“..some evidence that the “Special Units” trailed the Wehrmacht into Poland...”
The SS Einsatzgruppen were killers, pure and simple. Extermination squads sent to denude the area of the Slavic Untermenschen (subhumans).
Whatever crisis of morale they may or may not have had, it didn’t stop them from blowing peoples’ heads open, bayoneting children, gassing and burning people alive so they could create Lebensraum (living space) for future Teutonic settlement.
The Wermacht, were they true patriots for their nation and true soldiers, should have slaughtered the Einsatzgruppen, SS units, and Gestapo at very opportunity and taken their country back. They outnumbered them by a large majority. But they did nothing except the bidding of their National Socialist masters as well.
Nuremberg set a precedent - “just following orders” doesn’t spare you from the hangman’s noose, nor the firing squad. Wermacht officers and Landsers went to the gallows as well as the SS.
I do understand your point, but I think once the other side sets this insanity off, there’ll be no stopping it until one side or the other is left standing.
The same ideology that drove those Einsatzgruppen is alive and well in the modern left today. They can call it whatever euphemism they want, but it’s the same thing.
They mean to be masters, one way or the other.
Yes, but there weren't enough of them. So the orders also went out to Waffen-SS battalions that were a little less inclined to engage in summary executions.
Conspiracy, a movie about the Wansee Conference illustrates the point. An SS-Major named Rudolf Lange complains about his men having to participate in mass shootings in Riga. (Actually Lange's battalion stood by while Latvian civilians did the dirty work. But it impacted his men negatively and he wanted to make that point to the Boss, Reinhard Heydrich.)
My point is that there is always a shortage of savages & mentally-ill to fill the "Einsatzgruppen". Soldiers will not do this work. If some do, it's incredibly hard to keep them at it.
Incidentally this is one of the reasons that the Nazi's turned to industrial methods that were the hallmark of the "Final Solution". There needed to be some 'distance' involved between the perpetrators and the victims.