Hitler's SS Death's Head Division

This study will examine the development of the Hitler's SS Death's Head (Totenkopf) Division, as described in Soldiers of Destruction, by Charles W. Sydnor, Jr. The study will consider the reasons for the growth of the SSTK and what such development tells us about the nature of National Socialism. The greatest enemy of the Nazis, at least in Europe, was Russia, and it was inevitable that the SSTK, as one of the essential ingredients in National Socialism, would find its ultimate purpose in the war on the eastern front with Stalin. As the war moved toward that final confrontation with Russia, the importance of the SSTK inevitably grew, leading to the development and expansion of the elite, powerful and ruthless Division.

Sydnor makes clear that he believes the SSTK were an essential part of the rise of National Socialism under Hitler and that the Division represented the spirit of Nazism. He writes, for example, that there is an increasing interest in the SSTK "because, institutionally, and for most of the history of the Third Reich, the SS Death's Head Division occupied a strategic intersection amid the moving traffic of Hitlerian criminality" (xii).

The theme of the book is that the SSTK was not only the spirit of Hitler's Nazi policy, but also its very backbone. In his conclusion, Sydnor writes of "'the executive instrument of the Fuhrer's will'---the wartime SS, the single most important institution of the Hitlerian age" (350). The book, then, is a record of the origins

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Eicke's more severe disciplinary action---sending the SSTK offender to a concentration camp not as a guard but as an inmate (62). The fear of such punishment ensured that the members of the SSTK followed every order to the letter, including the most brutal of orders. The development, growth, and acquisition of new powers and functions by the SSTK from that point on could not have occurred unless Hitler and Himmler had wanted it to. And, indeed, the SSTK figured specially in the Nazi leaders' plans (64). Part of the reason the SSTK increased in importance to the National Socialist movement during the war years was the relentless salesmanship of Eicke. He simply inundated the high command with promotional pitches for the SSTK, including an important tour for a general which resulted in both an increased reputation for the Division as well as a steady increase in support and supplies. However, it was not until the battle of France that the role of the SSTK and its ability to perform in battle became more clear: The performance of SSTK . . . did . . . compel the German generals to agree with Himmler that armed SS units . . . could fight alongside the army in the most sensitive and important sectors of the front. . . . In additio

Category: History - H