Original subtitles

♪ ♪

Narrator: They were, they thought, the third reich's racial elite.

Men superior to others.

Ready to do anything for the triumph of national socialism.

Men hitler could count on to the death.

To apply their racial theories, they were prepared to eliminate their adversaries,

To decimate the jewish people,

To massacre civilian populations.

Over 70 years later, some of them are still living among us.

-One people, one reich, one führer! That was our motto.

Eberhard: I felt anti-semitic.

Herbert: We wanted a pure state.

No jews in the third reich!

Narrator: This is the story of ss fanaticism, bloodlust and terror...

(theme music plays)

Told from the inside.

Summer 1941.

Hitler invades the soviet union.

A war of a kind that has never been seen before, to conquer "living space" and exterminate

The "judeo-bolsheviks," as he calls them.

Alongside the regular army the wehrmacht, the führer has at his disposal more than

100,000 men who have sworn loyalty to the death: The ss.

This horrific scene was filmed behind the lines.

Jewish men were assassinated and buried in the sand.

Just one of the terrible consequences of the indoctrination of the 1930's.

(gunshot)

Hans friedrich was in the first ss infantry brigade.

A few months before his death in 2005, he confessed on film to his part in the

Murder of several thousand jews.

Hans: They were in such a state of shock

And so scared that we could do what we

Wanted with them.

Try to imagine, there's a ditch.

On one side, there are people.

And opposite, there are soldiers.

That was us.

And we shot.

The ones who were hit, fell in the ditch.

Interviewer: What were you thinking and feeling while you were firing?

Can you tell us?

-Nothing. I just thought...

Aim well.

So they'd be killed with a single shot.

That was my only thought.

Interviewer: That was your only thought?

You didn't have any feelings for the jewish civilians you were executing?

(sighs).

-No.

-And why not?

-Because my hatred of the jews was too strong.

-The hardened ss who took part so enthusiastically were mad.

They wanted to be "super-nazis." and this meant exterminating non-stop.

In terms of public opinion, when you talked to people about the jews,

Many would say: "the only thing we can do is exterminate them."

Narrator: The extermination: Not all took part but many agreed with it.

In order to kill jews, the nazis had been employing special units they used for

The invasion of poland.

The einsatzgruppen, detachments of killers made up of ss members,

Police and locally recruited auxiliaries.

Here is one of their leaders, ss general jeckeln.

He would be hanged by the allies in 1946 for the murder of more than 100,000 people.

His method of execution: Sardine packing.

He applied it here, in the babi yar ravine, where he executed more

Than 30, 000 jews.

They were laid on top of one another and shot,

Then buried in layers like sardines.

Men, women, children.

-A woman with a child fell to the ground and begged:

"shoot me! Shoot me!"

The ss soldier, a ukrainian, took the child's head,

Placed it next to the woman's head and shot through it.

And he said: "one bullet!"

Narrator: The paradox was that the ss didn't see themselves as criminals,

But as victims,

Soldiers defending themselves.

Oskar gröning is one of the last auschwitz ss men still alive.

He believed at the time that it was the jews who had brought the world to

Wage war against germany.

This twisted racism meant he believed that they deserved their fate.

-We were convinced, and this was our vision of the world, that we germans had been

Betrayed by the whole world and that there was a huge jewish conspiracy against us.

Children weren't our enemies at that point.

The enemy was the blood, which flowed in them.

But the children would grow up and become potentially dangerous jews.

That was why the children were included.

Narrator: Executioners, victims.

Switching the roles authorized every crime.

In the view of ss chief himmler, those who killed jews were carrying out

Indispensable work for the survival of the country.

He wanted to attend a massacre and see for himself hundreds of bodies piled up in a ditch.

He is said to have felt queasy seeing the blood spurt from bullet wounds.

But his demands for executions only increased.

Listen to his voice as he speaks to his generals.

Narrator: To wipe out 11 million european jews, according to the ss's own

Calculations himmler appointed a technocrat of crime,

Ss member reinhard heydrich.

"the man with the iron heart," as hitler called him.

The genocide, it's him.

A former officer expelled from the navy, he ran the rsha, the reich's central security

Office in charge of all state security.

One of his sons gave us his family films, notably these holiday movies.

Married to an aristocrat from northern germany.

He embodies the ideal ss man: A cold-blooded, athletic and efficient nazi.

With his secret police force, he had files on millions of germans, notably the jews,

Whom he divided into several racial groups: 100% jewish, mixed blood, etc.

It was a formidable system,

And the first step towards extermination.

♪ ♪

For his services, hitler made him head of bohemia-moravia.

You can see him here at home in prague castle, the former residence of the

Austro-hungarian emperor.

A king surrounded by his court.

When she learned of his nomination, his wife lina was overcome:

"I was submerged by a feeling of exaltation",

She wrote.

"I said to myself I was no longer a mere mortal but a princess,

And that I was living in a fairy tale."

Many people benefited from the war.

These waffen ss soldiers, for example, who crisscrossed

Europe from one conquest to the next.

For them, it was like a great adventure.

In France in particular.

When I had a chance, I went to buy butter from a farmer and, of course,

I paid for it.

That was my state of mind.

I didn't feel like the soldier of an occupying army.

I always had normal human relations with people in France.

Not military ones.

♪ ♪

Narrator: As the jewish people gradually disappeared, the ss profited and dreamed.

Himmler had promised them the brightest of futures.

The third reich will last 1,000 years, he tells them.

As greece fought rome, as rome conquered carthage and jerusalem,

So germany will crush the judeo-bolshevik ussr.

It is the last war, he tells them, so we may as well win it swiftly.

It will put an end to centuries of racial strife.

♪ ♪

These are arguments that hit home.

The ss wanted to believe that in conquered soviet land, himmler would give them vast

Agricultural holdings where thousands of slav workers

Would work for them, as slaves.

Like the teutonic knights of old, the new lords would defend german civilization

Against the barbarians.

While history has proven himmler to be a murderous monster,

Some of his ss followers still see him as their hero.

Egon: The ideology was: Out with the jews! Get out!

We can see the state of mind of himmler, the biggest bastard of all time.

-Himmler was a decent man, a man of honest character.

Himmler wanted the best for the german people.

Narrator: And apparently not only for the german people.

From 1940, with the aim of founding a german empire, he opened the doors of the ss to

The inhabitants of several defeated countries.

The danes, the norwegians, the dutch: They were all germanic, said himmler.

As the war continued, the ss opened up also to the french-speaking belgium's,

The french themselves and the italians, latin peoples,

To whom himmler gave the hope of entering into the nazi elite.

-Joining the waffen ss was a promotion for us.

I was in germany.

I'd heard that the germans were underfed, but this was false.

And badly dressed, not true.

Everything I saw in germany was much better.

For me, it was an excellent model.

Costamagna: The national socialist party had done a lot of good in germany for the

Workers by giving them jobs, getting them

Involved, building them houses and gardens, etc.

We thought it was a model, yes.

Exactly.

My dream was to see germany win the war.

For me germany was the supreme nation in europe.

When I joined the waffen-ss, I considered myself to be one of them.

Narrator: An illusion.

None of these non-germanic, latin or here muslim slav peoples would ever actually

Belong to the black order.

Attracted by the wages and the family allowances,

They wore the uniform but were cannon fodder.

"for every foreigner who dies," said the head of recruitment,

"no german mother cries."

The führer's residence in bavaria.

Here are the architects of the final solution:

Himmler the cynic in the company of reinhard heydrich,

His dark shadow.

Confidence on their faces.

In 1942, the nazis controlled a large part of europe and were putting into practice

Their racial theories.

They believed they would soon defeat the ussr.

They knew, however, that their death machine would not be sufficient to

Complete the extermination.

And that some of their men were disgusted by the tasks they were

Being asked to perform.

Narrator: In 1942, there were still some ten million european jews left to kill,

According to heydrich's calculations.

After several experiments, the ss leaders believed they'd found the solution.

How to kill far more people while sparing their troops.

Death camps.

This amateur footage shot by ss guards shows the inside of the posen camp,

One of the first in occupied poland.

Interning undesirables as in the 1930s was no longer enough,

They were to be killed.

In the greatest secrecy, the ss tested toxic gas.

In a specially built gas chamber hidden behind these outer walls,

They had already eliminated 400 mentally ill prisoners by 1939.

Gassing was a gentler form of death, they said.

Particularly for the killers.

And so the ss now used this technique to re-launch their killing machine,

Targeting against all european jews.

-Where the nazis were very smart was with the extermination in the

Concentration camps.

They managed to keep it all perfectly secret.

There were a lot of people to exterminate.

Narrator: Most would be sent to the slaughterhouse.

Notably to auschwitz.

These photos, taken by an ss guard,

Show the arrival of prisoners and their sorting by ss doctors.

On one side are the young and healthy who will work.

On the other, those who will be killed in the coming hours.

Once they were designated, the ss guards avoided them.

They merely supervised the killing process, dropping toxic gas canisters into the

Gas chamber via a hatch.

Then other prisoners removed and burnt the bodies in ovens.

The only ones willing to speak about auschwitz are members of the waffen ss,

Who weren't even there.

Yet, despite the indisputable facts of history, astonishingly,

They hold on to the myth that the holocaust never happened.

-Everything that's been said about the massacres, I've heard it all.

But I didn't believe it all.

And even today, I don't believe it all.

Herbert: What happened to the dead from auschwitz?

Where are they?

Kaisergruber: If hitler had really wanted to annihilate the jewish people,

Don't you think he would have succeeded?

It wouldn't have been hard for him.

-For me, the word auschwitz doesn't exist.

I just don't recognize it.

Whether there were mass graves or not, or they were killed with this product or that,

Or gassed or shot, the subject's of no interest to me at all.

Narrator: Holocaust denial is shocking and offensive to our ears,

And it is against the law in some countries.

The terrible truth that these men refuse to accept is that the nazis,

With the ss at the helm, committed genocide against the jewish people and

Others they condemned as undesirable,

Resulting in the loss of millions of lives.

A fact of history that cannot be negated.

Herta bothe could not deny the existence of the camps.

She worked in several before moving to bergen-belsen.

Herta: My first impression wasn't bad.

Right away, a ss sergeant said: "oh, here's my little blondie!"

I thought that was nice for a young girl.

I got on well with the ss men.

They wanted to be important, and they did what they wanted with the prisoners.

There was one guard, kopp, she was a madwoman.

Her fiancé was adolf hitler's driver; she thought she had every right.

Narrator: Most of the ss guards in the camps experienced a

Feeling of power.

Many were delighted to be appointed there.

The camps were a safe haven, the staff were not risking their lives and himmler had

Made sure they'd be comfortable.

Like here, at the reischof camp, 120 miles from auschwitz.

The auschwitz camp itself was much sought-after.

It was here, to this 470-acre complex, that oskar gröning was sent

As an accountant in 1942.

Oskar: The main camp at auschwitz was like a small town,

With its gossip and rumors.

There was a grocer's where you could buy marrowbone to make a soup.

A canteen, a cinema.

There was a theatre, where they regularly put shows on.

A sports club, where I was a member.

It was joyful and lively, like in a small town.

Narrator: They even had a rural leisure resort, 20 miles from the camp.

-Alcohol was very important.

They gave us a ration every day and sometimes we had serious drinking parties.

Narrator: Oskar gröning was, he claims, disgusted by the massacres and asked for a

Transfer to the front two years after his arrival.

Although he too has retained some fond memories of his times at the camp.

-The particular situation of auschwitz enabled us to forge friendships that I still

Remember with pleasure today.

Narrator: The men and women of the ss, who behaved like monsters,

Were human beings.

And there lies the problem.

Narrator: July 20th 1944.

The beginning of the end.

This time, their idol was almost eliminated.

At a senior staff meeting, hitler's bunker was blown apart by a bomb.

A wehrmacht officer from germany's old elite was behind the attack.

Hitler was only slightly wounded, but everyone was deeply affected:

The third reich, supposed to last 1000 years, was under threat.

The normandy landings are now a month old.

In the east, in the west, everywhere the germans are retreating.

To try to shore up their crumbling front-lines, hitler scales up the deployment of

The waffen-ss: The "frontline firemen, "as they call them.

The ss know they have everything to lose.

Since the 1930s, they've staked everything on hitler.

If he falls, they fall with him.

Ekkehard: That was what the war was about, total war, where the human being

Has no importance.

None.

The only question was: How to win the war?

That was the question.

Narrator: "better kill one thousand russians too many than one too few,"

Their leaders on the eastern front told them.

Confronted with a similar insurrection in France, they applied the same terror.

To dissuade the population from supporting the resistance.

At oradour, the das reich division assassinated 642 people.

Ss soldier guhr was 6 miles away at the time, he says.

-Concerning the village of oradour, I didn't know about it.

When you're a partisan, you must know that it's best not to go up against

Combat troops who are used to responding

Immediately with every weapon available.

-I saw civilians hanging from trees and lampposts.

They said: You see what we do.

If you do anything against us, then we'll hang you.

We'll kill you!

Narrator: Certain waffen-ss soldiers from the das reich division

Were forcibly enrolled.

Nothing like the others who were volunteers.

From the alsace border region, they were born french but the nazis saw them as german.

They were called the "malgré nous," "against our will".

In 1944, as the army withdrew,

They discovered from the inside the pitiless methods of the black order.

-All those who weren't with them were against them.

If you caught traitors, resistance fighters, civilians,

Then you could shoot them and that was that!

Except for the blacks.

The blacks weren't worth a bullet.

You put their heads under your arm and bust their skulls with a shovel.

That's what they told us.

-You could feel the fanaticism in their every move.

They said the whole world was against them but they would win anyway.

-Until now everything had gone fine, they thought it would continue and that hitler would

Do whatever was necessary.

They thought; for now we're retreating, but the time will come when we'll stop them and

We'll be able to advance again.

Narrator: Born and bred on nazism, these ss men couldn't imagine their fuhrer's demise.

Or their own.

Their leaders warned them: German civilization will disappear if the jews and

The communists prevail.

To replace heydrich, executed in prague by the czech resistance,

Himmler appointed another ss officer, kaltenbrunner.

And the reign of terror continued unabated.

For some time now, reality had no longer concerned them.

The reality is what allied troops found in 1945 when they liberated the camps and

Discovered the massacre committed by the ss.

Six million jewish victims.

Hundreds of thousands of political prisoners assassinated.

Homosexuals, priests, gypsies, disabled people.

Only some of the 40,000 ss guards were arrested and identified.

These men who thought they were superior to others looked very ordinary.

Some were disguised as prisoners, in striped uniforms,

In an attempt to pass unnoticed.

Most of them were identified by the blood group tattoo under their arms,

Stamped when they first joined the ss.

A mark they could never wash off, even if they cut and re-stitched their skin.

Among them were 3000 female camp guards.

Including herta bothe.

For two days, the allies made them bury their victims.

Interviewed over 50 years after the events, herta bothe had not one word to

Say about the dead prisoners in the camps.

She believes she was the victim.

-To go to the toilet, we had to do it on the ground, and wash our hands with urine.

It's true, it's really true!

The concentration camp ruined my life.

I was just a simple guard.

I was there, and I did what I was asked to do.

Interveiwer: Do you feel guilty?

-No. Me personally, no.

I knew I could do nothing for them.

I couldn't help them; otherwise I'd have been locked up.

Narrator: They had been the new lords, they had become pariahs.

Until the bitter end, most of them continued to fight on the front,

Or what was left of it.

Living the legend, remaining pure.

-I remember everyone had to form a semi-circle.

And our leader soberly told us what he'd just heard on the radio:

"hitler has fallen in berlin.

As a result, you are no longer bound by the oath you swore to hitler,

But you are still beholden to the german people." that was it.

Then we dispersed without a word.

Narrator: May 8th 1945.

Germany surrenders.

The ss were moved into prisoner-of-war camps where they would spend months,

Even years.

Disguised as a police sergeant, their leader, himmler, hid among the crowd.

After several weeks of wandering, he was arrested by the allies and committed

Suicide with a cyanide capsule.

-I found myself in the pow camp with other ss members.

They were still just as fanatical at that point.

Don't believe they were saying, "what idiots we've been!"

But we germans were so stupid to have compared the jews to rats.

We were so dumb.

Narrator: Some of them were sentenced to death by the allied courts.

Like these waffen-ss soldiers, accused of executing american prisoners in 1944.

Convinced they were right, they refuse to listen to their sentences to the end.

Narrator: "the justice of conquerors," they say.

Because the atrocities committed by the allies, the bombings of japanese and

German cities, went unpunished.

-Why did they bomb dresden?

Why nagasaki?

Why yokohama?

Why were the poles massacred by the russians?

Why haven't those people been tried?

Nobody talks about that.

Germany certainly committed crimes, for sure.

But they've all been punished.

Narrator: That the germans were all punished is a myth maintained by the veterans.

Apart from a few leaders, most of the ss slipped through the net.

As if only one man should really pay the price.

-Hitler betrayed me.

He pushed us into misery when he'd promised us joy.

He perpetrated such crimes that I can only see it as treason.

Narrator: A good ss member must be able to wipe out even his close family

If they rebel against adolf hitler's ideas.

So said their generals.

-During all those years I experienced some very difficult times.

I don't regret them for one moment.

-No, I have no regrets, no way.

And I don't doubt for a moment that if I had to do it again,

I'd do exactly the same thing.

I have no reason to give up my ideas.

And it's not the moment to change my mind.

Narrator: Germany: One of the most creative nations in history.

"I'm ashamed to be a german", wrote one munich citizen on may 28th 1945 on the

Ruins of the feldherrnhalle.

The place where the ss had once sworn their allegiance.

But how to get out of the cult?

Eberhard heder, a captain in the wiking division, abandoned his racist convictions and

Pursued a career in the army of the federal republic of germany.

Ekkehard guhr, a member of the ss's das reich division who dreamed of chivalry

Became a pastor.

Egon kuhn became a trade unionist, speaking tirelessly of the brainwashing he had

Received in his youth.

But they were exceptions.

Many of them would remain incorrigible and nostalgic, often joining waffen ss

Veterans' associations, which still exist today.

Like manfred diener.

Or kurt barkhausen, whose speeches are still used by extremist networks.

Herbert von mildenburg set up businesses in south america, while maintaining relations

With several notorious revisionists.

It wasn't until 2015 that the former auschwitz accountant,

Ss sergeant gröning was tried by the german courts.

He was sentenced to four years in prison for complicity in the murder of

300,000 jews. Pending appeal.

Captioned by cotter captioning services.