Was the Waffen SS any better than the rest of the Wehrmacht?

Some of them were quite good troops. However, they were fighting a losing battle and were subject to Hitler's insane orders to do the impossible and they were autistic enough to follow them. This resulted in unnecessary casualties. Adding to this was the disconnect between SS command the army command which resulted in poor coordination of attacks.
Also made it harder to pull off a coup against the Nazi government since they were separate from the Army.

>>34643938
a few divisions were really well trained and equipped, but for the most part they were politically loyal

>>34643938
The reason they have that reputation is that a couple of units like Liebstandarte and Das Reich did pretty well in combat. Most of the others were basically glorified reservists.

>>34643938
SS divisions varied wildly in their level of training and equipment. You could say certain divisions are better than the Wehrmacht standard.

I remember reading the account of a German commander who was very busy preventing the SS officers in his sector from embarking on suicide missions, but this was early in the war.

They were intended to be an exclusively nazi counterpart to the Prussian-influenced conservative Wehrmacht - while they felt it was their duty to be loyal (e.g. Manstein's "Prussian field marshals don't rebel!" answer to Stauffenberg) there were quite a few who were bitter about the "new" Germany not being the one they used to know, and thus framed as an elite fighting force compared to average Joe's Heer, which overall wasn't the truth as their performance was quite similar, and that's about it.

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>>34643938
In the same sense that the Marine Corps. is better than the Army because they're all zealous Motards that would run straight into machine gunfire for MUH CUHNTRY.

They were also given more nazi space magic toys than the wehrmacht.

>>34644126
As i see it, SS troops were to be used similarly to how the stosstruppen of WW1 was used (and to be seen in the same way). They weren't necessarily "better" than the rest of the wehrmacht, but they were held to higher physical standards, were given (sometimes) better equipment and were expected to perform more or less what others consider "suicide missions".

As to what actually happened, well, ill leave that unsaid because there are sources that suggest both that they were great ubermensch, others that they were fanatic lunatics.

>>34644176
>>34644192
The SS never had better equipment. Hell, they were mostly using captured arms because the Wehrmacht controlled the supply chain and weren't diverting anything to the SS.

>>34643938
SS divisions fighting on the east (1st Leib.) - yes they were hardcore elite soldiers
SS divisions fighting on the west ( like 12th SS Panzerdiv.)- no just like any other german units on the western front they were conscript tier.

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>>34643938
>Was the Waffen SS any better than the rest of the Wehrmacht?
Not really. There were a few divisions that could actually be considered elite, but the rest of them weren't anything special.

At the begiining, the SS was a organisation with genuinely high standards, but struggled with equipment, why they used stuff like ZB30s, Hi-powers and radoms. They got better equimpent as the war progressed. But in 1942 it had sustained too many losses and they let everyone in, why late divisons like the "Hohenstaufen","hitlerjugend" and "Götz von Berlichingen" where shit. The only thing these units had for them was the high morale

Some very well trained, equipped and motivated, making them elite units by and large. Other units...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/36th_Waffen_Grenadier_Division_of_the_SS

...less so.

>>34644246
In the Blitzkrieg campaign of 40 and 41 they were put into a special role and for such given specialized in many cases prototype equipment. Yeah, past 1944 every frontline unit wehrmacht or SS had a good stash of captured arms.

>>34644295
>The only thing these units had for them was the high morale

As long as the amphetamines lasted at least.

>>34644350
No, the Hitlerjugend was literal divison of brainwashed kids. Most SS troopers didn't want to get captured so they went either full gray man and ripped off their collars etc. or simply killed themselves.

>>34644349
No. After 1943 the Wehrmacht was ordered to play ball and let them into their supply chains. Before that they were making do with captured arms, or in some cases having totally different guns made for them such as anti-tank rifles because they couldn't get any from the Wehrmacht.

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>>34643938
Ameritards commenting on such topics will always give me the worst cases of cringe.

Just imagine a morbidly obese neckbeard that had been fed poorly written propaganda all his sorry excuse of a life, sitting in his Neet filth that says stuff like "Hitler was stupid" or "the SS were autistic"...

>>34644246
Who received the foreign equipment?

From what I remember reading the pure German divisions like the 1st SS division got German equipment while foreign divisions like the 5th SS Wiking division got captured weapons and didn't receive proper modern weapons before 1943.

>>34643938
>Popular history books and television paint them as an elite and I wonder how true that is.

I'd say the first German SS division were elite, then as the war progressed the SS transitioned from being a military elite to a mass army.

>>34643938
More than half of them were unmotivated foreign conscripts so probably not

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>>34644803
>Who received the foreign equipment?
The SS. They had a lot of foreign weapons and a lot of older German equipment such as Gew98s.

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>>34644900

>>34643973
>Also made it harder to pull off a coup against the Nazi government since they were separate from the Army.
that was the whole point of the waffen ss existance
almost all totalitarian states do something going into this direction.
the most direct threat to the Leaders/Parties power is a military coup.
By creating two competing armed forces the cooperation necessary for a quick and clean military coup becomes almost impossible. Any coup attempt will lead to civil war

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>>34644126

I find it funny that how many of the old guard Prussian artistrocratic types fucking hated Hitler and the Nazi Party like Based von Saucken

>fought in Prussian Army from 1914 to 1918
>won the Prussian Knight's Cross with Swords during the spring offensive of 1918
>Became a Colonel between the wars
>Became a General while fighting in the east
>won the Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds
>didn't even bother to hide his contempt for Hitler when meeting him in person
>surrendered personally to the soviets and got sent to Siberia rather than abandon his men

>>34643938
Early SS was very choosy about who they took in and had very high standards, late SS took in niggers, children and old men.

>>34644571
If hitler was so smart, how come he lost? Checkmate, autists

>>34644296
>"Dirlewanger's preferred method was to herd the local population inside a barn, set the barn on fire, and then shoot with machine guns anyone who tried to escape."

>the Dirlewanger brigade burned prisoners alive with gasoline, impaled babies on bayonets and stuck them out of windows and hanged women upside down from balconies

damn

>>34645843
>testified seeing a Dirlewanger man raping a girl while wielding a knife, and then cutting her wide open along the entire length of her torso after ejaculation.

i wonder how much of this is actually true, and how much is muh lampshade tier

>>34645879
With the absurd amounts of ww2 stories that are straight made up I'm starting to doubt everything that wasn't witnessed by 200 people.

>>34644571
Nigger, I'm>>34644282
What lets you believe I'm american? The half this board's population is compromised of european noguns.

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>>34644803
>Who received the foreign equipment?
When the Nazies captured a nation they would generally keeps arms production in those areas rolling, since the SS was responsible for its arms procurement until 43 they would have those companies manufacture arms on contract for them. One specific example I can think of is FN producing Hi-Powers with german stampings and acceptance marks.

In this famous picture you can actually see the pistol he is holding, an FN high power.

>>34646083
Things like that happened in Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and certainly elsewhere. Under some circumstances everything is possible. Not saying it is true, but plausible.

>>34645507
It really was the difference of ideology. They didn't want the ideologues of a modern reactionary movement to run the nation, but instead the Prussia which they thought was the only organic Prussian movement. Germany was a creation of the enemy, Prussia is what they had to go back to.

>>34644296
To be fair the 36th was made up of the worst of the worst expected to die on the front , maybe taking bullets meant for more important people. Not the best decision, since after being let loose they basically went rogue, I wouldn't say their actions were sanctioned by the Reich at large.

>>34645507
Shame Prussian culture is all but dead.
>A cavalry officer who regularly wore both a sword and a monocle, Saucken personified the archetypal aristocratic Prussian conservative who despised the braune Bande ("brown mob") of Nazis. When he was ordered to take command of the Second Army on 12 March 1945, he came to Hitler's headquarters with his left hand resting casually on his cavalry sabre, his monocle in his eye, . . . [and then] saluted and gave a slight bow. This was three 'outrages' at once. He had not given the Nazi salute with raised arm and the words 'Heil Hitler', as had been regulation since 20 July 1944, he had not surrendered his weapon on entering....and had kept his monocle in his eye when saluting Hitler.[2][3]

When Hitler told him that he must take his orders from Albert Forster, the Gauleiter (Nazi governor, or "District Leader") of Danzig, Saucken returned Hitler's gaze....and striking the marble slab of the map table with the flat of his hand, he said, 'I have no intention, Herr Hitler, of placing myself under the orders of a Gauleiter'. In doing this he had bluntly contradicted Hitler and not addressed him as Mein Führer.[2][4]

To the surprise of everyone who was present, Hitler capitulated and replied, "All right, Saucken, keep the command yourself." Hitler dismissed the General without shaking his hand and Saucken left the room with only the merest hint of a bow.[2][4]

>>34643938
note that in ww2 german forces had:
>1 milion russians
>70000 azeris
>2600 indians
>20000 arabs
>7000 albanians
>33000 armenians
>14000 georgians
>16000 turks

>>34645879
>>34646083
Dude, Division Dirlewanger was a penal unit. They basically took the worst scum they could find from prisons, concentration camps and mental hospitals and dumped them to terrorize the enemy.

>>34645507
>>34646594
They really did. They were too prideful to abandon their own aristocracy and tradition in favor of what the Nazis demanded. Which was you only got benefits if you served the party, and thus served Hitler.
Not to forget that Hitler was an Austrian, and I would not be surprised if some older WW1 officers resented that considering how Austria-Hungary led Germany to do most of the fighting in a war they didn't even start.

Another great example of someone sticking it to Adolf.
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_von_Lettow-Vorbeck#Post-war_career
>He intensely "distrusted Hitler and his movement,"[46] and approached his relative Hans-Jürgen von Blumenthal with an idea to form a coalition with the Stahlhelm against the Nazis. This resulted in the Vorbeck-Blumenthal Pact. Later, when Hitler offered him the ambassadorship to the Court of St James's in 1935, he "declined with frigid hauteur."...
> During the 1960s, Charles Miller asked the nephew of a Schutztruppe officer, "I understand that von Lettow told Hitler to go fuck himself." The nephew responded, "That's right, except that I don't think he put it that politely."[41]

>>34645843
Bet you believe that jews were turned into soap too.

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>not knowing that paratroopers were always the elite

>>34646691
Penal battalions committing war crimes isn't fairy tales dude

>>34646947
Early in the war, certainly. Later on though you had regular Luftwaffe infantry being given the title Fallschirmjäger even though they never went through a jump school or had the strict training routines that Kurt Student's men did.

>>34646978
>crimes against partisans
>nice try

>>34643938

They were given better equipment because of their larping skills not fighting skills.

>>34644295
This is also my understanding of it.

>>34645879
from any other unit: lamp shade if not followed with a court marshal and exicution. Prussians did not stand for that shit
but Direwanger where the scum of the earth told that they would die but if they died fighting they where alowed to do pretty much anything

>>34646170
that's HOI 3 man note the american scout car behind him and the sigarets in their mouths
those are some germans that just rolled up some janks and enjoying their spoils
probably their first real sigarete in years if not their lives

>>34646170
>since the SS was responsible for its arms procurement until 43 they would have those companies manufacture arms on contract for them. One specific example I can think of is FN producing Hi-Powers with german stampings and acceptance marks.
No. The FN Hi-Powers, just like MOST arms plants under German control was inspected and controlled by the Wehrmacht.

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>>34646668
>>34646594
on the topic of Prussian junkers
my grand parents home town was used as a garrison/recuperation area
the man in charge was a mid level officer (can't give you the rank gramps forgot) but it was a Von, read Prussian Junker
They had one rape in 1941 and the bastard got strung up on the town square, no rapes after that.
and when my grand aunt was shot by a drunken officer the Von in charge made sure all her costs where reinbursed, including a new dress.

On the other side of the family we had a WWI ace. He got invited to speak to a fighter squadron stationed near to where he lived. never got harrased over the last war or pushed to collaborate by the germans. And the guy was half Prussian so you might have tought they'd have it out for a "traitor".


Might have helped that my grand parents lived in Ieper ( Ypers to the anglo's) and the other side has Junker blood (bastard but recognised during the ocupation for racial purity) but from all the tales I've heard the occupation never struck me as being that bad or harsh as portraied

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>>34643938
>Was the Waffen SS any better than the rest of the Wehrmacht?

Yes of course, shitbird.

That's like asking whether conscripts are better than volunteers in any other army..

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>>34647416
>SS all volunteers
a lot of the not German SS units and even more so from the occupied terretories "volunteerd" for service in the SS
you sign up to go work in germany, you sign a bit of paper in german.
you get to germany, keep going. Arrive in Poland, surprise! you are now part of a volunteer work party for the eastern front.
Half a year later, the SS unit we recruited from your country is running kind of thin and you are already in the east and have already signed your life away. So here is your rifle go shoot some ruskies.
About half the troops serving in the Flemish SS "volunteerd" like that. Now not that the collaboration movement back home had any issues with such recruitment tactics, they helped to do it to fluff the numbers of waffen SS volunteers to look good.
Never did get to know how my grand uncle ended up in the SS, then again I never knew him and my grand father won't talk about it and only told me he was 22 so that would put his time of death in 42-43. But since I got named after my grand uncle my family musn't have minded that much.

>>34647703
A big part of the SS was conscripted anyway, you got to your "Defence Enhancement Camps" in the Hitlerjugend, where everybody was traind for mandatory service, and on the first evening, all SS volunteers were told to step forward. Most of the time 80% did that due to:
1.peer pressure
2.non-volunteers had had an extra hard time in those camps, for example running addtional rounds or shortenend lunch breaks.

>>34647843
yea "volunteer" is always a lose term in times of war

>>>/pol/134814947

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>>34646668
>During the 1960s, Charles Miller asked the nephew of a Schutztruppe officer, "I understand that von Lettow told Hitler to go fuck himself." The nephew responded, "That's right, except that I don't think he put it that politely."[41]

Basically an issue of better equipment and brainwashing.

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1st, 2nd, 3rd and 5th ϟϟ decimated hordes of bolsheviks. third battle of kharkov with a 10-1 kill ratio while attacking a defended city. they lasted from the start of the war and surrendered last. id say they were the best units in the entire war.

>>34647403
is that picture from a movie? Middle guy looks like that excellent actor I enjoy whose name escapes me.

>>34648423

Daniel Brühl?

>>34643938
Ja.

Why?

Because they always recive the best toys. Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler were the Hitler's spoiled

>>34646980
>elite
>jump ontop of a few convicts and a nandfull of kiwis.
>get fucking shrecked
>have to be bailed out by the heer.

WE WUZ PARATROOPERS N SHEET

>>34648423
Yes, it's from the the film Joyeux Noel about the WW1 Christmas Truce.

>>34648894
Apart from the fucking disaster that Crete was, just look how effective they were fighting in France in the 1940 offensive and 1944 defensive. Even if Crete was their last combat jump, the German paratroopers actually trained as such were effective in ground combat.

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We all know the true sign of an elite fighting force is in its songs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_6v--ajdXE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBopF6GYuS8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-sMBM4leWk

>>34649092
Then France blows them out of the water
https://youtu.be/s2f5pJ3aoU0
https://youtu.be/EFXwNhZvIAk
https://youtu.be/Y7RRpZxa788

>>34647703

I'm obviously not referring to the shitty ass impromptu "divisions" assembled from stragglers and criminals.

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>>34648323

The only regular Heer unit that approached the battlefield performance of the premier Waffen-SS units was Das Reich, because it was mostly a volunteer force.

>>34647703
>About half the troops serving in the Flemish SS "volunteerd" like that.

You got some literature on this? Leon DeGrelle was pretty enthusiastic about his service and he had the battlefield record to back it up..

>>34643938
Trained fanatics with a psychotic combat doctrine.

In combat they were often used as rushers >>34644192 pretty much this.

My Grandfather was part of the Marinestoßtruppkompanie, an elite squad of the Kriegsmarine, and took part in multiple missions along with the SS, all of them were borderline suicidal. He never spoke about it. He was transferred to Norway 1942 or so until the war ended, as thanks for his service.
Poland was a disaster in this regard. Himmler let SS troops ride into battle on white horses at some places for example, the autism knew no limits.

The non German divisions are worth mentioning. They were absolute canonfodder, comparable with the zerglings in Stalingrad.

Dirlewanger's division was absolutely brutal. Their purpose was to cause sadistic terror.
It consisted of poachers and criminals.

>>34643938
Depends on the unit. Some of them were top tier "elite" units. Some of them were absolute garbage.

>>34648323

>Using the Sowilō runes in place of the Sig runes

Your ancestors would be ashamed

>>34648323
>LRDG

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>>34649482
Nigger, "Das Reich" WAS the 2nd SS Tank Division.
Did you mean "Großdeutschland" by any chance?

>>34649504
yes but he was in a diffrent legion
the source for this is a witness tesitmony of some men that fought in the Flemish legion. I'm sorry but you'r gona need to my word on it, the veterans of the legion do not like talking with outsiders and/or recording devices of any kind.

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>>34649553

Any good books on those subjects? Early war memery and forgein SS fodder sounds interesting. Hell I would even like to learn more about early war kriegsmarine infantry.

Were there any SS in North Africa and Italy?

>>34652768
italy yes, north africa no

>>34643938
They were Marines of 3rd reich.

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>>34652866

Cursed post

>>34646594
That's one hard motherfucker, especially to do that in 1945 when Hitler had gone completely off the deep end.

>>34652866
They were much better than that, even when they let all the rapists and Muslims in.

>>34648926
>>34648454
That's it. Honestly one of my favorite actors period. Love him as Niki Lauda in Rush, and Goodbye Lenin is one of my all time favorite movies.

>>34645879
Pure soviet fiction

Some of it is outright hilarious

>>34649352
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exoj9ek2LJU

>>34643938

Like the fallschirmjager, the SS was, in the beginning, an elite organization. By mid-war all pretense had been dropped though and the SS was made up of just people who were extra loyal to the Nazi party.

They were sometimes more effective than other units even late in the war, but that was mainly because they tended to fight much more recklessly, resulting in higher losses on BOTH sides, which the Germans were less able to handle.

Some sources say that SS had best training in world war 2 but they went completely retard with it and thought that enemy can't kill them.

"My training is better than yours so you can't kill me."
"think again how to keep head down with that dum dum in your stomach"

>>34644246
This is at least partially true.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5Cgy6oiVY4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMPKywiuQtQ

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>>34646627