Talk:Julius Ringel

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Can anyone add anything about the murder of civilians by Ringel's troops in Crete?

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Regarding some other problems:

The part on his past in the Austrian Army is not correct and not complete:

1. At the outbreak of World War I his regiment was "Landwehr-Infanterie-Regiment Nr. 27". First in 1917 it was renamed "Gebirgs-Schützen-Regiment Nr. 2".

2. In the Federal Army of the first Republik of Austria there existed no "Gebirgsjäger-Brigade". "Gebirgsjäger" is a German miliary term, not an Austrian. The correct Austrian term ist "Alpenjäger", but this term was only in use for regiments and battalions. The name of Ringel's brigade was simply "5th Brigade".

3.Ringel was not only a "supporter" of the Nazi Party. During the time of his military service he joined - treacherously and against his military oath - the secret illegal "Nationalsozialistischer Soldatenring" and moreover in 1937 he became a "Führer" of the "Gaugruppe Süd" (Regional Group South) of this Nazi society. The widow of his division commander told that at the eve of the German occupation of Austria on March 11th he tried to arrest her husband, Ringel's military superior, with drawn gun. Otherwise there is no known negative evidence in this connection.

Ringel was doubtless a good professional officer and many of his comrades, even some who were dismissed or arrested in 1938 testified in his favour. The proceedings against him on high treason were dismissed 1955 on account of lack of evidence. But the facts specified in para. 3 should not be completely held back in a Wikipedia biography.

An interesting and rather unbiased source in this matter is: Marcel Stein, Österreichs Generale im Deutschen Heer 1938 - 1945, Bissendorf 2002, page 297 - 303 --Carlos Mayor (talk) 18:32, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

It looks that most info about killed - murdered - Cretan civilians (e.g. shot immediately after being apprehended fighting or in possession of firearms) come from Ringel's own book.

Such behaviour seem to used to be often the practice, also with resistance fighters in other countries (and times). E.g. Yugoslav partisans were kind of uniformed, but probably not answerable to a then accepted government (Yugoslav royal army commanders surrendered in 1941, sovereign was in Britain and not captured or surrendered, but partisans were not affiliated to him, so legal about shooting armed resistance fighters might be a bit legally shady (I don't know which law was applicable in which case etc.). But killing civilians (their own and occupied, in concentration camps and as hostages) was (IMO also legally) terrorism.

There was/is a problem with legality where legal government is corrupted and/or assumes power over people that they shouldn't have, e.g. aborigines of several countries and times (Australia, Americas, European and US slave trade a century or two ago which were at the time made legal, jungle tribes in South America and Africa and SE Asia pretty recently). And recently Afganistan and US war on drugs, and there were rumors about parts of US military trafficking drugs to finance themselves during Vietnam war.

And Opium Wars in China a century or two ago, where Westerners used their firearmed armies and navies to force China to allow they sell opium there (in thousand tons per year lots, as it seems). A strange look at western civilized war on drugs, I think we definitely should stay aware off when discussing such things.

And when and where there is - as often is - no reliable sources (hopefully, yet, but I'll not hold my breath til they emerge), WP policies mostly keeps info in conspiracy theory category. Or, I'm glad to see, an often more influential one, speculative fiction (e.g. Ursula K. Le Guin and others, about who's articles could be, and many have been written here;-).

So if I wrote about what could happen, I could probably legally cite a book of some of such authors (as answer to challenge Who said that), but such doesn't support or disprove info about what really happened, as here.

Here, discussion page on German WP Ringel article also states that Ringels's own book is a primary source and so not a reliable peer reviewed published secondary source as required by WP policy. Theoretically, he could be bragging in his book, so it's really by definition not a reliable source. At a glance I got up to now I don't feel he bragged, but I neither read the book through, or saw clear pages clearly citing violations, so I am undecided (I know that I - still - don't know). Marjan Tomki SI (talk) 16:52, 7 November 2025 (UTC)