Contribution And Impact Of The Ss Of Carrying Out The...

In this essay I will be discussing Assess the role, contribution and impact of the SS in carrying out the Holocaust. What was the Holocaust? The Holocaust was a memorable event in 20th century history. It began with discrimination; then the Jews were segregated from their communities and killed; and finally they were treated like property beings and murdered. During the Second World War the Nazis aim was to erase the entire Jewish population of Europe and to destroy its culture and its existance. In 1941 there were about 11 million Jews living in Europe; by May 1945 the Nazis had killed six million of them. Whilst the Jews of Europe were the Nazis aim target, many millions of other people were also put into prison, made slaves and†¦show more content†¦entry into battle, and Hitler killed himself shortly before Germany s defeat. Hitler and the SS Adolf Hitler founded the Schutzstaffel in April of 1925, as a group of personal bodyguards. As time went on, this group of bodyguards grew from 300 members in 1925 to 50,000 in 1933 when Hitler took office. The man responsible for this growth and the success was Heinrich Himmler, who commanded the SS from 1929 until its disintegration in 1945. Between 1934 and 1936, the SS gained control of Germany s police forces and expanded their responsibilities. Because of these new responsibilities, the SS divided into two sub-units: the Allgemeine-SS, and the Waffen-SS. Combined, these two organizations consisted of over 250,000 troops by 1939. Himmler was soon one of the most feared men in Nazi Germany and Europe once World War Two broke out. As head of the SS, he was the post powerful person in Nazi Germany During the mid-1930s the SS was basically split into groups that did different jobs. One group administered the concentration camps and the Nazis wanted soldiers on the battlefield with the same national socialist ideals and culture of the SS, (SS-Verfà ¼gungstruppe, the SS Dispositional Troops, which later became the Waffen-SS Other SS members worked in the Sicherheitspolizei, Gestapo, and Sicherheitsdienst, all these groups were part of the SS however some member of these groups were not officially signed SS members.