The Waffen SS

     The Nazi Waffen SS has been written about and shown in movies and television shows more than enough times that most Americans are familiar as to who or what they were.  Just in case anyone may need a refresher on the subject, the Waffen SS, which literally means in German "armed" SS or armed Schutzstaffel, began life as the bodyguards for the Nazi party under the organization and leadership of the notorious Heinrich Himmler.  However, it soon grew to a much bigger organization and by the time World War Two was launched by Hitler, the Waffen SS had regular Panzer and infantry divisions fighting alongside the regular army, the German Wermacht.  However, they were never a part of the army and were answerable only to Himmler, not the regular army generals!
     The SS had a very nasty reputation even among Germans.  The regular army, Wermacht, did not like them and considered them in the same category as the hated Gestapo! The SS wore a distinctive black uniform rather than the standard gray or dark green worn by the Wermacht.  They also had the distinctive stylized letters SS as collar insignia which was commonly referred to as the "lightning bolts."  The German component of the SS also wore the "death's head" or the skull and cross bones insignia.  All in all, not a nice bunch and not to be confused with the regular army and professional soldiers of the Wermacht!  The infamous concentration or death camps where those horrible extermination of Jews took place were all manned and guarded by the SS! In short, those terrible war criminals such as Joseph Mengele were all members of the SS.  Mengele may have been a medical doctor, but he was an SS doctor!
     As I said in the beginning, the American public has seen and read enough about the SS to be familiar, to at least know that they were not nice people!  However, despite all the movies and TV shows and books, what most people are unaware of is that the vast majority of SS troops were not German!  Most certainly Joseph Mengele, Adolph Eichman, and other notorious SS figures were German, however, there were many others that were captured and tried as war criminals that were not German.  Despite all the talk about "super race" and superiority of German people, etc., the Nazis were not above recruiting and using none Germans, even those that they considered "sub-human" such as the Russians, and non-Caucasian ethnic minorities, people of "color," to fill the ranks of the SS!  Roughly 70% of the SS was made up of none Germans!  The Nazis tried to convince everyone that it was a smaller number, more like 60%, but still, even in trying to doctor the numbers, the majority came out as none German.
     At the height of World War Two, the SS was represented by more than 24 different countries and nationalities.  At its peak, Germany had 38 SS Divisions of which more than 25 Divisions were entirely composed of none Germans, except for the very top leadership!  That's an awful lot of foreigners in Germany's supposed elite forces! An average army division consists of about 10,000 men, some a bit more, some a bit less.  So, using that figure as average, there were at least 250,000 or quarter of a million SS soldiers that were none German! That's an awful lot of soldiers, about like what the Pentagon is planning on having in our Army in the near future, and larger than our entire Marine Corps!
     Hungary, for example (incidentally, Hungary was Germany's ally) provided four SS Divisions and one SS Battalion, the 61st, 63rd, 32nd, and 25th SS Divisions and the 25th SS Battalion.  The 25th Waffen SS Grenadier Division, known as the Hunyadi 1st Hungarian, was considered to be elite even among SS!  All in all, there were about 40,000 Hungarians serving in the Waffen SS.  Other countries that had significant representation in the SS and had independent SS Divisions were:  Estonia,  Latvia, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium, Ukraine, Rumania, Albania, Spain, France, and even countries such as Azerbaijan, to name a few!  Balkan regions was well represented, just about all Balkan countries provided troops for the SS.  Azerbaijan had the largest contingent, some 70,000 served in the SS!  Believe it or not, there were members from the UK, Ireland, India even!  These were not large numbers, UK had something like sixty in all, not enough to form an independent unit, but nevertheless, there were volunteers from POW camps that represented UK.  Even U.S. had four volunteers from POW camps.
     So, the idea that all of those nasty SS types were blond and blue eyed Germans is but a myth.  Turns out that vast majority of SS were none German, some were not even European, with the largest single group of 70,000 being Muslim, from Azerbaijan!  Quite a different story from what Hollywood script writers like to present!
     After the war the allies made a concerted effort to not divulge the facts about the make up of SS.  Frankly, it would have caused problems in many European countries if the general population found out that so many of their countrymen fought for the bad guys!  As for UK, despite the very small numbers, still, it would have been an embarrassment had the numbers been released.  The same applies to Soviet Union.  We were "allies" with Soviet Union and did not want to embarrass them and Stalin definitely did not want his people to know that there were so many "traitors."  An entire Cossack Division defected to the Nazis and became an SS Cossack Division!  They were all very strong anti communists and agreed to fight only on the eastern front against the communists, not against the Western Allies.  When the war ended they surrendered to the U.S. troops.  We promised not to turn them over to the Soviets, but after some pressure from Stalin, we shipped them off to Soviet Union where they were promptly all executed.  Ukraine also had a very large contingent that volunteered for the SS to fight the Soviets.  Perhaps Putin is trying to pay back after all these years!
     So, history does not always give an accurate account of what took place.  As I mentioned in some of my earlier blogs, the victors always shape history in their favor.  It would not have been good PR to divulge the fact that so many of the "allies" actually volunteered and fought on the German side, not only as just soldiers, but as soldiers of the dreaded, and hated SS!