Waffen-SS vs. Einaatzgruppen

What was the Waffen-SS attitude towards the Einsatzgruppen etc? Was there animosity? I am pretty sure there was a general feeling of anti-semitism, or, rather, anti-Judaism in the Waffen-SS (weren't there Muslim members? as well as soldiers from all over towards the end), but what was the attitude of the regulard Waffen-SS towards the monsters running the camps?

Also, has anyone read "The Hour of the Avenger"? Is it worth finding and reading?

 

Why post this in the western europe section?

and

W-SS was a political indoctrinated force. You cannot polish a turd.

 

Very diplomaticly put!

 

Please understand, I hate nazis. Read my other posts to see what I am talking about. I am mainly interested in the hardware of the war, and the technical developments to come from them. I know someone who maintains, staunchly, that there was a clear difference between the w-ss and the einzatzgruppen/totenkopfs or however you spell them. I maintain there isn't, that they were all nazis, and all should have been pushed up against the wall, chained there, and let the camp prisoners have a go with picks and shovels and screwdrivers and what-have-you. I don't hold with this person's "but the w-ss was no longer predominantly German" at the end of the war. They still agreed with the principles of the nazis enough to join this ALL VOLUNTEER army. What I want to know is about an INTERNAL discord between one group of monsters and another. It doesn't make one group good -- in ANY way imho. I just want to know if the w-ss hated the camp-ss and vice versa.

As for posting it in the western Europe section originally, that was because I came across this webpage: Col. Howard A. Buechner's account of German Soldiers executed at Dachau by I Company, 157th Regiment, 45th Thunderbird Div. which most certainly takes place on the WESTERN front as it happens to be about American soldiers @ Dachau, one of the few camps we actually liberated (as opposed to the Russians on the Eastern Front). It wasn't a mistake, just a response to that website. Also, because the book I am talking about, Hour of the Avenger, is a book about Dachau and the events when the US Army liberated the camp and town. FYI Dachau is about 20 km NW of Munich.

Thanks
Hummel

 

Not all foreign volunteers in the Waffen SS believed in nazi ideology. The Estonian SS volunteers for example, joined the ranks of the Waffen SS in order to fight the Soviets and defend their homeland from them. The Soviets had conquered Estonia prior to Operation Barbarossa and tortured and murdered many of the Estonian people. When German forces "liberated" Estonia from the Soviets, the Estonians treated the Germans as "liberators" and decided that they would rather help the Germans than the Soviets. The Germans then created the Narwa battalion, and the 20th Waffen Estonian Divison. Those units and others fought bravely on the Eastern Front against their enemy, the Soviets. When Estonia was falling in 1944 to the Soviets, the Estonians in the Waffen SS were asked if they would like to stay behind and many did so, going to to fight with the forest brothers during and long after the war. The Estonian volunteers, along with many other foreign volunteers did not commit war crimes like some other units had, they simply would rather fight the Soviets than the Germans.
I know thats alot, but all I am trying to say is that being in the Waffen SS did not mean that you were a true National Socialist and believed in all the Nazi Ideals, later in the war even regular German people were being Conscripted into the Waffen SS due to the need for troop replacements.

 

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Iverson, first welcome to the forum. Within any organization there are the true believers, the social climbers and the odds and ends. The Waffen SS was a political army rather than a national one, as for the foreign volunteer's, they did have a mixed bag of reasons for fighting as part of Hitler's reich. Still when you choose to take up the uniform, you accept what ever it stands for.

 

I do remember reading that Estonian SS volunteers did not have a problem handing over Jews to their "Liboraters".

IMO, siding with the devil in order to punish a bully has its draw backs...

 

Welcome Iverson and thanks for the only considered post in this discussion , are you Estonian ?

 

A choice between Stalin or Hitler what a decision to have to make !!!

 

The Baltic countries were putsched three times at least, in 1940 by the Soviets, 1941 by the Germans, and 1944 by the Soviets again. What a fate...

 

The Waffen SS did begin as a political force. Himmler wanted to expand it but could not get enough manpower because of the recruitment quotas applied by the Wehrmacht, especially from the Heere. This was a way to limit the size for fear of having it grow too big like the SA. Himmler found a way around that by recruiting foreign volunteers. No foreigner could serve in the Wehrmacht. This also allowed those who were not German but who wanted to fight the communist the ability to do so. These foreign volunteers were more facists than nazis. So there were instances where those foreign volunteers did not buy into the Jewish question. Yes they ended up being labeled as nazis and everything that came with it but majority of them just wanted to fight communism.

 

I don't think there was much contact between both:there were in june 1941 a few thousands of the Einsatzgruppen and some 100000 of the WSS in the east .Probably some units of the WSS never did meet members of the Einsatzgruppen :ex:Kampfgruppe Nord who was fighting in Finland with Dietl .

 

I can accept on a technical level that you cannot call all SS Foreign Volunteers Nazi's per se. Yet many of these formation's substituted a differing ethnic group to be oppressed and exterminated because they had their own race hatred. They also employed reprisal killings on any civilian near a partisan attack in Russia and the Balkans. There was a reason the SS was declared an illegal or criminal organisation. Were there honorable men who joined, probably, did they continue to act honorably, possibly, but on the whole the nature of the organisation was corrosive and regularly called upon it members to do things that cannot be defended as reasonable acts of war. The Waffen SS had more in common with the NKVD than the USMC.

 

The Norwegian volunteers in the 'Nordland' regiment was taught nazi ideology during their training. The soldiers in the Norwegian Legion were technically part of the SS, but were trained in Norway and was a 'Norwegain' unit.

During the last few years the staunch defenders of the norwegian volunteers had to give up the ghost. Civillian reprisals in the balkans, and executions in the east was finally proved.

Singing (like Shaggy) it wasn't me doesn't cut it anymore.

As for the honorable bit I think the german film Stalingrad captivate it well. The real bastards are the ones who proclaim not to be nazis.(hard to recount the event I don't have the film on DVD, only VHS but my VHS machine is long gone...)

 

If you were in the Waffen SS then you did the unspeakable.There is no excuses for these people.They were right there butchering innocent civilians be they jewish or non-jewish.you wore their uniform and you did
unspeakable disgusting things.
killing babies by bashing in their skulls,murdering jews in ditches layer upon layer of corpses,killing off whole villages who may have sheltered partisans.
i have no love for the waffen ss.they were and are a criminal organization not an army like the wehrmacht.
and who knows how many of the wehrmacht commited criminal acts against innocent civilians ?
all the books and research i have done says the waffen ss were a bunch of hard core nazis who had no problem doing the bad things.

 

This is like asking what the difference is between thuggish street criminals and professional gangsters or, the attitude of criminals towards say one who just murders their victims and those who choose to rape and then murder them.

 

What an excellent considered reply !!!