Italian and Croation SS????

It was, but Germany needed manpower more than ideologies at the end of the war.

The italian SS was created in February 1944 looking at the state of the war in 1944 i'm sure you can see why. At this time as well Italy was being invaded and being ss italians gave direct control to hitler.

The 13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Handschar(1st Croation) was kind of weird creation. Mostly Himmler's doing and his twisted beliefs and fantasys. It was kind of famous as the only SS division to mutiny
    

Edited by Gundamor - 20-Jul-2006 at 14:47

They had the Black-Shirts (italian camicie nere or squadristi), they were a paramilitary organization. At the outbreak of war, they formed some divisions, but, they weren't ''elite'' (training, equipment) as the SS.

actually the reason the Waffen SS had so many foreigners was simply the German law at that time forbade to draft Germans into miltiary formations other than the wehrmacht. divisions that were German at closer look were not really German, for example the two cavalry Divisions who were made up of Volksdeutsche from Hungary. only 10 Divisions or so were made up entirely of Imperial born Germans, and they were drawn either from KZ Guards, the Hitler Youth, the Police or the personal field units of Hitler and Himmler.