Why are SS items so highly priced?

[Dr. Strangelove]

Cufftitle!

That Type 2 Flatwire Band was a bargain ! Rare bird and you know who owned it, a Man who was also SS Totenkopfverbaende. What a haul of insignia.

[Robert H]

Dr. Strangelove, what we just got yesterday? A true dealer.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Robert

Robert, you are no "Dealer" as you keep all the nicest items to enjoy yourself ! I can't blame you. A real Dealer will sell anything for Money.

[90th Light]

From Canadian Vets who I have spoken with who were there they considered the W-SS to be fanatical murderers...However they had great respect for the German Paratroops who they considered to be the well trained,true combat soldiers.

Glenn

This surprises me to say the least.

I have never meet a New Zealand returned veteran who had much time for the German Paratrooper of WW2. Many of them were real Nazis and true believers in what they were doing. The NZ 28th Maori Battalion never took them prisoner and they never took anyone from the 28th prisoner or ask those who got left behind on Crete in 41 or Italy 43-45 what they did to the locals which just about sums the whole thing up.

The SS often seem to get too much of the blame for it all and others who were right up there with the cause like the Paras do not seem to get enough. To show what I mean here is a passage word for word from "Rommel's Army in Africa" (Stanley, Paul & Co Ltd. 1987) page 172;

"(MEETING OF THE MINDS,
During 1971 the late General Siegfried Westpal arrived in New Zealand to attend the Auckland Anzac Day ceremony and later toured various New Zealand provincial cities. At one such city General Westphal had just laid a wreath at the War Memorial on behalf of the Afrikakorps Veterans Association when a former member of Parachute Regiment 5 marched out from the crowd of onlookers and came to a smart halt in front of the General with a snappy salute and identified himself. Later General Westphal's escort the President of the Auckland Returned Services Association said how the 8th Army had not liked the Paratroops, 'They were bloody tough bastards'. General Westphal smiled and said, 'we in the German Army found the same thing !')"

The New Zealand soldiers found the German Paratroopers to be just as fanatical as their SS conterparts and just as capable of murder. In fact in many cases the Paratroopers went even further and are quite renowed for keeping the party message and line alive in the POW camps and any German POW who may have lost the plot would usually find themselves on the receiving end of Nazi Para justice and may not have made it home.

Never meet a New Zealand soldier yet who had any time for them but they would agree that they did their job. Then again is Paratrooper stuff really any cheaper than the SS stuff ???

May be its the fanatical and the murder we like to pay the bucks for ???

Chris