Were SS units a truly elite fighting force, or did they have

I know the Japs were feared by most because they were all absolute lunatics, and also the savage torture thing

>>2020497

it varies a lot

earlier all-german divisions tended to be more elite, whereas some of those higher in number, esp. non-german volunteers (not to be racist, they probably weren't as high of a priority) weren't as skilled (some baltic divisions even used conscription, and don't forget the 12th, many of the boys in that division wouldn't be old enough to post here!)

it is important to note that initially the Waffen SS was a meh fighting force (i.e. Poland), they weren't as trained military wise compared to the regular army

>>2020497

Like every military and individual unit involved in the war, it was so vastly different at the beginning and at the conclusion as to be nearly incomparable.

As very general statements both are true.

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>>2020547
>>2020563
Were there any engagements that were won due to "SS resolve" or somthing like that?

>>2020596
Battle of the Bulge.

>>2020622
This. Without the "SS resolve" Americans might have lost the battle.

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>>2020596
>>2020622
>>2020672

What? The only sector of the American lines the Germans failed to advance was Elsenborn Ridge, where the US artillery pooped on the 12th SS Hitlerjugend for a week.

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>>2020622
>>2020672

Oh. You're being cheeky.

You cheeky cunts.

>>2020497
before Barbarossa the SS was garbage, a third-rate fighting force only slightly better that the police forces.

Towards the beginning of the war the SS performed rather poorly, their casualties were higher than that of their Heer counterparts during the invasion of Poland and they were more known for their brutality than for their combat prowess. They were worse trained and armed with outdated or captured equipment.

It wasn't towards 1942-43 that they became an elite force, and even then it was only a few divisions like Das Reich and LSAH for example, and even then they were no better than the elite Heer divisions like Grosadeutschland. The only thing that set them apart was their fanaticism. Of the couple dozen or so SS divisions that fought throughout the war most of them were pretty bad.

As a whole the SS is vastly overrated.

>>2020596
Sorry what do you mean?

I do recall one soldier manning a 50mm Pak from the 3rd single handedly destroyed 13 tanks and killed over 100 Russian soldiers over the span of two days

The Germans were soundly outnumbered at Kharkov, so certainly some resolve would've been useful

One time several soldiers from the 2nd singlehandedly captured all of Belgrade with a lot of luck and ballsyness

Perhaps this battle?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tannenberg_Line
Or this?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demyansk_Pocket


idk, I'm sure other non-SS soldiers have achieved similar feats too

besides, the "rambo" behavior could be a detriment really, losing unnecessary lives

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>>2020774
The battle of Tannenburg is a good example of what I'm looking for (also didn't know about it, pretty insane).

I'll try better to clarify my question. Did any generals rely on the SS to accomplish and objective that couldn't have been done by the regular force? The SS has a reputation of being a formidable fighting force, did they prove that in any battles? Individual "rambo" behavior isnt what I'm looking for. I'm more interested in the unit as a whole.

>>2020731
So why do you think they have such a renowned reputation? Is it just wheraboos?

>>2021199

Not the guy you're responding to, but the only example on offense I can think of is Klisura pass, where they charged ahead into a heavily defended position and broke it. It was bold, daring, nigh-suicidal, and it worked. Of course, it didn't always work, and the Waffen SS tended to have higher casualties and less coherency as a result.

But generally, the "generals" didn't rely on the SS much. The regular Heer didn't like the SS paramilitaries, and often the two tried to ignore each other as much as possible.


Generally though, at least in the West, the reputation comes from when things were falling apart, 1945 fighting in Germany itself. The SS is more ideologically committed, and as they weren't considered real soldiers, they were far more likely to be put in front of a tribunal and hanged. So since they had more at stake, the SS fought on in the last days, no matter how bad the odds were, when the regular Heer tended to surrender or break; which I think is where a lot of the reputation came from.

>>2021210
Because they had scarier looking uniforms.

>>2021210
yes precisely
also
>>2021354

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>>2021199

basically what >>2021233 said, the Heer and the Waffen SS weren't always on awfully friendly terms and teamwork was an issue.

I guess they were more reliable for dirty work, and even then many common or garden Wehrmacht troops did war crimes too

They were also keen on fighting to the end, hence many of the last fighters in Berlin were actually foreign Waffen SS volunteers.

Due to the fact that the the Waffen SS were likely to be issued the best equipment, they were more likely to put in the more dangerous situations (hence they would suffer relatively high losses on occasions like Kharkov)

>>2021210

Well that reputation stretches way back to the Second World War. First off the Germans kinda wanted the Waffen SS to be elite, so they sometimes got preferential treatment and the best equipment. Also I heard they were quite good at propaganda and recruiting, so many an eager volunteer chose the SS over the Wehrmacht stuff. This also explains their ability to get so many foreign volunteers. This elitism, coupled with their oft-fanatic actions, furthered this reputation of them. Their viciousness and their likeliness to suffer a worse fate when captured probably ended up being a negative feedback loop lol.

but all in all, I'm sure your average Waffen SS dude wasn't that far different from your average Wehrmacht dude

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>>2021354
>spooky

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Yrjo Pyyhtia and Kalevi Kononen(SS-Wiking) got surrounded in a small hill after the rest of their unit had been KIA. Using an MG they managed to held the position for 6 hours killing 200

>>2021210

Nazis were bretty gud at propaganda. We still associate them with mechanized warfare, blitzkrieg, industrialized warfare, etc... when in reality it was a largely agrarian country with a military whose transportation was still 80% horse-drawn.

Fucking horses, bro.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_DnRn9hyFU

>>2021529
>>2021385
Hey I think I posted the same guy you did

>>2021533
Well yeah, Finnish SS-men were top elite. Lauri Törni had rep already in Finnish army and then served in SS and post-war joined American Army and became green beret (his career there was inspiration for John Wayne movie).

>>2021210
beating the nazis was nice propaganda to distract everyone from the shadier shit some of the allies had been up to but it works better if they look like satan rather than criminally retarded. satan needs to be competent and threatening to matter so they didn't put great effort into deflating the nazi propaganda about being competent and threatening, afterwards.

and obviously lots of people have since picked up the narrative because it's compelling.

>>2021535
hm?

>>2020596
soviets used cage armor tho.

>>2020547
>>2020547

Friendly reminder that the "not as skilled" Latvian divisions were the most decorated non German divisions and wete considered elite.

>>2020596
Courland pocket

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>>2021210
flecktarn

Early war SS: laughing stock, hand-me-down equipment, regular forces looked down on them, high morale

Late war SS: a mixture of average divisions whose esprit de corps often made up for still defficient leadership when compared to regular forces, with genuinely top of the line elite outfits given priority in equipment

>>2020547
>earlier all-german divisions tended to be more elite

but the Waffen SS were widely considered to be fucking terrible at their inception, if anything the later non-German units (Charlemagne, Wiking etc) were often the best, aside from Totenkopf, Das Reich, Leibstandarte and other notable exceptions they were often only as good as or even worse than regular Wehrmacht divisions.

>>2020497

they were a weird parallel army to the Wehrmacht with their own command structure, so the Wehrmacht fucking hated them for a start, they were political soldiers charged with furthering the ideology as well as fighting, plus they were relied on for atrocities as well even more so than the regular army. Also other anons have mentioned that they were far more likely to be rounded up at the end of the war and tried or imprisoned/executed, so they fought harder out of desperation maybe? Also probably a lot of the legends around them are literal Nazi lies, you can't believe any "history" recorded by totalitarian regimes.

Did they likely have a good esprit de corps? sure. Were they soldier for soldier better than any other part of the Nazi war machine? probably a bit sometimes.

>>2021529

>mfw far right extremists could trick women into Nazism by showing them all the hot /fa/ SS dudes from old pictures

this guy, if he was dropped from WW2 to current times could walk out into the street right now dressed exactly like that and pick up chicks

>>2021529

holy fuck, did the nazis invent instagram?

>>2020497

You know.. one shot to the track and that "mighty krupenstahl" is fucking worthless, right?

>having a personal army next to the regular army
Why not just have one military force? This separation is extremely stupid.

>>2023979

Because you don't trust your underlings not to overthrow you, and thus create multiple factions to play them off against each other.

>>2023979
It's the nazis, shit doesn't have to be logical or effective. I mean, even Göring got a panzer division eventhough he was supposed to concentrate on the air war

>>2023979

Welcome to totalitarian regimes. Unless the military is itself running the country, typically the people in charge are going to want an politically reliable armed group of some kind to enforce their rule. The Waffen-SS is kind of an extreme example of this.

>>2024033
Ironically the Goring Division was supposed to be the Air Force's equivalent of the SS.
Goring was a narcissist. If there was anything that could rival his power, he wanted one bigger and better

>>2023976
One shot with what exactly a rifle? Fuck no.

Higher caliber canons? Fuck yeah, it will damage the tracks of course.

But you see, this was the norm for all case mate tank destroyers of the time. So I don't see why you would feel the need to point that out other than the fact that your butt hurts so fucking much.

>>2022550
nah

for example, the first division was named the 15th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, note the "of the" thereby already putting it at a lower level on paper

perhaps individually they had some commendation, but as an entire division the effectiveness was questionable

>hey are first and foremost Latvians. They want a sustainable Latvian nation state. Forced to choose between Germany and Russia, they have chosen Germany, because they seek co-operation with western civilization. The rule of the Germans seems to them to be the lesser of two evils.

t. commander of 15th

>We will beat the Russians now and we will beat the Germans after that

t. some latvian legion song

that aside

let's take the 15th, they were relatively untrained and lacked cohesion, as well as having a poor chain of command
>punctual replacement of equipment, supplies, and soldiers was a pain
>there was poor coordination between german and latvian officers
>poorly company and battalion commanders
>basically they lacked any sort of organized loss replacement system

http://www.karamuzejs.lv/~/media/karamuzejs/documents/raksti/Valdis%20Kuzmins%20-%20The%2015th%20Division%20of%20the%20Latvian%20Legion.ashx

>>2022910
I did state how initially the Waffen SS was a poor fighting force which lacked the training of the Heer. Leibstandarte, Das Reich, and Totenkopf are the original "big three" divisions of the Waffen SS, and Wiking joined them in 1941 (Polizei was still some police thingy until 1942). Then there was the Germanic Nord, which aside from a failure during Arctic Fox, performed superbly for the remainder of the war. So yeah the big three are probably the most distinctive SS units of the war, forming the II SS Panzer Corps that kicked ass in Kharkov.

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>>2024523
yah

Out of all the non german divisions the Latvian ones had the most awards and knights crosses. And the number assignes to a division doesnt tell the effectivness of it.

>>2025869

I would check again, I'm pretty sure Wiking had more than the 19th

>And the number assignes to a division doesnt tell the effectivness of it.
Sorry I do not understand, reword it maybe?

>>2026750
You can check as much as you Latvia 1 and Latvia 2 had the most awards and decorations

>>2026764

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Knight%27s_Cross_recipients_5th_SS_Panzer_Division_Wiking

Wiking has a lot apparently

>>2020497
The Jagdpanther looked baller af.

>>2020497
Some truth and some falsehood to the notion. Depends on which unit. It didn't take much to achieve very favourable performances on the Eastern Front, and on that Front were plenty of foreign SS units that had no choice but to fight to the death because death in a gulag (firing squad if they were lucky) was all that awaited them if they surrendered.

I remember a part of Anthony Beevors "Berlin" about a small group of French SS soldiers drinking cognac and laughing during the siege.

>>2020596
Soviets used matresses frequently to deflect panzerfaust attacks.

>>2022928
Yeah probably :^)