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First, this wasn't the "norm" for German behavior on the Western Front. Even on the Eastern Front they generally exploited the prisoners or let them die from exposure. Those that they outright executed they often believed to be communist party members/commisars or had some other political reason for doing so.
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The following doesn't come from the best source, but it's late at night and it's the nearest. This is in regard to fighting in the Ukraine in 1941:
From Ripley, Tim,
Hitler's Praetorians (Spellmount, 2004)
"When six men of the
Leibstandarte's reconnaissance battalion were overrun and executed by Soviet troops, [Sepp] Dietrich was enraged and ordered every Russian prisoner caputred over a four-day period to be shot. More than 4,000 Russians were killed in cold-blood by the
Liebstandarte."-p.71
I doubt that many of those 4,000 men were shot because they were Communist party members. Eastern Front was no quarter asked, no quarter given.
Even on the Western Front, the Waffen-SS were hardly pure. Most of us will know of the execution of Canadian prisioners by the 12th SS
Hitlerjugend, supposedly because British troops had beaten several HJ officers to death. Indeed, the fighting between the Canadians and HJ in Normandy was some of the most ruthless and bloody on the Western Front. I'm not sure that many prisoners were taken then.
Of course, there were exceptions, such as the 9th SS Division's treatment of the 1st British Airborne Division prisoners they took after the fall of Arnhem, who were surprised at how well they were treated. Sadly, this seems to be a relatively one-off case.
-SC