SS Junker School

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
SS Junk School Bad Tölz 1942

SS Junker Schools were military schools established in 1937, which, as training centers for the SS during the Second World War, had the task of training junior military leaders for the Waffen SS . SS Junker schools existed at a total of five locations, including Bad Tölz , Braunschweig , Klagenfurt , Posen-Treskau and Prague - Dewitz . Its graduates made up the next generation of leaders in the SS disposable troops , in the order police , in the SS death's head associations and in the SD . In addition to the military training, a holistic "SS-compliant way of life" was taught.

The leadership of the later Waffen SS and, above all, the soldiers and the leader corps of this SS division considered the SS Junker Schools to be equivalent to the German military schools of the Wehrmacht and the army ; some military historians are critical of this view. Around 15,000 SS leaders completed this training in around 22 war junior courses.

history

General cuff of the SS school Braunschweig
General cuff of the SS school Bad Tölz

SS leadership schools as separate schools for the leadership personnel of the SS were part of the military elite concept of Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler from an early stage . In terms of space, it was possible to use the former national sports schools. In them the future leader corps of the General SS and the armed SS units were to be trained. In the autumn of 1936, Adolf Hitler opened the first SS commanding school in Bad Tölz . A little later, Felix Steiner became the commander of this school . In the summer of 1937, the SS leadership school in Braunschweig was set up, which, under the direction of Paul Hausser, was also to train military leadership personnel for the available troops. In terms of the organizational structure, the leadership schools of the SS disposal force corresponded to the leadership schools of the General SS .

The leadership schools in Bad Tölz and Braunschweig were officially renamed SS Junker schools on August 8, 1937. The Junker Schools were now comparable to the regular military schools of the Army for training young leaders of the Waffen SS. The military training was now carried out strictly according to the army regulations. The SS-Unterführerschule Dachau , which was dissolved in July 1937 and incorporated into the SS Junkerschule Bad Tölz , obviously served as a model for this .

From the summer of 1938 Hausser also held the position of inspector of the Junker schools with the aim of increasing the efficiency of these training centers.

Following the example of the junker schools of the disposal troops, further leadership schools of the SS and also the police were founded in the course of the 1930s, which were based on the structure and the organizational structure (see main article: leadership schools of the SS, the SD and the security police ). They only differed from the Junker schools in terms of the main training areas.

From June 1940 the Junker Schools were merged as part of a reorganization comprising 179 departments of the General SS with the SS-Totenkopfverbände , SS main offices and the SS disposal force to form the Waffen-SS . The course participants of the Junker schools were now assigned to the Junker Schools according to old army traditions as regular leader candidates or as candidates for the leader reserve (roughly comparable to an officer candidate on leave).

In the summer of 1943 the SS Junkerschule Klagenfurt was opened in Klagenfurt-Lendorf in buildings built by concentration camp prisoners. The name was changed to SS and Waffen Junkerschule Klagenfurt on June 1, 1944. It served as a training course for German and foreign leaders. The commander was SS-Standartenführer (later SS-Oberführer) Walter Bestmann.

In the spring of 1944, the SS Junk School in Prague-Dewitz went into operation . The courses began on July 3, 1944. In this school, in addition to the training of young leaders, courses for disabled SS Junkers took place. The commander was SS-Standartenführer Wolfgang Joerchel.

Training in junior schools

Course content

Lessons in the SS Junker School Bad Tölz in 1942
Lessons in the SS Junker School Bad Tölz in 1942

The timetable of the Junker schools was as follows: tactics, terrain and map studies, combat training and training on one's own weapon, general practical troop service (weapon technology, shooting training, drill), ideological education, army, SS and police, administration, physical exercises, weapons theory , Pioneering apprenticeship, communications apprenticeship, tank apprenticeship, automotive beings, medical services, air force apprenticeship, working hours, German lessons (for volunteers with a non-German mother tongue).

Insofar as the SS was a political organization, the training of its leadership cadre was also political. According to the Reich leadership SS, the training should consist in equal parts of military training and "ideological education". The latter did not mean the subject of the same name (which was later renamed “ideological training”), but an interdisciplinary pedagogical principle. In the subject of "ideological education", "Germanic history", "Aryan racial studies" and the basics of the so-called "Greater German habitat philosophy" were taught. All subjects were determined by the National Socialist ideology, up to and including sport, which was supposed to awaken the aggressive spirit and train the course participants to be ready-to-fight fighters.

The aim of this lesson was to identify with the principles of SS ideology, e.g. B. with the geopolitical claims to rule ( people without space , living space in the east ), with social Darwinism , which was justified with the "life struggle of the Aryan master race", with anti-communism and anti-Semitism .

The SS Junkers took the oath on Adolf Hitler personally. After finishing school, the SS Junkers usually completed a weapons science course in the Dachau concentration camp .

SS Junker

This article or the following section is not adequately provided with supporting documents ( e.g. individual evidence ). Information without sufficient evidence could be removed soon. Please help Wikipedia by researching the information and including good evidence.
Lots of numbers, no sources

The course participants at an SS leadership school - called  SS-Junker - were selected according to National Socialist ideology under “ racial ” criteria. Until 1937, people could be accepted at a driving school who were no more than 23 years old, at least 1.74 m tall and who did not wear glasses. A so-called large Aryan certificate, which went back to the 18th century, and a medical certificate of health had to be presented. Of course, SS leadership schools were also a place of political indoctrination . Course participants were z. B. also massively urged to leave the church, since Christian religion and membership in a community that is ideologically oriented towards neo-paganism would not go together in the opinion of the SS leadership. By 1937 around 90% of the participants had left the churches and had believed in God . They shared this with the members of the SS disposal troops, where at the beginning of 1938 around 80% did not belong to any religious community. But by 1943 the majority of them had rejoined the churches, as Felix Steiner had repeatedly called for.

Special skills of the applicants for courses at the junior schools - apart from athletic ones - were not required. Around 90% of the participants had a general primary school certificate. The trained officers of the SS disposable troops or the Waffen SS should represent a primarily military and racial elite. However, since higher education or the Abitur was required for areas within the Waffen-SS, from 1940 onwards, preference was given to accepting high school graduates from Napola .

Up until 1936 attending a junior school was not a substitute for military service. credited h., he was neither military service nor protected before the convening by the Wehrmacht. From August 1938, instructions stated that the SS Junker had to have served in his unit for two years and was only allowed to attend school after an assessment by the immediate superior. From 1938 onwards, attending the Junker School was regarded as completing military service . (This order was also assured in writing to the SS volunteer in the "Information sheet for joining the SS volunteer troops".)

Because of the socially very heterogeneous composition of the leader candidates and their highly different education as well as military qualifications, it was the task of this agency to standardize the level of training and social behavior as far as possible.

SS Junkers continued to wear their own uniforms during the course and not special uniforms like the participants in the driving schools. After successfully completing the Führer course, all participants returned to their main units as SS-Standartenjunker (SS-Scharführer) or as SS-Standartenoberjunker (SS-Hauptscharführer). There they were quickly promoted to SS-Untersturmführer (active) or SS-Untersturmführer of the reserve .

Use of the graduates

Until the beginning of the war, the graduates were deployed in the general SS and police, also as guards in concentration camps. According to a random sample in December 1938, about 18 percent of the leaders trained at SS Junker schools were doing their job in the concentration camps.

Known people from the Junker School

Commanders

Lecturers

Graduates

See also

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ 1935-1944: The castle as an SS Junker School - Braunschweig Castle Museum .
  2. ↑ Bernd Wegner : Notes on the history of the Waffen SS . In: RD Müller, HE Volkmann, (Ed. On behalf of MGFA ): The Wehrmacht: Myth and Reality . Oldenbourg, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-486-56383-1 , p. 410 f.
  3. ↑ Arnd Krüger & Frank von Lojewski: Selected aspects of military sports in Lower Saxony in the Weimar period , in: Hans Langenfeld & S. Nielsen (ed.): Contributions to the history of sports in Lower Saxony. Part 2: Weimar Republic . (= Series of publications by the Lower Saxony Institute for Sports History, Vol. 12) Lower Saxony Institute for Sports History NISH, Hoya 1998, ISBN 3-932423-02-X , pp. 124–148.
  4. ↑ Federal Association of Soldiers of the Former Waffen-SS eV (Ed.): When all brothers are silent. Large illustrated book about the Waffen SS . Munin-Verlag , Osnabrück 1973, Appendix “Information sheet for joining the SS volunteer troops (February 1938 edition)”, pp. 574-575.
  5. ↑ Gordon Williamson: The SS - Hitler's Instrument of Power . Neuer Kaiser Verlag, Klagenfurt 1998, p. 36.
  6. ↑ Bernd Wegner: Hitler's political soldiers. The Waffen-SS 1933–1945: Concept, structure and function of a National Socialist elite. 9th edition. Schöningh, Paderborn 2010, ISBN 978-3-506-76313-6 (revised dissertation, University of Hamburg, 1980), p. 142.