The Waffen-SS

The non-Germans who fought in the German armed forces during World War II, particularly in the Waffen-SS, had to wait a long time for their stories to be told. During the Cold War, a simplistic dichotomy held sway. Historians in both East and West demonized them as collaborators and war criminals. The veterans painted themselves as volunteers fighting to save Europe from “Bolshevism.” Both tacks simplify: to the victorious Allies, non-Germans fighting in the Waffen-SS undercut the myth of bad Germans on one side and just about everyone else on the other—a fable to which both the Soviet and Western blocs subscribed. Waffen-SS veterans, meanwhile, gathered together at reunions and spun tales of combat against the Red Army—leaving out the slaughter of defenseless civilians. The end of the Cold War and the revival of European nationalisms in the years following 1989 changed all that. Once-taboo subjects and memories re-emerged, the world saw memorial marches by “freedom fighters” in the Baltic states and Ukraine. It turns out there really was a Fascist International, made up of men from all over Europe willing to lay down their lives for the cause of anticommunism; given the number of young people who attend memorial events today, the idea still resonates

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