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full title Sicherheitsdienst des From the very beginning of his career
Reichsführers-SS or SD, was the until his dying day, Adolf Hitler had
intelligence agency of the SS and the just two major goals. His primary goal
Nazi Party in Nazi Germany. The was the forcible acquisition of
organization was the first Nazi Lebensraum (living space) for the
intelligence organization to be German people. Secondly, he desired
established and was considered a some kind of final reckoning with the
sister organization with the Gestapo, Jews.
which the SS had infiltrated heavily The first steps toward Lebensraum
after 1934.The Schutzstaffel was a occurred in 1935 when Hitler openly
major paramilitary organization under violated the Treaty of Versailles by
Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in reintroducing military conscription
Nazi Germany, and later throughout and began rapidly rebuilding the
German-occupied Europe during German Army. Hitler then managed
World War II. It began with a small to negotiate a naval pact with Britain
guard unit known as the Saal-Schutz allowing Germany to have a Navy
("Hall Security") volunteers to totaling 35% of Britain's fleet, along
provide security for party meetings in with a submarine fleet equal in
Munich. In 1925, Heinrich Himmler size.Hitler would answer his own
joined the unit, which had by then question in the affirmative while in
been reformed and given its final the same breath promising that
name. Under his direction (1929–45), Germany would never break the
it grew from a small paramilitary peace. To emphasize the point, Hitler
formation to one of the most powerful uttered some remarkable statements
concerning the horrors of war, which also arrested and sent to local jails.
he had witnessed first-hand as a Businesses owned by Jews were not
frontline soldier. allowed to reopen unless they were
managed by non-Jews. Curfews were
Kristallnacht placed on Jews, limiting the hours of
the day they could leave their homes.
On the night of November 9, 1938,
violence against Jews broke out
across the Reich. It appeared to be
unplanned, set off by Germans' anger
over the assassination of a German
official in Paris at the hands of a
Jewish teenager. In fact, German
propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels
and other Nazis carefully organized
the pogroms. In two days, over 250
synagogues were burned, over 7,000
Jewish businesses were trashed and
looted, dozens of Jewish people were
killed, and Jewish cemeteries,
hospitals, schools, and homes were
looted while police and fire brigades
stood by. The pogroms became
known as Kristallnacht, the "Night of
Broken Glass," for the shattered glass
from the store windows that littered
the streets.
The morning after the pogroms
30,000 German Jewish men were
arrested for the "crime" of being
Jewish and sent to concentration
camps, where hundreds of them
perished. Some Jewish women were