If the Jewish press believes it can continue to slyly threaten us, the National Socialists, they should watch out. One day our patience will reach its limits and we will shut these Jews' dirty lying mouths once and for all.
It was a visceral, vengeful hatred, bottled up for too long, born out of 19th-century racist theories, a sinister indication of what was to come.
10:00 Since their creation in 1925, the SS had been Hitler's bodyguards. They stood out in their dashing black uniforms and could be seen everywhere alongside the party leaders. They wanted to be noticed, to distinguish themselves. Verner Wolkner explains,
I knew it was an elite formation; in other words, they wouldn't take any Tom, Dick, or Harry.
Manfred Diener, SS Death's Head Division, adds
I wanted to be part of an elite division.
They were the new regime's shop window. New recruits had to be tall, at least 5'6", and young, under 23. No Jewish ancestry. They had to provide genealogical details dating back to the 18th century. Strength. Prestige. Virility. In the 3rd Reich, if you wanted a successful career, if you wanted a successful life, you joined the SS.
Egon Kuhn of the SS Viking Division shared,
Women were very interested in the idea of getting to know SS men and making friends with them. They were obviously ideal fellows. The SS were very much in demand. Marrying a member of the SS was an honor, of course.
12:00 They were also known as the Black Order, a name that linked them to the Knights of the Middle Ages when Germanic soldier monks colonized Eastern Europe. They were filled with grandiose ideas that they were the new Lords of Germany entrusted with replacing the old aristocratic elite that had always run the country.
Ekkehard Guhr was a Protestant minister. His SS Unit, the Das Reich Division committed numerous atrocities during the War. At the age of 17, he says, he joined the SS to defy his parents who refused to allow a relationship with a young Catholic girl.
There were images in Germany where you would see a young man sign up for the war for freedom and he would kneel before his beloved who would bless him. All of those emotions that I don't think we can understand or express today, they existed back then.
Manfred Diener, SS Death's Head Division explains,
Our motto, written on our belt buckles, was "My honor was my loyalty." It meant no cowardice when facing the enemy.
Ekkehard Guhr elaborates,
The ideology that Himmler had drilled into us was "you are nothing; your people are everything."
13:50, Werner Wolkner, explains
You belong to the nation. The nation is you. You are part of the nation.
Kurt Barkhausen makes the point that,
I wanted to prove that I was ready to risk my life for that ideology to rescue a clan, the intrepid New Man, able to remove pity from their hearts, the racial spearhead of the German people as they saw themselves.
This is what the state does, it flips Christian and religious values and claims as their own.
This is Heinrich Himmler, their chief, one of the greatest criminals of all time. He was from Munich's cultivated middle classes: anti-semitic, anti-communist, anti-Christian, one of the first Nazis and one of the most ambitious.
15:00 At the age of 23, he took part in the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923. When Hitler sought to overthrow the German Republic and set up a fascist regime, as Mussolini had done in Rome the previous year, the coup failed after clashes with police in Feldherrnhalle Square. But Himmler had got himself noticed, and from that point on, his rise step by step was irresistible. 10 years later, in 1933, he was in charge of 50,000 SS. He was still subordinate to Rohm. Here with his arm raised, the head of the party militia, the SA. It was an unbearable position for Himmler. For months with the aid of Nazi dignitaries, he tried to persuade the Fuhrer that Rohm was plotting against the government.
16:16 On June 30, 1934, he succeeded. It would be called the Night of the Long Knives. The men in black would massacre their own SA comrades. Hitler himself triggered events by having Rohm arrested in a Bavarian hotel where he was staying. He was transferred to a Munich prison by the SS and liquidated along with members of his staff. With this fratricidal massacre, Himmler now under direct orders from Hitler obtained autonomy for the SS. In 1936, this uncharismatic man was appointed Chief of Police for the whole of Germany. In addition to the SS and their intelligence service, the SD, he now controlled every uniformed policeman as well as the Criminal Division and the Secret Police, the Gestapo. With "Faithful Heinrich," as Hitler called him, Germany became a state under police control, and its young SS was as obedient as machines.
Ekkehard Guhr again,
When you are a soldier, you have to carry out orders. You're not there to think. That's how it was. Today, it's different. At the time we said, "Leave the thinking to the horses. They have bigger heads."
Egon Kuhn of the Viking Division,
We weren't telling jokes and having a laugh. "Attention!" Quick march! Left! Right!
Werner Volkner,
An order was an order. If someone gave me an order to do it.
18:30 "Blood and soil." Himmler's new creed. In exchange for their obedience, SS Reichfuhrer offered his men a new imaginary world of German mythology and racial superiority, pursuing the slightest trace of exploitable German history. He created a religion that could replace Christianity, a religion based on race with its particular beliefs and rituals. Here, a child's baptism with no priest. The minister is an SS officer, and the crucifix has been replaced by a portrait of Hitler.
Ekkehard Guhr points out,
This atmosphere and the ceremonial mythology I found fascinating.
