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The violence and destruction was carried out by members of the Sturmabteilung (SA), Schutzstaffel (SS), Gestapo, as well as German civilians. [1] [2] German and Nazi officials, along with standard civilians, watched as Jewish property in Leipzig turned to ash. The pogrom affected Jewish men, women, and children in Leipzig and other parts of ...
The elite corps remained as one man behind Hitler and even fought against their SA comrades. However, the SS remained part of the SA. Hitler was delighted with the SS's support and even claimed that the victory over Stennes was thanks to them. The SS remained loyal to its Führer and its slogan became Meine Ehre heißt Treue - My honor is loyalty.
During World War II, the Nazi German Einsatzkommandos were a sub-group of the Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing squads) – up to 3,000 men total – usually composed of 500–1,000 functionaries of the SS and Gestapo, whose mission was to exterminate Jews, Polish intellectuals, Romani, and communists in the captured territories often far behind the advancing German front.
The vast majority of Gestapo officers came from the police forces of the Weimar Republic; members of the SS, the SA, and the Nazi Party also joined the Gestapo but were less numerous. [104] By March 1937, the Gestapo employed an estimated 6,500 people in fifty-four regional offices across the Reich. [ 105 ]
In early January 1938, SS-Sturmbannführer (SS-Major) Hans Helm was appointed as a police attaché to the German diplomatic mission in Belgrade. Helm was a protege of the senior Gestapo official, Heinrich Müller , and his appointment to the position was encouraged by Jovanović and Aćimović, whom he had met when they visited Berlin.
The Einsatzgruppen were formed under the direction of SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich and operated by the Schutzstaffel (SS) before and during World War II. [4] The Einsatzgruppen had their origins in the ad hoc Einsatzkommando formed by Heydrich to secure government buildings and documents following the Anschluss in Austria in March 1938. [5]
The Einsatzgruppen were SS mobile death squads, operating behind the front line in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe.From 1941 to 1945, they murdered around 2 million people; 1.3 million Jews, up to 250,000 Romani, and around 500,000 so-called "partisans", people with disabilities, political commissars, Slavs, homosexuals and others.
The purge of the SA leadership and other enemies of the state began on 30 June in an action which became known as the Night of the Long Knives. Eicke, along with hand-chosen members of the SS and Gestapo, assisted Sepp Dietrich's Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler in the arrest and imprisonment of SA commanders, before they were shot.