So now that Nazis and neo-Nazis are back in favour, can we all agree that the Waffen-SS were without a doubt the most effective, professional and distinguished combat ground force in WW2?
Waffen-SS Best Force in WW2
So now that Nazis and neo-Nazis are back in favour, can we all agree that the Waffen-SS were without a doubt the most effective, professional and distinguished combat ground force in WW2?
I liked the Man in the High Castle, but I didnt like when they turned Himmler into a bad guy.
I just wanna vacation in the antarctica beach houses..
are nazis in antarctica actually featured in that show?
No, unrelated line of thought. I just wanted to post it quickly to be first post haha
also you are thinking of Afrika Korps; the real professional and honest soldiery
They lost
They were propaganda darling party thugs who got the shiny toys and tried to make up their deficiency in skill and effective leadership through fanaticism with extremely varying success.
>Waffen-SS
>Party thugs
Lmao, why do brainlets think they have opinions?
You need to read books to form relevant opinions, and most of you moronic c**ts haven't read a book in the last 12 years.
>t. defeated by a couple of underequipped bongs hiding in a shed
Yes, party thugs, the Waffen SS at Arnhem behaved like animals and we tried for it, and in France at Oradour-sur-Glane and of course over eastern Europe. Why don't you fricking read a book you borderline illiterate neo nazi spastic. Actually don't bother. The only thing you are any good for is burying alive with communists.
That doesn't mean they were party thugs you dumb Black person lmao
>armed branch of the party
>thugs
>not party thugs
>The armed branch of a political party, famously known for stabbing to death members of the prior armed branch of the same political party, isn't a collective of party thugs
>Waffen-SS were without a doubt the most effective, professional and distinguished combat ground force in WW2?
Who started this gay myth? The Waffen SS was another armed branch of the National Socialist state and just like the regular Wehrmacht, they had their fair share of elite units and stinkers. The Waffen SS was at best, a paramilitary branch of the SS that could produce highly-motivated, zealous combat troops that delivered excellent results but it also had average, unremarkable units or absolute stinkers. There was also a notion shared by some in the Wehrmacht that the Waffen-SS were brutish political soldiers whose awards were not equivalent to the professional Wehrmacht's combat awards.
The Waffen SS' performance did not exceed or fall behind the Wehrmacht's by any significant capacity.
This what I know anyway, if you believe otherwise, please tell me why you do.
>There was also a notion shared by some in the Wehrmacht that the Waffen-SS were brutish political soldiers whose awards were not equivalent to the professional Wehrmacht's combat awards.
Curious as to what your source is on that.
Every memoir I've read of Heer soldiers name the Waffen-SS as top notch soldiers whose bravery and effectiveness was unquestioned and most felt a sort of relief if they knew Waffen-SS were on their flanks or in their AO. Never heard anything about their awards being "lesser" as the standards for say an Infantry Assault Badge were the same in both the Heer and Waffen-SS. Read some Knight's cross citations and you'll be astounded at what some of those guys did.
While I agree that yea, the SS had some shit units, those were mostly near the end of the war and foreign units like the Handschar and onwards, but the 1-12 SS divisions were pretty top notch.
>Every memoir I've read of Heer soldiers name the Waffen-SS as top notch soldiers whose bravery and effectiveness was unquestioned and most felt a sort of relief if they knew Waffen-SS were on their flanks or in their AO.
the opposite actually
SS performed worse than heer units at the battle of the bulge due to their inexperience with battling the western allies
such as opening with a traditional opening barrage that got them nuked into the ground with counter-battery fire and failling to grasp much denser US recon and flank security, leading to them getting jumped
>Tigers in the Mud
>Adventures of my Youth
>Blood Red Snow
>In Deadly Combat
disagree with you, what memoirs are you referring to?
>Tigers in the Mud
dont lead with dumbassery
ok, I would ask you again to answer my question but maybe it's safe to assume you don't actually read books.
>SS performed worse than heer units at the battle of the bulge
>SS didn't do so hot in last 5 months of war, tune in for more at 11
no shit
>no shit
>heer in the exact same situation did better
>it's safe to assume you don't actually read books.
any further discussion with someone who uses tigers in the mud is pointless
while a good source for learning about how german tank crews performed their business, its very bad at actually trying to evaluate how good the germans actually were at combat because of how much the writer blames everyone and everthing except the average german soldier for every problem
ok what books should I read that might prove your point?
a better book would be soldaten, which is tediously boring but actually gives a more candid view of soldiers towards the SS
they did not view them as particularly great soldiers and were only really impressed by their ability to withstand great losses
they were otherwise trained and equipped to the same standard, just generally more zealous
a lot of their mystique comes from their propaganda machine hyping them up, they were otherwise identical
I've read the book.
It's mostly aristocratic officers who naturally did not like the SS so I would say their view might be skewed too.
Still stands, that almost every memoir I've read of Heer soldiers state that the SS were usually very well trained, highly motivated, and very effective on the front and as I see a few others mentioned in the thread, Heer soldiers were glad to hear the Waffen-SS was nearby.
>these 4 memoirs don't count
>thissingle one does because it agrees with me
>therefore memoirs showed them in a bad light in general
Black person you are moronic.
>Who started this gay myth?
Mostly Nazi propagandists. People bought into it because it made WWII a better story for the winners; that lead to modern wehrabooism, and might well have had a role to play in modern neo-nazism.
Frick off ESL tourist
which division and when?
Early Das Reich, or LSAH, meh, motivated enthusiasts at best.
Late Das Reich or Frundsberg, Hohenstauffen etc... the best soldiers of the war. maybe the best of the last two centuries.
the term "frontline fireguard" for the late waffen ss was given by wehrmacht not without reason, it was always a good feeling to have a ss division on your flank.
>it was always a good feeling to have a ss division on your flank
Weird, thats word by word exactly what my grandpa used to say.
Just imagine her boots after a coupledays of fighting retreat
This is a real poster, and I wish morons in the past rolled them up instead of just hard-folding them in half, fricking twice
No. They were a bunch of unprofessional fanatic frickers.
>be notorious SS panzer division
>lose to a regiment of US infantry with a battalion of M10s
yea ima say they were overrated chief
By that point in the war the entire German military was fricked. You can’t compare the SS in 44 to the early war.
It is a meaningless claim. You might as well claim that the cooks of the US Army are the world's finest soldiers. The best of the Waffen-SS were very good soldiers. The worst of the Waffen-SS were the most useless uniformed forces os WW2. It all comes down to which unit we are talking about. Their training, their equipment, what material the units were based on. Pressganged Polish 15 year old slave workers handed a rifle and an SS badge does not elites make.
Waffen-SS were the VDV of WW2.
there were reports from wehrmacht officers on how the waffen ss were cowboys and got themselves killed for inches of ground
now there was a huge rivalry between them so it could all be bullshit
heer officers*
There was a huge rivalry over manpower and equipment, neither of which was in unlimited supply. And Heer was led mostly by military career officers while Waffen-SS was led by political career officers. But they cooperated on operations.
The thing is, the Waffen-SS started out with elite aspirations and the idea that you could churn out elites very fast if you compressed the training and threw in lots of political motivation. Their system made 'finished' soldiers in a matter of weeks where the Heer spent six months. Hitler absolutely loved it, as even though the soldiers weren't actually anywhere near finished they could still be deployed. So Waffen SS became the prefered place to put foreign volunteers, low grade conscripts, anti-aircraft crew members, frigging Hitler Jugend kids, whoever could be forced or talked into putting on a low quality uniform and picking up a rifle from before WW1. So the quality of WSS units vary from fully equipped panzer divisions to absolute scum whose main interest was in punishing the next village for stealing two of their cows.
The Wehrmacht blame everything down to the Waffen SS which only worked short term but frick them hard long term
statistically the waffen SS did not differ significantly in terms of combat performance than the Wehrmacht. whether they were as strategically or tactically as competent is debatable
what is certain though is that the wehrmacht generals, officers and landed gentry were incredibly ass anguished at any other military outfit taking their glory or threatening their position, so take what they say about the SS combat divisions with a big grain of salt
Ukraine killed /k/. It turned into reddit.
could you be more of a newbie? /k/ has always talked about armed conflicts when they happen. I remember when shit popped off in the philippines and there were plenty of threads for that. /misc/gays are the ones diluting this board with their constant bullshit and complaning
They have, but this conflict has been fricking terrible. Bring back Syrian war circa 2017
>accuses someone of being a newbie
>cries about /misc/
syria was comfy, hell even the occasional donbass war thread wasn't bad, but the ukraine escalation in particular emboldened the armatard revanchists which in the past at least confined themselves to their 1-2 false flag threads a day. now they raid /misc/ and invite all the cross-board homosexualry that entails. but that's all good so long as you get to seethe about russia, right?
>actually it's /k/ raiding /misc/, that's the only reason why /misc/ comes here
This is an interesting thread with more info than any thread I've seen in a while
>waffen ss
>nazi frat boys
Regular Wehrmacht were far superior, or panzer grenadiers
>can we all agree that the Waffen-SS were without a doubt the most effective, professional and distinguished combat ground force in WW2?
They weren't even the best ground combat force in Nazi Germany.
>Brandenburgers
>Fallschirmjägers
>Panzer Lehr Division (pre-Normandy)
>Großdeutschland Regiment
Of the 36 Waffen-SS divisions, about 6 (LSSAH, Das Reich, Totenkopf, Hohenstaufen, Frundsberg, Wiking) consistently acquitted themselves well (albeit after rocky starts in 1939/1940) and were the foundation of the organization's reputation. The rest were paper formations (1st Hungarian, Nibelungen), brave but ineffective (Hitlerjugend, Nordland), only excelled in crimes against humanity (Handschar, Reichsführer-SS, Florian Geyer), literally comprised of Untermenschen fighting with a gun at their backs (RONA, 2nd Russian/1st Belarussian), or self-explanatory (Dirlewanger).
This isn't even getting into the rearguard SS formations like the SS-TV, Einastzkommandos, Sicherheitsdienst, Order Police, and Trawnikis who were basically completely fricking useless against any opponent better trained and armed than rioting concentration camp prisoners with shivs.
>ineffective
>Nordland
Not their fault the war was unwinnable at that point. They inflicted massive casualties on the Soviets at Narva and the Sinimäed (Tannenberg Line), but what can you do when the subhumans just keep coming
WTF gun is that? Google doesn't help.
Czech ZB-53 machine gun, the Germans used them after occupying Czechoslovakia, calling them MG 37(t).
Damn, so obscure there's not even a decent YT video on one. For a WW2 gun that's odd.
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK I HATE NAZIgayS AND COMMIES.
You mean how they helped lose France because they were busy massacring French civilians on their way to Normandy rather than actually hurry the frick up leading to days of delay? The units responsible fricked up so bad in putting their sadistic need to kill civilians over the mission they were planned to be court martialed by the Nazi leadership, but they died in battle before it got to that.
LOL frick no, half the SD were foriegn legionaries, another 40% morons. Japanese imperial guard, aussie marines, us marine raider, brit commandos all easily better.
The Waffen SS was easily the best paramilitary force in the war.
But that's about it really.
>best paramilitary force
considering their competition was the Iron Guard and Italian black shirts and whatever Japan had, that's like finishing first in the special olympics.
I think the most correct assessment of the Waffen-SS is that they were the most varied force in the war, owing to their inherent nature as an armed wing of a political party. Some divisions are true elites with the best equipments Germany could afforded, while some are pond scums with black powder guns.
Some of the most powerful forces in WW2 were Waffen SS, but that's not because they're Waffen SS.
The big difference is between elite/mobile units and second rate static/garrison units.
Waffen SS had both, Wehrmacht had both.
Talking about Germany sent 200 divisions into the Soviet union and destroying vast formations and capturing millions of prisoners, hides a simple truth of that Germany sent two armies into Russia:
1. A highly trained and superbly equipped mechanised army of about thirty divisions.
2. A vast and largely unskilled force of badly equipped and horse mobile infantry, which trailed along to try and perform the role of garrison troops.
The successes and headlines came from the former, while the failure to win was almost entirely due to the inadequacies of the latter.
Vast areas could be dealt with in World War Two in one of two ways. Large numbers of low quality infantry, as in Russia or China, or small numbers of high technology elite forces, as in African and Asia. The mistake historians make, which any half way competent wargamer could disabuse them of, is to fail to understand that a good armoured or mechanized division is worth, in both cost and combat value, up to three corps of low value infantry. Indeed the Blitzkrieg campaigns by the Germans in Poland, France, the Balkans, North Africa and Russia; or by the Japanese in the Pacific and Asia; or by the British in North Africa, East Africa and the Middle East; or by the combined Western Allies (British, French, Canadian, Polish, and American) in France in 1944 to 1945; or by the Russians in Europe and the Far East in 1944 to 1945: all had the same things in common. Well trained and well supported elite combat forces sweeping aside large numbers of inadequately trained or equipped infantry.
...
It is a mistake to imagine that entire campaigns were engagements of similar types of armies.
There is a word for the engagements of similar types of armies – stalemate.
That word applied to the Western Front while Germany was busy using it’s elite troops to defeat Poland; to the middle years in North Africa (after the British professional troops who had swept aside the Italian, French and Iraqi masses were dispersed to Greece and Iran and Asia); and to the middle part of the war in Russia (after the German’s key strike formations had been worn down and then dispersed to the Med or the west). Stalemate, or ‘too and fro’ engagements, are what characterised North Africa, Russia, Burma, New Guinea and the Pacific islands throughout1942 and 1943.
During the war the smaller campaigns tended to get less credit - though it is sometimes suspicious that numbers are valued in some circumstances, and area in others. The Mediterranean Front against the Axis was an extraordinarily long campaign over an extremely large area, yet many – particularly Americans who often fail to understand the Mediterraneans importance to intercontinental strategy – discount it’s scale and significance. (A British general visiting the Soviets responded to toasts about the battles of Stalingrad and Moscow by offering a toast to El Alemein. The bemused Soviet’s asked how big the battle was, and then commented “we would call that a skirmish” – a point which emphasises the fact that the hundreds of Soviet Divisions embraced by historians of the Eastern Front were rarely as big as a British Brigade or American Regimental Combat Team. To get a real comparison all western divisions should be compared to soviet corps.)
stop making such good and high-effort posts on nu-/k/
Similarly the Burmese and New Guinea theatres are incredibly undervalued in their role against Japan. There were more Japanese divisions fighting longer and harder in either place than everywhere that American troops fought the Japanese put together. (The fact that in New Guinea it was Australians rather than Americans who did most of the successful fighting – the American troops first assigned disappointed their vainglorious Fuhrer MacArthur enormously at first – might have had an influence on this ranking.)
By contrast the US Western Front against Germany in 1944 to 45 is overstated both in the area it covered, and in the number of troops involved (almost half the US troops listed for that campaign did not arrive until it was already almost over. A dozen divisions had barely landed in France before the Germans surrendered.) Which puts it in the same category as the Pacific campaign, which, if the allied troops are discounted – as they so often were by the Americans – rarely saw more than a couple of American divisions at a time engaged anywhere.
The confusion is added to by the enigma that remains China, which is simultaneously undervalued and overvalued. It is undervalued in that China and Manchuria occupied the attention of 80% of the Japanese army throughout the war. Which means that by any the standards applied by some historians: China was the Soviet Union of the East, and deserves all the glory that was lavished on communist Russia by the trendy historians of the last generation. On the other hand it was overvalued, in that China achieved virtually nothing in the war against the Japanese apart from occupying large numbers of very low grade garrison troops.
The Japanese demonstrated an ability to shatter the Chinese at will – when they could spare the effort or inclination. But the great Japanese advances against the Western Allies in Asia and the Pacific were made by the ten most well trained and equipped divisions, while the Army staff acknowledged that the ninety odd divisions assigned to China and Manchuria were both fully occupied, and incapable of contributing much of additional value. Those ten divisions were of greater importance than the other 90, and no advance was possible without them (except against the hopeless Chinese of course - see Soviet attack in 1945).
Similarly the British could sweep the Italian, or French, or Iraqi, forces from the Middle East and Africa at will: but faced stalemate when their obligations in Greece, Iran and Asia dispersed their professionals and left lower quality recruits to take the brunt of German professionals. As long as the Germans could drain the Russian front of high quality divisions for North Africa, Italy, or France: they could reduce the Allies to sheer attrition just the way the Russian infantry were reducing the Rumanian and Hungarian levies in the east (while the remaining German mechanised forces wore themselves out charging around playing firemen).
So the whole argument of comparing numbers becomes ridiculous.
The vast Japanese army in China was not held by massive Chinese efforts, it was just an immobile mass in it’s own right.
The vast hordes of infantry of either side wandering around the Russian plains, were in fact little more than second rate garrisons waiting to be swept away by whichever side next concentrated a high tech strikeforce. The real count of what was going on, was where the elite were being engaged.
In Europe, the vast quantities of Geman infantry being slowly chewed up in Russia were not nearly as significant as the much smaller numbers of mechanised and anti-aircraft troops and planes being slowly chewed up by the western allies. The infantry were of little value, and could be replaced by all sides, in numbers which put the Great War to shame. It was the mechanised forces which broke the budget. Similarly in the East the vast number of Japanese troops sitting around in China were of less significance than the dozen crack divisions and thousands of aircraft being chewed up by the British and Australian armies and the US Navy respectively.
>literally within days of capturing Moscow, stopped only by Hitler’s order to divert forces
>most diverse army in world history
>worlds biggest factory (America), worlds biggest meatsuit manufacturer (Russia), worlds biggest gaggle of homosexuals (England) still just barely “win” the battle for the right to cut your sons dick off
>the most kino and it’s not even close
OP is not a homosexual for once
>born too late to fight for Hitler
>born too early to fight for AI Hitler
The only reason Germany even got as far as it did was because the Frenchies were so cucked and demoralized by communism that they just completely disintegrated after losing at Sedan.
Hitler got Hugo Boss wool suits for his regular infantry
Americans get multicam.
How much did Hitlers experience in WW1 play into the success of the Wehrmacht in WW2?
Or for that matter goebbles deployments in WW1.
Who was the last US leader that had experience on the front line?
It is said that Hitler was against the use of chemical warfare in ww2 since he was badly wounded from it since ww1. But probably all parties were agreeing it was a crap weapon with the technology at hand anyway.
Overall Hitler was a disaster as a leader of the Wehrmacht and his experiences during WW1 may have been key to it. He - not without justification - mistrusted the Generalstaff and overran their judgement and plans again and again, and picked political lapdogs to lead them. Meanwhile he enjoyed setting the Heer, SS, Luftwaffe and other organizations in competitive situations with the idea that it would create better forces. He was not unique in this line of thinking during that war, but it contributed to the fatal end.
>Overall Hitler was a disaster as a leader of the Wehrmacht and his experiences during WW1 may have been key to it. He - not without justification - mistrusted the Generalstaff and overran their judgement and plans again and again, and picked political lapdogs to lead them.
The exact opposite of all of this is true. Read less memoirs by butthurt generals, head a lot of good ideas that were ignored (like upgunning the panzers like 2 years before everybody else realized the necessity) and listened to his generals way too often when he disagreed.
E.g Kursk vs operation Panther.
Didn't they have a high rate of officer mortality to the point that the had barely
any competent officers left at the end?