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Execution of Friedrich Jeckeln -Brutal Nazi SS General whose Execution turned into Theater of Horror. The 1st of September 1939. Nazi Germany invades Poland, and the German Army is followed by the Einsatzgruppen which are Nazi mobile death squads sent to Poland to kill the civilians, mostly the Polish intelligentsia such as teachers, priests, physicians, and other prominent members of Polish society. After the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, these paramilitary death squads working with units of the German armed forces and local collaborators, will conduct mass shooting operations targeting mostly Jews, Romani, Soviet officials, and other people with disabilities. From 1941 to 1945, while operating behind the front line in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe, the Einsatzgruppen will murder around 2 million innocent men, women and children accounting for one third of all Jewish Holocaust victims. One of the main perpetrators of these atrocities is Friedrich Jeckeln. Friedrich August Jeckeln was born on the 2nd of February 1895 in Hornberg, then part of the German Empire. Upon the outbreak of World War I on the 28th of July 1914, Jeckeln served on the western front first as an artillery officer and then as a pilot trainee but in 1916 he was badly wounded. Following Germany’s defeat, he was discharged from the army and worked on a farm in the Free City of Danzig. He married Charlotte Hirsch, a daughter of the farm’s owner and had 3 children together but he filed for divorce in 1927 because of Charlotte father’s alleged Jewish background. By this time Friedrich Jeckeln was a fanatical antisemite and anti-communist. In 1929 he joined the Nazi party and one year later he joined the SS. The SS – Schutzstaffel or Protection Squads - was originally established in April 1925 to protect Adolf Hitler and other Nazi leaders and speakers and provide security for political meetings. SS members were subject to strict military discipline and swore an oath of complete loyalty to Hitler and those appointed by him. In January 1929 Heinrich Himmler became the head of the SS and the organization greatly expanded in size and strength. By the time Hitler came into power in 1933, Himmler had made the SS the dominant organization within the Reich. From the beginning of the Nazi regime, Hitler entrusted the SS first and foremost with the removal and eventual murder of political and so-called racial enemies of the regime. The SS became a virtual state within a state in Nazi Germany and was staffed by men who perceived themselves as the “racial elite” of the Nazi future. From 1939, the SS assumed responsibility for “solving” the so-called Jewish Question which then culminated in 1941, when the leadership planned, coordinated and directed the so-called Final Solution. This “solution” was the genocide of European Jews during World War II.; also known as the Holocaust. SS officers were directly responsible for the management of concentration camps, where millions of Jews were murdered by poison gas. Jeckeln, from 1933 a member of the Reichstag - the German parliament, was known to be ruthless, brutal, self-indulgent and hard. He relentlessly pursued political opponents, especially communists, social democrats and the unions, and was primarily responsible for the murders of eleven communists and labor organizers in German Rieseberg on 4th of July 1933. These murders were carried out by SS members with extraordinary brutality. The Second World War began on the 1st of September, 1939 when Germany invaded Poland. Nazi Germany possessed overwhelming military superiority over Poland. Germany launched the unprovoked attack at dawn on the 1st of September with an advance force consisting of more than 2,000 tanks supported by nearly 900 bombers and over 400 fighter planes. In all, Germany deployed 60 divisions and nearly 1.5 million men in the invasion. The assault on Poland demonstrated Germany’s ability to combine air power and armor in a new kind of mobile warfare. The world adopted a new term to describe Germany’s successful war tactic: Blitzkrieg, or “lightning war.” Join World History channel and get access to benefits: Disclaimer: All opinions and comments below are from members of the public and do not reflect the views of World History channel. We do not accept promoting violence or hatred against individuals or groups based on attributes such as: race, nationality, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation. World History has right to review the comments and delete them if they are deemed inappropriate. ► CLICK the SUBSCRIBE button for more interesting clips: #ww2 #worldwar2videos #worldhistory
