Von Happen rides again

[sturmbannfuhrer]

On a note not quite associated with real SS stuff, I thought it was still relevant to this forum.

I was fascinated at an early age by the wonderful black uniforms of the SS, not from seeing real ones or footage from the war, but by seeing the sinister Derren Nesbitt as Sturmbannfuhrer Von Happen in "Where Eagles Dare".

Well I'm off to see the great man Saturday night at the Wyvern Theatre in Swindon. Any of you guys out there fans of big Derren get your asses over there too.

Here he is in action:

[Bobwirtz]

Historically speaking this character is dressed totally wrong... but the movie people have to do something to distinguish the Gestapo from everybody else I guess. Same thing in Hogan's Heroes! They will NEVER get it right because this is (now) how people see these things. Viewers are probably wondering why the Gestapo is driving German tanks in battle when they see Army or Waffen-SS panzer crews!

Bob

[Robin Lumsden]

Maybe Herr Nesbitt got carried away with his alter ego as von Happen.

Here's an excerpt from Wikipedia.................

His career was damaged in 1973 when he was convicted of assault causing actual bodily harm on his wife, Anne Aubrey. He thrashed her on the bare buttocks with a leather strap after she told him that she was having an affair with another man. She divorced him shortly afterwards.

[Bobwirtz]

Did she just stand there and take it ?

Bob

[Dr. Strangelove]

Damage?

Damaged his career? Sounds like she needed a good hiding !

[TonyS]

Damaged his career? Sounds like she needed a good hiding !

Yeah - sounds like she needed a lesson on not cheating.

[90th Light]

This raises an interesting question, I wonder just how many Panzer crewmen did get done in for looking like true Nazis when they surrendered to Allied soldiers ?

I know the Kiwi soldiers stand accused for showing no mercy to the crew of Tiger tank which was knocked out in Italy which had picked up the crew of another knocked out Tiger tank. All eight tried to surrender but several got blown away in the process. The Germans there on the day say it was murder, the Kiwis say they still had small arms and tried to run. War is war I suppose so how did our average GI or Russian react when they encountered someone one wearing the black "party" uniform with their hands up yelling surrender ?

There was something about those 1960's movies which never quite leaves us and still can got us all going. Well those of us old enough to remember going to the Saturday "flicks" to see them,

Chris

[Felix]

This raises an interesting question, I wonder just how many Panzer crewmen did get done in for looking like true Nazis when they surrendered to Allied soldiers ?

I know the Kiwi soldiers stand accused for showing no mercy to the crew of Tiger tank which was knocked out in Italy which had picked up the crew of another knocked out Tiger tank. All eight tried to surrender but several got blown away in the process. The Germans there on the day say it was murder, the Kiwis say they still had small arms and tried to run. War is war I suppose so how did our average GI or Russian react when they encountered someone one wearing the black "party" uniform with their hands up yelling surrender ?

There was something about those 1960's movies which never quite leaves us and still can got us all going. Well those of us old enough to remember going to the Saturday "flicks" to see them,

Chris

Just a reflection; the winners write the history as mentioned many times before. If it would have been the other way around that the Germans would have shot down a few allied soldiers under uncertain conditions, like above, they would have been accused of war crimes and hated. How many Malmedy's to German troops that no one cares about? They got what they deserved because they were born in the wrong country. Right.

For sure I wouldnt want to be wearing a black unifrom and get captured by the soviets. Most likely a sure one way ticket to heaven, or hell depending on your karma.

[sgstandard]

Movies

There was a time when Hollywood at least got part of it right with the portrayal of military men as noble. Nowadays, they don't even portray soldiers of their OWN country in a favorable light. Besides the obvious disdain many Hollywood producers have for the military, they rarely ever portray it correctly because they simply don't understand how soldiers think, and they could never relate to the concept of sacrificing for one's own country. The officer is usually shown as an unfeeling automoton who needslessly sacrifices his men for some evil, selfish purpose. The truth is, of course, exactly the opposite. Has anyone seen the movie where the German officer browbeats one of his men by asking him if he liked living with men? The soldier doesn't know what to say, so the officer said that since he enlisted, and knew he'd be living with men, therefore he must enjoy it. Finally, the poor guy said, "Well, I guess so." The officer started ranting, "He said YES, he said "YES". The whole pathetic exercise was obviously to portray the basic German soldier as a homosexual. One last thing:
Will SOMEONE please tell these directors that unless they've been in the field for months, SS officers DON'T HAVE LONG HAIR !! They look like Mexican Federales, for God's sake !!

[stonemint]

This guy was my favorite "No. 2" in (IMHO) the greatest television series of all time, "The Prisoner":

[stonemint]

BTW, the man responsible for the uniforms in "Where Eagles Dare" is Sean Barry-Weske, who peddled a lot of lower-quality repros on the internet back in the late 90s. You can check out his bio on imdb.com.

[Federico Perez]

Oh Yes....a Gestapo officer with a German Cross in gold and if memory don't fail me a GOLD close combat clasp!!!!

For me the most "realistic" WW2 oriented movie is THE EAGLE HAS LANDED...theres a LOT of details from armor,guns to uniforms on that movie that you don't really see in any other period movie about WW2. I know is not an actual war event and is fiction BUT very nice movie. anyway!!!!

[90th Light]

Just a reflection; the winners write the history as mentioned many times before. If it would have been the other way around that the Germans would have shot down a few allied soldiers under uncertain conditions, like above, they would have been accused of war crimes and hated. How many Malmedy's to German troops that no one cares about? They got what they deserved because they were born in the wrong country. Right.

For sure I wouldnt want to be wearing a black unifrom and get captured by the soviets. Most likely a sure one way ticket to heaven, or hell depending on your karma.

Hello Felix, well this is an interesting case because we learned about it from what the Germans wrote after the war. The New Zealanders or British had almost nothing written about it except to say that Tigers were encountered and destroyed.

One of the best accounts is in "Tiger The History of a Legendary Weapon 1942-45" by Egon Kleine & Volkmar Kuhn. This book was originally published in German but my edition is the English translation put out by Fedorowicz 1989. The particular incident is described on page 205 in some detail. In fact there are several mentions of the New Zealanders and their dealing out of the Tigers in this book (or getting dealt out by them).

What became very interesting in all of this, was that in the late 1980's to early 1990's the New Zealand government funded a research project for the history department of Otago University to document an oral history of all the veterans living in Otago and Southland to talk about World War 2 from a social perspective and create an oral library reference which could be preserved for research into the future (shame it was not done in the 1970's and we would have got a lot more of the North African veterans but sadly many of them were gone by the time this was done).

I knew personally the academic who was doing the interviews and showed him this book. He then built questions about this into his questions he was asking. To my surprise, he actually found two or three of the veterans who were there and one who actually did some of the shooting. We showed them the German book and let them read the German account. Our main question of focus was, did New Zealand soldiers not take Tiger crews prisoner and were they done in because New Zealanders dis-liked Tigers because of the numbers of New Zealand soldiers they killed ? The answer was no, it all depended on the circumstances. Many New Zealand soldiers could not always accurately identify a Tiger and often confused them with them with Panthers, Nashorns and Hummels. The soldier who did some of the shooting was quite certain that one or more of the German Tiger crews had a pistol and opened fire while the rest tried to run. Certainly there was confusion and the Kiwi soldiers did not feel that they had the area secure. They were tense and on guard. They did not feel that these Germans were shoot in cold blood however and were trying to give them the chance to surrender.

Others who were there confirmed this and in some cases then produced pictures of times were German had been shoot in cold blood or done in out of spite. We concluded that the for the New Zealand division some thing changed in Italy. The chivalry which had existed in many ways in North Africa had disappeared and the New Zealand Division had became very hard in their attitude towards the Germans. What caused this is still not fully explained but it could have been that the Kiwis had come of age as soldiers and were just sick and tried of the whole thing and those who started it or it could be the encounters with German units who were battle harden from the intolerant massive blood baths of the Eastern front and then transferred to Italy bringing that type of fight to that front. Could even have been to much hand to hand with the real Nazis in the FJ. What ever it was, we certainly sent a lot more Germans to an early grave in Italy than needed to go but may be not as intentionally as it appears in this case.

I will stop here and apologise for hi-jacking this thread. May-be we need to start a thread on its own about this in the appropriate section. You can see however why our fathers never enjoyed those 1960's movies and thought they were nothing but shameful crap at the time. One of my friends fathers who had been a POW taken on Crete actually put his boot through the TV when he found his son watching Hogan's Heros. The boy just came to my house to watch it after that and left his dad in peace.

"Least we forget"

Chris

[SgtB]

On a note not quite associated with real SS stuff, I thought it was still relevant to this forum.
I was fascinated at an early age by the wonderful black uniforms of the SS, not from seeing real ones or footage from the war, but by seeing the sinister Derren Nesbitt as Sturmbannfuhrer Von Happen in "Where Eagles Dare".
Well I'm off to see the great man Saturday night at the Wyvern Theatre in Swindon. Any of you guys out there fans of big Derren get your asses over there too.Here he is in action:

Anton Diffring (SD Col Kramer) was no slouch, either! I've seen him playing German officers in many films such as 'The Heroes of Telemark', 'The Eagle Has Landed', and 'Victory', etc.

Although Karl-Otto Alberty probably has the record!

I believe I remember seeing Nesbitt in a 70's John Wayne movie - 'Brannigan' maybe? Or 'McQ' ?

[TonyS]

Although Karl-Otto Alberty probably has the record!

Yes - the SS Tiger tank commander in Kelly's Heroes - that is one of my favorite movies.