The fallout continued over Parliament's recognition of a man who fought for the Nazis and there are now renewed calls to remove two monuments in Edmonton with ties to the regime.
Are these monuments linked to the group that didn't do any actual Nazi shit according to the historian?
Like, I wasn't 22me or Airborne while I was in the army, but I was in while they were doing some heinous hazing shit. Am I (more of) a dick because I was in the same organization that included those two units who were doing bad things at that time?
The comparison isn't "hazing is just as bad as genocide." The comparison is "simply being part of the same large organization as some people doing awful things doesn't make a person equally culpable." This is straightforward to understand.
SS was a volunteer unit. They only accepted the most devout and loyal. Those that were willing to do some of the most heinous depraved shit for Hitler.
If you chose to be a part of that, you deserve all the criticism that comes with it. Take offense all you want, I literally don't fucking care.
The Waffen-SS had 900,000 people by the end of WWII and it included conscripts. Recruitment standards loosened significantly as the war progressed. After the war, the Nuremberg trials specifically exempted conscripts who had been forced into the SS and who had not committed war crimes from any criminal responsibility.
World War II was complicated, especially on the eastern front. Don't assume the "good guys" and "bad guys" were clearly delimited by a simple badge or insignia.