Excerpts from the appendix to the book: Heinz Höhne. “Black Order of the SS. The history of the security detachments. Black order ss black order ss

One day, Munich officers, scientists, industrialists and landowners unexpectedly received invitations to a large reception with the Reichsfuehrer SS. They came to this reception, some driven by curiosity, others not without hesitation and unpleasant suspicions. On more than one occasion, Nazi leaders have called the upper classes of society decadent, ruled by Jews. However, this time Himmler did not criticize them. On the contrary, he asked those present to "help bring tradition to the SS organization." Every state, the Reichsfuehrer continued, needs an elite. In a Nazi state, the SS should become such an elite. They will be able to fulfill their functions if the members of this organization, based on racial selection, are carriers of military and aristocratic traditions, clear thinking, as well as the creative activity inherent in entrepreneurs. Guests invited to the reception should help in the formation of such traditions. Everyone was amazed at his speech. Such an unusual line for a Nazi, chosen by Himmler, led to the fact that almost everyone present joined the ranks of the SS.

This event, organized in the first year of the Nazi era, showed that Himmler was able to create advertising for his order. Of all the Nazi organizations, it was the SS that had the best reputation then, especially against the background of plebeians in brown shirts. Walter Schellenberg later recalled that the best joined the SS, preferring this organization to other party structures. And Grober, the Catholic archbishop of Freiburg, admitted in 1946: "We in our city considered the SS the most respectable of the Nazi party organizations."

Many Germans took the SS's claim to being an elite for granted. Historical experience taught that without them the state, democratic or dictatorial, could not exist, and the sad end of the Weimar Republic, where everyone was equal, confirmed this. Looking at the British democratic establishment or at the Soviet party hierarchy, the Germans understood that the political system is resistant to crises if it relies on a ruling class with a solid organization. Therefore, the SS propaganda of the new elite was then quite attractive. Moreover, Himmler gave it the form of a romantic tradition beloved by the Germans.

Hitler's biographer Konrad Heiden, certainly not a Nazi, in 1934 believed that against the background of the "revolutionary SA" SS men look like a stronghold of conservatism. Even the murders on June 30 did not shake the respect that common people had for the SS. The relief from the disappearance of the brown-shirted troops that had filled the cities was stronger than the moral feeling. The massacre was forgotten. The nation lived in the hope that the usual burgher peace and tranquility would never again be disturbed by hooligans from the SA. The Germans did not recognize the "devilish masquerade", they did not yet know that on the way to an absolute dictatorship the idea of historical necessity would be used more than once as a cover for "crimes for the good."

In addition, that "crime of necessity", in the summer of 1934, was dressed up in a suit that is dearest to the German heart - in a uniform. Discreetly hiding the plebeian brown shirt under a black uniform, the SS men were now clad in black from head to toe. They wore black caps with a silvery "Dead Head" logo, black coats with black buttons, black ties, black belts, and black boots. The creators of this form had the goal of influencing the psychology of Germans who are sensitive to the hierarchy with the help of various kinds of mystical symbols and insignia. Officers in the rank of Hauptsturmführer and below had six parallel silver stripes in pursuit, in the ranks from Sturmbannführer to Standartenführer - three intertwined stripes, and starting with the Oberführer - three double interlaced stripes. Senior officers also wore insignia on their collars: Standartenfuehrer - one oak leaf, Oberfuehrer - two, Brigadefuehrer - two leaves and a star, Gruppenfuehrer - three leaves, Obergruppenfuehrer - three leaves and a star, and the Reichsfuehrer himself - three leaves in a wreath of oak leaves.

All this tinsel was supposed to demonstrate that the SS is really the elite, the imperial guard, consisting of selected, staunch fighters, “unconditionally loyal to the Fuhrer, ready to carry out any of his orders without the slightest hesitation,” as Himmler put it.

It was in this environment that Himmler opened wide the doors of the SS to representatives of the upper classes of Germany. Money and staffing were what the special formations of the SS needed most of all, and the only source of both was to know and rich industrialists and merchants. Himmler was so enthusiastic about recruiting personnel for various SS structures that he did not even notice that he was contradicting himself. For years, the Nazis preached the creation of an elite based on racial-biological selection. Now, the SS called on people on the basis of social prestige, wealth, high origin, and such words were not previously in the Nazi vocabulary.

The social composition of the SS changed radically. From the old SS (until 1933) only a tiny handful have survived; they, however, occupied leading positions, but in general, in the last years of the existence of the Third Reich, 90 percent of the composition was replaced. The first and the "newcomers" were from the aristocracy. Several big names emerged even before the Nazis seized power: the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg, Crown Prince of Waldeck and Pyrmont, Prince Christoph and Prince William of Nesse. In the spring of 1933, there was a new infusion of blue blood. Prince of Hohenzollern and Count von der Schulenburg joined the SS; behind them followed a retinue - all from the "Gothic Almanac" of the German nobility. In 1938, they accounted for 8 to 19 percent of the highest ranks of the SS, starting with the rank of Standartenführer.

The aristocracy was followed by representatives of the upper middle class. Unlike their predecessors, these were "new people" - intellectuals who received an academic education (most often legal), emotionally and spiritually close to the German youth movement. They basically went to the SD, creating in this structure a special intellectual atmosphere, alien to the spirit of the "soldier brotherhood" of veterans, as well as to the vulgar National Socialism of the lower classes. There were Walter Schellenberg, Reinhard Höhn, Franz Six, Otto Ohlendorf - "social engineers" and excellent organizers, they gave the Fuhrer's dictatorship a kind of "legality". They were pragmatists, had no other ideology than the desire for power, and did not bind themselves to generally accepted moral norms.

This layer was joined by a group of young economists, also from the upper middle class, they moved into the economic structures of the SS. They are not much different from the technocrats who took over the post-war industry in West Germany. Ideology interested them even less than newcomers to the SD. Like Standartenführer Dr. Walter Salpeter, they saw in Himmler's industrial empire only an opportunity for a secure and fast career.

The next group came from the Reichswehr officer corps. They supplemented the SS paramilitary units (BT) formed in 1934 and further enhanced the SS's heterogeneity. For example, General Paul Hausser, appointed inspector of the BT, was a staunch monarchist and naturally gave the new units a distinct conservative bias; on the other hand, there were also reformers like Felix Steiner who saw the SS as a suitable field for military experiments.

People from the peasant environment also fell into the SS; Thus, the children of peasants, who did not see a future for themselves in labor on the ground, often became the guards of concentration camps. But more developed peasant children could enter the SS cadet schools (in the Reichswehr there was no such opportunity for them).

And with such and such variegation, Himmler also introduced the institution of honorary commanders. High SS ranks with the right to wear uniforms, but without the right to command, were assigned to important state and party officials, scientists, and diplomats. These people did not serve for an hour at all. It was simply that Himmler hoped to raise the prestige of the SS and expand their public support.

The fact that the anti-Nazi Baron Ernst Weizsacker had the rank of brigadeführer, and such an ardent enemy of Hitler as Gauleiter Forster, was considered SS Obergruppenführer, led many historians to believe that the Himmler state in the state was generally a “fifth column”. In fact, the honorary commanders had the same relation to the SS as, for example, the wife of the Italian ambassador, whom Himmler also tried to award with some title. And many distanced themselves from the SS in every possible way. For example, the chairman of the government of Cologne, Rudolf Diels, an honorary SS Oberfuehrer, resolutely prevented the Gestapo from poking his nose into the activities of his administration. There were some curiosities: Konrad Hnelein, leader of the Sudeten German party, became an honorary Gruppenführer after the SD failed to remove him; and Martin Bormann, also an honorary commander of the SS, constantly interfered with the work of the internal department of the SD.

Nevertheless, Himmler continued to look for new cadres for the SS, sometimes even incorporating entire organizations into its composition, if he believed that this was necessary to strengthen the position of the order in "good society."

Wanting to take possession of the strongholds of German conservatism, Himmler tried to get his hands on the Horsemen Society. Some of them really joined the SS, others limited themselves to cooperation. Horsemen in the main horse breeding areas wore SS uniforms. In 1937, the "SS riders" won all equestrian championships in Germany. Himmler paid dearly for such victories. He promised the leadership of the societies that he would accept their members into the SS, regardless of political views. This angered the old fighters, who regarded this public as "reactionary Nazis." Most of the rider recruits accepted the harsh SS rules, but a few had other ideas. In 1933, 11 "horsemen" refused to take the SS oath and were sent to a concentration camp. Baron von Hoberg was shot by the SS on July 2, 1934 for revealing some of their inner secrets to the Reichswehr, and ten years later Himmler executed another prominent "horseman", Count von Salviati, for participating in the assassination attempt on Hitler.

On the other hand, the pact with the Horsemen's Societies gave Himmler access to the landowners' world. The consequence of this was an alliance with the semi-monarchist organization of the former officers "Keefhauser". The central council and local governments were collectively admitted to the SS. But when in this way General Reinhard, who was still loyal to the Kaiser, found himself in the ranks of the SS, the old SS fighters felt that they ceased to understand Himmler. After all, Reinhard and his friends, such as Count von der Goltz, also admitted to the SS, were just branded by the SS newspaper Schwarze Corp. as "the worst reactionaries." The patch came out of the receptions "as a whole" of the naval corps: their commander made a suffocating speech when he called to join the SS, because "you need to know the enemy by sight." After that, the Reichsfuehrer SS refused collective events.

Himmler was worried not only about the problem of personnel, but where to get money for the SS. German industrialists and managers, however, were only happy to provide financial support to the SS. They created the Club of Friends of the Reichsfuehrer SS, which included people who, for various reasons, believed that it was best to side with Himmler. There were also opportunists like Butefisch from “A. O. Farben, the largest chemical monopoly, convinced Nazis like Dr. Naumann of the Propaganda Ministry, anxious entrepreneurs like Flick and even latent opponents of Nazism like Hans Waltz, the director of the Bosch firm: all of them allocated money for the needs of the SS.

The Friends were, as it were, an offshoot of the Planning Committee for Economic Problems, which was created in 1932 by Wilhelm Kepler, Hitler's economic adviser. The committee included prominent economists and financiers, among them the president of the Reichsbank Schacht, the chairman of the board of the United Steel Plants, Vogler, and the Cologne banker Baron von Schroeder. True, the role of the committee as a generator of economic ideas for the future masters of Germany soon faded away, but Kepler's young and nimble assistant interested Himmler with the idea of a Friends Club, and from mid-1924 the club was under the wing of the Reich - Fuhrer. Schacht and Vogler abstained from membership, but many other firms came in their place. They hoped that by paying an indemnity to the SS treasury, they could thus protect their business from the Nazi invasion. The membership list of "friends" was read from the Business Register: Deutsche Bank, Dresdner Bank, Commerz Bank, Hamburg-American Shipping Company, German Transcontinental Oil Company, A. O. Farbenindustri "," Simmens and Schuckert ", the Rheinmetall company, the Hermann Goering concern ... All the meetings were attended by the highest ranks of the SS. At first, the club met twice a year (in Nuremberg during the party convention and in Munich during the SS oath), but later the "friends" began to meet monthly at the Pilot's House in Berlin. Himmler regularly requested financial contributions from these gentlemen, as he put it, for "the social, cultural and charitable activities of the SS." The total amount of annual receipts to the SS special account at the Dresdner Bank was about a million marks. Himmler was able to show his gratitude: SS ranks rained down on the Club of Friends. Of the 32 club members, 15 became honorary commanders of the SS.

The gluttonous SS were the only formation within the party that Hitler allowed to independently manage their financial affairs and even allowed to acquire a category of "auxiliary members", "sponsors", Forder nde Mithglieden, abbreviated FM, who helped the SS with their contributions. They did not join the ranks of the SS, did not take the oath of allegiance to Hitler, and were not obliged to carry out the orders of the SS leadership. Each SS regiment actually had its own sponsoring organization, and the SS leadership conducted extensive propaganda to attract individual or collective sponsoring members, especially after the Nazis came to power, calculating that many Germans would rather choose such an indefinite form of participation in public deeds than joining a party organization, the more so that everyone could set for themselves the amount of the contribution, with a minimum of one stamp per year. The letters FM were also a protection for German companies and testified to their loyalty to the new regime. To make this institution more attractive, Himmler ordered the development of the FM badge - a silver oval with a swastika, double SS runes and the letters FM, and also began to publish a special newspaper, the circulation of which reached 365 thousand copies by the beginning of the war. The efforts of the propaganda machine have been successful. The "shadow army" of those accompanying them grew rapidly, and streams of money flowed into the SS treasury. In 1932, there were 13,217 of them, and they contributed 17,000 marks, and in 1934 their number reached 342,492, and the amount of contributions was 581,000 marks. A simple but catchy rhyme was even composed in a marching rhythm, of course:

Joining the SS is a great honor.

Honor and glory to friends.

Let's go hand in hand

Be great, power!

For all that, there could be no genuine solidarity in an organization assembled from such diverse elements. SS veterans suddenly saw the SS uniform in public, about whom it was known beforehand that they did not know the basics of National Socialism. And Schwartz, the party treasurer, could no longer put on his SS uniform, because "now too many wear SS uniforms and, even worse, many SS commanders have no right to do so." The uniform and SS insignia by themselves did not mean that this man was a real SS man in spirit. For example, Heinrich Müller, the future head of the Gestapo, who wore the chevron of an old fighter on his sleeve, the Upper Bavarian Committee in January 1937 declared an "ambitious, narcissistic" type who cannot be considered a party comrade. He "never worked actively in the party" and therefore "cannot serve the cause of national revival." The Human Resources Department of the State Security Directorate (RSHA) characterized Heinrich Butefisch as “a former Mason, a businessman who is only interested in international cooperation; he considers his company a state in a state with special rules and privileges. " About banker von Schroeder, SS Oberfuehrer, treasurer of "friends of the Reichsfuehrer SS", a secret report said that he was previously associated with the Rhine separatists, was friends with Konrad Adenauer and "was never an active fighter in the SS sense."

Himmler himself, over time, felt the danger threatening the inner unity of the SS. In 1937, he admitted that "too large numbers are harmful" because many people joined the SS, "not being sincere supporters of the movement and lacking ideals." It seemed to Himmler that he had overcome this danger, but in reality it existed until the very end of the SS. True, in mid-1933 he temporarily stopped recruiting new members. "I said that we would not accept anyone else," Himmler wrote, "and then in 1933-1935 we cleaned out useless elements from the rookies." During this period, about 60 thousand people were expelled from the SS. Basically, the victims of the purge were outspoken fortune-seekers, homosexuals, drunkards and people whose Aryan origins were in question. They even expelled some of the old fighters: they were needed "during the period of the struggle" in order to trample opponents, but they were not suitable for the new "Praetorian Guard". In addition, Himmler no longer wanted to tolerate professional loafers. “If a person changes jobs three times without a valid reason, he should be kicked out. We don't need parasites. "

He dealt with homosexuals especially hard; he considered their very appearance in the ranks of the SS a personal insult to himself. Even old fighters, such as the Gruppenführer Kurt Witte, who was dismissed from the SS "due to illness", did not escape his anger, although his associates and everyone around, including the SA, knew very well what this "illness" was. In 1937, Himmler insisted that every homosexual should be expelled from the SS and brought to justice. "And after serving his sentence, he will be sent on my instructions to a concentration camp and shot while trying to escape."

And one more thing invariably worried Himmler: what if at least a drop of non-Aryan blood would be found in the SS veins. From June 1, 1935, all commanders were required to provide evidence that neither themselves nor their wives had Jewish ancestors. All of them, not excluding the old comrades of Himmler, now scoured the churches, the registration books, compiling their genealogies, officers and cadets - since 1750, and all the rest - since 1800.

Anyone who had a trace of Jewish origin in the roots of the family tree was obliged to immediately submit a report to their superiors about their dismissal from the SS of their own free will; those who did not do so were awaited by the SS trial and dismissal by sentence.

Himmler was ruthless in this respect - at least to the lower ranks. We had to be more tolerant with the elders. For example, a certain Obersturmführer M. (as he is designated in the dossier) found out that his wife's grandparents were Jews. He was allowed to remain in the SS, but on condition that his wife agrees not to have more children, and he will not attach his son to the SS under any circumstances. As time went on, Himmler became more and more cautious in accordance with the rank of the sinner. Already during the war years, Gruppenführer Kruger was going to marry his daughter to Sturmbannführer Klingenberg. Here it was unexpectedly revealed that on the part of Frau Kruger, according to Himmler, there was in 1711 "a purebred Jew in the ancestors." Klingenberg was forbidden to marry Kruger's daughter, but Kruger's son was allowed to enter Leibstandart.

So, 60 thousand SS men were expelled, but this action in itself could not guarantee the unity of the SS. Himmler realized that they lacked a certain corporate spirit; and the structure should be tougher, and the conditions of admission are stricter. We need a kind of "code of honor". What was formerly only an organization was now to become an order. The Jesuit Order became a historical example, a model for the new SS. It is no coincidence that Karl Ernst, the assassinated head of the stormtroopers, poked fun at Himmler as a "black Jesuit," and even Hitler himself called him his Ignatius Loyola. It was in them that Himmler found what he considered the main feature of caste thinking - the doctrine of obedience and the cult of organization. Schellenberg admitted that Himmler "built his order on the principles of the Jesuits."

Indeed, the similarities are striking. Both orders had enormous privileges, both did not submit to ordinary jurisdiction, both were protected by the strictest conditions of admission, and their members were bound by oath and unconditional, blind obedience to their master or master - the Pope or the Fuhrer. In addition, the Jesuits in the 17th century created their own independent state in Paraguay, and the SS leaders dreamed of creating an SS state outside Greater Germany, in Burgundy, with their own government, army and legate in Berlin. Even the crises they faced were similar; the Jesuits have always had enemies within the Catholic Church, and the SS within the Nazi Party.

There were common points in the organization of top management. Loyola (1491-1566) created a government for the Jesuit order he founded, the head of which had four assistants. Himmler assigned these positions to the Reichsfuehrer and heads of departments: Karl Wolf commanded the Reichsfuehrer's operational headquarters, Reinhard Heydrich - SD, Walt; Darre - the department of racial policy and colonization (RusA) was on a par with the head of the SS tribunal Paul Scharfe and the head of the general chancellery August Heismeyer (he replaced the ill-fated Witte). This department later grew into a huge department that dealt with practically all the administrative and economic affairs of the SS (with the exception of the SD).

In 1942, four new main directorates were created, to which part of the functions of the general chancellery was transferred: operational, under the command of Hans Jutner (headquarters of the SS military forces), personnel, under the leadership of von Gerf, administrative and economic, led by Oswald Pohl, who was in charge of and concentration camps, as well as the Heismeier department, which dealt with the system of political education.

These central departments controlled all the structures of the huge army, which became the SS. Their representatives constantly checked discipline and efficiency. The Reichsfuehrer's messengers arrived unexpectedly, met with the commanders, asked them tricky questions and thus tested the knowledge of the charter and the level of competence. They looked through the documents of SS units and structures and reported upstairs about the mood, morale and order in the units. Even senior commanders feared these emissaries.

By organizing a system of command and control, Himmler freed himself up for the next task. Instead of the current motley public, he wanted to see a man of the Nordic type from the race of masters, a kind of standard SS man. The Russian Agricultural Academy was instructed to tackle the new selection criteria.

Specifically, this case was entrusted to the Hauptsturmführer Professor Bruno Schulz, and he had to present his views to the selection racial committee. The professor described his criterion under three headings: race, physical health, endurance (mental ability was not considered). Since Himmler believed Nazi democracy theorists that the master race was made up entirely of blonde, blue-eyed Nordic creatures, and intended to purge the SS of other races, Schultz built his own value accordingly. He divided all of humanity into five racial types: "purely Nordic", "mostly Nordic", "balanced, with an admixture of Alpine or Mediterranean features", "bastards of the Eastern Baltic or southern type" and "bastards of non-European origin." Only persons of the first three categories were allowed to join the ranks of the SS. Even this Himmler considered a temporary compromise. He would like blondes to occupy all important government posts in the coming years and that in a maximum of one hundred and twenty years, the German people will again turn outwardly into Northern Germans. But origins are not everything. Schultz also compiled a list of nine additional items for physical selection in the SS: Himmler was simply obsessed with proportional addition. So that the lower leg and thighs match each other, and the body would not be too heavy for slender legs. It was believed that only a proportionally built person is suitable for long, exhausting marches.

For admission to the SS, persons of the first four categories out of nine on the list were selected - with "ideal", "excellent", "very good" and "good" constitution. The lower three categories were immediately rejected, but those who belonged to the fifth or sixth group were given a chance if they proved with their endurance and endurance that they were worthy of being considered the true representatives of the Nordic race. Himmler also demanded special behavior: “A person should not behave like a subordinate. It is necessary that everything in him - gait, hands, posture - correlates with the ideal to which we strive. "

Candidates who successfully passed the racial commission were subjected to the tests and examinations established for them within a certain period. Here Himmler again copied the Jesuits, who had a severe and long probationary period for the neophytes before they took monastic vows and became full members of the order.

The highlights of SS initiation were in conjunction with major Nazi holidays. On November 9, the anniversary of the Munich Beer Putsch, an applicant who reached 18 years of age was confirmed as a candidate and received the right to wear an SS uniform without insignia on the collar. On January 30, the day the Nazis came to power, the candidate became a cadet and received a temporary SS certificate. Finally, on April 20, on Hitler's birthday, the cadet became an SS man, received a permanent certificate and a badge on his collar. And he took the oath to Hitler:

“I swear to you, Adolf Hitler, Fuehrer and Chancellor of the German Reich, to be loyal and courageous. I promise to obey you and those you specify. I will be faithful to the end. I swear, God help me. "

The oath was supposed to give the newcomer a sense of the unity of the charismatic leader - the Fuhrer and his black army. A special ceremony for taking the oath was established for the VT (those units that at the beginning of World War II began to be called the Waffen-SS, that is, the SS troops). At ten o'clock in the evening on November 9, in the presence of Hitler, a torchlight procession was organized in the holy places for Nazism in Munich. One of the members of the Club of Friends recalled with great feeling this "midnight oath": beautiful youth, serious faces, an example of bearing and posture. Elite. Tears welled up in my eyes as thousands of voices repeated the oath in chorus. By the light of torches, it looked like a religious event. For the general SS, the oath did not mean the end of the trial. Between April 20 and entering the service on October 1, each newcomer had to fulfill the norms for a sports badge and learn the SS "catechism", where the ideology of the order was presented in the form of questions and answers, strengthening the cult of the Fuhrer in the minds of recruits. For example: "Why do we believe in Germany and Hitler?" - "Because we believe in God, and God created Germany, and we believe in our Fuhrer, because he was sent down by God." Question: "What makes you obey?" Answer: "My inner conviction, my faith in Germany, in our movement and in the SS and my devotion."

A candidate stuffed with ideology, he entered the service in the "labor camp" or the Wehrmacht, and if this service was successful, then he was admitted to the SS "with a probation period for a month." A new one was approaching on November 9, and at the solemn ceremony he took another oath. This time, he tied himself and his future family with a decree on marriage issued by the Reichsfuehrer. Himmler ruled that a member of the SS could marry "only if the necessary conditions for racial purity and healthy offspring are met" and only with the permission of the Russian Agricultural Academy or the Reichsfuehrer personally.

After that, the young SS member received an SS dagger and was admitted to that special brotherhood in which the fanaticism of a religious sect, the rituals of the feudal era and the romantic cult of Germanism were intricately intertwined with modern entrepreneurship and the composure of politicians in power.

The final phase of Himmler's program was the cultivation of corporate spirit. In this case, he took the Prussian officer caste as a model. Each of his orders, every detail of official relations were thought out so that the conviction was rooted in the SS men: they belong to the elite, the SS is not at all like the other party formations. Himmler wanted to achieve the same prestige for his order as medieval chivalry.

Scharfe, the head of the SS legal service, explained why the SS stand apart within the party: “Compared to an ordinary party member, the SS man naturally occupies a special place, because his duty is to protect all movements in general and his Fuhrer, and, if necessary, even at the cost of your life. This special provision, of course, implies that the SS man must be treated differently from the others. " And from this, Scharfe concluded that neither the state, nor even the party court had the right to judge the SS man. This is exclusively the prerogative of SS judges and senior officers. Thus, a special jurisdiction was introduced within the SS: for the VT, for the "Death's Head" detachments (concentration camp guards), for the SD and cadet schools. The age-old traditions of European law were abandoned: the SS had its own laws. In addition, in 1935, Himmler proclaimed: "Every SS man has the right and even the duty to defend his honor with arms in hand." Thus, the duel, the custom of the arrogant aristocrats, returned to life.

With the consent of the Reichsfuehrer, any SS man could challenge another to a duel. With the usual pedantry, Himmler laid out all the details in the order. The offended party must "take steps within 3-24 hours, excluding Sundays and public holidays, to demonstrate that they want an explanation or satisfaction." If he did not receive satisfactory explanations or apologies, he was ordered to warn the enemy that he was sending his representative (second) to him, from whom the enemy would “hear further”. The second was to be chosen "of the most appropriate rank"; he must appear in uniform to fulfill his mission. His duty is to convey the challenge, agree on the time and place of the duel and the type of weapon. If a challenge to a duel was sent in writing (this was allowed as an exception), then the letter must certainly be registered.

According to Himmler's ethics, the code of honor should also allow for suicide. The order was also enforced with bureaucratic thoroughness. An illustration is the case of Obersturmführer Buchold, who was sentenced to death for torturing his subordinates. On June 22, 1943, Hauptsturmführer Bleil wrote a report: “I informed Buchold of the Reichsführer’s order to leave in his cell a revolver with one cartridge for a period of six hours, in order to enable him to atone for the crime of which he is accused. I handed him a 0.8 caliber revolver with one round, cocked and unsecured, then I left. " The offender was also forced to give a receipt that the order for Himmler's "favor" had been communicated to him. Here is the Reichsfuehrer's commentary on this: “By his death, Buchold redeemed his guilt. The body should be handed over to relatives. They need to be informed that he was killed in action. "

However, the same jurisdiction, under which all ranks of the SS fell, could, as Himmler feared, lead to leveling and damage military discipline in general. Therefore, he drew a horizontal line separating the high priesthood from the priesthood and from the rank and file brothers. From Freemasonry, before which the Reichsfuehrer experienced an almost superstitious thrill of horror, he adopted and introduced in his order some "special signs" that endow the intra-caste hierarchy - again in the opinion of the Freemasons - with mystical power. At first, only old wrestlers had the right to wear a silver ring with a signet in the form of a skull, but then this circle was expanded. By 1939, the ring was already worn by every commander who has been in office for at least three years. But the dagger has become one of the most important symbols of the "new Germanic chivalry". It was handed over to the SS men no lower than the Untersturmführer, and even then not to everyone. Unlike the signet ring, the "status" of the dagger was not stipulated in the general charter, it was awarded only by order of the Reichsfuehrer. Only graduates of SS cadet schools received a dagger automatically after passing the last exams. The dagger emphasized the importance of its owner, and among the higher ranks the number of those awarded the dagger increased proportionally. By the end of the war, 362 out of 621 Standartenführer, 230 out of 276 Oberführer, 88 out of 96 Gruppenführer, 91 out of 92 Obergruppenführer, and each of the four Oberstgruppenführer had daggers. In addition, apparently under the impression of the legend of the 12 knights of the Round Table, Himmler never sat more than 12 guests at his table and, following the example of King Arthur, who chose the 12 bravest ones, appointed the 12 best Obergruppenführer to the highest positions in his order.

For a select few, Himmler wanted special insignia. In 1937, Professor Karl Diebitsch, the head of the SS department, related to art, was tasked by the Reichsfuehrer to design the coats of arms for several prominent SS leaders. Before Diebitsch had time to turn around, Himmler had a new idea and a whole group "Ancestral Heritage" arose, which was engaged in the study and excavation of Germanic antiquities throughout the country. They also gave material to Diebitsch, based on the tribal emblems of the ancient Germans.

In the castle of Wewelsburg, Himmler found his Valhalla, where he could gather his knights at a round oak table and place them in an appropriate way. They met in a large hall, 100 by 145 feet, where each had a high-backed pigskin chair with a silver plaque bearing the host's name. They would sit around the table for hours, conferring or engaging in a seance-like meditation. Each of these chosen ones had their own chambers in the castle, designed in the style of different eras and dedicated to certain historical figures.

The owner of the castle - according to the Minister of Armaments, "either a pedant-teacher, or an outright eccentric" - even thought out the death ceremony for his knights. Below the dining room was a crypt, surrounded by stone walls five feet thick. Stone steps led into a depression like a well, where 12 stone pedestals stood against the walls. In the event of the death of the Obergruppenfuehrer, his coat of arms was to be burned in this kingdom of death, and the urn with ashes had to stand on one of the pedestals. Four openings in the ceiling were arranged in such a way that the smoke during the burning ceremony would rise in one even trickle.

It was said that Himmler searched all of Westphalia, because, according to legend, there was a castle there, which should survive amid general destruction during a new invasion from the East, and finally came across Wewelsburg. This ancient castle in the mountains, named after one of the first owners - the semi-legendary robber knight Vevel - and which at one time became the center of resistance to the Huns, could not but impress the Reichsfuehrer: after all, his life belonged equally to the present and the past.

A pragmatist living in the present time, took advantage of the difficulties of the local authorities, on whose shoulders lay the care of the maintenance of the castle. They were only too happy to dump this burden on Himmler. Having become the owner of the castle in July 1934 for a purely nominal rent of 1 mark per year, he turned to the Minister of Economy: "I intend to use Wewelsburg as an all-German school for the SS command staff ... this requires the maximum possible state subsidy to cover the costs of the building." Within his personal headquarters, he allocated the management of Wewelsburg under the leadership of Standartenführer Siegfried Tauberg (in 1937 he became known as the commandant of the fortress); The SS architect was entrusted with the reconstruction, and the work was carried out by the detachments of the Labor Front.

The Reichsfuehrer's own private quarters were located in the south wing above the dining room and included a room for his extensive collection of weapons, a library with 12,000 books, a reception room, and meeting rooms for the SS Supreme Court. In the same wing there were rooms for Hitler, but he, however, never appeared in Wewelsburg - which, apparently, was the reason for the rumor that he was destined to be buried here.

By the end of the war, Wewelsburg was already worth 13 million marks, but this castle, with all the ritual undertakings, was for Himmler not just a game of "living pictures". He believed that history (or his own version of history) could be both a unifying and driving force in the SS. And Wewelsburg was not the only SS castle in the country. In 1937 Himmler declared: “My goal is that, whenever possible, in every SS district a similar cultural center, a monument to German grandeur and German history, should be established. They must be restored and brought to a state worthy of a cultured nation. " In 1936, Himmler founded the Society for the Development and Restoration of Monuments of German History and Culture, and priorities were given to the favorite periods of the Reichsfuehrer - the era of German paganism and the colonization of the East by the Germans. Monuments and documents of this kind were most consistent with the anti-Slavic and anti-Christian ideas of the SS. Himmler remarked: "Such things are of the utmost importance in political struggle."

The Memorial Fund of King Henry I became Himmler's pride. This German king (875-936) conquered the Slavic lands and therefore enjoyed the special favor of Himmler, who hated the Poles. On the millennium of the death of Henry I, Himmler vowed at his grave in Quedlingburg Cathedral (then empty) "to complete the mission of the Saxon king in the East." A year later, in a solemn atmosphere, he transferred the remains of the king there. He wanted this tomb to become a pilgrimage site for the Germans, their "holy land." Then, on each anniversary of this event, Himmler would come there at night for silent communication with his namesake.

He loved to communicate with the great people of the past, believing that he was given the power to summon spirits. According to him, King Heinrich appeared to him more than once when he, Himmler, was in a state of trance, and gave important advice. He got so used to the image of his hero that he gradually began to consider himself the reincarnation of King Henry I.

At the heart of all this occultism was not simply a love of history for history's sake. Contact with the past was supposed to convince the SS that they were members of a chosen caste, the successors of a long line of German nobility, and give the SS the ideological unity that this organization lacked. This is what first distinguished the SS from the orders of the past, which always possessed a harmonious system of ideology. Himmler said: "We are the link between past and future generations, and we must instill confidence in our people that the spirit of ancient Germany will forever abide in her land." Meanwhile, the SS cadres did not show much interest in the cult of ancestors, as well as in other ideological issues. Educational nights were considered the most boring SS activities. Responsibility for training was transferred to the administrative department, which took a new approach, focusing on historical stories. A romanticized story, colored by ideology, was supposed to fill the vacuum caused by the absence of an original key idea, inherent in the SS alone.

To strengthen the corporate spirit of his order and, he claimed, to revive historical German traditions. Himmler began to invent neo-pagan rituals. In fact, they were not so much pagan as simply non-Christian; but this is not so important, the main thing is that the SS men differ from the outside world. Here in Himmler the school teacher prevailed, and he began to poke his nose into the most intimate spheres of the life of his SS men: love, family, religion - everything demanded the highest permission of the Reichsfuehrer. Indeed, in his eyes, the SS is not just an unification of people, but an order of the German clans.

And so in 1936 he composes an instruction, which says that an SS man should also marry, preferably at the age of 25-30, and start a family. And the marriage law of 1931, according to which a member of the SS was bound by an oath, gave Himmler the right to veto in the event of an unsuitable couple.

The SS man and his fiancée had to fill out a questionnaire, RusA, undergo a medical examination by an SS doctor, present evidence of Aryan origin and their photographs in bathing suits. After that, the RusAll decided whether both parts of the proposed marriage were worthy of being included in the "Generic Book" of the SS; in relation to the leaders of the SS, such decisions were made by the Reichsfuehrer himself. Church marriages were taboo, and after civil registration, the commander of the local SS unit took the oath of allegiance to each other from the newlyweds. At his sign, they exchanged rings and received "bread and salt" from their order.

All these rules were established by Himmler in order to alienate the members of the fraternity from the Christian church. Only a person who renounced God could be appointed as a commander. The priest was not allowed to either the newborn or the dying. The local SS leader played the role of the priest. The baptismal ritual was replaced by very specific gifts from the Reichsfuehrer, produced in his own SS factory near Munich: at the birth of the first child, the parents received a silver cup, a silver spoon and a blue silk scarf; at the birth of each next - a candelabrum with the inscription: "You are just a link in the endless chain of the family."

The SS leadership also had a negative attitude towards the favorite holiday in Germany - Christmas. In opposition to him, Himmler threw a summer solstice festival, and the factory began to spew out streams of "summer" candelabra and "summer" silver plates at the SS and their families.

All this noise-gam-tararam about Christmas showed how far the SS ideology was from the realities of life. Many "New Pagan" rituals have remained on paper. Even the marriage rules, which the SS men swore to abide, became the subject of such fierce controversy that many decided to ignore them. In 1937, 307 people were expelled from the SS for such violations. The ever-growing discontent forced Himmler to mitigate his sentence. Already in the same year, 1937, it was recognized that there was no need to exclude, if the main thing was proved - racial purity. And in 1940, an instruction was issued according to which all SS men who were expelled for violating the rules on marriage must be reinstated if they themselves meet racial requirements.

Himmler also failed with his anti-church program. Two-thirds of the SS men serving in the common units did not break with the church by the beginning of the war. Most of the "atheists", about 70 percent, turned out to be in the "Death's Head" (concentration camp) units, but during the war, field priests were already allowed to visit SS units to perform services.

Himmler's SS wives must have been very disappointed: they did not want to start large families. The birth rate among the elite hardly differed from the birth rate in the country. As of the end of 1939, on average, SS families had one child, and officers' families - 1-2. Himmler's idea of raising purebred nobility also did not give much. In 1936, he invented the "Lebensborns" ("sources of life") with cheap houses for mothers and children, where it was officially allowed to give birth to unmarried purebred German women from purebred SS men. It was very much welcomed. According to the head of Lebensborn, Dr. Ebner, "the Reich Fuehrer ordered that every SS man should patronize future mothers of good blood." The majority, however, did not agree to break the conventions of everyday life, even despite such a frank hint that it was in the interests of "good blood." According to the same statistics, as of December 31, 1939, the SS leaders gave birth to 12,081 children; of these, only 135 children were born out of wedlock.

No neo-Germanic gimmick of Himmler could have infiltrated uniformitarianism into an organization as diverse as the SS. As for the anti-clerical campaign, it did the SS more harm than good. The aristocrats began to eschew the SS, more willingly entering their traditional service in the Wehrmacht. Contributions from sponsoring members fell from 581,000 marks in 1934 to 400,000 in 1936. Leaders were drawn from the SS to the industry; moreover, as the analysis carried out by the personnel service has shown, middle-ranking managers most often came to the SS because they saw this place only as a springboard for a career in the industry.

Himmler faced a dilemma that he could not resolve: the growing size of his empire dictated the urgent need to recruit leadership cadres; difficulties with the recruitment led to the fact that he had to accept people who had little in common with the standard of a true Aryan.

Recruiting difficulties would be even greater if the SS Order did not offer something spiritually attractive to strong, active natures. The SS differed from the Nazi party as a whole and from the outside world in a special way of life. The party set itself political goals; and in the ranks of the SS, in the words of the former Minister of Finance von Krozig, "a certain type of character was cultivated."

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Met the mention of the book by Heinz Höhne "The Black Order of the SS. The history of security detachments "during classes. I was impressed by the quotes and decided to read it in full. As a result, I was even more impressed - a continuous break in templates. The image of the Reich, as it turned out, was strongly mythologized for me, almost to the level of Mikhalkov's films about sailing attacks and tank armada.

On the other hand, while reading the author, questions constantly arose. He, as a lawyer, on the one hand, very logically and in detail describes the events, and on the other hand, he does not even keep silent about many things that did not fit into his "position", but is simply not accentuated somehow. For example, the "Thule" society meets only four times, and even then, in passing and in the appendix. And this despite the fact that:

Völkischer Beobachter is a daily newspaper, the official organ of the NSDAP. It was founded in 1919 on the basis of the weekly nationalist newspaper “Münchener Beobachter”, which was published even before the First World War. At first, it was published twice a week under the patronage of the Tule society and was mainly anti-Semitic. "

"The Thule Society, of which Heinrich Himmler was a member in 1919/20, took part in this movement."

"The solar circle is an ancient Scandinavian symbol of the sun, later the rune became the emblem of the" Thule "society

"The main combat units (for June 1944): 3rd SS Panzer Regiment" Thule "

Excerpts from the appendix to the book: Heinz Höhne. “Black Order of the SS. History of security detachments "

Such is the "insignificant" detail. Or, it is not at all clear why Himmler did not take the last step towards the removal of Hitler, which kept him "in the shadow of the Fuehrer"? Or, for example, how did it happen that the SS, disenchanted with ideals and turned away from the NASDAP ideology, nevertheless managed to retreat, withdraw money, people, create bases, continue the struggle? Who and how created ODESSA and Gladio? Where did some of the highest hierarchs of the order go? Why isn't Haushofer mentioned at all? And so on ...

Völkischer Beobachter. 1933 year

In addition, it can be seen that in his soul the author admires the SS, although he tries to hide it, perhaps even from himself. As a writer and journalist, Heinz Höhne created a very prominent, recognizable and easily readable portrait-biography of a political force: from its formation to the “sort of finale”. After his book, what is happening in Ukraine began to look even more frightening. This is how evil comes in. Step by step, imperceptibly, seemingly out of nothing and among ordinary, in principle, in many ways even good guys. Yesterday they walked, not knowing how to keep the line, and after a couple of months they wandered with laughter among the charred corpses, people they had just burned, proudly filming and posting “their achievements” on the Internet. So the SS in 1926 sent similar reports:

“In October, individual SS units managed to attract 249 new members to the NSDAP; subscribe 54 new readers to the Völkischer Beobachter newspaper, 169 readers to the Sturmer magazine, 84 readers to the National Socialist magazine, 140 readers to the Südwestdeutscher Beobachter newspaper, and pick 189 more readers for other nationalities. socialist publications. In addition, 2000 issues of the magazine "Illustrirter Beobachter" were sold out.

A couple of years later, Germany lay at their feet. And a couple of years later, reports already reported hundreds of thousands of Jews killed in a month.

In general, as after Dostoevsky, there was a painful feeling after reading, and a lot of thoughts and practical notes "in the margins." And also a depressing feeling of hopelessness. Human is too human.

1. What the book is about

From a political point of view, the book examines the history of the SS: from its inception to the "sort of" final in 1945. The author puts all questions of political metaphysics out of brackets. They seem to be absent for him, but what cannot be said about is mentioned dryly, in an accounting manner. But the picture of the political kitchen of the organization is drawn very well, frighteningly recognizable and convincing. The appendix provides a short guide to the SS: editions, insignia, structure, list of divisions with a short history.

Heinz Höhne (1926 - 2010-) German journalist and historian specializing in the history of Nazism and the secret services.

At the end of World War II, he was drafted into the army for some time and managed to fight. Then he studied at the journalism faculty in Munich, worked as a reporter. In 1955 he was invited to Der Spiegel, where he worked in the Anglo-American department, which he eventually headed.

But Heinz Höhne's work on Nazi Germany generated quite a lot of interest. They were even referred to by professional historians. Germany, the intelligence services, the Anglo-American department: all of this is suggestive. But there is surprisingly little information on the author, I couldn't even find a normal photo.

3. How and to whom is it useful?

Anyone who wants to understand what a political organization is, how it arises, develops and dies. It will be very useful for those who want to deal with fascism in practical terms. What is it, how does it work, why. Worth reading for those interested in the history of the "Jewish question". This, I think, is one of the most mythologized parts of Nazi history. And for example, when the political struggle of the SS against the mass extermination of Jews is described on the basis of archival documents, the templates begin to crack terribly.

4. Disadvantages

An attempt to cognize "evil" from a natural scientific standpoint. It's like trying to logically explain the motivation of believers. It can be very interesting, but essentially futile. And as a consequence, everything that cannot be rationally explained is attributed to the "fool", or is omitted from consideration.

And finally, the author is not trying to build a concept, he methodically describes a certain system. As a result, you begin to understand what and how the system is built from, how it functions, but what it was is still not clear.

5. Verdict

A very powerful book. Read to everyone who is trying to understand at least something in what is happening now. Both about the political "mechanics" of processes, and globally, on a global scale, in trends. I was deeply impressed by what I read.

They wore black uniforms, kept the nation at bay, and swore eternal allegiance to the Fuehrer. Their caps featured a skull and bones - the so-called "death's head" that their divisions carried across Europe. Their highest symbol was the double runes "zig" - "victory", and they destroyed millions of people.

All spheres of the life of the German nation were under their vigilant control. The police and special services were subordinate to them. They have occupied key positions in agriculture, health care and science. They managed to infiltrate the traditional stronghold of diplomacy and capture the commanding heights of the bureaucracy.

They were called "guard detachments of the National Socialist German Workers' Party" or "Schutzstaffeln", in abbreviated form - SS (for the first letters of the words). They felt themselves, as Dieter Wisliceny put it, "a sect of a new type, with its own forms and customs."

The uninitiated was not given a glimpse into the inner world of the secret sect of the SS. For ordinary citizens, she remained as ominous and incomprehensible as the Jesuit order, which the SS officially fought against, but at the same time imitated him to the smallest detail. The leaders of the "black order" deliberately supported the feeling of fear among the people.

"The secret state police - the Gestapo, the criminal police and the security service - the SD are shrouded in a mysterious political and criminal halo," enthralled the then police chief of the security service, SS Obergruppenfuehrer Reinhard Heydrich. The very same "master of the black order" Reichsfuehrer SS Heinrich Himmler confessed not without complacency: "I know that in Germany there are some people who feel bad when they see our black uniform, we understand this and do not expect to be loved."

People felt that some secret organization had scattered a huge, thinnest net over the Reich, but they were not able to make out it. The Germans could only hear the chased step of black columns on the asphalt of cities and villages, as well as the slogan songs that were heard from hundreds of gulps:

SS is coming! Clear the road!
Assault columns are ready!
They are from tyranny
Will find a way to freedom
Will find a way to freedom
Will find a way to freedom.
So be ready for the final blow!
How ready our fathers were!
Death is our comrade in arms!
We are black troops.

Thousands and thousands of invisible eyes watched every step of the compatriots. The giant police octopus held the nation tightly in its tentacles. 45 thousand officials and employees of the Gestapo, scattered in 20 departments, 39 departments and the so-called imperial branches, as well as 300 offices and 850 border police commissariats, recorded any more or less noticeable seditious manifestations. 30 top SS and police leaders, at the head of an army of 65,000 security police officers and 2.8 million members of the public order police, were in charge of "state security." 40 thousand guards and overseers terrorized in 20 concentration camps and 160 labor camps hundreds of thousands of imaginary and real enemies of the dictatorship. 950 thousand SS soldiers, including 310 thousand so-called "Volksdeutsche" from the countries of South-Eastern Europe and 200 thousand foreigners, along with the Wehrmacht, were constantly on alert, not forgetting about the surveillance of their army counterparts-rivals.

Hundreds of thousands of shadow hordes of agents and informants of the security service hourly monitored even the thoughts of fellow citizens. In universities and in production, on peasant farms and in the public service, all information of interest was caught and then pumped over to the Berlin center.

But not a single word reflecting the "working methods" of the SS organs, especially the thoughts that hovered in the empire of Heinrich Himmler, could ever become public. The Reichsfuehrer SS was careful to ensure that members of his order did not come into too close contact with ordinary representatives of the lay people. Himmler forbade the SS Fuhrer from participating in civil legal disputes with private individuals in order to prevent the court from getting a glimpse into the inner life of the SS. The Reichsführer SS refused to provide information on the economic activities of industrial enterprises belonging to the SS to the Reich Ministry of Economics. For the Death's Head units assigned to guard the concentration camps, Himmler issued a special order that read:

“First: no part of the guards should serve at their place of residence, that is, no, for example, a Pomeranian“ assault ”(company) will be deployed in Pomerania. Second: each unit after three months must be relocated to a new location. Third, the Death's Head units should not be used on city patrols. "

Even the most prominent leaders of the Third Reich could not afford to look behind the scenes of the "black sect".

“I knew nothing about the activities of the SS. In general, an outsider is hardly able to say anything about the Himmler organization, "admitted Hermann Goering in 1945.

Only the fall of the Third Reich dropped the veil of secrecy from the empire of the "black order". As accused of preparing for war and committing other grave crimes, the dock of the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg was taken by people who for many years led the security detachments.

The records of the Allied military tribunals included data carefully hidden by the SS apparatus. From the testimony of witnesses and the evidence presented by the prosecution, a picture of apocalyptic racial madness was formed. The "Black Order" appeared to the world as a guillotine ruled by psychopathic fanatics of "people's biological" racial purity. The results of the nightmare: from 4 to 5 million Jews were killed, 2.5 million Poles were liquidated, 520 thousand Roma were killed, 473 thousand Russian prisoners of war were executed, 100 thousand patients were killed in gas chambers.

“The SS was used for purposes that ... are criminal and include the persecution and extermination of Jews, atrocities and killings in concentration camps, excesses committed in the administration of the occupied territories, the implementation of the slave labor program, the cruel treatment and murder of prisoners of war. Conclusion: all persons who were officially accepted as members of the SS ... and remained so, knowing that this organization is used to commit acts defined as criminal, in accordance with article 6 of the charter, are suspected of crimes. "

The Nuremberg verdict branded the SS as a criminal organization and all those who ever wore the uniform of the "black order". Security detachments, until recently a collective image of the imaginary national elite, turned into an "army of lepers", as SS General Felix Steiner called them in a fit of self-pity. The Allied verdict had one major flaw, however: it did not specify how more than a million people were collectively turned into mass murderers. Nor did he explain where the SS got the power to implement the racial madness of the Nazi regime.

The former SS men could not, but rather did not want to reveal this secret. They assured that "they knew nothing at all," or they blamed all the blame and responsibility on their dead comrades. The first timid attempt at self-critical reflection on this problem was the book "The Great Chimera", published by the former SS Untersturmfuehrer Erich Kernmayr under the pseudonym Kern. However, quite soon, under the protective cover of revanchist tendencies that manifested themselves in the Federal Republic of Germany, from the pen of the former SS Fuhrer, firmly convinced that one can count on the short memory of their contemporaries, the so-called "justification" literature appeared. SS veteran Oberstgruppenführer Paul Hausser at the Nuremberg Trials could not, for example, remember whether he had ever met Himmler, "absolutely alien to the troops," in the disposition of military units. Former SS Obersturmbannfuehrer Robert Brill stated that he always perceived the internal organization of the SS as a voluntary association, to which the SS troops had nothing to do. The former SS men never tired of asserting that "they had no trace of racial hatred for anyone."

At the same time, from the ruins of the gas chambers of Auschwitz and Majdanek, the destroyed torture barracks of Dachau and Buchenwald, numerous creatures, rather like shadows, arose - people who survived the Nazi terror, who declared that they were ready to solve the riddle of the black order.

According to them, the SS is a monolithic organization of fanatical ideologues and shameless functionaries, governed by a single demonic will. Himmler's security detachments gradually seized all positions of power in the Third Reich, in order to eventually approve, according to the former prisoner of Buchenwald, professor of political science at the Darmstadt Institute of Politics Eugen Kogon, "a well-oiled and completely subordinate system of slaves and masters to the SS." In his bestseller The State of the SS, he portrays the leaders of the Black Order as a single, tightly knit clique, “ready for anything”. “Each planned step is calculated to the smallest detail, each goal is pursued with an outrageous, unimaginable cruelty. It was in this way that the well-constructed structure of the “SS state” conquered the party, then Germany and, finally, Europe. "

In other words, the concentration camp was the ideal model of the SS state, and the members of the SS were the true masters of Adolf Hitler in Europe.

Eugen Kogon introduced into scientific circulation a thesis that, at first glance, easily explains the essence of the SS phenomenon. Even SS General Otto Ohlendorf, who was on death row, said: "We will have to take this Kogon seriously."

What the professor chose to remain silent about or confine himself to vague hints was picked up by other historians, who began to collect a terrible mosaic of the undivided power of the SS. So, the Englishman Gerald Reitlinger proposed to consider the "empire of Himmler" as "a state within a state, comparable, perhaps, only to the Russian NKVD." Aychmann's biographer Comer Clarke, in turn, expressed his own conviction that the security forces "brought the shadow of Nazi terror to almost every home on the European continent," and the French writer Joseph Cassel saw all of Europe under the heel of the SS boot: "From the Arctic to the Mediterranean, from The Atlantic to the Volga and the Caucasus - they all lay prostrate at his (Himmler's) feet. "

And the more power was assigned to the "black order", the brighter the collective portrait of its "knights" with the monstrous mask of "black supermen" became.

“The eyes of the SS men, with their fishy gleam and dead, with a complete lack of spirituality, had something in common with all of them,” found the former prisoner of Sachsenhausen, the publisher of the newspaper Deutsche Rundschau, Rudolf Pechtel, who claimed that by the expression of his eyes he could always recognize "SD bloodhound." Kogon saw in the SS men "internally deeply dissatisfied, for one reason or another backward, flawed losers", and the average composition of the Gestapo, in his opinion, was completely replete with "degraded creatures." The army of informants of the SD, according to Kogon, sought all the dregs of society, which were expelled not only by the aristocracy, the bourgeoisie and the bureaucracy, but also by the working class.

If there were not enough negative epithets, the researchers of the "state of the SS" resorted to the help of psychoanalysis. So, according to the former prisoner of Auschwitz (Auschwitz) Eli Cohen, "SS men, with rare exceptions, were quite normal people who, under the influence of their own criminal" super-self ", turned into ordinary criminals." Psychologist Leo Alexander compared the Black Order to a gang of gangsters with its inherent denial of all morality: “If an SS man committed an offense calling into question his loyalty to the organization, he was either liquidated or forced to commit such an act that would forever tie him to the organization. From time immemorial, murder was considered such in the criminal world ”.

It should be noted that not all historians agreed with the arguments of the followers of Kogon. Already in 1954, in his sociological study, the German-American publicist Karl O. Petel wrote that all members of the SS cannot be assessed so unequivocally: "In the SS environment, there was not only one single human type ... There were criminals and idealists, idiots and intellectuals." And Ermenhild Neusüss-Hunkel, in his work "SS" published in 1956, argued that "the difference in the functions of numerous subdivisions of the Himmler apparatus does not allow an unambiguous assessment of all members of the SS community as a whole." After examining the statistics, she came to the conclusion that 15% of the total number of members of the "black order" were directly related to the Nazi apparatus of oppression; out of 80 thousand SS payroll in 1944, 39 415 people served directly in the main directorates of the SS, 26 000 - in the so-called "police reinforcement", 19 254 - in the security police and public order police in the country and 2000 - in the protection of concentration camps ...

A study of the SS archives introduced new adjustments to the post-war historiography of the Black Order. First of all, the statements contained in the aforementioned work of Kogon were questioned. Archival documents revealed a certain confusion made by the professor in dates, numbers and names, when the matter did not concern the events directly experienced by him in Buchenwald. Therefore, with each new reprint of the book, the Darmstadt researcher had to refute himself.

Thus, the chief of the criminal police Arthur Nebe, who appeared in the first edition of his book as "the most inconspicuous, but the most ruthless functionary of the SS apparatus", in its second version almost reincarnates into a resistance fighter, "from the very beginning experienced an internal struggle with his own conscience." ... At the same time, the mention of the territorial organizations of the SD - the so-called districts, allegedly existing during the war years, also disappeared. Gone is also the statement that the well-known expression "the fifth column" comes from the name of one of the divisions of the security service - its 5th department.

However, when reading the later re-editions of The State of the SS, the question arises: do some of Kogon's statements correspond to historical reality? So, for example, the professor mentions a certain five-step system of job categories for security personnel, which no SD officer has heard of! Further, Kogon reports that some "avengers for the death of Ryom" allegedly managed to eliminate 155 SS officers. However, such a number of "suddenly died" is not recorded anywhere, in any lists! Again, according to Kogon, there was no chief in the 1st department of the state secret police. But it is well known that such was. And the name of the head of this division was Werner Best. Regarding the number of SS military formations in 1936, Eugen Kogon names 190,000 people, while in reality their staff was only 15,000. political body of the black order.

The Germans took the exposure of the mass crimes of the SS at the same time with indignation and a sense of relief. With indignation - because these crimes covered their "motherland" with shame for many decades, and with a feeling of relief - because the thesis about the all-consuming, absolute power of the "black order" provided an opportunity for at least the older generation to justify their terrible past. "If the Himmler organization was such a powerful structure capable of holding the entire people in an iron fist," they reasoned, "then it would be sheer suicide for a simple burgher to criticize the regime, not to mention active resistance to it."

Moreover, the military generation of the German nation took the exposure of the crimes of the "black order" with a certain degree of satisfaction: the deeds of the SS became for them a good alibi and at the same time a kind of "atonement" for the whole world and for themselves. Back in 1946, Hans Laternser, a lawyer for the Wehrmacht High Command at the Nuremberg Trials, stated:

“The SS leaders are dead anyway. They took over everything. The Wehrmacht's shield must remain unblemished! " When it became known from American sources that Himmler himself at some time sympathized with the conspirators who attempted to assassinate him on July 20, 1944. Historian Hans Rotfels urged his German colleagues not to attach much importance to this fact.

"In the history of the German Resistance Movement, there is no and there can be no place for a chapter called Himmler," he said.

For the bulk of German historians, the SS topic remained a taboo. Not a single work devoted to security detachments, not a single study on the Nazi police apparatus, not a single scientific work on Himmler's "Eastern politics" ever revealed the thoughts of the descendants of the Nazis about the most monstrous organization ever formed on German soil. As a result, German scientists left these problems to foreign colleagues, who, with varying degrees of professionalism and knowledge, began to develop the latest understanding of the German past.

Works such as "The Extermination of European Jews" by American Raoul Hilberg and "German domination in Russia" by his compatriot Alexander Dalin can be safely attributed to serious research. However, most of the works of American and European historians, translated and published by leading German book publishers, unfortunately, do not provide a true analysis of the history of the black order, and archival documents are practically not studied by most authors.

Thus, the French writer Jacques Delarue published his "History of the Gestapo" without even reading the most important source on the topic - the now available archive of the personal headquarters of the Reichsfuehrer SS. Another Gestapo "chronicler", the Englishman Edward Crenkshaw, was apparently unable to distinguish between the spheres of competence of the state secret police and the sinister SD operative units operating in the East. The Frenchman Jacques Benoa-Meschin, author of the ten-volume History of the German Armed Forces, proved how, based on a few scattered quotes from Hitler and old newspapers, the story of the "Rohm conspiracy" can be told. Naturally, the result was below any criticism. The author was only able to confirm the conclusions previously declared by the Nazis themselves.

People who are so frivolous with history should be prepared for the fact that, over time, professionals will prove their failure as historians.

The Englishman Reitlinger, author of the books "SS" and "Final Solution", for example, puts forward the thesis that only "hatred of his own blood pushed Reinhard Heydrich, a Jew by birth, to exterminate the Jewish nation." This is an obvious falsification, for the author, apparently, is not familiar with the official testimony of the racial department of June 22, 1932 about the “purely Aryan” origin of the SD chief. Reitlinger reports other "sensational" details of the biography of "SS # 2" - as if he served as an intelligence officer in the Baltic states under the command of "Baltic Fleet intelligence chief Captain Canaris"; as if Heydrich was the favorite of Gauleiter Erich Koch and at the same time - the lover of his wife ... Naturally, none of these statements corresponds to historical truth.

What a fantasy that neglects real sources can lead to is demonstrated by three authors describing the trip of "Middle Eastern resident" Adolf Eichmann to Haifa in 1937. In the book "Minister of Death" by American Quentin Reynolds, for example, Aichmann inspects a Jewish kibbutz near Haifa, meets with a German agent in Palestine, and visits the anti-Jewish Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. Aychman's biographer Comer Clarke decided to surprise readers even more: he supplies his hero with 50 thousand dollars of "Nazi gold" and takes him to Haifa to a room at the Majestic Hotel, where Aychman, according to the author, is expecting a call from a mysterious man named Gadar. The Gestapo man allegedly transfers the money to the Arab nationalists, after which "four British military policemen secretly smuggle him across the border."

Austrian Simon Wiesenthal in his book "The Grand Mufti - Super Agent of the Axis Countries" claims that the former student theologian Eichmann, allegedly sent to Palestine by some "German counterintelligence", created an agent network in the Sarona area and "together with Ilse Koch, the main German agent in the Middle East ”established contact with the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. All this is nonsense! The only truth is that Aychmann actually spent 48 hours in Haifa as a tourist.

Similar speculations would have spread further if the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem in 1961 and the subsequent series of trials of SS "armchair" murderers in Germany had not awakened and increased the interest of serious German-speaking historians in the "phenomenon" of the SS.

The sociologist Hannah Arendt, who emigrated to the United States, published in 1963 the book "Eichmann in Jerusalem", in which she for the first time managed to give a prominent SS man individual, humanly reliable features. In the same year, the young historian Enno Georg, using the example of SS economic enterprises, showed how different these people were. Soon thereafter, researchers at the Munich Institute of Contemporary History debunked the advocates of the policy of “emotional overcoming of the past” with Hans Buchheim's work, The SS and the Police in the National Socialist State, and the two-volume Anatomy of the SS State, who, in the name of a higher truth, did not particularly care about historical truth. From across the ocean, they were supported by the crown-born George H. Stein, a professor at New York Columbia University, who published the first work on the SS troops, which fully meets the scientific requirements.

The American came to the following conclusion:

“The doctrine of criminal conspiracy and collective guilt, formulated during the era of the Nuremberg trials, can no longer satisfy serious researchers. Without diminishing the scale of the savage crimes of Himmler's henchmen, recent studies prove that the Black Order was actually not as monolithic as it seemed. "

Scientists are still unable to completely get rid of the ghost of the "SS state". Many of them, such as Karl O. Petel, are sure that the Third Reich (at least at its final stage) was ruled "in four hands" by Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler. For too long, many historians cherished their own concept of the Reich so much that they could no longer easily abandon the idea that the SS was the only structure of the Nazi empire with influence and indisputable power.

The Third Reich is presented to Kogon as a "thoroughly organized", totalitarian state, completely embracing every citizen, subordinate to a single, centralized "will". It may seem that the Nazis still managed to realize the age-old dream of the German nation: to build a strong state in which only one will - the Fuhrer - would be recognized and only one worldview would have the right to exist - the NSDAP, where only one force would rule - the SS.

However, the dream of a strong state remained only a dream. The Third Reich was not a totalitarian state, but rather a caricature of it - a mockery of all the hopes and ideas used by Nazi propagandists to build an authoritarian state.

“The total Fuhrer state,” as the historian Hans Buchheim believed, “in fact turned out to be not a thought-out apparatus and a super-rational system at all, but a labyrinth of privileges and political connections, competences and powers, and as a result fought with everyone against everyone, which was correctly named by someone. “National Socialist fighting games.” Buchheim’s British colleague H.R. Trevor-Roper wondered:

“How many people have been led by Nazi propaganda to believe that National Socialist Germany was organized as a 'totalitarian' state - cohesive, fully mobilized and controlled from a single center! In fact, German totalitarianism was something else. "

Total in the Nazi Reich was only the will of Hitler, who ruled over 80 million people through his own decrees and decrees. Only after the intentions of the Fuhrer were formulated and announced, the SS, as the main instrument of the dictatorship, received absolute power in their execution. However, influenced by momentary sentiments, the unbalanced Hitler constantly made mistake after mistake: he did not always clearly formulate what he wanted, and not all spheres of state life fell under the orders of the Fuehrer. Due to the fact that the imperial cabinet no longer met, and Hitler, hiding in headquarters, increasingly moved away from the ministers, the Fuhrer's decrees more and more often turned out to be accidental and were not executed.

Hitler constantly redistributed the centers of political power among his closest associates in order to prevent the emergence of unwanted competitors. The unwritten law of the Fuhrer's dictatorship stated: no state or other power structure should limit his freedom of maneuver. The essence of the Nazi regime was determined not by monolithic unity, but by the “anarchy of powers,” as Hans Frank, the “supreme jurist” of the Third Reich, once expressed his disappointment. Hitler did not want to be bound by any hierarchy, so he gave similar orders to as many minor hierarchs as possible. His more true than deliberate behavior did not give his closest subordinates the opportunity to unite against the dictator.

Thus, a system of "permanent self-restraint" (Hannah Arendt) emerged. Connecting several dignitaries to solve the same problem provided the dictator with complete independence from his subordinates. At the same time, however, the state itself turned into a field of struggle of competencies, which was capable of paralyzing the efficiency of the state machine to a much greater extent than the inter-party struggle in democracies despised by the Nazis. The state under Hitler degraded to the level of a poorly managed bureaucratic apparatus, to the facade behind which the dignitaries of the Reich waged their undercover wars. Ulrich von Hassel, one of the leaders of the anti-Hitler conspiracy on July 20, 1944, said about them: "These people do not even know what a state is!" Among SS intellectuals such as Otto Ohlendorf, "the theoretical absolute dictatorship of the Fuehrer, which, especially during the war, turned out to be pluralistic anarchy", aroused sharp irritation. According to a confession made by him in 1946 at the Nuremberg Trials, “the Fuehrer not only denied the state as such, but also brought it to the point that it could not be used as an instrument of governing the country. The state was replaced by pluralistic arbitrariness of the highest hierarchs ”.

"In this labyrinth of private empires, private armies and private secret services, the SS was not able to take a monopoly position," said the already mentioned British historian Trevor-Roper. In issues on which there were no specific instructions from Hitler, the black order had to independently fight for supremacy and influence among numerous other power groups.

When the SS acted independently, that is, outside the framework of the Fuehrer's directives, it turned out that Himmler clearly lacked authority to solve many problems. The Reichsfuehrer SS found himself forced to settle certain issues with other hierarchs of the Reich. In controversial cases, the one who possessed the most personal power and influence prevailed. And this also corresponded to the will of the Fuhrer: the long-term struggle of cliques and factions within the party spread to the state and guaranteed Hitler an undeniable position of power in the party and country.

The satraps of Hitler, in the image and likeness of the feudal princes of the past, formed coalitions, feuded and reconciled. Sometimes they formed formal alliances with each other. So, in 1936, the security police concluded an agreement with the Abwehr, consisting of 10 points and in this connection went down in history as the "Treaty on the Ten Commandments." In turn, Joachim von Ribbentrop had to hire several SS representatives to work at the Foreign Ministry in order to secure a truce in the "black order" war with his ministry. Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories Alfred Rosenberg teamed up with SS Gruppenfuehrer Gottlob Berger to repel the intrigues of the formally subordinate Reich Commissioner of Ukraine Erich Koch.

The Black Order, forced with great efforts to squeeze through the jungle of the struggle for influence, did not have enough time or energy to seize absolute power in Germany. Of course, Himmler managed to usurp one position of power after another, but there were two forces that the SS never managed to defeat - the party and the military. Himmler was forced to endure when the party, labor front and the SA began to hunt down the so-called "confidants" - informants of the security service; come to terms with the ban on the release of "Messages from the Reich" - information bulletins prepared by the SD about the internal political situation in the country; to remain silent when the most influential man in the occupied Poland - Governor General Hans Frank, under a joyful ovation from the Wehrmacht and the SA, threw Obergruppenführer Friedrich Wilhelm Kruger out the door.

Although the number of SS uniforms grew in Hitler's inner circle, the Fuhrer's latent distrust kept the SS at a proper distance from the last decisive power peaks of the state. Hitler constantly made the SS Fuhrer feel like they were just his henchmen. “The police of the new Germany are no better than the old,” he liked to grumble, and when the SS leadership intervened in German politics in Romania against his will, the Fuhrer became so furious that he called the SS a “black plague”, which he would sweep away with an iron broom.

The Reichsfuehrer SS always broke out in a cold sweat from just one challenge to the boss. Usually Hitler treated him like a diligent but not overly intelligent apprentice and never considered him as his successor. In March 1945, the Fuehrer explained: "Himmler will never be recognized by the party, and indeed he is an absolutely uncreative person."

Of course, the rules of the struggle of each against all pushed the SS to the side of the strongest. At the same time, in the empire of Adolf Hitler, there was a completely powerless group of people that there was no one to protect - the Jews. They became easy prey for concentration camps and SS gas chambers; none of the highest hierarchs of the regime stood up for them. Here, and only here, lay the barbed wire border that surrounded the real SS state that ever existed - the world of concentration camps. The prisoners of Himmler's "katsets" were in the position of powerless slaves and were completely left to fate. However, the history of their extermination also knows individual people in the party, representatives of the old guard and prominent SS functionaries, as well as dignitaries of the countries - allies of the Nazi Reich, who managed to put a spoke in the wheels of Himmler's death machine.

They wore black uniforms. They kept the nation at bay and pledged eternal loyalty to their Fuehrer. The cockades depicted a skull - the "death's head", which their divisions carried across Europe. Their highest symbol was the double ancient German victory sign "zig". They killed millions of people.

All spheres of the life of the German people were under their vigilant control. They commanded the police and intelligence services, guarded the Reich Chancellery and concentration camps, occupied key positions in agriculture and health, in science and in national politics. They managed to infiltrate the traditional stronghold of diplomacy and capture the commanding heights of the bureaucratic hierarchy.

Their official name is the guard units of the National Socialist German Workers' Party, or Schutz-staffel, abbreviated as SS. They felt themselves, as SS Hauptsturmführer Dieter Wisliceny put it, "a sect of a new type, with its own norms and customs."

The uninitiated was not given a glimpse into the inner world of the secret sect of the SS. For ordinary citizens, it remained as frightening and incomprehensible as the Jesuit order, against which the SS authorities officially fought, but at the same time they imitated it to the smallest detail. The leaders of the black order deliberately cultivated the fear of themselves among the people. "The secret state police, the criminal police and the security service are shrouded in a mysterious halo of political crime novels," said Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the security police, SS Ober Gruppenfuehrer, with pleasure. The very same grandmaster of the black order Reichsfuehrer SS Heinrich Himmler said not without satisfaction: "I know that there are people in Germany who feel bad when they see our black uniform, we understand this and do not expect to be loved."

People felt that some secret organization had scattered a huge thinnest net over the Reich, but they were not able to make out it. The Germans could only hear the chased step of the black columns on the asphalt and the slogan songs bursting out of hundreds of sips:

SS on the march, out of the way!

They will sweep away the tyrants. Freedom is ahead!

And again, and again in a marching rhythm: “We are black detachments! And death is everywhere! Ready to take the fight! "

Thousands and thousands of invisible eyes watched every step of the compatriots. The giant police octopus held the nation tightly in its tentacles. 45 thousand officials and employees of the Gestapo, scattered across 20 head offices (Leitstellen) and 39 offices (Stellen) of the Reich, as well as hundreds of border police commissariats, recorded any seditious manifestations. 30 top SS and police leaders, at the head of an army of 65,000 Security Police (Zipo) and 2.8 million Order Police (Orpo) officers, were in charge of state security. 40 thousand guards and overseers terrorized in 20 concentration camps and 160 labor camps hundreds of thousands of imaginary and real enemies of the dictatorship. 950 thousand SS soldiers, including 310 thousand so-called "Volksdeutsche" - ethnic Germans living in Southeast Europe, and 200 thousand foreigners, along with the Wehrmacht, were constantly on alert, not forgetting about the surveillance of their military counterparts-rivals.

A hundred thousand shadow horde of agents and informants of the security service (SD) hourly monitored the affairs and thoughts of fellow citizens. In universities and in production, on peasant farms and in the public service, any information of interest was caught and then pumped over to the Berlin Center.

But about what was happening inside the SS, especially about the thoughts that hovered in the empire of Heinrich Himmler, not a word could penetrate into the outside world. The Reichsfuehrer was careful to ensure that members of his order did not enter into close contact with the townsfolk. Himmler forbade the SS Fuhrer from participating in civil legal disputes with private individuals in order to prevent the court from getting a glimpse into the inner life of the SS. The Reich Ministry of Economics was denied information about the economic activities of SS-owned enterprises. For those units of the "Death's Head", which was entrusted with the protection of the concentration camps, Himmler issued a special order: "First: not a single unit can serve at the place of formation. The Pomeranian company is strictly forbidden to serve in Pomerania. Second, each unit must be transferred to a new duty station after three months. Third: the parts "The head of the death" must not be used on city patrols. "

Even the most prominent leaders of the Third Reich could not afford to look behind the scenes of the black sect. “I knew nothing about the activities of the SS. It is unlikely that an outsider is generally able to tell anything about the Himmler organization, "Hermann Goering said in 1945.

Only the fall of the Third Reich threw the veil of secrecy from the empire of the black order. Then, as those accused of preparing for war and committing other unthinkable crimes, the dock of the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg was taken by people who had led security detachments for many years.

The records of the Allied military tribunals included data carefully hidden by the SS apparatus. From the testimony of witnesses and the evidence presented by the prosecution, a picture of apocalyptic racial madness was formed. The Black Order appeared to the world as a guillotine ruled by psychopaths - fanatics of racial purity. A terrible bill was presented: from 4 to 5 million Jews were killed, 2.5 million Poles were liquidated, 520 thousand Roma were killed, 473 thousand Russian prisoners of war were executed, as part of the program of euthanasia in gas chambers, 100 thousand terminally ill were killed.

On September 30, 1946, Allied judges sentenced the Himmler SS as a criminal organization on the grounds that “the SS were used for purposes that are criminal and include the persecution and extermination of Jews, atrocities and murders in concentration camps, brutality in the administration of the occupied territories, the implementation of slave labor programs, mistreatment and murder of prisoners of war. " Conclusion: All persons are suspected of crimes "who were officially accepted as members of the SS ... who became members of this organization or remained so, knowing that this organization is used to commit acts defined as criminal in accordance with Article 6 of the Charter." (This refers to the Charter of the International Military Tribunal, adopted on August 8, 1945 in London.- Note. per.)

The Nuremberg verdict transformed the SS emblem into a symbol of political crime, into the Cain seal, which henceforth stood on everyone who ever wore a black uniform. Security detachments - until recently, a collective image of the self-styled national elite - turned into an "army of lepers", as SS General Felix Steiner said in a fit of self-pity. However, the Allied verdict had one serious drawback: it did not specify how more than a million people could collectively and in one fell swoop turn into mass murderers. Nor did he explain the source of the SS's power that enabled them to make the racial fantasies of the Nazi regime a nightmare fact of reality.

The former SS men could not or did not want to reveal this secret. Some found a way out in pretending that they did not know about anything at all, while others blamed all the responsibility on those who were no longer alive. The book "The Great Chimera", written in 1948 by former SS Untersturmfuehrer Erich Kernmayr under the pseudonym Kern, can be considered the first timid attempt at a self-critical understanding of the problem before the general public. However, then in West Germany, in a fertile atmosphere of "rehabilitation" and restoration of life, exculpatory literature began to appear. The former SS Fuhrer firmly believed in the short memory of their contemporaries. For example, SS veteran Oberstgruppenführer Paul Hausser at the Nuremberg trials spoke of Himmler as a "completely non-military" man and could not recall a case that Himmler ever appeared in the location of military units. SS Sturmbannfuehrer Brill said that he always perceived the so-called "Allgemeine (general) SS" as a voluntary association, to which the SS troops had nothing to do. The SS men never tired of claiming that they had never learned racial hatred.

Heinz Höhne

Black Order of the SS. The history of the security squads

Introduction

SS is coming! Clear the road!

Assault columns are ready!

They are from tyranny

Will find a way to freedom

Will find a way to freedom.

So be ready for the final blow!

How ready our fathers were!

Death is our comrade in arms!

We are black troops.

Even the most prominent leaders of the Third Reich could not afford to look behind the scenes of the "black sect".

“I knew nothing about the activities of the SS. In general, an outsider is hardly able to say anything about the Himmler organization, "admitted Hermann Goering in 1945.

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Vislicen and Dieter (1911-1946) - SS Sturmbannfuehrer. Born in the village of Regulovken (East Prussia). He was a close friend of Aychman, was involved in the deportation of Jews from Slovakia, Greece and Macedonia. With his help, about 100,000 Jews were sent to concentration camps in Poland. In 1943 he was a member of a special task force operating in Hungary (450,000 were arrested and deported). After the war, he was hanged by the authorities of Czechoslovakia. (Hereinafter - note.trans.)

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SD - security service. Formed in 1934, initially to ensure the safety of Hitler and the party leadership, it is a kind of auxiliary police. She was engaged in the study and preparation of general materials, revealed the plans of opposition parties and movements, established their spheres of influence, systems of communication and contacts, influencing public opinion. Then she included foreign intelligence, counterintelligence and the Gestapo. She had an extensive information network inside the country and abroad, kept a dossier on opponents of the regime. Her spy network was divided into categories: proxies, agents, informers, informant assistants, and untrustworthy subjects. Formally, the SD was subordinate to the party leadership - Hess, and then Bormann, in fact, Himmler. At the Nuremberg Trials, she was recognized as a criminal organization.