Erich Hartmann, the best fighter pilot in history

How about: "What is it with you and glorifying soldiers who fought for the nazi regime?"

Better?

You just love confrentation

My point is simply that while he may not have been a nazi, he still fought for nazi ideals and goals (even if not on a personal level). I still respect his skill, and I have heard of some terrible stories of hell like conditions on the Eastern Front from German soldiers (on the History Channel), and I hold sympathy for them, as some didn't even have a choice (I heard of one SS recruit who wasn't allowed to leave the room until he signed the recruiting list as a 'volunteer'. Nevertheless, it is difficult for me to separate his great skill from what his country stood for when he was shooting down all those enemy planes.

You're free to hold that view, and I'm free to hold mine.

Yes but putting Russians into big pits and leaving them to die also wasn't wrong according to the Geneva convention, and neither were the Japanese death marches of allied POWs because neither of the countries signed

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Wrong.

I am not wrong. I stated that the Soviets did not sign the convention, and that was the reason as to why they didn't get treated nicely by the Germans.

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One German POW recorded in his diary that when their camp was stormed by Soviet troops, they took the wounded soldiers from tents, soaked them with oil and burned them. After that SS symbol was made out of their heads.

The brutality that came from the Soviet side was initiated by the Nazis, and there is no way you can deny this. They burned down entire villages, taking women and children and old men and putting them in barns and burning them. My source? An elderly woman who survived the war as a partisan and who came across such a village.

The Nazis had special brigades unique to the Eastern front designed to travel behind the front line and kill and torture anyone they thought could even potentially be an enemy, and Hitler's convincing the soldiers that they were subhumans didn't help the situation any. Compared to what the Russians did, this was much worse (it is the intentional extermination and subjugation of an entire group of people, the slavs, and of course we can't forget about Russian Jews).

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This isnt propaganda.

My stories aren't propaganda either. Its interesting. Did the documentary document the attrocities that the nazis pulled on the Russian populance?

Oh, and one more thing, it wasn't just the pure nazis doing the crimes. Plenty of ordinary Werhmacht soldiers committed crimes such as raping women, including young girls (the Russians did the same but there seems to be more coverage of that), stealing Russian treasures (just as they had from other occupied territories), etc.

I understand that not all were guilty, as I mentioned in another thread: some didn't even want to go. But I find it hard to swallow that they were at all fighting for a just cause or that they were all innocent (apart from the nazis), which is the kind of picture (it seems anyway) that you are painting.

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However, the fact that Soviets were taking revenge from Gemany in 1945 was hardly justified.

In documentatation, Battle of Berlin, it was mentioned that Soviet officers like Zhukov were very disappointed when their soldiers started to loot, rape and even murder civilians.

1. I wouldn't say that the Soviet actions were justified, but you have to admit that years of sworn hatred on an enemy that has hurt your country so much will do that to you.

2. The fact that Russian generals were disappointed instead of condoning and promoting the practice (as Hitler and SS commanders did) is a sign of the differences of governing ideologies, which manifest themselves even at the upper military level.

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However, Germans didnt burn all villages and commit acrosities in every village they encountered, if that is what you think

Of course I wouldn't go that far. That was just one concrete example I know, but they did other things as well.

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I have pohotos of Soviet civilians vawing flags and welcoming the Germans. Indeed, some Soviet citizens were more or less happy about the fact that Germans arrived.

I have seen such photos too. Most of those civilians were from the Baltics and the Ukraine. They believed that the Germans had come to liberate them, when the reality was far worse than what the Soviets did (or didn't do, as in the case of the Ukraine when they didn't provide aid to the people who starved themselves by burning their crops). In the Ukraine in particular, the Germans took even more grain away from the Ukrainians, to the point of starvation, than Stalin did.

Its interesting, but those very people were so quick to point out the classes that the Germans sought for extermination: communists, Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, Soviet collaborators, etc. It just makes me wonder about their ethics.

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Thousands Soviets also joined Wehrmacht as valunteers. ( Intrestingly, at the end of WWII many of these Soviet valunteers surrendered to Western Allies. However, Western Allies simply handed them to Stalin who had them shot. )

Yes I recall that.

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This general was general Vlasov

I discussed this in an earlier thread as well, and how his existence takes the steam out of Stalin's officer purge, for the consequences of 10 Vlasovs instead of just 1 would be disasterous for the USSR, and for the world in general (I'm sure we can agree on that).

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Ouh, and yes. The documentation also contained material about German acrosities

Oh, ok that's good. Because it seems today that all I see is German soldiers recounting their tales of horror, never mentioning what the Soviets went through (on History Channel, at least).

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You might be intrested in knowing that Hitler had plans for Europe after Axis had won WWII.

Ect: Hitler wasnt going to make Baltic states part of the Reich.

Baltic states, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia were forced to join Soviet Union, and they didnt really like Soviets and communists.

These countries would have been granted independence after the war.

I know of Hitler's plan for a New Order in Europe, though I am not quite positive as to whether your assumption that the baltics wouldn't be incorperated into the Reich is correct.

I am aware of the fact that the Baltics hate Russia for their Sovietification slightly prior and after the Second World War. In fact, I recently read that the presidents of both Estonia and Lithuania refuse to join the Russians in their victory celebrations on May 9th in Moscow.

Here is a little excerpt from a document about someone else's perception of what would have happened after the war to the Baltics:

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According to Nazi intentions, attempts at Germanization were to be undertaken only in the case of those foreign nationals in Eastern Europe who could be considered a desirable element for the future Reich from the point of view of its racist theories. The Plan stipulated that there were to be different methods of treating particular nations and even particular groups within them. Attempts were even made to establish the basic criteria to be used in determining whether a given group lent itself to Germanization. These criteria were to be applied more liberally in the case of nations whose racial material (rassische Substanz) and level of cultural development made them more suitable than others for Germanization. The Plan considered that there were a large number of such elements among the Baltic nations. Dr. Wetzel felt that thought should be given to a possible Germanization of the whole of the Estonian nation and a sizable proportion of the Latvians. On the other hand, the Lithuanians seemed less desirable since they contained too great an admixture of Slav blood. Himmler's view was that almost the whole of the Lithuanian nation would have to be deported to the East.

Whatever happened, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were to be deprived of their statehood, while their territories were to be included in the eastern area of German settlement. This meant that Latvia and especially Lithuania would be covered by the deportation plans, though in a somewhat milder form than the Slav - "voluntary" emigration to western Siberia.

You can read the whole document here: http://www.dac.neu.edu/holocaust/Hitlers_Plans.htm#PLANS%20FOR%20THE%20BALTIC%20NATIONS