SS, The - Hitler's Instrument of Terror

Initially a handful of men raised to be Adolf Hitler's personal bodyguard, the SS - meaning protection squad - eventually became a multi-headed beast with many responsibilities. It ran internal security with ruthless efficiency, it implemented the horrific Nazi racial policy and ran the concentration camps, it was an important, and in the end the only reliable, part of the Reich's intelligence services and perhaps most strikingly, it developed its own combat units. Numbering over 900,000 soldiers alone by the end of 1944, the Waffen - SS campaigned in Poland, Western Europe, the Balkans and the Soviet Union, fighting to the end in the ruins of Berlin. This book is the complete history of one of the most infamous organizations in history, offering a balanced, authoritative account of Hitler's private army, the very cornerstone of the Third Reich's internal security forces. Every aspect of the SS is examined in full: its origins, its units and their battles, the foreign legions, the various non-military departments, and the key figures who led formations in the field and oversaw internal affairs within Nazi Germany, men such as Heinrich Himmler, 'Sepp' Dietrich, Theodor Eicke and Kurt Meyer. In addition the question of atrocities committed against prisoners and civilians, and the SS role in the concentration camp system, is addressed in full.