The Nazis Who Never Lost Their Faith

In December 1944, the 12th SS Hitlerjugend division, which consisted of soldiers who were fanatically devoted to the führer, was deployed against the American Army in the Ardennes offensive (the Battle of the Bulge). 

The officers in the division had warned their soldiers that if any SS soldier surrendered without suffering incapacitating injury, he would be treated as a traitor. When some soldiers were injured during the battle and were captured by the American troops, they rejected transfusion of foreign blood, which they saw as blood drawn from the body of racial inferiors. They preferred to die with German blood flowing in their veins.

As late as 1945, when most German cities and towns had suffered a series of devastating bombing raids and were reduced to rubble, and it was clear that Hitler had lost the war, the SS soldiers (Schutzstaffel) did not lose their faith in the führer and were ready to die for him. They remained loyal to the Nazi doctrine of German (Aryan) supremacy.