Talk:British Free Corps
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I have just added a substantial amount of text which I have taken verbattim from http://members.aol.com/sturmpnzr/BFChistory.html. The website owner (Ed Dyer) has given me permisson to use this text in Wikipedia for which I am very grateful.
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[edit] Australian and New Zealanders
"In World War II, the British Free Corps (BFC) or Britisches Freikorps was a small unit of the Waffen-SS consisting of British and Commonwealth citizens (chiefly from Australia and New Zealand) who had been recruited by the Nazis."
I am removing the explict link to Australia and New Zealand as the passage above seems to imply either the BFC was chiefly from Australia and New Zealand, or that the Commonwealth members were chiefly from Australia and New Zealand. The Feldgrau reference shows Commonwealth citizens as 3 Canadians, 3 South Africans, 3 Australians and 1 New Zealander; the ANZers were in fact a minority. Commonwealth should suffice.
Kudz75 07:21, 17 May 2004 (UTC)
[edit] Freeman
According tot the body of the text Freeman was the only memeber nbot charged, yet at the foot, he recieved 10 years. Which is right? 213.48.182.7 15:42, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)
[edit] Clean up
I'm removing this article from cleanup, having made an extensive attempt to straighten out the logic of the material, adding a few new bits of information -- & yes, I've removed some things also (e.g., people mentioned who only appear once in the narrative). There is still much to be done, & these are some of the issues I can think need doing:
- I have not read Adrian Weale's book mentioned in the Bibliography; from what I've read, this is the authoritative account of the unit, & someone should review this article against what is written there. (I don't have access to this book, otherwise I would do it.)
- Exactly how relevant is the role of BQ Sgt. Brown to this article? He is an interesting character, but outside of Dyer's article no other account thinks he's worth mentioning.
- I've seen 2 different accounts of what Pleasants & Leister were doing when the German detained them: E. Dyer's account states they were just a couple of kids detained for trivial reasons; other accounts make it clear they were former British Union of Fascists members & petty thieves.
- There are 2 views of John Wilson: Dwyer says he was coerced into joining, & a miserable sergeant; an account in the online newspaper "Scotland on Sunday" describes him as a martinet, & suggests he might have willingly joined.
- Again, the sources are divided over Hugh Cowie: the Scots newspaper is far more sympathetic towards Cowie, & denies Dwyer's charge that he was part of the act of bigotry against the Maori volunteers.
- Dwyer's account on how exactly the BFC was pulled from the line is contradictory; I simplified his account because of that.
- As the last poster notes above, Dwyer's account is contradictory whether Freeman was punished or not. If one source I used correctly quotes Weale, Freeman was exonerated of all charges.
In a way, this confusion is to be expected. Weale has been quoted to say that the facts around this unit are obscured by numerous myths & inaccuracies. Hopefully I have brought this article closer to the facts of what actually happened. -- llywrch 21:18, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)
- I stumbled across this article by accident and found it both fascinating and hilarious. This should be made into a movie! Well done to the authors of this piece. Stephenjh 09:57, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
[edit] {unref}
I've placed {{unref}} on here because the source is primarily just one book and there are no inline citations. violet/riga (t) 20:46, 2 August 2007 (UTC)