Reddit mentions of The Waffen SS: Hitler's Elite Guard at War, 1939–1945

I just want to point out two things. The first, is that I am not familiar with Skarlo in any way; I just want to point out that he may have left some information out of his biography, whether unintentionally or intentionally, and his biography may have served as a way for him and his family, his children, grandchildren, etc., to remain 'though tarnished - in the end, still accepted' within Norwegian society. The old don't believe everything that you read rule.

Now to immediately break this rule, I would in any case subscribe to the following quotation from George Stein's 'The Waffen SS: Hitler's Elite Guard at War, 1939-45' (page 92) (first published in 1966):

>In the Waffen SS, where loyalty, duty, and blind obedience were a way of life, the conduct of the troops depended to a large extent on the attitudes of their leaders. Despite the ideological indoctrination to which Waffen SS personnel were subjected (an indoctrination that preached, among other things, hatred for Germany's enemies, especially Jews, Slavs, Bolsheviks, and other "subhumans"), individual cases of misbehavior toward prisoners of war and noncombatants seem to have been relatively rare. But where such acts were ordered, encouraged, or simply condoned by unit leaders, large-scale atrocities occurred. It is difficult to imagine regular German Army troops who would not have hesitated at an order to shoot down 100 helpless prisoners of war; but when a junior SS officer gave such an order at Le Paradis it was obeyed without question or hesitation and members of the SS company went around with rifle and bayonet to finish off the survivors. This was not standard procedure, but similar incidents took place frequently enough - especially along the eastern front - for such behavior to become a hallmark of the Waffen SS.

>Here, then, is the Waffen SS in 1940: small but well equipped; possessing an esprit de corps and motivated by an ideology, but lacking the traditions of an established military service; manned by men of exceptional physical fitness who are good soldiers yet are capable of committing unsoldierly acts; an elite force often indistinguishable from the best units of the German Army with which it serves, yet one which unmistakably bears the stamp of the SS organization and the National Socialist movement which spawned it.

So, in essence, I am emphasizing the ideological indoctrination briefly referenced by Stein above (I am sure he goes into more detail later within the book), and is part of what I mean when I say 'stone cold killer'. I apologize for the non-precise language here, but I mean this term in the sense of, the actions of those soldiers during WW2 who had been indoctrinated into an ideology based upon a belief system centrally incorporating concepts of 'uebermenschen' and 'untermenschen' - and then given a machine gun and permission (which is why I wouldn't use this term towards all sides who fought in WW2 - but again, I shouldn't use such unclear language).

There is an (I guess) valid point to be made in this discussion, which is not all Germans were Nazis during WW2, whether military or civilian, and furthermore, not all Waffen SS members, whether German or not, were outright monsters (ala the 36th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS). However, I would always be cautious when stating that this person or that person knew this or didn't know that (in the context of this discussion). The fact is that we will never actually know, and all we have to go on is the evidence presented by both sides of the story. Leaving out this far too convenient 'winners write the history' position, I am thoroughly convinced that the true good guys within the ranks of, for example the Waffen SS, are too small to even bother defending. Whether even one 'legitimate good guy (for lack of a better term)' even existed carrying a machine gun in an SS lapel pin in WW2 then becomes the next question in my opinion..

then where do you go?

edit: a few minor things, such as bold