Jewish campaigners call for end to controversial German pulp magazine that 'glorifies Nazi SS butchers'



Der Landser praises soldiers of the Waffen S.S who were seen as one of the main perpetrators of the Holocaust

Campaigners claim the magazine glorifies the soldiers when really they were 'murderous thugs'



Jewish campaigners are demanding a German pulp magazine be shut down for glorifying Nazi soldiers in World War II.

Der Landser - translated literally as The Squaddie - is a small magazine published by the giant Bauer media group whose pages are filled with stories of derring-do, glory and chivalry.

But those it praises are foot soldiers in either the Wehrmacht - the Germany army during the Second World War which facilitated in numerous massacres of civilians - or the soldiers of the Waffen S.S.

Controversial: The magazine praises foot soldiers in either the Wehrmacht, the Waffen, or fighting, S.S.

The Waffen S.S were seen as one of the main perpetrators of the Holocaust.



In a recent issue, a group of Waffen S.S. in Greece are swigging wine after a battle and declaring; 'These Greeks are a good natured lot - we conquer them and they are still friendly!'

In previous issues soldiers of S.S. divisions like Das Reich have been portrayed as fighting machines who fought only for honour and their Fatherland.

But no mention is ever made of the atrocities they took part in. Das Reich, for example, laid waste to the village of Oradour sur Glane in 1944, killing over 650 people.

Glorified: The Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Los Angeles is angry that Hitler's Nazi soldiers have been portrayed in a positive light

And the Totenkopf, or Death's Head division, murdered 99 British soldiers in Le Paradis in France in 1940.

In previous issues of Der Landser, which has been published continuously since 1957, both divisions were glorified with no mention of participation in atrocities.

The Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Los Angeles, named after the death camp survivor who devoted his life after the war to bringing Nazi killers to justice, said it is time to call time on Der Landser.

It called on the German government to shut the publication down.

Rabbi Marvin Hier of the centre said: 'It portrays these men as honourable soldiers like British, American, Canadian or French soldiers. But the reality is they were murderous thugs.'

In a time of rising neo-Nazism in Germany, Rabbi Hier said publications like Landser which glorify the soldiers of the Third Reich, have no place.

The copies are available through Amazon and downloadable through Apple and i-Tunes.

Distributors for the magazine in Germany said they have no plans to halt production but the country's interior ministry, mindful of the harm done to Germany's image abroad through such works, has promised a full probe which will seek ways to possibly shut it down.

The respected German magazine Der Spiegel once described it as 'a specialist journal for whitewashing the Wehrmacht.'