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1941 Christmas Letter from a Swedish Waffen-SS Soldier
"Departure - Letters from Germanic Volunteers of the SS Division Wiking" is the English translation of a 1943 publication by the Swiss war correspondent Benno Schäppi. The book is a compilation of wartime letters written by volunteers from Northern and Western Europe serving in Hitler's Waffen-SS "Wiking" (Viking) Division. More than 1,000,000 foreigners in all joined the regular forces of Germany, Finland, Italy, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia in fighting Stalin's Bolshevik hordes in the snow and ice of Russia. About 200,000 of them serving in the more ideologically driven Waffen SS.
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The following letter was penned to his family by an unnamed young Swedish SS man disgusted with many of his own degenerating countrymen who were denigrating Hitler. Mr. Schäppi perhaps wanted to protect the families back home from their names being "doxxed" -- should the Bolsheviks prevail. This is a short but extremely powerful and insightful letter.
1. Hitler and his allies launched the massive Operation Barbarossa in June of 1941. This was necessary because because the Soviet Union was preparing to attack and conquer all of the European continent. // 2 & 3. "Hitler's Swedes" (about 300 volunteers) fought bravely against the Bolshevik legions. Some were obviously teenagers!
Letter from a Viking:
“I had forgotten that there is so much that is base and depraved back home, such as the speech by a ‘Swedish statesman’ that I read - among other things, he said: ‘Every sound national policy is selfish; the course we are following, supported by all groups in society, is cold-bloodedly selfish.’ When I read this, my thoughts turned to a German comrade, a forty-five year-old non-commissioned officer named Otto Heine, who fell in battle. I knew him only a little; I knew only that he was a teacher by profession, an academic. .We had spoken once; it was when I offered him my condolences in early November, for he had just received the news that his son had fallen in Finland. ‘Up there in the north,’ he said bitterly, ‘isn’t that where you Swedes are actually supposed to be?’ You can imagine how one feels when faced with such a question - have you ever turned bright red because you had to be ashamed of your country?! It felt to me as if we had murdered his son; if we Swedes had had even a drop of a sense of responsibility and decency, not a single German soldier would have had to be stationed in Finland. .I also read the son’s obituary - it simply read: ‘He died for culture.’ He was certainly no ‘cold-blooded egoist! You can’t be that if you stand on the line Adolf Hitler has drawn; perhaps then you won’t be supported by all groups in Swedish society, but you will be supported by all decent people across an entire continent. I have a request for you, a gift I would like for my twentieth birthday: I would ask you to observe a minute of silence on this day in memory of the gray heroes who, in the Siberian cold, from Petsamo to Sevastopol, thousands of kilometers from their homeland, are fighting for you as well, you, who can celebrate Christmas in peace.
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I ask you further that, if you hear these heroes, their country, and their Führer being mocked there, that you then stand up and speak your mind, even if it is to your relatives and closest friends, for the people who are casting mud at Germany today are worse than traitors; they are committing an outrage against an idea that inspires an entire continent, against the culture of Europe that has been created over the course of millennia, and which Adolf Hitler’s heroes are defending with weapons in hand against the barbarians in the East. Tonight, millions of hearts are praying for the victory of culture and light over barbarism and the forces of darkness—I know that your hearts are among them.”
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May the brave young Viking's wish be granted -- better late than never.
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* Author's Note: After the war, the international Waffen-SS -- which mainly fought against the Bolshevik Soviets in the east -- was declared a "criminal organization" by the Jewish-dominated Military Tribunal at Nuremberg in 1946. All members were subject to automatic arrest. Thousands were sentenced to death or imprisonment for invented "war crimes." Lower-ranking Waffen-SS personnel were forced to undergo "denazification" -- which included cruel internment in "re-education" camps and having their assets seized.
The international heroes who volunteered to join the Germans in fighting the Bolshevik hordes helped to slow them down enough to save the rest of Europe. After the war, surviving Waffen SS men were singled out for special punishment -- (including testicle torture and murder at the hands of Jewish interrogators!) -- for imaginary "war crimes."