Explain Why The SS-Einsatzgruppen Deserve The Masters Of Death
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The SS-Einsatzgruppen truly deserve the title, Masters of Death. The SS began their operation for lebensraum, more living space for the German Aryan race. In order for Adolf Hitler to achieve lebensraum he would have to find ways to get rid of those who were not considered worthy enough. The best and simplest way of achieving that to Hitler was to commit genocide among the Jews. The SS first started as Hitler’s own personal bodyguard force that eventually grew into its own army of death squads, “that operated outside the constraints of German law.”1 The SS-Einsatzgruppen would invade and occupy countries across Eastern Europe to accomplish the goal of lebensraum.2
For the SS-Einsatzgruppen to achieve their goals of more lebensraum and eliminating all the Jews, they would have to invade and occupy countries alongside the…show more content… The Lithuanians allowed released convicts from prisons to carry out the killings of the Jews in their town squares. The Lithuanians would throw women and children into rooms underground with little to no food. The guards would rob the jewelry from the imprisoned women, and sometimes rape and murder them as well. In one case, the Lithuanian guards opened up the barracks, and the Jewish people came out only to be in the line of sight of bullets. Stahlecker who was a commander in the SS-Einsatzgruppen, summarized that “for the security police [that is, the SS] not to be seen to be involved, at least immediately,”10 which was a good idea because the world would see it as the people of their home country committing these acts and would not get involved. Whereas if the SS were seen mostly doing it the world’s superpowers would take notice and take action on it. The same actions upon local populations were seen throughout Eastern Europe when Barbarossa commenced. This went extremely well in the SS favors because the local populations were doing all the dirty work for