- 20 hours ago
For educational purposes
Hitler created the SS in 1925 as a private army that would be loyal to him to the death.
The young German volunteers, who joined the SS, dreamed of joining the Third Reich racial elite.
Submitted to intense propaganda and put in charge of the Reich concentration camps, these fanatical activists would soon become criminals, jailing communists, Jews, and all real and imagined enemies of National Socialism.
Hitler created the SS in 1925 as a private army that would be loyal to him to the death.
The young German volunteers, who joined the SS, dreamed of joining the Third Reich racial elite.
Submitted to intense propaganda and put in charge of the Reich concentration camps, these fanatical activists would soon become criminals, jailing communists, Jews, and all real and imagined enemies of National Socialism.
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:071945. World War II comes to an end. Allied troops liberate the Nazi concentration camps.
00:19Stunned and in shock, they film the faces of the camp guards, the SS.
00:49The SS. They were, they thought, superior to other men.
01:12They soaked Europe in blood, massacred their opponents, decimated the Jewish people.
01:20I, the SS from the heavy boats?
01:23The youth, they don't see anything. In general, they heard that they were at the time.
01:32SS camp guards. Police. Waffen-SS. Some of them are still alive.
01:47A people, a reich, a leader. That was our solution.
01:52I felt like anti-Semite.
01:56We wanted to have a pure state. We wanted, that in the Third Reich, there was no Jews.
02:04The SS, they were the fous.
02:07They were the terrorists.
02:08They were the police, Dr. Yao.
02:12Mad, criminals, or ordinary men?
02:18We've met the last of those still living.
02:36This is the story, told from the inside, of those men and women who embraced one of the
02:43worst ideologies the world has ever known.
03:05Central Germany, 1933.
03:11Hitler's been in power for several months.
03:17Here is one of the first movies shot by the SS, the Schutzstaffeln, or protection squadrons,
03:28recognizable by the skulls on their cap and the lightning flash initials on their flags.
03:38They were not afraid of death, they said, neither inflicting it nor suffering it.
03:45All volunteers to join what according to their criteria was a grouping of superior Nazis.
03:56Werner Fulkner is a former member of the SS Deaths Head Division.
04:03He was nine when Hitler came to power.
04:14He still knows by heart the Nazi party's official song, the Horstwessel lead.
04:26Born in Berlin in 1924, this German lives in the south of England, where he married and
04:33made a new life for himself.
04:35At the end of World War II, he spent several years an Allied prisoner of war camps, because
04:41he had been in the SS.
04:47The Wehrmacht went like this, no, this, and the SS went like this.
05:13The outlook on life was, well, get the job done and finish with.
05:23This documentary takes us to find SS members who are still alive.
05:28To try to understand the incomprehensible.
05:35After several months of research, we discovered over 20 SS veterans living in different countries
05:41across Europe.
05:44Words that often shock.
05:47Some have broken with Nazism, others not.
05:52This man is one of them.
05:54Kurt Bockhausen, age 92.
05:59He lives in central Germany.
06:02He too was in the Deathshead division, whose members often worked in concentration camps.
06:11The truth is what both sides of the world.
06:14The truth is a clear understanding of the person, who are you?
06:20What do you want?
06:21What do you think?
06:22What do you expect from life?
06:22Second, a healthy family, a relationship with the family.
06:30To get children, that is a gnome.
06:35And who takes care of it, will have a lot of time.
06:39And then came the people.
06:44Our children, we lived and thought about it.
06:47What made us a typical German?
06:57That were the values we had.
07:07A vanished world, so little like our own, but at the same time so near.
07:16Only 80 years separate us from these young men who embraced fanaticism.
07:24To justify themselves, all point to 1918.
07:30When Germany lost the First World War, the Versailles Peace Treaty took several border regions away from Germany.
07:41USAID was a denial of Germany.
07:45And it was a denial of the highest degree.
07:50We Germans were the only ones who lost.
07:55And we Germans got all the money, like now, after the Second World War.
08:02On top of the perceived humiliation came the nightmare of 1920s Germany.
08:09The unemployment.
08:11The poverty.
08:13And the shame.
08:14When in 1923, the French and Belgian governments decided to cross the border and occupy the Ruhr to claim their
08:23war reparations directly in the factories.
08:27When they looked to justify their crimes, the SS would often point to the tribulations of the 1920s.
08:39Humiliation.
08:40Humiliation, yeah.
08:42Now, if you're in your own country and somebody comes and does bad things to you, you are humiliated, aren't
08:54you?
08:57Naziism, they said, gave them back their dignity.
09:03They began to form ranks behind an Austrian World War One Corporal Adolf Hitler.
09:09A radical nationalist who promised them he would wipe out the shame.
09:15We were all on the ground and had no harm.
09:20And suddenly, we were like someone again.
09:26Where this commitment would lead them, the SS didn't know.
09:33We were proud of this development.
09:38What they did know was that their first targets would be the communists.
09:44Those anti-Germans, as they called them.
09:47They'd been fighting them in the streets since the end of the war.
09:51They accused them of betraying the nation and overthrowing the emperor with their 1918 revolution.
09:58While the German army carried on the fight against the Allies.
10:04They had to fight against them, because they wanted to build a working state with all the workers in the
10:14countries, including America.
10:21When I remember my childhood, in Hamburg, I only knew that as a child I saw the big roads on
10:31the street.
10:33And my father said, if they come to the border, then we were lost.
10:38And he meant that he was the communist party.
10:48The Nationalsozialism was closer to the social level.
10:54And also in the political level, because it was on Germany.
10:59While the communists were built, the communism became one of the Jews, the Jews.
11:12As a socialist, the Jewish people believed it was, when the Jews left.
11:24from the German people's misery.
11:27They're hiding everywhere, said his manifesto,
11:30behind the communists who seized power in Russia in 1917,
11:35behind the capitalists in New York
11:37who pulled the strings of the world economy.
11:43For Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels,
11:45the hour of the great confrontation was near.
11:49And when the jüdischen Zeitungen
11:51heute glauben, auf versteckte Drohungen
11:54die nationalsozialistische Bewegung einschüchtern zu können.
11:58Sie sollen sich bieten!
12:02Einmal wird unsere Geduld zu Ende sein
12:06und dann wird den Juden das breche Lügenmaul gestoppt werden!
12:19It was a visceral, revengeful hatred,
12:22bottled up for too long,
12:26born out of 19th century racist theories.
12:30A sinister indication of what was to come.
12:37Look at the SS men here in the hall.
12:41It was they who, within less than 10 years,
12:44would take the leading role in assassinating Jews in their millions.
12:56Since their creation in 1925,
12:59the SS had been Hitler's bodyguards.
13:03They stood out in their dashing black uniforms
13:06and could be seen everywhere alongside the party leaders.
13:13They wanted to be noticed.
13:16To distinguish themselves.
13:20I knew it was an elite formation.
13:24In other words,
13:26they wouldn't take any Tom, Dick and Harry.
13:29Ich wollte einer Elite-Division angehören.
13:39They were the new regime's shop window.
13:44New recruits had to be tall.
13:46At least five foot six.
13:50And young.
13:52Under 23.
13:57No Jewish ancestry.
14:00They had to provide genealogical details
14:03dating back to the 18th century.
14:08Strength.
14:10Prestige.
14:13Virility.
14:15In the Third Reich.
14:17If you want a successful career,
14:20if you want a successful life,
14:23you join the SS.
14:29The women were very interested,
14:32the SS-People
14:33to learn to know
14:34and of course
14:35to go to friendship with them.
14:37Yes, of course.
14:39They were also ideal people.
14:41The men were asked,
14:42the SS-People were asked.
14:47The SS-People were asked.
14:56They were also known as the Black Order,
14:59a name that linked them to the Knights of the Middle Ages,
15:03when Germanic soldier monks colonized Eastern Europe.
15:09They were filled with grandiose ideas,
15:12that they were the new lords of Germany,
15:15entrusted with replacing the old aristocratic elite
15:19that had always run the country.
15:27Eckehard Kuhr is a Protestant minister.
15:31His SS unit, the Das Reich Division,
15:35committed numerous atrocities during the war.
15:39At the age of 17, he says,
15:42he joined the SS to defy his parents,
15:45who refused to allow a relationship
15:48with a young Catholic girl.
15:50He was asked for the first life
15:53in Germany.
15:54where the young man
15:56in the war,
15:59to go to the war,
16:00and to fall for his loved one
16:03and to fall for his loved one
16:04and to fall for his children.
16:05These emotions,
16:08the people can not even go back now,
16:11or not to say,
16:13but they were just there.
16:16The Devise was, and there was on our Koppelschloss,
16:22my Ehre is Treue.
16:25That means no freedom from the enemy.
16:32There was ideology,
16:34I believe that the Himmler was infiltrated,
16:38you are nothing, your people are everything.
16:46You belong to the nation.
16:48The nation is you.
16:53You are part of the nation.
16:55Da wollte ich beweisen,
16:59dass ich bereit war für meine ideologische Einstellung
17:04auch mein Leben zu riskieren.
17:14A clan,
17:17the intrepid new man,
17:20able to remove pity from their hearts.
17:25The racial spearhead of the German people,
17:28as they saw themselves.
17:33This is Heinrich Himmler, their chief.
17:38One of the greatest criminals of all time.
17:44He was from Munich's cultivated middle classes.
17:47Anti-Semitic, anti-Communist, anti-Christian.
17:53One of the first Nazis.
17:55And one of the most ambitious.
18:03At the age of 23, he took part in the Beer Hall Putsch.
18:08When Hitler sought to overthrow the German Republic
18:11and set up a fascist regime,
18:13as Mussolini had done in Rome the previous year.
18:19The coup failed,
18:21after clashes with police in Ferdinhala Square.
18:28But Himmler had got himself noticed.
18:31And from that point on,
18:33his rise, step by step,
18:36was irresistible.
18:40Ten years later,
18:42he was in charge of 50,000 SS.
18:47He was still subordinate to Röhm.
18:50Here with his arm raised,
18:51the head of the party militia,
18:53the SA.
18:56It was an unbearable position for Himmler.
19:01For months,
19:03with the aid of several Nazi dignitaries,
19:05he tried to persuade the Fuhrer
19:08that Röhm was plotting against the government.
19:13On June 30, 1934,
19:16he succeeded.
19:19It would be called the Night of the Long Knives.
19:23The men in black would massacre their own SA comrades.
19:31Hitler himself triggered events by having Röhm.
19:35arrested in a Bavarian hotel,
19:37where he was staying.
19:43He was transferred to a Munich prison by the SS,
19:47and liquidated along with members of his staff.
19:55With this fratricidal massacre,
19:58Himmler, now under direct orders from Hitler,
20:01obtained autonomy for the SS.
20:06In 1936, this uncharismatic man
20:10was appointed chief of police for the whole of Germany.
20:15In addition to the SS and their intelligence service,
20:19the SD,
20:20he now controlled every uniformed policeman
20:23as well as the criminal division
20:25and the secret police,
20:26the Gestapo.
20:30With faithful Heinrich,
20:32as Hitler called him,
20:34Germany became a state under police control,
20:37and its young SS as obedient as machines.
20:44As a soldier,
20:45there was a request for them,
20:47and not to think.
20:50So was it then.
20:53Today is the training and the training
20:57are different.
20:58But it was then,
21:00let them think,
21:01let them think,
21:03let them think,
21:03let them think,
21:04let them think,
21:18A order was an order.
21:21If somebody gave me an order to do,
21:24then I'd do it.
21:27Blood and Soil
21:30Himmler's New Creed
21:33In exchange for their obedience
21:35the SS Reichfuhrer offered his men
21:38a new imaginary world of German mythology
21:41and racial superiority
21:45Pursuing the slightest trace of exploitable German history
21:49he created a religion that could replace Christianity
21:54a religion based on race
21:56with its particular beliefs and rituals
22:06Here, a child's baptism
22:08with no priest
22:11The minister is an SS officer
22:14and the crucifix has been replaced by a portrait of Hitler
22:35The SS were promised healthy, smiling wives
22:41Before their weddings
22:42the women were sent on courses to Nazi party schools
23:01The wedding plans had to be approved by the SS racial service
23:07In devoting themselves to their husbands
23:09and to the procreation of future SS members
23:13these women would be joining an order of knights
23:16and becoming Nazi combatants themselves
23:23To rise in the ranks of the SS
23:25a member had to be married by the age of 26
23:28Have his first child by 28
23:32Then another every two years
23:36With at least four in all
23:43Unprecedented in any previous political organization
23:47Himmler controlled the private lives of its members
23:52Do not be afraid of death
23:54Do not be afraid of death, he told them
23:56The individual dies, but through his children
23:59his people will grow beyond life
24:09Most of the SS we've met
24:11were still children in the mid-thirties
24:15Raised in a totalitarian state
24:17They were subjected to Hitler's propaganda
24:22Some of the most extensive brainwashing
24:24of the 20th century
24:30This man, Egon Kuhn
24:32A left-wing activist and trade unionist in Hanover
24:37is a former SS man from the Viking division
24:40His radicalization, now totally repudiated
24:45began at infant school
24:49The Nazis had made for children
24:52Bonbons with Hakenkreuz drauf
24:55and so on
24:55And I was proud of
24:57Hakenkreuzbonbons to use
25:00The first time I was proud of
25:03I was proud of
25:04When I was five years old
25:05I was in kindergarten
25:07When we went to the park
25:09or went to the park
25:11Then I was in the Hakenkreuz
25:13I was in the park
25:13I was in the park
25:14That was very clear
25:18That was very clear
25:18I was in the park
25:20Allgemein
25:20Allgemein
25:22Allgemein
25:22And so is
25:23In the time
25:241934
25:25Also
25:26Nachdem I was 10 years old
25:28Was
25:28So to say
25:30Dieses
25:30Gedankengut
25:31Und
25:32Dieses
25:32Auftreten
25:33In uniform
25:34Und
25:34Selbstverständlich
25:35Der Hitlergruß
25:36Praktisch
25:37Völlig
25:37Allgemeingut
25:38Geworden
25:39Ich
25:41Kenne
25:42Eigentlich
25:43Aus dem ganzen
25:44Bereich
25:44Niemand
25:45Der sich dem
25:46Verweigert hätte
25:50Children
25:51Were being conditioned
25:52With insidious
25:53Fascist ideology
25:54And hideously
25:56Anti-Semitic
25:57Racism
25:57On a daily
25:58Basis
25:59For Hitler
26:00They were to be regarded
26:02As future soldiers
26:03Of the Reich
26:03With the best
26:05Of them
26:06Destined
26:06To join
26:06The SS
26:09Meine Eltern
26:10Waren immer erschüttert
26:11Ich war ein absoluter
26:13Judenhasser
26:16Ich hätte mich nie
26:17In der Schule
26:18Neben einen Juden
26:19Hingesetzt
26:20Nie
26:22Das war nicht
26:23Unsere Hasse
26:25Das war
26:26Jude war schlimm
26:27Das war schlimm
26:31Getrüger
26:33Verräter
26:36Arbeitsscheu
26:38Geldverdiener
26:40Halsabschneider
26:47In the youth organizations
26:49Budding SS-Members
26:51Were given
26:51Military Training
26:52From an early age
26:55Like in Sparta
26:56In ancient Greece
26:57The state educated
26:59The children
27:03They sang
27:04With the
27:05Begeisterung
27:05On the
27:05Lied
27:06Of the
27:07The
27:07Wellen
27:08Schlagen
27:09To
27:09The
27:10World
27:10Hat
27:10Ruhe
27:11Hat
27:11Ruhe
27:12That
27:12Heist
27:12Also
27:13Juden
27:13Vernichtung
27:16Ertrinken
27:16Verdichten
27:20At the time
27:21The extermination
27:23Of Jews
27:24Was not
27:24On the
27:24Agenda
27:26But the
27:27Barriers
27:28Were falling
27:28Like here
27:30At a
27:30Carnival
27:30In Nuremberg
27:31Where an
27:32Effigy
27:32Of a Jew
27:33Was hanged
27:34From
27:34Afloat
27:39Or in
27:40This
27:41Vile
27:41Racist
27:42Propaganda
27:42Film
28:21This twisted
28:23View of
28:23Germany
28:24As a
28:24Victim
28:25Of its
28:25Jewish
28:25Communities
28:26Ran
28:27So
28:27Deep
28:27That
28:28It
28:28Continues
28:29To
28:29Warp
28:29The
28:29Minds
28:30Of
28:30Some
28:30Former
28:31SS
28:31Men
28:34Ich weiß
28:35Nicht
28:36Ob
28:36Sie
28:36Interessiert
28:37Daran
28:38Wären
28:38Wenn
28:40Sie
28:40Anderen
28:41Blute
28:42Sind
28:42Eine
28:43Rasse
28:43Aufzunehmen
28:44Die
28:46Grundsätzlich
28:47Verschieden
28:48Ist
28:48In
28:49Ihrer
28:49Art
28:50In
28:51Ihrer
28:51Religion
28:52In
28:53Ihrer
28:53Lebens
28:54Auffassung
28:55Dass
28:57Sie
28:57In
28:58Unserem
28:58Volk
28:59Den
29:00Gleichen
29:00Platz
29:01Einnehmen
29:01Als
29:03Wir
29:03Die
29:03Ursprünglichen
29:04Hier
29:06Geborenen
29:08This
29:09Austrian
29:09SS
29:10Member
29:10Never
29:10Committed
29:11Any
29:11Crimes
29:12Himself
29:12He
29:13Says
29:13But
29:14On
29:14His
29:15Shelves
29:15Like
29:15A
29:15Shrine
29:16To
29:16Nazi
29:16Blood
29:17Lust
29:17Or
29:18His
29:18Old
29:18Dagger
29:19And
29:20A
29:20Cruel
29:21Caricature
29:21Of
29:22An
29:22East
29:22European
29:22Jew
29:25They're
29:26Still
29:26Our
29:26Enemies
29:27He
29:27Says
29:27Off
29:28Camera
29:30To
29:31Avoid
29:31Being
29:31Sued
29:32He
29:32Uses
29:33A
29:33Metaphor
29:52It was at the age of 14 that Herbert von Mildenberg saw Hitler for the first time.
30:01Er hat uns angesehen mit seinen Augen irgendwie eine Ausstrahlung gehabt haben, die faszinierend waren.
30:11Dann hat man das Lied gesungen, nach Hause, nach Hause, nach Hause gehen wir nicht, bis unser Führer spricht, bis
30:23unser Führer spricht.
30:26Und wir waren begeistert, so wie heute die Trotteln bei einem Fußballspiel sind.
30:38Hitler.
30:42Hitler.
30:43The man who would resurrect Germany.
30:51Es war wie in einem Rausch.
30:59The fact
31:00war ganz einfach, dass die sechs Millionen Arbeitslose in fünf Jahren alle beschäftigt waren.
31:12Hitler.
31:13By increasing aid for workers, providing leisure activities previously reserved for the
31:19elite, and by funding massive rearmament and major building projects through the confiscation
31:26of Jewish assets and massive debt, Hitler bought the approval of the German people.
31:36For the SS we met, it was a miracle.
31:43Das war der Beweis, dass der Hitler das, was er versprochen hatte, in der Tat umgesetzt hat.
31:53Der Mann hat Mut, das ist kein Feuchling.
31:57Kann man sagen, dass Hitler der Mann ihres Lebens war?
32:01Ja, hundertprozentig.
32:05Hundertprozentig.
32:10Hundertprozentig.
32:13SS Fanaticism.
32:16Born out of humiliation.
32:19Fascination with a savior.
32:22And an unshakable feeling of superiority.
32:29In just a few years, this infernal spiral led Germany, the land of Goethe, Kant and Beethoven,
32:37over the brink.
32:42An entire people faced Oblivion.
32:48Es war eine ideologische Blindheit, weil ich vermute, dass der Nationalsozialismus in
32:57seiner zentralen Destruktivität überdeckt war von den Erfolgen in dieser Zeit.
33:08Repression began in 1933.
33:12Political opponents were isolated from the rest of society, as a preventative measure,
33:19without trial.
33:22The task was entrusted to the SA, then the SS.
33:30The pretext was the burning of the Reichstag, the German parliament.
33:37Hitler presented it as the beginning of a new communist revolution.
33:42The communists want to bring down the state, they were told.
33:49They were considered a danger to the community.
33:54Well, they were taken out of the community and the community could get on with their lives.
34:01I experienced that the people, who had been attacked in the Säle, they were suddenly eliminated.
34:12The communists.
34:14Entweder sie gingen mit der Zeit, oder wenn sie dagegen weiter opponierten, kamen sie in ein abgesondertes Lager,
34:25was später dann Konzentrationslager hieß.
34:28So dass also ein Widerstand in Deutschland praktisch kaum erkennbar war oder möglich war.
34:40Hertha Botha, from a modest family in northern Germany, is a former member of the SS.
34:48At the age of 21, she interrupted her nursing training to look for work.
34:53She was offered a job as a woman's prison guard.
35:00I went to the work.
35:04Brüßhafer hieß er.
35:06And he said, Frau Bote, Sie müssen im KZ als Aufseherin.
35:12I said, what is that?
35:14Das kenne ich gar nicht.
35:14Was ist ein KZ?
35:16Ja, das ist ein Lager, da müssen Sie Frauen aufsichtigen.
35:20I said, das kann ich nicht.
35:21Ja, wenn Sie nicht hingehen, kommen Sie selber rein.
35:24Oh Gott.
35:24Ja, was nun?
35:27Da musste ich hin.
35:31They were not yet death camps, only internment camps.
35:38But the SS inflicted on the prisoners a regime of terror.
35:45Die mussten dann draußen stehen, ob Winter, ob Sommer.
35:50Wie war das?
35:51Dann standen die da in der Kälte oder so mit ihren ...
35:54Sind da auch Leute umgefallen?
35:57Ja, sind sie auch umgefallen.
36:01Schläge und Kniebeugen und was weiß ich alles.
36:09Was ist da in Ihnen selber vorgegangen, wenn Sie Zeuge solcher Brutalitäten wurden?
36:15Da habe ich mich umgedreht und habe weggeguckt.
36:18Das konnte ich nicht mehr ansehen.
36:23Das war nicht.
36:32Das war nicht.
36:35Das war nicht.
36:38common forms of torture at the time. With his hands tied behind his back, attached to a rope,
36:45a prisoner has to stand on a stool. When he falls from exhaustion,
36:50he's suspended by his arms and his shoulders are dislocated.
36:59But who cared about torture?
37:03Public opinion saw the SS as bringing deviants back to the straight and narrow.
37:13These prisoners in striped uniforms were filmed close to the Dachau camp.
37:21The filmmaker, a baker who supplied the camp staff, owned various objects made by the prisoners,
37:27such as these candlesticks, this rocking horse, and these beds.
37:40He filmed his friends, including SS camp officers.
37:46This is the swimming pool where guards could relax after work.
37:55Who could imagine that the prisoners behind the watchtower you see in the distance were going through hell?
38:03On the eve of World War II, the SS camps had silenced all opposition.
38:10It seemed the camps were opposed by no one.
38:15If I'm told to guard prisoners, and I'm told to go up on the tower, there is a machine gun,
38:27and somebody tries to escape, you shoot them. Of course I would.
38:37November 9th, 1938, the Feldherrn Halle in Munich.
38:46Less than a year before the start of World War II, and the beginning of the carnage.
38:55These thousands of SS men are about to live one of the most important events of their lives.
39:17Eberhard Hedder, a future captain in the Viking division.
39:24That was full. And rechts and links, the tribune, on which the viewers stood.
39:34And at the midnight of the United States, I experienced, that Hitler was there祝福祭.
39:46And then the SS-Männer said, they speak the Eid.
39:50I swear to you, I swear to you,
39:56Father Hitler,
39:58Father Hitler,
40:00Freude and powerhouse,
40:03Freude and powerhouse,
40:05We have out full of hearts this spoken.
40:09I swear to you,
40:11I swear to you,
40:14The Lord comes to the end of the day.
40:17The Lord comes to the end of the day.
40:21This Biss in the death has moved me, of course,
40:27The Lord comes to the end of the day.
40:39But it was too late.
40:42The first large scale massacre of Jews took place that very night.
40:47It would be known as Kristallnacht.
40:51Throughout the country, Nazi activists murdered almost a hundred Jews,
40:56smashed shop windows, and set synagogues on fire.
41:09These home movies show firemen arriving at a fire,
41:13an SS-man at the bottom of the frame, smiling and preventing them from putting it out.
41:22Himmler had given the order to let the synagogues burn without setting fire to the German buildings,
41:29as he called them.
41:32I saw it, how the Scheiben were thrown from the Schaufensters.
41:39I saw it, how the Jews were thrown away.
41:43I saw it, how the Jews were thrown away.
41:50I saw it, how the Jews were thrown away.
41:57I felt like a anti-Semitic, but not in the sense of how the anti-Semitism is today,
42:09as a sense of how the Jews are going to destroy the Jews.
42:27By joining the SS,
42:29they said they wanted to raise Germany up again
42:32and at the same time help themselves to rise above other people.
42:44With the outbreak of World War II,
42:46they would soon move from collective intoxication to mass murder.
43:12In September 1939, Hitler attacked Poland, starting the Second World War.
43:19In September 1939, Hitler attacked Poland, starting the Second World War.
43:23On the eve of the offensive,
43:26the SS played a crucial role.
43:31To justify the invasion,
43:33the Fuhrer ordered them to fake a Polish provocation.
43:37The SS simulated a Polish attack,
43:40a bloody one, on the German border.
43:46Dirty work the SS had done since the start,
43:50and would do to the end.
43:57The SS also took part in the fighting alongside the regular army,
44:02the Wehrmacht.
44:05If the SS sacrificed itself on the front line,
44:08paying with its blood, explained their leaders,
44:11it would have the moral right to lead the repression in Germany.
44:19To these men destined to fight on the front line,
44:23Himmler gave a name.
44:26The Waffen-SS, the armed SS.
44:33800,000 men joined the Waffen-SS during the war.
44:39They saw themselves as political soldiers,
44:42and in the eyes of the regime, they were dependable.
44:47Hitler could count on them in the event of trouble, at home or abroad.
44:58The ship was released on the front line,
44:59in the middle of the war.
45:00The first battery was fired,
45:01the charge was fired,
45:02The advertising was then
45:03called Panzer Division.
45:07And the Waffen-SS was called Panzertruppe,
45:10and I was fascinated by Panzertruppe.
45:10And for the word Panzertruppe,
45:11I was fascinated by Panzertruppe.
45:15Here's one of those Waffen-SSs,
45:18Manfred Diener, age 16.
45:21For this baker's son from Thuringia, it was an opportunity for social advancement.
45:50Wer sich freiwillig meldete in der vorletzten Klasse, der bekam das Abiturszeugnis nachgeschickt.
46:01Beim anderen Wehrmachtsteilen musste man, um Offizier zu werden, Abitur haben.
46:08Die Waffen-SS machte eine große Ausnahme.
46:11Da konnte man schon wie ich zum Beispiel als einfacher Dorfschulabsolvent Offizier werden.
46:25Es war ein Ideal World.
46:28A fantasy.
46:31A model for the German people to follow.
46:37In reality, these men were no longer their own masters.
46:43With a tattoo of their blood group indelibly marked under their left arm, they had become someone else.
46:51Once inside the Black Order, there was no way back.
47:10Here they are again, the young Waffen-SS men we saw in a drill at their barracks are now at
47:17the vanguard of the invasion of France.
47:21As in Poland, SS soldiers committed war crimes.
47:37A murderous rage to which their leaders would turn a blind eye.
47:42Notably this one.
47:44Notably this one.
47:45SS Chief, Zepp Dietrich.
47:48One of the killers of the Night of the Long Knives.
47:55They knew that for their leaders, only victory mattered.
48:08The Germans crushed France in six weeks, succeeding in doing what the previous generation 25 years earlier had failed to
48:17do in four years.
48:45It was just one step.
48:48In June 1941, one year after the victory against France, and after having conquered Yugoslavia and Greece, Hitler unleashed his
48:59troops on Stalin's USSR.
49:04The objective, the destruction of communism, and the conquest of a living space for the Aryan race.
49:18The Nazis waged a war of a different type against the USSR, colored by the indoctrination of the 1930s.
49:28A war of extermination against the Jews, communists, and any individuals suspected of opposing the Reich.
49:41This horrific scene was filmed behind the lines by a German with his own camera.
49:47Men of Jewish origin executed and buried in a ditch.
49:58Hans Friedrich was in the 1st SS Infantry Brigade.
50:04A few months before his death in 2005, he confessed on film to his part in the murder of several
50:11thousand Jews.
50:17A few months after his death, the Germans were in the murder of a group.
50:31A few months after his death in the murder of a group.
50:37A few months after his death in the murder of a group.
50:42and there were soldiers, that were we, and they were shot.
50:50And they were shot, and they fell down.
50:57What you thought or thought about it,
51:02would you say that?
51:04Yes.
51:07I just thought, carefully.
51:18So that you can see them.
51:23That was my idea.
51:27That was the only idea?
51:28You had no sense for the people,
51:31and the Jewish activists who were shot?
51:37No.
51:39And why not?
51:41That's why my hate is,
51:43when Jews go over, too big.
51:46And I give to,
51:49my thinking is unjust.
51:52I'm not sure.
51:55I'm not sure.
51:56But what I've experienced from the old age of the town
52:01on the farm,
52:02what the Jews did with us,
52:07then it won't change.
52:10I'm not sure.
52:11I'm not sure.
52:21What did the Jews do to him in his childhood?
52:24No one knows.
52:27It's likely that he himself is not sure.
52:32The terrorists who were upset with the SS people,
52:40were just exhausted.
52:41They just wanted to be over-Nazis.
52:46That means,
52:47you know,
52:47that's not for killing.
52:51The whole thing,
52:53if they talked about Jews,
52:56many people said,
52:57And I said, they can only kill them.
Comments