Why were Waffen-SS soldiers often shot instead of being taken prisoner?


 It is a pathetic episode of the history, but the truth that the Waffen-SS soldiers were frequently shot after giving up is simply explained by the desire to take revenge. This was the result of the excessive brutality displayed by the SS in war.The SS was the armed wing of the Nazi Party which was fanatical and ruthless. They were not only notorious in breaching the laws of war. Often instead of becoming prisoners, the captured Allied soldiers were killed by them. An example is the case of the Normandy raid when SS men of Kurt Meyer shot twenty Canadian prisoners in the Ardenne Abbey; the Battle of the Bulge resulted in nearly ninety American prisoners being killed by SS men near Malmedy.


Word of these murders went round among the Allied troops. When an American or a British soldier found one of his comrades killed after giving up, rage was his order of the day. They hastily came to the conclusion that these SS men were no soldier at all they were killers and deserved no mercy.


Allied forces would tend to retaliate since the SS had adopted a policy of no-prisoner with the Allies. When an SS soldier tried to surrender, several units of the Allies saw the chance to get even back as well as to kill a dangerous fanatic who could kill them first. The SS uniform was a death penalty due to the atrocious war crimes.

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