"Even" US army forces were ordered to commit atrocities (for the usefulness of terror ot for the quick fix/shortcut of it), but some units did them in their own (that command may or may not have found out later about). It's just that war is chaos, & fog of war very real and a tool. The logistics of war are insane & at every level there are just individual people prone to people things.

Propaganda paints a picture for you and the tool to flight it is knowledge.

[–] marathon@thelemmy.club 5 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Never on the same scale as the Waffen-SS.

[–] Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee 0 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago)

Yes - to clarify, I wasn't disagreeing with anything I replied to.

I broadly assume "command" knows about shit happening, it's too many purely logistic things to just slip by (especially when whole units are involved). However I also assume that command (and historically later commands) decides if they know/knew about it (unless there is direct evidence they knew about it or ordered it).