Richard Landwehr

Book cover of Landwehr's 1981 revisionist work glorifying the role of the Waffen-SS in the Battle of Narva; the image appeared as an advertisement in a periodical sympathetic to the Waffen-SS.^[1]

Richard Landwehr is the author of numerous books about the Waffen-SS, its non-German volunteers in particular. He has been producing the magazine Siegrunen on the same topic for over 30 years. He has written for the Journal for Historical Review (JHR) which is published by the Institute for Historical Review, an American Holocaust denial^[2] organization.

Depiction of Waffen-SS

Landwehr's works about the Waffen-SS show the Nazi organisation in a favorable light. His article "The European Volunteer Movement in World War II" (20 1981 JHR 59-84) lauds the Waffen-SS and the ideals they fought for while assiduously avoiding any mention of war crimes (real or alleged). The world view that permeates Landwehr's work is best summed up in his own words from the 1981 article in JHR:

After a generation of slander, vilification and falsehood concerning the European volunteers, the first rays of light are beginning to shine through. Slowly, but surely, their story is being told. As for the soldiers themselves, many are of the belief that they were ahead of their time, both militarily and philosophically, and that their legacy is yet to be fulfilled. For myself, perhaps the most incisive observation was made by the former Waffen-SS Colonel Joachim Peiper in a letter to his comrades while he was being held in American confinement under sentence of death: 'Don't forget that it was in the ranks of the SS that the first European died'.

After citing the example of the Dutch SS volunteers, Landwehr claims that "the men who got into the Waffen-SS usually represented the best human material that their respective countries had to offer" (1981 JHR).

Criticism

Historians criticize Landwehr's works for their revisionist, apologetic portrayal of Waffen-SS.

• The military historian S.P. MacKenzie describes Landwehr as an "extreme admirer [from] the fringes of the far-right."^[3]
• Dr. van Hoesel's 1948 study (cited in both George Stein's "The Waffen SS" and Henry L. Mason's 1952 "Purge of the Dutch Quislings") of 450 Dutch SS volunteers revealed some joined to avoid prosecution for petty crime or delinquency. Others joined out of boredom and a desire for adventure, some for prestige, better food or to avoid labour service.
• The records left by the Nazis themselves serves to contradict Landwehr's misleading image of the idealistic European SS volunteer. Stein notes that Gottlub Berger, who dealt with foreign volunteers, was aware of the prevalence of criminal elements and noted that "many criminals are quite outstanding soldiers if one knows how to handle them" (Berger to Gruppenfuhrer Rauter, April 9, 1942, Geheim, RFSS/T-175, 111/2635463ff.).
• In A European Anabasis - Western European Volunteers in the German Army and SS 1940 - 1945, historian Kenneth Estes authoritatively documented the motivations of the western European volunteers and came to markedly different conclusions than those of Landwehr.

MacKenzie connects Landwehr with the contemporary Waffen-SS historical revisionism, first propounded by HIAG, the Waffen-SS lobby group from the 1950–1990s. Commenting on this contemporary trend, Mackenzie writes that "as older generation of Waffen-SS scribes has died off, a new, post-war cadre of writers has done much to perpetuate the image of the force as a revolutionary European army" and includes Landwehr in this group.^[4]

Landwehr's work is often quoted by neo-Nazi websites and he is routinely defended by them. The group Nazi Lauck NSDAP/AO expressed outrage after they claimed a German court had tried Landwehr in absentia for charges arising from his books.

Works

• Estonian Vikings: Estnisches SS-Freiwilligen Bataillon Narwa and Subsequent Units, Eastern Front, 1943-1944 ISBN 1-899765-09-3
• Lions of Flanders: Flemish Volunteers of the Waffen-SS, 1941-1945 ISBN 1-899765-03-4
• Budapest: The Stalingrad of the Waffen-SS ISBN 1-57638-129-3, (Hardcover), ISBN 1-57638-128-5
• Charlemagne's Legionnaires: French Volunteers of the Waffen-SS 1943-1945 ISBN 0-918184-07-X
• Fighting for Freedom: The Ukrainian Volunteer Division of the Waffen-SS ISBN 0-918184-05-3
• Italian Volunteers of the Waffen-SS: 24 Waffen-Gebirgs-(Karstaeger) Division Der SS and 29. Waffen-Grenadier-Division Der SS (Italienische Nr. 1) ISBN 1-57638-104-8
• Lions of Flanders: Flemish Volunteers of the Waffen-SS 1941-1945 with Ray Merriam & Ramiro Bujeiro (Illustrator) ISBN 0-918184-04-5
• Narva, 1944: The Waffen-SS and the Battle for Europe ISBN 0-918184-02-9
• Nordic Warriors: SS-Panzergrenadier Regiment 24 Danmark, Eastern Front,1943-45 with Holger Thor Nielsen ISBN 1-899765-07-7
• Romanian Volunteers of the Waffen-SS, 1944-1945 with Ramiro Bujeiro (Illustrator) ISBN 0-918184-08-8
• Steadfast Hussars: The Last Cavalry Divisions of the Waffen-SS ISBN 1-57638-105-6 Hardcover, ISBN 1-57638-130-7
• The Wallonien: The History of the 5th SS-Sturmbrigade and 28th SS Volunteer Panzergrenadier Division with Ray Merriam and Jean-Louis Roba ISBN 1-57638-088-2

References

Citations

1. Werther & Hurd 2014.
2. Holocaust denial
   • Carlos C. Juerta and Dafna Shiffman-Huerta "Holocaust Denial Literature: Its Place in Teaching the Holocaust", in Rochelle L. Millen. New Perspectives on the Holocaust: A Guide for Teachers and Scholars, NYU Press, 1996, ISBN 0-8147-5540-2, p. 189.
   • "While denial of the Holocaust's very occurrence had emerged already during the early postwar period, it gained new prominence in the 1980s and early 1990s. During this period denial attempted to leave the lunatic fringe and set out for the mainstream in both the United States and Europe, as figures such as Arthur Butz, Bradley Smith, and Robert Faurisson, together with organizations like the Institute for Historical Review, attempted to lend academic credibility to Holocaust Denial." Gavriel D. Rosenfeld "The politics of uniqueness: reflections on the recent polemical turn in Holocaust and genocide scholarship" in David Cesarani, Sarah Kavanaugh. Holocaust: Critical Concepts in Historical Studies, Routledge, 2004, ISBN 0-415-27509-1, p. 376.
   • "In recent years, Holocaust denial has become a propaganda mainstay of organized racism. It is promulgated by racist groups and by organizations like the Institute for Historical Review (IHR), which publishes the scientific-looking Journal of Historical Review." Kathleen M. Blee. Inside Organized Racism: Women in the Hate Movement, University of California Press, 2003, ISBN 0-520-24055-3, p. 92.
   • "The pseudo-scholarly guise of Holocaust deniers is epitomised by the Institute for Historical Review - established in the United States in the late 1970s - and its journal, the Journal of Historical Review, which have provided the core of the more contemporary Holocaust denial movement (Stern 1995)." Lydia Morris. Rights: Sociological Perspectives, Routledge (UK), 2006, ISBN 0-415-35522-2 p. 238 note 1.
   • "The chief organization promoting Holocaust denial is the Institute for Historical Review, a California organization founded in 1978 by Willis Carto, who also founded the extreme right-wing Liberty Lobby." Suzanne Pharr. Eyes Right!: Challenging the Right Wing Backlash, South End Press, 1995, ISBN 0-89608-523-6, p. 252.
   • "Denial is an international phenomena with deniers active across the globe. This is not an incidental occurrence, but rather is the result of organized international networking. Organizations such as the California-based Institute for Historical Review (IHR) have played the pivotal role in this process by organizing regular international conferences since 1979 in America." Konrad Kwiet, Jürgen Matthäus. Contemporary Responses to the Holocaust, Praeger/Greenwood, 2004, ISBN 0-275-97466-9, p. 141.
   • "A growing number of white nationalist and white supremacy groups have adopted innocuous-sounding names such as the Euro-American Student Union, the Institute for Historical Review (a Holocaust denial group), ..." Carol M. Swain. The New White Nationalism in America: its challenge to integration, Cambridge University Press, 2002, ISBN 0-521-80886-3, p. 28.
   • "Since its inception in 1979, the Institute for Historical Review (IHR), a California-based Holocaust denial organization founded by Willis Carto of Liberty Lobby, has promoted the antisemitic conspiracy theory that Jews fabricated tales of their own genocide to manipulate the sympathies of the non-Jewish world." Antisemitism and Racism Country Reports: United States, Stephen Roth Institute, 2000. Retrieved May 17, 2007.
   • "The IHR is the Holocaust-denial group in Costa Mesa that attempts to rewrite the history of World War II in favor of the Axis powers and present nazism in a favorable light. The IHR is sponsored by Willis Carto who also leads the anti-Semitic and quasi-Nazi Liberty Lobby." Russ Bellant, Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party, South End Press, 1991, ISBN 0-89608-418-3, p. 43.
3. MacKenzie 1997, p. 139.
4. MacKenzie 1997, pp. 139–140.

Bibliography

• MacKenzie, S.P. (1997). Revolutionary Armies in the Modern Era: A Revisionist Approach. New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-09690-4.
• Werther, Steffen; Hurd, Madeleine (2014). "Go East Old Man: The Ritual Spaces of SS Veteran's Memory Work" (PDF). Culture Unbound. Journal of Current Cultural Research 6: 327–359. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-01-02.