Why would you do a story about a photo, without the photo?
You know, it’s not as bad as Prince Harry, but even if these guys had no education, they must have seen a movie once. It’s hard to believe they didn’t have any idea.
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44 comments
February 10, 2012 at 9:56 am
silbey
Even the Navy Times managed to put up the photo:
http://www.navytimes.com/news/2012/02/marine-scout-snipers-nazi-ss-logo-020912/
February 10, 2012 at 10:00 am
Vance Maverick
Because NPR’s website is auxiliary to its main medium of radio?
Ignorance is plausible, I’m afraid, on the face of it. I’ve been on at least one project that was initially given the acronym SS — admittedly we weren’t carrying guns.
February 10, 2012 at 10:03 am
eric
It’s not the acronym, it’s the double lightning-bolt logo.
I am willing to grant the innocence of this goldfish.
February 10, 2012 at 10:05 am
zunguzungu
As I noted on twitter, the interesting thing to me about the NPR story — after the absence of the photo — is the phrase “resemble,” as in “a logo resembling that of the notorious Nazi SS.” I mean, it *is* that logo. One can be be plausibly ignorant of the exactness by which they are the same symbol, but they are, actually, the same symbol, right?
I wonder if that might be part of the answer; if they put the photo up, and also put up an SS flag, then it would be obvious to us that they are the same symbol, thus obscuring the thing Vance brings up, which is that it’s also a kind of typeface one might simply adopt?
Or maybe they’re just lame journalists, too.
February 10, 2012 at 10:08 am
eric
In fairness to NPR, it’s an AP story.
Also, isn’t it conventionally “Adolf Hitler”? Google says it is, and you know that makes it so.
February 10, 2012 at 10:25 am
Malaclypse
Christ that is depressing.
February 10, 2012 at 10:28 am
Matt_L
no. no. no.
February 10, 2012 at 12:58 pm
Ken Houghton
zunguzungu – Well, it does have a blue, not a black, background. Which might get around a trademark infringement lawsuit, if it were in an unrelated industry.
And that’s the BEST defense I can think of. Is the USMC recruiting people without a knowledge of military history these days?
February 10, 2012 at 2:04 pm
saintneko
The USMC is recruiting folks as young as 18. So yes, they are recruiting people without knowledge. ;) I thought I was smart way-back-when, but you know what? I was a fuckin idiot at that time. (And 15 years from now, I’ll be saying the same thing about myself from now).
It also does look like it could be a heavy metal band logo.
February 10, 2012 at 4:12 pm
Main Street Muse
Sadly, the history of the 20th century seems ill-taught to the No Child Left Behind generation. I do believe ignorance can be to blame (and hope, actually, this was done out of ignorance rather than deliberate choice to imitate the SS.)
February 10, 2012 at 5:43 pm
Erik Lund
Kids are stupid. WTF are their officers?
February 10, 2012 at 11:13 pm
TF Smith
You could always ask these people:
http://www.tecom.usmc.mil/HD/Contents/Oganization/Staff.htm
The director is a Georgetown Phd, according to Linked-In.
February 11, 2012 at 12:30 am
Ben
A few questions inevitably leap to mind.
Where and how did they acquire that flag? How do you get a 3′x5′ SS flag without, um, knowing what you’re doing?
The photo’s from 2010, and the article says no message from the top saying “cut it out” came down until November 2011. So that’s at least a year that some kid is carrying around a bigass SS flag and is eager enough to show it that at least nine of his buddies take a picture around it. What’s the minimum number of people that saw the flag and didn’t, um, carefully explain what the kid had there? The ten in the picture, plus how many more? 10? 30? 100? I have no idea. Then again, there’ s no reason to think the flag was in action, so to speak, the entire time between the photo and last November.
Blech.
February 11, 2012 at 7:10 am
elizardbreath
That’s right. I’d believe for any particular 18-25 year old idiot that they had no idea that that was a Nazi symbol. But in any group of ten people, someone should have spotted it and said cut that shit out, and once it was spotted and explained, even the ignorant should have been willing to get rid of, or redesign, the flag immediately.
February 11, 2012 at 7:20 am
Dave
They knew, they didn’t care – how hard is that to stomach as an explanation? It’s not much different to knowing the words to ‘Napalm sticks to kids’, or any other such example of military folk art. YOU think it makes you a badass motherfecker; EVERYONE ELSE thinks you’re a psycho fascist.
February 11, 2012 at 8:25 am
silbey
I suspect that Dave is correct. See, eg:
http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/marine-scout-snipers-and-the-ss-flag
Don’t worry, I suspect that Stephen Hunter will be along to explain to us how this all okay:
http://edgeofthewest.wordpress.com/2009/04/14/oh-please/
February 11, 2012 at 4:39 pm
eric
From silbey’s link:
Appalling in more than one way.
February 11, 2012 at 5:53 pm
grackle
This version of the story has photos of the logo on a gun as well as the flag. If nothing else, a planned and consistent use of the logo. Appalling indeed.
February 11, 2012 at 10:43 pm
Vance Maverick
Ugh, the excuse of ignorance really doesn’t fit. Check out the comments on the article grackle linked.
February 12, 2012 at 2:40 am
David in San Jose
Ugh, the excuse of ignorance really doesn’t fit. Check out the comments on the article grackle linked.
I really think it is ignorance, I think most military types tend to read combat histories which don’t give enough emphasis to the atrocities committed by the SS.
February 12, 2012 at 9:46 am
eric
So to be clear, the impulse toward exculpation-by-ignorance has gone from “They must have just happened on the SS double-lightning-bolt logo by the common initials and a process of font-tastic convergent evolution” to “they knew it was a Nazi logo, they just didn’t know how bad that was”.
This sounds implausible to me.
February 12, 2012 at 9:47 am
eric
I mean, do I have to point out that if you want to display “a professional respect for the German military’s martial capabilities on the battlefield and not the politics or actions of the Nazi fascist regime” then the SS logo is the exact opposite of what you want?
February 12, 2012 at 10:14 am
Erik Lund
I don’t buy the ignorance, for the same reason that I defend the kids. You can empty the logo of its specific content by simply conceding that the “SS” logo is inherently transgressive. The kids today love being transgressive. We’re Nazis! Hilarious! High fives all around!
It would be horrible if it represented a mature and considered adoption of Nazi ideology, but it doesn’t. We’re still talking about kids, and kids just aren’t there yet. They get there through patience, teaching, and the setting of good examples, hopefully, by the Marine Corps. You know, the absent presence of the photograph..
February 12, 2012 at 11:06 am
Josh
To tie this back to silbey’s post from last week (or, more specifically, the category it was in), I present you with this. (Note that the co-author is a former lieutenant colonel in the Army.)
February 12, 2012 at 11:08 am
Josh
A better link about that book.
February 12, 2012 at 11:18 am
silbey
We’re still talking about kids, and kids just aren’t there yet.
Maybe. I’d kind of buy that for the non-NCO enlisted, but the NCOs aren’t kids, and nor are their officers.
And OH JOHN RINGO NO!
February 12, 2012 at 11:45 am
Dave
As I said above, you really do just have to inhabit a different moral universe to make sense of this; but once you’ve made the trip, it makes perfect sense. The mindset is somewhere between a teenage trenchcoat nazi and Jack Nicolson in A Few Good Men…
February 12, 2012 at 2:29 pm
David in San Jose
I mean, do I have to point out that if you want to display “a professional respect for the German military’s martial capabilities on the battlefield and not the politics or actions of the Nazi fascist regime” then the SS logo is the exact opposite of what you want?
I don’t think it is possible to “display a professional respect for the German military” on a battle flag. That why I thought it must be ignorance, soldiers are more likely to read Citadel than Bloodlands. Maybe there is some kind of Lost Cause thought process going on where the Waffen SS in not complicit in war crimes committed in rear areas.
Thinking about this a bit more, I think Dave’s thoughts are probably closer to the mark. It might be possible for a few individuals to have a shallow understanding of history, it is not believable for everyone to be this ignorant, especially if the Scout Snipers were using the SS symbol 30 years ago.
February 12, 2012 at 3:02 pm
silbey
Giving me hope:
http://mcgazette.blogspot.com/2012/02/ss-snowflakes-and-supervision.html
February 12, 2012 at 4:48 pm
Vance Maverick
That does give some hope, silbey, thanks.
I posted a comment earlier and then took it down, but I’ll try again. This seems to me like the embarrassing fringe of a tendency that must be almost inevitable with a professional military. If we want to inculcate the military virtues, can we be surprised if some come to admire them for themselves? A military requires loyalty, discipline, efficiency, etc. — can we be surprised that some people look around for examples so “badass” that admiring them proves they care more about the virtues than the ends they serve?
In my own life, I’ve given a lot of effort and ingenuity toward making computer programs whose purposes I didn’t care about, and enjoyed my work as a craft. In that light, I can’t feel myself much superior to these kids.
February 12, 2012 at 5:12 pm
TF Smith
It is appalling.
Having said that, Davis has an ROTC unit; Cal has one of the oldest NROTC units in the nation (founded by Chester Nimitz, IIRC)…CSU Maritime is in-between. Maybe a guest lecture?
Consider it a teachable moment.
Best,
February 12, 2012 at 6:16 pm
eric
If we want to inculcate the military virtues, can we be surprised if some come to admire them for themselves?
But Vance: the SS are not the people to turn to if you want to admire the military virtues.
February 12, 2012 at 6:17 pm
eric
TF, like most people, I consider self-invited guests a little rude. Although I’m happy to respond to an invitation.
February 12, 2012 at 8:51 pm
Vance Maverick
Were they disloyal? Undisciplined?
February 13, 2012 at 12:54 am
eric
Vance, are those “the military virtues”? Lots of mere bureaucratic toadies are loyal and disciplined. I think you’d want courage, martial competence, battlefield honor, toughness, willingness to sacrifice self for comrades and, frankly, a disinclination to put genocide first among your military virtues.
February 13, 2012 at 6:17 am
Lurker
Here, I would talk about the lure of the dark side. In popular history, the Waffen-SS are presented as fanatically disciplined and tactically very proficient soldiers who were loath to surrender. They were the elite troops of the last enemy that the US armed forces have considered as their peers. (I don’t claim these to be true but I claim that these are widely believed to be true by the professional military personnel.) The fact that they also routinely massacred civilians and committed murders of POW’s is only a minor point.
Thus, a serviceman may associate SS primarily with being a mighty warrior. The war crimes of the SS are, then, actually reinforcing the stereotype of being “badass”. They might even be rationalised away as “doing whatever it takes”. This is exactly the problem of “warrior” mindset. If you stop thinking of yourself as a tool of the society to defend itself, and start to conceptualize yourself as a warrior, you get quite different rolemodels: SS instead of Stauffenberg.
February 13, 2012 at 7:00 am
politicalfootball
Speaking of the ignorance defense, this one is my favorite.
February 13, 2012 at 7:37 am
politicalfootball
To zunguzungu: I suppose there’s a colorable case to be made that the logo in the flag merely resembles the Waffen SS logo. A little googling around for images gives me this representation and others like it, with thinner strokes and a noticeable tilt to create more of a twin lightning stroke effect. Although there are some variations, I can’t find one that quite matches the one here. Mind you, I’m a little uncomfortable googling around the kind of sites that carry this logo, so I may have missed something.
February 13, 2012 at 8:18 am
ajay
“My scouts and snipers also liked the SS flag/logo. Not for any sinister or anti-Semitic calculation, but for the simple reason the acronym/letters SS fit nicely in identifying a Scout Sniper and generally because of a professional respect for the German military’s martial capabilities on the battlefield and not the politics or actions of the Nazi fascist regime.”
Anecdotally, there’s a lot of admiration for the SS and the Wehrmacht generally in the US armed forces and their supporting industries. In particular, US army tankers are Rommel-cultists almost to a man. I suspect that’s what happens if you spend fifty years in Germany. Also, if you want to praise yourself indirectly, a good way to do it is to praise the people you beat.
February 13, 2012 at 8:44 am
eric
if you want to praise yourself indirectly, a good way to do it is to praise the people you beat
By this logic it would be excellent for the US military to fly banners “resembling” the Nazi swastika.
February 13, 2012 at 9:34 am
Vance Maverick
Eric, none of us is saying this stuff is defensible, merely comprehensible.
February 13, 2012 at 2:44 pm
Ralph Hitchens
Good lord, where was an officer to rein in such display?
In Vietnam we had our share of black humor: “My favorite ordnance is napalm. Man, that stuff just sucks the air out of their friggin’ lungs and makes a sonofabitchin’ fire!” But I never saw or heard of Nazi imagery, & can’t recall mention of any on our Vietnam Veterans Discussion List, of which I’ve been a member since about 1993.
February 14, 2012 at 4:27 am
ajay
By this logic it would be excellent for the US military to fly banners “resembling” the Nazi swastika.
That’s not technically “logic” there, eric. More of a “non sequitur”.
February 19, 2012 at 3:27 pm
TF Smith
Rommel cultists?
Patton cultists, sure. Even Abe Abrams and Don Starry cultists, I can see…maybe even the occasional Tal cultist…
But “Rommel Cultists”?
Evidence, please.