Racial war

None of these actions in themselves were unique to the Waffen-SS. German police and army units, as well as locally recruited auxiliary forces, have also been implicated in atrocities on the Eastern Front. The SS, however, threw themselves into the war against the Soviet Union with a zeal that was unsurpassed in other branches of the German occupation forces. If there was a tough job that needed doing, the Waffen-SS would be there. The Waffen-SS clearly believed in its cause and did not flinch from carrying out its orders no matter how murderous. The point was that the war in Russia was above all a racial struggle between the Aryan Germans and the "inferior" Slav races. The Waffen-SS was the racial vanguard of the National Socialist movement, staffed with pure Aryan recruits. Prior to Operation Barbarossa, Waffen-SS commanders went to great lengths to indoctrinate their men with Hitler's racial ideology to prepare them for the coming struggle. It was not surprising that when they were unleashed into battle, the Waffen-SS carried out its orders to kill and murder Hitler's "race enemies" with ruthless efficiency.

After the war, several former Waffen-SS officers tried to distance themselves from the SS mass-murder campaigns in occupied Russia, saying that they were only "simple soldiers who just fought at the front". This defence does not really hold water, given that few Wehrmacht or Waffen-SS units did not participate in some sort of rear-area security duty (which inevitably involved the routine mistreatment of civilians) at some time during their service in the East. Even if they did not participate in the murders of civilians themselves, cross-posting of Waffen-SS men between the various divisions and units of the SS organization meant its members were all aware of the true nature of German rule in occupied Russia.

Atrocities in Russia

No Waffen-SS officer would ever contemplate refusing to serve in Russia out of moral scruples, and only one SS officer is documented as ever refusing to participate in a mass killing in the East. Several senior Waffen-SS officers and ordinary soldiers did suffer mental breakdowns as a result of their service in murder squads in the East, but that was after they had participated in the slaughter. It is hard to feel sorry for these butchers. Towards the end of the war, as defeat began to loom ominously over them, an increasing number of Waffen-SS officers and men tried to get out of serving in the East for fear of being captured by the Soviets. In the light of the brutal behaviour of the SS in Russia, captured Waffen-SS soldiers could expect little mercy. The attempts by senior Waffen-SS officers to escape Berlin in May 1945, after they had forced the city's citizens to endure its destruction at the barrel of the gun, were particularly distasteful.

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