The Dark Reason Captured SS Soldiers Were Shot D

They were some of the most feared soldiers to take to the battlefields of the 20th century and they were driven by their devotion to their Führer. The SS or Schutzstaffel led by Heinrich Himmler originally began life as a personal bodyguard unit tasked with keeping a close eye on Hitler. However, it transitioned to become the elite guard of the Reich and also the force that carried out many security-related jobs such as overseeing the concentration camps.

But they had a military wing known as the Waffen SS. But if the SS soldiers fell into captivity on the battlefield and were captured even by the Allies, they faced immediate execution and many were shot on the spot. The Allies feared the SS and they were known for being the most devoted who would fight to their deaths.

But why were SS soldiers more likely to be shot than ordinary Wehrmacht or German Army ones? The Waffen SS were heavily involved in many war crimes throughout World War II. From overseeing mass shootings and atrocities to carrying out anti-partisan warfare against resisters, they became known for their brutal actions.

Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, wanted to involve the group in the war effort and he wanted his force to be seen with as much prestige as soldiers who fought in the ordinary army. And in late 1939, Hitler with one eye on a new global conflict gave Himmler permission to establish an armed SS force known as the Waffen SS.

He was allowed to begin with four divisions, but soon this became more than 20. Half a million SS men fought in these groups and they had their own command structure. Instead of just military training or weapons training, SS soldiers were given political indoctrination and further brainwashing that focused on ensuring they would give their lives for the Reich.

The Allied soldiers who came up against them found they were some of the best equipment, MG 42s, King Tiger tanks and much more and they had been given stronger gear than the army in some cases. But after D-Day, there was a belief inside the Allied ranks by some soldiers that SS soldiers needed to be dealt with instantly after their capture or surrender and that they should be shot and executed on the spot.

Of course, this would have been a war crime if someone who surrendered was shot. But why did this reputation develop? Firstly, the Allies had heard about the SS’s reputation for atrocities and war crimes. The group had become synonymous with the concentration camps and mass murder. Organizations like the Totenkopf or Das Reich divisions were linked to massacres in which hundreds were shot and during the Battle of the Bulge, they executed many American soldiers and prisoners in the Malmedy massacre. The Allies knew that the SS executed prisoners including British, Canadian and American commandos. So when they encountered SS men in their captivity, they believed that if the tables were turned, they would not be given any mercy. One American veteran said that if they wore the SS runes, we didn’t take them prisoner. We’d seen what they did to our boys. Also, the SS soldiers were known for fighting to the last bullet and they

rarely surrendered willingly. Many fought on when surrounded, wounded or even hopelessly outnumbered. This made them a dangerous and unpredictable enemy and some SS even used a false surrender dropping their weapons to then fire at the Allies again which led Allied soldiers to treat surrender with suspicion.

One British soldier of the 11th Armoured Division said that, “We learned quickly if he was SS, you didn’t trust him to surrender properly.” They had a reputation for being deceptive and defiant which led many to be shot before being captured. But by the final weeks of the war, there were many concentration camps which were discovered and found by the Allies and the Soviets and they had found the scenes of massacres.

At Dachau, for example, they discovered train boxcars just outside the main camp with thousands of dead bodies inside. These are victims of the crimes of the SS within the camp. Upon entering Dachau for liberation, the Americans shot many SS guards after seeing this. They were caught up rightly in the emotion and sought instant revenge.

Some Einsatzgruppen members, members of the death squads that rampaged in the east after capture, were publicly executed in front of the Soviet population. Now, the uniforms for the SS made them actually very easy to identify and also spot. The SS often wore their distinctive collar insignia with SS runes and they also had blood group tattoos usually under their left arm.

A small mark with a letter. Some at the end of the war to avoid capture or punishment for being a member of the SS actually burned these off and tried to remove the tattoo. The SS were so easily recognizable and it was difficult for SS men to blend in with regular Wehrmacht troops. So once identified, they risked immediate execution and could be even spotted in the most ferocious battle situations.

On the Eastern Front, the conflict between specifically the SS and the Red Army was one of annihilation. The SS were given roles to slaughter and execute those who were said to be racially inferior or undesirable in the eyes of the Nazis. SS divisions took part in anti-partisan operations. This involved massacre of civilians.

The Soviets saw them as criminals and not soldiers and captured SS men were shot frequently on the spot by members of the Red Army in retaliation for the Commissar Order. They saw the SS as those men who had burned down villages and organized massacre and there would be no mercy. Now, official orders from the Allied High Command did demand that all prisoners of war be treated in accordance to the Geneva Convention, but on the field of conflict, whether this was taken seriously or not was rather debatable. Following the Malmedy massacre in which 84 American prisoners of war were murdered by SS troops, the Americans began to take less SS prisoners. This was also reported within the Canadian and British ranks in Normandy and also in the Netherlands. Reports of shot SS soldiers rarely made it back to High Command and commanders often turned a blind eye too understanding the emotions of their men

and also the reputation of the SS. The group had been indoctrinated by the Nazis to believe that if they did fall into enemy hands, that they would be tortured and executed. Many were told that the Allies, especially the Soviets, would execute them hence why they went down with a fight.

But in the final weeks of the Second World War, order broke down across Germany and the front lines. Allied and Soviet troops saw the end in sight but were exhausted by the fighting. Civilians were lynching SS men in the streets, too and field executions began and field executions became common even by Wehrmacht soldiers who blamed the SS for the Nazis and for prolonging the war.

But to sum up, the SS soldiers were more likely to be shot during their capture because their units had committed atrocities which earned them a reputation for brutality. Also, they fought fanatically and sometimes there were cases of fake surrender meaning it was dangerous to take them a prisoner. Also, the Allied soldiers wanted revenge for the massacre of prisoners of war and fellow countrymen they had heard about.

They were also easy to spot and identify which meant they did not blend in well to the general German military. But while many SS men met a violent end when they were captured, others did manage to hide their identities and actually blend into a post-war world escaping any punishment and any form of justice.

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