Jorg Haider is Dead

[ICantSpellDawg]

The SS was responsible for many of the atrocities committed, and I hope you don't deny that. SS-Totenkopfverbände. The Einsatzgruppen, the death squads, that went out exclusively to kill undesirables. The SS was more of the political arm of the Wermacht, it's recruits, if I recall, had to be of Aryan descent, and pledge loyalty to the Nazi Party. Many of it's officers were well known Nazis.

If you understood the SS-Totenkopfverbande you would know that it had a totally separate hierarchy from the Waffen-SS. The Oberkommando der Wehrmacht controlled the Waffen-SS, while the Nazi-party controlled the Totenkopfverband and Einsatzgruppen. The Waffen-SS was like the Marines and rarely engaged in the actual purges as the wehrmacht was against such things. Regular wehrmacht troops also engaged in purges to an extent, yet they are honored for their heroism. Waffen-SS sacrifice and heroism was amazing during world war two and, while they were part of an unacceptably de-humanizing war machine which deserves it's infamous title, they are often mis-judged by what the SS-Totenkopfverbande, Allgemiene-SS and Einsatzgruppen were directly responsible for - three authoritatively separate branches of the government that were directly answerable to the NSDAP rather than the O.d.W.