All militaries have their legends but none are more surrounded by various myths than the German military of the Second World War. Today, we are going to have a look at some of these myths in order to discover the truth – that the German military was just as competent and flawed as other major militaries of the Second World War era.
Waffen SS superiority myth
Possibly the most common and prevalent myth concerns the training superiority of the Germans, specifically the Waffen SS units. This myth, based on actual Nazi propaganda, seeped into post-war popular culture and largely remains embedded in it to this day, despite the fact that this Waffen SS reputation is mostly unwarranted.
While some specific Waffen SS units could indeed be considered the "elite" of the German military, the same could be said about the Wehrmacht armored divisions. Waffen SS units were as a whole never superior to the Wehrmacht – quite the contrary. Certain units (such as heavy tank units) are on par record-wise with the Wehrmacht, but many Waffen SS units are simply inferior to the properly trained German soldiers. SS troopers were initially chosen by their racial origin and loyalty to the Nazi regime, neither of which implied any combat prowess. The regular Wehrmacht units had to save the SS several times from utter destruction, even during the campaign in France, and, as a general rule, the SS units had higher losses and achieved their objectives less often than the regular army units. The statements above actually only apply to the "best" Waffen SS units – Das Reich, Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler and Totenkopf. Other Waffen SS units were even worse (especially those not consisting of ethnic Germans but of foreign volunteers). In real battle they were generally sub-par to completely useless, had poor morale and were only used to hunt down partisans (for example the 13th Waffen SS Mountain Division "Handschar").
