universally hard core. And I think it's reasonable to assume a substantial portion of party members joined in a manner analogous to people enlisting in the army in 1968 immediately after they received their notice of induction. Enlistees were able to have some control over what the army did with them. Inductees, much less control.

Nevertheless, . . .

 

[griffer]

According to German government documents, more than ninety percent (90%) of the adult German-Austrian population were members of the National Socialist Worker's Party after 1938. . .

Really? Can you site this?

I find that hard to believe since they only had a plurality at best in the Reichstag. I know there was certainly some bandwagoning and some coercion, but 90%?

From wiki-

"When it came to power in 1933 the Nazi Party had over 2 million members. Once in power, it attracted many more members and by the time of its dissolution it had 8.5 million members. Many of these were nominal members who joined for careerist reasons, but the party nevertheless had an active membership of at least a million, including virtually all the holders of senior positions in the national government...."

From only one site, I gathered that simply Germany proper had a 40MM+ population. So while 8.5MM at its peak is a lot, it doesn't seem to be quite the 90% you cite.

Please substantiate that figure.

 

[griffer]

Trick of the light, look at his nose and chin....
"Of course you'd say that, you have the brain pan of a stagecoach tilter!"

Try these on-

"Of course you'd say that, you have the brain pan of a stagecoach tilter!"

Yes, I know i didn't really make my case, but TOM CRUISE? Sigh. Should have used a better picture, cause dang it he does sort of look like him.

 

[dr greg]

spare me

What is it with Tom Cruise and history flix? He was responsible for the ridiculous and disgustingly pathetic Last Samurai, which would be one of the worst films of any genre ever made. Now he tackles this :rage: .
he should stick to vapid comedies or better still, make Battlefield Earth Pt2.
The founder of that lunatic cult he belongs too wrote oodles of Sci-fi nonsense so there's no lack of source material. The fact he can't act might be a hindrance though, perhaps he should get some lessons from a real actor like Antonio Banderas lol lol lol lol

 

[BellyTank]

Wait 'til he opens his cake hole.

B
T

 

[MudInYerEye]

I read DIANETICS 10 times.

M
*
D

 

[BellyTank]

You're not crazy.

B
T

 

[Diamondback]

And I was expecting a film about the XB-70.

Well, I was hoping... Whatever happened to unfinished prototype AV3 anyway? It's like it just disappeared from the plant one night just after cancellation, with no official record of scrapping ever being made...

Pfft. He looks like some rich pretty boy in a badly chosen Halloween costume and about as tough as a dollop of whip cream....

Well said, Charlie--he's only about my height, and I could take him in a knock-down-drag-out--of course, I've got a good bit more weight to throw around, too...lol

 

[MudInYerEye]

Institutionalized.
(all I wanted was a pepsi)
.

 

[Edward]

Wait 'til he opens his cake hole.

Yeah, I'd started to wonder how they'll voice it... will they go with the old 'suspension of disbelief' device where they speak English and carry non-German accents, or will he make a stab at carrying a German accent? You never know, he might surprise us all. I actually thought he was good in Interview with the Vampire, and I loathe Tom Cruise normally. I'm not sure if I was overly negatively influenced by Top Gun or what did it, but.... euw.

Speaking as a German, I take offense of your use of the term 'Nazi'.

Oops, apologies - I should have picked up on that one, I'm normally better at remembering the distinction between the Nazis and the Wehrmacht!

On a realted note, how widely was the Swastika worn by Wehrmacht Troops (if at all) during the war? I remember when Prince Harry caused all that kerfuffle by going to a party dressed as a "Nazi" in January 05, there was some comment on the uniform he chose. It was reproted he wanted the SS uniform but it was too small so he went with the Afrika Corps, who apparently never wore the Swastika (it was the swastika\ armband he was wearing that caused all the outrage to begin with).

The colonel was dissallusioned with the Nazi party and was against the Nazis.

That's what I couldn't remember - whether he was a Nazi who was disillusioned with Hitler's actions and direction, or whether he was Wehrmacht and never exactly pro-Hitler to begin with.

And actually, the real Colonel cut a rather dashing figure, not the silly one Cruise cuts.

I'm not familiar with the photos.... was the eyepatch an original feature, or is it something Cruise's wardrobe people have added? I've always thought an eyepatch can look very dashing (I'd probably sport one on occasion if I lost an eye myself), but in some Hollywood corners it has become very much "panto villain".

Keep in mind, in American pop culture, the leprechaun has about as much to do with real Irish culture as piza has to co with Italy or Taco Bell with Mexico.

Ha, most of American popular culture's notion of anything Irish has very little to do with real Irish culture. lol

In other words, don't be offended, yee wee lil' man!

lol

Indeed, I find myself somewhat put off with the constant referral to Germans in the Second World War era as Nazis. Those in military service at the time were primarily citizens who joined to support their country, explore career possibilities, or later joined under duress, and the officer corps was made up mostly of the traditional Prussian and Bavarian military families for whom life service was common and point of honor. Sections of the military and government such as the Sturmabteilung, (SA), Schutzstaffel (SS), Sicherheitsdienst (SD) and Gestapo were the exception and not the rule, and were considered arms of the party. Even these were not made up entirely of party members, and the Allgemeine-SS(black-uniformed party members and officials originally part of Hitler's elite guard) was a completely different animal from the Waffen-SS(elite military troops).

Try to think of 'Nazi' as not so much German and more as what it actually was, a political party; the NSDAP, National Socialist German Worker's Party.

I think probably where the confusion comes in for a lot of folks (leaving aside Hollywood's way of portraying it) is the situation is commonly seen as "Nazis in charge of dictatorship in Germany, therefore Nazi state, therefore army = Nazis." The reality of course was considerably more complex, as you say.

The outfit that fascinated me - I saw a picture in a book once years ago and have never been able to find anything on the web - was one of the units raised in a German colony somewhere on the African continent, where all the men were very clearly non-white. Good illustration there, I would have thought, of the difference between the working practices of the Nazis and the Wehrmacht!

Intersting point re the SS... I have to admit WW2 itself is not the period I am most familiar with (oddly enough, at school we studied Germany from 1919-1939 in history, and the post war settlement, not the actual war period itself), but I wasn't aware that there was the levle of distinction between the Waffen SS and the Allgemeine-SS.... time I did some reading again, I think!

 

[griffer]

The red armband was a political item, not wehrmacht. You found it on the political and paramilitary units.

That said, the Wehrmacht did use armbands.

And wehrmacht uniforms did bear swastikas, clutched under the eagle, both on headgear and uniforms.

The lines between Allegemeine and Waffen-SS were blurry, to say the least, aa Allegemeine units were made combat ready and converted to Waffen units.

They both held maniacal devotion to Hitler and Himmler.

True, the character of the Waffen-SS changed as the war progressed and recruits came directly into the Waffen-SS, but they were always Himmlers Teutonic knights and would have replaced the Wehrmacht eventually.

Stolen from Wikipedia, so it must be true-

"Politics of the Wehrmacht

Due to the constitution of Weimar Republic any soldier of the Reichswehr was neither allowed to become a member of a political party nor to vote in an election because there was a strict separation between politics and the armed forces. The same applied later to the Wehrmacht. Most of its leadership was politically conservative and therefore not in favour of a Nazi revolution conducted by “uneducated proletarians". But after Adolf Hitler gained power he had promised to rebuild Germany's military strength and thus some officers became sympathetic towards the National Socialist movement. Political influence in the military command began to increase later in the war when Hitler's flawed strategic decisions began showing up as serious defeats for the German army and tensions mounted between the military and the government. Not only did Hitler appoint unqualified personnel to lead his armies, but also gave to his commanders impossible orders, such as to shoot all officers and enlisted men who retreated from a front line.


Resistance to the Nazi regime

From all groups of German Resistance those within the Wehrmacht were the most feared by the Nazis. There were several attempts by members of the Wehrmacht like Henning von Tresckow or Erich Hoepner to assassinate Hitler as an ignition of a coup d'état. Rudolf Christoph Freiherr von Gersdorff and Axel Freiherr von dem Bussche-Streithorst even tried to do so by suicide bombing. Those and many other officers in the Wehrmacht such as Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg and Wilhelm Canaris strictly declined the atrocities of the Hitler regime. Combined with Hitler's problematic if not senseless military leadership, this also culminated in the famous July 20 plot (1944), when a group of Wehrmacht officers led by von Stauffenberg tried again to kill Hitler and overthrow his regime. Following this attempt every officer of the Wehrmacht who approached Hitler was searched from head to foot by his SS guards. As a special degradation all German military personel were ordered to replace the standard military salute with the Hitler salute from this date on. To which extent the German military forces were in opposition to the Hitler regime or supported it is nevertheless highly disputed amongst historians up to our days."

 

[Edward]

Thanks, Griffer - interesting reading. FWIW, I tend to find Wikipedia is at least as reliable as other sources - there was some academic study reported in the English press last year to the effect that Wikipedia was at least as reliable as the Encyclopedia Britannica with regards to science subjects. On the things that I know something about myself, I've never fonud it to be drastically off-beam. Still, as with anything else it's an approach with caution affair.

 

[Maj.Nick Danger]

I was thinking XB-70 too,...but the story could be good in movie form and I welcome historical movies that are not based on crummy TV shows from the seventies.
But Tom Cruise? :eusa_doh:

 

[DavidVillaJr]

Institutionalized.
(all I wanted was a pepsi)
.

I don't know why, but this is the last Thread of the last Forum I EVER expected to find a Suicidal Tendencies quote.

BRAVO:eusa_clap


dv

 

[MrBern]

full DAilyMail article

"I have admired him as a hero and I will play him as a hero," said Cruise.
An insider on the set added: "The project means so much to Tom. This is one Nazi's uniform he can wear with pride."

 

[Dixon Cannon]

Say what you will......

..This 'plonker' makes enough to buy, maintain and fly one of these! Any "plonkin'" I can get involved in? I'd love to play dress up for his salary!

-dixon cannon

P.S. I would change my name to "plonker" if that's what it would take to afford that kind of toy! I envy the guy!

 

[carebear]

XB-70? What about the VF-1?