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.
The Japanese commander in charge of one of the civilian internee camps near Manila basically allowed the prisoners to take control when he heard U.S. troops were approaching to the extent that even one of the more brutal officers named Abiko was killed by the internees and they ground out burning cigarette butts in his dying corpse.
The officer in charge used that incident to get him and the other guards safe passage out. Don't remember the name of the prison, but it was and is a college campus.