colonel-kurtz-official: Members of the Waffen-SS’s elite “Dschungel Kader” al
colonel-kurtz-official: Members of the Waffen-SS’s elite “Dschungel Kader” alongside Japanese occupation troops in the former French Indochina, 1960. Operating against the American-funded Viet Minh guerilla army, the Germans’ superior parachute tactics and combined-arms expertise soon ended the civil conflict and secured the Greatest East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere’s hold on the resource-rich nation.@the-alt-historian One of my cousins is a German-born mischling who somehow got himself caught up with the Waffen-SS (this was after Himmler’s execution in ‘56, and the subsequent relaxations of the Nürnberg Laws). He’d shown such promise in training that they selected him for the Dschungel Kader (incidentally, a lot of German Jews and part-Jews ended up serving with the Kader) and he was part of the third contingent of German troops sent to Indochina. I have some of his letters, and if you don’t mind I’ll reproduce a passage:“23. July, 1960. My dearest sister. We had a hard piece of work against us today. Encountered our first American advisers– leather-tough special troops [spezialtruppen is the word he used, which I assume refers to Army Special Forces] in very odd striped camouflage. They were weighted down with more equipment than I have seen in three months, grenades, knives, compasses, ammunition bandoliers, rucksacks and mines, anti-tank launchers. Our entire platoon could only kill three of the four in three hours of firefighting, and we lost six of ours. Our local assistants [exact trans.] had no trouble tracking the last; they are loaded heavily and move like beasts. Americans cannot fight in jungles properly, not at all.[…] We did finally get our hands on the fabled new American automatic rifle, known as the M-16. It is a beautiful thing, light and easy to fire with practically no recoil. I would have taken one, but the ammunition is of a remarkably strange caliber, much different than our Kurz round. As it is, we sent them back for analysis…”The letter goes on, but I feel that that’s enough. Anyway, just posting these online is enough to get HUAC down your throat. And my family’s connections to Germania have already gotten us investigated multiple times. The war rages on, I guess… -- source link
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