Schutzstaffel
SS 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.
Soldiers in Waffen SS
Huffman (2005) examines Waffen-SS soldiers and their experiences, actions, and importance during World War II. It 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. 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.
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.[1]
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.
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 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.[2]
See also
Bibliography
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- 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 (1983)
- 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
- 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)
- 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);