Schutzstaffel

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SS (for Schutzstaffel, German for "Protective Squadron") was part of the Nazi party, controlled by Heinrich Himmler. It was noted for its devotion to Adolf Hitler, for its fanaticism in battle, and for its control of the death camps during the Holocaust.

Origins

Third Reich: 1933-39

World War II

Holocaust

Soldiers in Waffen SS

The Waffen-SS organized 38 divisions comprising (at one time or another) about 800,000 soldiers; 25% were killed in battle. They were never integrated into the Wehrmacht, and had a reputation for brutality, mistreatment and killing of prisoners and civilians, and war crimes.[1] In December 1944 on the Western Front during the "Battle of the Bulge" elements of the Waffen SS Leibstandarte Division shot between 86 and 100 Americans prisoners near Malmedy.[2]

Huffman (2005) examines Waffen-SS soldiers and their experiences, actions, and importance during World War II. He explores the Waffen-SS in terms of ideology and indoctrination, everyday life and combat experiences, comradeship, battle front and home front influences, and connections between the " Frontgemeinschaft " (front community) and the " Volksgemeinschaft " (people's community). Huffman focuses on the Waffen-SS junior officers, NCOs, and enlisted men. Waffen-SS soldiers experienced a "totality" of war as a concrete, lived, total experience, and thus the front experiences became normalized to a large extent. They were much better trained than regular army units, with dangerous simulated combat exercise; it was rigorous, realistic and often brutal.[3] Strong comradeship among the troops was important, and helped account for their strong cohesiveness and fighting strength. The Volksgemeinschaft and Frontgemeinschaft and the strong attendant home front and battle front influences were not just words; there was a reality of overall solidarity, and the Volksgemeinschaft and Frontgemeinschaft served for millions of Germans as structures around which to cast their belief systems and actions. The German civilian populace was militarized during the war, and the German military formations, especially the Waffen-SS, were greatly militarized.<ref. Huffman (2005)</ref>

Ideology, indoctrination, and combat had significant influences on the mentalities and experiences, as well as the increased fanaticization and radicalization of the soldiers and their subsequent actions, which included a greater propensity to follow criminal orders and commit war crimes. Ideology was absorbed and accepted by Waffen-SS soldiers far more readily because of the nature of World War II with all of its racism and savageness. Waffen-SS troops were the most radicalized and politicized troops in the German armed forces and the fanaticized military elite and political soldiers of Nazi Germany.[4]

International units

The Waffen SS recruited soldiers, whether of German background or not, from many different ethnic groups across Europe. About 6,000 Norwegians volunteered; most of them were assigned to divisions that included both Germans and volunteers from other countries, about 2,300 served under the Waffen-SS in a separate national unit, the Norwegian Legion; there were also Danish, Flemish and Dutch units. Some 10,000 Frenchmen served in units the Légion des Volontaires Français (LVF, French Volunteer Legion) and Charlemagne Division of the Waffen-SS. Most volunteered in 1944 and had been members of the Milice Française and other collaborationist groups; the left France with the Germans to avoid reprisals by the Resistance. Knowledge of their fate if they were captured and sent home made them more fanatic. 5500 men served in the Danish Frikorps (Danish Legion), on the Eastern Front.[5]


Bowen (2001) describes volunteers in Waffen-SS units late in the war. Under Allied pressure, Francisco Franco withdrew his earlier support of Nazi Germany to a position of neutrality. He ordered the repatriation of the Blue Division to Spain, a unit that lost 22,000 of 47,000 men in the Stalingrad campaign. However, thousands of Spaniards committed to the Nazis' New World Order remained illegally in Germany, joining Norwegians, Danes, Dutch, and others who chose to fight alongside the Germans to the bitter end. Franco proved unable to persuade these Spaniards to quit a lost cause.[6]


See also

Bibliography

  • Allen, Michael Thad. The Business of Genocide: The SS, Slave Labor, and the Concentration Camps 2002 online edition
  • Breitman, Richard. The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the Final Solution. 1991. 352 pp.
  • Browder, George C. Hitler's Enforcers: The Gestapo and the SS Security Service in the Nazi Revolution (1996) online edition
  • Burleigh, Michael. The Third Reich (2000)
  • Dederichs, Mario. Heydrich: The Face of Evil (2006)
  • Estes, Kenneth. "A European Anabasis: Western European Volunteers in the Germany Army and SS, 1940-1945" (Ph.D. diss., University of Maryland), 1984
  • Evans, Richard J. The Third Reich in Power: 1933-1939., 2005. 800 pp.
  • Gingerich, Mark. "Waffen-SS Recruitment in the 'Germanic Lands;'" Historian 59 (1997): 815-30;
  • Goldin, Milton. "Financing the SS" History Today, (Jun 1998), Vol. 48, Issue 6 full text in Academic Search Premier
  • Huffman, Christopher William. "The Waffen-SS Soldier in World War II: Fanaticism, Everyday Life, and the New Military History." PhD dissertation Georgia State U. 2005. 430 pp. DAI 2005 66(6): 2352-A. DA3180700
  • Koehl, Robert. The Black Corps: The Structure and Power Struggles of the Nazi SS (1983)
  • Koethe, Richard D., III. "The Waffen SS." Military Review 1994 74(2): 64-67. Issn: 0026-4148 Fulltext: in Academic Search Premier/Ebsco
  • Kren, George M. and Leon H. Rappoport. "The Waffen SS: a Social Psychological Perspective." Armed Forces & Society 1976 3(1): 87-102. Issn: 0095-327x
  • Lumans, Valdiso. Himmler's Auxiliaries: The Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle and the German National Minorities of Europe, 1933-1945 (1993)
  • Manvell, Roger, and Heinrich Fraenkel. Heinrich Himmler: The SS, Gestapo, His Life and Career (2007)
  • Padfield, Peter. Himmler: Reichsführer-SS. 1990. 656 pp.
  • Rempel, Gerhard. Hitler's Children: The Hitler Youth and the SS (1989) online edition
  • Smith, Peter Scharff; Poulsen, Niels Bo; and Christensen, Claus Bundgård. "The Danish Volunteers in the Waffen SS and German Warfare at the Eastern Front." Contemporary European History 1999 8(1): 73-96. Issn: 0960-7773 Fulltext: Cambridge Journals
  • Sofsky, Wolfgang. The Order of Terror: The Concentration Camp 1997. 356 pp. online edition
  • Stein, George H. The Waffen SS: Hitler's Elite Guard at War, 1939-1945 (1984)
  • Syndor Jr., Charles W. Soldiers of Destruction: The SS Death's Head Division 1933-1945 (1977)
  • U.S. War Department. Technical Manual, TM-E 30-451: Handbook on German Military Forces (1945) online edition
  • Wachsmann, Nikolaus. "Looking into the Abyss: Historians and the Nazi Concentration Camps." European History Quarterly 2006; v 36; pp247+ online
  • Wegner, Bernd. The Waffen-SS: Organization, Ideology and Function (1990);

Notes

  1. ↑ Wegner (1990)
  2. ↑ Ater the war the colonel Joachim Peiper and 65 other SS soldiers were tried, convicted and imprisoned for war crimes; two were hung. James J. Weingartner, Crossroads of Death: The Story of the Malmédy Massacre and Trial. 1979
  3. ↑ Koethe (1994)
  4. ↑ Huffman (2005); Koethe (1994)
  5. ↑ Smith et al (1999)
  6. ↑ Wayne H. Bowen, "The Ghost Battalion: Spaniards in the Waffen-SS, 1944-1945." Historian 2001 63(2): 373-385. Issn: 0018-2370 Fulltext: in Ebsco
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