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The First World War

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Why did interwar disarmament fail?

What role did the SS play in Nazi Germany?

Scott Reeves examines the increasing importance of the SS in maintaining control of Hitler’s Germany after 1934

Source A Photograph taken during the clearing of the Warsaw Ghetto in May 1943 and contained in a private report to Heinrich Himmler. The Jewish inhabitants had fought against the Nazi attempts to transport them from the ghetto to Treblinka extermination camp

1 Use Source B to plot a living graph showing how the power and violence of the SS changed over time.

The SS — few words send as big a chill up the spine. This shady organisation sums up all that was wrong with the Nazi regime: unquestioning, black-uniformed men arresting opponents in the middle of the night, massacring civilians and putting the Final Solution into practice. Yet it is important not to view the SS too simplistically. It did not spring into life fully-formed and ready to commit whatever war crime Hitler ordered. The SS, as with many other aspects of Nazism, developed over the course of two decades.

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The First World War

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Why did interwar disarmament fail?

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