The Horrifying Treatment of Hitler’s SS Troops

In the 1930s, something very terrible began to happen in Germany. A man named Adolf Hitler became the leader of the country. He was the head of a political group called the Nazis. Hitler and the Nazis believed in hateful ideas, especially against Jewish people. They wrongly blamed the Jews for Germany’s problems, such as losing World War I and economic troubles.

One of the scariest parts of Hitler’s group was the SS, which stood for “Schutzstaffel.” The SS started out as a group meant to protect Nazi leaders, but it quickly became a violent and powerful force. These troops were completely loyal to Hitler and followed his cruel orders.

The SS treated Jews very badly. In the early 1930s, they began by hurting Jewish businesses, burning books by Jewish authors, and spreading lies. In 1935, the Nazis passed the Nuremberg Laws, which took away many rights from Jewish people. Jews were no longer considered German citizens, and they were not allowed to marry or even be friends with non-Jewish Germans.

SS troops helped enforce these laws and used fear to control Jewish people. They beat people in the streets, arrested Jews without reason, and sent them to places called concentration camps. These were not normal prisons — they were horrible places where people were treated like animals, forced to do hard labor, and often died from hunger, sickness, or violence.

One of the most terrifying nights was in November 1938, during an attack known as Kristallnacht, or the “Night of Broken Glass.” The SS and other Nazi groups destroyed Jewish homes, schools, and over 1,000 synagogues (Jewish places of worship). They smashed windows of Jewish-owned stores and sent around 30,000 Jewish men to concentration camps.

All of this was just the beginning. In the years that followed, things got even worse, leading to the Holocaust, when 6 million Jews were murdered.

The SS played a huge role in carrying out this hatred. They were the ones who arrested Jews, forced them out of their homes, and helped send them to death camps. Many of these actions started in the 1930s, setting the stage for one of the darkest times in human history.

By William Scott