An image showing a National Guardsman donning what appears to be a Nazi symbol on his kevlar helmet has caused the Army to launch an investigation after it was spotted on social media.
The 20th Special Forces Group’s official Instagram page posted a photo of three soldiers on Sunday, where one of them seems to have a patch depicting the Nazi SS Totenkopfverbände — or more commonly known as “Totenkopf” or “Death’s Head,” over a palm tree, according to Military.com.
“That weekend feeling. Enjoy the rest of your weekend. Don’t stop training. Don’t get complacent,” the caption of the post read.
The faces of the three Green Berets were blurred out in the post — a common practice for images showing Special Forces soldiers or United States Special Operations Command (SOCOM) personnel — indicating the photo was edited and the post reviewed before being put on social media.
The 20th Special Forces Group addressed the controversy on their page after users on Instagram noticed the historically horrific symbol.
“There was not one. It’s a 3rd group team patch taken out of context,” the account replied to a user, according to the outlet.
The image has since been removed from the account.
The Totenkopf logo was confirmed to once be the “unofficial” emblem of the 3rd Special Forces Group but was “banned in 2022 by 3rd Special Forces Group leadership when it was brought to their attention,” spokesman Maj. Russell Gordon with the 1st Special Forces Command told the Army Times.
The 3rd Special Forces Group is based in Fort Liberty, North Carolina, but Army Special Operations Command spokesperson Jacqueline Hill confirmed to Military.com that the Green Beret wearing the patch was attached to the 20th Group, which is based in Birmingham, Alabama.
“The use of symbols and patches depicting historic images of hate are not tolerated and a clear violation of our values,” Army Special Operations Command spokesperson Jacqueline Hill told the outlet Tuesday.
Hill noted that the command knew the “situation” and that the matter was being investigated.
It’s unknown how the logo was used before it was banned or how many teams within the special forces community adopted it before it.
Gordon shared that the soldiers flaunting the patch before the 2022 investigation were ignorant of the historical meaning of the Totenkopf.
“There was nothing that they found that clearly identified somebody trying to display any images of hate,” Gordon told the Army Times.
The Totenkopfverbände was the symbol for members of the Schutzstaffel (SS) responsible for running Nazi concentration camps, extermination camps and members of the Einsatzgruppen — the paramilitary death squads that participated in mass murders across Europe during World War II.
Members of the SS who wore “Death’s Head” did so to distinguish themselves from other units of the SS.
The patch worn by the soldier in the Instagram post appears to be a mock of an SS division’s campaign in Africa, which also shows the symbol on top of a palm tree.
The only difference in the logo was the patch being worn by the soldier had the “Death’s Head” insignia in the middle and not a swastika, like the authentic one used by the Nazis’ Afrika Korps.
This is not the first instance of Nazi logos or imagery being adopted by US military personnel.
The controversy comes only a month after the Army had to apologize for a recruiting poster for the Montana National Guard which showed Nazi soldiers marching during World War II, according to KTVQ.
In 2012, the Marine Corps was forced to apologize after scout snipers were seen posing with a flag with the Nazi SS’s lightning bolt-style flash.
The photo was taken in 2010 during a deployment in Sangin province, Afghanistan.
A spokesperson for the Marine Corps told The Guardian in 2012 that the sniper’s intentions were not in any way trying to glorify or reference the SS but stood for “Scout Snipers.”
