It's pretty hard to argue the verdict the world and history has placed the the SS, whether they be Waffen or Algemeine. Guilt by association may not be fair, and combat is a terrible thing (especially on the Russian Front), but the crimes of the SS were so pervasive, common and on such a scale no matter where they went, that it would be hard to say, "it was just the criminal element who did bad things".

It isn't a winning political strategy to be a Nazi or SS apologist <shrug>.

Multiple Waffen-SS units were associated with war crimes. I can think of at least one that ran a concentration camp. There were no clean SS units. Those were the true believers, though there were also conscripts amongst them, for whom on an individual case it may get more complicated.

nortex97 said:

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German politics are fascinating. I love that they have a 'pirate' party, and that their legacy parties are panicked about the shifting winds.

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They also have a comedy party (Die PARTEI), which actually has a seat in the European Parliament. Their aims include providing all citizens with a unicorn, rebuilding the Berlin Wall, waging a war of aggression against Liechtenstein, and amending the German constitution to reflect that the CEOs of television networks do not have human dignity.

Their youth wing is called the "Hintner Youth", and its official greeting is "Hi, Hintner!"

In regards to OPs question, that is a very sensitive and dynamic topic.

For the past 30 years I have studied and collected artifacts from WWII. Of all the memoirs I have read, there are multiple accounts of SS units doing despicable things.

As an example and is somewhat relevant with the 80th anniversary of DDay, look up the Battle of Graignes. Here is a summary of what the 17th SS did a few days after the Normandy invasion:


"At the end of the 11 June battle, the 17th SS entered the church and found Captain Abraham 'Bud' Sophian's aid station. Sophian (battalion surgeon and paratrooper) had surrendered the building to them by waving a white flag at the door. SS troops forced the Captain, his two medics and 14 wounded American paratroopers to line up against a wall. The captured Americans were by definition POWs and therefore should have been protected under the terms of the Geneva Convention of 1929, which Germany was a signatory to. In fact, the wounded Americans were divided into two groups and murdered. One group of five wounded was taken to the edge of a nearby pond, where SS troops bayoneted them and threw their bodies into the water. The other group of nine were forced to march at gunpoint, approximately four kilometers to the South, to a field near the village of Le Mesnil-Angot. After arriving at the field, the group were forced to dig a pit which would be their own graves and then kneel down. After the hole had been dug, the SS shot each of the wounded men through the head and pushed their bodies into the pit.[1] At some point that same day, Captain Sophian and his two medics were also shot by the SS. Sophian's body was not recovered until the spring of 1945. Collectively, these 17 murders perpetrated by Waffen SS troops against defenseless prisoners of war constituted war crimes.

Other Germans began systematically rounding-up French civilians suspected of assisting US troops. A total of forty-four villagers were rounded up, interrogated by the Germans as suspected collaborators with the Americans and were then shot dead. Other SS men dragged Father Leblastier and Father Lebarbanchon from the rectory into the courtyard outside, and shot them both dead. The Germans then discovered Madeleine Pezeril and eighty-year-old Eugnie Dujardin and shot them both dead in their beds. Thereafter, the SS men ransacked the village for any valuables they could steal.

On Tuesday 13 June, the Germans burned the village. They poured gasoline over the bodies of Father Leblastier, Father Lebarbanchon, Eugnie Dujardin and Madeleine Pezeril and then set them on fire. The ensuing blaze was allowed to burn out of control, destroying 66 homes, the boys' school, Mme Boursier's caf, and the 12th-century church. Another 159 homes and other buildings were damaged either as a result of that fire or the fighting. Before the 11 June battle and the German retaliation that followed, the village of Graignes had consisted of just over two hundred dispersed homes and other structures. Afterward, only two houses survived unscathed.

By then most of the Graignes defenders had already left. Small groups arrived in Carentan late at night on the 12 June. Other troopers, some alone and some in pairs, continued to filter in on the 13 and 14 June. Twenty-one men hidden by the Rigault family and taken to Carentan by Joseph Folliot on the night of 15 to 16 June were the last from Graignes to make it back to U.S. lines. Out of the original 182 troopers involved in the defense of Graignes, 150 made it out alive.

Had the mis-dropped paratroopers of the 507th not stopped dead the advance of the 17th SS Panzer Grenadiers this division could have made it to Carentan before the 101st Airborne Division."

It's important to think objectively and not make hastily generalizations, but to make any concession for the SS and its members is foolish. I'm sure there may have been a few good individuals within its ranks, but collectively they were some ruthless soldiers, especially in the East.


There is a monument in Graignes dedicated to the fallen.


HTH, OP.