[6] The rules were partially relaxed in 1940,[7][8] and after the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Nazi propaganda claimed that the war was a "European crusade against Bolshevism" and subsequently units consisting largely or solely of foreign volunteers and conscripts were also raised.

[25] By November 1933 the formation had 800 men, and at a commemorative ceremony in Munich for the tenth anniversary of the failed Beer Hall Putsch the regiment swore allegiance to Adolf Hitler.

[45] Himmler's military formations at the outbreak of the war comprised several subgroups that would become the basis of the Waffen-SS: In August 1939, Hitler placed the Leibstandarte and the SS-VT under the operational control of the Army High Command (OKH).

The SS Totenkopf, on the southern flank of the 7th Panzer Division, was overrun, finding their standard anti-tank gun, the 3.7 cm PaK 36, was no match for the British Matilda II tank.

[64] The SS Totenkopf 4 Company, then committed the Le Paradis massacre, where 97 captured men of the 2nd Battalion, Royal Norfolk Regiment were machine gunned after surrendering, with survivors finished off with bayonets.

[80] SS Division Nord, which was in northern Finland, took part in Operation Arctic Fox with the Finnish Army and fought at the battle of Salla, where against strong Soviet forces they suffered 300 killed and 400 wounded in the first two days of the invasion.

Over the winter of 1941–42 it received replacements from the general pool of Waffen-SS recruits, who were supposedly younger and better trained than the SS men of the original formation, which had been drawn largely from Totenkopfstandarten of Nazi concentration camp guards.

[42][82] The invasion of the Soviet Union proceeded well at first, but the cost to the Waffen-SS was extreme: by late October, the Leibstandarte was at half strength due to enemy action and dysentery that swept through the ranks.

[84] Because it was more mobile and better able to carry out large-scale operations, the SS Cavalry Brigade had 2 regiments with a strength of 3500 men and played a pivotal role in the transition to the wholesale extermination of the Jewish population.

[86] On 19 July 1941, Himmler assigned Fegelein's regiments to the general command of HSSPF Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski for the "systematic combing" of the Pripyat swamps, an operation designed to round up and exterminate Jews, partisans, and civilians in that area of the Byelorussian SSR.

[91] Fegelein's final operational report dated 18 September 1941, states that they killed 14,178 Jews, 1,001 partisans, 699 Red Army soldiers, with 830 prisoners taken and losses of 17 dead, 36 wounded, and 3 missing.

During Field Marshal Erich von Manstein's counteroffensive, the SS Panzer Corps, without support from the Luftwaffe or neighbouring German formations, broke through the Soviet line and advanced on Kharkov.

The German offensive cost the Red Army an estimated 70,000 casualties but the house-to-house fighting in Kharkov was particularly bloody for the SS Panzer Corps, which lost approximately 44% of its strength by the time operations ended in late March.

But the German advances now failed – despite appalling losses, the Soviet tank armies held the line and prevented the II SS Panzer Corps from making the expected breakthrough.

[109] The Leibstandarte was thereafter sent to Italy to help stabilise the situation there following the disposal of Benito Mussolini by the Badoglio government and the Allied invasion of Sicily, which marked the beginning of the Italian campaign.

In March, the bulk of the 1st Italienische Freiwilligen Sturmbrigade (or Brigata d'Assalto, Volontari in Italian) was sent to the Anzio beachhead, where they fought alongside their German allies, receiving favourable reports and taking heavy losses.

It then formed the rear guard for the three German corps withdrawing from Finland in Operation Birch, and from September to November 1944 marched 1,600 kilometres to Mo i Rana, Norway, where it entrained for the southern end of the country, crossing the Skagerrak to Denmark.

Favoured tactics during the siege, particularly of the Dirlewanger Brigade, included the ubiquitous gang rape of female Poles, both women and children; playing "bayonet catch" with live babies; and torturing captives to death by hacking off their arms, dousing them with gasoline, and setting them alight to run armless and flaming down the street.

[b][c] In the following weeks, the unit was moved south to the Wola district, but it fared no better in combat there than it did in Ochota; in one incident, a sub-unit of the Kaminski Brigade advanced to loot a captured building on the front line, but was subsequently cut off from the rest of the SS formation and wiped out by the Poles.

As a part of Operation Konrad I, the IV SS Panzer Corps was committed to action on 1 January 1945, near Tata, with the advance columns of the Wiking Division slamming into the Soviet 4th Guards Army.

On 23 April, SS-Brigadeführer Wilhelm Mohnke was appointed by Hitler as Battle Commander for the centre government district (Zitadelle sector), which included the Reich Chancellery and the Führerbunker.

[56] A number of SS medical personnel who were members of the Waffen-SS were convicted of crimes during the "Doctors' trials" in Nuremberg, held between 1946 and 1947 for the Nazi human experimentation they performed at the camps.

[201] In addition to documented atrocities, Waffen-SS units assisted in rounding up Eastern European Jews for deportation and utilised scorched earth tactics during rear security operations.

[210] High ranking German politicians such as Konrad Adenauer, Franz Josef Strauss, and Kurt Schumacher courted former Waffen-SS members and their veteran organisation, HIAG, in an effort to tap into the voter potential, and helped deflect blame for war crimes onto other branches of the SS.

A small number of veterans served in the new German armed forces, the Bundeswehr, something that raised national and international unease in regard to how it would affect the democratic nature of the new army.

[211][212][213] SS-Gruppenführer Heinz Lammerding, who commanded the Das Reich Division that perpetrated the Tulle and the Oradour-sur-Glane massacres in occupied France, died in 1971, following a successful business career in West Germany.

"[218] On 22 June 2005, the Italian military court in La Spezia found ten former Waffen-SS officers and NCOs living in Germany guilty of participation in the Sant'Anna di Stazzema massacre and sentenced them in absentia to life imprisonment.

On 21 February 2012, The Council of Europe's Commission against Racism and Intolerance published its report on Latvia (fourth monitoring cycle), in which it condemned commemorations of persons who fought in the Waffen-SS.

[236] The results are still felt, with scholarly works being drowned out by a "veritable avalanche of titles",[247] including amateur historical studies, memoirs, picture books, websites, and wargames.

[252] On 30 April 2021, after the march was held in Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated: "We categorically condemn any manifestation of propaganda of totalitarian regimes, in particular the National Socialist, and attempts to revise truth about World War II.