Read Army of Evil: A History of the SS Online
Authors: Adrian Weale
Right
: Otto Ohlendorf, the economist who led the SD-
Inland
, but also commanded a Special Task Group during the invasion of the Soviet Union. (
Bundesarchiv)
Left
: Adolf Eichmann, the “Jewish Expert” who masterminded the persecution and later extermination of Jews throughout Europe. (
AP/Press Association Images)
Right
: Christian Wirth, pioneer of the use of gas for mass murders of Jews. (
Holocaust Research Project)
Left
: Franz Stangl, the Austrian police officer who commanded the Sobibor and Treblinka death camps. (
Topham Picturepoint/Press Association Images)
Right
: SS-Lieutenant Heinz Macher, a highly decorated Waffen-SS officer who accompanied Himmler during his attempted escape in May 1945. (
Bundesarchiv)
Otto Skorzeny (
left
), commander of Waffen-SS special forces on the Eastern Front, spring 1945. (
Public Record Office)
Recruiting poster for the British Free Corps. (
Bundesarchiv)
A Sikh member of the Free Indian Legion, stationed on the Atlantic coast of France, spring 1944. (
Bundesarchiv)
Two members of the British Free Corps of the Waffen-SS—Kenneth Berry (
left
) and Alfred Minchin (
right
)—with German Army soldiers on a visit to a naval internment camp, April 1944. (
Public Record Office)
Sepp Dietrich (
left
), who led the first armed SS unit in 1933, also commanded the largest, the 6th SS Panzer Army, during the Ardennes offensive in winter 1944–45. (
Bundesarchiv)
Members of the Dirlewanger battalion of convicted criminals and political prisoners taking part in street fighting during the Warsaw Rising of August 1944. (
Bundesarchiv)
Members of the Waffen-SS and German Army who had escaped across the River Elbe to surrender to the US Army rather than the Soviets, May 1945. The prisoner (
center
) with a bandaged head is also a member of the Dirlewanger battalion.
(
Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)
An SS-sergeant major, under British supervision, carrying the body of a dead prisoner to a mass grave at Belsen concentration camp, May 1945. (
Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)