Kurt gerstein, born on august 11, 1905, of an old prussian family, graduated as a mining engineer in 1931. So the majority of german soldiers, both ss and regular army, just got executed when captured, and that went for. I stumbled on some photographic evidence of us troops busy killing german waffen ss. The real love story between a nazi ss guard and jewish. Total casualties among the waffenss will probably never be known, but one estimate indicates that they suffered 180.
The ss officers who led the einsatzkommandos the nazi mobile killing units. Ss general karl wolffthe highest ss and police leader for germanoccupied italy. Exwaffen ss troops who fought after ww2 axis history forum. Ian baxter is an avid collector of ww2 photographs. Red cross and vatican helped thousands of nazis to escape. It wasnt until may, five days after germanys defeat, that the last remnants of wehrmacht and ss units in czechoslovakia stopped fighting. Many an author, popular and academic, has tackled the topic of the ss and waffen ss but very few have done so in an objective fashion like stein. There were lot of ss divisions in ww2, and ss members commited lot of crimes. After more than six decades, with libraries full of books, archives packed with testimony and warehouses crammed with documents, you might. His previous books in this series include hitlers boy soldiers, nazi concentration camp commandants and german army on the eastern front the advance, german army on the eastern front the retreat and nazi. In 1940, standard practice in the german police was to grant equivalent ss rank to all police generals. How thousands of nazis were rewarded with life in the u.
The 7 most notorious nazis who escaped to south america. Some ss men have confessed that there were some gas chambers at auschwitz or at auschwitzbirkenau. This post on world war ii books is sponsored by libby. As a result, veterans were generally denied the rights and benefits granted to other wwii german veterans. Laughter lines the faces of camp staff as they prepare for a singsong. Fifteen years and four books ago, i tackled the third reich and the holocaust. To see the wide variety of ss uniforms that were made, i can highly recommend the 3 volume set of books by michael beaver uniforms of the waffenss. Two thousand nine hundred fortyfive men lined up in four motorized columns immediately behind the german army on june 22, 1941 as it prepared to launch operation barbarossa the german attack on the soviet union an attack designed to win the war. Inside these pages, you will meet over 960 infamous men the officers of nazi germanys totenkopf deaths head.
In the final months of world war ii, as the allied troops pushed deeper into nazi. One of the authors who wrote about the conflict in indo china from 1945 to 1974 made a point of stating that the ffl forces there, which were only a small. American intelligence officer frank manuel started seeing the symbol near the. After the night of the long knives, when the ss became independent from the sa, hitler. Wagemueller escapes the allied powers in postwar europe by fighting his way west and using.
Written for the us market, it doses contain some questionable photo captions and some equally questionable translations of german phrases. However, even during the darkest of times, there was still love. The ss, in the third reich series published by timelife in 1988, looks at the early history and formation of this organisation. High ranking german politicians courted former waffen ss members and their veteran organisation, hiag. A small number of veterans, somewhat controversially, served in the. What happened to most of the german generals captured by. Find out how and why south america became a safe haven for thousands of former nazi party members and ss officers after world war ii. These photos were taken between may and december 1944, and they show the officers and guards of the auschwitz relaxing and enjoying themselves as countless. By downloading libby to your smartphone, you can access thousands of ebooks and audiobooks from your library for free anytime and anywhere. Rachel seiffert, whose grandfather was a doctor in the waffen ss. Likewise, german forces occupying the narrow hel peninsula in poland didnt surrender to the soviets for nearly a full week after the official end of hostilities.
Dirlewanger was sent to a concentration camp, but through the help of a former wwi colleague who knew ss chief heinrich himmler, he was once again released. The ranks include distinctive insignia designs worn on the collar points by all officers. Pierce intercepted a japanese convoy returning to rabaul from lae, on 10 january 1943. Few perpetrators seek out their victims, let alone write books about them. This was because of numerous highprofile atrocities and their connection to the ss and nsdap. Waffenss veterans in postwar germany played a large role, through publications and political pressure, in the efforts to rehabilitate the reputation of the waffenss, which had committed many war crimes during world war ii. This is an apolitical forum for discussions on the axis nations and related topics hosted by the axis history factbook in cooperation with christian ankerstjernes panzerworld and christoph awenders ww2 day by day. Waffen ss veterans in postwar germany played a large role, through publications and political pressure, in the efforts to rehabilitate the reputation of the waffen ss, which had committed many war crimes during world war ii. Ss officers in a parade, 1939 bundesarchiv, bild 10200009 ccbysa. The ss officers who ran the nazi concentration camp system. Maximilien aue has reinvented himself, many years after. September 1 marks the 78th anniversary of the start of world war ii, when the nazi wehrmacht stormed into poland. Dont miss these 100 must read world war ii books, including fiction, ya. The admittance of former waffenss personnel to the new bundeswehr created.
Recruited nazis more than thought, declassified papers. Photo showing execution of waffenss troops in a coal yard in the area of the dachau concentration camp during its liberation. An exception was made for waffenss conscripts sworn in after 1943, who were exempted because they were not volunteers. After wwii ended the waffenss was rightly condemned at the nurnberg trials as a criminal organization. Devils guard, by george robert elford published in 1971, is the story of a former german waffenss officers string of nearconstant combat that begins on world war iis eastern.
Some rare images of waffen ss pictures from history. A history of the division images of war 1st edition. The prin eugen was also worn by army officers on occasion. Waffen sshitlers elite guard at war, 19391945 by george h. List of nazi party leaders and officials wikipedia. Here, casey titus tells us about a love story between a nazi concentration camp prisoner and an ss guard at auschwitz. You will encounter twelve ss officers who served in treblinka and. On may 6, 1945, hitlers successor, reich president and admiral karl donitz, formally relieved himmler of his duties, in accordance with hitlers orders. After her conscription in 1942, bothe served the majority of the war at the stutthoff camp near danzig. Finally a single volume detailing the ss officers that served in the largest and most. Following is the list of persons holding the title positions as well as actual highest ranks of the schutzstaffel ss since the earliest inception of the armed ss units in nazi germany. Laughing at auschwitz ss auxiliaries poses at a resort for auschwitz personnel, 1942. Ss officer otto skorzeny, who helped organize and train the.
This model known as the prinz eugen and is the second rarest out of the 9 different patterns of the field marshal series. The red cross and the vatican both helped thousands of nazi war criminals and collaborators to escape after the. The prinz eugen was favored by ss officers in the years before they came out with the m36 officer degen. On nuremberg trials ss was declared criminal organization by international military tribunal, and banned in germany after 1945, but most members of that organization were not punished. Decades after nazi armies began their march of conquest and. When the war first began, the vast majority of ss members belonged to the allgemeine ss, but this proportion changed during the later years of the war after the waffenss opened up membership to ethnic. Execution of ss soldiers at dachau the killing of unarmed pows did not trouble many of the men in i company that day for to them the ss guards did not deserve the same protected status as enemy soldiers who have been captured after a valiant fight.
Argonaut ss 166 naval history and heritage command. In fact, she was not in the ss in any capacity but her husband karl koch was the commander of buchenwald and later majdanek. From brasilia to paris, tehran to ulaanbaatar, government officials on. After a good nights sleep, groening reported once more with the other new arrivals to the central ss administrative building. I have recently added a mega rare black ss panzer wrapper from the 5th ss panzer division wiking.
Military side arms of the major combatant powers by peter suciu editors note. You will encounter the 256 ss officers who worked at dachau the ss concentration camp that doubled as a training school for death. The ss einsatzgruppen was a paramilitary task force that was formed in 1938, when austria and parts of czechoslovakia were being annexed and occupied by germany. The sun can reveal that 25 members of hitlers ss are.
Richard euringer writer who selected 18,000 unsuitable books which did not. Members of the waffen ss who enlisted or were drafted into a german ss division or a foreign division of the ss after 1943 were exonerated. She was born on the wrong side the year after hitler came to power, and. Ostap kykawec, who now lives in west yorkshire, was one of 8,000 of the waffenss officers who settled in the uk after world war two.
They confirmed, however, that there were several smaller disparate group who helped nazis after ww2, in conjunction with the catholic church, several latin american governments and even the cia. During wwii, oskar groening watched as hundreds of thousands of jews were. Officers being sentenced to death for the massacre of of 86 civilians in the village of ascq during world war ii after a german troop train was derailed. Commander of ss unit lives in us after world war ii. After world war ii, thousands of nazis became informants in the cold war against the. Literally, supreme leader of the ss by virtue of his position as the fuhrer of germany. The stories of my grandfathers in the wehrmacht and waffen ss. The french convinced a significant number of waffenss troops to join the french foreign legion after the armistice. Ive heard that the options they were given were not very good. After the night of the long knives, when the ss became independent from the sa, hitler was listed on ss officer rolls as member no. I vow to you, adolf hitler, as fuhrer and chancellor of the german reich. Peter suciu, whose previous articles for have included the small arms rifles, submachine guns, machine guns of the major world war ii belligerents, turns his attention to the principal hand guns used by allied and axis countries. The holocaust has left its mark as one of the darkest moments in history. In 1963 wiesenthal identified karl silberbauer, an austrian policeman serving in.
As a member of the hitler youth he took part in the burning of books written by. What happened to the memebers of the ss after wwii. The einsatzgruppen special action group were waffen ss who went around in vans and gassed every jewish peasant they could find or killed them in other horrible manners. Karl hanke governor gauleiter of lower silesia from 1941 to 1945. An ss officer, mengele was sent at the start of world war ii.
April 29, 1945 us army photograph you can see the piles of dead germans lying there. After serving a twoyear sentence, he was released but was soon after imprisoned again for sexual assault. What happened to the german waffen ss soldiers after the. One of the most horrifying testimonies from the horrors of the holocaust was left by a consciencestricken ss officer, kurt gerstein, who visited the deathcamps belzec and treblinka in august 1942 and witnessed the mass gassing of jewish men, women and children. Between 1925 and 1945, the german schutzstaffel ss grew from eight members to over a. Starting in 1939, foreign units of the allgemeine ss were raised in occupied countries. Soon after her release from internment in 1948, maschmann wrote a letter to.
Pfannenstiel before the landcourt of darmstadt in the federal republic of germany, on june 6, 1950. After world war ii, american counterintelligence recruited former gestapo officers, ss veterans and nazi collaborators to an even greater extent. The nazi werewolves who terrorized allied soldiers at the end of. Army plane which was out of bombs saw one destroyer hit by a torpedo, saw the explosion of two other destroyers, and reported five. Some exss officers who gave interviews in the 60s maintained odessa never existed as the single organised global organisation as envisaged by weisenthal. What was the fate of most ss members after world war ii.
I have to say that after i spoke to a holocaust historian from the auschwitz. Any that were alive at the end of the war and surrendered may have violated their oath. After world war ii ended, eichmann went into hiding in austria. Certainly after wwii many former ss men joined, and some of them that ended up in mercenary units in africa were murdered by british mercenaries, as. The man in the photo above is adolf otto diekmann, the battalion commander who was the highest ranking officer present at oradoursurglane on june 10, 1944 the day that 642 men, women and children were murdered and the whole town was destroyed by fire. Laughing at auschwitz ss auxiliaries poses at a resort.
After germanys defeat in world war i groenings father joined the. Hsspf and ssoberabschnitt fuhrer, head of the munich police in world war ii, 86, 1 april 1929, 15067. The top concern for the ss was annihilating anything and everyone that was considered a threat to the nazis. Confessions of ss men who were at auschwitz by robert faurisson.