Third Party Press

1160 (mainly) SS Soldbuch Scans available

Absolut

Absolut

Senior Member
Not my field of collection and please forgive me if this had been posted before. A friend recently told me of this and after some search I managed to find the original source. If I'm understanding it correctly, in Czech Republic they found a total of 1160 Soldbücher, which were hidden at the end of WWII. They are mainly of SS members, and of those mainly from KZ guards.

Czech Republic scanned these and sorted them by family names and made those available online. They can be viewed online here: http://www.vuapraha.cz/node/119
 
Thanks a lot. My last name did not appear 😌 If he did not know this database, Peter U will be happy.
4 pages of extracts from Wehrpasse, people with various backgrounds who ended up in the SS.
 
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Thanks for sharing that link! In my brief look at these Wehrpasse, it appears that they were assigned to the SS very late in the war from other, non-SS units and branches of service.
 
Haha, I checked for my name as well and was happy to have not found anything! I don't know Peter U, but feel free to send him the link, if he is not active on this forum.

You can't check 1160 Wehrpässe quickly, but I've also by occasion clicked one that was very early SS. But you might be correct that many are late "joins" to the SS.
 
I’m skeptical. I see Landesshützbattallion transferred right to kl Flossenburg along side Luft field division the same. Something doesn’t add up for some of these. Remember history can be made as well, I’d like to hear the back story on the research of these men, did these actually get proven to be legit? How hard would it be to add a line in 1945 to condemn someone? If guilty, then that is the history as well.
 
No need to be skeptical mfarb.
This website has been online for a longtime now.
These Wehrpaßer are all legit; they are part of the KL Flossenburg archive (this archive has been looted after the fall of the Berlin Wall and plenty of these are now in the hands of private collectors).
KL Flossenburg had a very large guard garrison in 1945, this garrison not only guarded the main camp but also the many subcamps that provided forced/slave labour for the German war industry.
By 1945 all those SS-men that could hold a gun on the front line had been taken out of the concentrationcamp garrisons, they were replaced by Landesschützen and elderly Luftwaffe troops; my own greatgrandfather was guarded by teenagers of the Hitlerjugend in 1945.
It also has to be said that these elderly former WH or LW guards had a good reputation with the KL inmates, they weren't in general not as brutal as their "full blooded" SS counterparts, of course because the guards were less brutal now at the end of the war, it didn't mean those camps became easy places to live, the forced labour was still hard and the food rations were kept to an absolute minimum.
Another good example is KL Dora, the camp where V2 rockets were produced, a large part of the camp was guarded by former LW troops that were pressed in to the Waffen SS.
 
Imagine being forced into that service at the end of the war. A good person’s name was destroyed with that assignment.
 
mrfarb said:
Imagine being forced into that service at the end of the war. A good person’s name was destroyed with that assignment.
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Indeed and most of these older guys, several of them being WW1 veterans, knew all to well that the war was infact lost and that it was just a matter of time and it wouldn't end well for Germany.
In case of the KL Dora-Nordhausen, I don't base this fact on my feeling alone, their is a chapter about these ex-LW guards in the main reference work about this camp that confirms all this, if you were detained there you were better of being guarded by them, then by foreign (Eastern European) Waffen SS volunteers.

This is where my greatgrandfather was detained and had to do slave labour:

HISTORY – Gedenkstätte – Memorial WALPERSBERG

www.walpersberg.de www.walpersberg.de
For this camp there are known cases, which my greatgrandfather witnessed too, of HJ boys and girls being cruel to the inmates, they had been blasted with NS propaganda their entire live and they kept on believing in the myths of the "untermensch" and the final victory until the bitter end.
 
mrfarb said:
Imagine being forced into that service at the end of the war. A good person’s name was destroyed with that assignment.
Click to expand...
The worst thing I can think of is living decently for most of your adult life and, in your old days, confessing that you were (Günter Grass) or, after your death, being outed as (Horst Tappert) a Waffen SS.
 
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I think it would actually be worse to be a former American, British, Dutch, et al. POW/survivor of Japanese forced marches, prisoner camps, human experimentation and realize that nothing would be done to pursue your former victimizers. Ever.

Pat
 
Pat said:
I think it would actually be worse to be a former American, British, Dutch, et al. POW/survivor of Japanese forced marches, prisoner camps, human experimentation and realize that nothing would be done to pursue your former victimizers. Ever.

Pat
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Of course, Pat, being on the wrong end of a gun is always the worst situation and a war crime is what it is.
I was thinking about "being forced" into this after 1943. Alsatians "malgré-nous" were a case in point : some became war criminals, others not.
 
I agree. Weren't there a number of Alsatian Wehrmacht members summarily executed by Resistance and/or Maquis shortly after surrendering in 1945?

Pat
 
Pat said:
I agree. Weren't there a number of Alsatian Wehrmacht members summarily executed by Resistance and/or Maquis shortly after surrendering in 1945?

Pat
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I don't remember a specific case, but the number of extrajudicial executions by the Resistance is estimated at 9000.
What looks all too well like a war crime is the execution of 12 Frenchmen of SS Charlemagne in Bad Reichenhall on the May 8, 1945 by the "2ème Division Blindée".
At Oradour, there were 13 Alsatians.
Georges Réné Boos was the only volunteer and lead a death squad according to the trial which occurred in 1953.
One of these 13 guys allegedly tried to divert a woman and her 2 kids from the village:
www.parismatch.com

Albert Daul, le dernier "malgré-nous" - Oradour-sur-Glane

Albert Daul était un Alsacien incorporé de force dans la SS. Présent lors du massacre, il parle pour la première fois depuis son procès.
www.parismatch.com www.parismatch.com
 
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Thanks, the Bad Reichenhall massacre might be what I was thinking of. There were some photos of that incident taken immediately prior.

I haven't had time to read the entire article yet, but I didn't know that 40,000 Alsatians served in the Wehrmacht. That's a lot of guys from one region of an occupied country!

Pat
 
Pat said:
Thanks, the Bad Reichenhall massacre might be what I was thinking of. There were some photos of that incident taken immediately prior.

I haven't had time to read the entire article yet, but I didn't know that 40,000 Alsatians served in the Wehrmacht. That's a lot of guys from one region of an occupied country!

Pat
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Actually, 130 000 were forced, 40 000 were KIA or died in Soviet POW camp 188 near Tambov (17 000 died there : https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_188)
 
Hallo, ich habe hier eine Frage an die Experten und würde mich freuen, wenn Sie mir weiterhelfen könnten. Ich suche Einträge von OStBf EICHMANN. Möglicherweise ein Dokument, auf dem man nachvollziehen kann, welche Waffe (Luger) er hatte. Gibt es eine Möglichkeit herauszufinden, welche Nummer seine Pistole hatte? Für jeden Hinweis wäre ich dankbar..
Grüße martin100
 
martin100 said:
Hallo, ich habe hier eine Frage an die Experten und würde mich freuen, wenn Sie mir weiterhelfen könnten. Ich suche Einträge von OStBf EICHMANN. Möglicherweise ein Dokument, auf dem man nachvollziehen kann, welche Waffe (Luger) er hatte. Gibt es eine Möglichkeit herauszufinden, welche Nummer seine Pistole hatte? Für jeden Hinweis wäre ich dankbar..
Grüße martin100
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Translation:
Hello, I have a question for the experts here and would be happy if you could help me. I am looking for entries from OStBf EICHMANN. Possibly a document on which one can trace which weapon (Luger) he had. Is there a way to find out what number his gun was? I would be grateful for any hint. Regards
 
martin100 said:
Hallo, ich habe hier eine Frage an die Experten und würde mich freuen, wenn Sie mir weiterhelfen könnten. Ich suche Einträge von OStBf EICHMANN. Möglicherweise ein Dokument, auf dem man nachvollziehen kann, welche Waffe (Luger) er hatte. Gibt es eine Möglichkeit herauszufinden, welche Nummer seine Pistole hatte? Für jeden Hinweis wäre ich dankbar..
Grüße martin100
Click to expand...
Vielleicht in den Archiven seines Prozesses, aber es ist sehr unwahrscheinlich. Ich würde auf eine Pistole in 7,65 wetten:

Book Review: SS Contract Walther PP/PPK

www.forgottenweapons.com www.forgottenweapons.com
 
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