Some Waffen-SS apologists try to lay the blame for the atrocities in the East at the door of rogue elements, such as locally recruited militia troops in the Baltic states and the Ukraine. Although it is true that these units at first were not part of the Waffen-SS, officers of the Waffen-SS did play a key role in recruiting these units because there were not enough SS men of German origin to man all the murder squads needed by the Einsatzgruppen. Then the Waffen-SS officially sanctioned many of these units by incorporating them into the organization from 1943 onwards. In any case, Waffen-SS units were committing atrocities almost from the start of Barbarossa, well before local units had been raised. For example, only two weeks after the start of the Russian campaign, the Wiking Division massacred 600 Galician Jews in "reprisal for Soviet cruelties".

The Waffen-SS and the Holocaust

It has also been claimed that the Waffen-SS played no part in the Holocaust and the industrialized killing of Jews. The concentration camp system was set up in the 1930s by Theodor Eicke of the SS-Totenkopfverbönde that was incorporated into the Waffen-SS in 1940. Thousands of Waffen-SS men were also drafted to help the Einsatzgruppen's murderous campaign to exterminate the Jews of Eastern Europe, participating in mass killings or guarding ghetto districts where Jews from the west were concentrated before being sent to death camps. Waffen-SS units played a major role in the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943, which was little more than a exercise in mass murder.

Even the supposed Waffen-SS combat units participated in the mass killing and deportation of Jews as part of the infamous "Final Solution". Jews were routinely executed or maltreated in areas controlled by Waffen-SS units. The Totenkopf, Das Reich and Wiking Divisions were all documented joining in the mass killings of Jews in Poland and Russia. Albanian Waffen-SS troops were also involved in loading Jews onto rail cars bound for the death camps.

The Totenkopf Division

The Totenkopf Division was particularly implicated in the concentration camp system. Even though it became part of the Waffen-SS in 1940, when its official administrative link to the camps was broken, the division continued to draw personnel from the camp system and wounded personnel from the front spent time recuperating on "light duties" in the camps. The 36th Waffen-SS Division also spent many months guarding ghettos in Poland and Russia. This was the infamous Dirlewanger Brigade, which became a volunteer unit of the Waffen-SS in January 1942. Recruited from convicted criminals, by the beginning of 1943 its 700 men comprised 50 percent non-Germans. As the war dragged on the unit pressed members of the SD, court-martialled Waffen-SS soldiers, army prisoners and even political prisoners from concentration camps into its ranks. The brigade's most notorious episode was during the 1944 Warsaw uprising, when Dirlewanger's men went on an orgy of killing and looting.

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