Waffen-SS

 

The Schutzstaffel were units that began in 1925 when Adolf Hitler came to power over Germany. While Hitler was in power, he was building an army that he called the Nazis. The Nazis were a racial group that were building other armies like the Schutzstaffel(SS) who were made to be Hitler’s bodyguards. Hitler soon later gave his chain of command of the SS to his trusted friend Heinrich Himmler because he was the only one that Hitler could trust. At that time he only had two hundred and eighty men, but in 1933 his SS has grown up to fifty-two thousand men. Later in December of 1940 Himmler created his new army called the Waffen-SS, which grew very fast up to one-hundred-fifty thousand men. In June of 1944 Himmler had over eight-hundred thousand men, two-hundred thousand being Hitler’s bodyguards, five-hundred- ninety-four- thousand men for the Waffen-SS and finally twenty-four thousand men for the Death Head units.

 

 

                                    

Himmler decided that he would fully command the Waffen-SS through his years. The Waffen-ss grew so large they had over thirty-eight divisions each having about nine-hundred-fifty thousand men. Their training that they had to go through consisted of three objectives: physical fitness, small-arms proficiency and the political indoctrination. Those were so brutal that one of the three objectives failed to be passed. The soldiers did not have to salute to their officers they only had to have their right arm vertical from their elbow. When war was coming Himmler had to command three other divisions because the Waffen-SS division was still in training, so the other three were the LSSAH, SS-VT, and the SS-TV to be used to invade Poland and the Fall Gelb. Then the Waffen-SS got to go and fight but they showed poorly because of the emphasis on Political indoctrination than on military training before the war started.

                                                                                 

 

 

Sometimes they were made fun of because of their mess ups with their objectives and the casualties. Then later they proved themselves that they are as bad and were capable soldiers worth fighting for their division. They truly proved their skills during the Third Battle of Kharkov when the second SS-Panzerkorps and the SS Brigade furans under the command of Paul Haussen recaptured a city and werakened the Soviet offensive, that saving the group with Erich von Manstein from being cut off and destroued. The Waffen-SS division expanded into several other divisions being seen as being elite. These divisions mostly called the classic Waffen-ss because they had LSSAH, Das Reich, Totenkop, the multinational Wiking, the Hohenstaufen and Frundsburg, and the Hitlejugend. Many of the Waffen-SS despite having heavy casualties kept their reputations and crack formations until the end of the war.
 

They weren’t really involved in the Holocaust, there were only in charge of the death camps. Many of their units made some really bad war crimes and some people were willing to testify but they said that they couldn’t. When Hitler saw that the Soviets fought differently so he invaded their country differently and so the Waffen-SS were involved in killing innocent civilians and turning prisoners like political troops would be captured and then killed instantly. With many Jewish cities in Poland and Russia the Waffen-SS had more of a chance to be convicted of some war crime like when they captured over is one-hundred fifty men in Canada over the Battle of Normandy and then just killed them instead of letting them stay alive and making them talk about their secrets in their army and Oskar Kirlewanger and Bronislaw Kaminski were always remembered with their anti-partisan duties in the east and their behavior in the Warsaw uprising.

 
 

recruitment poster... In atrocities some units of the Waffen-SS had to find and capture all the Jews in eastern Europe during anti-partisan operations. Soon the wholeWaffen-SS was announced the biggest criminal unit by the International Military Tribunal and in 2003 the government of Great Britain said that there were over 0ne-thousnad-four hundred Waffen-SS that are retired living in the United Kingdom. Himmler had an recruitment specialist named Gottlob Berger was wishing to expand Himmler’s Waffen-SS without competing with anybody to be the bigger man. In 1942 the Waffen-SS also with their elite divisions had to rely on conscripts of ordinary German draft pool. And it was common for excess Navy personnel to be with the Waffen-SS without anybody testifying that they shouldn’t be with them. Then the Waffen-SS had to surrender to the Soviets.

 
 

Brenden Dankenbring

7th Soc. Studies

Rossville Jr. High

Holocaust Project

Spring 2009

Bibliography