kampfgruppe:

Himmler envisioned his SS as a neo-pagan version of the Teutonic Knights of old, even building a castle (complete with a round table) for his most honored knight commanders. The “religion” of the SS was never official, but the organization was definitely taking on a pagan mysticism based upon the ancient Germanic religious beliefs.

There was the emphasis on the sacred nature of blood and soil; the blood of the Germanic race and the soil of the German Fatherland. The runic alphabet, the oak tree and reminders of the old Germanic gods were to be seen. The SS was moving from militant nationalism to mystical nationalism -the outright worship of the nation. The war, however, slowed progress in this area. It was no longer possible to send SS research teams out to dig up ancient Germanic settlements and as the war situation worsened it became more and more difficult to maintain even the racial purity standards of the SS.

Early on there had been an enlargement to include what was known as the Germanic-SS (men recruited from countries like the Netherlands, Denmark and Norway) but eventually the Waffen-SS included various ethnicities that were not German or Germanic in the least as the SS became more and more desperate for manpower.