Waffen-SS: Hitler's Elite Guard at War 1939-1945

Bristol, England: Cerberus Publishing Limited, 2002. 2002 Reprint . Hard Back. Fine/Fine. 7 3/4" x 10. 324 Pages Indexed. Black cloth with silver spine lettering. First published in 1966 this edition published in 2002. Brand new gift quality condition - book and dust jacket. Interior text pages are near flawless. High quality glossy pages throughout. Sixteen pages of full color glossy plates and black and white photo illustrations. A feature common to the three great European totalitarian dictatorships of our time - Stalin's Russia, Mussolini's Italy, and Hitler's Germany, was the establishment of a party militia alongside the regular state police and armed forces. Originally the instrument of terror and repression, Hitler's SS included an armed branch that had been formed out of his bodyguard, the Leibstandarte. With the advent of war more and more SS regiments were established and trained to become the Waffen-SS, the crack military branch of Hitler's Elite Guard. During World War Two the Waffen-SS proved to be an efficient, formidable and ruthless fighting machine. Halting and rolling back the Allies in such places as Kharkov, Warsaw, Normandy, the Ardennes and Berlin. It effectively postponed the ultimate collapse of Hitler's Third Reich. Drawing on the captured records from the many branches of the SS, including Heinrich Himmler's own vast archive, the author has written a major history of this elite army. The author shows how, despite obstruction by Hitler's military chiefs, the Waffen-SS grew from a praetorian guard of barely 28,000 men at the beginning of the war to a combat hardened army of more than 500,000 in 1945. The structure and organisation of the Waffen-SS is examined in detail. The rigid personnel selection and intensive physical, military and ideological training that helped create a tough and dedicated cadre around which the ever-growing army relied. The author discusses the methods used by the Waffen-SS to mobilise foreign manpower. More than half the men wearing its uniform in 1945 were not native Germans. The author also discusses its relations with the Wehrmacht, its successes and failures in battle, and its record of atrocities. Includes a Glossary, Bibliography, and five appendices of various charts. Large heavy book that may incur additional charges for shipping to some locations.