German ss what does it stand for

He must have hoped that the document and his lowly rank would mean he would pass through checkpoints. He was wrong. On the document was an official stamp and British military intelligence had seen the same stamp and unit details being used by members of the SS who had been trying to flee.

And so word had gone out that anyone else with those details was to be detained. Next morning, the three men were taken to a detention camp.

Once there, Hizinger asked to see a senior officer. Although his cover was still intact, he must have feared it would not last long and perhaps hoped he could bargain his way out of the situation. So he took off his eye patch and calmly revealed who he really was.

After Hitler's death in his bunker, this made him one of the most-wanted Nazis still alive and a man responsible for many of the worst crimes of the Third Reich. The British team began to question him to confirm he was who he said. A few hours later a medical officer, Capt Wells, was told to check Himmler.

As he came to look inside his mouth he saw a small blue-tipped object hidden in his cheek. As Capt Wells tried to pull it out, Himmler struggled with the doctor, pulled his head away and crushed the object between his teeth. It was a cyanide capsule. He was dead within minutes. Himmler had been given away by a fake stamp that his own people had placed in a document.

The incriminating papers remained hidden for 75 years, but they can now be seen for the first time after being donated to the Military Intelligence Museum in Shefford, Bedfordshire. View the list of all donors. Trending keywords:. Featured Content. Tags Find topics of interest and explore encyclopedia content related to those topics.

Browse A-Z Find articles, photos, maps, films, and more listed alphabetically. For Teachers Recommended resources and topics if you have limited time to teach about the Holocaust. Wise — International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. About This Site. Glossary : Full Glossary. Only last week, a Nazi secretary at the Stutthof camp, Irmgard Furchner, was due to go on trial north of Hamburg but escaped from a nursing home hours beforehand.

She was eventually caught in Hamburg and her trial was rescheduled for 19 October. She was released from custody earlier this week. Nazi camp secretary caught after fleeing her trial. Former Nazi SS guard found guilty over mass murder. Image source, Reuters. Josef S, who was 21 when he first became a guard at Sachsenhausen in , appears in court. Leon Schwarzbaum survived Sachsenhausen as well as Auschwitz and Buchenwald. Most Nazi camp guards will not face trial. Image source, AFP.

Nazi SS guard Bruno Dey was convicted last year of complicity in 5, murders. This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Related Topics. Germany World War Two.