Read Army of Evil: A History of the SS Online
Authors: Adrian Weale
Right
: Theodor Eicke, creator of the SS concentration camp system, killer of Ernst Röhm and commander of the SS-Death’s Head Division. (
Bundesarchiv)
Left
: Paul Hausser, former army general who founded the SS officer schools. (
Bundesarchiv)
Right
: Felix Steiner, tactical guru of the early armed SS units and later commander of the Germanic Panzer Corps. (
Bundesarchiv)
Left
: Gottlob Berger, the Swabian PE teacher who masterminded the expansion of the Waffen-SS. (
Bundesarchiv)
Right
: Walter Schellenberg, Himmler’s foreign intelligence chief and confidant in the later years of the war. (
Bundesarchiv)
Odilo Globocnik (
second from right
), commander of Operation Reinhard, with unidentified Nazi officials in 1943. (
Yad Vashem)
SS personnel at Belzec death camp, 1942. The camps employed relatively few SS men. Much of the dirty work fell to Ukrainian auxiliaries.
(
Instytut Pamieci Narodowej Muzeum Regionalne w Tomaszow Lubelski, courtesy of Zygmunt Klukowski)
Above left
: A Waffen-SS NCO of a Special Task Group prepares to murder a Ukrainian Jew as other Waffen-SS and Reich Labour Service members look on. (
Library of Congress Dokumentationsarchiv des Oesterreichen Widerstandes, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum [USHMM], YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, courtesy of Sharon Paquette)
Above right
: Lithuanian militiamen—under SS direction—force Jewish women to undress before murdering them, Panevezys, 1941. (
USHMM, Institut Pamieci Narodowej Lietuvos Nacionalinis Muziejus, courtesy of Saulius Berzinis Mrs. Bukowska)
Special Task Force members murder a Jewish family, Ivangorod, 1942.
SS soldiers conduct a selection of the
rampe
at Birkenau, circa 1944. It is likely that the column of prisoners on the far side of the tracks is being led to the gas chambers. (
Yad Vashem)
The SS leadership at Auschwitz, 1944: (
left to right
) Richard Baer, Josef Mengele, Josef Kramer, Rudolf Höss and Anton Thumann. (
USHMM, courtesy of anonymous donor)
Left
: Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, SS anti-partisan chief in central Russia. (
Bundesarchiv)