Personally, I never jumped on the Waffen-SS bandwagon. I thought I'd just throw in my two-cents to try and answer your question.BillHermann wrote: ↑02 Jul 2012, 21:13
The simple question still is why are they trendy (Cool), why has so much fiction been created. Why is there whole sale defence of the organization and the constant effort to separate the organization completely from the SS when we know it's not factual. Finally I find it ironic that the Elite status is always floating around while at the same time trying to disasoosiate the organization from the SS and Nazis. When it's the association with the SS and Nazis that gave them the propaganda Elite status in Nazi Germany.
The Waffen-SS received a lot of publicity during and after the war. Elite (or in the case of the Waffen-SS, the perception of elite) military units have always received their fair share of attention. The Germans made the WSS out as the cream of the crop. In the aftermath (as the Cold War set in) there wasn't a whole lot of opposition to the Wehrmacht superiority myth, the WSS was sort of the poster child of this "misunderstood military" being as they were made out as ruthless killers during the war, and, now, in a time where revisionism was running rampant, the WSS suddenly became just a bunch of ordinary soldiers doing their duty. It was more than likely accepted because the U.S and the west in general was trying to whitewash the Germans who were now our allies. The myth of the WSS was heavily perpetuated by its officers after the war in numerous publications, justifying massacres by blaming someone else or fabricating events or blowing actual things out of proportion and making mountains out of mole hills as far as the WSS' combat exploits were concerned. People ate it up, the information made it into other publications. Before you know it the entire view of the WSS changed.
In short, a lot of the reverence is based on a lie. There really isn't anything the WSS did combat wise that separates it from the Heer.
So, to answer your question, while some find the WSS interesting out of the intent to preserve that chapter of history, the ones who seemingly worship them are simply misguided.