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this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2023
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He volunteered to join the SS. Nobody was forced to join the fucking SS. Did you mean to say "really wanted to fight alongside", and what's your evidence for "people they didn't like"?
SS is not the same as Waffen-SS. The Waffen-SS again had foreign legions. These Waffen-SS foreign legions were volunteers at first, later a mixture of volunteers, voluntolds, conscripts and in the end pressured and/or forced conscripts.
I don’t know about the individual motives of the person in question. But the Waffen-SS foreign legions are too much of a mixed bag to generalize.
In Eastern Europe many joined the Waffen-SS foreign legions to fight against the occupation of their countries by the Soviets. Their values and goals didn’t necessarily align with those of the Nazis, except that they had a common enemy.
Edit: The Waffen-SS was part of the German war machine and they did commit plenty of war crimes. I was commenting to differentiate between two different criminal organizations here (SS/Waffen-SS) and to explain how the recruitment changed as the war went on. It was a mistake on my part to omit this, given the sensibility of the topic. Please do not take my comment as an attempt at whitewashing the numerous crimes of various Waffen-SS units.
My hot take is that if you sell your soul to the Nazis to fight for independence, you should be dealt with like a Nazi.
Not that hot of a take. They committed plenty of war crimes of their own and some were dealt with accordingly after the war. Sadly, not all war criminals were put to trial for various reasons and now it’s oftentimes too late.