Germanic SS

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Headquarters of the Schalburg Corps in Copenhagen, Denmark 1943

Germanic SS was the collective name for those SS units that arose between 1939 and 1945 in the Germanic-speaking states and regions occupied by Germany. These were modeled on the German General SS and, like the Waffen SS , were not considered military units. Despite this, many of their relatives hired foreign volunteers for the Waffen SS during World War II .

Origins

Event of the Germanic SS in Norway (1941).

Before the Second World War both Denmark had and Norway parties who are ideologically on fascism or Nazism oriented: The National Socialist Workers' Party of Denmark ( Danmarks Nationalsocialistiske Arbejderparti ; DNSAP) was founded in 1930, but had until 1939 only three seats in parliament.

Until 1933 Vidkun Quisling was the leader of the Norwegian party Nasjonal Samling (NS). The party was not politically successful until a pro-German government came to power after the conquest of Norway in 1940. At this point, the Norwegian State Police, which had been abolished in 1937, were re-established to assist the Gestapo in Norway.

In the Netherlands, the National Socialist Movement (NSB) had greater political success before the war. The party received four percent of the vote in the 1937 national elections. After the occupation in 1940, all of these groups supported Nazi Germany in their respective countries and were a recruiting pool for the Waffen SS.

The idea of ​​the National Socialists to co-opt additional “Germanic people” in the SS stems to a certain extent from the folk belief that the original Aryan-Germanic homeland was in Scandinavia and that in the racial-ideological sense, people from there or from neighboring northern European regions would be a reservoir of Nordic-Germanic blood.

The conquest of large parts of Western Europe enabled the Germans , and especially the Schutzstaffel , to gain access to these "potential recruits", who were considered part of the larger "Germanic family". Four of these conquered nations (Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands and the Flemish-speaking Belgians) were, in the opinion of the then Reich leadership SS, rich in "Germanic people". Heinrich Himmler called the people of these countries with regard to their Germanic aptitude "incredibly valuable forces in terms of blood". Accordingly, some of them were recruited into the SS and, like foreign workers from these regions, enjoyed the highest privileges, which also included unrestricted sexual contact with German women. Eager to broaden their scope, fanatical National Socialists like Gottlob Berger , the head of the SS main office , viewed the Germanic SS as fundamental to a burgeoning German empire.

Himmler's vision for a Germanic SS began with the idea of ​​amalgamating the Netherlands, Belgium and Northeast France into a West Germanic state called Burgundia , which the SS (as part of the “ Greater Germanic Empire of the German Nation ”) was supposed to create as a safety buffer for Germany. In 1940, the Germanic SS manifested itself in Flanders for the first time when the General SS Vlaanderen ("General SS Flandern") was founded, followed two months later by the Germaansche SS Nederland ("Germanic SS Netherlands") in the Netherlands and in May 1941 from Germanske SS Norge ("Germanische SS Norway") in Norway. The last nation in which a Germanic SS was founded was Denmark, whose Germansk Korpet ("Germanisches Korps", later called Schalburg Corps ) was established in April 1943.

According to the SS, they did not think of their compatriots in terms of national borders, but in terms of racial composition. This was known to them conceptually as Deutschtum , a larger idea that transcended traditional political boundaries. While the SS leadership foresaw an imperialist and semi-autonomous relationship with the Nordic Germanic countries such as Denmark, the Netherlands and Norway as contributors to a larger Germanic empire, Hitler refused to grant these countries the desired level, despite continued pressure from high-ranking SS members Grant independence.

Area of ​​responsibility

The task of the Germanic SS was to enforce the German-ethnic racial theory , especially its anti-Semitic views. As a rule, they acted as local security police who supported the German units of the Gestapo , the Security Service (SD) and the other main departments of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA). Their main job during the war was to track down partisans, subversive organizations and any group that opposed the Nazi ideology. In other cases, these foreign units of the SS were employed by large German firms to propaganda for the Nazi ideology among their compatriots and to monitor and control the workers.

More than this, however, the inclusion of other Germanic people was part of the attempt of the National Socialists to Germanize Europe collectively, and for them the Germanization should lead to the creation of a world empire which is ruled by Germanic people at the expense of other races.

One of the most notorious groups was in the Netherlands, where the Germanic SS were used to round up the Jews . Of the 140,000 Jews who lived in the Netherlands before 1940, only around 24,000 survived the war by going into hiding. Despite their relatively small number, a total of 512 Jews from Oslo were arrested by the Norwegian police and the Germanske SS Norge ; once captured, they were deported to Auschwitz . Even more Jews were rounded up outside of Oslo, but the total number of Norwegian Jews captured never exceeded a thousand during the war. Similar measures were planned by the SS against the approximately 6,500 Danish Jews, but most managed to hide in Denmark or to escape to Sweden before the high-ranking German deputy in Denmark, SS-General Werner Best , joined the SS Was able to draw up his disposal and complete his planned raids and deportations.

Organizations

The flag of the Dutch SS

The following countries established active divisions of the Germanic SS:

A National Socialist underground organization also existed in Switzerland, known as the Germanic SS Switzerland . It had very few members and was viewed by the Swiss authorities as a fascist splinter group.

After the war

After the Second World War, many members of the Germanic SS were tried by their respective countries as traitors to their fatherland. Independent war crimes trials (outside the jurisdiction of the Nuremberg Trials ) have been held in several European countries such as the Netherlands, Norway and Denmark.

Ranks

The Germanic SS used a system of badges based on the ranks and badges of the Schutzstaffel . The different names of the ranks have been modified slightly depending on the country in which they were used.

The following overview shows a comparison of regular SS ranks and ranks of the Germanic SS:

Equivalent SS rank Netherlands, Belgium Norway Denmark SS insignia
SS- Obergruppenführer SS Oppergroeps, unfortunately - - SS-Obergruppenführer Collar Rank.svg
SS group leader SS Groepsleider Baton leather - SS-Gruppenführer Collar Rank.svg
SS Brigade Leader SS Brigadelider SS brigadefører - SS-Brigadführer Collar Rank.svg
SS- Oberführer SS-Opperleider SS nest brigadefører - SS-Oberführer Collar Rank.svg
SS standard leader SS standard clothes ‡ SS-standartfører Colonel SS-Standartenführer Collar Rank.svg
SS Obersturmbannführer SS-Opperstormbanleider SS-neststandartfører Oberstløjtnant SS-Obersturmbannführer Collar Rank.svg
SS- Sturmbannführer SS Stormbanleider SS-stormbannfører major SS-Sturmbannführer collar.svg
SS- Hauptsturmführer SS-Hoofdstormleider SS-høvedsmann Kaptajn SS-Hauptsturmführer Collar Rank.svg
SS- Obersturmführer SS Opperstormleider SS stormfører Overløjtnant SS-Obersturmführer Collar Rank.svg
SS- Untersturmführer SS Onderstormleider SS neststormfører Løjtnant SS-Untersturmführer Collar Rank.svg
SS storm troop leader - - Fændrik SS-Sturmscharführer Collar Rank.svg
SS- Hauptscharführer SS-Hoofdschaarleider SS dropper Stabsvagtmester SS-Hauptscharführer Collar Rank.svg
SS- Oberscharführer SS-Opperschaarleider SS nest dropper Obervagtmester SS-Oberscharführer Collar Rank.svg
SS squad leader SS-Schaarleider SS-lagfører Vagtmester SS-Scharführer Collar Rank.svg
SS- Unterscharführer SS Onderschaarleider SS nestlagfører Obertropsfører SS-Unterscharführer Collar Rank.svg
SS Rottenführer SS Rottenleider SS rodefører - SS Rottenführer Collar Rank.svg
SS storm man SS Stormman SS stormmann Tropsfører SS-Sturmmann Collar Rank.svg
SS man SS-Man SS man Schalburgmand SS-Mann, SS-Schuetze, SS-Oberschuetze collar.svg
SS candidate SS mate - - No

‡ The Flemings in Belgium used the same titles as the Dutch SS. There was no rank above the SS-Standartenführer.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Adrian Weale: Army of Evil: A History of the SS . Caliber Printing, New York 2012, ISBN 978-0-451-23791-0 , pp. 265 .
  2. ^ William Shirer: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich . MJF Books, New York 1990, ISBN 978-1-56731-163-1 , pp. 676 .
  3. ^ Adrian Weale: Army of Evil: A History of the SS . Caliber Printing, New York 2012, ISBN 978-0-451-23791-0 , pp. 265-266 .
  4. ^ Uwe Puschner: The Notions Völkisch and Nordic: A Conceptual Approximation . In: Horst Junginger; Andreas Åkerlund (Ed.): Nordic Ideology between Religion and Scholarship . Peter Lang GmbH, Frankfurt am Main 2013, ISBN 978-3-631-64487-4 , p. 26-27 .
  5. ↑ Geraldien of Frijtag Drabbe Künzel: Germanic Brothers: The Dutch and the Germanization of the Occupied East . In: Anton Weiss-Wendt, Rory Yeomans (Ed.): Racial Science in Hitler's New Europe, 1938–1945 . University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, Nebraska 2013, ISBN 978-0-8032-4605-8 , pp. 93 .
  6. ^ Raul Hilberg: Perpetrators, Victims, Bystanders: The Jewish Catastrophe, 1933-1945 . Harper Collins, New York 1992, ISBN 0-8419-0910-5 , pp. 209 .
  7. ^ Heinz Höhne: The Order of the Death's Head: The Story of Hitler's SS . Penguin Press, New York 2001, ISBN 978-0-14-139012-3 , pp. 500 .
  8. ↑ Chris McNab: Hitler's Elite: The SS 1939-45 . Osprey, Oxford and New York 2013, ISBN 978-1-78200-088-4 , pp. 105 .
  9. ^ André Mineau: SS Thinking and the Holocaust . Editions Rodopi, New York 2011, OCLC 939867786 , pp. 45 .
  10. ^ Heinz Höhne: The Order of the Death's Head: The Story of Hitler's SS . Penguin Press, New York 2001, ISBN 978-0-14-139012-3 , pp. 500-501 .
  11. ↑ Chris McNab: Hitler's Elite: The SS 1939-45 . Osprey, Oxford and New York 2013, ISBN 978-1-78200-088-4 , pp. 105-106 .
  12. ↑ Geraldien of Frijtag Drabbe Künzel: Germanic Brothers: The Dutch and the Germanization of the Occupied East . In: Anton Weiss-Wendt; Rory Yeomans (Ed.): Racial Science in Hitler's New Europe, 1938-1945 . University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, Nebraska 2013, ISBN 978-0-8032-4605-8 , pp. 83-84 .
  13. ^ Yehuda Bauer: A History of the Holocaust . Franklin Watts, New York 1982, ISBN 978-0-531-05641-7 , pp. 240-243 .
  14. ^ Adrian Weale: Army of Evil: A History of the SS . Caliber Printing, New York 2012, ISBN 978-0-451-23791-0 , pp. 387 .
  15. ^ Donald Bloxham: The Final Solution: A Genocide . Oxford University Press, New York 2009, ISBN 978-0-19-955034-0 , pp. 241-243 .
  16. ^ Adrian Weale: Army of Evil: A History of the SS . Caliber Printing, New York 2012, ISBN 978-0-451-23791-0 , pp. 387-388 .
  17. ↑ Jürg Fink: Switzerland from the perspective of the Third Reich 1933–1945 . Schulthess, Zurich 1985, ISBN 3-7255-2430-0 , p. 72-75 .
  18. ^ Hugh Page-Taylor: History of the Norwegian political SS. Historical Research Unit (HRU), London., Accessed May 15, 2017 .