Waffen-SS in the context of "Red Army"

A war crime is a violation of the laws of war that gives rise to individual criminal responsibility for actions by combatants in action, such as intentionally killing civilians or intentionally killing prisoners of war, torture, taking hostages, unnecessarily destroying civilian property, deception by perfidy, wartime sexual violence, pillaging, and for any individual that is part of the command structure who orders any attempt to committing mass killings (including genocide or ethnic cleansing), the granting of no quarter despite surrender, the conscription of children in the military, and flouting the legal distinctions of proportionality and military necessity.

The formal concept of war crimes emerged from countries fighting and the codification of the customary international law that applied to warfare between sovereign states, such as the Lieber Code (1863) of the Union Army in the American Civil War and the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 for international war. In the aftermath of World War II, the war-crime trials of the leaders of the Axis powers established the Nuremberg principles, such as that international criminal law defines what is a war crime. In 1899, the Geneva Conventions legally defined new war crimes and established that states could exercise universal jurisdiction over war criminals. In the late 20th century and early 21st century, international courts extrapolated and defined additional categories of war crimes applicable to a civil war.

The victim theory (German: Opferthese), encapsulated in the slogan "Austria – the Nazis' first victim" (Österreich – das erste Opfer der Nazis), was the 1949–1988 Austrian ideological basis formed by Austrians themselves under Allied occupation and the independent Second Austrian Republic. According to the founders of the Second Austrian Republic, the 1938 Anschluss was an act of military aggression by the Third Reich. Austrian statehood had been interrupted and therefore the newly revived Austria of 1945 could not be considered responsible for the Nazis' crimes in any way. The "victim theory" that had formed by 1949 insisted that all of the Austrians, including those who strongly supported Adolf Hitler, had been unwilling victims of the Nazi regime and were therefore not responsible for its crimes.

The "victim theory" became a fundamental myth in Austrian society which allowed previously bitter political opponents – e.g. the Social Democrats and the conservative Catholics – to unite and bring former Nazis back into social and political life. For almost half a century, the Austrian state denied the existence of any continuity between it and the political regime that had existed in Austria from 1938 to 1945, actively kept up the myth of Austrian self-sacrificing statehood, and cultivated an image of national unity. Postwar denazification was quickly wound up; veterans of the Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS took an honorable place in society. The struggle for justice by the actual victims of Nazism – primarily Jews – was deprecated as an attempt to obtain illicit enrichment at the expense of the rest of the Austrian nation.

The Malmedy massacre was a German war crime committed by soldiers of the Waffen-SS on 17 December 1944 at the Baugnez crossroads near the city of Malmedy, Belgium, during the Battle of the Bulge (16 December 1944 – 25 January 1945). Soldiers of Kampfgruppe Peiper summarily killed eighty-four U.S. Army prisoners of war (POWs) who had surrendered after a brief battle. The Waffen-SS soldiers had grouped the U.S. POWs in a farmer's field, where they used machine guns to shoot and kill the grouped POWs; many of the prisoners of war who survived the gunfire of the massacre were executed with a gunshot to the head.

Besides the summary execution of the eighty-four U.S. POWs at the farmer's field, the term "Malmedy massacre" also includes other Waffen-SS massacres of civilians and POWs in Belgian villages and towns in the time after their first massacre of U.S. POWs at Malmedy; these Waffen-SS war crimes were the subjects of the Malmedy massacre trial (May–July 1946), which was a part of the Dachau trials (1945–1947).

The Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (German: [ˈoːbɐkɔˌmando deːɐ̯ ˈveːɐ̯ˌmaxt] ; abbreviated OKW [oː kaːˈve] Armed Forces High Command) was the supreme military command and control staff of Nazi Germany during World War II, that was directly subordinated to Adolf Hitler. Created in 1938, the OKW replaced the Reich Ministry of War and had nominal oversight over the individual high commands of the country's armed forces: the army (Heer), navy (Kriegsmarine) and air force (Luftwaffe). With the start of World War II, tactical control of the Waffen-SS was also exercised by it. There was no direct chain of command between the OKW and the other High Commands.

Rivalry with the different services' commands, mainly with the Army High Command (OKH), prevented the OKW from becoming a unified German General Staff in an effective chain of command, though it did help coordinate operations among the three services. During the war, the OKW acquired more and more operational powers. By 1942, the OKW had responsibility for all theatres except for the Eastern Front. However, Hitler manipulated the system in order to prevent any one command from taking a dominant role in decision making. This "divide and conquer" method helped put most military decisions in Hitler's own hands, which at times included even those affecting engagements at the battalion level, a practice which, due to bureaucratic delays and Hitler's worsening indecision as the war progressed, would eventually contribute to Germany's defeat.

Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (German: [ˈhaɪnʁɪç ˈluːɪtpɔlt ˈhɪmlɐ] ; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was a German Nazi politician and military leader. He was the 4th Reichsführer of the Schutzstaffel (Protection Squadron; SS), a leading member of the Nazi Party, and one of the most powerful figures in Nazi Germany. He was also one of the main architects of the Holocaust.

After serving in a reserve battalion during World War I without seeing combat, Himmler went on to join the Nazi Party in 1923. In 1925, he joined the SS, which was initially a small paramilitary arm of the Nazi Party that served as a bodyguard unit for Adolf Hitler. Himmler rose steadily through the SS's ranks to become Reichsführer-SS by 1929. Under Himmler's leadership, the SS grew from a 290-man battalion into one of the most powerful institutions in Nazi Germany. Over the course of his career, Himmler acquired a reputation for good organisational skills and for selecting highly competent subordinates, such as Reinhard Heydrich. From 1943 onwards, he was both Chief of the Kriminalpolizei (Criminal Police) and Minister of the Interior, which gave him oversight of all police and security forces (including the Gestapo). He also controlled the Waffen-SS, a branch of the SS that served in combat alongside the Wehrmacht (Germany's armed forces) in World War II.

The government of Nazi Germany was a totalitarian dictatorship governed by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party according to the Führerprinzip. Nazi Germany was established in January 1933 with the appointment of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany, followed by suspension of basic rights with the Reichstag Fire Decree and the Enabling Act which gave Hitler's regime the power to pass and enforce laws without the involvement of the Reichstag or German president, and de facto ended with Germany's surrender in World War II on 8 May 1945 and de jure ended with the Berlin Declaration on 5 June 1945.

As the successor to the government of the Weimar Republic, it inherited the governmental structure and institutions of the previous state. Although the Weimar Constitution technically remained in effect until the German surrender, there were no actual restraints on the exercise of state power. In addition to the already extant Weimar government, the Nazi leadership created a large number of different organizations for the purpose of helping them govern and remain in power. They pursued a policy of rearmament and strengthened the Wehrmacht, established an extensive national security apparatus and created the Waffen-SS, the combat branch of the Schutzstaffel (SS).

The Indian Legion (German: Indische Legion), officially the Free India Legion (German: Legion Freies Indien) or 950th (Indian) Infantry Regiment (German: Infanterie-Regiment 950 (indisches)), was a military unit raised during the Second World War initially as part of the German Army and later the Waffen-SS from August 1944. Intended to serve as a liberation force for British-ruled India, it was made up of Indian prisoners of war and expatriates in Europe. Owing to its origins in the Indian independence movement, it was known also as the "Tiger Legion", and the "Azad Hind Fauj". As part of the Waffen-SS it was known as the Indian Volunteer Legion of the Waffen-SS (German: Indische Freiwilligen Legion der Waffen-SS). The transfer to the Waffen-SS was never fully executed and many members of the division refused to wear the new uniforms and insignia.

Indian independence leader Subhas Chandra Bose initiated the legion's formation, as part of his efforts to win India's independence by waging war against Britain, when he came to Berlin in 1941 seeking German aid. The initial recruits in 1941 were volunteers from the Indian students resident in Germany at the time, and a handful of the Indian prisoners of war who had been captured during the North African campaign. It later drew a larger number of Indian prisoners of war as volunteers.