     It was Christmas Eve in Bande, a little village northwest of Bastogne. The Abbe Jean-Baptiste Musty was celebrating Mass. The Germans had been in the town for two days now. During the German occupation, the Belgian resistance operated out of Bande, and there were reprisals, but the American army had arrived before the Germans could finish the job. Now soldiers from the SD, the security service of the SS, were here to even an old score. They quickly moved through town, arresting all the men. They even took four of the Abbe's young philosophy students. Seventy men, all the men from the village, were gathered in an old sawmill.
     They freed one man and his son in return for some wine. Then they separated the older men from the younger men and marched this younger group down the road to some burned-out houses. They lined them up, 33 in all, in three rows of eleven, with their hands over their heads. Then they went through their pockets, taking everything of value. Six soldiers guarded them.
     One of the soldiers put his hand on the shoulder of the last man in the last row. He led him to the burned-out house. The officer in charge was waiting at the doorway. He grabbed the man, shot him in the neck, and kicked him into the cellar of the burned-out house. The soldier came back and put his hand on the next man's shoulder. He too was led to the house; he too was shot.
     One by one, the Belgians were led to the cellar and shot. They were too frightened to offer resistance. Leon Praille was the 21st. When he felt the hand on his shoulder, he walked partway to the house, then hit the escorting soldier with his fist and ran away. In the gathering darkness, he made his escape. Nobody else ran. 32 men were killed. When they were done, the SD officer emptied his machine pistol into the pile of bodies. Then the soldiers piled wood on top of the bodies and left.
/The SS
     The SS or Schutzstaffel, was originally created as a guard for Nazi party officials. Under the energetic leadership of Heinrich Himmler, the SS gained control of the Secret Police and later all police forces within Germany and the occupied territories. By the end of the war, the SS had become a state within a state, extending its reach into such areas of German life as recruitment and training of conscripts, pensions, population resettlement, marriages, and legal affairs (the SS had its own legal system.) The SS also ran the death camps through its Totenkopf (Death's Head) formations.
      When the war began, the SS added a new arm, the Waffen-SS, or military arm of the SS. Originally composed of just four regiments, the Waffen-SS grew rapidly. By the end of the war, it included 31 divisions, including 7 SS Panzer divisions. The Waffen-SS had the best of everything: first pick of all recruits, the best equipment, and even its own supply system which enjoyed precedence over regular army supplies. Despite this, combat performance of SS units was not appreciably better than regular Wehrmacht units; in the Battle of the Bulge, the Sixth SS Panzer Army was stalled in the north while the Fifth Panzer Army, composed of regular army units, made the big breakthrough.
     Initially, Waffen-SS troops were volunteers chosen for their racial purity and ideological reliability. Later, as Germany's manpower resources became strained, the requirements were loosened so much that anybody who succumbed to the great pressures to "volunteer" was accepted. All SS recruits were subjected to intense political indoctrination and were expected to fight with fanaticism. They also considered themselves above the law and developed a reputation for brutality, murdering civilians and shooting prisoners of war. Most of the atrocities perpetrated in World War Two by Germans were committed by the SS./