SS-Totenkopfverbände (SS-TV), “Death’s-Head Units,”    was the SS organization responsible for administering the Nazi concentration camps for the Third Reich. While the Totenkopf (Death’s Head/skull) was the universal cap badge of the SS, the SS-TV also wore the insignia on the right collar to distinguish itself from other SS units. On 26 June 1933, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler   appointed SS-Oberführer Theodore Eicke    the Kommandant of the first Nazi concentration… Read more »

She was the daughter of a minor German aristocrat who worked as a schoolteacher. She claimed that she knew nothing about Reinhard Heydrich’s crimes committed while he was head of the RSHA, or Reichssicherheitshauptamt, Reich Main Security Office. Lina von Osten met the then Naval Lieutenant Heydrich on December 6, 1930, at a gala hosted by the… Read more »

Eight women, all the same types, that are thought, possibly, to have been intimate with Hitler, attempted suicide: Maria ” Mimi” Reiter  his first love, the thirty-seven-year-old Adolf became infatuated with Mitzi, a sixteen-year-old Munich shop girl. He proposed marriage but said his “duty and mission” consumed him and she would have to wait for… Read more »

The SS-Ehrenring, SS Honour Ring”, unofficially called Totenkopfring (“Death’s Head Ring”) , was an award of Heinrich Himmler;s Schutzstaffel SS). It was not a state decoration, but rather a personal gift bestowed by Himmler. The SS Honour Sword  and SS Honour Dagger  were similar awards. The ring was initially presented to senior officers of the Old Guard (of… Read more »

Erhard Heiden (23 February 1901 – c. 1933) was an early member of the Nazi Party  and the third commander of the paramilitary wing of Schutzstaffel SS,  the Sturmabteilung (“Storm Detachment; SA”).  Heiden  was appointed head of the SS, an elite subsection of the SA in 1927. At that time the SS numbered less than a thousand men and Heiden found… Read more »

Heinz Hermann Schubert was born 27 August 1914, in Berlin, shortly after the outbreak of the World War I. He went to school in Eisenberg, Thüringen and then again in Berlin Lichterfelde, where he  attended also a commercial college. From April 1931 to August 1933 Schubert worked for a lawyer. From August 1933 Schubert worked as a… Read more »

The 23rd SS Volunteer Panzer Grenadier Division Nederland  was a German Wafffen SS division comprising volunteers from the Netherlands. It saw action on the Easter Front during World War II. The Dutch soldiers were planned to be a part of the Nordland division but after protests from the Dutch nazi-party, National Socialistische Beweging (NSB), it was decided that they would form their own division…. Read more »

The Beer Hall Putsch, also known as the Munich Putsch, and, in German, as the Hitlerputsch or Hitler-Ludendorff-Putsch, was a failed coup attempt by the Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler — along with Generalquartiermeister Erich Ludendorff and other Kampfbund leaders — to seize power in Munich, Bavaria, during 8–9 November 1923. By midmorning on 9 November, Erich Ludendorff  cried out, “Wir marschieren!” (We will march!) and Ernst Röhm  force together with… Read more »

In late June 1942, the Jewish Council  was informed that the Jews would have to work in labour camps in Germany. In Amsterdam, 4,000 summons were sent,  but many of the summoned Jews did not report for work. As a result, the Germans rounded up 700 Jews on 14 July 1942. This group was to… Read more »

In Nazi Germany established brothels in the concentration camps to create an incentive for prisoners to collaborate, although these institutions were used mostly by Kapos, “prisoner functionaries” and the criminal element, because regular inmates, penniless and emaciated, were usually too debilitated and wary of exposure to Schutzstaffel (SS) schemes. In the end, the camp brothels did not produce any… Read more »