The sought after original SS publication "Waffen-SS im Western" is available here for the first time. Translated into English and carefully reproduced, this rare SS book photographically documents the Waffen-SS campaigns in Holland, Belgium, and France during 1940. The photos were taken by SS war correspondents and vividly illustrate the early SS combat troops as they conquered Western Europe. A clear concise history showing wartime footage, including uniforms, insignia, headgear, weapons and more. This book has often been regarded as one of the best publications ever printed by the Nazi regime on the Waffen-SS. It is a highly valuable photographic study for military historians and collectors alike.

Organized and trained during 1943, the 10th SS Panzer Division saw its first action in the spring of 1944 during the relief of an encircled German army on the Eastern Front. Several months later, in response to the Allied invasion at Normandy, the division returned to the West in mid-June 1944. Here the division engaged in a series of armored attacks and counterattacks against British and American forces. The 10th SS briefly held off a few enemy thrusts but gradually had to fall back to Falaise, where the division escaped the Allied encirclement with no tanks and only a fraction of its men. The 10th SS Panzer Division next defended against the Allied parachute assault during Operation Market Garden in September 1944. Depleted and now a division in name only, the 10th SS fought in Alsace before Hitler sent it to the Eastern Front again. There, east of Berlin, the division participated in the final battles to enable the escape of German soldiers and civilians from Soviet captivity.

This is the first systematic pan-European study of the hundreds of thousands of non-Germans who fought - either voluntarily or under different kinds of pressures - for the Waffen-SS (or auxiliary police formations operating in the occupied East). Building on the findings of regional studies by other scholars - many of them included in this volume - The Waffen-SS aims to arrive at a fuller picture of those non-German citizens (from Eastern as well as Western Europe) who served under the SS flag. Where did the non-Germans in the SS come from (socially, geographically, and culturally)? What motivated them? What do we know about the practicalities of international collaboration in war and genocide, in terms of everyday life, language, and ideological training? Did a common transnational identity emerge as a result of shared ideological convictions or experiences of extreme violence? In order to address these questions (and others), The Waffen-SS adopts an approach that does justice to the complexity of the subject, adding a more nuanced, empirically sound understanding of collaboration in Europe during World War II, while also seeking to push the methodological boundaries of the historiographical genre of perpetrator studies by adopting a transnational approach.

This photographic journal was originally published in the spring of 1941. It was edited by and carried a forward by HauptsturmfŸhrer Gunter d'Alquen, commander of the SS Propaganda Kompanie and editor of the official SS paper, Das Schwarze Korps.??Many of the pictures taken in this book feature the men of Waffen SS Standarte "Germania". In 1940 the men who bore the word Germania on their cuff bands were fighting as a motorised regiment under the command of SS-StandartenfŸhrer Karl-Maria Demelhuber.??This is a unique account of the Waffen SS on campaign in the west from a primary source, edited by, and with an introduction by Emmy award winning author Bob Carruthers.

The Waffen-SS are commonly regarded as the elite of Germany’s armed forces during World War II. They gained much of this reputation while fighting on the Eastern Front in Russia during Germany’s war against the Soviet Union. They were also called to the fore in an attempt to hurl back the Western Allies’ invasion forces in Normandy, and were used in the last great offensive on the Western Front in the Ardennes and contributed to the final defence of Berlin. In adversity, they were some of the most resilient soldiers that fought for Germany in World War II and were ideologically and politically aligned with Hitler. For over 70 years, many of the manuscripts contained in this book, and sourced from the United States National Archives, have not been scrutinised by modern researchers. This book provides a unique opportunity to publish these records in order to provide an insight into the Waffen-SS. The Waffen-SS was a military organisation that is steeped in the military folklore of being a force capable of incredible military feats, but it was also capable of incredible evil. These records are exceedingly valuable as they are one of the few contemporaneous primary sources of information available in relation to the Waffen-SS.

The well-equipped armored divisions of the Waffen SS were among the most effective German orders of battle in World War II. This book offers accounts of the battles in which they took part, as well as firsthand anecdotes from surviving Waffen soldiers and from Allied troops whom fought against them. Strategies and weaponry are detailed, as are major battles like the effort to hold Caen, Operation Market Garden and the Ardennes Offensive.

This book in the popular Images of War series covers the deeds of the Waffen-SS on the Western Front during the Second World War. With extensive text and in-depth captions with many rare and unpublished photographs it describes the fighting tactics, the uniforms, the battles and the different elements that went into making the Waffen-SS such an elite fighting unit. It traces how the Waffen-SS carefully built up their assault forces utilising all available reserves and resources into a ruthlessly effective killing machine. It depicts how this awesome military formation grew to be used in offensive and then in defensive battles, and provides much historical information and facts about the weapons and all the components that fought on Western Front. The reader learns how the Waffen-SS battled their way through the Low Countries and the Balkans. After D-Day they played a key role in Normandy and fought at Arnhem, in the Ardennes and shifted from one disintegrating part of the front to another in a drastic attempt to stabilise the crumbling war effort.The Waffen-SS on the Western Front 1940 1945 provides an excellent insight into one of the most effective fighting formations in military history.