Why Were SS Soldiers Shot After They Surrendered?

Added: 2026-05-26

[00:00:00]The SS were known for being some of the most dangerous and fearsome soldiers in the whole of the Second World War.

[00:00:05]They were fanatical men who were more than willing to lay their lives down for their Reich. The SS were on an ideological crusade during the war, and they would do whatever it took to rid Europe of their enemies. And on the battlefield, they were treated ruthlessly, often if they were captured.

[00:00:22]The Allies knew exactly how dangerous the SS were, and they knew that these were the most ardent Nazis that they would face.

[00:00:29]They had also learned about some of the crimes that SS units had committed.

[00:00:34]Because of this, often the Allies refused to take prisoners and dealt with the SS quietly with a bullet to the back of the head.

[00:00:42]But the shooting of enemy combatants during the war who had surrendered was actually a war crime and was something that someone could be brought to a court-martial and a war crimes tribunal for.

[00:00:53]There was very little action taken against Allied soldiers at the end of World War II who did deal with the SS soldiers in this way, and they pretty much escaped any form of punishment. But why were SS soldiers shot after their surrender, even if it was a war crime?

[00:01:10]The SS, or Schutzstaffel, was to begin with, set up as Hitler's personal bodyguard detachment, and it would rise from a group of around a dozen loyalists to become one of the most dangerous and virulently paramilitary organizations in the whole of history.

[00:01:25]It was Heinrich Himmler, the Reichsführer SS, who expanded the group to a huge extent, and Himmler wanted to establish a military wing of the group.

[00:01:33]Hitler gave him permission to do this, and the Waffen SS was then born.

[00:01:38]This was a paramilitary armed force who were heavily indoctrinated into the Nazi laws and policies, and they were separate from the normal German army.

[00:01:47]The Wehrmacht actually became rivals to the Waffen SS, and there would be constant disputes during World War II between the organizations, as the SS detachments sometimes got better equipment quicker.

[00:01:59]As well as the military wing, there was also the Allgemeine SS, which was responsible for enforcing the racial policies of the Nazis. And there was also the SS Totenkopf for Bande, the Death's Head units, who ran the concentration and extermination camps.

[00:02:15]They were at their most primitive, radical Nazis, who would stop at nothing to neutralize their enemies and those who they deemed were in opposition to the Nazis and what the Reich government wanted to do.

[00:02:27]They were after all responsible for the deaths of those millions of people who found themselves persecuted in Europe during World War II.

[00:02:34]But the Waffen SS in particular were forced to undergo heavy indoctrination alongside their military training, which made them incredibly dangerous.

[00:02:43]The Allies understood these dangers and with this many SS soldiers became the most fearsome enemies who needed dealing with sharply and brutally.

[00:02:53]One reason why the SS soldiers were shot or executed after being captured was the SS's close connection to war crimes and atrocities.

[00:03:01]Unlike the regular German army, the Wehrmacht, the Schutzstaffel was heavily involved in mass murder, racial persecution, and terror all across occupied Europe.

[00:03:12]From the beginning of the war with the invasion of Poland to the final days of the conflict in which concentration camp prisoners were being gunned down en masse, the SS were known for committing horrific war crimes.

[00:03:24]SS units carried out mass shootings of civilians, public executions of prisoners, anti-partisan reprisals in which whole villages were liquidated of people, and much more.

[00:03:35]Because of all of this, the Allied soldiers often viewed the SS men not as ordinary soldiers in the same vein as the German army, but as ideological extremists and criminals.

[00:03:46]Hatred towards the SS intensified when Allied troops liberated concentration camps such as Dachau, Buchenwald, and Bergen-Belsen.

[00:03:55]After the Soviets liberated Auschwitz in January 1945, the Americans probably couldn't believe what they'd heard about the site.

[00:04:02]But when the Western Allied forces liberated camps of their own, they discovered prisoners who were starving, piles of corpses which were rotting, crematoria with ashes inside the ovens still, and evidence of industrialized murder on a scale which was unimaginable.

[00:04:18]Many soldiers were horrified and enraged by what they saw.

[00:04:21]In some cases, SS guards captured near these camps were shot as soon as they surrendered.

[00:04:27]One infamous example of this occurred within the barbed wire fences of Dachau concentration camp.

[00:04:33]Dozens of SS guards were killed during the liberation of the site shortly after the Americans captured the camp.

[00:04:40]The SS were also seen as fanatical fighters on the battlefield. Waffen SS men had a reputation for fighting ruthlessly and refusing to surrender.

[00:04:49]Most of them had sworn personal loyalty to Adolf Hitler, rather than to Germany, their country.

[00:04:55]Allied soldiers believed that SS men were more likely to keep fighting after defeat, and they also feared fake surrender, too.

[00:05:02]They knew SS soldiers would also try to escape captivity, or even continue guerrilla resistance if they let them go.

[00:05:10]Because of this reputation, some frontline troops believed it was safe to not take any SS prisoners at all, especially during brutal close-range combat.

[00:05:20]The war between specifically the Nazis and the Soviet Union, despite originally a pact existing between the two nations, was especially savage.

[00:05:28]From 1941 onwards, SS units participated in mass killings of Soviet civilians and prisoners of war during Operation Barbarossa.

[00:05:37]Entire villages were burned, hostages were executed, and millions of Soviet POWs died from starvation, shootings, and mistreatment.

[00:05:46]By the time Soviet troops entered Germany in 1944 and 1945, many soldiers had seen destroyed towns, dead civilians, and evidence of massacre.

[00:05:57]Because of this, the Soviet soldiers often viewed captured SS men as symbols of terror and destruction.

[00:06:03]Revenge killings therefore became common, especially during the final stages of the war.

[00:06:09]Certain SS atrocities also directly encouraged the Western Allied troops, as in the Americans, Canadians, and British, to stop taking SS prisoners.

[00:06:18]One famous example of this was the Malmedy massacre, which was committed by SS soldiers commanded by Joachim Peiper during the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944.

[00:06:28]Peiper ordered the slaughter of many American prisoners of war in a field, and when the bodies were discovered, news of the killing spread rapidly amongst American units, and many soldiers became far less willing to spare captured SS men afterwards.

[00:06:42]Similar reactions followed SS killings of Canadian prisoners in Normandy, and massacres of resistance fighters all across occupied Europe.

[00:06:51]There was a culture developing that the SS were almost deserving of the treatment they received.

[00:06:57]The SS also deliberately created an intimidating image. Their black uniforms and symbols, especially the Totenkopf, the death's head symbol, became associated with the concentration camps, political terror, and illegal execution.

[00:07:11]By the later stages of the war, Allied soldiers had instantly associated SS insignia with atrocities.

[00:07:19]This meant SS personnel were frequently treated much more harshly than ordinary Wehrmacht soldiers. By the end of the war, the Waffen SS had expanded massively and included foreign volunteers, conscripts, and teenage recruits.

[00:07:32]Some had little ideological commitment to the Nazi cause and had actually been forced into fighting in the final stages of the war.

[00:07:40]However, Allied troops on the battlefield rarely had time to distinguish between SS veterans and reluctant recruits. Hesitating for a moment could lead to their own deaths, meaning they instead pulled the trigger.

[00:07:52]Taking prisoners was also during fast-moving battles very dangerous, and this could lead to more surrendering soldiers being dispatched and shot.

[00:08:00]Particularly during operations like those on D-Day, the Allies were not in the business of taking prisoners, but were much more focused on moving and advancing forward.

[00:08:10]Any soldier who held their hands to surrender could have found themselves instead at the end of the bullet.

[00:08:16]But not all executions and killings happened on the battlefield. After the war, many SS personnel were tried by Allied military courts for war crimes.

[00:08:25]The most famous proceedings brought against the Nazis was, of course, the Nuremberg trials. During this trial, the SS was declared a criminal organization because of its central role in atrocities and genocide.

[00:08:36]Many SS leaders, camp guards, and officials were later executed at other trials after being convicted of war crimes. Others received long prison sentences.

[00:08:47]Although many SS prisoners were killed or executed quickly after capture, it is important to remember that millions of German soldiers, including large numbers from the Waffen SS, surrendered and did survive captivity.

[00:09:00]Most SS prisoners were not immediately shot after capture. Many spent years inside prisoner of war camps run by the Americans, British, French, or even the Soviets.

[00:09:09]Conditions could be extremely harsh, especially in Soviet captivity, but large numbers eventually returned home after the war.

[00:09:16]Ultimately though, captured SS soldiers were singled out because the SS represented far more than an ordinary military organization.

[00:09:24]To the Allies and the people living under Nazi occupation, the SS symbolized fanaticism, concentration camps, massacre, racial violence, and political terror.

[00:09:34]By 1945, years of brutality and war had created enormous hatred towards the SS.

[00:09:40]In the chaos and anger at the end of the war, this sometimes led to captured SS soldiers being executed either unofficially on the battlefield or officially after war crimes trials.

[00:09:52]Thanks for watching.

[00:09:54]If you did find this video interesting, please make sure to subscribe. Once again, thank you so much for watching one of these videos.