HITLER'S WAFFEN SS TROOPS.   Term Paper ID:5617 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: Studies the origins, functions, political & military purposes & demise of the elitist Nazi police force.... More...

16 Pages / 3600 Words 8 sources, 46 Citations, TURABIAN Format $64.00 Return to List of Papers

Paper Abstract: Studies the origins, functions, political & military purposes & demise of the elitist Nazi police force. Paper Introduction: The purpose of this research is to examine the origin, purpose and demise of the Waffen SS. Following the Battle of the Somme in 1914, all German divisions were expected to train and maintain at least one battalion of crack assault units, who were subjected to especially rigorous training and used only in the event of a major push. The name given to such a unit was "Stosstrupp," or "Shock Troop." Stosstrupp was also the name first given to what is known better as the Schutzstaffeln, or SS. At least one commentator has seen a parallel between the Shock Troops of World War I and the armed Schutzstaffeln, or Waffen SS, of World War II. Both were separated from the regular land army by virtue of their harder training and special privileges. There is no direct link between the two military Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. The purpose of this research is to examine the origin, purpose anddemise of the Waffen SS. 578.Ibid., p. 451.Hohne, p. The suresymbol of the Reich's weakened state - the failure of top-notch SSdivisions to hold in the east, made Hitler furious, and the Chancellorcommanded the removal of the Leibstandarte arm-bands from the members ofthe four divisions: Adolf Hitler, Das Reich, Totenkopf, andHohenstaufen.[xl] In mid-194 , the Waffen-SS had consisted of 1 , men. At least one commentator[i] has seen a parallel between the ShockTroops of World War I and the armed Schutzstaffeln, or Waffen SS, of WorldWar II. 479.Ibid., p. As part and parcelof the "racial German" idea of recruitment, a school was established at BadToelz by the Waffen-SS. 138.Hohne, pp. . The Verfuegungstruppe almost did not survive. They moved as part of Hoth's 4thPanzer Army, which consisted of the hitherto unheard of total of ninepanzer divisions. Though they had not distinguished themselves as part of the Wehrmachtin Poland, the new Waffen-SS did brilliantly in Russia. 177.Waverly Root, Secret History of the War, Vol. By1944, not only Belgians, Dutchmen and Norwegians had joined the Waffen-SS,but Rumanians, Slavs, Ukrainians, and Russians as well.[xxiii] Himmler and Hitler, at least in the early days of the SS and Waffen-SS, prided themselves on the ability of the SS not only to police, but topropagate Aryan blood. . Given their militarytraining by No. Courses at Bad Toelz were restricted to three. This, of course, was the purpose of the SS to begin with, and itwas the retention of its police powers which no doubt allowed the Waffen-SSto retain the "SS" part of its title. 9 Infantry Regiment Potsdam, and headed by Sepp Dietrich,the Leibstandarte swore their allegiance to Adolf Hitler on the tenthanniversary of the 1923 Putsch, in November of 1933. There had been nounconditional surrender on the part of Germany, and so the Allies had notallowed for the policing of Germany, nor for the supervision of arms withinher borders. . 2 NavalBrigade, including Lieutenant Johann Ulrich Klintzsch, who supervised theSA's training, Lieutenant-Commander Hoffman, who became Chief of Staff, andthe Brigade's leader, Captain Ehrhardt. III (New York:Charles Scribner, 1945-46), pp. 459.Hitler, p. The solution tothe puzzle seemed to be to make the armed SS units independent, but the OKWGenerals would have none of it. Hitler very much wanted the SA directly to bedirectly responsible to the NSDAP, and, therefore, to Hitler. Hitler's Battles for Europe. InFebruary, 1945, four Waffen-SS armored divisions were sent to battle inHungary along with Sepp Dietrich's 6th Panzer Army. Casualties, as they had been in Poland, werevery high among Waffen-SS troops. The mammoth size of the General SS, and thefact that, from the beginning, it had duplicated virtually every Statefunction, made it possible for the SS, in the last ten months of World WarII, to take over Germany. . The origins of an armed SS go back to before the establishment ofwhat is formally known as the Waffen-SS. 17-19.Adolf Hitler, Hitler's Secret Conversations, 1914-1944 (NewYork: Octagon Books, 1972), p. I noticed this particularly while the Berghof was being built, and I was most anxious to do some- thing to improve it. One example of this police-action approach to military problems canbe seen in the course offered at the Waffen-SS school. 283-284. The personnel included Rudolf Hess.Heinz Hohne, The Order of the Death's Head: The Story ofHitler's SS, translated from the German by Richard Barry (NewYork: Coward-McCann, 197 ), pp. The army moved on a frontage of thirty miles, and cameup against rugged Russian defenses. 448.Bracher, pp. The Order of the Death's Head: The Story of Hitler's SS, trans. Hitler's Secret Conversations, 1941-1944. To the minds of many Nazis, much of Europe, including Belgium,Holland, and Norway, contained "racial Germans," or persons whose Nordicblood constituted their "Germaness." This was the beginning of the demise of the original intent of theSS. Very often the members of the Waffen-SS think about the deportation of this people (Russian Jews) here. Further, in the event of war, theVerfuegungstruppe had to be either disbanded, or made to submit to theorders of the Wehrmacht.[xiv] Following von Fritsch's fall from power, however, the case began toreverse itself. In addition to the remnants of TrenchMortar Company No. New York: Viking, 1957.Root, Waverly. While the anti-Nazivon Fritsch was in power, he did all that was possible to stifle itsexistence. the transmission of personal property of Jews to the GermanGovernment; illegal confiscation taking place in "the shortest possibletime;"[xxxiii] 2. the use of living prisoners for the purpose of forming abarricade in battle;[xxxiv] 3. the murder, in the disguise of Wehrmacht officers, of a FrenchPOW General.[xxxvi] Of particular notoriety were the crimes of the "racial German" 7thWaffen-SS, or "Prinz Eugen" Division: In October of the year 1942 the division "Prinz Eugen" commenced its criminal march through theYugoslav provinces. Graduates from this class, the Unterfuehrurschule, were encouragedto go on to the Fuehrurschule, which trained men with a combination ofmilitary and political leadership in mind.[xxviii] In the summer of 1943, the foreigners at this school included one detachment of Scandinavians- Finns, Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians organized together as a special group; a considerable number of Swiss, though not enough to permit the formation of a special battalion; several Estonian companies; a few Dutchman, Flemish, and Croats; some Hungarians; and a group called Volga Germans of mixed Teutonic and Slavic ancestry.[xxix] But half of the students at Bad Toelz were Germans in both thepolitical and racial senses. 89-9 .Ibid., p. . 22-23.Ibid., p. Members of Trench Mortar Company No. . Politicalinstruction was crucial.[xxx] So the Waffen-SS kept the best of two worlds. 19, Roehm recruited former members of the No. It remains to examine some of the atrocities of the Waffen-SS and the demise of that body in the final hours of World War II. Elitismremained a part of the Verfuegungstruppe, but its units could no longer becompared with the tiny bands of guards that the SS had started out to be.The generals of the Wehrmacht saw a threat. With itsincredible growth, the Reichsfuehrun-SS, Himmler, worried about thepossibility that the armed SS might slip away from his grasp. 415.Hohne, pp. The German Dictatorship: The Origins, Structure, and Effects of National Socialism, trans. Gestapo: Instrument of Tyranny. New York: Charles Scribner, 1945-46.Strawson, John. 577.----------------------- 1 19, underthe command of Captain Streck, beat up hecklers and troublemakers at NSDAPmeetings. It still helped to check the power ofthe Wehrmacht, not as a force large enough to take on the Army in "regularcombat," but as an extended, armed (Waffen) police force which could quellrevolts, whether those of the people or of the Wehrmacht. Both theSS and the Wehrmacht were extremely dissatisfied with theVerfuegungstruppe's performance on the field of battle. Near the beginning of July, 1943, the Germans attacked the KurskSalient. The SS: Alibi of a Nation, 1922-1945. . Hisplan involved using two of Hitler's decrees: the one of August 17, 1938,which had allowed parts of the Totenkapfverbande to join with theVerfuegungstruppe in the event of war, and one of May 18, 1939, which hadgiven permission to Himmler to call up 5 , men of the Allgemeine SS.The Totenkapfverbande were Concentration Camp guards, and the Allgemeine SSwere their replacements. Three Waffen-SS panzer divisions - Totenkopf, Liebstandarte, andDas Reich - assisted in the offensive. Upon his release from prisonin 1924, Hitler and Roehm struck up an old feud; whether or not the SAshould be under Party rule. It has been said that a combination of national bitternessand fear of Bolshevism produced and Freikorps, but whatever it was, theparamilitary organization attracted virtually every young man in Germany.Hitler later said that many SA men had come to him from the Freikorps.[iii] It is interesting to note that while Bracher, for one, paints apicture of the Free Corps as an exclusively reactionary group,[iv]Reitlinger claims that as many of them joined the resistance after Hitler'srise to power as joined with him.[v] In any case, that many Freikorpspersonnel later became SA personnel is undisputed.[vi] Captain Ernst Roehm created the first NSDAP police for the purpose ofprotecting Hitler in 1921. New York: Viking Press, 1956.Hitler, Adolf. 448.Ibid., p. They wore swastikas on their helmets and displayedarmbands of black, white, and red. Exactly the same thing happened in Poland, in weather 4 degrees below zero, where we had to haul away thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands; where we had to have the toughness - you should hear this but also forget it again immediately - to shoot thousands of leading Poles.[xxxi] The above statements belong to Heinrich Himmler and were given in anaddress to the officers of three SS Units at Kharkov in 1943. 7.Ibid., pp. In reaction to this, Hitler only said,"Losses can never be too high, they sow the seeds of futuregreatness."[xxv] Whether in victory or defeat, the by-words of the Waffen-SS seemed tobe "heavy losses." Another victory came in early 1943, when the entire SSPanzer Corps, cooperating with Hoth's Panzer Army of the Wehrmacht, removedthe Russians from Kharkov. The Wehrmacht was still in antipathy to the idea of an armed SS.Though they allowed the Waffen-SS to recruit, they also claimed the rightto screen applicants, and, in fact, were responsible for only one-third ofthe total applications made to the Waffen-SS going through.[xxi] Hitlerhimself was not, at least publicly, on the side of the further expansion ofthe Waffen-SS. In1939, he was head of the recruitment office of the SS Hauptamt. It was at first not athreat to the Wehrmacht. from the German by Richard Barry. 37 .Ibid., p. . New York: Praeger, 197 .Crankshaw, Edward. In 1941,there were 22 , . During the Nurnberg trials, many former Waffen-SSofficers claimed to have been "just soldiers" who happened to wear theuniform of the SS.[xxxii] Yet Nurnberg documentation showed otherwise, andit was the added actions of murder, "legalized" looting and general terrorthat distinguished an armed SS man from an armed soldier in the eyes of theAllies. Following the Battle of the Somme in 1914, all German divisions wereexpected to train and maintain at least one battalion of crack assaultunits, who were subjected to especially rigorous training and used only inthe event of a major push. A defensive zone of eight belts, 2 miles deep, containing mines, anti-tank guns, tank destroyers mounted with122-mm and 152-mm guns, massed artillery and almost a million men greetedthe unfortunate German aggressors.[xxvi] Though they performed well in battle, the Germans were repulsed. New York: Coward-McCann, 197 .Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression: A Collection of Documentary Evidence and Guide Materials Prepared by the American and British Prosecuting Staffs for Presentation before the International Military Tribunal at Nurnberg, Germany, Supplement A.Reitlinger, Gerald. They aretestimony to the fact that, while the Waffen-SS was a militaryorganization, it was also, like its sibling organization, the General SS, aterrorist organization. 414-415.Hohne, p. The name given to such a unit was "Stosstrupp,"or "Shock Troop." Stosstrupp was also the name first given to what isknown better as the Schutzstaffeln, or SS. Considering Hitler's suspicion of Roehm andEhrhardt, it is not impossible to construct the establishment of the ShockTroops as a sort of personal buffer against, not only anti-NSDAPindividuals, but the SA, should it become unruly. Organized underthe direction of Julius Schreck, SS members had to be between the ages of23 and 35, in excellent health, and fanatically loyal to "the Fuehrur."[xi] With the SS in his pocket, Hitler went about reestablishing the SA in1926. But with Berger'sexpansion of the Waffen-SS, this responsibility could not be carried out,since the Waffen-SS would come to include many non-Germans. by Jean Steinberg with an Introduction by Peter Gay. Prior to Hitler's takeover of the Wehrmacht in February of1938, the Verfuegungstruppe was denied artillery, refused the right to forma Division or publish notices of recruitment, and was subject to inspectionby members of the Wehrmacht. Berger also thought about andplanned for an even further expansion of the Waffen-SS. Today, thanks to the presence of a regiment of Leibstandarte, the country- side is abounding with jolly and healthy young children. 9 .Ibid., p. This was accomplished primarily with the aid ofthe Tiger Tank, an agile, broad-tracked tank which mounted an 88-mm gun.The success of the operation was of major proportions, since it regainedterritory lost in the near-catastrophic 1942 offensive, and restored theline of battle to where it had been before those losses. Though in many cases they acted, usually in accord withmembers of the Wehrmacht as in the above case, as any soldier in the fieldmight, though with a marked propensity for heavy losses and extra-fiercefighting, their military philosophy placed an equal weight of importance on"police-type" actions, as might be suspected by their background. For the furtherexpansion of the Waffen-SS, he turned to "Greater Germany," or what hasbene called the "Racial German" population of politically non-GermanEurope. By secret order of Hitler on August 17, 1938, theVerfuegungstruppe was classed as special police units which would do doubleduty in the event of war.[xv] That they would come under the command ofthe Wehrmacht in such a instance, remained temporarily the case. 1159.Reitlinger, p. TheLeibstandarte, fighting its way from Poland to the Black Sea, occupiedRostov in November, 1941. 4.Ibid., p. Both were separated from the regular land army by virtue of theirharder training and special privileges. One, the Umschulung,or retraining course, was intended for former officers of other nations.Students in this class simply had one style of military training, thatwhich they had brought with them from their native land, replaced with thatof the Germans. Its general purpose was the indoctrination of non-German (in the political sense) members in the ideals of Nazi philosophy.Not only citizens from occupied countries, but many from neutral nations aswell attend the Bad Toelz school. 423.Ibid., pp. These additions would make it possible forHimmler to organize three or four battle-strength divisions in a shortwhile.[xx] As soon as Hitler approved the plan, which technically got around theWehrmacht's rules against recruitment, Berger set about establishing thosedivisions. On August 19, 1939, the order came through for that to happen.Hitler ordered Inspector Hausser to become General Hausser and to directseveral units in combat in Poland. 456-458.Ibid., p. The Leibstandarte of 1933 was only a few hundredstrong, and seemed little more than ceremonial. 54 .Ibid., p. In 1942, there were 33 , , which grew to more thanhalf than half a million in 1943 and 91 , in 1944.[xli] Most of thisgrowth was made possible by Berger's "racial German" policy of recruitment,which made it possible for virtually anyone to join the Waffen-SS, much inopposition to the original SS principle of selectivity. In fact, almost simultaneous withthe NSDAP's seizure of power in 1933 came the "Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler,"an armed force organized as an SS Sonderkommando. . TheLeibstandarte Motorized Infantry was involved in the battle of Bzura, andthe "Germania" Regiment moved toward Lwow with the 14th army.[xvi] Himmler's reaction to the militarization of his "guards" is a sourceof speculation. New York: Scribner, 1971.-----------------------Gerald Reitlinger, The SS: Alibi of a Nation, 1922-1945 (NewYork: Viking, 1957), p. The Commander-in-Chief of theArmy, General von Fritsch, said on February 1, 1938, that "the attitude ofthe SS Verfuegungstruppe towards the Army is frigid if not hostile."[xiii]This attitude was generally reciprocal on the part of the Army, and lasted,in some form or another, throughout the War. The November putsch virtually destroyed what of the SA and SS-prototype had begun in the post-war period. 7.Karl Dietrich Bracher, The German Dictatorship: The Origins,Structure, and Effect of National Socialism, translated by JeanSteinberg with an introduction by Peter Gay (New York: Praeger,197 ), p. It was a police force,for the purpose of maintaining internal order and order in occupiednations. Party politics will not be tolerated . All branchesof the SS, which eventually came to include hundreds of thousands of men,were directly under his leadership. Their classes were not designed for use inconventional military situations, such s an army-to-army confrontation.Military instruction for Germans at Bad Toelz centered instead on suchthings as how to suppress revolts, and street-fighting. Another course was for the purpose of training former non-commissioned officers who had put in some time as recruits in the GermanyArmy. But it was also the private army ofthe NSDAP, belonging not to the Wehrmacht, though ostensibly it sometimestook orders from the Army, but belonging instead to the Party itself, andunder the direct control of Himmler. (On one occasion) officers and men of the SS division "Prinz Eugen" committed crimes of an outrageous cruelty . 454-456.Ibid., pp. This was significant as it had never beforeoccurred among members of the Waffen-SS. These thoughts come to me today when watching the very difficult work out there performed by the Security Police, supported by your men (Waffen-SS), who help them a great deal. On December 14, 1934, Himmler directed Hausserto take over a new organization, the SS-Verfuegungstruppe, whichsynthesized the Leibstandarte and the Politische Bereitschaften. It is a practice which must be followed: to these districts in which a tendency towards de- generacy is apparent we must send a body of elite troops, and in ten or twenty years time the blood- stock will be improved out of all recognition . the rape and murder of Polish women;[xxxv] and 4. Under Himmler, the SS grew and took on the characteristics ofterrorism and intransigence today associated with that body. Theinception of the Waffen-SS under Berger has been shown, and the differencesof the Waffen-SS with the Wehrmacht and the former's role in battle hasbeen discussed. A regiment of infantry and an artilleryregiment were assimilated by Major General Werner Kempf's division. 452-454.Ibid., pp. Hohne claims that Himmler never saw the Verfuegungstruppeas anything but an internal power-stabilization force, a way of checkingthe Wehrmacht should a coup d'etat be attempted.[xvii] But others haveclaimed that a military command in the field was a life-long ambition ofHimmler.[xviii] Whatever the truth of the matter, it seems obvious that: As Himmler's position became more powerful, and with the radicalization introduced by the total war, the (armed) SS, formed as a political- ideological special troop in conscious opposition to the Army, was able to assert itself over the Army as forcefully as the SS administration was to assert itself over the state apparatus.[xix] To assert such control mean, of course, to be independent of theArmy, at the very minimum. Thus, inApril, 1925, the SS was formally brought look existence. It also upset himthat, though the Waffen-SS had their own rank system (see page 6, thistext), many members used the rank system of the Wehrmacht.[xlii] From the fateful day of the attempted assassination of Hitler, July2 , 1944, the crumbling of the Waffen-SS was a simple reflection of thedissipation of Germany itself. . 8 -8 1.Ibid., p. Tiny, elite, theSS units numbered no more than twenty in any German city. 8 3.Ibid., pp. 7 .Reitlinger, p. 138.Ibid., p. 451.Ibid., p. Secret History of the War. This is made explicit inthe following 194 report of Himmler's: At Berchtesgaden, we owe a great deal to the infusion of SS blood, for the local population there was of specially poor and mixed stock. 46 .Ibid., p. Victims were shot, slaughtered and tor- tured, or burnt to death in burning houses. There is no direct link betweenthe two military forces, however, for the Waffen SS grew directly from theSA (Sturmabteilungen) and General SS, or protection squads of AdolphHitler. Part of the Verfuegungstruppe's problem inPoland had been their lack of heavy weapons, yet the OKW Generals werereluctant to either assume them weapons as a part of the Army or releasethem from the grasp of the Wehrmacht and let them develop their own heavyweapons supply. A "Totenkopf"Division followed, and there was the old Leibstandarte motorized infantry,which temporarily remained a regiment. Unlike the Army, the SS wasexpected to stay and hold, no matter how impossible the task. Uponhearing of the imminent destruction of the Verfuegungstruppe, Bergerapproached Himmler with a plan for its independence and expansion. the maintenance of our race is of vital importance.[xxiv] This view was also championed by Hitler, and it can be safely saidthat from the very beginning, it was not only the responsibility of the SSto protect Hitler, but to protect the race as well. The Shock Troopswere for the express purpose of guarding Hitler, and were "made up of menwho were ready for revolution and knew that one day or another things wouldcome to hard knock."[viii] There is reason to believe, upon readingHitler's own testimony, that the Shock Troops and their descendants held aconsistently high place in the value structure of Adolph Hitler.[ix] THe Shock Troops were small in number, racially "pure," and directlyunder Hitler's command. Hitler, not wanting the SA tobecome an instrument of Roehm's and Ehrhardt's, placed at its head CaptainHermann Goering.[vii] In 1922-1923, Hitler created the "Adolph Hitler Shock Troops," thedirect predecessors to the SS, out of the body of the SA. Nurnberg transcripts provide evidence of, among other atrocities andcrimes, the following: 1. 14.Ibid., p. On August 3, 1921, came the official proclamation creating theSturmabteilungen. . 8 8-8 9.Ibid., p. Infants with their mothers, pregnant women and frail old people were also murdered.[xxxvii]The Waffen-SS, through its association with the Concentration-Camp guardsin its "Totenkopf" Division, was also identified as party to the deathcamps.[xxxviii] As the Reich faded and the Second World War ground to a halt, sofaded the reputation for daring and fortitude in the face of heavy lossesassociated with the Waffen-SS in the early years of its existence. What had begun as a select corps of "racially pure" Aryans, now beganto include, for purposes of military expansion, those not so select. . 438-44 .Ibid., p. . I categorically refuse to allow the SA to become involved in Party matters; equally I categorically refuse to allow SA commanders to accept instructions from Party political leaders.[x] Hitler won this disagreement by ending his relationship with Roehm.But he deliberately postponed the reestablishment of the SA until he couldform something along the lines of the old Shock Troops, which would notonly be directly responsible to the Party, but to Hitler himself. Sent into combat onMarch 5 without artillery preparation or air cover, the SS divisionssuffered even higher losses than usual, and "symptoms of a rout"[xxxix]were reported to Hitler. This new army was to be called the Waffen-SS. 452.Bracher, p. Born in 1896, Berger had had a background in the NSDAP and in the SA. But it was the firstinstance of a guard unit being armed, and since an armed unit is for allpractical purposes an army, Hitler now had the beginnings of his own armyin the Leibstandarte.[xii] The explicit military nature of the Leibstandarte became clearer withthe replacement of Dietrich, a non-military type, with Paul Hausser, aformer Reichswehr general. TheWaffen-SS took on the look of an International Army within a few years. An SS-Police Division was formed in September, 1939, by Police Major-General and SS-Brigadefuehrur Karl Pfeffer-Wildenbruch. This divorce of the two forces came, in part,as a result of the SS' poor performance in Poland. Onecommentator has referred to the subsequent slaughter veteran soldiers andWaffen-SS Panzer Corpsmen as a "death ride."[xxvii] The Waffen-SS had a duality about their approach in being a militaryorganization. In the summer andfall of 1941, four SS divisions, as well as a mountain SS division, "Nord,"and a Police-SS division, the 4th SS, moved into the Russian front. It has so far been discussed that the SS was originally formed as anelite guard for Hitler, and that an armed SS grew out of this police forcein the 193 's, for the purpose of checking the power of the Wehrmacht. At home, the General SS fulfilled this function,and abroad, wherever went the Wehrmacht, so went the Waffen-SS, infusingGerman blood into the veins of non-German Europe. For three years, the history of the SS is fairly undistinguished.Then, in January of 1929, Heinrich Himmler was named Reichsfuehrur-SS. 352.Reitlinger, n.p.John Strawson, Hitler's Battles for Europe (New York: Scribner,1971), pp. 24.Ibid, pp. Even asearly as March, 1942, Himmler expressed this worry. 114 .Ibid., p. New York: Octagon Books, 1972.Hohne, Heinz. in the SA. The SS itself developed from the SA, which, in turn, is traceable tothe Freikorps, "for there is no border-line where the Freikorps ends andHitler's SA and SS begin."[ii] The Freikorps (Free Corps) movement aroseout of the post-war situation in 1918 in Germany. 174-177.Ibid., p. "DasReich" was involved first in the battle of Yalnya, in August, then in thebattle for Kiev, in September, and finally in the Moscow assault. Having had little military training, the Verfuegungstruppe sufferedlosses which were much heavier than those incurred by the Army. Formation of amotorized Division, "Das Reich," began on October 1 . He decreed that its size should be restricted to no morethan 5-1 percent of the size of the peace-time Army, and stressed that theWaffen-SS was not intended as anything more than an "armed statepolice."[xxii] Berger was determined that things be otherwise. SS-Brigadefuehrur Gottlob Berger came into the picture at this point. 154.See Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression: A Collection of DocumentaryEvidence and Guide Materials reared by the American and BritishProsecuting Staffs for Presentation before the InternationalMilitary Tribunal at Nurnberg, Germany, Supplement A.Ibid., p. 1159.Hohne, p. From late 1944 on, it was Himmler, not Hitler,who was referred to as "The Dictator of Germany."[xliii] It was theReichsfuehrur-SS, not the Chancellor of Germany, who negotiated with theAnglo-American High Command.[xliv] Still, despite the recent near-rout ofWaffen-SS divisions, and the virtual takeover of his political machinery bythe General-SS, it was upon a group of tattered Waffen-SS units under thecommand of Felix Steiner that Hitler pinned his last, futile hope for amilitary turnaround.[xlv] ENDNOTES BIBLIOGRAPHYBracher, Karl Dietrich. Roehm, onthe other hand, was adamantly opposed to this position. 9 .Edward Crankshaw, Gestapo: Instrument of Tyranny (New York:Viking Press, 1956), p. If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.

Many of our Papers can be Downloaded From This Site!

PLEASE READ THIS, IT IS IMPORTANT!

Office hours are Monday through Friday, from 9 am to 5 pm (PST). You may place orders for custom research over the phone during office hours. E-mail requests can be made to our graduate and undergraduate department any time, and will be reviewed during office hours. You may also contact customer service any time through e-mail, and we will review your message during business hours. A great many papers can be downloaded right from this site, but not all of them. If you would like to know if a particular paper is downloadable, just look in the description for: "Available for Internet Download: Y" or "Available for Internet Download: N" If you wish to purchase a paper which is NOT available for immediate download, you will need to make other shipping arrangements. Also, please be aware that these orders are processed Monday through Friday from 9 am to 5 pm (PST). If you place your order after 4:45pm on Friday, it will not be processed until the following Monday morning. We charge $8 per page for all of our pre-written reports, plus shipping (and tax for California residents). However, the highest cost of any ONE report is $136, or 17 pages. Please, take a moment. Make sure you have chosen the report you want or need BEFORE you complete your order. If you are not sure, allow us to help you. We do not offer refunds or exchanges, so it is important for you to let us answer your questions during office hours. Reports which are e-mailed or downloaded are in Microsoft Word format. We are making more reports available for e-mail delivery faster than we can update our listings. Please call to check on the status of particular reports. There are many other shipping options which are listed on the Checkout page.