Waffen

No military organisation has fought as well against such overwhelming odds as the Waffen-SS, but few have earned such an infamous reputation in the process. Hitler’s elite proved itself in some of the most savage actions of World War II: the battle of Kharkov, the defence of the Demyansk Pocket and the Normandy landings.

Barbarossa, Leningrad, Kursk, Kharkov – the Eastern Front was the scene of the most decisive campaign of World War II and Hitler’s elite soldiers, the Waffen-SS, fought in the East from the beginning of the Russian campaign in 1941 to the fall of Berlin in 1945.

Strafvollzugslager der SS- und Polizei: Himmler's Wartime Institutions for the Detention of Waffen-SS and Polizei Criminals is a book that Heinrich Himmler would not have wished written. Preferring that this corner of the SS history remained forever in the shadows, the existence of the SS penal system had the potential to besmirch his entire organisation.