The Waffen-SS was the combat wing of the Nazi Party's Schutzstaffel, as well as the multi-ethnic and multi-national military force of Nazi Germany. Throughout the length of the war it would go from a shabby fighting force to the most brutal, feared, and detested military organization in the world.
The Waffen-SS started from three regiments and expanded to over 38 divisions during World War II, serving alongside the Wermacht, but never officially becoming part of it. Adolf Hitler resisted assimilating the Waffen-SS into the army as it was supposed to become a specialized police force at the end of the war. Prior to the war it was under the command of Heinreich Himmler, but upon mobilization control was given to the German High Command.
In the attack on Poland in September of 1939, the Waffen-SS was tactically inferior to the Wermacht and suffered comparatively large losses. They partially made up for this during the attack on France in the spring of 1940, where they were exceptionally successful. After the latter event, another division was ordered to be created. Hitler accredited this achievement to what he called a “fierce will – the sense of superiority personified.”
In mid-1941, on the eve of Operation Barbarossa, the Waffen-SS numbered just 160,000. It had six divisions (Leibstandarte, Das Reich, Totenkopf, Polizei, Wiking and Nordland). It was reserved to play a major part in the attack on Russia, and Himmler had made it plain what was expected of them.
Hitler had already told his Wehrmacht generals that the attack on Russia was to be carried out with “unprecedented, unrelenting and unmerciful harshness.” The Waffen-SS made its name in Russia for its unwavering determination in attack and its cruelty to prisoners and civilian...
... middle of paper ...
...er had lost all faith in the Wehrmacht. He appointed Sepp Dietrich to lead the counter-attack in the Ardennes – known popularly as the Battle of the Bulge. Waffen-SS units fought hard enough that they managed to successfully push back the Allies temporarily. Their advance was only stopped by lack of fuel for their tanks. At Malmedy the SS showed its darker side when American POW’s were killed after what is thought to have been a singular escape attempt gone wrong. After the war, Leibstandarte SS officer Joachim Peiper was sentenced to death for his part in this massacre, but was later sentences to life in prison instead.
The legacy of the Waffen-SS is much less than direct. On many occasions they proved themselves an elite fighting force, many times on both fronts. However, the harsh aspects of the war that are linked to the Waffen-SS have tainted their acheivments.
The Gestapo, Hitler’s secret Police, instilled a lot of fear into the German people's eyes. With their leader being one of Hitlers advisers, you can tell they were pretty important to Hitler. However, they weren't always lead by one of Hitler’s advisers. The Gestapo had many roles to Hitler's war plan. With this they had many duties to do and many different complicated ways they did their duties.
“In Stalingrad, in addition to its heavy losses, the German army also lost its formidable image of being invincible,” Document 8 reveals.” In fact, with the loss of Stalingrad, the German army began to lose battles all across the Eastern Front and in North Africa”(Document 8: Graphics). The men did not lose their lives in the Battle of Stalingrad did lose the image that had been built for themselves. The following loses after that battle prove that the German army was weakened and could no longer keep all of their word and the image Hitler had built up for them. Without pushing the soldiers to stay at Stalingrad, Hitler and the Germans could have salvaged the war and their reputations. Although the end of World War II was 2 ½ years after the Battle of Stalingrad, the result of the battle influence who won the war. Because the Germans lost at Stalingrad, they began to lose other battles and suffered questioning and disbelief of their previous reputation of being invisible. The biggest mistake Adolf Hitler made was how he conducted the Battle of
The time, 1941, the place, the then Soviet Union, the Red Army is in retreat from the German forces, following closely behind the German frontline is an unspeakable force coming over the conquered lands like a deadly plague. The Einsatzgruppen were considered as mobile death dealers by their victims. The major occupation of the Einsatzgruppen was the humiliation, extermination, and complete of annihilation of Jews, Romany or gypsies, members of the communist party, and intellectsia or major thinkers. They were organized to be the most efficient at occupying and murdering the undesirables. The leaders of these hounds of war were hand selected by Heydrich Himmler from the brightest, bravest, and most loyal of the Nazi members. The Einsatzgruppen were broken down to cover more area and to cause more chaos. Their techniques for killing were horrific, and in some cases could even tax the mind of the executioner. They were responsible for most of the murders of Jews during World War 2. Almost every huge massacre site they were at it killing undesirables.
The atrocities of war can take an “ordinary man” and turn him into a ruthless killer under the right circumstances. This is exactly what Browning argues happened to the “ordinary Germans” of Reserve Police Battalion 101 during the mass murders and deportations during the Final Solution in Poland. Browning argues that a superiority complex was instilled in the German soldiers because of the mass publications of Nazi propaganda and the ideological education provided to German soldiers, both of which were rooted in hatred, racism, and anti-Semitism. Browning provides proof of Nazi propaganda and first-hand witness accounts of commanders disobeying orders and excusing reservists from duties to convince the reader that many of the men contributing to the mass
Among 1.5 million Jews were shot to death in the most brutal way by different Nazi units. The so-called Einsatzgruppen, which operated behind the front against the Soviet Union, were
...then and now by the immense controversy involved and the large amount of faith, responsibility, and bravery needed for the people. Pushing aside the major setbacks Germany had undergone, people today know Nazi Germany as the country that had always found a solution and pushed through, even during the least hopeful times. However, people also know the Third Reich as the horrific time of oppression and discrimination by Hitler and his colleagues; according to some, these actions that made Hitler all-powerful and everyone else weak or nonexistent actually led Germany to their success. This time period will always remain a many-sided topic of debate because of the many ways Nazis were victors, victims, and totalitarians.
Hitler’s first and foremost goal in Germany was to eliminate all of the Jews. With this plan in mind, he consistently sought different methods to kill Jews. One of the first methods Hitler used to complete this mass murder operation was the Einsatzgruppen. According to A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust, the Einsatzgruppen were killing units generally composed of German SS and police personnel(...
The Nazi Party was formed in January 1919 by Anton Drexler. Originally it was named the German Workers Party (DAP). Hitler joined in Autumn of 1919. He quickly rose to become the leader of the party. The party was transformed by Hitler and became a political party rather than the discussion group that it had been when he joined. The SA (Brownshirts) was formed to protect Hitler and other party leaders at meetings. It also disrupted the meetings of the Nazi’s political opponents.
On June 22, 1941, the Adolf Hitler launched a ruthless attack on his so-called ally, the Soviet Union. In December 1941, after a short five months, Operation Barbarossa, induced by the Nazi’s, failed. The Nazi Party ultimately fell to its demise, through the fail of Operation Barbarossa, from a combination of Hitler’s arrogance towards the Soviets as well as the Soviet response, but most importantly, Hitler’s greatest mistake: spreading his troops too wide across a colossal Russia.
The National Socialist German Worker Party known as the Nazis was run by Adolf Hitler. This grew into a mass movement controlled by Germany
...iques. They were also taught some of the practices that the doctors at Dachau would use to experiment on the prisoners with. Although the camps were ran by the SS they were under the control of the Gestapo. After the war the Gestapo was dissolved and declared a criminal organization. At the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminal the Gestapo was named as one of the chief institutional perpetrators of the holocaust but not very many officers were prosecuted (“Nazi perpetrators”).
The Gestapo were a brutal and reckless police force around Nazi Germany that was truly a disgrace to society in my eyes. The Gestapo were essentially the police force of Germany at the time. They’re methods were notoriously brutal and they showed no mercy while prosecuting helpless Jews. While not as important as the SS, the bodyguards of Adolf Hitler, the Gestapo still played a big role into the way Nazi Germany was ran. As brutal as they were, it is hard not to admit that their fear tactics were one of a kind. The way they struck fear into the hearts of those who opposed them.
World War II was seen around the globe as a war to end all wars. Combat like this had never been experienced before and it was the largest scale battle in recent history. The death tolls for all sides skyrocketed to heights that had never been reached in any battle ever before. There was one man at the center of it all, one man who came to personify the root of living, breathing evil. That man was Adolf Hitler and to the rest of the world, he was a superhuman military machine who had no other goal but to achieve world domination through destruction. But the roots of the Battle of Stalingrad all began in 1941 when Hitler launched operation Barbarossa. Hitler’s powerful army marched across the east, seemingly unstoppable to any force. Stalin’s Red Army was caught completely off guard and their lines were completely broken apart. A majority of the country’s air force was destroyed when airfields were raided and many of the planes never even got the chance to leave the ground. Hitler’s army finally came to Leningrad where the city was besieged. The city held for 900 days and never gave way to the relentless Germans. At the cost of 1.5 million civilians and soldiers, the Red Army stopped Hitler from advancing further and postponed his plan to sweep over the south. Another cause for the retreat of Hitler was the brutal Russian winter, which Hitler and his army were completely unprepared for and the icy cold deaths would continue to haunt the Germans.
The Nazi group started in 1919, and was formerly known as “The German Workers’ Party,” (Nazi timeline1). Then Hitler changed the name of the party to “National Socialist German Workers' Party” also known as the Nazi party.The Nazis’ looked up to Hitler because he created speeches about changing Germany and communism and dictatorship. His main goal was to to have Germany turn their backs on the Jews. Hitler used the Nazi party to spy on the Jews and exploit them. Hitler was imprisoned from the outcome of a violent march and was sentenced 5 years in prison, but he only actually served 9 months. During that time the Nazi party grew significantly. After Hitler was released from prison the party grew from 27,000 members in 1925, the Party grew to 108,000 in 1929, (Nazi timeline 1). In the 1930s Hitler helped the Nazi party and they became the strongest party in Germany.
The Nazis follow through with Hitler's plan to exterminate the Jews. Many of the soldiers who work at the death camps were not even members of the Nazi party originally. However, most follow orders obediently