Killing the SS: The Hunt for the Worst War Criminals in History

295 Pages·2018·17.51 MB·English

by  Bill O’Reilly

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About the Authors
Copyright Page

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This book is dedicated to my son, Spencer,
who likes history as much as his dad.
—B O’R
ILL EILLY

Prologue
MAY 7, 1945
REIMS, FRANCE
2:41 A.M.
The devil is being hunted.
In a classroom of the École Professionelle technical school, Nazi chief of staff
Gen. Alfred Jodl applies his signature to a sheet of foolscap, an oversize piece of
paper, formally surrendering the German army after nearly six horrific years of
fighting. Berlin has fallen. Nazi führer Adolf Hitler is dead from a self-inflicted
gunshot to the head, his body then doused in gallons of gasoline and set ablaze
by his personal bodyguard. Troops from the Allied powers of the United States,
Great Britain, and the Soviet Union now swarm unopposed throughout
Germany, quieting the few remaining pockets of resistance.
Despite the late hour, the walls of the schoolroom are lined with journalists
and generals on hand to bear witness. Maps showing the progress of fighting in
Europe cover the walls, their final update having taken place just one day ago.
Newsreel cameras record the somber moment of Germany’s defeat, the intense
heat of their lights making the room stifling. American supreme commander,
Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, leader of the Allied forces in Europe, is present but
does not participate in the formal signing. “Ike” prefers to let his chief of staff,
Gen. Bedell Smith, act on his behalf.
“With this signature,” Jodl announces in a noticeably emotional voice, “the
German people and the German armed forces are for the better or worse
delivered into the victor’s hands.”
*
But the devil is not fully submitting, and neither are many of his disciples. They
know their actions during the conflict will be considered war crimes. These men
murdered and brutally tortured innocent human beings on a scale so large that
the word atrocities does not even come close to describing the acts.
Thick dossiers on these “war criminals” have been compiled by American and
British intelligence agencies. The special admonition IMMEDIATE ARREST has
been stamped next to their names on this most wanted list. If caught and
convicted, the punishment will be death.
Execution will be swift.
If they are caught.
*
Nearly six hundred miles northwest of General Jodl’s surrender, the most
infamous Nazi murderer of World War II has no intention of delivering himself
into the victor’s hands. Instead, Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler is running for
his life. The mass killer now hides in a small farmhouse with a handful of his
most trusted aides, just outside the north German town of Satrup. Himmler and
these men are all members of a Nazi paramilitary organization known in German
as the Schutzstaffel.
The rest of the world calls these butchers by another name: the SS.
Schutzstaffel means “protection squadron,” and for the first four years after its
founding in 1925, watching over Nazi leader Adolf Hitler was its main priority.
But when Hitler appointed Himmler as Reichsführer—supreme leader—of the
SS in 1929, the twenty-eight-year-old former chicken farmer was not content to
be a mere bodyguard. The SS soon began gathering intelligence about Hitler’s
enemies and, in its recruiting, demanding that all applicants demonstrate German
“racial purity.”
By 1933, when Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist Party assumed power in
Germany, the military was divided between the Wehrmacht—the traditional
army, navy, and air force of the German state—and the SS, a paramilitary
organization loyal to Hitler and the Nazi Party.
Hitler gave Heinrich Himmler and the SS sweeping powers to incarcerate all
political opponents of the Third Reich, which came to include lawyers,
homosexuals, gypsies, the mentally handicapped, Catholic priests, and the entire