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Glossary
Additions
Genocidal Processes During World War
II
Abwehr
Intelligence services of the Wehrmacht.
Most of their activities were gradually taken over by the SS, being absorbed by it
in 1944.
Allgemeine SS
General body of the SS, which included all members
of the organisation with the exception of the Waffen-SS
For Nuremberg materials see Schutzstaffel
Barbarossa
Codeword for the military onslaught on the USSR,
launched June 22, 1941
'Bullet' Decree See Kugel Decree
Capo (Kapo)
A position of authority in concentration/death camps
occupied by an inmate. Capo's carried out the instructions of their immediate SS
supervisors, usually a Blockführer. Most frequently they were selected
from among those inmates who had been incarcerated because of their criminal activities.
As their own, frequently limited, albeit life-saving, privileges, depended on the
whim of their SS supervisors, they more often than not treated other inmates with extreme
harshness and brutality.
Commissar Order
See Kommisarbefehl
Concentration
and Extermination Camps
Cultural Genocide
See Culturecide
Culturecide
See article culturecide.htm
Death's
Head Detachments See Totenkopfverbände
Deutschen
Polizei
Divided by Himmler into two branches: (1) Ordnungspolizei, Ordinary Police, abbreviated to
Orpo,
and (2) Sicherheitspolizei, the Security Police, abbreviated to Sipo.
Follow the links for details on each.
Einsatzgruppe
Translated, variously, as Special Force, Action
Group, Operational Force, Task Force. The plural is Einsatzgruppen. These
units were under the control of the Reichsführer-SS
and had been formed originally to perform special operations attendant upon the invasion
of Poland in September, 1939. With the invasion of the USSR on June 22, 1941, they
assumed prominence as the units whose task it was to enforce the so-called Kommissarbefehl, or Commissar Order, essentially
liquidating all officials who had been prominent in the political system of the USSR
prior to the German occupation. There role extended rapidly, however, to include the
mass execution of Jewish communities in occupied areas of the USSR. It is estimated
that they were responsible for murdering approximately 1.5 million Jews. An Einsatzgruppe
was subdivided into smaller units, Einsatzkommando, , who, in turn, were formed
from the smallest unit, an Einsatztrupp. For more details on the
activities, structure, and significance of the Einsatzgruppen see the detailed Web article.
Einsatzgruppen key senior personnel.
The
"Einsatzgruppen Case."
Ereignismeldungen
Einsatzkommando
A subdivision of an Einsatzgruppe
Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg für die
Besetzten Gebiete (ERR)
A bureau managed by Alfred
Rosenberg, created July 1940, that was responsible for the appropriation of cultural
and ideological materials from German occupied territories. Rosenberg's official
title in this connection was The Führer's Representative for the Supervision of the
Intellectual and Ideological Instruction of the National Socialist Party. The
materials in question included millions of books and manuscripts and hundreds of thousands
of paintings, sculptures and other art objects. Most of these were simply
appropriated without recompense of any sort to their owners, a significant number of whom
in Western European countries were, or course, Jews or Jewish organisations.
Included as well, however were the writings and collections of Free Masons,
Jehovah's Witnesses, communists and socialists.
Einsatztrupp
A subdivision of an Einsatzkommando
Endlösung, die
Final solution. Generally taken to refer to
the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question", which, from August/September 1941,
at the latest, was taken to imply the physical liquidation of the Jewish population of
German occupied Europe.
Ereignismeldungen
Event Reports compiled by Heydrich's staff in Berlin
concerning the operational achievements of the Einsatzgruppen.
According to C R Browning, one hundred and ninety-five such were compiled between June 23,
1941, and April 24, 1942, and are the major source of evidence concerning
the executions of Jews and others by shootings.
Ethnic Cleansing
See article at ethnic_cleansing.htm
Ethnocide
See article at ethnocide.htm
franc-tireur
Main Entry: franc-ti·reur
Pronunciation: "frän-(")tE-'r&r
Function: noun
Etymology: French, from franc free + tireur shooter
Date: 1808
: a civilian and especially a guerrilla fighter or sniper
Freikorps
(Free Korps)
Created in the context of the social turmoil that
engulfed Germany during 1917-18, these were "freebooters" led
by former officers of right-wing disposition who were keen to suppress
reforms that would infringe on entrenched social, political, and
economic privileges. Proposed originally by General Ludwig
Maercker, December 12, 1918, who suggested the creation of a volunteer
rifle corps to suppress social dissent given that the regular military
appeared to be incapable of successfully undertaking such
tasks.
As K P Fischer noted, "The backbone of the Free
Corps units consisted of declassed imperial officers who were frightened
by the prospects of giving up their privileged positions in German
society. Having lost the war along with their warlord, they faced
a bleak prospect under a Socialist regime that was known to be hostile
to the old military establishment. It is estimated that there were
some 270,000 officers in 1919, many of them coming from the ranks of the
nobility. ...Stunned by the shock of defeat and the prospects of a
dreary life under socialism or even Communism, they became outraged elitist
reactionaries, desperately searching for a new imperial banner under
which they could continue their privileges." Some of these, and the
non-officer, mainly de-mobbed soldiers, who comprised the rank and file,
were later recruited by extreme nationalist organisations, including the
NSDAP; many volunteered later for participation in the activities of the
SA. (Source: K P Fischer. Nazi Germany: A New History, p.52)
Führer
Leader. Usually preceded by a description of
what is being led, as in Reichsführer-SS (Reich leader of the SS). Also used to
refer to the supreme leader of the Nazi Party until 1933, and thereafter, until 1945, the
Chancellor and supreme leader of the German people, Adolf Hitler, der Führer.
Gau
A territorial administrative political unit of the
NSDAP. Germany was divided into 42 Gaue. The NSDAP official in charge of a Gau
was known as a Gauleiter.
Gauleiter
Leader of a Gau
Geheime
Feldpolizei (Secret Field Police)
In charge of security tasks in the Wehrmacht.
Most of their functions were taken over by the RSHA in 1942.
Geheime
Staatspolizei Secret State Police,
abbreviated to Gestapo. Part of Amt IV of the RSHA
Nuremberg Tribunal Indictment (Gestapo and
SD) Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI
Generalgouvernement
That portion of Poland occupied by the Germans prior
to the invasion of the USSR on June 22, 1941, that was not administratively annexed to the
Third Reich. Its administrative headquarters was in Cracow (Krakow), in southern
Poland. The Governor-General of the Generalgovernement was Hans Frank.
General
Government See Generalgouvernement
Gemeindepolizei
Local Police
Gendarmerie Rural Police
General SS See Allgemeine SS
Gestapo See Geheime Staatspolizei
Höhere
SS-und Polizeiführer (HSSPF) (Higher
SS and Police Leader)
Senior SS personnel who assumed responsibility for
coordinating the activities of the Orpo, Sipo,
SD and General SS in military
administrative districts. During the war such districts were established in the
occupied areas. The Higher SS and Police Leaders also coordinated the activities of
SS with the senior military personnel in the military administrative districts. The SS,
under Himmler's leadership, continuously managed to broaden its areas of responsibility
relating to policing and security matters. By the end of the war nearly all
intelligence gathering, security and police matters were in the hands of the SS. The
Higher SS and Police Leaders were responsible for all these functions in specific
geographical areas. Their principal functions were to control the local police
authorities, monitor and carry out tasks relating to intelligence and security matters and
perform whatever other tasks that they were allocated by Himmler, or by the military
authorities in the occupied territories.
"In the occupied territories, the HSSPFs continued to be
personally responsible to Himmler and had constant instructions from
him, but they were, for operational purposes, responsible to the senior
military commander stationed in that territory. The principal functions
of the HSSPFs were to control the local police authorities, handle
special police and intelligence matters, and carry out other special
missions of a security nature for Himmler and for the military
authorities. An HSSPF usually held the rank of Gruppenfuehrer or
Obergruppenfuehrer in the SS, these ranks being respectively the
equivalent of a two-star and a three-star general in the United States
Army." (Source, p.12)
HSSPF See Höhere SS-und Polizeiführer
IMT See International
Military Tribunal, Nuremberg
International
Military Tribunal, Nuremberg
Established by the Allied Powers at the end of World
War II to try the major German war criminals. Their were 24 defendants who were charged on
one or more of four counts: (1) crimes against the peace, (2) crimes against humanity, (3)
war crimes, and (4) "a common plan or conspiracy to commit" the acts listed in
(1)-(3). The first session was held, symbolically, in Berlin under the chairmanship
of the Soviet member, on October 18, 1945. All subsequent sessions were held in
Nuremberg, also spelt Nurenberg. There were 216 sessions in all, the verdict being
delivered on October 1, 1946. Ten of the accused were sentenced to death. They
included Hermann Göering, who committed suicide before the sentence could be
administered, Hans Frank, Julius Streicher and Alfred Rosenberg. Adolf Hitler, Joseph
Goebbels and Heinrich Himmler had all committed suicide.
Numerous other trials were held, for which see Overview to Crimes, Trials and Laws.
Some of these were held by the Allied powers in their zones of German occupation.
Many others were held in the occupied countries where the offenses of which German and the
nationals of other countries were charged were committed. See also Charter of the International Military Tribunal.
Jew
Raul Hilberg, in his Destruction of the European
Jews, argued that conceptually the destructive process can be interpreted as having
proceeded through a number of distinct phases. His approach is etiologically
cumulative, each phase building on the preceding one, in line with his contention that the
direct physical elimination of the Jewish population of German occupied European countries
evolved, rather than this policy having been adopted as a definite programme during the
early years of the Third Reich, or before. The first stage of this process was the
definitional one, in which the German bureaucratic machine defined who was a Jew.
This, of course, was critically important as far as the eventual fate of many persons in
Germany and elsewhere was concerned. The Jews of Germany were, in comparison with
Jewry in Poland, the Baltic states, and the USSR, for instance, highly assimilated, the
assimilation process having been underway since the latter half of the nineteenth
century.
The first attempt at a definition appeared in 1933,
in connection with the promulgation of the Law for the
Restoration of the Professional Civil Service. The First
Regulation published for its implementation, April 11, alluded to who was a Jew
by reference to Aryan status:
Article 3
A person is to be considered non-Aryan if he is
descended from non-Aryan, and especially from Jewish parents or grandparents. It is
sufficient if one parent or grandparent is non-Aryan. This is to be assumed in
particular where one parent or grandparent was of the Jewish religion.
This was essentially a negative definition, that is,
in terms of those who were "non-Aryan", which includes categories other than
Jews. It is important to note, as Hilberg points out, that this definition is cast
in religious, and not racial terms. The criterion is whether or
not the parent or grandparent is of the Jewish religion. In racial terms, as categorised
by the leading ideologues of the Nazi movement, including Hitler, if all four grandparents
were Jews who had converted to Christianity, the offspring would still be a Jew, although
under the above definition they quite possibly would not. At the same time, the
definition is ambiguous in that the general clause refers to descent, whereas the
particulars refer to the practice of the Jewish religion. (See, R Hilberg. The
Destruction of European Jews. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1985, pp.27-28)
In addition, despite the ambiguity, the net was
potentially widely drawn in that a large number of persons would be subsumed under it who
were not practicing Jews, particularly those who had only one grandparent who had been a
practicing Jew. As noted earlier, Jews were relatively assimilated in pre-Nazi
Germany; in particular, the number of intermarriages was quite high.
A more embracing definition was introduced in the First Supplementary Regulation published under the Reich Citizenship Law, one of the so-called Nuremberg
Laws, issued November 14, 1935.
...
Article 2
(2) An individual of mixed Jewish blood is one who is
descended from one or two grandparents who, racially, were full Jews, insofar that he is
not a Jew according to Section 2 of Article 5. Full-blooded Jewish grandparents are those
who belonged to the Jewish religious community.
Article 5
(1) A Jew is an individual who is descended from at least
three grandparents who were, racially, full Jews... (2) A Jew is also an individual who is
descended from two full-Jewish grandparents if: (a) he was a member of the Jewish
religious community when this law was issued, or joined the community later; (b) when the
law was issued, he was married to a person who was a Jew, or was subsequently married to a
Jew; (c) he is the issue from a marriage with a Jew, in the sense of Section I, which was
contracted after the coming into effect of the Law for
the Protection of German Blood and Honor of September 15, 1935; (d) he is the issue of
an extramarital relationship with a Jew, in the sense of Section I, and was born out of
wedlock after July 31, 1936.
Accordingly, a person who is defined as not a Jew,
but a person of mixed Jewish blood, is:
(1) any person who descended from
two Jewish grandparents (half Jewish), but who (a) did not adhere (or adhered no longer)
to the Jewish religion on September 15, 1935, and who did not joint it at any subsequent
time, and (b) was not married (or was married no longer) to a Jewish person on
September 15, 1935, and who did not marry such a person at any subsequent time (such
half-Jews were called Mischlinge of the first degree), and (2) any person
descended from one Jewish grandparent (Mischling of the second degree). The
designations "Mischling of the first degree" and "Mischling
of the second degree" were not contained in the decree of November 14, 1935, but were
added in a later ruling by the Ministry of the Interior. [Source: R
Hilberg. The
Destruction of the European Jews. New York: New Viewpoints, 1973, p.48]
Kapo See Capo
Kommisarbefehl
The Commissar Order
Issued June 6, 1941. Instructions on the
liquidation of Bolshevik officials captured by the German forces invading the USSR. The order and further details.
Konzentrationslager
Concentration camp
Kriminalpolizei
The Criminal Police.
The Kriminalpolizei and the Geheime Staatspolizei together constituted the Security
Police, Sipo, the Sicherheitspolizei
Kripo See Kriminalpolizei
KZ See Konzentrationslager
Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass)
Kugel [bullet] Decree
A decree that "directed that every escaped
officer and NC0 prisoner of war who had not been put to work, with the exception of
British and American prisoners of war, should on recapture be handed over to the SIP0 and
SD. ...These escaped officers and NCOs were to be sent to the
concentration camp at Mauthausen, to be executed upon arrival, by means of a bullet shot
in the neck.
" In March, 1944, fifty officers of the
British Royal Air Force, who escaped from the camp at Sagan where they were confined as
prisoners, were shot on recapture, on the direct orders of Hitler." [Source: Military High Command Trial]
Leadership
Corps of the Nazi Party
Under the terms of Article 9 of the Charter of the
International Military Tribunal "At the trial of any group or organisation the
Tribunal may declare (in connection with any act of which the individual may be convicted)
that the group or organisation of which the individual was a member was a criminal
organisation." One of the groups so designated was the Leadership Corps of the
Nazi Party.
"The Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party
consisted, in effect, of the official organisation of the Nazi Party, with Hitler as
Fuehrer as its head. The actual work of running the Leadership Corps was carried out
by the Chief of the Party Chancellery (Hess, succeeded by Bormann) assisted by the Party
Reich Directorate, or Reichsleitung, which was composed of the
Reichsleiters, the heads of
the functional organisations of the Party, as well as of heads of the various main
departments and offices which were attached to the Party Reich Directorate. Under
the Chief of the Party Chancellery were the Gauleiters, with territorial jurisdiction over
the main administrative regions of the Party, the Gaus. The Gauleiters were assisted
by a Party Gau Directorate or Gauleitung, similar in composition and function to the Part
Reich Directorate. Under the Gauleiters in the Party hierarchy were the Kreisleiters
with territorial jurisdiction over a Kreis, usually consisting of a single country, and
assisted by a Party of (sic) Kreis Directorate, or Kreisleitung. The Kreisleiters
were the lowest members of the Party hierarchy who were full time paid employees.
Directly under the Kreisleiters were the Ortsgruppenleiters, then the Zellenleiters and
then the Blockleiters. Directives and instructions were received from the Party
Reich Directorate." [Source: Judgment of the International Military Tribunal for
the Trial of German Major War Criminals. Nuremberg, 30th September and 1st October,
1946. London: HMSO, 1966, pp.67-68]
Lebensborn e.V
"The Fountain of Life. An SS society
founded in 1936. ... Its main functions were to adopt suitable
children for childless SS families, to succour racially sound pregnant women and their
offspring, and in general to promote the racial policy of the SS." (H
Krausnick, M Broszat. Anatomy of the SS State. London: Paladin, 1973)
lebensraum
Living space
Leibstandarte-SS Adolf Hitler
One of the most famous and esteemed units of the SS,
being the personal bodyguard of der Führer. Formed in 1933, it was
commanded by SS-Gruppenführer Josef (Sepp) Dietrich, initially with a complement of 120
men.
Lemcos
Mischling See Jew, definition of.
Nacht [Night] und
Nebel [Fog] Decrees
A series of related decrees introduced in late 1941 that provided that in
German occupied territories in the west, civilians would be tried for offenses against the
German state only if it was likely that the verdict would be one of execution, and that
this would be carried out a few days after their apprehension. If this was unlikely,
the "offender" would be tranported for to concentration camps in Germany, all
requests for information about their whereabout from relatives or others to be denied. In
the event of trials in Germany, alien witnesses would only be allowed to be heard with the
consent of the High Command of the armed forces, the public being denied access to the
proceedings.
NMT See Nuremberg Military Tribunal
NSDAP Nationalsozialistiche Deutsche Arbeiter Partei [National Socialist German
Workers' Party], abbreviated to Nazi Party.
Nuremberg
Military Tribunal (NMT)
Tribunal(s) set up by the United States in its zone
of occupation to try those who were guilty of major war crimes, under the authority of Control Council Law No.10. Twelve
trials were conducted between 1946 and 1949. These included the trial of those who
had participated in and commanded the Einsatzgruppen, members of the RuSHA, and the I G
Farben, Krupp and High Command trials. For more detailed information see Trials, Crimes and Laws: Overview, and the Statistical Table of the Nuremberg Trials.
OKH Oberkommando des Heeres [Army High Command]
Both numerically and operationally, the Army was the
most important of the armed services. Field-Marshall Walter von Brauchitsch was its
Commander-in-Chief between 1938 and December 1941. This position was then assumed by
Hitler. As Hitler was also Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Wehrmacht, this meant
that there was considerable overlap in practice between the OKH and the
OKW.
For further information see The
German Military System (Source)
OKL Oberkommando der
Luftwaffe-[Supreme Command of the
Air Force]
OKM Oberkommando
der Kriegsmarine [Navy High Command]
"The Navy was the smallest of the services, and its personnel and
units were numerically the smallest within the German Armed Forces. From
1928 until 1943 the OKM was headed by Fleet Admiral Erich Raeder. From
1943 to the end of the war in May, 1945, Fleet Admiral Doenitz,
succeeding Raeder, was Commander-in-Chief of the German Navy, having
previously been in charge of its most important weapon, the submarine."
(Source)
OKW Oberkommando der Wehrmacht [Armed Forces High Command]
The OKW was established in February 1938 and
controlled all matters of inter-service policy. It was directly responsible for the
overall conduct of operations during the war. Its most senior officer was Wilhelm
Keitel,
Field Marshal and Chief of Staff for the whole of the period from 1938 to 1945. The
most important section of the OKW, which was directly concerned with field operations, was
the Armed Forces Operations Staff (Wehrmachtsfuehrungsstab, WFST). During the war
this was commanded by General Alfred Jodl.
The decree promulgated by Hitler that established the OKW also specified that
"Command authority over the entire Armed Forces is from now on exercised directly by
me personally."
One of the principal agencies of the OKW was the
General Armed Forces Office (Allgemeines Wehrmachtamt, AWA), which was concerned primarily
with administrative matters. An important subdivision of the AWA was the Office of
the Chief of Prisoner-of-War Affairs (Chef des Kriegsgefangenwesens, Chef
Kriegs-Gef).
For further information see The
German Military System (Source)
Ordnungspolizei
The Order Police, abbreviated to
Orpo. These
were the uniformed police who consisted of the Schutzpolizei
(National Police), the Gendarmerie (Rural Police) and the Gemeindepolizei (Local Police)
Protocols of the Elders
of Zion
Anti-Semitic tract that was first printed and
circulated in Russia during the first decade of the twentieth century. Its subject
matter was purported meetings held during the Zionist Congress held in Basle, Switzerland,
in 1897. Jews and Freemasons were alleged to have held discussions directed at
ensuring a world government controlled by them that would dominate and exploit
Christendom. The Protocols purport to reproduce the substance of these
deliberations. They were translated into the main European languages and
circulated in most European countries, as well as further afield..
Rear Areas
"During war time the operational area of the Army (Heeres) was
divided into various segments. The operational areas of an army (Armee) consisted of
the combat zone and an army rear area. The operational area of an army group
consisted of the operational areas of the armies under it and an army group rear area.
The boundaries of the army group rear area coincided with the boundaries of the
army rear areas and extended to the territory under civil administration of the Reich,
such as the Commissariat Ostland in the east.
The army group and army rear areas were commanded by general officers who
were directly responsible to the commander-in-chief of the army group, or army,
respectively. The missions with which these commanders were charged can be
summarized as follows:
Administration of the occupied area;
The maintenance of peace and order in these areas;
Responsibility for the security of railroads and main supply routes
leading to the front line, as well as for all supply agencies engaged on behalf of the
front-line troops."
[Source: United Nations War Crimes Commission. Law Reports of the Trials
of War Criminals: The German High Command Trial. New York: Howard
Fertig, 1994,
p. 11. First published in 1949 as Law Reports of Trials of War Criminals, Vol.12]
Reichsführer-SS
Reich Leader of the SS. Throughout the history
of the Third Reich, this position was occupied by Heinrich
Himmler, who, for most of the period, was also Chief of the German Police.
Reichskommissar für die Festingung des
deutschen Volkstums
Commissioner for the Consolidation of German
Nationhood. This office was established by Hitler in 1939 in the context of the plan
to reconstitute the demographic structure of German occupied Poland. Persons of
German origin settled in Poland and further east were to be settled in that part of Poland
that was annexed to the Third Reich. Jews and Poles resident in these areas were to
be moved to eastern Poland, the area known as the Generalgouvernement.
Reichskommissariat für das Ostland
The name for the German civil administration in the
eastern occupied territories of the USSR. There was a separate Reichskommissariat
for the Ukraine. The Reichskommissariat was subdivided into smaller administrative
units.
Reichssicherheithauptampt
(Main/head Office of Reich Security)
Formed in 1939 by Himmler to coordinate and manage
the activities of the Gestapo, Kripo and SD, a subdivision of the SS.
This agency was headed by Reinhard Heydrich until
his assassination in 1942 near the village of Lidice, in Czechoslovakia, whilst serving in
the office of Protector of Bohemia and Moravia.
Reichstag
Name of the German parliamentary legislative
chamber.
RSHA See Reichssicherheithauptampt
SA See Sturmabteilungen
Schutzpolizie National Police
Schutzstaffel
Protection or guard detachment. Formed in 1925
as Hitler's praetorian guard. Heinrich Himmler
became its leader, Reichsführer-SS in
1929.
Nuremberg Tribunal Indictment, Gestapo and
SD: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part
V
SD See Sicherheitsdienst des RfSS
Sicherheitsdienst
des RfSS
The security service of the SS [RfSS refers to Reichsführer-SS],
established in 1932. Its head was Reinhard Heydrich.
It was the intelligence agency of the NSDAP. In 1944 it
absorbed the Abwehr, the intelligence agency of the OKW, the Armed Forces High Command.
Nuremberg Tribunal Indictment, Gestapo and
SD: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part
V
Sicherheitspolizei
The Security Police, which included the Kripo and
the Gestapo
Sipo See Sicherheitspolizei
SKL
Seekriegsleitung [Naval War Staff ]
Sturmabteilungen
Storm Troopers
Founded in 1921, these were the political soldiers
of the NSDAP, its most active supporters and those who marched in
demonstrations, kept control at political meetings, and were quite prepared to engage in
active combat with supporters of opposing political parties. Most of the more
serious conflicts were with members of the socialist and communist parties. From
1939 they became responsible for pre-military training of able-bodied males.
SS See Schutzstaffel
Totenkopfverbände
Death's Head units or detachments
Originally members of these units guarded the
concentration camps. In 1938 they participated, alongside the Verfügunstruppen, in the occupation of Austria, the
Sudetenland and Czechoslovakia. In 1939, 6,500 of their most experienced members,
under the command of the former commandant of the concentration camp Dachau, and Inspector
of Concentration Camps 1933-1939, Theodore Eicke, formed the first Waffen
SS unit, the Totenkopfdivision. Until mid-1941 its units were employed in
policing occupied territories, and the supervision and implementation of deportations and
executions. Immediately prior to the assault on the USSR, the Totenkopfverbände
were incorporated in units of the Waffen SS.
Totenkopfwachsturbanne
(Death's Head Guard Battalions)
These were the units of the SS which guarded the
concentration camps during the war, whose members were drawn from the Allgemeine SS. As the military situation worsened in
1942/43, their more able-bodied members were transferred to the Waffen
SS. The place of these was taken by older members of the SA, soldiers from the
armed services who had been wounded and were no longer fit for active duty, and members of
the Waffen SS who were not fit for field duties.
United Nations War Crimes Commission
The Commission was established following discussions
between representatives of the Allied powers in London, on October 20, 1943, and first met
in January 1944.
Its primary task was to collect, investigate, and
record evidence of war crimes, and to report to the governments concerned all instances in
which a prima facie case existed. ...[it] was assisted by
various national offices established by the member nations, offices which immediately
began searching for war criminals. The national offices submitted to the Commission
formal charges against suspected war crimnals and a description of available evidence to
substantiate the charges. After these charges were received, the Commission had to
determine whether the accused should be arrested and prosecuted by the member
governments. This made it necessary to identify and locate the accused and to plan
for their later prosecution. ... The Commission itself took no part
in these arrests and prosecutions; in fact, most of the accused were
never brought to trial. [Source: N.E Tutorow. War Crimes,
War Criminals and War Crimes Trials. New York: Greenwood Press, 1986]
UNWCC See United
Nations War Crimes Commission
Waffen SS
Originally designated Verfügunstruppen, and established by Hitler in 1938, as
an armed force entirely separate from the military, under the control of the Reichsführer-SS. In the Second World War
these units fought alongside those of the Wehrmacht in all the main European sectors.
Their contribution was especially noteworthy, often infamous, in the blitzkreig
campaign against France and on the Eastern Front throughout the years 1941-45. By
the end of the war the Waffen SS had 38 divisions, including nationals from many occupied
European countries. As George Stein noted, throughout their history of military
engagements these units "established an unrivalled reputation for toughness in
battle."
Wehrmacht German Armed Forces
Organizational Chart:
Upper Echelon Command
WFSt Wehrmachtfuehrungsstab
(Operational Staff of Armed Forces)
Wirtschafts-und Verwaltungshauptamt
The Economic and Administrative Office of the SS.
Created in 1942 it controlled the vast economic interests of the SS. These
were tied up with concentration camp and extermination programme through the
administration of slave labour and the saleable outputs from the Jewish ghettoes and
concentration and extermination camps. The SS official in charge was
Obergruppenführer Oswald Pohl.
WVHA See Wirtschafts-und
Verwaltungshauptamt
Zigeuner Roma and Sinti (Gypsies)
Zigeunerlager Roma and Sinti (Gypsy) Camps
Municipal camps for the confinement of German Roma
and Sinti, established post-1935. Roma and Sinti who were stateless, or held other
nationalities, had already mostly been expelled from German soil: "These gypsy camps
were in essence SS-Sonderlager: special internment camps combining elements of
protective custody, concentration camps and embryonic ghettoes. Usually located on the
outskirts of cities, these Zigeunerlager were guarded by the SS, the gendarmerie,
or the uniformed city police. After 1935 these camps became reserve depots for
forced labor, genealogical registration, and compulsory sterilization. Between 1933 and
1939, Zigeunerlager were created in Cologne, Düsseldorf, Essen, Frankfurt,
Hamburg, and other German cities. These camps evolved from municipal internment
camps into assembly centres for systematic deporation to concentration camps after
1939." [Source: "Holocaust: The
Gypsies." Sybil Milton. In S Totten, W S Parsons, I W Charny (eds.) Century
of Genocide. Eyewitness Accounts and Critical Reviews. New York: Garland, 1997]
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