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'The best political weapon is the weapon of terror. Cruelty commands respect. Men may hate us. But, we don't ask for their love - only for their fear.' -Heinrich Himmler The Schutzstaffel, or SS - the brutal elite of the Nazi Party - was founded by Hitler in 1925 to be his personal bodyguard. From 1929 it was headed by Heinrich Himmler, who built its numbers up from under 300 to well over a million by 1945. The SS became the very backbone of Nazi Germany, taking over almost every function of the state. SS members were chosen not only to be the living embodiment of Hitler's notion of 'Aryan supremacy', but also to cement undying loyalty to the Führer at every level of German society. Merciless fanatics in jackboots, the SS systematically slaughtered, tortured, and enslaved millions. This is the story of the rise and fall of one of the most evil organizations the world has ever seen.
'The best political weapon is the weapon of terror. Cruelty commands respect. Men may hate us. But, we don't ask for their love - only for their fear.' -HEINRICH HIMMLER The Schutzstaffel, or SS - the brutal elite of the Nazi Party - was founded by Hitler in 1925 to be his personal bodyguard. From 1929 it was headed by Heinrich Himmler, who built its numbers up from under 300 to well over a million by 1945. The SS became the very backbone of Nazi Germany, taking over almost every function of the state. SS members were chosen not only to be the living embodiment of Hitler's notion of 'Aryan supremacy', but also to cement undying loyalty to the Fu ̈hrer at every level of German society. Merciless fanatics in jackboots, the SS systematically slaughtered, tortured, and enslaved millions. This is the story of the rise and fall of one of the most evil organizations the world has ever seen.
A history of the SS, the Nazi Party's military arm, woven around the life and career of SS chief, Heinrich Himmler. The author reveals the SS rituals; how it functioned as a business organization; and how the key men (Himmler, Heydrich, Eichmann and others) operated - often against one another.
The Nazi, the Painter and the Forgotten Story of the SS Road by G. H. Bennett Pdf
In 2006 a long-forgotten canister of film was discovered in a church in Devon, a county located in the southwestern corner of the United Kingdom. No one knew how it had gotten there, but its contents were tantalizing—the grainy black and white footage showed members of the German SS and police building a road in Ukraine and Crimea in 1943. The BBC caused a sensation when it aired the footage, but the film gave few clues to the protagonists or their task. World War II historian G. H. Bennett pieces together the story of the film and its principal characters in The Nazi, the Painter and the Forgotten Story of the SS Road. In his search for answers, Bennett unearthed an overlooked chapter of the Holocaust: a wartime German road-building project led by Walter Gieseke, the Nazi policeman who ended up running the SS task force, that served the dual purpose of exterminating Jewish and other lives while laying the infrastructure for a utopian Nazi haven in the Ukraine. Bennett tells the story of the road and its builders through the experiences of Arnold Daghani, a Romanian artist who was one of the few Jewish laborers to survive the project. Daghani describes the brutal treatment he endured, as well as the beating, torture, and murder of his fellow laborers by the Nazis, and his postwar efforts to bring the perpetrators to justice. Recovering an important but lost episode in the history of World War II and the Holocaust, The Nazi, the Painter and the Forgotten Story of the SS Road is a moving and at times horrifying chronicle of suffering, deprivation, and survival.
"It is 1941 and Germany has won the war. Britain is occupied, Churchill executed, and the King imprisoned in the Tower of London. At Scotland Yard, Detective Inspector Archer tries to do his job and keep his head down. But when a body is found in a Mayfair flat, what at first appears to be a routine murder investigation sends him into a world of espionage, deceit, and betrayal"--
It began with an armchair. It began with the surprise discovery of a stash of personal documents covered in swastikas sewn into its cushion. The SS Officer’s Armchair is the story of what happened next, as Daniel Lee follows the trail of cold calls, documents, coincidences and family secrets, to uncover the life of one Dr Robert Griesinger from Stuttgart. Who was he? What had his life been – and how had it ended? Lee reveals the strange life of a man whose ambition propelled him to become part of the Nazi machinery of terror. He discovers his unexpected ancestral roots, untold stories of SS life and family fragmentation. As Lee delves deeper, Griesinger’s responsibility as an active participant in Nazi crimes becomes clearer. Dr Robert Griesinger’s name is not infamous. But to understand the inner workings of the Third Reich, we need to know not just its leaders, but the ordinary Nazis who made up its ranks. Revealing how Griesinger’s choices reverberate into present-day Germany, and among descendants of perpetrators, Lee raises potent questions about blame, manipulation and responsibility. A historical detective story and a gripping account of one historian’s hunt for answers, The SS Officer’s Armchair is at once a unique addition to our understanding of Nazi Germany and a chilling reminder of how such regimes are made not by monsters, but by ordinary people.
Europe. The Waffen-SS were not 'soldiers like any others', but ruthless killing machines, whose battlefield crimes set them apart from the regular Wehrmacht
Author : Robert Lewis Koehl Publisher : The History Press Page : 259 pages File Size : 42,9 Mb Release : 2012-05-30 Category : History ISBN : 9780752486895
The SS grew out of Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler's obsession to prevent the treachery they believed to have caused the German defeat in the First World War. The SS was to be an elite corps of politically aware soldiers whose primary aim was to prevent the undermining of the Nazi Party by rendering its potential enemies harmless. This disturbing story reveals not only the inner workings of the SS, but its paramount role in the mass murder of Europe's Jews, homosexuals and gypsies, its organisation of the death squads and the military campaigns undertaken by the Waffen SS.
The Waffen SS were Hitler's elite forces during WWII. They were the forces that were feared by the enemy and praised by their allies. During the Nuremberg Trials, the Waffen SS was condemned as part of a criminal organization, however, the Nuremberg Trials exempted conscripts from that condemnation. On several occasions, the Waffen SS was criticized by Heer commanders for their reckless disregard for casualties while taking or holding objectives, however, the Waffen SS divisions eventually proved themselves as capable soldiers. The poor initial performance was mainly due to the emphasis on political indoctrination rather than proper military training before the war. Despite this, the experience gained from the Polish, French, and Balkan campaigns and the peculiarly egalitarian form of training soon turned Waffen SS units into elite formations. These are the stories of the men that once were part of this elite force, not to glorify the Nazi regime or crimes committed by them, but to give them a voice too.
WARTIME BERLIN: The Niemann family - Karl, Minna and their four children - live in a quiet, suburban enclave. Every day Karl commutes to work, a business manager travelling around inspecting his “factories”. In the evenings he returns home to life as a normal family man.Three years ago Derek Niemann, born and raised in Scotland, made the chilling discovery that his grandfather Karl had been an officer in the SS - and that his “business” used thousands of slave labourers in concentration camps, such as Auschwitz, Dachau, Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen. Derek had known little about the German side of his family, but now a lifetime of unsettling hints and clues began to fall into place.With the help of surviving relatives and hundreds of previously unknown family photographs, Derek uncovers the true story of what Karl did. A Nazi in the Family is an illuminating portrayal of how ordinary people can fall into the service of a monstrous regime.
S.S. Nerissa, the Final Crossing by William Dziadyk Pdf
A remarkable human story, one that is worth reading. - Maritime Engineering Journal Fascinating story is told in a thorough and interesting manner, highly recommended. - Action Stations magazine, Canadian Naval Memorial Trust, HMCS Sackville Book is intriguing. Recommended for navy enthusiasts and more casual readers alike. - Starshell magazine, Naval Association of Canada --- Second Edition, with an Addendum. In the written histories of the Battle of the Atlantic, the S.S. Nerissa is overlooked. She was the only ship transporting Canadian Army troops to be lost to enemy action during the entire Second World War. The details of the sinking were highly classified until almost 50 years after the event. The tragic loss of this ship resulted in the third largest loss of life for a ship sunk by U-boats in the approaches to the British Isles. These human losses touched not only Canadian families, but also families in allied nations and in the neutral United States … and these losses are largely unknown to our current generation. Two hundred and seven lives were lost: 81 Merchant Navy; 73 Canadian Army; 10 Royal Canadian Navy; 4 Royal Navy; 8 Royal Air Force; 11 American pilots (UK Air Transport Auxiliary); 3 Royal Norwegian Air Force; 3 Canadian government employees; and 14 civilian passengers (including 3 children). After these many years, their stories deserve to be told. Included are eye-witness accounts from many of the survivors and some stories of those who perished. The first torpedo exploded into the Engine Room. Six minutes later, as the lifeboats were being lowered, U-552 (Erich Topp) fired a coup de grâce torpedo into the already stricken Nerissa. Of the ship’s eight lifeboats, only one was successfully launched, one was upright but flooded, four were capsized and two were pulled down with the ship. Much of this true story is based on the analysis of testimony, recollections and official reports taken from survivors, as well as declassified Canadian, British and German documents. Nerissa usually sailed independently, not in escorted convoys. This book focuses on the events which led up to the sinking by U-552 and the deadly 10 hours awaiting rescue about 80 miles off the coast of Ireland. Only eighty-four survivors were alive to be rescued by HMS Veteran, while HMS Hurricane and RAF 502 Squadron aircraft provided anti-submarine sweeps. The book also provides humanizing details to a very tragic story. Addressed is the public relations dilemma related to informing families of their losses, while the allied authorities enforced security restrictions related to a major wartime incident. Also included is relevant historical context of Britain’s overall war efforts at that time; and in particular Bletchley Park’s significant advances in decrypting German naval Enigma encoded messages … in the few weeks before and after the sinking. --- The Addendum summarizes results of recent collaborative analysis, by the author and a retired Irish journalist, of various historical records which may now allow identification of bodies from the S.S. Nerissa which washed ashore onto the Irish coast, but had not been identified during the war.
Reprint of the classic World War II memoir German General Kurt "Panzer" Meyer's autobiography is a fascinating insight into the mind of one of Germany's most highly decorated and successful soldiers of World War II. If you love small-unit actions, this is the book for you. Follow Meyer with the 1st SS-Panzer Division "Leibstandarte" and the 12th SS-Panzer Division "Hitlerjugend," from the first day of the war in Poland, through service in France, Russia, and Greece, up until his capture in Normandy in 1944 and his postwar trials and tribulations.
From an award-winning and bestselling historian, the first comprehensive military history in over fifty years of Hitler's famous and infamous personal army: the Waffen-SS The Waffen-SS was one of the most feared combat organizations of the twentieth century. Originally formed as a protection squad for Adolf Hitler it became the military wing of Heinrich Himmler's SS and a key part of the Nazi state, with nearly 900,000 men passing through its ranks. The Waffen-SS played a crucial role in furthering the aims of the Third Reich which made its soldiers Hitler's political operatives. During its short history, the elite military divisions of the Waffen-SS acquired a reputation for excellence, but their famous battlefield record of success was matched by their repeated and infamous atrocities against both soldiers and civilians. Waffen-SS is the first definitive single-volume military history of the Waffen-SS in more than 50 years. In considering the actions of its leading personalities, including Himmler, Sepp Dietrich, and Otto Skorzeny, and analyzing its specialist training and ideological outlook, eminent historian Adrian Gilbert chronicles the battles and campaigns that brought the Waffen-SS both fame and infamy.
“For those interested in the fighting on the Eastern Front in general . . . give[s] us some of the vast scale of the SS by the end of the war.” —HistoryOfWar.org Though Sweden was neutral during the Second World War, Swedish SS volunteers saw action on both the eastern front and NW Europe, and participated in some of the bloodiest clashes: the initial stages of Operation Barbarossa, the winter of 1941–42, the battles of Kursk, Arnhem, Normandy, Narva, the Warsaw uprising, the Cherkassy and Kurland pockets and, finally, the end in Berlin. There was never an official recruitment drive in Sweden, which is why only some 180–200 men enlisted. Those who wanted to recruit themselves often had to make their way to the occupied countries—a fact that makes those Swedes who joined the SS volunteers in the truest sense. This book lets us follow individuals such as Hans Lindén, who was the first named Swedish volunteer to fall in action aged barely nineteen years old; the unpopular Swedish SS officer Gunnar Eklöf; Elis Höglund, who after several years on the Eastern Front deserted and returned to Sweden; Gösta Borg, who volunteered for the SS a second time as he was denied the chance of becoming an officer in Sweden; and Karl-Axel Bodin, the only Swede to be included in the list of suspected criminals at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, who joined the SD in March, 1945. The book includes over 150 photos and is thoroughly researched from primary sources, making it a valuable addition to the history of the SS, and the men who volunteered to serve in it.