S01E01 Heydrich
As head of the SS Security police, Reinhard Heydrich rose with meteoric speed to control the murder squads operating in Poland and Russia with brutal efficiency. He took charge of the 'final solution to the...
The SS
S01E03: Himmler's Madness
Part 2 looks at Heinrich Himmler, the most powerful man in the Third Reich after Hitler. The SS expanded rapidly under Himmler's efficient leadership and soon cast a black shadow over Germany. Himmler chose the castle of Wewelburg in Westphalia as the centre of the SS cult, and invented a glorious historical past and a pseudo-religion. Eyewitness accounts include SS doctor Ernst Günther Schreck, former concentration camp inmate Max Hollweg, former German army officer Bernd Freytag von Loringhoven, Himmler's personal staff member Gabriele Winckler and Florentine Rost van Tonningen who was a friend of Himmler's and the wife of an SS officer.
Overview
SS — the two letters in old Germanic rune script represent the most effective and dangerous instrument of power of the Nazi dictatorship. The SS represented more than any other Nazi organisation the wild and deadly delusions of those who believed themselves part of the master race. It took only a few years for Hitler's Schutzstaffel to be transformed from an insignificant personal bodyguard to an all-powerful empire of evil. There are personal interviews with survivors and and with those men who served the inhuman SS system. Only now, as their lives draw to a close, are they prepared to speak up. In the world's first television series on the overall history of the SS, this documentary series takes a balanced view with many previously unpublished sources and with witnesses to the history of the SS: victims, perpetrators and opponents.
Episodes
S01E02 The Struggle for Power
Part one looks at how the SA, the Storm Detachment of the NSDAP, began as a group of thugs and criminals, many of whom had fought in World War I. This group helped Hitler rise...
S01E03 Himmler's Madness
Part 2 looks at Heinrich Himmler, the most powerful man in the Third Reich after Hitler. The SS expanded rapidly under Himmler's efficient leadership and soon cast a black shadow over Germany. Himmler chose the...
S01E04 Death's Head
This episode looks at the Death's Head Battalion, whose members were identified by the badge with a skull on the right lapel of their uniform. They underwent rigorous training to abolish every trace of human...
S01E05 The Waffen SS
"Give death and take death" — this was the motto of the Waffen-SS on the frontlines of the Second World War, which earned it dubious fame: between boldness and crime, propagated heroism and mass murder....
S01E06 The Mystery of Odessa
When the "Third Reich" surrendered, Heinrich Himmler's elite order became the "Army of Outlaws". Some perpetrators are brought to trial and convicted by the Allies as war criminals, but some of the most wanted SS...
