I’m sure they were excellent combat troops, but the best troops on earth would have difficulty taking a fortified hilltop castle defended by armor and machine guns. One has to wonder what they thought they were going to accomplish, even if they did take the castle...At that point in the war, even the most devoted nazi should have thought ‘why bother?’
According to wikipedia (so taken with a huge grain of salt) there was one SS soldier with the defenders as well.
Very true about assaulting a castle. Cool that a castle is still a SOB to take even with modern weapons. That’s my first takeaway. And that 17th SS looks like that second tier type SS.
First formed in 43, with draftees and Romanian Germans. Got introduced to our paratroopers several times and disliked them.
But these weren’t the “no cavity” “perfect Aryan” SS of 1939 types.
And agreed,, on May 5, 1945,,,a wise SS monkey should really be thinking about routes to Argentina.
That wouldn't surprise me. At that stage of the war, many SS soldiers were draftees.