Racist, violent, and murderous, these were the members of the Schutzstaffel. The SS has remained in history as one of the most sinister and heartless armed forces of all humanity. These men formed a Nazi paramilitary organization during World War II. Initially formed as Hitler’s personal bodyguard, is it possible that the same elite force that was responsible for massacring millions of Allied soldiers and millions of Jews in concentration camps was in charge of security at the Nuremberg trials? You will find the

answer to this question in this video. Get ready to travel to the courtroom where the fearsome SS murderers and criminals unexpectedly guarded the Nuremberg trials. Welcome, once again, to Military History. In the dark days following the end of the Second World War, when the echo of cannons still echoed in every corner of Europe, humanity faced an unprecedented moral crossroads.

The setting was Nuremberg, a city that had witnessed the grandiose Nazi parades of the Third Reich, but would become the epicenter of an unwavering quest for justice. The Nuremberg trials, carried out mainly between 1945 and 1946, marked a crucial chapter in history, not only because of the magnitude of the crimes tried, but because of the innovative legal approach that was adopted.

 For the first time, military and political leaders of Germany, led by Adolf Hitler, sat in the dock facing an international tribunal that would lay the foundations for the conviction of crimes against humanity. What was unprecedented was that those who were in charge of security during the trials were precisely members of the force that had committed the most atrocious crimes.

It all began within the majesty of the courtroom in Nuremberg, where a balancing act took place between justice and the need to hold inhumane war criminals accountable. Among the Nazis judged most prominent were Hermann Göring, one of the key architects of the Third Reich regime, and Rudolf Hess, the Führer’s lieutenant.

Other notorious leaders, such as Joachim von Ribbentrop and Julius Streicher, were also among the accused, each representing key cogs in the machinery of National Socialist barbarism. The testimonies echoed in the room, from the horrors of concentration camps to the devastation of entire cities. Each of the statements revealed the colossal scale of the crimes perpetrated.

 Göring, with his characteristic arrogance, attempted to justify his actions, but his words crumbled in the face of the overwhelming amount of evidence of his atrocities committed. In the same way, Rudolf Hess tried to disassociate himself from responsibility for the events, blaming mainly the Führer, in whom he placed all the Reich’s directives.

Amid the palpable tension between the desire for justice and the need for an impartial process, the statements of the accused added elements of drama. Göring, in a moment of despair, expressed, “I lost the war, but I still retain my honor.” This statement captured the sentiment felt by the Nazi leaders.

 Those who once believed themselves invincible and unpunished were now facing the consequences of their actions in front of an international court. The course of this trial went through legal and moral challenges. The protagonists of this legal feat were the prosecutors and defenders in court. These men confronted the Nazis by presenting unpublished documentary evidence to the world.

The horrors that occurred under the totalitarian German regime came to light and shocked the members of the court. The famous opening speech of Robert H. Jackson, the chief prosecutor of the United States, resonated as a call to humanity to confront Nazi barbarity with courage and determination. Among the most notable passages, the one that condemns the actions of the Nazis stands out.

The crimes that have been perpetrated by these men are so atrocious that civilization cannot tolerate their continued existence. After years of atrocities perpetrated by the Nazi regime, the world anxiously awaited the sentences that would fall on the architects of evil. Hermann Göring was one of the first to face the verdict.

The verdict of the sentence echoed in the room as the commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe, in a stripped uniform and expressionless face, received his sentence. Guilty of war crimes and crimes against peace. The same ambition that had elevated him to unimaginable heights now condemned him to the gallows.

 Cowardly, he did not dare to face his sentence and committed suicide by ingesting a cyanide capsule the night before he was to be hanged. Hess, the Führer’s second-in-command, was unable to avoid his condemnation despite attempting to betray his leader and wanting to collaborate with the allies. The sentence was overwhelming. Life imprisonment for carrying out Hitler’s final solution.

In case you don’t know it, this is the name of the sinister plan designed by the Führer and those close to him for the systematic extermination of the Jews of Europe. Im Sommer 1941 wurde ich persönlichen Befehlsempfang zum Reichsführer SS Himmler nach Berlin befohlen. Dieser For its part, the sentence against Joachim von Ribbentrop, the skilled Nazi diplomat, revealed that his role in the signing of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact was not only diplomatic, but also generated a series of deaths.

The treaty consisted of a non-aggression agreement between the USSR and Germany, which the Nazis ended up betraying. For that reason, he was sentenced to hanging. His exceptional manipulation skills, which positioned him as a fundamental man of the Reich, could not alter the inexorable course of justice. Julius Streicher, the infamous anti-Semitic propagandist, faced the reading of his sentence with a defiant countenance.

His poisonous rhetoric had turned him into a moral architect of the murderous barbarity of National Socialism, making him one of those fundamentally responsible for Nazi racism. The judges understood that words can be weapons as lethal as gas chambers, so they sentenced him to death by hanging. Another of the main architects of the Final Solution, Heinrich Himmler, did not face the court due to his suicide.

But the ramifications of his crimes were present in each sentence. The condemnation of his subordinates, such as Ernst Kaltenbrunner, head of the Gestapo, underlined the brutality of his actions and forever buried his family and memory. Kaltenbrunner faced hanging for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

 These sentences marked the end of a dark era and the beginning of a world that steadfastly refused to forget what had happened. The announcement of the Nuremberg sentences not only echoed in the courtrooms, but reverberated in the collective conscience of humanity. The verdict punished individuals and established a precedent for international justice.

In connection with the administration of the concentration camps, the SS embarked on series of experiments on human beings, which were performed on prisoners of war or concentration camp inmates. These experiments included freezing to death and killing by poison bullets. Now, there is an interesting fact that may even be paradoxical.

 Many of the guards who escorted these Nazi leaders to their cells, who brought them their last meal, and who in some cases even participated in their execution, were former members of the fearsome SS. Just as you listen, the same soldiers who had carried out terrible atrocities under the orders of the Nazis, were now the ones in charge of keeping them behind bars or taking charge of pulling the lever so that they would die by hanging.

Let’s go on to tell the story of these disloyal troops. The SS, known for its involvement in inhumane acts such as racial and religious persecution and systematic genocide, found itself fulfilling an unusual but necessary role. This unexpected twist raises questions about the justice process and the difficult balance between punishment and redemption faced by these soldiers.

It is essential to remember that in the post-World War II scenario, differentiating who had voluntarily been a fanatical soldier of Nazism and who had been forced to go unnoticed to survive was an almost impossible task. Although the Allied War Crimes Tribunal banned the Schutzstaffel as an organization, it excluded from its trial those who, far from joining voluntarily, were foreign recruits forced to serve as soldiers.

Two specific groups, the Waffen SS troops of Latvia and Estonia, were surprisingly favored by a system that considered them victims rather than perpetrators. In an intriguing postwar chapter, the court chose to overlook the participation of those who did not embrace SS membership by choice, but were recruited under complex circumstances.

An example of this were the militias formed during the German occupations. The Soviet Union, witness to the actions of these units on the Eastern Front, did not hesitate to express its firm opposition. For them, the men who joined the SS were as much war criminals as the Germans, regardless of their circumstances, and the protection granted was seen as an affront to justice.

The paradox lies in the differentiated interpretation of foreign recruits and their motivations for joining the SS. While some argue that they were forced to serve in a foreign military machine, others insisted that their collaboration did not exempt them from their bloodthirsty responsibilities. The Soviet Union raised its voice, arguing against the protection given to Latvian and Estonian Waffen SS recruits.

However, the firmness of the Soviet positions was overshadowed by a court vote, which ruled out any dissent. With the magistrates’ decision, captured SS recruits in the Baltics found themselves unexpectedly released from prisoner of war camps. However, this privilege created a dilemma of monumental proportions.

Their home countries were now under Soviet occupation, and returning meant facing the possibility of being arrested as war criminals. In this geopolitical labyrinth, uncertainty loomed over the question of when the Soviet occupation would come to an end. That was the hope that the former soldiers had. At the same time, another significant obstacle emerged for these individuals.

Despite having identity documents issued by Allied Forces, Latvians and Estonians were also not well received in Western nations, which closed their doors to them due to their passage through the SS. It all seemed like a great irony. The truth was that they had become free men, but without a nation to migrate to, nor a homeland to receive them.

The following footage shows the soldiers’ faces with clear traces of Baltic ancestry. Their features reflect the uneasiness of their lives without direction or destiny. In the desolate post-war scenario, these men found themselves trapped in a limbo with no way out. With their homes under the shadow of Soviet occupation, the idea of returning became increasingly dangerous.

So, without a clear destination, they made temporary homes in makeshift camps throughout Germany and other Allied nations, escaping tight Soviet control. In the midst of this uncertainty, some of these men decided to take a step forward and explored new job opportunities in search of a better life. Determined, they contacted Allied Headquarters in search of work.

It was then that a senior commander of the Western forces, in charge of assisting the displaced, observed this peculiar situation and decided to bring it to the chain of command. The decision that followed marked an unexpected turn in the destinies of these Latvians and Estonians. Although it is not known exactly who thought of it, it was determined that given the release of so many Allied soldiers returning home.

 These trained troops, supposedly devoid of Nazi ideology, would be used to replace them. The need for security personnel was not just limited to Nuremberg. The conclusion of the conflicts in Europe, and months later in Japan, generated a demand for guards in various installations under the control of the Allied powers. Thus, these men found only one way to redeem themselves, to become responsible for Western security in a world that was still recovering from the scars of war.

Their lives, marked by adversity, took an unexpected direction that led them to play a crucial role in the reconstruction and security of a new post-war chapter. In the same way, the demand for security forces at the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal gave way to the former SS being ordered into troops and assigned to guard and security positions during the judicial process.

These men, forced recruits to one of the most infamous divisions of the Nazi army, found themselves protecting the epicenter of international justice. The loyalty and dedication with which they carried out their duties did not go unnoticed, and their actions were praised in the halls of Nuremberg. The majority of Nazi leaders did not want to be touched by these soldiers, whom they considered traitors to the cause and deserved nothing more than a death sentence.

 Let’s see some archive material where you can see these Estonian and Latvian militiamen in action, and at the service of the German troops. However, when the 1950s arrived and the Allied powers no longer required their services, these men once again found themselves in a conflictive situation. Unable to return to their homes, the soldiers wandered without a homeland until they were finally allowed legal immigration.

 The benefit included being welcomed by any Allied country they decided to move to, as well as being pardoned for war crimes they had committed. Some of these individuals chose to seek new horizons in English-speaking lands such as the United States, Great Britain, and Australia, while others chose to stay in Germany, a territory they had occupied as guests since they began serving the SS and later the Allies.

Although this seemed to be the happy ending for these soldiers, the shadows of the past emerged with the force of righteous ghosts. Investigations into their activities and responsibilities as Waffen SS recruits, carried out by authorities in their respective homelands, continued long after their duties with the Allied powers concluded.

Against the murky background of history, the truth about the actions of some Estonian soldiers emerged with stark revelations. The conclusion noted that many of these soldiers were directly involved in war crimes in the Klooga concentration camp, anchored in their own land, Estonia. According to researchers and specialists, the division’s Estonian militias executed at least 2,000 prisoners from German camps in the Baltic country.

 In 2006, the Estonian International Commission for the Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity reviewed the evidence from the Soviet and German trials, seeking truth and subsequent justice. The organization’s conclusion was forceful. The 287th Police Battalion actively participated in these atrocious acts, causing them to be considered as war criminals as the Nazis.

According to records, approximately 70 recruits were involved in protecting the perimeters of the Klooga camp as part of the Schutzstaffel troops. The evidence indicated that the Estonians openly collaborated in the execution of the prisoners, which tarnished the reputation of the Baltic countries’ militias, causing, for example, monuments in their honor to be removed by government authorities.

Although the shadow of the crimes committed by Nazism can never be completely faded, the Nuremberg trials represented a crucial step towards accountability and building a world where justice prevailed over impunity. In the same way, the Baltic nations made revisionism of those people who voluntarily participated in the ranks of the SS, which generated social condemnation against those who had betrayed their homeland by helping the forces of the Reich.

The story of these Waffen SS recruits became not only a testament to the complexities of the post-war period, but also a tale of individuals caught in the web of political decisions and unforeseen consequences. This revealing episode illustrates the moral difficulty of trials and urges us to reflect on the nature of justice and the opportunity for redemption, even for those whose hands are stained with the most heinous crimes.

In this scenario of unexpected twists, the Latvian and Estonian SS became accidental protagonists of a story that challenged conventional definitions of guilt and justice. The story of the first mass shooting of the Holocaust is truly repulsive. The troops of the Third Reich, advancing towards the heart of the USSR in the fall of 1941, had taken Kiev on September 19th.

Just 10 days later, the mobile death squads, Einsatzgruppen C, supported by the SS and local collaborators, carried out the Babi Yar massacre on the outskirts of Kyiv. This atrocity was the largest crime of the Third Reich and its Ukrainian partners at that time with an estimated but unconfirmed number of over 100,000 victims executed to annihilate the entire Jewish population of the capital of Ukraine within 48 hours.

 That massacre marked a qualitative leap in the Holocaust. Today, we will tell you everything about the Babi Yar massacre and hear the chilling testimonies of those responsible during the subsequent trials in Kyiv. This is Military History. Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, had been a center of anti-Semitism in Europe since ancient times.

 In the 19th century, Ukrainian Jews were victims of looting and lynching during the era of Tsarist Russia and were also targeted by the White Army’s anger during the Russian Civil War between 1919 and 1923. With the founding of the Soviet Union and Stalin coming to power, things did not improve as Communist propaganda blamed them for the famine caused by the Holodomor between 1932 and 1934, resulting in millions of deaths.

The Soviet narrative also accused them of conspiring with the Third Reich when the Germans invaded the USSR in 1941. As absurd as it sounds, since they were supposedly the cause of the German invasion. On September 19th, 1941, German forces entered the city of Kyiv. Like much of the Ukrainian territory occupied by the Germans, the city was incorporated into the Reichskommissariat Ukraine, established on September 1st.

When the Wehrmacht marched into Kiev on September 26th, 1941, after a bloody battle against the Red Army, the anti-Semitic atmosphere was already extremely heated. First, due to previous Marxist propaganda, and second, because of the thousands of Ukrainian nationalists who accused the Jews of being accomplices of Russian communism, and consequently, guilty of all the evils Ukraine had suffered at the hands of Stalin.

If this were not enough, the German invaders were even more racist than the local population, who welcomed them by throwing flowers and applauding, creating a cocktail of hatred that would turn into tragedy. From the moment the German army took control of Kiev, numerous Ukrainian nationalists attacked or jeered at the city’s Jews, forcing them to undergo public humiliations, demonstrating that the threat was not only German.

However, during the first week of the Nazi occupation in Kiev, something happened that would lead to tragedy. Two large and unexpected explosions destroyed the German headquarters in the area surrounding the main street in the city center. A significant number of German soldiers and officers died as a result of the explosions.

 Although these were caused by mines left by the Soviets in their retreat, the Germans blamed the Jews and used that sabotage as a pretext to implement a plan to annihilate the remaining Jewish community in Kiev. Babi Yar, or Grandmother’s Ravine, was the location chosen by the Allgemeine SS for the mass extermination. As a secluded and discreet place on the outskirts of the capital, right next to a psychiatric hospital and a prison, it was perfect for killing thousands of people and making their bodies disappear into the depths of those wide, natural

gorges. The most sinister part is that the victims had to dig their own graves. The Einsatzgruppe C, led by General Otto Rasch, was in charge of this vile operation with its four detachments dividing the tasks. Sonderkommando 4A and 4B would gather the urban Jewish population of Kiev to take them to the ravines, while Einsatzkommando 5 and 6 would carry out the shootings through successive volleys.

 Alongside these German forces, the Ukrainian police of Kiev and the local militia of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists would also participate in the massacre performing auxiliary, escort, and security tasks. Let’s hear how one of the officers explained the procedure. Surprisingly, 24 hours before the start of the Babi Yar massacre on September 27th, 1941, the SS sought to erase evidence of what was about to happen in the ravines.

A small detachment stormed and evacuated the nearby psychiatric hospital killing the 752 patients and mentally ill who could have witnessed what was going to happen two days later. Meanwhile, on the following day, it was announced through a series of posters hung throughout the city of Kiev with the message, “All Jews residing in Kiev and its surroundings must present themselves tomorrow, Monday, at 8:00 in the morning at the corner of Melnykovska and Dokterivska streets.

 They must carry their documents, money, valuables, and also warm clothing. Any Jew who does not comply with these instructions and is found elsewhere will be shot. Any civilian who enters the properties evacuated by the Jews and steals their belongings will be shot. The reactions were horrifying as narrated in the following testimony.

At 8:00 a.m. on Monday, September 29th, 1941, the Day of Atonement, thousands of Jews gathered in the center of Kiev, although many had been there for several hours before intending to get a better position. As innocently as it was terrifying, most of the summoned Jews mistakenly thought it was a deportation to another city’s ghetto.

 It was clear that what was coming was going to be infinitely worse. However, both the Ukrainian police and armed nationalist militias made them walk to the outskirts of the capital near the municipal cemetery. Once there, German soldiers from Einsatzgruppe C took charge of the Jews and ordered them to leave their suitcases and belongings by the fence of the area.

 At that point, many began to be alarmed by distant machine gunshots and noticed a German Air Force plane circling overhead like a cruel crow watching them. Unfortunately, there was no turning back because a checkpoint was set up at the exit, preventing them from leaving the area. They were ordered to form groups and walk along a path guarded by Ukrainian auxiliaries armed with clubs who would beat them if they did not advance.

Not only that, but they also insulted and spat on them. This was how the journey passed for 10 minutes. First through a dried-up grove and then over a plane of tall grass until the prisoners finally reached the ravine to discover their terrible fate. After contemplating that steep and rocky slope of 30 m in height, they discovered with horror that was crowded with the bodies of their neighbors and relatives.

It was all death and pain, while for the soldiers, it was just routine work. Next, the victims were forced to undress with many pleading or embracing each other to say their goodbyes before German soldiers fired a volley that made their lifeless bodies fall rolling onto the rest of the murdered. Officers approached to finish off the wounded, but later, to save ammunition, they began to throw dirt on them between layers of corpses so that the dying would ultimately suffocate amidst the dead in the soil.

In just 48 hours, on September 29th and 30th, 1941, Nazi forces alongside local collaborators killed about 33,700 Jews. This was how the Babi Yar massacre entered history in a sinister way, being one of the first steps towards Hitler’s final solution. In this massacre, neither women nor children nor the elderly were spared, as recounted by one of the cruel executioners.

This massacre would not be the only one committed at Babi Yar. When political relations between the Third Reich and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists broke down in late 1941, it led to a brief war between them. In that conflict, the Germans captured 621 fighters from their former Ukrainian allies, who were shot in the infamous ravine.

 Chillingly, that fell pit became a shared grave for victims and executioners. However, this event was only an exception because by 1942, German and Ukrainian soldiers agreed to peace and normalized their alliance to destroy Jews and opponents. Massive killings took place in the Babi Yar ravine for 2 years, starting from the September 1941 massacre.

 In this location, Germans stationed in Kiev systematically executed tens of thousands of people, both Jewish and non-Jewish. Other groups of people killed at Babi Yar included Roma, or Gypsies, Soviet prisoners of war, and civilians whom the SS or Einsatzgruppen wanted to eliminate. It is estimated that the victims at this site of horror were around 100,000 people, but some specialists and historians say the figure could be double.

The true number is impossible to know with certainty because many corpses were cremated, and the Nazis eliminated evidence and exhumed bodies to cover their atrocities. As the Red Army approached Kiev in August 1943, the Germans initiated a cover-up operation to conceal what had been happening at Babi Yar. To achieve this, they used the labor of inmates held at the Syrets concentration camp, established in May 1942, to hold Soviet prisoners of war and Jews deemed useful.

To cover up the mass shootings, the Germans ordered 321 Syrets prisoners to dig mass graves, exhume partially decomposed bodies of victims, burn them, and then scatter their ashes in the same location. The process was torturous and inhumane, and most tragically, at the end of the work, the reward was to be executed and discarded alongside the victims in that accursed ravine.

Killings there continued until the fall of 1943, just a few days before the Soviets regained control of Kiev on November 6th. The Nazis and their Ukrainian collaborators did an efficient job trying to hide what had happened, but a few survivors managed to escape and go into hiding. Their survival was crucial as they could testify to these crimes before Soviet and American authorities to ensure these crimes did not go unpunished.

After the war, several SS commanders who had planned and supervised the massacre were arrested and tried. Paul Blobel, the overall commander of the SS unit responsible for the massacre, was sentenced to death in the subsequent Nuremberg trials against the Einsatzgruppen and was hanged on June 7th, 1951 in Landsberg prison.

Otto Rasch was also charged in the Einsatzgruppen trial, but his case was suspended for health reasons and he died in prison in 1948. Erich Koch, who had been Reichskommissar of Ukraine at that time, was tried and sentenced to death by a Polish court for his atrocities in occupied Poland, but was never tried for his crimes in Ukraine.

 His death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment and he died in prison in 1986. Tana Pronicheva, a Jewish survivor of the September massacre, testified in a Soviet court against the Ukrainian officers who had executed the massacre. In one of her written testimonies after the war, Pronicheva described what she saw at Babi Yar. Every time I saw a new group of men and women, old and young, being forced to undress, they were all taken to an open pit where they were shot with machine guns.

Then, another group was brought. I witnessed this horror with my own eyes. Although I wasn’t standing near the pit, the terrible screams of people in a state of panic and the soft voices of children shouting, “Mother, mother.” reached me. If her writing seemed chilling, even more terrible is hearing how she survived in the first person.

Must be really at the same as China is very started to check out the trailer Yeah, that could have a lot of love that I have. Shall I go out again? No, I got lots of love. Later, Pronicheva was buried alive, but managed to surface and escape in the darkness while the Nazis were busy shooting a new group of Jews.

In January 1946, thanks to these trials and testimonies like Pronicheva’s, 15 former members of the German police were tried in Kiev for the crimes committed at Babi Yar. 12 of them were sentenced to death, and the other three received harsh prison sentences. The ones sentenced to death were publicly hanged in Kiev city square on January 29th, 1946.

Ukrainians decided to leave archival material of the moment, ensuring it remained recorded in the nation’s memory. Despite these hangings, justice was not complete as the vast majority of the actual perpetrators, young Nazis and racist Ukrainians, were never tried for their role in the massacre. This brings us to the end of this

terrible story. Share your opinions in the comments below. We appreciate you reaching this point and look forward to the next installments of military history.