A DW investigation has found that dozens of Instagram accounts have been sharing images of Wehrmacht and SS officers framed as heroic, with captions praising their courage, toughness and tactical skill while ignoring their role in war crimes and the Holocaust. Many posts display visible SS symbols and are presented without historical context, attracting millions of views and largely approving responses—heart and applause emojis—while receiving little critical engagement.
The posts appear to have slipped past moderation. Meta and Instagram did not consistently flag or remove content that includes hate symbols, according to the report. The SS, prominently featured in many of the images, was the main instrument of Nazi repression and terror and played the central role in operating concentration and extermination camps such as Auschwitz, Majdanek and Treblinka. In Auschwitz alone, roughly 1.1 to 1.5 million people were murdered, most of them Jews from across Europe, along with Sinti and Roma, Poles, prisoners of war, political opponents and other targeted groups.
Experts warn that decontextualized imagery functions as online propaganda. Eva Berendsen of the Anne Frank Educational Center said she is shaken by the volume of Nazi content and cautioned that presenting such images without explanation leaves young viewers to form their own, potentially distorted impressions. Many teenagers encounter Nazism and the Holocaust first on social media—often before classroom instruction—so posts that lionize soldiers can shape attitudes without critical framing. Repeated exposure to idealized images of supposedly heroic fighters can also reinforce problematic ideals of masculinity, Berendsen added.
Concrete examples underline the problem. One post showed two photos of Wehrmacht mountain infantryman Otto Schury—one in uniform, one in civilian dress after the war—accompanied by text praising his “bravery” in the capture of Chania on Crete. The caption made no mention that the German occupation was followed by terror against civilians: about 300 Jewish residents of Chania were deported to concentration camps, and only a few survived. Another post celebrated Waffen-SS officer Kurt Meyer, showing SS runes on his collar and extolling his toughness, while omitting that Meyer was a convicted war criminal who had personally taken part in killings after the 1939 invasion of Poland.
DW’s inquiry found no single point of origin for these accounts; they are registered in several countries, including Germany, Pakistan, the United States and Turkey. Some appear intended to maximize reach and engagement, while others show clear ideological motivation.
Historians and Holocaust organizations condemned the posts. Johannes Hürter of the Institute of Contemporary History in Munich said celebrating convicted war criminals and figures heavily implicated in atrocities is an “almost unbearable distortion of history” and a worrying sign of a relapse into uncritical attitudes toward the Nazi past. He linked the wave of glorification to the broader rise of right‑wing extremist attitudes and networks, which have long admired Hitler’s armed forces and now use symbols and uncritical portrayals as coded affirmation and communication.
Christoph Heubner, deputy chairman of the International Auschwitz Committee, accused Meta and its founders of failing to distance themselves from the attitudes those posts reflect. For survivors and relatives of Holocaust victims, the online glorification is deeply hurtful; Heubner described the posts as an attack on survivors’ dignity that emotionally stigmatizes victims and treats them inhumanely.
DW contacted Meta with a list of problematic posts and received a reply from a Hamburg PR agency that offered no substantive answers, saying only that the items were “under review” and pointing to Meta’s Community Standards. Four days later, most of the examples DW had forwarded, including the Kurt Meyer photograph, were no longer accessible. Why Instagram allowed them in the first place and what measures will prevent similar content remain unanswered.
The investigation highlights gaps in platform moderation and the risks of encountering decontextualized extremist imagery online. Experts urge stronger enforcement of rules on hate symbols and more proactive contextualization, so that social media does not become a channel for normalizing or celebrating perpetrators of mass murder.