BillHermann wrote:Sorry Dren you would do yourself best by seeing the big picture not just one part.
The "bad" side is what made them who they were. That is the camps, killings and pillaging. They were not just panzers and infantry racing across feilds. If so the would be like any other army.
They were who they were from the beginnings as Hitlers bodyguard to the Night of the Long Knives, to the formation of the first combat units, then to the full creation of the Waffen-SS. To the first poor performances to the limited successes in the early 40s To the camps , Warsaw ghetto clearing and the final Warsaw uprising through to the final Berlin battles and surrender. That was the Waffen-SS and its history. By the end of the war the SS was the Waffen-SS.
The Waffen-SS was an evolution from its parent agency. Its shared its history and had much of the same purpose. It was just larger and was better armed than its parent organiztion.
Knowing the full history and the bad elements gives you a better understanding of who they were and why they performed the way they did.
The bad side is very much one of the keys to their performace. Both with the Japanese and the SS / Waffen-SS. It's much easier to be ruthless on the battle feild when you dehumanize people and your enemy. It becomes easy to be nasty, cruel and efficient when you see your enemy as less than you.
So it's safe to say there was no "warrior code" (think Bushido-code) for the germans/waffen-ss - thats dissapointing , I was looking forward to reading some sort of western/modern warrior code - im still interested in why they fought(to the death), but this thread has made many good points and I think im looking in the wrong direction.
Next im trying to find information on is SS-officer training - that should really give the best glimpse into what made these men tick. I read that 20% of their time during their 10 month training was ideology - would be interesting to know what that entailed! Im suspecting alot of race related stuff and germanic history - I wonder what else.