The American Spectator

Reader Mail

(Page 3 of 10)

Tom Fry br> St. Louis, Missouri /p> p> Harleys are manufactured to meet the same EPA noise standards as every other motorcycle and left stock they are an irritant to no one except perhaps Joan Claybrook. So they don't need a "different exhaust system" but merely need to be left alone. The owners of the loud bikes chose for them to be loud and pay approximately $500 to be so. I ride a Harley and it's quiet. br> -- Scott Forrest br> Anchorage, Alaska /p> p> WAFFEN GRASS br> Re: Jacob Laksin's Shattered Grass : /p>

Anybody who has studied or read up on the Wehrmacht, the Waffen SS, and German social history during the Nazi era would question the veracity of either of Günter Grass's statements. Even as late as 1945 the Waffen SS was a home for Nazis fanatics. Their record was one of both unparalleled brutality as well as military achievement. It wasn't unusual for one SS mechanized division to hold the line against 3 or 4 Soviet armored brigades. Hitler and the Wehrmacht relied on the SS to perform under for harsh and almost impossible conditions. This was well known to all Germans, especially the youth. One didn't volunteer for the SS on a lark. Every recruit knew how desperate their situation was; joining the SS was a sure ticket to an early death or worse: a Siberian POW camp. Only the true believers volunteered. The training and indoctrination of the SS was brutal even by German standards. Only a certain human type could survive their training, and combat on the Eastern Front. One does not go into the SS, survive their brutality, and then come out a pacificistic communist.

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