 Quoting German political journalist Karl Otto Paetel in his 1966 book, the historian George Stein writes that the works produced by HIAG's circle were "trying to prove only what no tolerably informed person has ever attempted to deny, viz., that the soldiers of the Waffen-SS were brave fighters, suffered big losses and, as far as they served in the front line, did not run exterminations camps".Stein notes that the apologists define the Waffen-SS "in the narrowest of terms" and are silent on the matter of war crimes.He notes that only a minority of men were implicated in known atrocities and that the most historically significant role of the Waffen-SS was in the battles for "Hitler's Europe".