Mennonite Nazi War Crim Dies in bed In Canada

[Josh]

It sure is interesting how prompt the government was in executing McVey. Almost like they had something to hide.

[Neto]

Interesting story about the OK City Bombing. I was working in Washington DC when that happened and it completely changed everything about security at Federal office buildings.

I don't believe in the death penalty, even in cases like that (or even war criminals like Oberlander). But I do think McVey should have taken responsibility for his actions and then if there was rehabilitation or redemption to be done the place for that would have been in prison. That would have been the place for him to come around and seek to restore his humanity and soul. If prison is for anyone in our society it is for people like McVey. I didn't follow the case very closely but my recollection was that he never expressed any remorse or sought forgiveness for his crimes. Prison shouldn't be a brutal inhumane place because we should not be a brutal and inhumane society. There should be space for rehabilitation and redemption. Because the vast majority of prisoners do eventually get released back into our society. I also don't think prison is necessarily the worst thing that can happen to someone if it gives them a chance to find redemption and restore their soul.

I also do not support the death penalty, but I also want to be clear that I am not making any kind of political statement. For me, this was a personal reaction. I remember where I was sitting in the church service on the Sunday before Mcveigh's execution (I notice that I misspelled his name in my earlier comment). I don't recall if it was mentioned by anyone in the service, but it was on my mind. (We were home on state-side furlough at that time, but returned to Brazil before the attack on the NYC twin towers. We were in the village at that time, later the same year.)

[Jeff Altweg]

It's hard to understand in any way , the hold Hitler had on all the Germans, if you listen to his recorded speeches , it's just a lot of yelling that makes little sense at all, He took all the Mennonites in , in Germany and beyond, about the only ones not falling for his Kool-aid, was the JW's, of all people, he put them all in concentration camps ,to get rid of them .....
Getting back to the "Russian Mennonites" , They must still have been somewhat organized, as they still had their own "Special ed" residental school in one of the remaining villages ,in a fine set of brick buildings ..
When a German killing team discovered them....(It may ,or may not have been Oberlander's team). they herded them all, including the caretakers, into an open field close by and machine-gunned them all , then took over the buildings for their local headquarters ..... it was about 150 children..
It's tough to fathom such extreme evil that took place there on a regular basis ,

[Ken]

It sure is interesting how prompt the government was in executing McVey. Almost like they had something to hide.

Do you even bother to check the things that you assert?

April 19, 1995: Oklahoma City Bombing
June 2, 1997: McVey convicted and sentenced to death
March 8, 1999: McVey's final appeal is denied by the Supreme Court
June 11, 2001: McVey executed

He was also allowed to freely communicate with the press and wrote various manifestos and diatribes to various news sources that were published at the time, including Fox News. https://www.foxnews.com/story/mcveighs- ... o-fox-news He also showed no remorse. In his final interview he said:

• "I am sorry these people had to lose their lives, but that's the nature of the beast. It's understood going in what the human toll will be."

[appleman2006]

I just recently became aware of McVeys connection to the Waco thing.

[Josh]

It's hard to understand in any way , the hold Hitler had on all the Germans, if you listen to his recorded speeches , it's just a lot of yelling that makes little sense at all,

Perhaps you don't understand German?

He took all the Mennonites in , in Germany and beyond, about the only ones not falling for his Kool-aid, was the JW's, of all people, he put them all in concentration camps ,to get rid of them .....

Huh

For your information, Russian Mennonites are Flemish and Frisian, which are two countries (Belgium and the Netherlands) that both fought back and resisted Nazi occupation (but ultimately lost and were overrun). But I'm not sure it's entirely necessary to make such concise declarations of which ethnic groups are the "good" and "bad" ones.

[Neto]

... digging up a dead horse to beat it....

This appeared in the Plautdietsch History FB group today;



Contributor's comment:

Grave marker for Mennonite Gerhard Harder
Ethnic German, conscripted (?) member of the Waffen-SS.
“Hier fiel der in __ SS Milit. __?? Gezwungene Volksdeutsche Gerhard Harder … in der Reihen der Waffen SS.”
Either 1942 or 1943 in USSR.
Photo description gives the date of July 1941. However, the First Ethnic German Cavalry Regiment (mostly Molotschna boys; about 750) was only formed in the second half of 1942.
Can anyone read the blurred text? GRanDMA does not help me identify him. Two of my mother's brothers were in the same cavalry regiment.
Source: Bundesarchiv, https://bild.bundesarchiv.de/.../file77 ... 17louv.jpg

[Ken]

The Waffen SS were the regular combat divisions of the SS. By wars end they numbered over 1 million soldiers and fought in regular battles alongside the regular Wehrmacht. Essentially they were just regular solders but under the command of the SS rather than army. They began as all-volunteer forces, but as the war dragged on and the tide turned against Germany they started to backfill destroyed Waffen SS units with draftees.

The Einsatzgruppen of which Oberlander was a member were separate mobile killing squads set up by Himmler who followed the German forces eastward. They only numbered between 3,000 and 5,000 total across the entire eastern front and were the instrument of Hitler's final solution, first directly murdering tens of thousands across the eastern front, and then later organizing the deportation of millions of Jews and other "undesirables" to death camps.

There was a Netflix 4-part documentary about the Einsatzgruppen made a few years ago and I watched the first two episodes recently. Very grim stuff. It seems they put the most educated and ideologically fanatical Nazis into these groups and they did a lot of their "work" with the cooperation of local right-wing nationalist militias who themselves did a lot of the killing in places like Ukraine and the Baltic states. There is also no evidence I have seen that anyone was ever conscripted into these Einsatzgruppen squads, unlike the Waffen SS. And they were mostly disbanded after the tide turned against Germany on the eastern front in 1943 and 1944 and the German army was in retreat. https://www.netflix.com/title/80134093

[Neto]

The Waffen SS were the regular combat divisions of the SS. .... Essentially they were just regular solders but under the command of the SS rather than army.
....

OK. This is not something I've studied, and I didn't know about this distinction. I imagine this was the same situation with the man who ended up working as a missionary in Peru (whose 2 sons I knew).

[PetrChelcicky]

It's hard to understand in any way , the hold Hitler had on all the Germans

I'm guessing, too - I think it was mostly a matter of coming out of a time of starvation into a time of affordable living. You will normally be grateful to the political leader who makes this possible. It's the same reason why so many after-war Germans had a soft spot for Adenauer and why so many Russians (including emigrated "Russian Germans") have a soft spot for Putin.