Original subtitles

(intense music)

- [Narrator] Germany's so-called elite.

The fuhrer's guard.

(intense music)

A Black Order.

(intense music)

The end result is a crime the likes of which the world

has never seen.

(intense music)

Summer 1945, the war is over.

The allies have put an end to the murders of the S S.

Now, they set out to find the perpetrators.

They recognize the S S men by the tattooed blood group

on their left upper arm,

but many have had them surgically removed

or have gone into hiding.

One of these men is Klaus Barbie, the butcher of Lyon.

An S S Hauptsturmführer, actually a minor figure

in the S S.

But in Lyon, as head of the gestapo there,

he becomes a sadistic murderer.

I have come to kill, Barbie is supposed to have said,

when he took up his post.

Gestapo headquarters in Lyon is the Hotel Terminus.

Barbie tortures his victims during interrogation

with red hot pokers, electric shocks, boiling water,

and whole collection of tools that lie on the desk

in front of him.

The torture often goes on for days.

Many of his victims, women and men, die.

- Well, everybody knew who some of these people were

that were wanted.

I mean, you know, including Klaus Barbie, but I mean,

his name was up the head of the list everywhere.

- [Narrator] James Milano works in liberated Europe

for the C I C, the US Military Intelligence Service.

- We knew that the French were after him.

You know, this was common knowledge

that everybody was looking for these types of guys,

not only Barbie, but top four or five people on that list.

- [Narrator] Klaus Barbie makes contact

with former S S comrades in the underground.

He commits a robbery with them.

- Immediately after 1945, all S S members had to cover up

the traces they left behind during the war on the one hand.

And on the other hand, of course,

they were faced with the challenge of building up

a new existence.

So it was obvious for many of them that they had to secure

mutual help from their own networks.

- [Narrator] What remains of the S S

after the German defeat?

Does the Black Order live on in secret?

Thousands of perpetrators in Nazi functionaries

leave for the south, crossing the Alps

in the direction of Italy.

In Rome, the Vatican acquires dubious importance

for former S S men who want to build a new existence

for themselves.

Influential clerics help S S criminals.

- One of the most difficult things in the world is

to know anything about Vatican intelligence.

You can talk all you want to but I don't think

anybody's ever cracked that one.

- [Narrator] Rome is a kind of transit hub

for fugitive S S veterans.

The International Red Cross issues travel documents,

actually for Nazi victims who have lost everything.

The applicant's details are hardly ever verified.

With new travel documents, it's off from Rome to Genoa.

And from there by ship to Latin America, Argentina,

Bolivia and Paraguay are happy to accept immigrants

with know how.

Engineers, entrepreneurs and Nazis.

The US Secret Service also uses this escape route.

In the emerging east west conflict,

spies are recruited and smuggled out of Europe.

The Americans call the escape routes, the rat lines.

- We were collecting information about the Russians.

And in order to do that, we dealt with Russian deserters.

We mounted operations into the Russian zone of Austria

and so forth.

And then we found that we had a number of these people

on our hands, and we didn't know what to do with them.

- [Narrator] S S murderers like Klaus Barbie

are also on the payroll of the US Secret Service.

The times he collects information from Augsburg

about potential communist agents.

- My enemies enemy is my friend.

And so in the end, even a heavily incriminated offender

like Barbie finds his way onto American payrolls.

- [Narrator] In 1951, this collaboration ends in Germany.

Barbie travels via a ratline to South America, to Bolivia.

- Barbie doesn't flee of his own accord.

It's suggested to him by the Americans.

Who make it clear that the investigative efforts

by the French are so far advanced,

that they're no longer in a position to protect him.

And there was also the danger that American intelligence

would be extremely discredited,

not least by the east and gain a reputation

for having heavily incriminated war criminals

on its payroll.

- [Narrator] The allies had in fact committed themselves

to bringing Nazi perpetrators to justice.

At the end of 1945, an international military tribunal

in Nuremberg begins its first trial

against the main perpetrators who are still alive.

- Murderers they surely were, murderers in spades,

mass murderers on a scale never before seen in human history

that I knew otherwise they wouldn't have been there

as defendants.

- [Narrator] US lawyer, Benjamin Ferencz

had collected evidence from the concentration camps.

- I had been a liberator of many concentration camps

as a soldier in the American armies.

I had seen the product of mass murder in Buchenwald,

in Ebensee, in Mauthausen.

I certainly was shocked by that experience.

I was traumatized by that experience,

which has not left me to this day.

- [Narrator] Ernst Kaltenbrunner is also in the dock.

The former head of the S S Reich security main office

is the highest S S functionary still alive.

Kaltenbrunner denies having even heard of the Holocaust.

(Ernst speaks German)

- The biggest disappointment for me as an American,

as a soldier, as a prosecutor was the complete absence

of remorse among mass murderers.

They never said they were sorry because they were not sorry.

They were sorry they lost the war.

They were sorry they were sitting as defendants

and that I was still alive, but they were not sorry

about anything that they did.

- [Narrator] Ernst Kaltenbrunner is sentenced to death,

and the S S is officially disbanded and banned.

- The problem from the point of view of German society

is that there was the catch word victor's justice.

Many Germans had distanced themselves and didn't really want

to accept what was now being put on trial and disclosed.

Instead, they protected themselves from this knowledge,

which threatened their own identity by saying

this is victor's justice and as is often the case in war,

the victors are always right in the end and it doesn't have

to be the whole truth.

- [Narrator] In Nuremberg, more than a dozen S S men

are sentenced in further trials,

but the vast majority remain unlisted.

S S veterans form an organization called HIAG.

It is about financial help, legal assistance

and public rehabilitation.

- Loyalty actually takes pride of place

above everything else.

And in the S S, it was especially important.

- [Narrator] Otto Kumm, a general in the Waffen S S,

his division committed serious war crimes.

- It is the most important thing of all to me

to have belonged to this unit.

- They try to create the myth that they're soldiers,

just like any other, and thus to facilitate

their reintegration.

- [Narrator] The HIAG campaigns for S S veterans

to be treated in the same way as soldiers of the Wehrmacht

when it comes to pensions.

As early as the 1950s, this lobbying

for perpetrators provoked outrage.

Journalists remained hard on the heels of Nazi criminals.

One of them is the former senior Reich prosecutor

at the people's court Ernst Lautz.

He was responsible for an estimated 400 applications

for the death penalty.

After the war, he is sentenced to 10 years in prison,

but is released early.

Afterwards, he receives the pension of an attorney general

for many years.

For former members of the S S, Heinrich Himmler's daughter

becomes a popular contact point.

Gudrun Burwitz, as she is called after her marriage,

never renounces Nazi ideology.

- There are after all quite a large number of wives,

daughters, and sons of former S S leaders

who are trying to protect the historical image of the deeds

of their fathers.

- [Narrator] Even as a child, Gudrun Himmler is proud

to be the daughter of the famous man.

The Nazi princess, also accompanies her father on his work,

for example, when he visits the prison collection center.

In July 1941, she travels with pappy

as she affectionately calls him

to Dachau concentration camp.

She records this in her diary.

Today we visited the concentration camp in Dachau.

We looked at as much as we could.

We saw the gardeners, we saw the pear trees.

We saw all the pictures that prisoners painted, wonderful.

Afterwards, we had a very good lunch.

Himmler's daughter is a star of the right wing scene

and supports former Nazis with petitions for clemency,

money or help in finding accommodation.

- She was almost a kind of mythical figure

as Himmler's daughter, certainly among former S S men.

And she was largely responsible for an organization called

Stille Hilfe, which basically helped them

if they were in financial difficulties,

but behind the scenes she was quite significant

for them at least.

- [Narrator] Until her death in 2018,

Gudrun Burwitz received former S S men as a foreign audience

and questioned them strictly about where they had served.

In the 1950s, the federal German judiciary has a hard time

solving S S crimes.

Former Nazis work at many courts as judges

or public prosecutors.

There's no central coordination for tracking down criminals

or preserving evidence.

In 1958, this changes with the Central Office

in Ludwigsburg, Baden-Wurttemberg.

It is tasked with investigating Nazi crimes

and collecting evidence for preliminary investigations.

- When the Central Office was founded,

it wasn't seen as a good thing for the city of Ludwigsburg.

In fact, the people there were actually branded traitors

to the fatherland and nest fowlers.

I learned from the files that people also had problems

finding rental accommodation if they said they worked

at the Central Office.

Even taxi drivers are said to have refused

to drive visitors here.

- [Narrator] In the mid 1950s, the Hessian attorney general,

Fritz Bauer receives a tip off from Argentina.

Adolf Eichmann is said to be living there.

The former S S Obersturmbannfuhrer is one

of the main perpetrators of the Holocaust.

He organized the deportation of millions of European Jews,

the logistician of the crime against humanity.

Fritz Bauer fears Eichmann might be warned by old comrades

in the west German ministries and judicial authorities.

He turns to Israel.

Secret agents from Mossad set off for Buenos Aires.

Eichmann now calls himself Ricardo Klement

and works as an electrician in a Daimler Benz factory.

He lives with his family in modest circumstances

on the outskirts of Buenos Aires.

In his free time, he breeds rabbits.

A lower middle class existence.

From time to time, Eichmann meets old comrades

and boasts of his deeds.

(man speaks German)

- [Narrator] The Mossad agents

are soon certain Ricardo Klement is Adolf Eichmann.

They plan to strike on May 11th, 1960.

Eichmann is kidnapped on his way home in the evening,

Mossad men drag him into a car.

Argentina's police are kept in the dark.

The prisoner is smuggled past the airport checks

disguised as a crew member.

An El Al plane flies Eichmann directly from Buenos Aires

to Israel.

Eichmann is tried in Jerusalem.

In the process, the mass murderer presents himself

as someone insignificant, who was only following orders.

(Adolf speaks German)

(Adolf speaks German)

- [Narrator] The judges find Adolf Eichmann guilty.

He's executed on June 1st, 1962.

In the Federal Republic of Germany at the end of 1963

in Frankfurt am Main, Attorney General Fritz Bauer

causes a sensation with a first so-called Auschwitz trial.

- That I think was very important in bringing

the consciousness of realization of the crimes

they'd committed just as ordinary S S soldiers,

guards in the camps in the 1940s.

- Auschwitz was now outside the German Reich

and no one was insisting on the trial going ahead.

Nischwitz Bauer was different.

He wanted it too and so he tried

to bring the trial to Frankfurt.

- [Narrator] The young public prosecutor,

Gerhard Visser is part of Fritz Bauer's team

that collected incriminating material for years.

The accused are 23 former S S men

from the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Many of them now lead well to do lives as dentists,

merchants, pharmacists, or restaurateurs.

Some police officers salute as the defendants

walk past them.

During the trial, the men displayed strong self confidence

showing no signs of remorse.

Gerhard Visser works on the indictment.

- In the beginning, it was really intense.

It was murder and manslaughter from morning till night.

You also build up your own kind of inner resistance.

So as not to let it get too close to you.

- [Narrator] One of the accused is Hans Stark.

He apparently had the slogan, pity is weakness

hanging above his desk in Auschwitz.

Inmate Kazimierz Smolen testifies against him at the trial.

- He beat the prisoners especially often.

We often saw him at the punishment company,

there in block 11, where the prisoners were shot.

- He was more brutal than the other S S men.

I even had the impression that precisely

because he was so young, he wanted to show

that he was a fully fledged S S man.

- [Narrator] Hans Stark is 19 when he begins his service

in Auschwitz.

The high school student takes part in shootings

and gassings.

- Stark never showed pity, on the contrary,

he used to imitate the people pleading for mercy

at the ramp.

He acted as if it was all some kind of school prank.

How could an educated man be so brutal?

- [Narrator] Hans Stark is sentenced under juvenile law,

10 years in prison, five of which he serves.

In total, the court imposes six life sentences.

In addition, there are 11 prison sentences ranging

from three and a half to 14 years and three acquittals.

The message sent by the Auschwitz trial is more important

than the sentences.

For the first time since 1945,

Jewish victims in Germany are being heard

by the general public.

- The biggest postwar trial in west Germany was over.

It was legally binding and unsatisfactory

as far as the sentences were concerned.

Though that had to be accepted

and now nobody could actually claim that Auschwitz

didn't exist, that there were no gas chambers and so on.

Foolish views that are unfortunately

still being propagated today.

- The Auschwitz trial certainly had an enormous significance

for the victims who felt they were finally

getting some justice.

They were being heard.

They realized they could testify as witnesses

and that what they said had relevance.

- [Narrator] For the first time since Nuremberg trials,

postwar Germans were once again reminded

of the Nazis crimes.

Uncomfortable for many people and a disruption

of the mixed repression and relativization

that marked the general move.

Trials against Holocaust perpetrators were unpopular.

In 1985, Karl Frenzel, S S commander at the Sobibor

Extermination camp is indicted before the Hargan

regional court, about 250,000 people were murdered

at the camp.

As early as 1940, Karl Frenzel was involved in Aktion T4,

the murder of disabled people.

In Sobibor, he is noticeably ruthless and brutal.

He personally beats and murders people with his bare hands.

His neighbors have little understanding for the trial.

- Yes, I know him.

- Who do you mean?

- I have done for quite a while now.

I don't want to comment on that.

He's a very nice neighbor.

I know the story, but do you think a conviction

would be in anyone's interest?

- What should I say?

- Well, what do you think of him?

- I dunno, I'm staying out of it.

- Out of what?

- No idea, really?

- You don't know anything?

- No, that's the best option.

- Everyone makes mistakes.

Some make big ones and some small ones.

- Yeah, I think old men should be left alone.

I mean, there has to be an end to all this.

It has to be forgotten at some point.

- [Narrator] Karl Fremzel is sentenced to life imprisonment.

He's allowed to spend his last years in an old people's home

because of poor health.

(crowd cheers)

In the G D R, anti-fascism is a matter of state policy.

If Nazi crimes are talked about there,

then it is about those of others.

The fascists are the west Germans.

- We're talking about almost a million people who belong to

the Waffen S S alone.

And of course, a certain percentage of them stayed

and settled in the G D R.

Then they had to be reintegrated because quite simply,

they were needed for building up the new society,

including the economy.

It was inconceivable to exclude them completely.

- [Narrator] In the east, investigations

against Nazi criminals lie with the ministry

for state security, which has assiduously collected files

and documents from the Nazi era.

No public prosecutor and no scientists has access to them.

- There was no secret that until 1991,

nobody knew the files even existed.

11 kilometers of files that nobody knew about

that nobody outside the MfS had access to,

even within the MfS, I don't think many people knew

that they had this treasure trove of files

at their disposal.

Whoever had the files had power over the information

and could thus act unobserved by the public.

- [Narrator] In the G D R, the prosecution

of S S perpetrators has to do with the tense balance

between secrecy and propaganda in the east west conflict.

Where the charges are brought depends above all

on whether it seems politically opportune to do so.

In 1983, at a trial in east Berlin,

that seems to be the case.

It involves the murder of 650 civilians.

In 1944, men from the S S division, Das Reich,

round up the inhabitants of the French village

of Oradour in the market square.

Women and children are locked inside the village church.

Afterwards, S S men set fire to the church.

The men are herded into barns and shot.

- The worst thing is the disappearance of one's family

under such circumstances.

You have lunch with your family and in the evening

your family's dead.

There's no one left.

There's no house anymore.

There's nothing.

- [Narrator] Robert Hebras is one of the few survivors.

- It is simply a massacre that was unimaginable

in France until then.

It very quickly assumes a special significance

because the French government, the interim government,

decide to make Oradour a village martyr,

that is a symbol of France's suffering,

under the German occupation.

- [Narrator] By chance, the Stasi come across the file

of a suspicious G D R citizen, Heinz Barth,

S S Obersturmfuhrer, as a platoon leader

responsible for the murders at Oradour.

He was indicted in 1983.

- The Germans also want to show the French

that they're punishing these perpetrators,

even after all these years.

And they're on the side of the victims.

They simply want to present themselves well to France.

They want to strengthen connections,

political connections to France that also emerge as winners

in their relationship with France in this German, German,

French triangular relationship.

- [Narrator] The trial against Barth

attracts international media interest.

(Heinz speaks German)

- [Narrator] Robert Hebras testifies as a witness

against Barth.

- Barth's trial in east Berlin in 1983,

it became clear to me that he had no regrets.

He regretted only one thing,

that he couldn't see his grandchildren

because he was in prison.

But he didn't find a single word for the little children

who died in the church in Oradour.

- [Narrator] Heinz Barth is sentenced to life imprisonment.

The G D R declares that the trial shows how exemplary it is

in its prosecution of Nazis,

but the Stasi is not telling the whole truth.

Two of Heinz Barth's subordinates also turn up

in the secret investigation files.

They too were perpetrators at Oradour

but neither has to go to court.

- The identification of Barth after more than 30 years

in the G D R was already difficult to sell to the public,

especially the French public.

If two more men had been added there would've been a storm

of indignation and outrage.

- [Narrator] Nothing should tarnish the self image

of the anti-fascist G D R.

West Germany, the 1960s, students demonstrate

also against what they regard as the country's

overly lenient treatment of its Nazi past.

At the C D U party conference in 1968,

Beate Klarsefeld, then age 29,

slaps Chancellor and ex Nazi party member

Kurt Georg Kiesinger in the face.

- That was a symbolic act.

And it was the basis for the actions later on.

- [Narrator] In the early 1970s, Beate Klarsfeld tracks down

former S S Hauptsturmfuhrer Klaus Barbie in south America.

He now calls himself Klaus Ottman and works in Bolivia

as a businessman and advisor

to the country's military rulers.

- There are even studies on this that make it clear

that the torture practices used immediately after the coup

in Bolivia can be traced back to Klaus Barbie.

These really were torture practices that we also see

in France, so in that regard the military dictatorships,

in this case Bolivia, made use of this knowledge

from former S S functionaries.

- [Narrator] In a tape recording Klaus Barbie

tells his S S comrade Karl Wolf about Klarsfeld's efforts.

(man speaks in German)

- [Narrator] Beate Klarsfeld informs a French journalist,

but Barbie feels safe.

On French television he denies his identity.

- I am not Barbie, as I have already said,

I am Klaus Ottman and the Munich public prosecutor

will certainly have the chance to send these documents

to the Bolivian authorities.

- [Narrator] When a democratically elected government

comes to power in Bolivia in 1983,

Barbie is arrested and extradited to France.

- Barbie expelled from Bolivia to France.

I think that is for me, German, not Jewish.

It is the result of a long fight.

- [Narrator] In Lyon, the scene of his crimes,

Barbie stands trial in 1987.

Beate Klarsfeld follows the proceedings.

- For me it was the first time we came into the hall,

he was very indignant about having been extradited.

And I think he also said all my problems started

when this woman came to La Paz, yes.

- [Narrator] The trial is of national importance for France.

Klaus Barbie is sentenced to life imprisonment.

He dies in 1991 in prison.

For dictators and right wing extremists

the S S retains its importance even after 1945.

Otto Skorzeny, for example, does not have

to fear prosecution because he is protected

by dictator Franco in Spain.

Skorzeny, Hitler's S S man for special operations.

(audio in German)

- [Narrator] In Madrid undetected, the S S man

can celebrate the past with like-minded people.

From Spain, Skorzeny helps to maintain a network

of S S veterans.

He is said to be the head of a powerful underground troop.

The organization of former S S members or Odessa for short.

Is the S S continuing its existence underground,

gathering its forces for the time of revenge?

In the early 1970s, the alleged minutes of a meeting emerge.

A secret Odessa meeting with about 100 men.

In the end, the story turns out to be a myth.

- There was de facto, a network of former S S functionaries

who also cooperated, acted and communicated

across different countries.

But this large scale Odessa organization never existed.

- [Narrator] Riga in Latvia.

In the Baltic states once suppressed by the Soviet army

the S S still has many admirers today.

Here, S S veterans who fought against the Soviet

celebrate every year on March 16th.

A reinterpretation of history,

Nazis as heroes because they fought communists.

After the German invasion of Latvia in 1941,

160,000 Latvian's entered German service.

Most of them fight in the Waffen S S voluntarily.

They too swear allegiance to Hitler.

Latvian S S men participate in the Holocaust

and commit war crimes.

In Riga, Latvian and German Jews are harassed in the ghetto.

In 1941, around 30,000 are murdered in just two days.

Latvian's wearing S S uniforms are among the perpetrators.

At the annual commemoration ceremonies

this is of no importance.

Alongside the elderly veterans,

the younger generation also marches.

Right wing extremist youths side by side,

with former S S men.

- They allow anybody to celebrate and commemorate the war

if they fought against the Soviet Union.

Of course, many of those who fought against the Soviet union

were in fact Nazis or S S divisions, Latvian S S division.

Now I think the problem with this is

although the Soviet Union occupied these countries,

partly Russianized them, treated them unfairly,

suppressed local elites.

And of course, at least in Stalin's time

had a reign of terror.

This is not the same as the Nazi plans for these areas.

The Nazi's general plan for the east envisions 50 to 85%

of the people of these countries being exterminated

and you cannot say that of the Soviet Union.

So, I think it's a misapprehension about history

and about the past.

- [Narrator] But how can the legacy

of the S S be dealt with?

In the spring of 1985, the Bitburg Military Cemetery

made headlines, 2000 fallen soldiers of the second world war

are buried here, including 49 Waffen S S men.

US President, Ronald Reagan and Chancellor Helmut Kohl

want to honor the victims here together.

The planned visit triggers weeks of public controversy

in the US.

Holocaust survivors and Jewish association's call

on the S S president not to go to Bitburg.

- Mr. President, don't go to Bitburg to forgive and forget,

to sanitize the Nazis of their crimes,

to wipe clean the butcher's bayet go, thank you very much.

(crowd applauds)

- [Narrator] The president is unimpressed.

On May 5th, 1985, he and Kohl visit

the Kolmeshohe Military Cemetery.

Together with two former world war II generals.

40 years after the end of the second world war,

the intention is to send a worldwide sign

of reconciliation from Bitburg.

But the dead S S men prevent that.

- The visit to Bitburg showed that at least people

in the west and in Germany too, didn't understand

what it was all about.

The moment you bring in members of the Waffen S S

who are buried there, just like ordinary soldiers,

it means that something has gone wrong.

Something went wrong with both Kohl and Reagan

and it was good the people protested against these things.

- [Narrator] Many Waffen S S soldiers are not

personally involved in crimes, but the uniform they wear

stands for terror and for the murder of millions.

Former membership of the S S is becoming more and more

of a burden in democratic Germany.

The subject is often either talked down

or avoided altogether.

Hanns Martin Schleyer,

President of the Employer's Association,

joined the S S in 1933 as a Hauptsturmfuhrer.

He was murdered by left wing terrorists in 1977.

Actor, Horst Tappert, his past in the S S only became known

after his death.

Nobel prize winner, Gunter Grass only admits

to his membership in the Waffen S S in his late seventies.

He is allowed to keep his Nobel prize.

Actor, Hardy Kruger was also drafted into the Waffen S S

in March 1945 at the age of 16, cannon fodder

for the last days of the war.

Just like thousands of others in the Wehrmacht, Volkssturm

or Waffen S S.

The Central Office in Ludwigsburg examines the extent

to which S S men were personally guilty.

This still leads to legal proceedings against people

who are now very elderly.

- I certainly don't think the investigations

against Nazi perpetrators are wrong.

I think they're still necessary in terms of history

in legal history.

I think it was an urgently needed step that these sentences

passed over the last 10 years were passed at all.

- [Narrator] After the turn of the millennium,

the Central Office also sets its sites on a Ukrainian

who immigrated to the USA after the war.

John Demjanjuk is said to have been a supervisor

in the Sobibor extermination camp in 1943.

As part of the so-called Trawniki, prisoners of war

who performed guard duty and auxiliary work for the S S.

The Central Office in Ludwigburg accuses Demjanjuk

of having participated in the murder

of at least 29,000 people.

In 2009, the now 89 year old is found guilty

by the Munich regional court for being an accessory

to murder, a novelty in legal history.

- Anyone who served in an extermination camp

or in a concentration camp in which systematic extermination

took place, it was on general duty was guilty

of what happened, even if they did not kill directly.

Guilty of being an accessory to murder.

That is a factor that could probably not have been presented

in that way, 40 or 50 years ago in the Federal Republic.

- [Narrator] After the Demjanjuk verdict,

trials are possible against all S S members

who were on duty in the camps,

small cogs in the murder machinery.

Today, senior citizens, many without insight or remorse.

(man speaks in German)

- [Narrator] Between 1945 and 2005,

almost 14,000 Nazi perpetrators stand trial in west Germany.

About half of them are found guilty and mostly given

prison sentences of between six months and one year.

- We had heard less from the circles of those affected

of the victims about it being absolutely necessary

to enforce the sentence.

But it is important that the criminal law is recognized.

We are not an ungracious state.

We do not prosecute anyone who could no longer stand trial

or who's no longer capable of defending himself.

This gets investigated very closely.

There is no exemption from punishment

once you are 90 years old.

- [Narrator] Some old S S veterans

are still celebrating today.

Right wing extremist parties like Der Dritte Weg

pay homage to them as contemporary witnesses.

Here, they have a ready audience for their historical views.

- The flow of history remains even with the last war.

And I maintained that the problems have remained

almost the same and that the second world war

is not yet over.

- Suddenly eyewitness evenings with former S S people

can now take place and the internet transports that.

That means they're becoming visible again

and their views are spreading.

The trivialization and even the denial of the Holocaust

are visible once again, due to people

who give themselves a certain voice,

a special voice, because they say I was there.

- [Narrator] Yesterday's right wing extremists

as role models for the right wing extremists of today.

The Sword and Shield Festival in Ostritz, Saxony.

Sword and shield, S S for short.

The security service for the festival is provided

by the group Arische Bruderschaft.

T-shirts feature a logo of two crossed hand grenades.

The emblem of the S S Sturmbrigade Dirlewanger,

notorious for numerous war crimes.

Symbols banned in Germany are plastered over.

(man yells in German)

(men sing heavy metal in German)

- There's a spiritual infiltration going on here

that can be described as fruitful.

And in that respect, I am of course,

already a credible representative for the young people

as a member of the life generation and as one

who's never made cheap concessions to the zeitgeist.

- [Narrator] Right wing rock festivals

are considered fertile locations for recruitment.

For example, for the Azov regiment,

paramilitary volunteer battalion, ultra nationalist,

which fights against pro Russian separatists

in the Ukraine conflict.

In 2017, there is said to be 2,500 mercenaries in its ranks,

including Germans.

The sign of recognition is a wolf trap symbol,

like the S S dispositional troop once wore.

A special troop of the US Marines also seem

to have few qualms.

The scout snipers use the S S double runes

as an unofficial emblem.

- When other nations use the symbols of the Nazis,

stupidity knows no bounds.

- [Narrator] The S S show what people are capable of,

the deepest abyss in German history.

- The SS are seen as the core of the Nazi regime.

Well, so it seems in the culture of remembrance,

but there always has to be a warning here.

If we merely look back on the memory of the S S,

we ignore the fact that a whole people cooperated

with the S S with this part of national socialism.

- [Narrator] The deadly lie of the battle of the races

leads to the crime against humanity.

The S S sees itself as an elite.

In truth, it is an instrument of mass murder,

a historical disgrace.

(intense music)

(music continues)

(music fades)