Matthew Bailey

UWRT 1102
Wertz-Orbaugh
04/07/2015
The Development of my Nazi SS Research and Review of my Sources

In this research review I will cover parts of the inquiry topic that I have been researching
all throughout this year. The inquiry topic that I have been researching this year is the Nazi
Schutzstaffel (SS). The Nazi SS was first established in 1925 and was tasked to perform special
assignments such as being bodyguards, strong-arm men, political spies, and distributors of the
party newspaper, the Volkischer Beobachter. When Heinrich Himmler took control of the SS he
soon began to make changes and developed the SS into a police force for the Nazi party. This
police force was instructed to go after anyone who threatened disloyalty to Hitler, like forces
such as the SA. The SA were an assault division of the German army during the First World
War. They were commonly known as Storm Troopers in English. The SS eventually overtook
and disbanded the SA in 1934 and soon after began to train its own special military units and a
special corps of guards who were in charge of the concentration camps. (Koehl 275). I will be
discussing two articles in this research review: The Character of the Nazi SS by Robert Koehl
and Law and Justice in the Nazi SS: The Case of Konrad Morgen by James Weingartner. The
Character of the Nazi SS discusses the perception of the SS during and after the war. The article
also includes a brief description of how the SS came into being, and some of what they were
involved in during the war. Weingarthers article discusses the SS judicial system focusing

specifically on Konrad Morgen, one of the SSs leading judges, and some of the cases that he
was involved with.
I found Koehls article to be very useful because of its description on what the SS was and
how they operated. Prior to reading the article I had little knowledge of what the SS actually
was. I mainly knew them as elite soldiers who were in charge of rounding up Jews and
controlling them in concentration camps. I also knew them as the group of soldiers that operated
in the higher ranks of Nazi party. So this made the article a good source of information for me
and since it was one of the first articles I found it gave me the broad knowledge of what the SS
was to get me started. This allowed for me to build on my research by using some of the topics
that were presented in the article.
Koehls article had the purpose to analyze the major interpretations of the Nazi SS and to
offer an explanation of the difficulties to explain these interpretations. To summarize Koehl
went through and analyzed how the view of the SS had changed from when it was first
established to when the article was published in 1962. He stated that much of our SS image
stems from non-historical literature highly colored by the motives and interests of the authors
(Koehl 275). Throughout the article he analyzes peoples perceptions of the SS in the past and
the present and he also discusses how the SS viewed themselves. He stated that As yet,
relatively few authors have provided interpretations (Koehl 275). What he is stating is that very
few authors have offered a good interpretation of what the SS was. He also states that an
interpretation of the SS must be part of an effort to understand National Socialism (Koehl 277).
What he is referring to here is that if these two ideas were to be separated a distorted image of
the SS if depicted. This in return would develop the false ideas that he has described in the
article. Before reading the article I feel that I often fell into the category of people who allowed

the false image of the SS to be the image I thought them to be. I feel that this is the case for most
people who have not done very much inquiring on the SS. Through reading the article I found
the information to be useful because it allowed for me to realize that in order to properly inquire
on the SS I needed to look at the information that had not been misguided by the non-historical
literature.
Weingarthers article went in deeper to one of the roles that the SS took during Hitlers
reign. It stated how the SS police court system was in charge of most of the Nazi occupied
territory during the rule. The SS courts were mostly attached to the regional headquarters of the
SS. They were tasked to uphold the military laws that were placed over the occupied territories.
(Weingartner 278). Konrad Morgen was one of the SS judges. He is one of the more notable
judges of the SS police court because he saw how many of the Nazi high ranking officials would
break the laws they were tasked to uphold and he saw the corruption in their ranks, so he went
after those high ranking Nazi officers who violated the Nazi laws. Some of the cases he
produced were the investigations of supply dumps stealing supplies and selling them for profit.
(Weingartner 283).
Through reading this article I was able to discover that the SS were more than just the
strong military force I originally believed them to be. They were a well thought out
organization, and in this article their role as the Nazi judicial system is discussed. As stated in
the article in form, the SS judicial system closely followed that of the Wehrmacht.
(Weingartner 278) The Wehrmacht was the Nazi law system. These laws show how complex the
SS actually was and why it was one of the strictest of all the Nazi systems. In the article it states
that the SS stood in obvious contradiction of the rule of law (Weingartner 277). This shows
that although the SS were expected to be the ones to follow the law the best they did not follow

the laws. This shows the assumption that the SS thought that they were above the law. The SS
court system was very complex and has a close resemblance to the modern day court systems
used all over the world. The article explained how their court system works and this is a small
section of what it stated During trials, judges questioned the accused and evaluated evidence,
ruling on its admissibility. Following summation of prosecution and defense case, the bench
retired to reach a verdict which was announced and explained by the SS Judge (Weingartner
278). In reading the entire section of how court functioned I was able to realize how similar their
court system was to the United States, although often their rulings were a little more brutal. This
article helped with my research because it showed me that the SS was more than soldiers. This
then helped me find more research that I could use to better fully understand the SS.
Overall both of these articles helped immensely with my research. When I first chose my
inquiry topic I had a broad knowledge of the SS. Through reading these articles I was able to
discover that the SS was much more than an elite group of soldiers. The Character of the Nazi
SS gave me enough detail of what the SS was to further my research and it also allowed me to
realize that I should not allow non-historical literature to misguide my knowledge of the SS.
Law and Justice in the Nazi SS showed me that the SS was an in-depth system that included a
court system. It also provided me with a good example of a SS judge. Both of these article also
served as valuable sources to find new articles through the topics they covered.

Works Cited
Koehl, Robert. The Character of the Nazi SS. The Journal of Modern History 34.3 (1962):
275-283. JSTOR. Web. 7 April. 2015.
Weingartner, James. Law and Justice in the Nazi SS. Central European History 16.3 (1983):
276-294. JSOTR. Web. 7 April. 2015.