[SZonian]

"As a side note there were also always a few German soldiers who simply refused to kill innocents (a favored trick was to close their eyes and raise their rifles when everyone else fired). They were assigned KP duty afterwards, but were mainly not subject to any other penalty."

Incidents like this were more wide spread than many would like to believe. Himmler himself noted the psychological impact this was having on his men, thus the impetus for the infamous death camps...

[pierrem15]

German SS camp guards were quite often "trained" or desensitized to brutality by being sent first to a concentration camp in Germany before being sent to a death camp in Poland.

Even then, as one SS man recounted in Shoah, many of them when the arrived at Auschwitz reacted by vomiting when they realized what was going on.

[pierrem15]

I also tend to resist the current understanding that implicates many Wehrmacht units in the Holocaust.

It's hard for me to imagine that combat units were pulled off the front lines to kill Jews, or that they had either the time or inclination to go chasing after Jews in a combat zone.

I think this is a confusion stemming from the fact that Wehrmacht reserve police battalions were often dedicated to rounding up and killing Jews.

So, yes the "Wehrmacht' was used in the Holocaust, but probably not many active combat units.

Reprisals, on the other hand, are a different matter.

[Cronos]

Himmler was scary crazy — I compare him to Beria and Timur-e-Lang in his blood thirst. He was a real monster.