Transcription
January 30th, 1933. Hitler becomes Chancellor of the Reich. A man who has loudly announced his intention to destroy democracy comes to power legally.
BEHIND HITLER'S RISE is the failure of German politics and the violence of paramilitary associations such as the stomach tailong SA for short and the staff the SS the SA Hitler's brown shirts Nazi poster boys and thug squad responsible for marches is propaganda and beatings of political opponents, primarily communists and social democrats. Bloody street fights between the SA and leftists lead Germany to the brink of civil war in the early 1930s. This benefits Hitler twice over. The Nazis were able on the one hand to inflict a lot of violence on their adversaries, but also somewhat ironically to pose as the only party that was tough enough to defend Germany from the threat of violence from people like the communists.
The SS is still part of the SA. They can be recognized by their black caps with the swastika and skull and crossbones. Symbols that signal that they are violent and ready to kill. The SS wants to be more than just a thug squad.
As the name says, its purpose was to protect the party and the party organs against their enemies. In Hamburg, the young Ottokum witnesses attacks on political opponents from 1931 onwards.
Party meetings were always disturbed by communists and then we had to rush out there and beat them up. Our group called Storm Five had a truck parked in front of the door which immediately drove us there if something was going on somewhere. And then we jumped down and it was quiet in no time.
In the understanding of the SSmen, brawls are honorable operations. SSmen were encouraged to be infatuated with the ideals of soldiering, of comradeship, and toughness. The reality was very different. And this looks a lot more like the politics of hooliganism than it looks like the politics of soldiers.
Nazi thugs have existed since the founding of the party. Nothing unusual in the VHimar Republic. Paramilitary units are a legacy of the First World War. At the end of 1918, shortly after the flight of the emperor, residents militias and the free cause are formed. They were mainly former frontline soldiers who wanted to fight against those they believe were responsible for the defeat. Jews, Marxists, revolutionaries.
By the mid-20s, numerous political combat units had emerged. Nearly all of them present themselves in a strictly military manner with flag, uniform, and parade march, attractive for young men at the time. This has to do with the fact that the military already conveyed an enormous prestige in the imperial era. Young men seek this prestige, seek this fascination, but because of the disarmament provisions in the treaty of first sight, they no longer have the opportunity to join the military. So they join these political paramilitary fighting organizations.
The Nazi party NSDAP is able to gather hundreds of thousands of mostly young men at the Reich Party Congress in Nuremberg in 1927. SS and SA march in front of Hitler. Among them, the 26-year-old Hinrich Himmler. Two years later, he becomes head of the SS. He is still a rather insignificant Nazi. The SS remains subordinate to the SA. Himmler is more of an assistant to the SA leadership, as a party film clearly shows. But the inconspicuous man wearing glasses has great goals. The SS should be more than just party security. It should be the Nazi elite. The ideal image of the Nazi movement, Nordic, tall, athletic, Aryan, as it was called at the time. That's exactly how SSmen were supposed to be. Every applicant must prove that he has no Jewish ancestors. In 1932, Himmler establishes the SS race office. later renamed the race and settlement office to examine applicants.
Ottokum does not quite meet the specifications. Nevertheless, he's accepted.
They were all especially select men. They were all tall. I was actually much too small for the SS even back then. They made a big exception and took me in after all.
Himmler sees the SS as an association of Nordic men as early as 1931. Its goal is to keep the Nordic race pure. In essence, this is directed against Jews and Slavs. They are considered foreign, inferior, and dangerous. Himmler's idea of the SS included not only deep racism but also unconditional allegiance to Hitler. A striking difference to their competitor. As early as 1930, the SA sometimes had different ideas from the party leadership. The SS was going to be Hitler's tool in the event of any conflict between the party and the SA. We see this already in 1930 when uh conflict between the SA and the party is already breaking out into actual violence. And it's the SS that is being deployed to bring the SA back under control.
As the new Reich Chancellor, Hitler pursues one goal above all. He wants absolute power in the state. Any means will do.
Nazis are hunting down opponents of the regime throughout the whole country. SA and SS men become auxiliary police officers, open terror in the cloak of legality. The SS excelled in contempt for human beings. When the Jewish lawyer Mk Ziger tried to get the police to release a client in mid-March, he was beaten up by SS men and chased through the center of Munich with his trousers cut up barefoot and with the cardboard sign around his neck.
Hinrich Himmler is now the police chief of Munich. Political opponents are tortured at police headquarters on Himmler's orders. Himmler had valuable knowledge at his disposal. In 1931, he had set up a security service within the SS for spying on opponents. Reinard Hydra, the head of the so-called SD, had lists drawn up with thousands of names. Following Hydra's lists, opponents of the regime are now systematically imprisoned without judicial review for an indefinite period. The legal basis is provided by the rice fire.
At the end of February 1933, which the Nazis declared to be a communist coup attempt, Hitler's government responded by passing the famous Richag fire decree uh which basically tore the heart out of the constitution of VHimar, crushed all individual rights. It was the thing that really made possible the concentration camps, all of the abuse of human rights, all of the barbarity of the Nazi regime in the 12 years that followed. The ordinance is supposed to serve the protection of the people and the state. In reality, it enables legal terror. The result is a bloody hunt throughout the country.
June 1933 in Berlin, Koopenik, SS and SA men devastate flats. They take away alleged evidence and arrest supporters of the SPD and KPD parties. Among them, the young communist Valta Pasler. His girlfriend at the time, Emmy Martins, experiences the brutal despatism of the Nazis.
My boyfriend was arrested at 5:00 in the morning and in the evening at 9:00 he came back, shaved, swastika burnt in it was in his head. He was completely beaten up.
Like Valter Pesler, hundreds of people are arrested and tortured in Berlin Kurpenic in June 1933. The situation gets out of control when a social democrat resists and shoots two SA men. Afterwards, Nazis turned the district court in Kenik into a torture site. The rampage in the district prison lasts for a week. Copenic blood week is what the victims later call it. At least 24 supporters of the KPD and SPD are murdered in these rooms.
In 1933, opponents of the regime were arbitrarily imprisoned, abused, and put on public display throughout Germany. The first concentration camps are built in the middle of the cities. Nazi propaganda films such as this one from the Oranianborg concentration camp show the embellished image of a kind of educational camp. Sport and discipline are supposed to shape Nazi opponents into members of the new folks. The story that the existence of the camps was kept secret was invented much later. The Germans knew about the camps. Not only that, the regime even made sure that people knew about the camps in order to scare.
In 1933, dozens of early concentration camps like Oranianborg are set up spread across the Reich. Hinrich Himmler also has a camp built on an empty industrial site in the north of Munich, the Dhau concentration camp. At the time, it was the only camp administered by the SS, a kind of test laboratory for the rise of Himmler and the SS.
Meanwhile, the much larger SA confidently stages itself under its chief of staff and Strum. The men in Brown celebrate the new Nazi regime. At SA events, R appears on equal footing with Hitler. Himmler and the SS hardly play a role in public. The SA has swelled into a kind of mass army, also through the integration of other right-wing military associations. From around 500,000 men in January 1933, the SA grows to 4.5 million by summer 1934. This makes Room's militia 45 times larger than the Reichwear, the official army with its 100,000 soldiers.
Anst Room has ambitious goals. He wants to push the Brown Revolution further. He's not interested in an alliance with the old elites. The young law student Otto Grnida witnesses him in Munich.
At the end of January in 1934, I heard a speech from Rome in front of the Bavaria statue. I'd rather make a revolution than celebrate revolutions. The revolution's not over yet. It must go on.
This is about the last thing Hitler wants to hear. And it's pretty much the last thing the Army high command wants to hear because the army sees this SA as a real threat. And to an extent it is because Rome sees the SA as the nucleus of a new in a sense more populist army.
Himmler uses this to betray his boss room. He has the SS security service gather information about an alleged SA coup plan. Hitler is alarmed and makes a decision that decisively favors Himmler's rise. On June 30th, 1934, Room and his close associates are arrested by SS men. In the next few hours, the SS kills more than 100 people. The entire SA leadership, including Anst Drone, the SS, become Hitler's executioners.
Himmler now has free reign and begins to expand his black order into a state within the state. Radical and efficient. From 54,000 members in January 1933, the SS grows to about 180,000 by 1936. Himmler chooses his elite not according to education or profession, but according to outward appearance and attitude. Most of the new recruits are members of the so-called general SS. Men who collect for the winter relief organization in their free time or serve as cordons at public events.
In 1934, Hitler allows the SS to set up its own armed units. Himmler turns the previous special task forces into militarily trained troops at his disposal. The nucleus of a future SS army, the Vafen SS. The grounds of the former helped Kadetan Anstalt in Berlin. The most notorious of these troops has its barracks here. The Landata SS Adolf Hitler. to his men.
SS soldiers must be powerful, ready to make sacrifices and ideologically completely in line with Hitler soldiers at the disposal of the dictator.
Himmler expands the SS into a network of terror. This includes the actual Shuttaf with honorary members, now called the General SS. Next to it are the armed units, the so-called fug to with full-time soldiers and the guards of the concentration camps, the so-called tort for bender, the skull units. The ideological training of the youth is particularly important to the SS chief. He wants to raise a generation of ideologically solid warriors.
Balanchat in Saxony Anhalt. Above the town lies the building of the former Nazi Nalpo leadership at Antal Napola for short. Just one of the many Nazi boarding schools, but the only one to be rebuilt. This is where the leadership elite of the thousand-year-old Reich is to be educated. On average, the boys are 10 years old when they enter the Narola. For admission, good grades are less important than so-called Aryan ancestry. At the end of their time at school, they have to pass the ab. But along the way, they are supposed to become strict Nazis. U Lampre, who attended an Apollo, experienced this.
We had to learn to obey. First of all, with the ulterior motive, only those who've learned to obey can command.
This is entirely in the spirit of Hinrich Himmler. From 1936, the SS took over the inspection of the naras and thus the supervision of the curriculara. The schools differ in their additional offerings such as gliding here in Balanchet, but the core is the same. Children are to be educated to become obedient warriors with lots of sport, military drill, and tests of courage.
We were given the command jump. There are two things. First, I should have the courage to jump into the unknown. But secondly, I should have the trust in the person giving the order who would not let me jump to my death. Mind you, unless it was absolutely necessary. In the war, thousands will follow the orders of their superiors to their deaths.
Himmler wants his soldiers to fight with particular courage and determination. In many cases, this will lead to unnecessary bloodshed and high casualties. Blind obedience allows men like Ottokum to make a career in the Vafns. In 1944, he becomes commander of the SS Mountain Division, Prince Oegan. In the Balkans, Kum's division is involved in numerous war crimes.
The complete trust in Hitler, which was still so pronounced among us, that one knew this is where they put you and this is where you have to stand even if it means you have to die. There was no room for pardon.
The delusion of heroic struggle, kill and be killed for Hitler. The SS embodied the ideal of what they believed to be the perfect man. They were not in any way thinkers. They were not allowed to be soft. They were not allowed to have empathy. They were supposed to embody the ideal killer male.
In their self-image, the men of the SS are the spearhead of the Nazi movement, the leadership of a future greater Germanic Reich, elite of the Aryan race. Himmler wants to spread this image of the SS among the population. In 1935 he founds the SS newspaper Draatza core the black core. The newspaper is a colorful weekly with big headlines and many photos poems and reports. Daily politics are seldom found here. Instead SS image cultivation and worldview the mixture is wellreceived even outside the SS. Himmler's PR works a facade behind which the crime of the century is planned.
Since 1933, the Nazi regime has also been active in the economy with propaganda effect. The construction of motorways and the folks vagen are regarded as national socialist prestige projects. The SS is also involved in the German economy. Himmler orders the SSmen to deport Jews from all over Europe to the camps in occupied Poland. In the Awitz concentration camp alone, more than a million people are forced into hard labor or murdered in gas chambers. The bureaucracy of the Holocaust, the exploitation and plundering of the Jews is controlled by the SS administration. The so-called main economic administration office was the central administrative organization for the looted goods of the deported Jews. Mass murder, robbery, and exploitation. That is the real core of the SS, the core of Himmler's supposed elite force.
The night of November 10th, 1938, the synagogues in the Reich burned. The prelude to an unprecedented crime, the Holocaust. In the November pogram, Jews are abused, humiliated, and murdered by SSmen, too. They just thought this was absolutely their duty, their right, and that they were fulfilling what they considered to be the natural order of things, the sort of natural racial hierarchy of the world. In their self-image, the SSmen are members of a Nordic elite and born to rule. But we were all aryens. That was a very important point that as aryens we felt superior to other races, especially of course to the Jewish race, but also to the Slavic peoples. an ideology that unites.
The ideology in a sense sets up the world of good guys and bad guys of the people who were within your circle of moral obligation and who the people are outside that circle. With the invasion of Poland in September 1939, theories become deeds. In the occupied territories, the SS with the support of the Vermacht begins its murder campaigns. Himmler has plans drawn up for the Germanization of a large part of Poland. Thousands are resettled, imprisoned, killed. The goal for the SSmen seems clear. to save Europe from communism, to cleanse Europe from the Jews, because they were the precursors of communism. People said this without ever having met a Jew in person. Without ever considering the fate that was awaiting the Jews.
Jurgen Gurgenszone grows up under the swastika. He was 18 when he volunteered for the Buffaness in 1942. The military arm of the SS has borne this name since 1940. Units of the Vafess fight and murder on the front lines of the attack on the Soviet Union. In a short time, the German troops are able to advance far to the east. Millions of Soviet Jews come under German rule and are systematically murdered. The eastern campaign was planned as a war of extermination from the very beginning.
On December 1st, 1941, the commander of an Inzat scoper in Lithuania draws up a balance sheet. Carl Jger proudly reports to Berlin. In only 4 months, Inzat Commando 3 has killed over 137,000 Jews in 71 towns and villages in Lithuania. Jerger boasts he can state that the goal of solving the Jewish problem for Lithuania has been achieved. There are no more Jews in Lithuania.
In the German Reich, all Jews have to wear the Yellow Star since September 1941. A short time later, the first ones are deported to the East. The perpetrators call this the final solution of the Jewish question. The SS is responsible for carrying it out.
In organizing the genocide, the SS drew on experience from the so-called fear of 1941, the first systematic mass murder by the Nazis. The victims are mainly disabled people. Their murder is explained with catch words such as useless eaters and purification of the people's body. From 1940 onwards, the SS carries out murders in six institutions throughout the Reich. A total of 70,000 people fall victim to Axion. But then Hitler officially terminates the campaign after protests from affected families and Catholic clergymen. The dictator himself had signed the document giving doctors permission for the so-called mercy killing. A cynical paraphrase of the campaign. The only preserved murder order with Hitler's signature.
Since the implementation of this order also repeatedly provoked queries and critical inquiries, Hitler actually quite obviously avoided issuing an unamiguous murder order in the case of the Jews. What we have here are clear recognizable encouragements above all in the direction of Himla and Hydri himla and Hydri know what Hitler wants. They become the main perpetrators of the Holocaust. The personnel of Axion Tia are given the task of organizing largecale murder in gas chambers. Many campaign veterans are deployed in the extermination camps that are built in the east from 1942 onwards. Murder factories for the criminal delusion of the struggle of the races.
For 20 years, Hitler has spoken again and again about the end of the Jewish people. Himmler gives him the instrument to realize the inconceivable, the SS. It murders conscientiously and efficiently. Many only realize the dimension of the crime after the war.
A basic feeling is still a certain basic feeling of guilt, of complicity in the disaster. Only after 6 years of war did Germany's opponents succeed in putting a stop to the barbarism. The SS murdered and fought to the end, fanatically, blindly. Himmler's Black Order wants to build a new world. A world that would in truth be hell on earth. The end of humanity. For this nightmare, the SS commits crimes the likes of which history is never seen.