Images - The SS and Police System

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1.	Political Intimidation in Kassel's Opera Square: Only a Stubborn Mule Ends Up in a Concentration Camp (1933) In the spring of 1933, Himmler, then Munich's chief of police, ordered the opening of the first concentration camp [Konzentrationslager or KZ] in nearby ....
2.	Prisoners during Roll Call at the Oranienburg "Protective Custody Camp" Near Berlin (April 1, 1933) Most concentration camp inmates were political opponents, so-called enemies of the race, common criminals, homosexuals, or “asocials” whom the Nazi leadership would not tolerate in the new German....
3.	Employment of Prisoners at the Oranienburg "Protective Custody Camp" near Berlin (April 1933) Most concentration camp inmates were political opponents, so-called enemies of the race, common criminals, homosexuals, or “asocials” whom the Nazi leadership would not tolerate in the new German....
4.	Prisoners Doing Leveling Work at the Dachau Concentration Camp (May 24, 1933) In March 1933, Heinrich Himmler (then Munich's chief of police) opened the first concentration camp [Konzentrationslager or KZ] in nearby Dachau. The facility was supposed to provide "protective....
5.	An SS Member Signs the Oath of Loyalty to Hitler at a Mass Rally on the People’s Day of Mourning (February 25, 1934) Himmler regarded the SS as the "executive instrument of the Führer's will" and demanded of his men unconditional loyalty both to himself and to Hitler. The SS motto “My honor is loyalty” was drilled....
6.	Hermann Göring, Chief of the State Secret Police Office, names Heinrich Himmler Deputy Chief and "Inspector of the Prussian Political Police" (April 20, 1934) Under the leadership of Heinrich Himmler, the SS [Schutzstaffel] developed into the regime’s most effective instrument of power and terror within a period of only a few years. Himmler had....
7.	Heinrich Himmler Views Ancient Germanic Rune Markings in a Palatinate Quarry (1935) Heinrich Himmler was an advocate of racial myths, occultism, and esoteric ideas. He founded, for example, the German Ancestral Heritage Association [Deutsches Ahnenerbe e.V.], a group that....
8.	Busts of Hitler (right) and Göring (left) in the Main Hall of the Secret State Police Office at 8 Prinz-Albrecht-Straße (1935) The Secret Police Office (Gestapa) at 8 Prinz-Albrecht-Straße, Berlin, was the central headquarters of Prussia's political police from May 1933 on. After Himmler was appointed inspector and deputy....
9.	Heinrich Himmler Trains for the Reich Sport Badge in Silver (1936) Prospective SS recruits had to prove their "racial" purity and superiority through strenuous admissions and training procedures. Among other things, they had to demonstrate their exceptional physical....
10.	Hitler's Bodyguard Regiment [SS-Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler] during a Six-Day Deployment (1936) The SS-Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler (LSSAH or LAH) was Hitler’s bodyguard regiment; it was one of the many specialized groups and paramilitary organizations that developed within the SS during....
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