Waffen-SS: Atrocities

Background

The soldiers of the Waffen-SS committed many atrocities during World War II, both on and off the battlefield. They were above all the racial warriors of the Third Reich, and they were contemptuous of all those that Nazi ideology classed as inferior races. As they held their own lives in low esteem, it was unlikely that they would accord the lives of their enemies greater value.

SS ideology

The military prowess of the élite panzer divisions of the Waffen-SS is rarely called into question. They were undoubtedly formidable fighting forces that acquitted themselves with great distinction on the battlefields of World War II. However, the participation of Waffen-SS men in massacres across Europe during the war has cast a shadow over their military victories. Apologists for the Waffen-SS have tried to portray it as a separate and distinct military branch of the large SS organization, which had no role in the genocidal campaigns of murder against Jews and other racial groups considered sub-humans by Hitler and his Nazi race-based ideology.

To try to draw a distinction between the "ordinary" soldiers of the Waffen-SS and SS "war criminals" is a mere semantic exercise. The Waffen-SS was an integral element of the SS, and even if its members were not specifically part of the Nazi murder machine that organized and conducted massacres and deportations, they certainly knew it was happening and helped ensure it did happen. A large number of Waffen-SS men and units, however, did undoubtedly participate in a series of massacres of civilians and prisoners of war across Europe between 1939 and 1945.

Collective guilt

The collective guilt of the Waffen-SS stems first from the fact that the early leaders of the organization were the ringleaders and trigger-pullers during the infamous "Night of the Long Knives" in June 1934. "Old Guard" SS officers, such as "Sepp" Dietrich and Theodor Eicke, were the men who led the firing squads that killed off Hitler's enemies in the SA. Eicke even fired the first shots into the defenceless SA leader, Ernst Röhm. This was the first act of extra-judicial killing by Hitler, and effectively established his dictatorship.

It was the war in Russia that next showed up the Waffen-SS in its true light. It was the vanguard of Hitler's war of racial conquest. No mercy was shown to racial and political opponents of the Nazis by the Waffen-SS. According to Hitler and National Socialist ideology, the lives of Jews and Russians were totally worthless, except as forced labour to be exploited for the benefit of the German war effort. Russian civilians were treated with disdain, and their property, crops and houses were routinely looted or confiscated by Waffen-SS troops, even if this resulted in death or starvation in the country's harsh climate. Any Soviet commissar or political officer captured by the Waffen-SS was executed in accordance with Hitler's infamous "commissar order". The Geneva Convention was not applied to Soviet soldiers captured by the Waffen-SS, and they were routinely starved and denied medical treatment. Punishment killings of hundreds of Soviet prisoners were common occurrences in the Waffen-SS, with the Leibstandarte once killing 4000 prisoners in a four-day period. Revenge killings of thousands of civilians in response to partisan attacks were also a Waffen-SS speciality.

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