Original subtitles

♪ ♪

Narrator: They were, they thought, the third reich's racial elite.

Men superior to others.

Ready to do anything for the triumph of national socialism.

Men hitler could count on to the death.

To apply their racial theories, they were prepared to eliminate their adversaries,

To decimate the jewish people,

To massacre civilian populations.

Over 70 years later, some of them are still living among us.

Kurt: One people, one reich, one führer!

That was our motto.

Eberhard: I felt anti-semitic.

Herbert: We wanted a pure state.

No jews in the third reich!

Narrator: This is the story of ss fanaticism, bloodlust and terror.

(theme music plays)

Told from the inside.

Central germany.

1933.

Hitler has been in power for several months.

Here is one of the first movies shot by the ss, the schutz-staffeln,

Or protection squadrons.

Recognizable by the skulls on their caps and the lightning flash initials on their flags.

They were not afraid of death,

They said: Neither inflicting it, nor suffering it.

All volunteers to join what, according to their criteria,

Was a grouping of superior nazis.

Werner völkner is a former member of the ss death's head division.

He was nine when hitler came to power.

(singing in german)

Narrator: He still knows by heart the nazi party's official song,

The horst wessel lied.

-Yes.

Narrator: Born in berlin in 1924, this german lives in the south of England,

Where he married and made a new life for himself.

At the end of world war ii, he spent several years in allied prisoner-of-war camps

Because he had been in the ss.

-The wehrmacht went like this.

No, this.

And the ss went like this.

-What fascinated me was the military aspect.

Sharp!

Standing to attention.

When I said good morning, I clicked my heels.

I nodded and said, "heil hitler!"

It was really great.

-The outlook on life was: Well, get the job done and finished with.

Narrator: This documentary takes us to find ss members who are still alive,

To try to understand the incomprehensible.

After several months of research, we discovered over twenty ss veterans living in

Different countries across europe.

Words that often shock.

Some have broken with nazism, others not.

This man is one of them.

Kurt barkhausen, aged 92.

He lives in central germany.

He too was in the death's head division, whose members often worked in concentration camps.

-What counted for us?

First of all, the purity of the person.

Who are you?

What do you want from life?

Secondly: You have a healthy family.

You are married.

Having children is a gift of god, a guarantee of happiness.

After that, there is the people.

How did our ancestors live?

What did they believe in?

What has made real germans of us?

These were our fundamental values.

Narrator: A vanished world, so little like our own, but at the same time so near:

Only 80 years separate us from these young men who embraced fanaticism.

To justify themselves, all point to 1918, when germany lost the first world war.

The versailles peace treaty took several border regions away from germany.

-The versailles treaty was a humiliation for germany.

A supreme humiliation.

Narrator: On top of the perceived humiliation came the nightmare of 1920's germany:

Unemployment, poverty.

In the years to come, when they looked to justify their crimes,

The ss would often point to the tribulations of the 1920s.

Nazism, they said, gave them back their dignity.

They began to form ranks behind an austrian world war I corporal,

Adolf hitler.

A radical nationalist who promised them he would wipe out the shame.

-We were on our knees.

We had been poor and miserable, and then suddenly we were somebody again.

Narrator: Where this commitment would lead them, the ss didn't know.

-We were delighted with this change.

Narrator: What they did know was that their first targets would be the communists.

Those "anti-germans" as they called them.

They'd been fighting them in the streets since the end of the war.

They accused them of betraying the nation and overthrowing the emperor with their

1918 revolution, while the german army carried on the fight against the allies.

-Why did we have to fight them?

Because they wanted to build a workers' state, with workers from every country,

Including america.

Ekkehard: I remember in hamburg, when I was a child, seeing big demonstrations

In the street.

My father said, "if they get into power, we're screwed."

He was talking about the communist party.

-National socialism was more social than communism, and in political terms,

Was devoted purely to germany.

Whereas communism was aimed at the world and was largely run by jews.

Narrator: The abhorrent view that the jews were the real enemy,

"worse than the communists" they said, was taking hold.

For hitler, the jews had profited from the german people's misery.

"they're hiding everywhere," said his manifesto.

"behind the communists who seized power in russia in 1917.

Behind the capitalists in new york who pull the strings of the world economy."

For propaganda minister joseph goebbels,

The hour of the great confrontation was near.

(cheering and applause)

Narrator: It was a visceral, revengeful hatred, bottled up for too long,

Born out of 19th century racist theories.

A sinister indication of what was to come.

Look at the ss men here in the hall.

It was they who, within less than ten years, would take the leading role

In assassinating jews in their millions.

Narrator: Since their creation in 1925, the ss had been hitler's bodyguards.

They stood out in their dashing black uniforms and could be seen everywhere

Alongside the party leaders.

They wanted to be noticed, to distinguish themselves.

Werner: I knew it was an elite formation.

In other words, they wouldn't take any tom, dick and harry.

-I wanted to be part of an elite division.

Narrator: They were the new regime's shop window: New recruits had to be tall,

At least five-foot six, and young: Under 23.

No jewish ancestry.

They had to provide genealogical details dating back to the 18th century.

Strength, prestige, virility.

In the third reich, if you want a successful career, if you want a successful life,

You join the ss.

-Women were very interested by the idea of getting to know ss men and

Making friends with them.

They were obviously ideal fellows.

The ss were very much in demand.

Marrying a member of the ss was an honor, of course!

Narrator: They were also known as the black order.

A name that linked them to the knights of the middle ages when germanic

Soldier-monks colonized eastern europe.

They were filled with grandiose ideas: That they were the new lords of germany,

Entrusted with replacing the old aristocratic elite that had always run the country.

Ekkehard guhr is a protestant minister.

His ss unit, the das reich division, committed numerous atrocities during the war.

At the age of 17, he says, he joined the ss to defy his parents,

Who refused to allow a relationship with a young catholic girl.

-There were images in germany where you would see a young man sign up for the war for

Freedom, and he would kneel before his beloved, who would bless him.

All of those emotions that I don't think we can understand or express today,

They existed back then.

-Our motto, written on our belt buckles, was: "my honor is my loyalty".

It meant: No cowardice when facing the enemy.

-The ideology that himmler had drilled into us was: You are nothing,

Your people is everything.

-You belong to the nation.

The nation is you.

You are part of the nation.

-I wanted to prove that I was ready to risk my life for that ideology.

Narrator: A clan, the intrepid new man, able to remove pity from their hearts.

The racial spearhead of the german people, as they saw themselves.

This is heinrich himmler, their chief.

One of the greatest criminals of all time.

He was from munich's cultivated middle classes, anti-semitic, anti-communist,

Anti-christian; one of the first nazis.

And one of the most ambitious.

Narrator: In 1934, himmler incited hitler to eliminate his former brothers-in-arms:

The leaders of the sa, the nazi party militia.

They would call this fratricidal massacre the night of the long knives.

Carried out by his ss, this bloodbath consolidated his position at the heart

Of the regime.

At the head of several hundred thousand ss members,

He managed in the space of a few years,

To extend his control to all german police.

From his young men in black he demanded total submission.

-When you are a soldier, you have to carry out orders.

You're not there to think.

That's how it was.

Today it's different.

At the time, we said: Leave the thinking to the horses, they have bigger heads.

-We weren't telling jokes and having a laugh.

Attention! Quick March!

Left! Right!

-An order was an order.

If somebody gave me an order to do then I'd do it.

Narrator: "blood and soil," himmler's new creed.

In exchange for their obedience, the ss reichsführer offered his men a new

Imaginary world of german mythology and racial superiority.

Pursuing the slightest trace of exploitable german history, he created a religion that

Could replace christianity:

A religion based on race, with its particular beliefs and rituals.

Here, a child's baptism, with no priest.

The minister is an ss officer and the crucifix has been replaced by a

Portrait of hitler.

-The atmosphere and the ceremonial mythology I found fascinating.

I've never forgotten it.

Narrator: The ss were promised healthy, smiling wives.

Before their weddings, the women were sent on courses to nazi party schools.

Narrator: The wedding plans had to be approved by the ss racial service.

In devoting themselves to their husbands and to the procreation of

Future ss members,

These women would be joining an order of knights and becoming

Nazi combatants themselves.

To rise in the ranks of the ss, a member had to be married by the age of 26,

Have his first child by 28, then another every two years, with at least four in all.

Unprecedented in any previous political organization, himmler controlled the private

Lives of its members.

"do not be afraid of death", he told them.

"the individual dies, but through his children, his people will grow beyond life."

Most of the ss we've met were still children in the mid-30s.

Raised in a totalitarian state, they were subjected to hitler's propaganda,

Some of the most extensive brainwashing of the twentieth century.

This man, egon kuhn, a left-wing activist and trade unionist in hanover,

Is a former ss man from the wiking division.

His radicalization, now totally repudiated, began at infant school.

-The nazis made sweets for children with swastikas on them.

I was proud to eat those sweets.

But I was even prouder when I was 5 years old, in school, and we'd go on walks

Or on visits and I could wear my swastika armband.

-This was all drilled into us quite deliberately.

To the point that in 1934, when I was 10, that state of mind,

With the uniforms and the hitler salute, was quite natural.

In fact, I didn't know anyone who was opposed to it.

Narrator: Children were being conditioned with insidious fascist ideology and

Hideously anti-semitic racism on a daily basis.

For hitler, they were to be regarded as future soldiers of the reich,

With the best of them destined to join the ss.

-My parents were devastated.

I deeply hated jews.

I would never have sat next to a jew at school!

Never.

They were quite simply not of our race.

Jews were an abomination.

Crooks, traitors, lazy,

Obsessed with money, cut-throats.

-Well they were alien to the german people!

Narrator: In the youth organizations, budding ss members were given military

Training from an early age.

Like in sparta in ancient greece, the state educated the children.

-We used to like singing songs.

The waves will close in on them, the world is at peace.

It means the extermination of the jews.

They would be drowned, wiped out.

Narrator: At the time, the extermination of the jews was not on the agenda.

But the barriers were falling.

Like here, at a carnival in nuremberg, where an effigy of a jew

Was hanged from a float.

Or in this vile racist propaganda film.

Narrator: This twisted view of germany as a victim of its jewish communities ran

So deep that it

Continues to warp the minds of some former ss men.

Even today their abhorrently racist views have not been diminished by time.

-I don't know if you would like it, when you have a very precise type of blood,

To accept a race that is fundamentally different in its way of being,

Its religion and its very conception of life.

And that they would be as prevalent in society as true-blood germans

Who were born here.

Narrator: This austrian ss member, never committed any crimes himself, he says.

But on his shelves, like a shrine to nazi bloodlust are his old dagger and a cruel

Caricature of an east european jew.

"they're still our enemies", he says, off camera.

To avoid being sued, he uses a metaphor.

-When you have good apples, and you mix them with pears,

Then you end up with neither apples nor pears, that's all!

Narrator: It was at the age of 14 that herbert von mildenburg saw hitler for the first time.

-There was something in his eyes when he looked at us, something fascinating.

We sang,

♪ we're not going home, we're not going home, before the führer speaks. ♪

We were in heaven,

Like idiot football fans in a stadium today.

Narrator: Hitler, the man who would resurrect germany.

-It was intoxicating!

Eberhard: The fact was that six million unemployed found work within the

Space of five years.

Narrator: By increasing aid for workers, providing leisure activities previously reserved

For the elite, and by funding massive rearmament and major building projects through the

Confiscation of jewish assets and massive debt, hitler bought the approval

Of the german people.

For the ss we met, it was a miracle.

-It was proof that hitler had accomplished what he'd promised.

The man had guts.

He wasn't a coward.

-Would you say that hitler was the man of your life?

-Yes, 100%.

100%.

Narrator: Ss fanaticism, born out of humiliation,

Fascination with a savior and

An unshakable feeling of superiority.

In just a few years, this infernal spiral led germany, the land of goethe,

Kant and beethoven, over the brink.

An entire people faced oblivion.

-There was a form of ideological blindness.

I think the deeply destructive nature of national socialism was masked at the

Time by the success it had.

Narrator: Repression began in 1933.

Political opponents were isolated from the rest of society as

A preventive measure.

Without trial.

The task was entrusted to the sa, then the ss.

The pretext was the burning of the reichstag, the german parliament.

Hitler presented it as the beginning of a new communist revolution.

The communists want to bring down the state, they were told.

-They were considered a danger to the community.

Well, they were taken out of the community and the community could

Get on with their lives.

-I myself noticed that the people who had previously expressed

Opposition at party meetings had now disappeared.

Either the communists joined our movement, or they continued to oppose us and

Were sent to special camps, which were later called concentration camps.

To the extent that there was almost no opposition in germany.

It just wasn't possible any more.

Narrator: Herta bothe, from a modest family in northern germany,

Is a former member of the ss.

At the age of 21, she interrupted her nursing training to look for work.

She was offered a job as a women's prison guard.

Herta: I had an appointment at the employment agency.

With a mr. Bruschafer.

He said: "miss bothe, you're going to be a guard at a concentration camp."

I said, "what's a concentration camp?"

"it's a camp, and you'll be guarding women." "oh, I can't do that."

"if you refuse, you'll be sent to the camp yourself."

My god! What could I do?

So I went.

Narrator: They were not yet death camps, only internment camps.

But the ss inflicted on the prisoners a regime of terror.

-They had to stay outdoors, in both summer and winter.

Interviewer: Among the ones standing in the cold, did some fall down?

Herta: Yes, some fell down,

From blows, or had to stay on their knees, I don't know.

-What did you do when you saw such brutality?

-I turned away. I didn't look. I couldn't watch that.

Narrator: Herta bothe, who would be sentenced to ten years in prison after the war,

Has little to say about the brutality.

This photo re-construction made by prisoners after the liberation shows one of the

Most common forms of torture at the time.

With his hands tied behind his back, attached to a rope,

A prisoner has to stand on a stool.

When he falls from exhaustion, he is suspended by his arms and his

Shoulders are dislocated.

But who cared about torture?

Public opinion saw the ss as bringing deviants back to the straight and narrow.

These prisoners in striped uniforms were filmed close to the dachau camp.

The filmmaker, a baker who supplied the camp staff, owned various objects made

By the prisoners, such as these candlesticks,

This rocking horse and these beds.

He filmed his friends, including ss camp officers.

This is the swimming pool where guards could relax after work.

Who could imagine that the prisoners behind the watchtower you can see in the

Distance were going through hell?

On the eve of world war ii, the ss camps had silenced all opposition.

It seemed the camps were opposed by no one.

-If I'm told to guard prisoners and I'm told to

Go up on a tower there is a machine gun,

And somebody tries to escape, you shoot them.

Of course, I would!

Narrator: November 9th 1938.

The feldherrnhalle in munich.

Less than a year before the start of world war ii and the beginning of the carnage.

These thousands of ss men are about to live one of the most important events

Of their lives.

Narrator: Among them:

Eberhard heder, a future captain in the wiking division.

Eberhard: The square was packed.

Stands were filled with spectators on the right and left.

The oath ceremony began at midnight.

I saw hitler arrive, very solemn.

And then, "men of the ss, recite your oath!"

-We pronounced the words with our hearts.

-The phrase "to the death" was a shock, of course.

Loyalty to that degree?

That's going too far.

Narrator: But it was too late.

The first large-scale massacre of jews took place that very night.

It would be known as kristallnacht.

Throughout the country, nazi activists murdered almost 100 jews,

Smashed shop windows and set synagogues on fire.

These home movies show firemen arriving at a fire and ss men at the bottom of the frame

Smiling and preventing them from putting it out.

Himmler had given the order to let the synagogues burn, without setting fire to

"german buildings" as he called them.

-I saw how the windows had been smashed, the shop windows.

I saw jews being taken away and I saw jews badly treated.

At that time, I didn't understand why.

-I felt anti-semitic, yes, but not in the sense that people give the word today,

Which implies the extermination of the jews.

Narrator: They would soon find out what their vow entailed.

In September 1939, hitler attacked poland,

Starting the second world war.

On the eve of the offensive, the ss played a crucial role.

To justify the invasion, the führer ordered them to fake a polish provocation.

The ss simulated a polish attack, a bloody one, on the german border.

Dirty work the ss had done since the start and would do to the end.

The ss also took part in fighting alongside the regular army, the wehrmacht.

If the ss sacrificed itself on the frontline, paying with its blood,

Explained their leaders, it would have the moral right to lead the

Repression in germany.

To these men destined to fight on the front line, himmler gave a name:

The waffen ss, the armed ss.

800,000 men joined the waffen ss during the war.

They saw themselves as political soldiers and in the eyes of the regime,

They were dependable.

Hitler could count on them in the event of trouble at home or abroad.

(speaking in german)

Ekkehard: At the time, there was a recruitment advert for armored divisions.

The waffen ss were armored troops.

And for me the term "armored troops" was fascinating.

Narrator: Here is one of those waffen-ss, manfred diener, aged sixteen.

For this baker's son from thuringia, it was an opportunity

For social advancement.

-With us there was no "sir".

"lieutenant, sir!"

Or " yes captain, sir!"

-The relations between soldiers and officers were completely different.

An ss officer couldn't order a soldier to dig a hole; he had to do it himself.

And there was also the fact that, at school, the ones who volunteered during their

Penultimate school year graduated without having to sit their exams.

-In other wehrmacht units, you needed your exams to be an officer.

The waffen ss made an exception.

Even if, like me, you only had a basic school certificate, you could become an officer.

Narrator: It was an ideal world, a fantasy.

A model for the german people to follow.

In reality, these young men were no longer their own masters.

With the tattoo of their blood group indelibly marked under the left arm,

They had become someone else.

Once inside the black order, there was no way back.

♪ ♪

Here they are again, the young waffen-ss men we saw on a drill at their barracks are

Now at the vanguard of the invasion of France.

As in poland, ss soldiers committed war crimes.

A few months later, they would take part in the invasion of yugoslavia, then greece,

And above all, in June 1941, the ussr.

It was there, against stalin's troops, that himmler's ss would find their special role.

The ss chief had given them the order to liquidate jews, communists and anyone

Suspected of opposing the reich.

For the men in black, the ultimate horror of genocide would be their legacy.

Captioned by cotter captioning services.