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Describes the horrific war crimes committed by Hitler's SS troops through interviews with former SS members.
Describes the horrific war crimes committed by Hitler's SS troops through interviews with former SS members.
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00:07They were, they thought, the Third Reich's racial elite.
00:14Men superior to others, ready to do anything for the triumph of National Socialism.
00:25Men Hitler could count on to the death.
00:33To apply their racial theories, they were prepared to eliminate their adversaries.
00:39To decimate the Jewish people.
00:43To massacre civilian populations.
00:53Over 70 years later, some of them are still living among us.
00:59One people, one Reich, one Fuhrer.
01:03That was our motto.
01:05I felt anti-Semitic.
01:09We wanted a pure state.
01:12No Jews in the Third Reich.
01:18This is the story of SS fanaticism, bloodlust and terror.
01:24This is the story of SS fanaticism.
01:34Told from the inside.
01:53This is the story of SS fanaticism.
01:54Summer 1941.
01:57Hitler invades the Soviet Union.
02:01A war of a kind that has never been seen before.
02:05To conquer living space and exterminate the Judeo-Bosheviks, as he calls them.
02:16Alongside the regular army, the Wehrmacht.
02:19The Fuhrer has at his disposal more than 100,000 men who have sworn loyalty to the death, the SS.
02:35This horrific scene was filmed behind the lines.
02:43Jewish men were assassinated and buried in the sand.
02:48Just one of the terrible consequences of the indoctrination of the 1930s.
03:01Hans Friedrich was in the First SS Infantry Brigade.
03:07A few months before his death in 2005, he confessed on film to his part in the murder of several
03:14thousand Jews.
03:21They were in such a state of shock, so scared that we could do what we wanted with them.
03:37Try to imagine, there's a ditch.
03:44On one side, there are people.
03:46And opposite, there are soldiers.
03:49And that was us.
03:50And we shot.
03:53And we shot.
03:54The ones who were hit fell in the ditch.
04:01What were you thinking and feeling while you were firing?
04:06Can you tell us?
04:09Nothing.
04:14I just thought, aim well.
04:22So, they'd be killed with a single shot.
04:27That was my only thought.
04:30That was your only thought.
04:32You didn't have any feelings for the Jewish civilians you were executing.
04:41No.
04:43And why not?
04:45Because my hatred for the Jews was so strong.
04:48No, it's so close.
04:57The hardened SS, who took part so enthusiastically, were mad.
05:05They wanted to be super-Nazis.
05:11And this meant exterminating non-stop.
05:16In terms of public opinion, when you talk to people about the Jews, many would say, the
05:22only thing we can do is exterminate them.
05:29The extermination.
05:31Not all took part, but many agreed with it.
05:38In order to kill Jews, the Nazis had been employing special units they used for the invasion of
05:44Poland.
05:45Poland.
05:45The Einsatzgruppen.
05:47The Einsatzgruppen.
05:49Detachments of killers made up of SS members, police, and locally recruited auxiliaries.
05:58Here is one of their leaders, SS-General Jekylln.
06:05He would be hanged by the Allies in 1946 for the murder of more than 100,000 people.
06:14His method of execution?
06:17Sardine packing.
06:20He applied it here, in the Baba Yaa Ravine, where he executed more than 30,000 Jews.
06:30They were laid on top of one another and shot, then buried in layers like sardines.
06:39Men.
06:41Women.
06:43Children.
06:46Women.
06:48A woman with a child fell to the ground and begged, shoot me, shoot me.
06:56The SS soldier, a Ukrainian, took the child's head, placed it next to the woman's head, shot
07:10shot through it, and he said, one bullet.
07:17The paradox was that the SS didn't see themselves as criminals, but as victims, soldiers defending
07:25themselves.
07:27Oskar Grunin, one of the last Auschwitz SS men still alive, he believed at the time that
07:36it was the Jews who had brought the world to wage war against Germany.
07:41This twisted racism meant he believed that they deserved their fate.
07:47We were convinced, and this was our vision of the world, that we Germans had been betrayed
07:55by the whole world, and that there was a huge Jewish conspiracy against us.
08:02Children weren't our enemies at that point.
08:06The enemy was the blood which flowed in them, but the children would grow up and become potentially
08:13dangerous Jews.
08:17That was why the children were included.
08:25Executioners, victims, switching the rules authorized every crime.
08:41In the view of the SS Chief Himmler, those who killed Jews were carrying out indispensable
08:48work for the survival of the country.
08:54He wanted to attend a massacre and see for himself hundreds of bodies piled up in a ditch.
09:01He said to have felt queasy seeing the blood spurt from the bullet wounds, but his demands
09:08for executions only increased.
09:13Listen to his voice as he speaks to his generals.
09:18We have the moral right.
09:21We have the duty of our people to do this.
09:25This people that wanted to bring us to bring us to bring us to bring us to bring us to
09:27bring us to bring us to bring us to bring us to bring us.
09:34This person who has brought us to bring us to bring us to bring else we are in a canvi
09:38Especially whether theosion of the levitude among the people within the human bodies at this time,
09:44We have the difficult task for the relationship to reunify our people at this time, to be taken together.
10:20To wipe out 11 million European Jews according to the SS's own calculations.
10:26Himmler appointed a technocrat of crime.
10:32SS member Reinhard Heydrich, the man with the iron heart as Hitler called him.
10:41The genocide, it's him.
10:48A former officer expelled from the Navy, he ran the RSHA, the Reich's Central Security
10:55Office, in charge of all state security.
11:01One of his sons gave us his family films, notably these holiday movies.
11:12Married to an aristocrat from northern Germany, he embodies the ideal SS man.
11:17A cold-blooded, athletic, and efficient Nazi.
11:26With his secret police force, he had files on millions of Germans, notably the Jews, whom
11:34he divided into several racial groups.
11:36100% Jewish, mixed blood, etc.
11:43It was a formidable system, and the first step towards extermination.
12:04For his services, Hitler made him head of Bohemia Moravia.
12:09You can see him here at home in Prague Castle, the former residence of the Austro-Hungarian Emperor.
12:20A king surrounded by his court.
12:32When she learned of his nomination, his wife Lina was overcome.
12:40I was submerged by a feeling of exultation, she wrote.
12:44I said to myself, I was no longer a mere mortal, but a princess.
12:50And that I was living in a fairy tale.
13:02Many people benefited from the war.
13:06These Waffen SS soldiers, for example, who crisscrossed Europe for one conquest to the next.
13:12For them, it was like a great adventure.
13:17In France, in particular.
13:23When I had a chance, I went to buy butter from a farmer.
13:27And, of course, I paid for it.
13:30That was my state of mind.
13:32I didn't feel like the soldier of an occupying army.
13:36I always had normal human relations with people in France.
13:40Not military ones.
13:42Noté½¢istas.
13:56As the Jewish people gradually disappeared, the SS profited and dreamed.
14:05Himmler had promised them the brightest of futures.
14:15The Third Reich would last a thousand years, he tells them.
14:21As Greece fought Rome, as Rome conquered Carthage and Jerusalem, so Germany will crush the Judeo-Bolsheba.
14:35It is the last war, he tells them, so we may as well win it swiftly.
14:46It will put an end to centuries of racial strife.
15:02These are arguments that hit home.
15:07The SS wanted to believe that in conquered Soviet land, Himmler would give them vast agricultural holdings.
15:17Where thousands of Slav workers would work for them, as slaves.
15:25Like the Teutonic Knights of old, the new lords would defend German civilization against the barbarians.
15:40While history has proven Himmler to be a murderous monster, some of his SS followers still see him as their
15:49hero.
15:53The ideology was, out with the Jews, get out.
15:58We can see the state of mind of Himmler, the biggest bastard of all time.
16:06Himmler was a decent man, a man of honest character.
16:13Himmler wanted the best for the German people.
16:18And apparently not only for the German people.
16:23From 1940, with the aim of founding a German empire, he opened the doors of the SS to the inhabitants
16:31of several defeated countries.
16:35The Danes, the Norwegians, the Dutch.
16:40They were all Germanic, said Himmler.
16:45As the war continued, the SS opened up also to the French-speaking Belgians, the French themselves, and the Italians,
16:54Latin peoples.
16:56To whom Himmler gave the hope of entering into the Nazi elite.
17:06Joining the Waffen-SS was a promotion for us.
17:10I was in Germany.
17:12I'd heard that the Germans were underfed, but this was false.
17:17And badly dressed, not true.
17:22Everything I saw in Germany was much better.
17:27For me, it was an excellent model.
17:32The National Socialist Party had done a lot of good in Germany for the workers.
17:38By giving them jobs, getting them involved, building them houses and gardens, etc.
17:45We thought it was a model, yes.
17:48Exactly.
17:49My dream at the time was to see Germany win the war.
17:53For me, Germany was the supreme nation in Europe.
17:56When I joined the Waffen-SS, I considered myself to be one of them.
18:03An illusion.
18:06None of these non-Germanic, Latin or here Muslim Slav peoples would ever actually belong to the Black Order.
18:15Attracted by the wages and the family allowances, they wore the uniform, but were cannon fodder.
18:26For every foreigner who dies, said the head of recruitment, no German mother cries.
18:41The Führer's residence in Bavaria.
18:46Here are the architects of the final solution.
18:50Himmler the cynic in the company of Reinhard Heydrich.
18:53His dark shadow.
18:59Confidence on their faces.
19:02In 1942, the Nazis controlled a large part of Europe, and were putting into practice their racial theories.
19:13They believed they would soon defeat the USSR.
19:20They knew, however, that their death machine would not be sufficient to complete the extermination.
19:28And that some of their men were disgusted by the tasks they were being asked to perform.
19:50In 1942, there were still some 10 million European Jews left to kill, according to Heydrich's calculations.
20:02After several experiments, the SS leaders believed they'd found the solution.
20:08How to kill far more people while sparing their troops.
20:15Death camps.
20:19This amateur footage, shot by SS guards, shows the inside of the Pozen camp.
20:26One of the first in occupied Poland.
20:31In turning undesirables, as in the 1930s was no longer enough.
20:36They were to be killed.
20:39In the greatest secrecy, the SS tested toxic gas.
20:45An especially built gas chamber hidden behind these outer walls.
20:51They had already eliminated 400 mentally ill prisoners by 1939.
21:07Gassing was a gentler form of death, they said.
21:12Particularly for the killers.
21:17And so the SS now use this technique to relaunch their killing machine.
21:24Targeting all European Jews.
21:30Where the Nazis were very smart was with the extermination in the concentration camps.
21:36They managed to keep it all perfectly secret.
21:40There were a lot of people to exterminate.
21:46Most would be sent to the slaughterhouse, notably to Auschwitz.
21:55These photos taken by an SS guard show the arrival of prisoners and their sorting by SS doctors.
22:05On one side are the young and healthy who will work.
22:09On the other, those who will be killed in the coming hours.
22:16Once they were designated, the SS guards avoided them.
22:20They merely supervised the killing process, dropping toxic gas canisters into the gas chamber via a hatch.
22:30Then other prisoners removed and burnt the bodies in ovens.
22:38The only ones willing to speak about Auschwitz are the members of the Waffen SS, who weren't even there.
22:46Yet despite the indisputable facts of history, astonishingly, they hold on to the myth that the Holocaust never happened.
22:58Everything that's been said about the massacres, I've heard it all.
23:03But I didn't believe it all.
23:05And even today, I don't believe it all.
23:09What happened to the dead from Auschwitz?
23:12Where are they?
23:15If Hitler had really wanted to annihilate the Jewish people, don't you think he would have succeeded?
23:22It wouldn't have been hard for him.
23:23For me, the word Auschwitz doesn't exist.
23:27I just don't recognize it.
23:29Whether there were mass graves or not, or whether they were killed with this product or that, or gassed or
23:37shot,
23:38the subjects of no interest to me at all.
23:45Holocaust denial is shocking and offensive to our ears.
23:49And it's against the law in some countries.
23:53The terrible truth that these men refused to accept is that the Nazis, with the SS at the helm, committed
24:01genocide against the Jewish people and others they condemned as undesirable.
24:08Resulting in the loss of millions of lives.
24:11A fact of history that cannot be negated.
24:20Hertha Botha could not deny the existence of the camps.
24:25She worked in several before moving to Bergen-Belsen.
24:32My first impression wasn't bad.
24:36Right away, an SS sergeant said, oh, here's my little blondie.
24:42I thought that was nice for a young girl.
24:49I got on well with the SS men.
24:52They wanted to be important.
24:56They did what they wanted with the prisoners.
25:02There was one guard, Kopp.
25:05She was a madwoman.
25:10Her fiancé was Adolf Hitler's driver.
25:14She thought she had every right.
25:16She got no way.
25:25She was a madwoman.
25:26I thought she was a madman.
25:27I thought she was a madman.
25:27Some flung out of the nation.
25:30He was a madman, man.
25:35Many were delighted to be appointed there.
25:39The camps were a safe haven, the staff were not risking their lives, and Himmler had made
25:48sure they'd be comfortable.
25:51Like here at the Reichhof camp, 120 miles from Auschwitz.
25:59The Auschwitz camp itself was much sought after.
26:02It was here, to this 470-acre complex, that Oskar Gronig was sent as an accountant in 1942.
26:16The main camp at Auschwitz was like a small town, with its gossip and rumours.
26:22There was a grocer's where you could buy marabone to make a soup, a canteen, a
26:32cinema.
26:34There was a theatre, where they regularly put shows on, a sports club, where I was a member.
26:41It was joyful and lively, like in a small town.
26:50They even had a rural leisure resort, 20 miles from the camp.
27:01Alcohol was very important.
27:06They gave us a ration every day, and sometimes we had serious drinking parties.
27:18Oscar Gronig was, he claims, disgusted by the massacres, and asked for a transfer to the
27:24front two years after his arrival.
27:29Although he too has retained some fond memories of his times at the camp.
27:36The particular situation of Auschwitz enabled us to forge friendships that I still remember
27:44with pleasure today.
27:51The men and women of the SS, who behaved like monsters, were human beings.
28:00And there lies the problem.
28:14July 20th, 1944.
28:18The beginning of the end.
28:21This time, their idol was almost eliminated.
28:26At a senior staff meeting, Hitler's bunker was blown apart by a bomb.
28:34A Wehrmacht officer from Germany's old elite was behind the attack.
28:41Hitler was only slightly wounded, but everyone was deeply affected.
28:45The Third Reich, supposed to last a thousand years, was under threat.
28:55The Normandy landings are now a month old.
29:00In the east, in the west, everywhere the Germans are retreating.
29:07To try to shore up their crumbling front lines, Hitler scales up the deployment of the Waffen-SS.
29:14The front-line firemen, as they call them.
29:20The SS know they have everything to lose.
29:28Since the 1930s, they've staked everything on Hitler.
29:35If he falls, they fall with him.
29:41That was what the war was about.
29:44Total war.
29:45Where the human being had no importance.
29:48None.
29:50The only question was how to win the war.
29:56That was the question.
29:59Better kill 1,000 Russians too many than one too few, their leaders on the Eastern Front told them.
30:07Confronted with a similar insurrection in France, they applied the same terror.
30:13To dissuade the population from supporting the resistance.
30:18At Oradur, the Das Reich Division assassinated 642 people.
30:25SS soldier Gur was six miles away at the time, he says.
30:31Concerning the village of Oradur, I didn't know about it.
30:37When you're a partisan, you must know that it's best not to go up against combat troops, who are used
30:44to responding immediately with every weapon available.
30:54I saw civilians hanging from trees and lampposts.
31:00They said, you see what we do?
31:03If you do anything against us, then we'll hang you.
31:06We'll kill you.
31:09Certain Waffen SS soldiers from the Das Reich Division were forcibly enrolled.
31:14Nothing like the others who were volunteers.
31:19From the Alsace border region, they were born French, but the Nazis saw them as German.
31:25They were called the Malgranu, against our will.
31:32In 1944, as the army withdrew, they discovered from the inside the pitiless methods of the Black Order.
31:43All those who weren't with them were against them.
31:46If you caught traitors, resistance fighters, civilians, then you could shoot them and that was that.
31:52Except for the blacks. The blacks weren't worth a bullet.
31:55You put their heads under your arm and bust their skulls with a shovel.
31:58That's what they told us.
32:01You could feel the fanaticism in their every move.
32:12They said the whole world was against them, but they'd win anyway.
32:17Until now, everything had gone fine.
32:19They thought it would continue and that Hitler would do whatever was necessary.
32:24They thought, for now we're retreating, but the time will come when we'll stop them and we'll be able to
32:29advance again.
32:40Born and bred on Nazism, these SS men couldn't imagine their Führer's demise.
32:49Or their own.
32:54Their leaders warned them.
32:56German civilization will disappear if the Jews and the communists prevail.
33:07To replace Heydrich, executed in Prague by the Czech resistance, Himmler appointed another SS officer.
33:16Kaltenbrunner.
33:17Kaltenbrunner.
33:17And the reign of terror continued unabated.
33:24For some time now, reality had no longer concerned them.
33:36The reality is what Allied troops found in 1945 when they liberated the camps and discovered the massacre committed by
33:46the SS.
33:49Six million Jewish victims, hundreds of thousands of political prisoners, assassinated.
33:59Homosexuals, priests, gypsies, disabled people.
34:10Only some of the 40,000 SS guards were arrested and identified.
34:16These men, who thought they were superior to others, looked very ordinary.
34:23Some were disguised as prisoners, in striped uniforms, in an attempt to pass unnoticed.
34:38Most of them were identified by the blood group tattoo under their arms, stamped when they first joined the SS.
34:47A mark they could never wash off, even if they cut and re-stitch their skin.
35:02Among them were 3,000 female camp guards, including Herta Bota.
35:11For two days, the Allies made them bury their victims.
35:17Interviewed over 50 years after the event, Herta Bota had not one word to say about the dead prisoners in
35:25the camps.
35:28She believes she was the victim.
35:36To go to the toilet, we had to do it on the ground.
35:42And wash our hands with urine.
35:46It's true. It's really true.
35:52The concentration camp ruined my life.
35:58I was just a simple guard.
36:03I was there, and I did what I was asked to do.
36:10Do you feel guilty?
36:14No, me personally, no.
36:17I knew I could do nothing for them.
36:19I couldn't help them.
36:21Otherwise, I'd have been locked up.
36:34They had been the new lords.
36:37They had become pariahs.
36:43Until the bitter end, most of them continued to fight on the front.
36:47Or what was left of it.
36:52Living the legend.
36:55Remaining pure.
37:02I remember everyone had to form a semicircle.
37:09And our leader soberly told us what he'd just heard on the radio.
37:19Hitler has fallen in Berlin.
37:23As a result, you are no longer bound by the oath you swore to Hitler,
37:27but you are still beholden to the German people.
37:31That was it.
37:32Then we disperse with that word.
37:44May 8th, 1945.
37:48Germany surrenders.
37:52The SS were moved into prisoner of war camps,
37:56where they would spend months, even years.
38:04Disguised as a police sergeant, their leader, Himmler, hid among the crowd.
38:10After several weeks of wandering, he was arrested by the Allies
38:14and committed suicide with a cyanide capsule.
38:22I found myself in the POW camp with other SS members.
38:27They were still just as fanatical at that point.
38:31Don't believe that they were saying what idiots we've been.
38:38But we Germans were so stupid to have compared the Jews to rats.
38:43We were so dumb.
38:49Some of them were sentenced to death by the Allied courts.
38:54Like these Waffen-SS soldiers,
38:56accused of executing American prisoners in 1944.
39:03Convinced they were right,
39:05they refused to listen to their sentences to the end.
39:20The justice of conquerors, they say.
39:24Because the atrocities committed by the Allies,
39:27the bombings of Japanese and German cities,
39:30went unpunished.
39:36Why did they bomb Dresden?
39:39Why Nagasaki?
39:41Why Yokohama?
39:44Why were the Poles massacred by the Russians?
39:49Why haven't those people been tried?
39:54Nobody talks about that.
39:57Germany's certainly committed crimes.
39:59For sure.
40:01But they've all been punished.
40:05That the Germans were all punished
40:07is a myth maintained by all the veterans.
40:10Apart from a few leaders,
40:12most of the SS slipped through the net.
40:17as if only one man should really pay the price.
40:20As if only one man should really pay the price.
40:24Hitler betrayed me.
40:31He pushed us into misery
40:34when he'd promised us joy.
40:42He perpetrated such crimes
40:44that I can only see it as treason.
40:52a good SS member must be able to wipe out even his close family
40:57if they rebel against Adolf Hitler's ideas.
41:01So said their generals.
41:05During all those years,
41:07I experienced some very difficult times.
41:13I don't regret them for one moment.
41:24No.
41:26I have no regrets.
41:28No way.
41:30And I don't doubt for a moment
41:32that if I had to do it all again,
41:33I'd do exactly the same thing.
41:37I have no reason to give up my ideas.
41:41And it's not the moment to change my mind.
41:53Germany.
41:55One of the most creative nations in history.
42:00I'm ashamed to be a German,
42:02wrote one Munich citizen on May 28, 1945,
42:06on the ruins of the Feldenhalle,
42:09the place where the SS had once sworn their allegiance.
42:22But how to get out of the cult?
42:31Eberhard Heder, a captain in the Viking division,
42:36abandoned his racist convictions
42:38and pursued a career in the army of the Federal Republic of Germany.
42:48Eckehard Goer, a member of the SS's Das Reich division,
42:53who dreamed of chivalry, became a pastor.
43:01Egon Kuhn became a trade unionist,
43:05speaking tirelessly of the brainwashing he had received in his youth.
43:14But they were exceptions.
43:17Many of them would remain incorrigible and nostalgic,
43:22often joining Waffen SS veterans associations.
43:25which still exist today.
43:29Like Manfred Diener,
43:32or Kurt Bockhausen,
43:34whose speeches are still used by extremist networks.
43:40Herbert von Mildenburg
43:43set up businesses in South America,
43:46while maintaining relations with several notorious revisionists.
43:57It was until 2015 that the former Auschwitz accountant,
44:02SS Sergeant Gronig,
44:03was tried by the German courts.
44:07He was sentenced to four years in prison
44:10for complicity in the murder of 300,000 Jews.
44:18Pending Appeal.
44:19Pending Appeal.
44:21To Be patient.
44:24Mildenburg
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