The Waffen SS was the elite of the German army during the Second World War, with a reputation for carrying out extremely daring operations. The armed forces of the SS were present from the invasion of Poland to the fall of Berlin into the hands of the Red Army.
Accused of committing countless war crimes, the men of the Waffen SS were branded as criminals and faced a bitter fate at the conclusion of the conflict. After the defeat in Normandy and the Soviet offensive of 1944, the SS attempted to delay the inevitable by fighting to the bitter end.
The SS fought fanatically, convinced they were truly super soldiers. They died by the thousands, neither giving nor asking for mercy. The average life expectancy of a Waffen SS soldier on the front line was two months.
After defeating the Allies at Arnhem, their last significant action would take place during the Reich's final offensive, the Battle of the Bulge. In this battle, special commands led by Otto Skorzeny acted in the rear of the American Army, creating tremendous chaos, while Kampfgruppe Peiper advanced further than anyone on the American front.
By 1945, most German units were fighting not only to resist the Soviets a little longer but also for simple survival. In mid-March 1945, the Germans formed elements of several SS units into a combat group to defend the Hungarian village of Szőreg from a Soviet attack.
Hans Göndorf, an officer in the Sturmgeschütz Battalion of the 3rd SS Panzer Division Totenkopf, witnessed the futile struggle of his SS soldiers. Running out of ammunition for their various weapons, the SS soldiers resorted to using knives and trench tools to defend themselves.
The Soviet forces offered the Germans the opportunity to surrender. When the Germans rejected the offer, the Russians attacked with force, and waves of communist soldiers advanced supported by heavy Soviet tanks.
A reconstituted battalion of the Nordland Division, which had subsequently joined the Wiking Division, accompanied the assault gun battalion. As the Soviets encircled the German units in the nearby town of Schulenberg, the morale of the Wiking Division began to break.
Oberführer Karl Ullrich decided to save his division from destruction and ordered his troops to break the encirclement on March 22nd. This was against Hitler's policy that German forces should not cede ground.
Another German SS division, the 9th SS Panzer Division Hohenstaufen, fought to keep an escape corridor open for the Wiking troops. Hitler erupted in anger upon learning of the retreat of Wehrmacht and SS units.
Five days later, he issued orders that the men of the Hohenstaufen Division should remove the distinctive armbands indicating they belonged to an elite division. The death knell of Nazi Germany sounded in Berlin, trapped between advancing Allied armies from the East and West.
Many Waffen SS units were ordered to Berlin to participate in what would be the final battle. By this point, virtually all German units were shadows of their former selves, decimated in men and short of weapons, equipment, and fuel. Divisions were reduced to battalion strength.
Despite everything, the SS continued to fight. The bonds between their soldiers, forged by years of fighting side by side, kept them steadfast. This was true for both native Germans and foreign SS soldiers.
They were determined to fight to the end, largely because they had nowhere to go. Returning home was not an option, and being captured by the Soviets meant almost certain death.
"Even in the last desperate days, the idea of surrendering our weapons was unthinkable," stated an SS soldier. Some Waffen SS men still believed in the possibility of victory even when the war was only weeks from its end, trusting in promises of innovative weapons.
"We knew important things were happening, that amazing weapons would soon come into action, and because of that the war would completely change," expressed Erik Wallin, a Swede in the Nordland Division. "We were aware that even better things were coming."
The Red Army forces advancing on Berlin found a unique way to commemorate Hitler's birthday. On April 20th, 1945, they celebrated the occasion by shelling the center of Berlin with their long-range artillery.
Two days later, Hitler erupted in one of his last tantrums when the 11th SS Panzer Army, created in the final weeks of the war by Himmler, failed to carry out an attack order. It is believed that Hitler's outburst was due to the Waffen SS, which he believed had never failed him before, finally faltering.
However, several Waffen SS units remained within the city, including the remnants of the Nordland and Charlemagne divisions. They were determined to fight to the end.
By this time, the SS began to disintegrate. In 1945, individual SS officers hoped to exploit tensions between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union to open negotiations for a separate peace with the Western Allies that would allow the National Socialist state to survive and continue the fight against the Soviet Union.
Among these officers were Obergruppenführer Karl Wolff, the highest-ranking SS leader for German-occupied Italy; General Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Heydrich's successor as head of the Reich Main Security Office; Walter Schellenberg, head of Department Six of the Sicherheitsdienst; and even Himmler himself, who appeared increasingly worried.
When the SS men considered the possibility of surrender, they found themselves in a difficult situation. They lacked the necessary power and a clear idea of what life would be like after the Nazi regime to accept total surrender, even in the face of the Western Allies' firm demands for surrender.
Karl Wolff managed to persuade the German military authorities in Northern Italy to surrender to the Anglo-Americans on May 2nd, 1945, five days before the end of the war. At the end of April, Himmler himself made an offer of unconditional surrender through an intermediary to General Dwight Eisenhower, the supreme commander of the Allied Forces in Europe.
Hitler learned of the offer by radio on April 29th, 1945. In one of his last official acts, the German leader ordered Himmler to be stripped of all his ranks and positions. On May 6th, 1945, Hitler's successor as President of the Reich, Admiral Karl Dönitz, formally relieved Himmler of his duties following Hitler's orders.
Despite his promise to all SS men to take full responsibility for their actions, the former SS chief planned to disappear wearing the uniform of the secret field police and carrying documents in the name of Heinrich Hitzinger. On May 20th, Soviet troops captured Hitzinger and handed him over to the British, to whom Himmler confessed his true identity. While his captors attempted a body search, Himmler evaded them by biting down on a cyanide capsule.
After the fall of the Third Reich and the death of Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler, SS soldiers faced their brutal fate, immersed in the uncertainty of a future marked by defeat. These elite warriors found themselves hunted by the Allies.
Waffen SS soldiers returned home on foot. At that time, the railways were almost entirely destroyed, roads had little asphalt, and rivers had to be crossed by swimming because the bridges had been bombed. With few farmers' carts available, many German soldiers returned from Belgium, France, Italy, and the Netherlands hoping their families were alive in the countryside, since the cities were devastated by Allied bombings.
Many were shot without warning. The SS had a reputation for not taking prisoners and discouraging surrender. In the final stages of the war, numerous SS divisions attempted to surrender to the Western Allies, who were more inclined to take them as prisoners and generally avoided execution after processing.
However, it was known that the Allies, both American and British, sometimes killed German soldiers attempting to surrender, regardless of whether they were SS or not. They avoided surrendering to Poles, French, and curiously Canadians. It was noted that Canadians only took SS prisoners if specifically ordered to do so, and it seems those orders had to be reiterated. Normandy had made the Canadians very unforgiving toward the SS.
In contrast, the Soviets often summarily executed those who attempted to surrender, and if they managed to surrender successfully, their chances of survival were generally low, just like for any soldier or civilian captured by the Russians.
When captured by the Western Allies, some of these divisions were returned to their country of origin or handed over to the Russians, especially if they had served extensively on the Eastern Front. Depending on the country of origin, some faced execution, while others were welcomed as heroes for fighting against communism or simply ignored.
Those handed over to the Russians often faced execution or forced labor, and there were cases where the Soviets killed entire divisions of Waffen SS that had surrendered. In some cases, the number of survivors from these divisions after surrender was in single digits.
Most of these men had the SS blood tattoo, and the Allies were aware of it. It was basically just a tattoo of their blood type. The Americans made all German POWs march in a straight line, shirtless and with their arms raised. If a blood group tattoo was seen, they were separated.
Some SS members went to the extent of cutting their skin and using makeup to cover the tattoo. The Americans were provided with pamphlets on how German POWs would attempt to conceal these tattoos.
When captured, they were identified and interrogated. If it was a lower rank who joined in 1943, they would be sent to a POW camp and later released. The SS began recruiting soldiers in 1943, so some men really had no choice and would be compensated with pensions.
If it was a high-ranking SS officer, they were interrogated and sent either to a POW camp or executed. Upon capture, they would be stripped of their ranks, as they were no longer soldiers but POWs.
Low-ranking SS soldiers had high hopes of surviving, especially if their documentation was destroyed, since the Schutzstaffel offices destroyed much evidence that could be used against them from 1944 onwards, including documents indicating who belonged to the SS and the year they joined.
Despite their crimes, the SS would be treated fairly by the Western Allies. That is what they sought when all hope was lost. However, the Soviets did not use a fair judicial system like the Western Allies did. In fact, much SS and Wehrmacht personnel were sent into Soviet custody and were never heard from again.
To this day, some SS personnel are still missing. They simply vanished. The Soviets would lock them up in gulags, and they could either be released or remain there forever.
With Himmler and Heydrich dead, the victorious Allies selected Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Heydrich's successor as head of the Reich Main Security Office, to represent the SS and all its crimes at the trial of the major war criminals in Nuremberg, which began in November 1945. The tribunal prosecutors also collectively accused and convicted the SS and Gestapo as criminal organizations.
The leaders of three key SS organizations, the Concentration Camp Administration, the Einsatzgruppen, and Himmler's Reich Commissariat for the Strengthening of German Nationhood, were tried in three subsequent Nuremberg trials under the aegis of the International Military Tribunal.
Each of the victorious Allied powers and each of the reconstituted governments after the liberation from German occupation tried hundreds of mid- and lower-level SS officers. Although SS members continued to face trials in the Federal Republic of Germany and elsewhere after the end of World War II, even to this day the vast majority of the SS and police never accounted for their crimes.
After Kaltenbrunner's execution on October 16th, 1946, the fate of the high-ranking SS officials varied greatly. Some were tried and executed, like Obergruppenführer Fritz Kline. Others were captured but died of natural causes before trial, like Obergruppenführer Oskar Dirlewanger. Many were charged with war crimes and spent time in prison, like Brigadeführer Kurt Meyer.
Beyond the four-nation process of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, the occupation forces, including the United States, also conducted individual military tribunals in their respective zones. The trials presided over by the US Army took place in Dachau from November 1945 to December 1947.
The defendants included a wide range of individuals, from senior members of the German military, Nazi officials, and concentration camp staff to civilians. They were accused of war crimes against Allied POWs and crimes perpetrated against civilians and Allied POWs in concentration camps, including Dachau.
As a component of the Dachau trials, the Malmedy massacre trial took place over two months, from May to July 1946, focusing on the crimes of the Waffen SS against American POWs and Belgian civilians. The Malmedy massacre was a documented and publicized killing of unarmed American POWs by the 1st SS during the Battle of the Bulge.
On December 17th, 1944, elements of the 1st SS Panzer Regiment commanded by Joachim Peiper captured 113 American soldiers, gathered them in a field, and machine-gunned them. Some survived by burying themselves under their comrades or playing dead, but 84 American POWs were murdered.
In the 1946 trial, 74 SS members, including Joachim Peiper and Josef "Sepp" Dietrich, were charged with crimes. These men were detained in various locations after being defeated. After being identified as associated with units responsible for war crimes, they were interrogated in Schwäbisch Hall, Germany, by American soldiers who spoke several languages and had escaped Nazi persecution.
Initially, the prisoners were kept together and had the opportunity to coordinate stories and plan their defense. The seven survivors of Malmedy testified at the trial, which began on May 16th. Belgian civilian witnesses who saw the murder of unarmed civilians also testified.
SS members testified under oath. Much of the statements were backed by nearly 100 testimonies presented to the court, including confessions and statements from some of the defendants implicating their co-defendants. The accused in uniform wore numbered identification cards around their necks. Only a few had the chance to testify.
The prosecution argued that the murder of American POWs and others perpetrated by Peiper and his men was premeditated, resulting from Hitler's orders for a ruthless campaign to instill fear and terror. The defense argued that the killings happened in the midst of battle.
After the trials concluded, the verdict came on July 16th, 1946, condemning all the defendants. In Dachau, an American Military Tribunal sentenced 46 Waffen SS members, including Joachim Peiper, to death by hanging for crimes against Allied POWs. Another 23 received life sentences, and the rest received 10 to 20 years.
What happened in the months and years following has become a topic of interest and investigation. The proceedings and pre-trial interrogations became highly publicized, controversial, and politicized. The convicted SS men claimed that American interrogators used illegal methods, including torture, and that all statements were forced.
Former chief defense counsel Colonel Willis Everett continued to work on behalf of the convicted men even after returning home in 1947. After the 1946 trial, controversies arose and a commission was formed to investigate. In 1948, some death sentences were commuted to life imprisonment, but not for Joachim Peiper and others.
In 1951, many were released, and the few remaining death sentences, including Peiper's, were commuted. In 1956, Peiper and others were released from Landsberg prison.
Years after the conflict, former SS officers organized HIAG, a mutual aid association of former Waffen SS members. It was a lobbying group and veterans organization founded in West Germany in 1951 with the primary aim of achieving the legal rehabilitation of the Waffen SS.
In 1951, Otto Kumm, a former SS Brigadeführer, founded HIAG, which had over 20,000 members. The high-ranking Waffen SS General Paul Hausser was HIAG's spokesperson. Well-known former Waffen SS commanders such as Felix Steiner and Herbert Gille became prominent figures. Sepp Dietrich and Kurt Meyer joined after being released from prison in 1955 and 1954 respectively. Meyer became HIAG's most effective spokesperson. After his death in 1961, Erich Eberhardt took over that role.
Since 1949, the ban on forming veterans associations had been lifted. In October 1950, a group of former officers produced the Himmerod memorandum, which they presented to German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer. They demanded the liberation of the German Waffen SS and the cessation of the defamation of German soldiers, including those of the Waffen SS.
Kurt Meyer, a former Waffen SS commander, published his memoirs, "Grenadier," as part of the campaign for SS rehabilitation and glorification of their role in the war. Although HIAG achieved the rehabilitation of the Waffen SS, their propaganda efforts contributed to reshaping the image of the Waffen SS in popular culture.
Their influence persists, with academic studies being overshadowed by a large number of amateur historical studies, memoirs of SS officers, internet forums, picture books, websites, and war games. HIAG also had a publishing house, Munin Verlag, which served as a platform for their publicity goals. Professional historians have described their work as revisionist apologetics.
At their first major meeting in 1952 in Verden, Hermann-Bernhard Ramcke, a former paratrooper general and convicted war criminal, condemned the Western Allies as the real war criminals and insisted that the blacklist on which all former SS members were placed would soon become a list of honor.
One of the most prominent officers of the 1st Division of the Waffen SS was Joachim Peiper, whose end was both curious and unclear. After his release, Peiper led a discreet life and did not publicly associate with former members of the Nazi party. However, in private he remained a firm believer and a member of the secret Waffen SS community in the Federal Republic of Germany.
The mutual aid association of former Waffen SS members provided him with support in finding employment, initially at Porsche in Stuttgart, but he was dismissed due to his wartime actions. The community helped him again to get a job as a car salesman at Volkswagen.
In June 1964, Peiper was brought to trial in Stuttgart for the Boves massacre in September 1943. Despite the collective guilt of the battle group, the court determined that there was no evidence of Joachim Peiper's individual responsibility or that he had directly ordered the massacre. He was acquitted of all charges.
After the trial, in a 1967 interview, he expressed his National Socialist feelings and his discontent with contemporary Germany, mentioning his desire to move to France, despite not having a particular affinity for the French, due to his love for the country and his disdain for German materialism.
In 1972, Joachim Peiper and his wife Sigurd decided to move to Traves in Burgundy, France. They chose a small house on the outskirts of the village. Although the French authorities knew who Peiper was, they granted him a temporary residence permit for five years. While living in France, he worked as a translator of military history books. He seemed to lead a quiet life and did not go out much.
In 1974, a former member of the French Resistance, Paul Cacheux, thought he recognized Peiper in a shop. Although he was not sure, he reported his possible presence to the French Communist Party. In 1976, Cacheux contacted Pierre Durand, a historian who confirmed Peiper's identity in the Stasi archives.
On June 21st, 1976, anti-Nazi activists distributed flyers in Traves informing residents that Peiper was a war criminal. On June 22nd, an article in L'Humanité confirmed his presence, thus beginning a campaign calling for his expulsion.
On July 13th, Peiper advised his wife to return to Germany, hoping that the situation would improve. However, in the early morning of July 14th, the police received calls about a fire at Peiper's house. When the firefighters arrived, they found the house in flames and a severely burned body inside, reduced to about 60 centimeters due to the intense heat of the fire.
In postwar Germany, Waffen SS veterans played a significant role in efforts to rehabilitate the reputation of the Waffen SS, who had committed numerous war crimes during World War II. High-ranking German politicians courted former Waffen SS members and their veterans organization, HIAG.
Controversially, some veterans served in the new German armed forces, the Bundeswehr. Additionally, former SS leaders during the war, such as Paul Hausser and Kurt Meyer, published several revisionist or uncritical books about the Waffen SS in the post-war years.
HIAG wielded some political influence in West Germany and attempted to attract mainstream parties, but this changed in the 1960s when the veterans organization, having achieved its goals, shifted towards far-right politics. HIAG greatly exaggerated its influence and at no point represented more than 8% of all Waffen SS veterans in West Germany.
In Germany, the historical review of the impact of Waffen SS veterans on post-war German society is ongoing, and several books have been published on the subject in recent years. The issue of Waffen SS veterans in West German society reached a critical point when the country began rearming and formed the Bundeswehr in 1955.
Initially, the intention was not to admit any former Waffen SS members, but this soon changed to allow former members up to the rank of Obersturmbannführer, or lieutenant colonel. Public opinion was divided on the matter, as many people in Germany had also suffered under the Nazi regime, while many others had been voluntary or involuntary members of Nazi organizations like the SS.
The exclusion of former Waffen SS members was criticized by HIAG, which tried to establish a distinction between the honorable Waffen SS and the evil Allgemeine SS, despite up to 60,000 Waffen SS men also serving in concentration and extermination camps.
The admission of former Waffen SS members into the new Bundeswehr created some discomfort with the former Allied Powers: Britain, France, and the United States. West Germany received conditional approval from the US State Department for the admission of former Waffen SS members into the armed forces, provided the number of applications was small and the selection process careful. This position was clarified after a question from the American Jewish Committee on how this step would impact the democratic nature of the new German armed forces.
From the German side, rejecting former Waffen SS members was seen as politically dangerous, as the estimated 500,000 Waffen SS veterans, a number later considered too high, were too large a group to ignore as potential voters. Former Waffen SS veterans were courted not only by West Germany's conservative government; opposition leader Kurt Schumacher also maintained good relations with the organization.
The number of applications from former Waffen SS members for the new Bundeswehr remained low, with 3,117 applications received by September 1956, of which 508 were accepted, including 33 officers. Despite the promised selection process, at least one member of the Allgemeine SS, Major Ulrich Bausch, who had been a guard at the Buchenwald concentration camp, was approved. Overall, the number of former Waffen SS members in the Bundeswehr never exceeded 770.
In comparison, the same selection process was not applied to the Federal Criminal Police Office, where 33 of the 57 senior officials were former SS members.
In postwar Germany, several former Waffen SS members found success, adopting diverse approaches to reveal their past. Günter Grass, awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1999, admitted in 2006 that he joined the SS in 1944. Actor Hardy Krüger was drafted into the Waffen SS in 1945 and admitted his past by refusing to shoot at American troops.
Another prominent German actor, Horst Tappert, kept his past secret, and only five years after his death did it become public that he had served in the 3rd SS Panzer Division Totenkopf since 1942. East German painter Bernhard Heisig, who volunteered for the SS in 1942, admitted his early past and joined the Communist Party after the war.
Journalist and Waffen SS volunteer Franz Schönhuber worked for 35 years for Bavarian newspapers and Bayerischer Rundfunk, Bavaria's state television, before being fired for downplaying Nazi crimes in his autobiography, after which he turned to far-right politics with moderate success.