“My honor is my loyalty.” This was the sacred oath that German officers of World War II swore to live by. These officers were a part of an organization that was created to eliminate the Jews and people that had abnormalities. The officers believed that there was a superior race, the Aryan race, the race of the future. That was what led these officers to murder so many Jews and people with abnormalities. The Schutzstaffel and Gestapo, Hitler’s secret police, had a significant impact on history because they were in charge of protecting and serving Hitler, they ran and guarded concentration camps, and they conducted many intelligence operations. Schutzstaffel (the SS) and Gestapo served Hitler up until the end of World War II. The SS members…show more content… It was mostly the SS who ran the camps and who worked the prisoners to death that were in the concentration camps. Gestapo mostly brought the prisoners to the camps. Jews, despite some belief, were not the first prisoners to be in the camps. The first people that were believed to be against Germany, such as doctors, scientists, and many political leaders, came to the camps before the Jews. Then, after that the Jews were taken to the camps. In the concentration camps, the prisoners built buildings, expanded the camps and worked in factories. The SS had mini-officers, called Kapos, who were prisoners but had special privileges. These people were often disliked because they got extra food and easier jobs. For the extermination camps it was a mass murder camp. The SS officers executed the prisoners as soon as the prisoners walked in. They first used a firing squad, which did not work well because the firing squad was too physical and time consuming. After that the officers realized that gas chambers were faster. The first time gas chambers were used was at the camp Chelmo, by a gas van, in December 1941. SS officers then discovered that it would be faster to do it in rooms, and that is how gas chambers were created. Camps like Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Majdanek were all concentration camps and extermination camps. These atrocities all happened because of belief in the “Final Solution” for the Jews and a superior race, the Aryan race. Thanks to this belief, most Jews never saw their family again. The belief was a huge factor in why the SS members and the Gestapo members conducted many intelligence operations for the Nazi
