These highly skilled soldiers were men who led from the front. As a result of their actions, they took great pride in accumulating injuries and medals at an alarming rate. They were expert practitioners of armoured warfare. Often their presence on the battlefield was enough to turn around a calamitous situation and restore the troops' morale.

Unlike British and American officers - who did not wear their medals on the battlefield - Waffen-SS officers made a great show of their decorations. This was particularly the case if they had won the famous Knight's Cross for bravery in battle (worn at the neck). Some of them even wore them with their camouflage combat smocks. They were totems of their own bravery in past battles, and their appearance also served to make their followers aspire to win these medals.

A fight to the finish

Unlike some of the older Waffen-SS hands, they had far from given up the fight, and now that the opportunity to achieve fame and notoriety had arisen, they were hungry for glory. Their wishes would soon come true.

For the rank-and-file men serving in the Waffen-SS, their enthusiastic willingness to fight was due to a combination of various factors. Since Hitler's accession to power, the population of Germany had been subject to daily bombardments of Nazi

ropaganda. The school and university systems were fertile recruiting ground for the Nazi Party, and the indoctrination of those youngsters was a major objective for Hitler's henchmen. The outbreak of war accelerated this process of indoctrination. Once the Allied bombers started raiding major German cities in massive numbers from late 1942 onwards, the German people could see for themselves what little pity they would evoke from such a ruthless enemy. The men who had served on the Eastern Front also realized that Germany would be shown no mercy if the Soviets ever broke through and were allowed to push into the Reich. It was a fight to the finish

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