There are two main opinions about the Estonian soldiers in the German Waffen-SS in WWII.

Nationalists and conservative circles insist that they were actually freedom fighters, and revere them. Others, the Simon Wiesenthal Center among them, say that they were war criminals and an integral part of all that the SS represented.

After two weeks of research and sifting through materials in German, Estonian and English, one thing is very clear: While neither position is 100% accurate, neither of them is wrong.

There were Estonian units that committed war crimes. German record-keeping made sure this can be said with certainty today.

But the Estonian SS troops weren’t all involved, and at the time these troops were raised, the Waffen-SS wasn’t what the propaganda made it up to be.

A few facts for starters

• The Waffen-SS was a mess. In fact, quite a few of the Estonian volunteers and conscripts would perform far better in front line service than the German SS troops did.
• Two Estonian units committed war crimes. These actions were duly reported and recorded by the Nazi bureaucracy. The facts stand, the participants are known, and the records are accessible.
• The vast majority of the Estonian SS troops did not commit war crimes. To summarily make them war criminals is to ignore the facts.
• Most of the action the Estonian Waffen-SS troops saw in the war was in defence of their own country’s territory against the later occupying power, the USSR.

To really call your opinion sober, you have to consider one more thing. The Soviet occupation of Estonia in 1940 was followed by a purge. More than 10,000 people were deported, with mortality rates among the deportees of over 60%. Thousands were arrested, many of them executed, and thousands died in Soviet camps.

With this first impression of the power now taking over, anyone fighting the USSR and trying to get its army to leave Estonia was an ally. And it’s this fact precisely that makes the Estonian SS units freedom fighters and national heroes in the eyes of many.

So, Estonians as members of a sinister elite Nazi army? Not so much, as we’ll soon see.

Debunking a Nazi propaganda myth

Since the Nuremberg Trials, the SS has gone through various phases of investigation, prosecution, research and, more than anything else, demonisation.

That it’s painted as a criminal, murderous and ideologically poisoned group is undoubtedly deserved. But modern culture, with Hollywood as its front runner, has perpetuated Nazi propaganda’s myth of the SS as a near invincible elite force. We’ve come to believe that it was as coldly efficient and maliciously flawless as it was demented and maniacal.

The reality was quite different:

They were demented and maniacal, all right, but they were a far cry from a perfect elite force.

From its beginnings in 1925, the SS was Hitler’s personal group of thugs run by Heinrich Himmler. It competed with the Nazi party militia SA (Sturmabteilung, assault division), run by Ernst Röhm.

The SS rose to power in the Nazi state in 1934. Röhm’s SA had been trying to rise to the role of the regular German army, which meant serious political trouble for Hitler.

He decided to settle the matter for good by having Röhm and most of his staff murdered by Himmler’s boys, and after that, the SA lost its importance.

Shortly after the elimination of the SA, the SS-Totenkopfverbände (“Death’s Head Units”) were formed out of SS personnel already working in police and concentration camps.

Before it played any role in the German war effort, the SS was active in political persecution, ran concentration camps, denounced and terrorised citizens on a massive scale and generally filled the role of the Nazi party’s death squad and thug brigade.

That’s what it excelled at. Its later ambitions to become an elite “Germanic” fighting force were hampered from the beginning by its leaders’ somewhat strange approach to military education.

Although several astute military minds were involved in setting up its system, the SS was dominated by a strange half-wisdom in military matters right from the start. New tactical line-ups were tried out and implemented, the usual army ranks replaced by an entirely new system.

Himmler, as the SS’ leader, was a farmer that hadn’t worked in his profession a day in his life. The best he ever got to was a job as a lab technician in a fertiliser factory. Not all of his staff and officers came from similarly humble backgrounds -

But they were still led by a former lab technician. And that mattered.

A failed artist and traumatised soldier; a trade-school drop-out obsessed with war; a soldier who never saw action, and later failed as a farmer; a failed writer and journalist; and a whole succession of military men and small clerks who never found anything sensible to do after World War I. The Nazi party’s important people mostly fit the profile of the deeply traumatised, dirt-poor loser blaming anyone but his own idea of a Germanic master race for the misery he found himself in.

The SS, like the Nazi party, was founded and dominated throughout by these kinds of people. The rest was propaganda.

Even within Germany, it cheated and bullied its way into a respected position. The German army, going back to the famous Prussian military schools, was the backbone of the country and extremely well-respected. By taking that position within the emerging new order, they would hog some of this good will for themselves.

You’ll have noticed by now that what the SS was at this point had nothing to do with an actual combat force.

There’s plenty to make the SS stand out from other death squads. No-one else ever came close to the industrialised mass murder they committed. But it’s equally true that there was hardly any other military unit in the whole of World War II that had success statistics as lousy as those of the Waffen-SS.

There were two main reasons for this. The fact that its officers were often ideology-crazed military dilettantes that had been promoted for political rather than sound military reasons; and the increasing need for volunteers and troops forced into service in the occupied territories.

This is where the Estonians come in.

The Estonian SS troops in the war

With lots of incompetent officers and hastily trained troops, the Waffen-SS often performed poorly in actual combat. Resorting to suicidal bravado to make up for its lack of military knowledge, it had an unusually high tendency to attack without hesitation — never mind tactics and intelligence.

In 1942 the Waffen-SS was taking heavy losses and needed men, and it was decided to fill the ranks with troops raised in the occupied territories.

On 1 October Hitler approved the creation of an Estonian Legion. 500 volunteers had signed up by late autumn, and their number rose to 1,280 after the integration of other troops the following spring.

Where the volunteer regiments weren’t enough, existing local reserves were integrated. When this didn’t do the trick, the Germans switched to general mobilisation to get to division strength.

The Wehrmacht had a loss rate of about 60% on the Eastern Front. Nazi propaganda suggested that the SS’ was a mere 30% and that this elite fighting force was doing very well against all odds. Data available today shows that in reality it was likely above 60%, and that in terms of confrontations won they were performing far worse than the Wehrmacht.

So, here’s neglected fact number one: The Estonians were not part of a highly trained and highly successful Nazi elite force. On the contrary, they had found the best and swiftest way of getting themselves killed fighting for the Germans, and a whole lot of them did, too.

Equally, the Waffen-SS had long let go of its ideological requirements and was simply trying to keep its numbers up, which means that virtually any regular and able-bodied man was welcome to join.

That takes us to neglected fact number two: By the time its Estonian units were set up, you didn’t need to be a Nazi anymore to be in the SS.

From its beginnings, the SS had been about ideology and the Nazis’ typical pecking order. A common-sense approach to promotion never existed. At the point Estonian volunteers and conscripts joined the action, the Waffen-SS was a far cry from what German propaganda had been trying to turn them into.

The Estonian Legion formed in 1942 grew enough for a battalion (called “Narwa”) to be sent south to join the 5th SS Panzer Division in the Ukraine. They fought at the Eastern Front among regular troops until March 1944.

This is important, because the documented war crimes committed by this division took place in 1941 and 1945. As it was part of it only between early 1943 and early 1944, the “Narwa” battalion is one of the Estonian units that did not verifiably commit war crimes.

In May 1943 the remainder of the Estonian Legion was turned into the 3rd Estonian SS Volunteer Brigade and reinforced with drafted personnel. This brigade consisted of volunteers, conscripts and already existing units.

The war crimes committed

All of the recorded war crimes committed by Estonian SS men took place in Belarus in 1943. All of the units involved were sent there to help in anti-partisan operations.

The 288. Front Battalion of the Estonian Police served under the command of SS-Obergruppenführer Friedrich Jeckeln. Just a few months in existence, this battalion had been moved to Belarus to participate in an operation with the cynical name “Winterzauber” (winter magic), running from February to April 1943.

Jeckeln’s group had the task to create a 40-km unpopulated corridor between the town of Sebezh and the Drissa, a small river. The order was to execute anyone suspected of being a partisan, and to march the remainder of the population to collection points and camps.

They went about it by marching into the villages and shooting every able-bodied man between the ages of 16 and 50. A popular method of saving ammunition was locking people into barns, then setting fire to the barns and burning everybody inside alive.

Those deemed too weak for the march to the nearest collection point were murdered also, which included children and the elderly. Upon arrival at the collection points, the remainder were sorted into those strong enough to be deported to Germany for forced labour, and those deemed too weak, who were then sent off to extermination camps and killed.

Well over 10,000 inhabitants of the area died, and some 15,000 were deported or ended up in extermination camps like the one in Salaspils close to Riga. More than 180 villages were completely destroyed.

The 288. Front Battalion was later sent to fend off the Red Army at Nevel on the Russian border along with the rest of Jeckeln’s men.

The second Estonian unit involved in war crimes was the 3rd Estonian SS Volunteer Brigade. It was moved to the same area in Belarus, where it took up anti-partisan action under the oversight of SS-Obergruppenführer Erich von dem Bach, to which Jeckeln and his men also belonged.

Hitler summed up von dem Bach very nicely, talking about the man’s reliable service as early as in the 1930s: “Whenever there was a place where communist resistance couldn’t be broken, I made him go there, and he thrashed them.”

And thrash them he did — though not the actual partisans. His main tactic wasn’t to fight the partisans in combat. In fact, direct confrontations were so rare that his troops hardly ever took any casualties.

What he did instead was have his men terrorise, rape, kill and deport the civilian population of the area.

The procedure was always the same. First, his troops would encircle the area. Then they would make lists of all the villages in it that were deemed to be supporting partisans or late with food deliveries to the Germans. Then would follow what was euphemistically called the “combing” of the area: The houses were destroyed, and the civilians either murdered, arrested or deported to Germany as forced labour for its industries.

The 3rd Estonian SS Volunteer Brigade arrived in time to join such an operation run by Erich von dem Bach, called “Heinrich”. The SS had to cancel the party on 9 November, as all involved troops were sent to fight the Red Army in Nevel. Still, “Heinrich” resulted in 5,452 killed, 7,916 forced into slave labour in German factories, and another 7,894 deported.

Reading up on Estonian SS troops in the year 1943, most Estonian and English sources simply omit these two operations. With the exception of a few that can’t ignore the deployment of certain units for the sake of accurate dates, Operation “Winterzauber” and Operation “Heinrich” are neatly screened out.

Where they are mentioned, a fight against partisans with reference to terrain and engagements won is the only thing you read about. The war crimes committed only come up in references to the higher-level German SS units in English and German-language sources. The Estonian sources on the whole leave them out.

Biographies of the involved Estonian officers usually neglect these two operations entirely.

The casual oversight today

Last year former SS-Oberscharführer Harald Nugiseks died. He was one of the very few non-Germans to be awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross. In the decade before his death, his biography, service and person appeared in the media a few times.

There were different camps. When in 2007 Nugiseks made the shortlist for the Maarjamaa Risti teenetemärk (Order of the Cross of Terra Mariana) and President Toomas Hendrik Ilves didn’t decide to award him the honour, there was a public outcry, especially in circles close to the Estonian Defence Forces and the Defence League, both of whom had awarded military honours to Nugiseks in the past.

At the same time, there were rather vocal people especially along Russian interest groups that pointed out that a “fascist” and war criminal was about to be awarded a high honour.

Russian-leaning interest groups hardly ever give a tinker’s damn about historical facts and proof. That’s just the way they happen to operate — in their world, something repeated often enough by the right people becomes the truth. Not much to take seriously there.

On the other hand, there seems to have been an apparently deliberate, shall we call it “oversight” on the part of the historians and commission members putting Nugiseks’ name forward for the honour.

Deliberate simply because this oversight is consistent enough to appear across several historical works, always leaving out the same seemingly small detail. One week in early November 1943 is plainly missing. And as chance has it, that’s the exact week where the 3rd Estonian SS Volunteer Brigade, Nugiseks being a part of it, committed war crimes in Belarus.

And as you don’t often miss what you don’t know exists, this has quite a bit of influence on how the Estonian public, pupils and students among them, see this detail of WWII history.

An example of this neglected, seemingly tiny detail is in the image below, taken from the chronicles pages of the book “Nugiseks — Ühe Rüütliristi kavaleri elutee kroonika” (Nugiseks — The Chronicles of the Life of a Knight of the Iron Cross).

It’s a fairly good bet that you’re looking at the chief reason why President Ilves didn’t award Nugiseks the honour so many are convinced he was due.

Not even touching on matters of ethics now, the political aftershocks of such an act would have been enormous, as the presence of Nugiseks’ unit during operation “Heinrich” is supported by actual evidence, just as are the war crimes that were committed during that operation.

Under rug swept for conceivable reasons

For 1 November 1943, there’s just a note in the image above, saying which unit Nugiseks was assigned to, not what they were ordered to do. Then follows the 7-day gap. Next is a note that says that Nugiseks was put in charge of the 1st squad, likely of the 1st company of the 43. SS Volunteer Regiment, telling from the German unit designation.

Starting 9 November, the 3. Estonian SS Volunteer Brigade was moved to the Eastern Front. That’s where its members fought until the end of the war.

The battles they were involved in came to prove that they were a force to be reckoned with, and that they showed more resilience and military competence than was typical for the Waffen-SS.

The Brigade was incorporated with other units in the 20th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Estonian) on 24 January 1944. And it is here where we need to begin if we want to understand why historians, authors, politicians and military men would choose to let war crimes pass.

On 31 January 1944, the German army announced the general mobilisation in Estonia and started raising more troops.

The 20th succeeded in the Battle of Narva, pushing the Red Army back across the river. It was later reinforced by the battalion “Narwa” mentioned earlier, and also received about half of the 32,000 conscripts the German army managed to raise.

Further engagements followed. The Battle of Tannenberg Line became legendary, when the last remaining battalion of the division, reinforced by injured soldiers, held a crucial position on one of the Sinimäe area’s hills. They succeeded, using Red Army weapons and grenades after running out of ammunition themselves.

They held out despite fierce attacks and relentless bomb raids from 25 July to 10 August 1944, when the Red Army units finally gave up and switched to defensive tactics.

In late August, at Emajõgi River, Estonian units destroyed a bridgehead of two Soviet divisions and made the following Tartu Offensive possible. The offensive didn’t succeed though, and the German army was pushed back again.

By mid September Hitler had ordered the full retreat from all of Estonia. The German army granted all those Estonian soldiers who wanted to stay and defend their country the right to leave. Many of them did, fought alongside other Estonian units, and some later became the Metsavennad, or Forest Brothers, a resistance group against the Soviets.

The last official engagement of the 20th in Estonia was on guard duty at the Kloogaranna concentration camp. What happened there is the best illustration of the fact that by far not all of the Estonian SS men can be called war criminals.

Some 70 personnel fresh out of the division’s training guarded the perimeter of the camp, while a German SD (Sicherheitsdienst, internal SS police) unit went about murdering the remaining prisoners.

Shocked by what was going on, the commander of the 287. Police Battalion objected and was arrested by the SD unit. The 278. then went in and freed him, but was still arrested by the Soviets later on and falsely accused of having taken part in the murders alongside the German unit.

As always, context matters

Now you can either single out the two units that committed war crimes in Belarus and base your opinion of the Estonian SS men on the whole on what happened there in 1943.

Or you can decide to look at the bigger picture. Doing this, you really can’t justify anything; but you might be able to explain a few things.

When e.g. Harald Nugiseks arrived in Belarus, he had just turned 22. Like his fellows, he couldn’t but have been under the impression of the first Soviet occupation, the purge that had followed it, and a good idea of what would happen if the Red Army was allowed to take over a second time.

(Which eventually they did, and which resulted in another 20,000 Estonians deported, arrested and murdered.)

On top of that, as they had done wherever they went, the Germans and the SS had flooded the Baltic public with propaganda on a massive scale. Propaganda that illustrated one point very much: That there was only one party entitled to winning the war, and that this party would ruthlessly eliminate anyone who stood in its way.

We all know better now, of course — but today we simply can’t start with the assumption that the Estonian public, and with it the volunteers and conscripts, where anywhere near as informed as we are.

Add to this the fact that both the 288. Police Battalion and the 3rd Estonian SS Volunteer Brigade were closely integrated in an existing SS unit, and what the SS was known to do to deserters — and spice this mix up with some of Milgram’s findings — and suddenly the original situation of the Estonian SS units in Belarus looks quite different.

Neither can you ignore the propaganda-driven anti-Soviet fervour. For all those who really do need a reminder, there was no such thing as universally accessible information back then. And they were told that they were fighting communist partisans, after all.

Acknowledging the victims

The only thing that is really beyond any explanation is the consequence with which publicly accessible sources of information here in Estonia ignore the role these two units played in Erich von dem Bach’s partisan hunt.

The Estonian SS men who committed these war crimes later demonstrated great courage and patriotism defending Estonian territory against the Red Army; and that should be included in your judgment, too, by all means.

There is sufficient evidence of propaganda, general confusion, and psychological factors at play. Today’s Estonia has no need to feel in any way guilty or embarrassed about what was done by a few, because it had no power over the events at all.

But to completely dismiss the fact that they had a hand in the murder of thousands; that they played a part in the Nazi project for German Lebensraum (living space, habitat) in the East that aimed to exterminate the Slavic population of the area; that thousands were dragged to Germany as slaves after their families were executed by the SS; that the children born to them there were left to starve; to dismiss all of this is far beyond negligent.

The resulting cluelessness about these facts, and the blatant disbelief among Estonians that any of this ever happened, has something decidedly childish and becomes none of the historians writing about the period, some of whom as illustrious as former prime minister Mart Laar.

That missing week in the history books, and this double standard when it comes to acknowledging facts, is the real embarrassment to this country.

After all, you won’t hear anyone question the accuracy of wartime record-keeping when talking about what was done to Estonians under the occupying forces.