Waffen SS: most dedicated soldiers you'll ever meet, or twisted fucking psychopaths?
these same threads every day
don't you get bored? i do
Exaggerating braggart paramilitaries. Not nearly as effective as they claimed they were.
>>389808
Not everyone browses 4chan 24/7 like you
>>389830
you don't have to browse 24/7 to be bored to shit of the "was SS/spartans/knight/samurai as badass as they say??"
mix it up and make another roman centurion vs samurai vs whatever thread you moron
xoxo
>>389853
>mix it up and make another roman centurion vs samurai vs whatever thread you moron
How is that mixing it up? Those threads are even more tired and fucking boring.
Honestly I wish this kind of military "history" was still posted on /k/ instead of here. There is no intelligent discussion in these threads, it's just image dumps and "cool facts" from Wikipedia.
My great grandpa had only bad things to say about them. Apparently they were a pain in the ass for common Wehrmacht soldiers to deal with, since in their fanatism they'd disregard risks and endanger everyone.
t. German
>>389803
>>389912
More or less this.
Waffen-SS were poor soldiers because they were fanatics. There were plenty of lunatics in there.
I'm reading a book about a boy in the Waffen-SS (16 years old). It's his memoire so it's based on his experiences. He tells of lots of crazy things. There was a finn in his company who would sneak off every night when he was on guard duty, find the russian camp and kill as many of them as he could without getting caught before returning to his post. He got reprimanded every time but just kept at it. Behavior like that endangers the entire group.
Furthermore, it should be noted that the trip to the eastern front could take 3-6 weeks sitting still on a train. So a lot of that physical conditioning they went through before that was negated.
And also, as with most german units, they were poorly supplied compared to other armies.
They were good at killing russians but they weren't good at not getting killed doing it. They had higher casualty rates than the Wehrmacht.
>>390591
>3 weeks of not going to the gym will turn healthy, fit soldiers into slugs
>>390597
>physical conditioning
You know how I know you dont workout?
>>390597
Science time:
Go work out 6 days a week for 6 months. Then, don't work out for 5 days.
You'll notice a decrease in performance from even that.
>>390858
thats a really hot scientific opinion you got there boyo
also your experiment needs work
just models of German efficiency
>>390591
>And also, as with most german units, they were poorly supplied compared to other armies.
>Waffen-SS were poor soldiers because they were fanatics.
You are so wrong it makes me sick.
inb4 /pol/.
It's not biased to say they were probably the most ferocious divisions in the entirety of WW2. The more the shit hit the fan and the wehrmacht armies couldn't handle getting BTFO by the Soviets, the more the German high command relied on the SS to at least hold ground and repel breakthroughs.
12th SS Hitlerjugend, literal boy scouts, gave the commonwealth troops some of the hardest fighting ever on d-day at Caen. The Allies wanted Caen on D-Day. They took it after a MONTH.
>As the success of the divisions increased, so too did the difficulty of the missions assigned them. In the closing months of the war, Waffen-SS formations were assigned impossible missions by Hitler, who saw them as not only exceptionally effective in combat, but also politically reliable.
Need I say more? Give credit where credit is due.
>>389912
Your grandfather wasn't half the man an SS soldier was t b h f a m
>>391009
Of the 15 German divisions which took part in the struggle for Caen, 2 of them were SS, the regular Heer did the bulk of the work.
>>391024
All notable battles involved SS HJ or SS panzer corps. Bulk of the work means staying your ground and using SS elements for support or counter attacks.
>>389803
The Waffen SS was pretty much the Nazi Party's showdog army of hatchetmen. Their combat performance was oversold, but their brutality was not.
>>391084
Or the Panzer Lehr, or the 2nd or 21st panzer divisions.....
No shit, the battles "involved" the SS, they were there and stuck in, but they, at their best, performed on average with Heer elements, and often performed a damned sight worse.
As always, they made idiotic, frontal assaults, more carried on by fanaticism than tactical sense. You like the 12th HJ? Here's what the Canadians had to say about them.
>No use was made of the fact that the Reginas' flanks were exposed; instead, 'the enemy flung himself straight against the strongest points and utterly failed to exploit the undoubted weakness of his opponent's position.
Harry Foster.
I prefer the Abwehr. Because they embodied Prussian professionalism while basically spearheading anti-Nazi resistance from top to bottom.
>>390591
>He got reprimanded
Did they tell him he was on "Finn ice"
>>391463
eat shit
>>391463
Carlos, plz go back to mexico
>>391009
He was a farmer from Thuringia, not a warrior of the master race on devine mission t b h f a m
>>389803
They liked dying a lot, that's for sure
>>389823
>Not nearly as effective as they claimed they were.
Who were the ones that led the drive into France in 1940?
Who were the ones that'd massacre entire Russians towns and villages and get away with it?
Who were the ones that would often plug breaches in the line and spearhead offensives such as in Moscow and Kursk?
>>391463
fuck you carlos
>>392039
>Ridiculous casualty rates compared to their peers
>Generally hated by their own brothers in arms
>Long term effects of their actions made life and strategy generally more difficult for their own side and catered towards resistance forces, as well as shitting on the morale of their peers.
>Only remarkable trait was their equipment and general lack of self-preservation; Often reflected in their 'tactics'.
>Only real achievement is 'occasionally we lose slower than others because we don't withdraw'.
SS were over-rated as shit. You could have at least idolized actual professionals that had more going for them than being political extremists. Like Brandenburgers or something. At least they required more than hugging Hitler's nutsack to earn their colors.
>>389803
Well, there was a division that recruited from the criminally insane so...
you cant put them all in the same bracket
compare SS-Nord and Dirlewanger
funny thing about SS is how they were a force of two extremes (strictly militarily speaking) - second rate divisions with poor hand me down and captured equipment that were looked down upon by actual soldiers of the armed forces, while also fielding elite formations with top of the line equipment
>>392298
...who were also looked down upon by actual soldiers of the armed forces.
>>392304
that's probably true but in the case of the former i didn't mean it as their looking down on them because of ideology or atrocities but rather for strictly military/professional reasons, like 'who are these meddling amateurs, we ain't giving them shit, let them have the obsolete stuff we don't want'
Reminder that by 1944 the majority of SS units were made of Croats, Bosniaks, Magyars and what have you, and not le aryan masterrace.
>>391009
>It's not biased to say they were probably the most ferocious divisions in the entirety of WW2. The more the shit hit the fan and the wehrmacht armies couldn't handle getting BTFO by the Soviets, the more the German high command relied on the SS to at least hold ground and repel breakthroughs.
Yes, that is biased. The Waffen-SS were fanatics in a war of fanatics. Your average Ivan or Japanese was just as ferocious as the Waffen-SS - ESPECIALLY as the war increased. By the end of it, the Waffen-SS were accepting anyone into their ranks. Ironically, by the end of it, Waffen-SS was probably the most multi-cultural fighting force in the war. Many of these people were anti-bolshevists first and nazis second and even more so, many of them felt no loyalty toward Hitler whatsoever.
Read Ivar Skarlo's memoire's of his time in the Waffen-SS if you want to get a personal account. By no means the ferocious fighting force you are describing.
>>392412
Do you have a link to that book published in English?
I can't find anything, I am wondering if it's due to censorship laws in Germany.
>>392660
Originally published in Norweigan since he was a norweigan SS voulenteer. The english title is With Wiking and Nordland.
Its not an excellent book by any means, but its interesting to get a view from an SS soldiers perspective. To be fair, he grows to hate the SS and is defeatist throughout as he early on realizes the futility of the german war effort (he reaches the front in late 1942).
>>392709
Les Bienveillantes (the Kindly Ones) is also a very good fiction book about the experience of an SS officer in Ukraine and Stalingrad. It even has celebrity cameos by Himmler, Eichmann, and Big A himself. Too bad you have to wade through like 300 pages of incest fantasies to get to the historical stuff.
>>392709
Google is spewing out nothing but links to, what I am guessing, Norwegian sites.
Was it ever released in English?
>>392757
I thought it was, but I could be mistaken.
>>392183
>Dirlewanger
You know you're pretty fucked up when SS High Command wants to get rid of you.
>>392039
Yeh man massacring all those villagers takes some balls
>>392412
okay, I see you are having trouble making a counter argument.
1. Tell me where I said the SS were homogenous?
2. Tell me where I questioned their loyalty to Hitler and National Socialism?
3. Tell me what divisions of similar size and strength had a similar or BETTER (as if you can LOL) combat record than Das Reich, for example?
>>391138
>In their first engagement with the Canadians, the HJ Division destroyed 28 Canadian tanks while losing only 6 soldiers for their efforts. They fought with a very high degree of determination. However, the odds were against them in the long run.
Two can play at this game.
>>394269
>In their first engagement with the Canadians, the HJ Division destroyed 28 Canadian tanks while losing only 6 soldiers for their efforts. They fought with a very high degree of determination. However, the odds were against them in the long run.
Let's continue that, shall we?
> In slightly over one month of combat, the HJ SS Panzer Grenadier Division had lost over 60 per cent of its forces due to combat actions. 20 per cent were killed and the rest of the 40 per cent were either wounded or MIA. The divisional commander, Fritz Witt, was killed, when British naval fire hit his regional command center.
>>394269
>okay, I see you are having trouble making a counter argument.
Not really, I'm not here for your sake. I was simply pointing out that you don't seem to know what you're talking about.
it's both
The US Airborne basically whooped the SS.
They had a reputation for being tough and maybe they were but that doesnt win you battles, bullets kill men equally.
When will /pol/ leave?
>>392145
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/36th_Waffen_Grenadier_Division_of_the_SS
Warning: Nightmare Fuel
Has anyone ITT read this book? Or Black Edelweiss?
>>395596
Yes that was the joke, thank you.
>>392743
Its an amazing book though
By '43, Waffen-SS were pretty much just the official Nazi Heer. In terms of performance, it was variable just like the Heer; some divisions were elite, most were OK, and some were trash. The initial divisions like the LSSAH and Totenkopf were arguably some of Germany's most elite divisions in the whole war.
Most of the comments in this thread are so fueled by hatred for the whole nazi regime.
Kind of like mathematical proof: I can't stand nazis therefore, sequential the SS was shit
>>396009
no, kid
they actually weren't all that impressive
sorry history isn't like your chinese cartoons
>>396037
Oh well isn't that a constructive argument.
Kind of impressed you didn't call me a fascist neonazi but a weeb.
>>394509
> Commander killed by naval fire
> Means the SS division was careless
Joke aside, without more context I have to say that none of that demonstrates that they were poor fighters. Even high losses don't mean much without knowledge of where, why, and what was accomplished in exchange.
I'm not agreeing with either, you're both just shit at arguing.
