Enlisted Association Of The National Guard Of The United: Fill & Download for Free

Which organization is more elite? The objective answer is the Old Guard.In fact, the Old Guard gathered together so much raw talent and experience that arguably it actually damaged the French Army as a whole (more on that later). However, being elite and being capable are two entirely different variables. Elite warriors armed with clubs are not as capable as weekend warriors armed with assault rifles. Therefore, even though the Waffen-SS was not as elite as Napoleon’s Old Guard, it was still much more capable.Comparing the Old Guard with the Waffen SS isn’t comparing apples to oranges so much as comparing fruits to jumbo jets. Yes, they are both “elite” units—at least on paper. However, that’s where the similarities really end. The Waffen-SS was virtually a separate branch of service that eventually numbered 38 divisions, or almost 900,000 troops. The Waffen-SS was simply too large to be an elite organization.The Old Guard, on the other hand, was a collection of the most experienced, well-trained units in the Grande Armee—including the iconic grenadiers of the Old Guard, but they also included light infantry chasseur units, Polish Lancers, Egyptian Mamelukes, dragoons, Napoleon’s light cavalry escort, and finally the Grenadiers a Cheval.The quality of each of these units varied widely, and each had a different purpose. The infantry units of the Old Guard were typically used as a tactical reserve—and they were only committed (with great reluctance) as a last resort. The cavalry of the Old Guard, however, were a different matter entirely. If you pick a famous Napoleonic victory, Marengo, Austerlitz, Eylau, etc. you are going to find these guys close to the decisive moment of the battle:Napoleon’s Old Guard infantry are famous almost for what they don’t do. Napoleon, quite simply, didn’t use them very much. His Grenadier a Cheval (Horse Grenadiers) are used throughout the period. These cavalrymen are human tanks.The Napoleonic Age produced a great many first-class cavalry commanders and cavalry units. Napoleon’s Horse Grenadiers were the very best. That being said, these Old Guard cavalry regiments were quite small; the Horse Grenadiers numbered approximately 1,100 cavalrymen, and the Old Guard cavalry as a whole only numbered around 6,500 men around 1811.Looking at the Grenadiers of the Old Guard, their strength appears to have fluctuated throughout the period. In 1811, heavy losses had reduced the size of the Old Guard to around 500 grenadiers. At its peak, the Grenadiers and Chasseurs of the Old Guard consisted of just two regiments each.Even for the era, this is an incredibly small unit. At its peak, the Old Guard was no larger than a World War II-era division. This makes its capability hard to assess. It was given specialized training during an era where untrained mass-infantry armies was the order of the day. However, the selection criteria for the guard varied. All recruits in the Old Guard had to be literate, and had to have 10 years worth of experience. However, the recruits weren’t screened or selected for endurance, skills, or abilities like most elite soldiers would be in the SAS or CAG/Delta. Instead, survival was what guaranteed placement in the Old Guard. If you lived through 3–5 campaigns, you must be doing something right.For the infantry in particular, the problem for an elite unit like the Old Guard is that Napoleonic battles were high casualty affairs in which most infantry forces were used as cannon fodder. After the French Revolution, most of the competent infantry officers either fled France, were removed from command, or were executed. To make up for this deficit in tactical knowledge, infantry tactics favored simplistic shock tactics using the bayonet and supported by clouds skirmishers and massed batteries as a means of delivering fire.French infantry was placed in column and used as human battering rams to break enemy infantry lines. Fire was the province of specialized units like the artillery and the light infantry. The problem is that elite units like the Old Guard had just as much chance of being mown down by a musket volley as any militia unit. At that point, the Old Guard is just elite cannon fodder—probably one of the reasons Napoleon was so reluctant to commit them to battle. However, the “catch-22” is that this very caution means that it’s hard to know how capable the Old Guard actually is.Probably the best example of the effectiveness of the Old Guard is at the Battle of Waterloo. At Waterloo, two Old Guard battalions took the village of Placenoit at bayonet point and held it against fourteen Prussian battalions. Bayonet combat, then and throughout history, required highly-trained, experienced, and above all fearless soldiers. The Old Guard’s mission to take and hold Placenoit is probably the right mission for the right unit. However, there aren’t very many example like Placenoit, because even though 19th-century warfare revolved around (fear of) the bayonet—actual bayonet combat was extremely rare.(Russ Crowley notes that there is some dispute about the units committed to the Plancenoit battle. Please see the comments below!)Sometimes in military history, the right combination of technology, culture, and economic conditions lead to military “super-elite” forces being more effective. The Middle Ages is a fairly good example of this, where advances in the effectiveness of cavalry, coupled with body armor increasing survivability in combat made the Medieval knight vastly more capable than other comparable elite cavalry forces. Furthermore, the desire to capture and ransom knights—rather than to kill them outright—meant that elite medieval warriors could anticipate to get bloodied in battle, and yet still expect to survive.Unfortunately for Napoleon’s Imperial Guard, mass and firepower are much more important in Napoleonic combat than skill or training. Therefore, despite how much pain Napoleon took in creating a “super-elite” force of infantry, cavalry, and artillery, the fact is that in an era of conscription and mass armies, elite forces just weren’t as effective as they were during the Middle Ages. They weren’t even as effective as they were a generation ago during the era of Frederick the Great where Prussian infantry were trained to deliver four to five rounds per minute. There is a reason why this is the era that produced modern conscription, not the era that inspired Space Marines. Napoleon himself probably knew that—which is why he refused to commit his guard unless it was absolutely necessary.A further criticism of the Imperial Guard in general, but of the Old Guard specifically, is that in exchange for a highly-capable combat division, Napoleon deprived the entire French Army of its best soldiers. This is not a critique unique to the Old Guard. Field Marshal William Slim, for example, railed against British commando units in World War II for the same reason. However, in Napoleon’s army membership in the Old Guard was based on seniority and experience. Who are your most experienced soldiers? Well, these guys:Napoleon filled-out the ranks of the Old Guard by taking sergeants from line platoons and companies and making them grunts in his Old Guard. In any modern army, it’s the non-coms that actually make the army function. In Napoleonic battle, these are the guys who ensure that battle lines stand firm, that columns move forward, and that infantry squares hold their ground. Despite all this, Napoleon takes the best non-coms and decides that the French Army is better off having one elite division than an army with elite, highly experienced sergeants. I am not sure that this was one of his better decisions, especially given the diminished utility of elite units.The Waffen-SS, by contrast, is not an elite combat division. It’s not even elite in the same way the Old Guard is elite. The Old Guard is elite by virtue of its stringent admission qualifications. The Waffen-SS is elite by virtue of the fact that it is the armed militia of the regime, not the army of the state. “Party armies” or regime armies are seen as elite not because of their combat skills. Whether you’re looking at the Waffen SS, the Soviet NKVD, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, or the People’s Liberation Army, these are organization that serve as the regime’s life insurance policy. Need an angry crowd dispersed? College students sent back to class at bayonet point? Then you need a party army or militia force.Fortunately, state armies, especially those that use conscription (like the German Wehrmacht of World War II) are notoriously unreliable if they have to use violence against their own people. In that way, the Waffen-SS is not all that different from any of the other party militias or armies of the 20th or 21st century. The trade off in a party army is that while they tend to be loyal and reliable, they are not necessarily great when it comes to state-to-state fighting. Take a look, for example at the Republican Guard of Saddam Hussein during the Gulf War. These weren’t nationally recruited, elite forces like Napoleon’s Old Guard or the SAS. Instead, they were simply troops that came from tribes and families loyal to the regime. What made them “elite” was the fact that these units were given the best tanks and equipment. Of course, their status as elite combat units was undermined after battles like 73 Easting in which Coalition armored forces made mincemeat of the Republican Guard units with virtually no losses. Theoretically, the Waffen SS is not too different from the Republican Guard of Iraq. The SS is a party militia that is elite by virtual of having access to the best equipment, and is seen as elite because it’s thought to be reliable……except history is a bit more complex. Sure, you can argue that the Waffen SS were amateurs because they were loyal to the Nazi Party first, and they (their officers especially) weren’t really professional soldiers. However, the origins of the SS are quite different from, for example, Saddam’s Republican Guard or other party militias.Germany after the Treaty of Versailles basically goes through a civil war. It’s not a war on the same scale as Russia’s contemporaneous conflict between the Whites and Bolsheviks, but that probably says more about conditions in Russia than it does about conditions in Germany. The German Revolution of 1918 and its after effects revolve around the fact that liberal and socialist organizations have been a fixture of German political life since at least 1848, but they were never given any power in proportion to their popularity. Germany had the largest socialist party in Europe in 1914, and despite their clout the kaiser and his chancellor simply asked them to rubber stamp war bonds in August of 1914. They were expected them to stay quiet for the rest of the war.Four years and millions of lives later, leftist groups decided they had had enough and rose up in November of 1918. Socialists, communists, and Spartacists actually managed to occupy large parts of cities like Berlin, and for a brief period of time states as conservative as Bavaria—the nursery of Nazism itself—declares itself to be a Soviet Republic.Armed German workers patrolling the streets of Berlin during the German Revolution.Even Germany’s moderate socialist government wanted to suppress these revolutionary groups, but the problem was that the military itself was seen as unreliable. The strike that had actually snowballed into the German Revolution wasn’t started by some workers council during a coal miners’ strike, but actually originated in the Kaiser’s High Seas Fleet (after they heard they were going to be sent on a suicide mission to break the British blockade). So, instead of relying on the German Army to put down the revolution, the government called on these guys:The Freikorps.Freikorps were units of mostly rightwing militia units that were raised by the government (and in many cases, individuals and local elites) to put down leftist revolutionaries. I suppose it’s possible that there were a few weekend warriors in the Freikorps, but by-and-large the Freikorps were composed of war veterans. Often, these war veterans in the Freikorps had experiences that were broadly similar to that of Adolf Hitler—they thought that war was a “hoot.” They thought that war gave them a sense of purpose and community that nothing could ever replicate in civilian life. They missed their old friends. They missed their old country. And now, from their perspective, draft dodgers, students, and traitors had taken both away (this is the famous Legend of the Stab in the Back).The Freikorps tended to recruit from and adopt the imagery of elite German units in WWI—the Stosstruppen (or storm troopers…see where we are going here?). These were units famous for their sheer aggressiveness, but also for how close-knit they were. Charging trenches is tough work, and the Stosstruppen weren’t trained to charge in as a wave by company or battalion to root out defenders at bayonet point. Instead, they used highly coordinated tactics based on cooperation to take and hold ground. Today, we call these tactics modern infantry combat—using tactics like using covering fire to suppress the enemy as a means to maneuver around them. What may be surprising is that while the Stosstruppen were highly aggressive, the units themselves—like many special forces units today—were fairly egalitarian. The Stosstruppen were mostly young, unmarried volunteers—so coercion wasn’t really necessary to get them to fight. Also, these units emphasized initiative at all levels—from company commanders all the way to grunts, and initiative and hierarchy are not exactly compatible. Stosstruppen units encouraged officers to treat their subordinates as comrades and equals rather than as lessers. The social and military boundaries separating officers from enlisted men wasn’t just undermined in four years of combat—but was actively minimized in order to promote unit cohesion and group solidarity.It might be a little indirect, but you can trace the lineal descent of the Waffen SS all the way to the elite stormtrooper units of World War I. Even the term “Nazi stormtrooper” is a term that emerges from this close association—including the adoption of the Totenkopf, or “Death’s Head” insignia.It’s also fair to say that the Freikorps were generally pretty effective at what they were intended to do: use any means necessary, including murder, torture, and open warfare to suppress revolutionary groups in Germany. They were certainly more effective than the German Army, but that’s to be expected. State armies are really only good for fighting state armies. They’re rubbish and most everything else—including, and especially, dealing with revolutions and popular uprisings. That’s why Germany’s Weimar Republic farmed out the task of taking down governments like the Bavarian Soviet Republic to the Freikorps.It also started a pattern over the next decade that culminated in Hitler’s chancellorship. German government elites might not like Nazis. They might not let their children date or bring Nazis home. They might not even socially acknowledge Nazis in public. However, they certainly don’t mind manipulating the patriotism of Nazis as a means to save their bacon.While it would be a misnomer to call members of the Freikorps, and the first members of the SS, “elite troops,” most were highly experienced combat soldiers and many worked in police forces after the First World War. The SS did not begin life as a trained military unit, but rather as party militia—with most members having military training and experience. On paper, it’s a party militia not too different from Mao’s student-led Red Guard—but in practice the culture of the SS and post-war Germany in general is very unique.Until 1936, the SS was actually comparable in size to Napoleon’s Old Guard. There were a few, battalion sized units—most notably Hitler’s bodyguard unit the Leibstandarte—but any historical memory with the Stosstruppen units on the Western front were now just that—a memory. The SS was a pretty effective street-fighting organization, but it certainly wasn’t prepared for modern warfare. That began to change in 1936 when its leader, Heinrich Himmler, began organizing the predecessor to the Waffen-SS field divisions.In contrast to Napoleon’s Old Guard where there were stringent military qualifications required to join, the Waffen-SS really didn’t require any military qualifications at all—except, you know, being able to demonstrate your “German-ness.” There were physical fitness and health requirements, but even these were relaxed at the beginning of the war. The Waffen-SS was entirely dependent on the Wehrmacht for its equipment and for its allotment of recruits. Based on Weber’s maxim that the first rule any bureaucracy is the preservation of the bureaucracy, you can guess just how successful this policy was in getting the cream of the Wehrmacht’s recruitment pool into the SS.At the beginning of the war, the best we can say about the “eliteness” of the Waffen SS is that they were no worse than the most average Wehrmacht unit. Waffen SS units got the same basic training as army units, and they may have had a marginal advantage in morale owing to their elite status within the Nazi Party. However, on the other hand the Waffen SS basically got the Wehrmacht’s leftovers in terms of recruitment, and Waffen SS officers were considered subpar.During the early war (1939–40), Waffen SS units proved that they weren't trained or prepared for modern warfare. They fought like street fighters: clumsily, aggressively, and instinctually. In the battle around the Polish town of Pabianice, the elite of the elite, the Leibstandarte, was surrounded by a Polish infantry division and almost destroyed if not for the timely intervention of a regular Wehrmacht unit. The Waffen SS generally received the best equipment—especially in 1943 with the creation of entire SS Panzer divisions. In fact, if you use the Koenigstiger “King Tiger” Tank as a way to measure equipment priorities, the Waffen SS had control of four of the elite heavy tank battalions out of a force that fielded 38 divisions, compared with the Wehrmacht which controlled 12 heavy tank battalions out of a force that fielded 315 total divisions. In other words, the Waffen SS had over one-quarter of the available heavy tanks units, despite only having 12% of the total number of divisions. That’s a very indirect measure of unit pampering, but it’s still revealing (Note: Cem Arslan provides some great contextualization for this point in the comments).Part of this pampering is because of the fact that the SS, like all party militias, was created in part as a counterweight to the power of the institutional military. Hitler, for very good reasons, distrusted the German Army which, in modern German history, was de facto a separate branch of government. The German Army was basically an institution controlled by the traditional Prussian nobility; the Nazi Party was a populist party that played on the conservative sensibilities of the working and middle classes. The problem between the two institutions was just as much one of class as of ideology. The expansion of the SS in 1940 allowed Hitler to reduce the power and influence exerted by the Wehrmacht, and thus the old Prussian Aristocracy.Other than equipment, the Waffen SS only had one attribute that arguably makes them elite: they fought.They didn’t fight elegantly, nor did they fight intelligently. But, they fought consistently and aggressively—even when they shouldn’t have. Wehrmacht accounts of the Waffen SS were highly critical—and you can detect a common theme with most of them. They get called out for animalistic cruelty, an unwillingness to take prisoners, war crimes, and insane recklessness. However, it’s rare that you hear the Waffen SS rebuked for cowardice or being overly cautious.Now, when you are fighting the Red Army in 1944–5, you probably want units to be cautious to conserve your manpower. However, Hitler’s Germany wanted units to fight to the end and to never surrender territory. You get the impression that Hitler would have probably been happier had he been in command of the Japanese Imperial Army than the German Army.The Waffen-SS is not really an elite combat unit. It’s a separate army that was given elite equipment, but not necessarily the elite people. It did, however, attract a particular type of person. For as horrible as the Waffen-SS was, it actually fills a pretty ancient niche in the history of the German Army.In German military history, there are two stock characters that appear with surprising consistency: Blücher and Gneisenau.An illustration of Blücher (bottom) and Gneisenau (top left).Ideally, every generation the German Army should get a commander like a Frederick the Great or a Napoleon. Unfortunately, talent and fortune are fickle, and the military system created by Frederick was ultimately destroyed by a French Army led by a commander of Frederick’s caliber: Napoleon Bonaparte.The problem with all Prussian institutions is that they always demand individuals with superhuman skills or abilities to control them. The Prussian Army would have to make do with people of ordinary abilities. Enter Blücher and Gneisenau.Gebhard von Blücher wasn’t the brightest crayon in the box. However, somebody like Blücher didn’t care about how colorful a crayon was anyway—his only concern is whether he could stab somebody with it. The “myth” of Blücher is more important in German military history than the man himself—an old, barely literate, hard-fighting, hard charging warrior. As a tactician or strategist, he wasn’t anywhere near the caliber of a Napoleon, Wellington, or even the dotards in the Prussian Army that he replaced after 1806.The one thing he brought to the table was sheer force of will.If you are looking for a “triumph of the will,” as the Nazis were, then look no further than old “Marshal Forward” because willpower was about all he had. For Blücher, a defeat was only a temporary delay to the day when he would finally (and personally) shoot Boney the Ogre. After the occupation of Paris, Blücher planned on blowing up a bridge named to commemorate France’s victory at the Battle of Jena. The Duke of Wellington only managed to save the bridge by stationing a British sentry on it. There are many “Blüchers” in German military history: Seydlitz, Prince Friedrich Karl, and arguably even Rommel fulfill the Blücher mold. These were individuals who understood warfare on an intuitive, rather than intellectual level—and when in doubt, they attacked. The surprising revelation is that the nation that produced intellectuals like Clausewitz historically honored and treasured the Blüchers of the world. The encirclement of the entire Austrian Army at the Battle of Königgrätz was only possible because of a series of extremely aggressive attacks launched by Prince Friedrich Karl to pin the Austrians in place. To the Prussians, bold, senseless aggression is actually quite sensible in the right context.Gneisenau, on the other hand, was young, skeptical, and highly educated. He, and officers like Scharhorst and Clausewitz were part of the Prussian Army’s braintrust that was created after the Battle of Jena-Auerstedt: professionally trained staff officers. Out of this small group you have the roots of the Prussian, and later German General Staff. The thinking here is that if fate is too fickle to produce a Frederick or Napoleon every generation, then you can create a group of brilliant individuals that was collectively as brilliant as any Bonaparte. There are also many Gneisenaus in German military history: Moltke the Elder, Ludendorff, Seeckt, and Manstein just to name a few. Very often these officers came from middle class backgrounds, and they were extremely cosmopolitan and academic in their interests. Moltke, for example, was famous for being “silent” in seven languages and for reading an English romance novel on a couch during the outbreak of war. In any case, Gneisenau became Blücher’s staff officer. In other words, Gneisenau became Blücher’s “handler.” His job was not to tell Blücher whether or not to attack, but to efficiently channel that aggression in a way to win battles—and, of course, to handle pesky issues like logistics and strategy.The partnership between the two men was highly successful and became a model for Prussian military command until 1945: a “muddy-boots general,” a “Blücher,” would command the army, establish broad objectives, and be the animating force or spirit of the army itself; the staff officer or the Gneisenau would handle complex logistical and strategic issues, and they would also ensure that aggressive field commanders were still conforming to the overall strategy established by the General Staff.You can even see these relationships in the highest echelons of the German Army. In many ways, the Hindenburg-Ludendorf partnership that ran both the war and Germany during the First World War is a riff off of the “Blücher-Gneisenau” relationship. It’s also what spelled the end of that system.The problem is that after World War I, the Allied powers decided to cap the German Army to 100,000 troops and 4,000 officers. This is one of the many reasons the ranks of the Freikorps grew so quickly. One benefit to this, arguably, is the fact that it allowed the German Army to select only the best and brightest officers and field commanders in order to put them on the fast-track for promotion. This is an argument I’ve seen more than a few times to explain the superiority of German generalship during World War II.However, the person making the personnel decisions in the post-war German Army was Field Marshal Hans von Seeckt, a seriously underrated historical figure who basically transforms the army of the kaiser to the Wehrmacht of World War II.Look at him though…If you replace the uniform with a tweed jacket, he could easily look the part of a librarian or college professor. Hans von Seeckt was an officer in the “Gneisenau” mold: a brilliant staff officer with decidedly unmartial interests and tastes; multilingual, cosmopolitan, and just as conversant in art, history, and literature as military tactics. In many cases he personally selected the officers that were retained—and they all became the generals and line officers of the Second World War.However, Seeckt was a staff officer, an intellectual, and above all knew that “The Next War” was going to be a war that would require thinking officers. In his book, Thoughts of a Soldier, he writes: “the whole future of warfare appears to me to lie in the employment of mobile armies, relatively small but of high quality, and rendered distinctly more effective by the addition of aircraft, and in the simultaneous mobilization of the whole forces, either to feed the attack or for home defence.”[1]Where does a Blücher fit in there? How can you have a muddy-boots general when wars are going to be fought and won flying over mud, or barreling across it in armored vehicles. In other words, how many Blüchers were purged after Versailles?There is no evidence that the Wehrmacht lacked aggression during the beginning of World War II. However, anecdotally it’s hard to find major commanders in the Blücher mold other than Rommel. I think that’s because the Wehrmacht became an army run by staff officers for staff officers.…Until the SS comes along.Commanders like Sepp Dietrich weren’t incredibly bright, but their sheer aggression and stubbornness hearkens back to that Blücher mold.The biggest distinction between the Waffen SS and the Wehrmacht—other than the scale of war crimes—is what type of officer they wanted. SS cadets needed to be loyal, aggressive, and racially pure, but only 40% of officers prior to 1938 had an elementary school education—in a country that invented modern-day public schooling as we know it.[2] There is a debate as on how different the Waffen-SS officer was from his Wehrmacht counterpart, but it’s fair to say that the difference is there. On average, the Waffen-SS officer was less educated, less aristocratic, but more athletic and physically conditioned than his Wehrmacht counterpart.Officers like Dietrich, the first commander of the the Leibstandarte, give us an idea of the type of officer the SS wanted: tough, crude, blue collar, aggressive, but utterly loyal. In fact, that loyalty lasted even outlasted the war against the SS itself given the fact that Dietrich joined a group to rehabilitate the historical reputation of the Waffen SS. As you can imagine, that group was as busy as it was unsuccessful.The Waffen SS isn’t elite except that it was a force set apart by the regime to protect itself. It had better equipment, arguably had slightly better morale, and there is some evidence that the pre-war Waffen-SS had more resources to invest in physical conditioning and training for individual soldiers than the Wehrmacht. How relevant or helpful that training actually was is a question I can’t answer.Against these minor advantages you have the fact that SS officers were often amateurish, and the other branches of the Wehrmacht got the lion’s share of the talent and manpower pool. You don’t see SS units performing missions with the complexity of the seizure of Eben-Emael. To do that, you need properly trained, elite forces.The SS isn’t properly understood as an elite force in the same way Napoleon’s Old Guard was. However, it is an institution with deep historical antecedents. This might be controversial, and I would love to get Cem Arslan and Cameron Greene’s perspective here because they are the experts, but the Waffen-SS might be the logical end result of a military tradition that wants to fight intelligently and aggressively at the same time.Frederick the Great said that Prussia’s wars should be “short and lively.” Ironically, the man he told to “go to the devil,” Gebhard von Blücher, was the very incarnation of that principle. Throughout the 19th-century, Prussia’s aggressiveness increased in proportion to the stakes involved. If the stakes of a Second World War involve national extermination, how can an organization like the Waffen-SS not somehow be the logical end-result? That question is a bit unsettling to me, and I don’t think that Prussia had a special destiny to support fascism per se. However, it doesn’t seem like the Waffen SS is as much a historical aberration in the German military tradition as we might think: particularly since the Waffen SS itself in its symbology and doctrine is a celebration of that very military tradition.At the end, the Old Guard is capable, because it is a professional military organization that prioritizes professional military experience as a requirement to be admitted. The Waffen-SS is a party militia. However, neither are all that capable, really.The Old Guard was a morale booster for the other line units, but it drained these same line units of their best soldiers. While not as elite as the Old Guard, the Waffen-SS was a similar drain on the army because it created a separate, and often confusing chain of command. As the Wehrmacht and the Waffen SS warred against the Soviets for the resources of Lebensraum, they warred against each other for resources.…Those don’t sound like capable forces to me.I’d like to thank User-13514848689614950959 for translating this answer into French!Footnotes[1] Hans von Seeckt[2] The Waffen SS

I guess that depends on the Military Veteran. For some it could be an issue. However, I downloaded a list of military organizations, List of veterans organizations - Wikipedia. You should attempt to connect with them and possibly someone may want to talk to you:Air Force AssociationAir Force Sergeants AssociationAmerican Ex-Prisoners of WarAmerican G.I. ForumAmerican LegionAmerican Veterans (AMVETS)American Veterans Committee (1943–2008)American Veterans CommitteeAmerican Veterans for Equal RightsArmy and Navy Union of the United States of AmericaAssociation of the United States Army (AUSA)Blinded Veterans AssociationCatholic War VeteransCenter for American Homeless VeteransDisabled American Veterans (DAV)Fleet Reserve AssociationGrand Army of the RepublicIraq and Afghanistan Veterans of AmericaIraq War Veterans OrganizationJewish War Veterans of the USAMarine Corps LeagueMilitary Officers Association of AmericaMilitary Order of the CarabaoMilitary Order of the CootieMilitary Order of Foreign WarsMilitary Order of the Loyal Legion of the United StatesMilitary Order of the Purple HeartNavy League of the United StatesNational Association for Black VeteransNational Guard Association of the United StatesNavy Musicians AssociationNavy Mutual Aid AssociationParalyzed Veterans of AmericaPearl Harbor Survivors AssociationRetired Enlisted AssociationSociety of American Military EngineersSociety of the CincinnatiStudent Veterans of AmericaThings We ReadUnited Confederate VeteransUnited Spanish War VeteransUnited States Submarine Veterans, Inc.United States Submarine Veterans of World War IIVeterans' Alliance for Security and DemocracyVeterans for PeaceVeterans of Foreign Wars of the United States (VFW)Vietnamese American Armed Forces AssociationVietnam Veterans of AmericaWounded Warrior Project

My dad flew 35 missions in a B-17 in 1944–45. He was never shot down, but came close on his first mission. All the allied airmen knew that if you got shot down and had no chance of escape, your best bet in surviving was to be picked up by the German army or Luftwaffe guards. With them you had your best chance of survival and in the case of Americans, it seemed that they were treated far better than many others. You did not want to be caught by civilians incensed by the allied bombings or the SS.Goering had a philosophy that there was a brotherhood between airmen and that sentiment existed in the senior Luftwaffe brass and this impacted how airmen were treated. It was also well known how well the Americans were treating German POW’s in the states, so good in fact that many migrated to the USA after the war. A few even escaped during the war and adopted false identities to stay in the USA. A few remained undetected until years later. I imagine this had a positive effect that may have made some difference in treatment, as this was its intention.For American and British airmen, all officers, they were treated far better than most as there was a mutual respect between airmen that made a difference. The Luftwaffe officers running the prison camps and their captured POW’s were unique in their measurably better treatment as compared to the terrible track record the Nazi’s had holding other POW’s. In fact the Luftwaffe senior officers disregarded several of Hitler's direct orders demanding harsher treatment and execution of the POW airmen. It is one of the few examples of a level of high respect for life and a display personal integrity within the Luftwaffe at the extreme peril of their own lives. Defiance of Hitler within the Nazi military bureaucracy was not commonly tolerated. While not a universal situation, during the war the bias was favorable towards these POW’s.Even though they were treated favorably as compared to others they still suffered immensely, but if they had not had the support from the senior Luftwaffe brass it would have been far worse.Below is some interesting details from the 392 Bomb group. Research of WWII B-24 POW Stalag Lufts of WWIIDulag Luft, located near Frankfurt am Main, was the Luftwaffe Aircrew Interrogation Center to which all Allied airmen were delivered as soon as possible after their capture. There each new prisoner, while still trying to recover from the recent trauma of his shoot-down and capture, was skillfully interrogated for military information of value to the Germans. The German interrogators claimed that they regularly obtained the names of unit commanders, information on new tactics and new weapons, and order of battle from naive or careless U.S. airmen, without resort to torture. New prisoners were kept in solitary confinement while under interrogation and then moved into a collecting camp. After a week or ten days, they were sent in groups to a permanent camp such as Stalag Luft III for officers or Stalag VIB for enlisted men. A nearby hospital employing captured doctors and medical corpsmen received and cared for wounded prisoners.The German garrison of Stalag Luft III was composed of non-flying Luftwaffe officers and enlisted personnel who were generally not qualified for frontline duty. Many of the guards were old and uneducated. Some had been wounded in combat and wore the patches of famous battles on the Eastern Front against Russia. For the enlisted men, guarding prisoners was probably regarded as better than duty in the East, but for the officers it must have been one of the least desired assignments. Some officers and men of the camp's garrison were genuinely hated by the prisoners. Most of the others tried to be decent to the POWs, often under difficult circumstances and the threat of severe punishment if they were caught doing anything that could be considered contrary to Germany's war effort. This general feeling of mutual respect is reflected in the fact that Gustav Simoleit and Hermann Glemnitz were invited as guests to the 20-year reunion of the American Former Prisoners of Stalag Luft III. They were warmly received.Food was always very close to a prisoner's heart. Germany, involved in a total war, had difficulties enough feeding its own people. Feeding POWs was well down on the list of priorities. The German POW rations were insufficient to sustain health and failed to meet the requirements of the Geneva Convention. Had the International Red Cross not shipped food parcels to all Allied POW camps except to the Russians, serious malnutrition would have been common. The Red Cross offer to feed the Russian POWs was spurned by Stalin. The receipt of the Red Cross food parcels suffered from the uncertainties of the wartime rail service in Germany and the caprice of the Germans who would withhold delivery of the food as group punishment.Kriegies stashed food for special occasions. A few spoons of British cocoa here or a few lumps of sugar there all went into a special reserve for what the Kriegies called a bash. Loosely speaking a bash was the Kriegies' way of celebrating a special event, perhaps the Fourth of July, Christmas, or even a birthday. Its ingredients had been saved laboriously for months. It was a feast.The International Young Men's Christian Association (Y.M.C.A.). with headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, undertook to preserve the quality of life for thousands of prisoners of war on both sides in World War II. The International Red Cross provided food, clothing, and medicines, while the Y.M.C.A. provided library supplies (largely books), athletic equipment, musical instruments, and chaplains' supplies. Both were major efforts and contributed immensely to the well-being of POWs. Volunteers from neutral countries, such as Switzerland and Sweden, with great dedication and at considerable personal risk, served Allied camps in Germany throughout the war.Swedish lawyer Henry Söderberg, as the representative of the International Y.M.C.A., was responsible for the region of Germany in which Stalag Luft III was located. He visited the camp regularly and went to great efforts to procure and deliver items requested by the various compounds. As a result, each compound had a band and orchestra, a well-equipped library, and sports equipment to meet the different British and American national tastes. Chaplains also had the necessary religious items to enable them to hold regular services. In addition, many men were able to advance, and in a few cases, complete their formal education.Söderberg remained in touch with many of his American friends by coming from Sweden to attend their reunions until his death in 1998. He kindly donated his rich collection of official reports, photograph albums, letters, and other materials documenting his work on behalf of the prisoners of many nations to the U.S. Air Force Academy Library. It is available to scholars, other researchers, and cadets alike.Nothing in Shakespeare could match the impact of the short speech delivered in the middle of the second act of "You Can't Take It With You" at the South Compound Theater on the night of January 27, 1945. Making an unscripted entrance, Col. Charles G. Goodrich, the senior American officer, strode center stage and announced, "The Goons have just given us 30 minutes to be at the front gate! Get your stuff together and line up!"At his 4:30 staff meeting in Berlin that very afternoon, Adolf Hitler had issued the order to evacuate Stalag Luft III. He was fearful that the 11,000 Allied airmen in the camp would be liberated by the Russians. Hitler wanted to keep them as hostages. A spearhead of Soviet Marshal Ivan Konev's Southern Army had already pierced to within 20 kilometers of the camp.In the barracks following Colonel Goodrich's dramatic announcement, there was a frenzy of preparation -- of improvised packsacks being loaded with essentials, distribution of stashed food, and of putting on layers of clothing against the Silesian winter.As the men lined up outside their blocks, snow covered the ground six inches deep and was still falling. Guards with sentinel dogs herded them through the main gate. Outside the wire, Kriegies waited and were counted, and waited again for two hours as the icy winds penetrated their multilayered clothes and froze stiff the shoes on their feet. Finally, the South Camp moved out about midnight.Out front, the 2,000 men of the South Camp were pushed to their limits and beyond, to clear the road for the 8,000 behind them. Hour after hour, they plodded through the blackness of night, a blizzard swirling around them, winds driving near-zero temperatures.At 2:00 a.m. on January 29, they stumbled into Muskau and found shelter on the floor of a tile factory. They stayed there for 30 hours before making the 15.5-mile march to Spremberg, where they were jammed into boxcars recently used for livestock. With 50 to 60 men in a car designed to hold 40, the only way one could sit was in a line with others, toboggan-fashion, or else half stood while the other half sat. It was a 3-day ordeal, locked in a moving cell becoming increasingly fetid with the stench of vomit and excrement. The only ventilation in the cars came from two small windows near the ceiling on opposite ends of the cars. The train lumbered through a frozen countryside and bombed-out cities.Along the way, Colonel Goodrich passed the word authorizing escape attempts. In all, some 32 men felt in good enough condition to make the try. In 36 hours, all had been recaptured.The boxcar doors were finally opened at Moosburg and the Kriegies from the South and Center Compounds were marched into Stalag VIIA.Stalag VIIA was a disaster. It was a nest of small compounds separated by barbed wire fences enclosing old, dilapidated barracks crammed closely together. Reportedly, the camp had been built to hold 14,000 French prisoners. In the end, 130,000 POWs of all nationalities and ranks were confined in the area. In some compounds the barracks were empty shells with dirt floors. In others, barracks consisted of two wooden buildings abutting a masonry washroom with a few cold-water faucets. Wooden bunks were joined together into blocks of 12, a method of cramming 500 men into a building originally intended for an uncomfortable 200. All buildings were hopelessly infested with vermin. As spring came to Bavaria, some of the more enterprising Kriegies moved out of the barracks into tents that had been erected to accommodate the stream of newcomers still coming in from other evacuated stalags. Some men chose to sleep on the ground, setting up quarters in air raid slit trenches. The camp resembled a giant hobo village.On the morning of April 29, 1945, elements of the 14th Armored Division of Patton's 3rd Army attacked the SS troops guarding Stalag VIIA. Prisoners scrambled for safety. Some hugged the ground or crawled into open concrete incinerators. Bullets flew seemingly haphazardly. Finally, the American task force broke through, and the first tank entered, taking the barbed wire fence with it. The prisoners went wild. They climbed on the tanks in such numbers as to almost smother them. Pandemonium reigned. They were free!Two days later, General Patton arrived in his jeep, garbed in his usual uniform with four stars on everything including his ivory handled pistols. He was a sight to behold. The prisoners cheered and cheered. The Longest Mission was finally over!