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The Final Solution
The Schutzstaffel, better known as the SS, was an elite paramilitary group created by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in the 1920s. There were two primary branches to the SS: the Allgemeine SS (or General SS) and the Waffen-SS (or Armed SS). Only the Waffen-SS features prominently in Ordinary Men because this was the group that typically deployed to newly won territory or war zones. Heinrich Himmler, one of the most notoriously brutal members of Hitler’s cabinet, was head of the SS and he created strict rules and regulations for who could join the elite force. Himmler did not just want able-bodied soldiers for his SS, but rather men who would wholeheartedly embrace Nazi ideology, including the idea that Germans are a master race who must eliminate the Jews from Europe in order to flourish. When the German army invaded Poland in 1939, the SS played a prominent role in the first systematic executions of Jews and Polish civilians (including teachers and activists) that the Nazis feared might try to organize and lead resistance groups against the Germans. As part of the Final Solution, Hitler and Himmler carefully chose reliable members of the SS with a reputation for exceptional brutality to run extermination camps and to plan and carry out the systematic murder of Jews in Europe during World War II.
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Shutzstaffel (SS) Term Timeline in Ordinary Men
The timeline below shows where the term Shutzstaffel (SS) appears in Ordinary Men. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 2: The Order Police
...Berlin. However, another chain of command—for any operations involving the Order Police working with the SS—runs up to Himmler. Himmler selects a “crony” of his—Odilo Globocnik, known for corruption and brutality—to...
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Chapter 3: The Order Police and the Final Solution: Russia 1941
...the first time. During preparations for Hitler’s planned invasion of Russia, special units of the SS called the Einsatzgruppen are formed, mostly from members of the Security Police and its corresponding...
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...occurs in July and seems to have been instigated by the top members of the SS: Heinrich Himmler, Kurt Daluege, and Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski. The action is carried out by...
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...murder—an issue that, at that time, had begun to extend beyond rank-and-file soldiers. A top SS officer who led troops during one of the massacres at Białystok, for instance, developed an...
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Chapter 5: Reserve Police Battalion 101
...with excessive violence. The commission in charge of this resettlement is partially made up of SS officers, who “mak[e] it clear” that “nothing [can] be done” with the sick and elderly,...
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...veteran and career policeman. Despite being an Alte Kämpfer, Trapp is never taken into the SS because, as Browning says, he isn’t SS material. In fact, his two subordinate captains (both...
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...Hans Scheer, and Kurt Drucker. Five of them are Nazis, but none belong to the SS. Out of the 32 noncommissioned officers about whom Browning has information, 22 are Nazis and...
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Chapter 6: Arrival in Poland
...coordinate the mass killings, deportations, and extermination camps. Additionally, he can use men from the SS, Gestapo, and the Order Police to help carry his plans out. Three battalions of Order...
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Chapter 13: The Strange Health of Captain Hoffman
...make Northern Lublin judenfrei along with First Lieutenant Messmann’s gendarmerie, about 100 Hiwis, and several SS men. In an unusual move, the Hiwis go cordon with the police while Messmann’s gendarmeries...
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Chapter 15: The Last Massacres: “Harvest Festival”
On October 28, 1942, the SS and Police Leader for the General Government decides that only eight Jewish ghettos can remain...
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...special unit under Lieutenant Brand, some of the younger noncommissioned officers are reassigned to the Waffen-SS, and Lieutenant Gnade takes Steinmetz with him to Lublin to form a special guard company....
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On November 2, the night before the killings begin, Globocnik’s recent successor as SS and Police Leader of the district meets with the commanders of the units that will...
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Chapter 16: Aftermath
Ironically, it’s not the hardcore, violent SS men from Reserve Police Battalion 101 that have the most postwar consequences to face, but...
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Chapter 18: Ordinary Men
...Numerous studies of Nazi killers focus on the possibility of self-selection to the Nazis or SS by naturally violent people. These studies consider possible psychological factors and situational or environmental influences...
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