title: Courtney Love

text: In Hole's formative stages, Love continued to work at strip clubs in Hollywood (including Jumbo's Clown Room and the Seventh Veil), saving money to purchase backline equipment and a touring van, while rehearsing at a Hollywood studio loaned to her by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Hole played their first show in November 1989 at Raji's, a rock club in central Hollywood. Their debut single, "Retard Girl", was issued in April 1990 through the Long Beach indie label Sympathy for the Record Industry, and was played by Rodney Bingenheimer on local rock station KROQ. Hole appeared on the cover of "Flipside", a Los Angeles-based punk fanzine. In early 1991, they released their second single, "Dicknail", through Sub Pop Records.


title: Courtney Love

text: With no wave, noise rock and grindcore bands being major influences on Love, Hole's first studio album, "Pretty on the Inside", captured an abrasive sound and contained disturbing, graphic lyrics, described by "Q" as "confrontational [and] genuinely uninhibited". The record was released in September 1991 on Caroline Records, produced by Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth with assistant production from Gumball's Don Fleming; Love and Gordon had met when Hole opened for Sonic Youth during their promotional tour for "Goo" at the Whisky a Go Go in November 1990. In early 1991, Love sent Gordon a personal letter asking her to produce the record for the band, to which she agreed.


title: Courtney Love

text: "Pretty on the Inside" received generally positive critical reception from indie and punk rock critics and was named one of the 20 best albums of the year by "Spin". It gained a following in the United Kingdom, charting at 59 on the UK Albums Chart, and its lead single, "Teenage Whore", entered the UK Indie Chart at number one. The album's feminist slant led many to tag the band as part of the riot grrrl movement, a movement with which Love did not associate. The band toured in support of the record, headlining with Mudhoney in Europe; in the United States, they opened for the Smashing Pumpkins, and performed at CBGB in New York City.


title: Courtney Love

text: During the tour, Love briefly dated Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan and then Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain. There are varying accounts of how Love and Cobain came to know one another. Journalist Michael Azerrad states that the two met in 1989 at the Satyricon nightclub in Portland, Oregon, though Cobain biographer Charles Cross claimed the date was actually February 12, 1990; Cross said that Cobain playfully wrestled Love to the floor after she said that he looked like Dave Pirner of Soul Asylum. According to Love, she first met Cobain at a Dharma Bums show in Portland, while Love's bandmate Eric Erlandson said that both he and Love were introduced to Cobain in a parking lot after a Butthole Surfers/L7 concert at the Hollywood Palladium on May 17, 1991. Sometime in late 1991, Love and Cobain became re-acquainted through Jennifer Finch, one of Love's longtime friends and former bandmates. Love and Cobain were a couple by 1992.


title: Courtney Love

text: Shortly after completing the tour for "Pretty on the Inside", Love married Cobain on Waikiki Beach in Honolulu, Hawaii, on February 24, 1992. She wore a satin and lace dress once owned by the actress Frances Farmer, and Cobain wore plaid pajamas. During Love's pregnancy, Hole recorded a cover of "Over the Edge" for a Wipers tribute album, and recorded their fourth single, "Beautiful Son", which was released in April 1993. On August 18, the couple's only child, a daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, was born in Los Angeles. They relocated to Carnation, Washington, and then Seattle.


title: Courtney Love

text: Love's first major media exposure came in a September 1992 profile with Cobain for "Vanity Fair" by Lynn Hirschberg, entitled "Strange Love". Cobain had become a major public figure following the surprise success of Nirvana's album "Nevermind". Love was urged by her manager to participate in the cover story. In the year prior, Love and Cobain had developed a heroin addiction; the profile painted them in an unflattering light, suggesting that Love had been addicted to heroin during her pregnancy. The Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services investigated, and custody of Frances was temporarily awarded to Love's sister, Jaimee. Love claimed she was misquoted by Hirschberg, and asserted that she had immediately quit heroin during her first trimester after she discovered she was pregnant. Love later said the article had serious implications for her marriage and Cobain's mental state, suggesting it was a factor in his suicide two years later.


title: Courtney Love

text: On September 8, 1993, Love and Cobain made their only public performance together at the Rock Against Rape benefit in Hollywood, performing two acoustic duets of "Pennyroyal Tea" and "Where Did You Sleep Last Night". Love also performed electric versions of two new Hole songs, "Doll Parts" and "Miss World", both written for their upcoming second album. In October 1993, Hole recorded their second album, "Live Through This", in Atlanta. The album featured a new lineup with bassist Kristen Pfaff and drummer Patty Schemel. "Live Through This" was released on Geffen's subsidiary label DGC on April 12, 1994, one week after Cobain's death from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in the Seattle home he shared with Love, who was in rehab in Los Angeles at the time. In the following months, Love was rarely seen in public, holing up at her home with friends and family members. Cobain's remains were cremated and his ashes divided into portions by Love, who kept some in a teddy bear and some in an urn. In June 1994, she traveled to the Namgyal Buddhist Monastery in Ithaca, New York and had his ashes ceremonially blessed by Buddhist monks. Another portion was mixed into clay and made into memorial sculptures. On June 16, 1994, Hole bassist Kristen Pfaff died of a heroin overdose in Seattle. For the band's impending tour, Love recruited Canadian bassist Melissa Auf der Maur.


title: Courtney Love

text: "Live Through This" was a commercial and critical success, hitting platinum RIAA certification in April 1995 and receiving numerous critical accolades. The success of the record combined with Cobain's suicide resulted in a high level of publicity for Love, and she was featured on Barbara Walters' "10 Most Fascinating People" in 1995. Simultaneously, her erratic onstage behavior and various legal troubles during Hole's 1994–1995 world tour compounded the media coverage of her.


title: Courtney Love

text: Hole's performance on August 26, 1994, at the Reading Festival—Love's first public performance following Cobain's death—was described by MTV as "by turns macabre, frightening and inspirational". John Peel wrote in "The Guardian" that Love's disheveled appearance "would have drawn whistles of astonishment in Bedlam", and that her performance "verged on the heroic ... Love steered her band through a set which dared you to pity either her recent history or that of the band ... the band teetered on the edge of chaos, generating a tension which I cannot remember having felt before from any stage." The band performed a series of riotous concerts over the following year, with Love frequently appearing hysterical onstage, flashing crowds, stage diving, and getting into fights with audience members. One journalist reported that at the band's show in Boston in December 1994: "Love interrupted the music and talked about her deceased husband Kurt Cobain, and also broke out into Tourette syndrome-like rants. The music was great, but the raving was vulgar and offensive, and prompted some of the audience to shout back at her."


title: Courtney Love

text: In January 1995, Love was arrested in Melbourne for disrupting a Qantas flight after getting into an argument with a stewardess. On July 4, 1995, at the Lollapalooza Festival in George, Washington, Love threw a lit cigarette at musician Kathleen Hanna before punching her in the face, alleging that Hanna had made a joke about her daughter. She pleaded guilty to an assault charge and was sentenced to anger management classes. In November 1995, two male teenagers sued Love for allegedly punching them during a Hole concert in Orlando, Florida in March 1995. The judge dismissed the case on grounds that the teens "weren't exposed to any greater amount of violence than could reasonably be expected at an alternative rock concert". Love later said she had little memory of 1994–1995, as she had been using large quantities of heroin and Rohypnol at the time.


title: Courtney Love

text: After Hole's world tour concluded in 1996, Love made a return to acting, first in small roles in the Jean-Michel Basquiat biopic "Basquiat" and the drama "Feeling Minnesota" (1996), and then a starring role as Larry Flynt's wife Althea in Miloš Forman's critically acclaimed 1996 film "The People vs. Larry Flynt". Love went through rehabilitation and quit using heroin at the insistence of Forman; she was ordered to take multiple urine tests under the supervision of Columbia Pictures while filming, and passed all of them. Despite Columbia Pictures' initial reluctance to hire Love due to her troubled past, her performance received acclaim, earning a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress, and a New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actress. Critic Roger Ebert called her work in the film "quite a performance; Love proves she is not a rock star pretending to act, but a true actress." She won several other awards from various film critic associations for the film. During this time, Love maintained what the media noted as a more decorous public image, and she appeared in ad campaigns for Versace and in a "Vogue Italia" spread. Following the release of "The People vs. Larry Flynt", she dated her co-star Edward Norton, with whom she remained until 1999.


title: Courtney Love

text: In late 1997, Hole released the compilations "My Body, the Hand Grenade" and "The First Session", both of which featured previously recorded material. Love attracted media attention in May 1998 after punching journalist Belissa Cohen at a party; the suit was settled out of court for an undisclosed sum. In September 1998, Hole released their third studio album, "Celebrity Skin", which featured a stark power pop sound that contrasted with their earlier punk influences. Love divulged her ambition of making an album where "art meets commerce ... there are no compromises made, it has commercial appeal, and it sticks to [our] original vision." She said she was influenced by Neil Young, Fleetwood Mac, and My Bloody Valentine when writing the album. Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan co-wrote several songs. "Celebrity Skin" was well received by critics; "Rolling Stone" called it "accessible, fiery and intimate—often at the same time ... a basic guitar record that's anything but basic." "Celebrity Skin" went multi-platinum, and topped "Best of Year" lists at "Spin" and "The Village Voice". It garnered Hole's only number-one single on the Modern Rock Tracks chart with "Celebrity Skin". Hole promoted the album through MTV performances and at the 1998 Billboard Music Awards, and were nominated for three Grammy Awards at the 41st Grammy Awards ceremony.


title: Courtney Love

text: Before the release of "Celebrity Skin", Love and Fender designed a low-priced Squier brand guitar, the Vista Venus. The instrument featured a shape inspired by Mercury, a little-known independent guitar manufacturer, Stratocaster, and Rickenbacker's solid body guitars and had a single-coil and a humbucker pickup, and was available in 6-string and 12-string versions. In an early 1999 interview, Love said about the Venus: "I wanted a guitar that sounded really warm and pop, but which required just one box to go dirty ... And something that could also be your first band guitar. I didn't want it all teched out. I wanted it real simple, with just one pickup switch."


title: Courtney Love

text: Hole toured with Marilyn Manson on the Beautiful Monsters Tour in 1999, but dropped out after nine performances; Love and Manson disagreed over production costs, and Hole was forced to open for Manson under an agreement with Interscope Records. Hole resumed touring with Imperial Teen. Love later said Hole also abandoned the tour due to Manson and Korn's (whom they also toured with in Australia) sexualized treatment of teenage female audience members. Love told interviewers at 99X.FM in Atlanta: "What I really don't like—there are certain girls that like us, or like me, who are really messed up ... they're very young, and they do not need to be taken and raped, or filmed having enema contests ... [they were] going out into the audience and picking up fourteen and fifteen-year-old girls who obviously cut themselves, and then [I had] to see them in the morning ... it's just uncool."


title: Courtney Love

text: In 1999, Love was awarded an Orville H. Gibson award for Best Female Rock Guitarist. During this time, she starred opposite Jim Carrey as his partner Lynne Margulies in the Andy Kaufman biopic "Man on the Moon" (1999), followed by a role as William S. Burroughs's wife Joan Vollmer in "Beat" (2000) alongside Kiefer Sutherland. Love was cast as the lead in John Carpenter's sci-fi horror film "Ghosts of Mars", but backed out after injuring her foot. She sued the ex-wife of her then-boyfriend, James Barber, whom Love alleged had caused the injury by running over her foot with her Volvo. The following year, she returned to film opposite Lili Taylor in "Julie Johnson" (2001), in which she played a woman who has a lesbian relationship; Love won an Outstanding Actress award at L.A.'s Outfest. She was then cast in the thriller "Trapped" (2002), alongside Kevin Bacon and Charlize Theron. The film was a box-office flop.


title: Courtney Love

text: In the interim, Hole had become dormant. In March 2001, Love began a "punk rock femme supergroup", Bastard, enlisting Schemel, Veruca Salt co-frontwoman Louise Post, and bassist Gina Crosley. Post recalled: "[Love] was like, 'Listen, you guys: I've been in my Malibu, manicure, movie-star world for two years, alright? I wanna make a record. And let's leave all that grunge shit behind us, eh? We were being so improvisational, and singing together, and with a trust developing between us. It was the shit." The group recorded a demo tape, but by September 2001, Post and Crosley had left, with Post citing "unhealthy and unprofessional working conditions". In May 2002, Hole announced their breakup amid continuing litigation with Universal Music Group over their record contract.


title: Courtney Love

text: In 1997, Love and former Nirvana members Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl formed a limited liability company, Nirvana LLC, to manage Nirvana's business dealings. In June 2001, Love filed a lawsuit to dissolve it, blocking the release of unreleased Nirvana material and delaying the release of the Nirvana compilation "With the Lights Out". Grohl and Novoselic sued Love, calling her "irrational, mercurial, self-centered, unmanageable, inconsistent and unpredictable". She responded with a letter stating that "Kurt Cobain was Nirvana" and that she and his family were the "rightful heirs" to the Nirvana legacy.


title: Courtney Love

text: In February 2003, Love was arrested at Heathrow Airport for disrupting a flight and was banned from Virgin Airlines. In October, she was arrested in Los Angeles after breaking several windows of her producer and then-boyfriend James Barber's home, and was charged with being under the influence of a controlled substance; the ordeal resulted in her temporarily losing custody of her daughter.


title: Courtney Love

text: After the breakup of Hole, Love began composing material with songwriter Linda Perry, and in July 2003 signed a contract with Virgin Records. She began recording her debut solo album, "America's Sweetheart", in France shortly after. Virgin Records released "America's Sweetheart" in February 2004; it received mixed reviews. Charles Aaron of "Spin" called it a "jaw-dropping act of artistic will and a fiery, proper follow-up to 1994's "Live Through This"" and awarded it eight out of ten, while Amy Phillips of "The Village Voice" wrote: "[Love is] willing to act out the dream of every teenage brat who ever wanted to have a glamorous, high-profile hissyfit, and she turns those egocentric nervous breakdowns into art. Sure, the art becomes less compelling when you've been pulling the same stunts for a decade. But, honestly, is there anybody out there who fucks up better?" The album sold fewer than 100,000 copies. Love later expressed regret over the record, blaming her drug problems at the time. Shortly after it was released, she told Kurt Loder on "TRL": "I cannot exist as a solo artist. It's a joke."


title: Courtney Love

text: On March 17, 2004, Love appeared on the "Late Show with David Letterman" to promote "America's Sweetheart". Her appearance drew media coverage when she lifted her shirt multiple times, flashed Letterman, and stood on his desk. The "New York Times" wrote: "The episode was not altogether surprising for Ms. Love, 39, whose most public moments have veered from extreme pathos—like the time she read the suicide note of her famous husband, Kurt Cobain, on MTV—to angry feminism to catfights to incoherent ranting." Hours later, in the early morning of March 18, Love was arrested in Manhattan for allegedly striking a fan with a microphone stand during a small concert in the East Village. She was released within hours and performed a scheduled concert the following evening at the Bowery Ballroom. Four days later, she called in multiple times to "The Howard Stern Show", claiming in broadcast conversations with Stern that the incident had not occurred, and that actress Natasha Lyonne, who was at the concert, was told by the alleged victim that he had been paid $10,000 to file a false claim leading to Love's arrest.


title: Courtney Love

text: On July 9, 2004, her 40th birthday, Love was arrested for failing to make a court appearance for the March 2004 charges, and taken to Bellevue Hospital, allegedly incoherent, where she was placed on a 72-hour watch. According to police, she was believed to be a potential danger to herself, but deemed mentally sound and released to a rehab facility two days later. Amidst public criticism and press coverage, comedian Margaret Cho published an opinion piece, "Courtney Deserves Better from Feminists", arguing that negative associations of Love with her drug and personal problems (including from feminists) overshadowed her music and wellbeing. Love pleaded guilty in October 2004 to disorderly conduct over the incident in East Village.


title: Courtney Love

text: Love's appearance as a roaster on the "Comedy Central Roast" of Pamela Anderson in August 2005, in which she appeared intoxicated and disheveled, attracted further media attention. One review said that Love "acted as if she belonged in an institution". Six days after the broadcast, Love was sentenced to a 28-day lockdown rehab program for being under the influence of a controlled substance, violating her probation. To avoid jail time, she accepted an additional 180-day rehab sentence in September 2005. In November 2005, after completing the program, Love was discharged from the rehab center under the provision that she complete further outpatient rehab. In subsequent interviews, Love said she had been addicted to substances including prescription drugs, cocaine, and crack cocaine. She said she had been sober since completing rehabilitation in 2007, and cited her Soka Gakkai Buddhist practice (which she began in 1988) as integral to her sobriety.


title: Courtney Love

text: In the midst of her legal troubles, Love had endeavors in writing and publishing. She co-wrote a semi-autobiographical manga, "Princess Ai" (Japanese: プリンセス·アイ物語), with Stu Levy, illustrated by Misaho Kujiradou and Ai Yazawa; it was released in three volumes in the United States and Japan between 2004 and 2006. In 2006, Love published a memoir, "", and began recording her second solo album, "How Dirty Girls Get Clean", collaborating again with Perry and Billy Corgan. Love had written several songs, including an anti-cocaine song titled "Loser Dust", during her time in rehab in 2005. She told "Billboard": "My hand-eye coordination was so bad [after the drug use], I didn't even know chords anymore. It was like my fingers were frozen. And I wasn't allowed to make noise [in rehab] ... I never thought I would work again." Tracks and demos for the album leaked online in 2006, and a documentary, "The Return of Courtney Love", detailing the making of the album, aired on the British television network More4 in the fall of that year. A rough acoustic version of "Never Go Hungry Again", recorded during an interview for "The Times" in November, was also released. Incomplete audio clips of the song "Samantha", originating from an interview with NPR, were distributed on the internet in 2007.


title: Courtney Love

text: In March 2009, fashion designer Dawn Simorangkir brought a libel suit against Love concerning a defamatory post Love made on her Twitter account, which was eventually settled for $450,000. Several months later, in June 2009, "NME" published an article detailing Love's plan to reunite Hole and release a new album, "Nobody's Daughter". In response, former Hole guitarist Eric Erlandson stated in "Spin" magazine that contractually no reunion could take place without his involvement; therefore "Nobody's Daughter" would remain Love's solo record, as opposed to a "Hole" record. Love responded to Erlandson's comments in a Twitter post, claiming "he's out of his mind, Hole is my band, my name, and my Trademark". "Nobody's Daughter" was released worldwide as a Hole album on April 27, 2010. For the new line-up, Love recruited guitarist Micko Larkin, Shawn Dailey (bass guitar), and Stu Fisher (drums, percussion). "Nobody's Daughter" featured material written and recorded for Love's unfinished solo album, "How Dirty Girls Get Clean", including "Pacific Coast Highway", "Letter to God", "Samantha", and "Never Go Hungry", although they were re-produced in the studio with Larkin and engineer Michael Beinhorn. The album's subject matter was largely centered on Love's tumultuous life between 2003 and 2007, and featured a polished folk rock sound, and more acoustic guitar work than previous Hole albums.


title: Courtney Love

text: The first single from "Nobody's Daughter" was "Skinny Little Bitch", released to promote the album in March 2010. The album received mixed reviews. Robert Sheffield of "Rolling Stone" gave the album three out of five, saying Love "worked hard on these songs, instead of just babbling a bunch of druggy bullshit and assuming people would buy it, the way she did on her 2004 flop, "America's Sweetheart"". Sal Cinquemani of "Slant Magazine" also gave the album three out of five: "It's Marianne Faithfull's substance-ravaged voice that comes to mind most often while listening to songs like 'Honey' and 'For Once in Your Life'. The latter track is, in fact, one of Love's most raw and vulnerable vocal performances to date ... the song offers a rare glimpse into the mind of a woman who, for the last 15 years, has been as famous for being a rock star as she's been for being a victim." Love and the band toured internationally from 2010 into late 2012 promoting the record, with their pre-release shows in London and at South by Southwest receiving critical acclaim. In 2011, Love participated in "Hit So Hard", a documentary chronicling bandmate Schemel's time in Hole.


title: Courtney Love

text: In May 2012, Love debuted an art collection at Fred Torres Collaborations in New York titled ""And She's Not Even Pretty"", which contained over 40 drawings and paintings by Love composed in ink, colored pencil, pastels, and watercolors. Later in the year, she collaborated with Michael Stipe on the track "Rio Grande" for Johnny Depp's sea shanty album "", and in 2013, co-wrote and contributed vocals on "Rat A Tat" from Fall Out Boy's album "Save Rock and Roll", also appearing in the song's music video.


title: Courtney Love

text: After dropping the Hole name and performing as a solo artist in late 2012, Love appeared in spring 2013 advertisements for Yves Saint Laurent alongside Kim Gordon and Ariel Pink. Love completed a solo tour of North America in mid-2013, which was purported to be in promotion of an upcoming solo album; however, it was ultimately dubbed a "greatest hits" tour, and featured songs from Love's and Hole's back catalogue. Love told "Billboard" at the time that she had recorded eight songs in the studio.


title: Courtney Love

text: Love was subject of a second landmark libel lawsuit brought against her in January 2014 by her former attorney Rhonda Holmes, who accused Love of online defamation, seeking $8 million in damages. It was the first case of alleged Twitter-based libel in U.S. history to make it to trial. The jury, however, found in Love's favor. A subsequent defamation lawsuit filed by fashion designer Simorangkir in February 2014, however, resulted in Love being ordered to pay a further $350,000 in recompense.


title: Courtney Love

text: On April 22, 2014, Love debuted the song "You Know My Name" on BBC Radio 6 to promote her tour of the United Kingdom. It was released as a double A-side single with the song "Wedding Day" on May 4, 2014, on her own label Cherry Forever Records via Kobalt Label Services. The tracks were produced by Michael Beinhorn, and feature Tommy Lee on drums. In an interview with the BBC, Love revealed that she and former Hole guitarist Eric Erlandson had reconciled, and had been rehearsing new material together, along with former bassist Melissa Auf der Maur and drummer Patty Schemel, though she did not confirm a reunion of the band. On May 1, 2014, in an interview with "Pitchfork", Love commented further on the possibility of Hole reuniting, saying:


title: Courtney Love

text: "I'm not going to commit to it happening, because we want an element of surprise. There's a lot of "i"s to be dotted and "t"s to be crossed."


title: Courtney Love

text: Love was cast in several television series in supporting parts throughout 2014, including the FX series "Sons of Anarchy", "Revenge", and Lee Daniels' network series "Empire" in a recurring guest role as Elle Dallas. The track "Walk Out on Me", featuring Love, was included on the "" album, which debuted at number 1 on the Billboard 200. Alexis Petridis of "The Guardian" praised the track, saying: "The idea of Courtney Love singing a ballad with a group of gospel singers seems faintly terrifying ... The reality is brilliant. Love's voice fits the careworn lyrics, effortlessly summoning the kind of ravaged darkness that Lana Del Rey nearly ruptures herself trying to conjure up."


title: Courtney Love

text: In January 2015, Love starred in a New York City stage production, "Kansas City Choir Boy", a "pop opera" conceived by and co-starring Todd Almond. Charles Isherwood of "The New York Times" praised her performance, noting a "soft-edged and bewitching" stage presence, and wrote: "Her voice, never the most supple or rangy of instruments, retains the singular sound that made her an electrifying front woman for the band Hole: a single sustained noted can seem to simultaneously contain a plea, a wound and a threat." The show toured later in the year, with performances in Boston and Los Angeles. In April 2015, the journalist Anthony Bozza sued Love, alleging a contractual violation regarding his co-writing of her memoir. Love performed as the opening act for Lana Del Rey on her Endless Summer Tour for eight West Coast shows in May and June 2015. During her tenure, Love debuted the single "Miss Narcissist", released on Wavves' independent label Ghost Ramp. She was also cast in a supporting role in James Franco's film "The Long Home", based on the novel by William Gay, her first film role in over ten years; as of 2022, it remains unreleased.


title: Courtney Love

text: In January 2016, Love released a clothing line in collaboration with Sophia Amoruso, "Love, Courtney", featuring 18 pieces reflecting her personal style. In November 2016, she began filming the pilot for "A Midsummer's Nightmare", a Shakespeare anthology series adapted for Lifetime. She starred as Kitty Menendez in "", a biopic television film based on the lives of Lyle and Erik Menendez, which premiered on Lifetime in June 2017.


title: Courtney Love

text: In October 2017, shortly after the Harvey Weinstein scandal made news, a 2005 video of Love warning young actresses about Weinstein went viral. In the footage, while on the red carpet for the "Comedy Central Roast of Pamela Anderson", Love was asked by Natasha Leggero if she had any advice for "a young girl moving to Hollywood"; she responded, "If Harvey Weinstein invites you to a private party in the Four Seasons [hotel], don't go." She later tweeted, "Although I wasn't one of his victims, I was eternally banned by [Creative Artists Agency] for speaking out."


title: Courtney Love

text: In the same year, Love was cast in Justin Kelly's biopic "JT LeRoy", portraying a film producer opposite Laura Dern. In March 2018, she appeared in the music video for Marilyn Manson's "Tattooed in Reverse", and in April she appeared as a guest judge on "RuPaul's Drag Race". In December, Love was awarded a restraining order against Sam Lutfi, who had acted as her manager for the previous six years, alleging verbal abuse and harassment. Her daughter, Frances, and sister, Jaimee, were also awarded restraining orders against Lutfi. In January 2019, a Los Angeles County judge extended the three-year order to five years, citing Lutfi's tendency to "prey upon people".


title: Courtney Love

text: On August 18, 2019, Love performed a solo set at the Yola Día festival in Los Angeles, which also featured performances by Cat Power and Lykke Li. On September 9, Love garnered press attention when she publicly criticized Joss Sackler, an heiress to the Sackler family OxyContin fortune, after she allegedly offered Love $100,000 to attend her fashion show during New York Fashion Week. In the same statement, Love indicated that she had relapsed into opioid addiction in 2018, stating that she had recently celebrated a year of sobriety. In October 2019, Love relocated from Los Angeles to London.


title: Courtney Love

text: On November 21, 2019, Love recorded the song "Mother", written and produced by Lawrence Rothman, as part of the soundtrack for the horror film "The Turning" (2020). In January 2020, she received the Icon Award at the "NME" Awards; "NME" described her as "one of the most influential singers in alternative culture of the last 30 years". The following month, she confirmed she was writing a new record which she described as "really sad ... [I'm] writing in minor chords, and that appeals to my sadness." In March 2021, Love said she had been hospitalized with acute anemia in August 2020, which had nearly killed her and reduced her weight to ; she made a full recovery.


title: Courtney Love

text: In August 2022, Love revealed the completion of her memoir, "The Girl with the Most Cake", after a nearly ten-year period of writing.


title: Courtney Love

text: Love has been candid about her diverse musical influences, the earliest being Patti Smith, The Runaways, and The Pretenders, artists she discovered while in juvenile hall as a young teenager. As a child, her first exposure to music was records that her parents received each month through Columbia Record Club. The first record Love owned was Leonard Cohen's "Songs of Leonard Cohen" (1967), which she obtained from her mother: "He was so lyric-conscious and morbid, and I was a pretty morbid kid", she recalled. As a teenager, she named Flipper, Kate Bush, Soft Cell, Joni Mitchell, Laura Nyro, Lou Reed, and Dead Kennedys among her favorite artists. While in Dublin at age fifteen, Love attended a Virgin Prunes concert, an event she credited as being a pivotal influence: "I had never seen so much sex, snarl, poetry, evil, restraint, grace, filth, raw power and the very essence of rock and roll", she recalled. "[I had seen] U2 [who] gave me lashes of love and inspiration, and a few nights later the Virgin Prunes fuckedmeup." Decades later, in 2009, Love introduced the band's frontman Gavin Friday at a Carnegie Hall event, and performed a song with him.


title: Courtney Love

text: Though often associated with punk music, Love has noted that her most significant musical influences have been post-punk and new wave artists. Commenting in 2021, Love said: Over the years, Love has also named several other new wave and post-punk bands as influences, including The Smiths, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Television, and Bauhaus.


title: Courtney Love

text: Love's diverse genre interests were illustrated in a 1991 interview with "Flipside", in which she stated: "There's a part of me that wants to have a grindcore band and another that wants to have a Raspberries-type pop band." Discussing the abrasive sound of Hole's debut album, she said she felt she had to "catch up with all my hip peers who'd gone all indie on me, and who made fun of me for liking R.E.M. and The Smiths." She has also embraced the influence of experimental artists and punk rock groups, including Sonic Youth, Swans, Big Black, Diamanda Galás, the Germs, and The Stooges. While writing "Celebrity Skin", she drew influence from Neil Young and My Bloody Valentine. She has also cited her contemporary PJ Harvey as an influence, saying: "The one rock star that makes me know I'm shit is Polly Harvey. I'm nothing next to the purity that she experiences."


title: Courtney Love

text: Literature and poetry have often been a major influence on her songwriting; Love said she had "always wanted to be a poet, but there was no money in it." She has named the works of T.S. Eliot and Charles Baudelaire as influential, and referenced works by Dante Rossetti, William Shakespeare, Rudyard Kipling, and Anne Sexton in her lyrics.


title: Courtney Love

text: Musically, Love's work with Hole and her solo efforts have been characterized as alternative rock; Hole's early material, however, was described by critics as being stylistically closer to grindcore and aggressive punk rock. "Spin"s October 1991 review of Hole's first album noted Love's layering of harsh and abrasive riffs buried more sophisticated musical arrangements. In 1998, she stated that Hole had "always been a pop band. We always had a subtext of pop. I always talked about it, if you go back ... what'll sound like some weird Sonic Youth tuning back then to you was sounding like the Raspberries to me, in my demented pop framework."


title: Courtney Love

text: Love's lyrical content is composed from a female's point of view, and her lyrics have been described as "literate and mordant" and noted by scholars for "articulating a third-wave feminist consciousness." Simon Reynolds, in reviewing Hole's debut album, noted: "Ms. Love's songs explore the full spectrum of female emotions, from vulnerability to rage. The songs are fueled by adolescent traumas, feelings of disgust about the body, passionate friendships with women and the desire to escape domesticity. Her lyrical style could be described as emotional nudism." Journalist and critic Kim France, in critiquing Love's lyrics, referred to her as a "dark genius" and likened her work to that of Anne Sexton.


title: Courtney Love

text: Love has remarked that lyrics have always been the most important component of songwriting for her: "The important thing for me ... is it has to look good on the page. I mean, you can love Led Zeppelin and not love their lyrics ... but I made a big effort in my career to have what's on the page mean something." Common themes present in Love's lyrics during her early career included body image, rape, suicide, conformity, pregnancy, prostitution, and death. In a 1991 interview with Everett True, she said: "I try to place [beautiful imagery] next to fucked up imagery, because that's how I view things ... I sometimes feel that no one's taken the time to write about certain things in rock, that there's a certain female point of view that's never been given space."


title: Courtney Love

text: Critics have noted that Love's later musical work is more lyrically introspective. "Celebrity Skin" and "America's Sweetheart" are lyrically centered on celebrity life, Hollywood, and drug addiction, while continuing Love's interest in vanity and body image. "Nobody's Daughter" was lyrically reflective of Love's past relationships and her struggle for sobriety, with the majority of its lyrics written while she was in rehab in 2006.


title: Courtney Love

text: Love has a contralto vocal range. According to Love, she never wanted to be a singer, but rather aspired to be a skilled guitarist: "I'm such a lazy bastard though that I never did that", she said. "I was always the only person with the nerve to sing, and so I got stuck with it." She has been regularly noted by critics for her husky vocals as well as her "banshee [-like]" screaming abilities. Her vocals have been compared to those of Johnny Rotten, and David Fricke of "Rolling Stone" described them as "lung-busting" and "a corrosive, lunatic wail". Upon the release of Hole's 2010 album, "Nobody's Daughter", Amanda Petrusich of "Pitchfork" compared Love's raspy, unpolished vocals to those of Bob Dylan.


title: Courtney Love

text: She has played a variety of Fender guitars throughout her career, including a Jaguar and a vintage 1965 Jazzmaster; the latter was purchased by the Hard Rock Cafe and is on display in New York City. Between 1989 and 1991, Love primarily played a Rickenbacker 425 because she "preferred the 3/4 neck", but she destroyed the guitar onstage at a 1991 concert opening for the Smashing Pumpkins. In the mid-1990s, she often played a guitar made by Mercury, an obscure company that manufactured custom guitars, as well as a Univox Hi-Flier. Fender's Vista Venus, designed by Love in 1998, was partially inspired by Rickenbacker guitars as well as her Mercury. During tours after the release of "Nobody's Daughter" (post-2010), Love has played a Rickenbacker 360 onstage. Her setup has included Fender tube gear, Matchless, Ampeg, Silvertone and a solid-state 1976 Randall Commander.


title: Courtney Love

text: Love has referred to herself as "a shit guitar player", further commenting in a 2014 interview: "I can still write a song, but [the guitar playing] sounds like shit ... I used to be a good rhythm player but I am no longer dependable." Throughout her career, she has also garnered a reputation for unpredictable live shows. In the 1990s, her performances with Hole were characterized by confrontational behavior, with Love stage diving, smashing guitars or throwing them into the audience, wandering into the crowd at the end of sets, and engaging in sometimes incoherent rants. Critics and journalists have noted Love for her comical, often stream-of-consciousness-like stage banter. Music journalist Robert Hilburn wrote in 1993 that, "rather than simply scripted patter, Love’s comments between songs [have] the natural feel of someone who is sharing her immediate feelings." In a review of a live performance published in 2010, it was noted that Love's onstage "one-liners [were] worthy of the Comedy Store."


title: Courtney Love

text: In 1993, Love and husband Kurt Cobain performed an acoustic set together at the Rock Against Rape benefit in Los Angeles, which raised awareness and provided resources for victims of sexual abuse. In 2000, Love publicly advocated for reform of the record industry in a personal letter published by "Salon". In the letter, Love said: "It's not piracy when kids swap music over the Internet using Napster or Gnutella or Freenet or iMesh or beaming their CDs into a My.MP3.com or MyPlay.com music locker. It's piracy when those guys that run those companies make side deals with the cartel lawyers and label heads so that they can be 'the label's' friend', and not the artists." In a subsequent interview with Carrie Fisher, she said that she was interested in starting a union for recording artists, and also discussed race relations in the music industry, advocating for record companies to "put money back into the black community [whom] white people have been stealing from for years."


title: Courtney Love

text: Love has been a long-standing supporter of LGBT causes. She has frequently collaborated with Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center, taking part in the center's "An Evening with Women" events. The proceeds of the event help provide food and shelter for homeless youth; services for seniors; legal assistance; domestic violence services; health and mental health services, and cultural arts programs. Love participated with Linda Perry for the event in 2012, and performed alongside Aimee Mann and comedian Wanda Sykes. Speaking on her collaboration on the event, Love said: "Seven thousand kids in Los Angeles a year go out on the street, and forty percent of those kids are gay, lesbian, or transgendered. They come out to their parents, and become homeless ... for whatever reason, I don't really know why, but gay men have a lot of foundations—I've played many of them—but the lesbian side of it doesn't have as much money and/or donors, so we're excited that this has grown to cover women and women's affairs."


title: Courtney Love

text: She has also contributed to AIDS organizations, partaking in benefits for amfAR and the RED Campaign. In May 2011, she donated six of her husband Cobain's personal vinyl records for auction at Mariska Hargitay's Joyful Heart Foundation event for victims of child abuse, rape, and domestic violence. She has also supported the Sophie Lancaster Foundation.


title: Courtney Love

text: Love has had an impact on female-fronted alternative acts and performers. She has been cited as influential on young female instrumentalists in particular, having once infamously proclaimed: "I want every girl in the world to pick up a guitar and start screaming ... I strap on that motherfucking guitar and you cannot fuck with me. That's my feeling." In "The Electric Guitar: A History of an American Icon", it is noted:


title: Courtney Love

text: With over 3 million records sold in the United States alone, Hole became one of the most successful rock bands of all time fronted by a woman. VH1 ranked Love 69 in their list of "The 100 Greatest Women in Music History" in 2012. In 2015, the "Phoenix New Times" declared Love the number one greatest female rock star of all time, writing: "To build a perfect rock star, there are several crucial ingredients: musical talent, physical attractiveness, tumultuous relationships, substance abuse, and public meltdowns, just to name a few. These days, Love seems to have rebounded from her epic tailspin and has leveled out in a slightly more normal manner, but there's no doubt that her life to date is the type of story people wouldn't believe in a novel or a movie."


title: Courtney Love

text: Among the alternative musicians who have cited Love as an influence are Scout Niblett; Brody Dalle of The Distillers; Dee Dee Penny of Dum Dum Girls; Victoria Legrand of Beach House; Annie Hardy of Giant Drag; and Nine Black Alps. Contemporary female pop artists Lana Del Rey, Avril Lavigne, Tove Lo, and Sky Ferreira have also cited Love as an influence. Love has frequently been recognized as the most high-profile contributor of feminist music during the 1990s, and for "subverting [the] mainstream expectations of how a woman should look, act, and sound." According to music journalist Maria Raha, "Hole was the highest-profile female-fronted band of the '90s to openly and directly sing about feminism." Patti Smith, a major influence of Love's, also praised her, saying: "I hate genderizing things ... [but] when I heard Hole, I was amazed to hear a girl sing like that. Janis Joplin was her own thing; she was into Big Mama Thornton and Bessie Smith. But what Courtney Love does, I'd never heard a girl do that."


title: Courtney Love

text: She has also been a gay icon since the mid-1990s, and has jokingly referred to her fanbase as consisting of "females, gay guys, and a few advanced, evolved heterosexual men." Love's aesthetic image, particularly in the early 1990s, also became influential, and was dubbed "kinderwhore" by critics and media. The subversive fashion mainly consisted of vintage babydoll dresses accompanied by smeared makeup and red lipstick. MTV reporter Kurt Loder described Love as looking like "a debauched rag doll" onstage. Love later said she had been influenced by the fashion of Chrissy Amphlett of the Divinyls. Interviewed in 1994, Love commented "I would like to think–in my heart of hearts–that I'm changing some psychosexual aspects of rock music. Not that I'm so desirable. I didn't do the kinder-whore thing because I thought I was so hot. When I see the look used to make one more appealing, it pisses me off. When I started, it was a "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?" thing. My angle was irony."


title: Schutzstaffel

text: The Schutzstaffel (SS; also stylized as "ᛋᛋ" with Armanen runes; ; "Protection Squadron") was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany, and later throughout German-occupied Europe during World War II.


title: Schutzstaffel

text: It began with a small guard unit known as the "Saal-Schutz" ("Hall Security") made up of party volunteers to provide security for party meetings in Munich. In 1925, Heinrich Himmler joined the unit, which had by then been reformed and given its final name. Under his direction (1929–1945) it grew from a small paramilitary formation during the Weimar Republic to one of the most powerful organizations in Nazi Germany. From the time of the Nazi Party's rise to power until the regime's collapse in 1945, the SS was the foremost agency of security, surveillance, and terror within Germany and German-occupied Europe.


title: Schutzstaffel

text: The two main constituent groups were the "Allgemeine SS" (General SS) and "Waffen-SS" (Armed SS). The "Allgemeine SS" was responsible for enforcing the racial policy of Nazi Germany and general policing, whereas the "Waffen-SS" consisted of the combat units of the SS, with a sworn allegiance to Hitler. A third component of the SS, the "SS-Totenkopfverbände" ("SS-TV"; "Death's Head Units"), ran the concentration camps and extermination camps. Additional subdivisions of the SS included the Gestapo and the "Sicherheitsdienst" (SD) organizations. They were tasked with the detection of actual or potential enemies of the Nazi state, the neutralization of any opposition, policing the German people for their commitment to Nazi ideology, and providing domestic and foreign intelligence.


title: Schutzstaffel

text: The SS was the organization most responsible for the genocidal murder of an estimated 5.5 to 6 million Jews and millions of other victims during the Holocaust. Members of all of its branches committed war crimes and crimes against humanity during World War II (1939–45). The SS was also involved in commercial enterprises and exploited concentration camp inmates as slave labor. After Nazi Germany's defeat, the SS and the Nazi Party were judged by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg to be criminal organizations. Ernst Kaltenbrunner, the highest-ranking surviving SS main department chief, was found guilty of crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg trials and hanged in 1946.


title: Schutzstaffel

text: By 1923, the Nazi Party led by Adolf Hitler had created a small volunteer guard unit known as the "Saal-Schutz" (Hall Security) to provide security at their meetings in Munich. The same year, Hitler ordered the formation of a small bodyguard unit dedicated to his personal service. He wished it to be separate from the "suspect mass" of the party, including the paramilitary "Sturmabteilung" ("Storm Battalion"; SA), which he did not trust. The new formation was designated the "Stabswache" (Staff Guard). Originally the unit was composed of eight men, commanded by Julius Schreck and Joseph Berchtold, and was modeled after the Erhardt Naval Brigade, a "Freikorps" of the time. The unit was renamed "Stoßtrupp" (Shock Troops) in May 1923.


title: Schutzstaffel

text: The "Stoßtrupp" was abolished after the failed 1923 Beer Hall Putsch, an attempt by the Nazi Party to seize power in Munich. In 1925, Hitler ordered Schreck to organize a new bodyguard unit, the "Schutzkommando" (Protection Command). It was tasked with providing personal protection for Hitler at party functions and events. That same year, the "Schutzkommando" was expanded to a national organization and renamed successively the "Sturmstaffel" (Storm Squadron), and finally the "Schutzstaffel" (Protection Squad; SS). Officially, the SS marked its foundation on 9 November 1925 (the second anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch). The new SS protected party leaders throughout Germany. Hitler's personal SS protection unit was later enlarged to include combat units.


title: Schutzstaffel

text: Schreck, a founding member of the SA and a close confidant of Hitler, became the first SS chief in March 1925. On 15 April 1926, Joseph Berchtold succeeded him as chief of the SS. Berchtold changed the title of the office to "Reichsführer-SS" (Reich Leader-SS). Berchtold was considered more dynamic than his predecessor but became increasingly frustrated by the authority the SA had over the SS. This led to him transferring leadership of the SS to his deputy, Erhard Heiden, on 1 March 1927. Under Heiden's leadership, a stricter code of discipline was enforced than would have been tolerated in the SA.


title: Schutzstaffel

text: Between 1925 and 1929, the SS was considered to be a small "Gruppe" (battalion) of the SA. Except in the Munich area, the SS was unable to maintain any momentum in its membership numbers, which declined from 1,000 to 280 as the SA continued its rapid growth. As Heiden attempted to keep the SS from dissolving, Heinrich Himmler became his deputy in September 1927. Himmler displayed good organizational abilities compared to Heiden. The SS established a number of "Gau"s (regions or provinces). The SS-Gaue consisted of "SS-Gau Berlin", "SS-Gau Berlin Brandenburg", "SS-Gau Franken", "SS-Gau Niederbayern", "SS-Gau Rheinland-Süd", and "SS-Gau Sachsen".


title: Schutzstaffel

text: With Hitler's approval, Himmler assumed the position of "Reichsführer-SS" in January 1929. There are differing accounts of the reason for Heiden's dismissal from his position as head of the SS. The party announced that it was for "family reasons." Under Himmler, the SS expanded and gained a larger foothold. He considered the SS an elite, ideologically driven National Socialist organization, a "conflation of Teutonic knights, the Jesuits, and Japanese Samurai". His ultimate aim was to turn the SS into the most powerful organization in Germany and the most influential branch of the party. He expanded the SS to 3,000 members in his first year as its leader.


title: Schutzstaffel

text: In 1929, the "SS-Hauptamt" (main SS office) was expanded and reorganized into five main offices dealing with general administration, personnel, finance, security, and race matters. At the same time, the SS-Gaue were divided into three "SS-Oberführerbereiche" areas, namely the "SS-Oberführerbereich Ost", "SS-Oberführerbereich West", and "SS-Oberführerbereich Süd". The lower levels of the SS remained largely unchanged. Although officially still considered a sub-organization of the SA and answerable to the "Stabschef" (SA Chief of Staff), it was also during this time that Himmler began to establish the independence of the SS from the SA. The SS grew in size and power due to its exclusive loyalty to Hitler, as opposed to the SA, which was seen as semi-independent and a threat to Hitler's hegemony over the party, mainly because they demanded a "second revolution" beyond the one that brought the Nazi Party to power. By the end of 1933, the membership of the SS reached 209,000. Under Himmler's leadership, the SS continued to gather greater power as more and more state and party functions were assigned to its jurisdiction. Over time the SS became answerable only to Hitler, a development typical of the organizational structure of the entire Nazi regime, where legal norms were replaced by actions undertaken under the "Führerprinzip" (leader principle), where Hitler's will was considered to be above the law.


title: Schutzstaffel

text: In the latter half of 1934, Himmler oversaw the creation of "SS-Junkerschule", institutions where SS officer candidates received leadership training, political and ideological indoctrination, and military instruction. The training stressed ruthlessness and toughness as part of the SS value system, which helped foster a sense of superiority among the men and taught them self-confidence. The first schools were established at Bad Tölz and Braunschweig, with additional schools opening at Klagenfurt and Prague during the war.


title: Schutzstaffel

text: The SS was regarded as the Nazi Party's elite unit. In keeping with the racial policy of Nazi Germany, in the early days all SS officer candidates had to provide proof of Aryan ancestry back to 1750 and for other ranks to 1800. Once the war started and it became more difficult to confirm ancestry, the regulation was amended to just proving the candidate's grandparents were Aryan, as spelled out in the Nuremberg Laws. Other requirements were complete obedience to the Führer and a commitment to the German people and nation. Himmler also tried to institute physical criteria based on appearance and height, but these requirements were only loosely enforced, and over half the SS men did not meet the criteria. Inducements such as higher salaries and larger homes were provided to members of the SS since they were expected to produce more children than the average German family as part of their commitment to Nazi Party doctrine.


title: Schutzstaffel

text: Commitment to SS ideology was emphasized throughout the recruitment, membership process, and training. Members of the SS were indoctrinated in the racial policy of Nazi Germany and were taught that it was necessary to remove from Germany people deemed by that policy as inferior. Esoteric rituals and the awarding of regalia and insignia for milestones in the SS man's career suffused SS members even further with Nazi ideology. Members were expected to renounce their Christian faith, and Christmas was replaced with a solstice celebration. Church weddings were replaced with SS "Ehewein", a pagan ceremony invented by Himmler. These pseudo-religious rites and ceremonies often took place near SS-dedicated monuments or in special SS-designated places. In 1933, Himmler bought Wewelsburg, a castle in Westphalia. He initially intended it to be used as an SS training center, but its role came to include hosting SS dinners and neo-pagan rituals.


title: Schutzstaffel

text: The SS ideology included the application of brutality and terror as a solution to military and political problems. The SS stressed total loyalty and obedience to orders unto death. Hitler used this as a powerful tool to further his aims and those of the Nazi Party. The SS was entrusted with the commission of atrocities, illegal activities, and war crimes. Himmler once wrote that an SS man "hesitates not for a single instant, but executes unquestioningly ..." any "Führer-Befehl" (Führer order). Their official motto was ""Meine Ehre heißt Treue"" (My Honour is Loyalty).


title: Schutzstaffel

text: As part of its race-centric functions during World War II, the SS oversaw the isolation and displacement of Jews from the populations of the conquered territories, seizing their assets and deporting them to concentration camps and ghettos, where they were used as slave labor or immediately killed. Chosen to implement the Final Solution ordered by Hitler, the SS were the main group responsible for the institutional murder and democide of more than 20 million people during the Holocaust, including approximately 5.2 million to 6 million Jews and 10.5 million Slavs. A significant number of victims were members of other racial or ethnic groups such as the 258,000 Romani. The SS was involved in murdering people viewed as threats to race hygiene or Nazi ideology, including the mentally or physically handicapped, homosexuals, and political dissidents. Members of trade unions and those perceived to be affiliated with groups that opposed the regime (religious, political, social, and otherwise), or those whose views were contradictory to the goals of the Nazi Party government, were rounded up in large numbers; these included clergy of all faiths, Jehovah's Witnesses, Freemasons, Communists, and Rotary Club members. According to the judgments rendered at the Nuremberg trials, as well as many war crimes investigations and trials conducted since then, the SS was responsible for the majority of Nazi war crimes. In particular, it was the primary organization that carried out the Holocaust.


title: Schutzstaffel

text: After Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power on 30 January 1933, the SS was considered a state organization and a branch of the government. Law enforcement gradually became the purview of the SS, and many SS organizations became de facto government agencies.


title: Schutzstaffel

text: The SS established a police state within Nazi Germany, using the secret state police and security forces under Himmler's control to suppress resistance to Hitler. In his role as Minister President of Prussia, Hermann Göring had in 1933 created a Prussian secret police force, the "Geheime Staatspolizei" or Gestapo, and appointed Rudolf Diels as its head. Concerned that Diels was not ruthless enough to use the Gestapo effectively to counteract the power of the SA, Göring handed over its control to Himmler on 20 April 1934. Also on that date, in a departure from long-standing German practice that law enforcement was a state and local matter, Hitler appointed Himmler chief of all German police outside Prussia. Himmler named his deputy and protégé Reinhard Heydrich chief of the Gestapo on 22 April 1934. Heydrich also continued as head of the "Sicherheitsdienst" (SD; security service).


title: Schutzstaffel

text: The Gestapo's transfer to Himmler was a prelude to the Night of the Long Knives, in which most of the SA leadership were arrested and subsequently executed. The SS and Gestapo carried out most of the murders. On 20 July 1934, Hitler detached the SS from the SA, which was no longer an influential force after the purge. The SS became an elite corps of the Nazi Party, answerable only to Hitler. Himmler's title of "Reichsführer-SS" now became his actual rank – and the highest rank in the SS, equivalent to the rank of field marshal in the army (his previous rank was "Obergruppenführer"). As Himmler's position and authority grew, so in effect did his rank.


title: Schutzstaffel

text: On 17 June 1936, all police forces throughout Germany were united under the purview of Himmler and the SS. Himmler and Heydrich thus became two of the most powerful men in the country's administration. Police and intelligence forces brought under their administrative control included the SD, Gestapo, "Kriminalpolizei" (Kripo; criminal investigative police), and "Ordnungspolizei" (Orpo; regular uniformed police). In his capacity as police chief, Himmler was nominally subordinate to Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick. In practice, since the SS answered only to Hitler, the de facto merger of the SS and the police made the police independent of Frick's control. In September 1939, the security and police agencies, including the "Sicherheitspolizei" (SiPo; security police) and SD (but not the Orpo), were consolidated into the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), headed by Heydrich. This further increased the collective authority of the SS.


title: Schutzstaffel

text: During "Kristallnacht" (9–10 November 1938), SS security services clandestinely coordinated violence against Jews as the SS, Gestapo, SD, Kripo, SiPo, and regular police did what they could to ensure that while Jewish synagogues and community centers were destroyed, Jewish-owned businesses and housing remained intact so that they could later be seized. In the end, thousands of Jewish businesses, homes, and graveyards were vandalized and looted, particularly by members of the SA. Some 500 to 1,000 synagogues were destroyed, mostly by arson. On 11 November, Heydrich reported a death toll of 36 people, but later assessments put the number of deaths at up to two thousand. On Hitler's orders, around 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps by 16 November. As many as 2,500 of these people died in the following months. It was at this point that the SS state began in earnest its campaign of terror against political and religious opponents, who they imprisoned without trial or judicial oversight for the sake of "security, re-education, or prevention".


title: Schutzstaffel

text: In September 1939, the authority of the SS expanded further when the senior SS officer in each military district also became its chief of police. Most of these SS and police leaders held the rank of SS-"Gruppenführer" or above and answered directly to Himmler in all SS matters within their district. Their role was to police the population and oversee the activities of the SS men within their district. By declaring an emergency, they could bypass the district administrative offices for the SS, SD, SiPo, "SS-Totenkopfverbände" (SS-TV; concentration camp guards), and Orpo, thereby gaining direct operational control of these groups.


title: Schutzstaffel

text: As the SS grew in size and importance, so too did Hitler's personal protection forces. Three main SS groups were assigned to protect Hitler. In 1933, his larger personal bodyguard unit (previously the 1st SS-Standarte) was called to Berlin to replace the Army Chancellery Guard, assigned to protect the Chancellor of Germany. Sepp Dietrich commanded the new unit, previously known as SS-Stabswache Berlin; the name was changed to "SS-Sonderkommando Berlin". In November 1933, the name was changed to "Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler". In April 1934, Himmler modified the name to "Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler" (LSSAH). The LSSAH guarded Hitler's private residences and offices, providing an outer ring of protection for the Führer and his visitors. LSSAH men manned sentry posts at the entrances to the old Reich Chancellery and the new Reich Chancellery. The number of LSSAH guards was increased during special events. At the Berghof, Hitler's residence in the Obersalzberg, a large contingent of the LSSAH patrolled an extensive cordoned security zone.


title: Schutzstaffel

text: From 1941 forward, the "Leibstandarte" became four distinct entities, the Waffen-SS division (unconnected to Hitler's protection but a formation of the Waffen-SS), the Berlin Chancellory Guard, the SS security regiment assigned to the Obersalzberg, and a Munich-based bodyguard unit which protected Hitler when he visited his apartment and the Brown House Nazi Party headquarters in Munich. Although the unit was nominally under Himmler, Dietrich was the real commander and handled day-to-day administration.


title: Schutzstaffel

text: Two other SS units composed the inner ring of Hitler's protection. The "SS-Begleitkommando des Führers" (Escort Command of the Führer), formed in February 1932, served as Hitler's protection escort while he was traveling. This unit consisted of eight men who served around the clock protecting Hitler in shifts. Later the "SS-Begleitkommando" was expanded and became known as the "Führerbegleitkommando" (Führer Escort Command; FBK). It continued under separate command and remained responsible for Hitler's protection. The "Führer Schutzkommando" (Führer Protection Command; FSK) was a protection unit founded by Himmler in March 1933. Originally it was charged with protecting Hitler only while he was inside the borders of Bavaria. In early 1934, they replaced the "SS-Begleitkommando" for Hitler's protection throughout Germany. The FSK was renamed the "Reichssicherheitsdienst" (Reich Security Service; RSD) in August 1935. Johann Rattenhuber, chief of the RSD, for the most part, took his orders directly from Hitler. The current FBK chief acted as his deputy. Wherever Hitler was in residence, members of the RSD and FBK would be present. RSD men patrolled the grounds and FBK men provided close security protection inside. The RSD and FBK worked together for security and personal protection during Hitler's trips and public events, but they operated as two groups and used separate vehicles. By March 1938, both units wore the standard field grey uniform of the SS. The RSD uniform had the SD diamond on the lower left sleeve.


title: Schutzstaffel

text: The SS was closely associated with Nazi Germany's concentration camp system. On 26 June 1933, Himmler appointed SS-"Oberführer" Theodor Eicke as commandant of Dachau concentration camp, one of the first Nazi concentration camps. It was created to consolidate the many small camps that had been set up by various police agencies and the Nazi Party to house political prisoners. The organizational structure Eicke instituted at Dachau stood as the model for all later concentration camps. After 1934, Eicke was named commander of the "SS-Totenkopfverbände" (SS-TV), the SS formation responsible for running the concentration camps under the authority of the SS and Himmler. Known as the "Death's Head Units", the SS-TV was first organized as several battalions, each based at one of Germany's major concentration camps. Leadership at the camps was divided into five departments: commander and adjutant, political affairs division, protective custody, administration, and medical personnel. By 1935, Himmler secured Hitler's approval and the finances necessary to establish and operate additional camps. Six concentration camps housing 21,400 inmates (mostly political prisoners) existed at the start of the war in September 1939. By the end of the war, hundreds of camps of varying size and function had been created, holding nearly 715,000 people, most of whom were targeted by the regime because of their race. The concentration camp population rose in tandem with the defeats suffered by the Nazi regime; the worse the catastrophe seemed, the greater the fear of subversion, prompting the SS to intensify their repression and terror.


title: Schutzstaffel

text: By the outbreak of World War II, the SS had consolidated into its final form, which comprised three main organizations: the "Allgemeine SS", "SS-Totenkopfverbände", and the Waffen-SS, which was founded in 1934 as the "SS-Verfügungstruppe" (SS-VT) and renamed in 1940. The Waffen-SS evolved into a second German army alongside the Wehrmacht and operated in tandem with them, especially with the "Heer" (German Army). However, it never obtained total "independence of command", nor was it ever a "serious rival" to the German Army. Members were never able to join the ranks of the German High Command and it was dependent on the army for heavy weaponry and equipment. Although SS ranks generally had equivalents in the other services, the SS rank system did not copy the terms and ranks used by the Wehrmacht's branches. Instead, it used the ranks established by the post-World War I "Freikorps" and the SA. This was primarily done to emphasize the SS as being independent of the Wehrmacht.


title: Schutzstaffel

text: In the September 1939 invasion of Poland, the LSSAH and SS-VT fought as separate mobile infantry regiments. The LSSAH became notorious for torching villages without military justification. Members of the LSSAH committed atrocities in numerous towns, including the murder of 50 Polish Jews in Błonie and the massacre of 200 civilians, including children, who were machine-gunned in Złoczew. Shootings also took place in Bolesławiec, Torzeniec, Goworowo, Mława, and Włocławek. Some senior members of the Wehrmacht were not convinced the units were fully prepared for combat. Its units took unnecessary risks and had a higher casualty rate than the army. "Generaloberst" Fedor von Bock was quite critical; following an April 1940 visit of the "SS-Totenkopf" division, he found their battle training was "insufficient". Hitler thought the criticism was typical of the army's "outmoded conception of chivalry." In its defense, the SS insisted that its armed formations had been hampered by having to fight piecemeal and were improperly equipped by the army.


title: Schutzstaffel

text: After the invasion, Hitler entrusted the SS with extermination actions codenamed Operation Tannenberg and AB-Aktion to remove potential leaders who could form a resistance to German occupation. The murders were committed by "Einsatzgruppen" (task forces; deployment groups), assisted by local paramilitary groups. Men for the "Einsatzgruppen" units were drawn from the SS, the SD, and the police. Some 65,000 Polish civilians, including activists, intelligentsia, scholars, teachers, actors, former officers, and others, were killed by the end of 1939. When the army leadership registered complaints about the brutality being meted out by the "Einsatzgruppen", Heydrich informed them that he was acting "in accordance with the special order of the Führer." The first systematic mass shooting of Jews by the "Einsatzgruppen" took place on 6 September 1939 during the attack on Kraków.


title: Schutzstaffel

text: Satisfied with their performance in Poland, Hitler allowed further expansion of the armed SS formations but insisted new units remain under the operational control of the army. While the "SS-Leibstandarte" remained an independent regiment functioning as Hitler's personal bodyguards, the other regiments—"SS-Deutschland", "SS-Germania," and "SS-Der Führer"—were combined to form the "SS-Verfügungs-Division". A second SS division, the "SS-Totenkopf", was formed from SS-TV concentration camp guards, and a third, the "SS-Polizei", was created from police volunteers. The SS gained control over its own recruitment, logistics, and supply systems for its armed formations at this time. The SS, Gestapo, and SD were in charge of the provisional military administration in Poland until the appointment of Hans Frank as Governor-General on 26 October 1939.


title: Schutzstaffel

text: On 10 May 1940, Hitler launched the Battle of France, a major offensive against France and the Low Countries. The SS supplied two of the 89 divisions employed. The LSSAH and elements of the SS-VT participated in the ground invasion of the Battle of the Netherlands. Simultaneously, airborne troops were dropped to capture key Dutch airfields, bridges, and railways. In the five-day campaign, the LSSAH linked up with army units and airborne troops after several clashes with Dutch defenders.


title: Schutzstaffel

text: SS troops did not take part in the thrust through the Ardennes and the river Meuse. Instead, the "SS-Totenkopf" was summoned from the army reserve to fight in support of "Generalmajor" Erwin Rommel's 7th Panzer Division as they advanced toward the English Channel. On 21 May, the British launched an armored counterattack against the flanks of the 7th Panzer Division and "SS-Totenkopf". The Germans then trapped the British and French troops in a huge pocket at Dunkirk. On 27 May, 4 Company, "SS-Totenkopf" perpetrated the Le Paradis massacre, where 97 men of the 2nd Battalion, Royal Norfolk Regiment were machine-gunned after surrendering, with survivors finished off with bayonets. Two men survived. By 28 May the "SS-Leibstandarte" had taken Wormhout, from Dunkirk. There, soldiers of the 2nd Battalion were responsible for the Wormhoudt massacre, where 80 British and French soldiers were murdered after they surrendered. According to historian Charles Sydnor, the "fanatical recklessness in the assault, suicidal defense against enemy attacks, and savage atrocities committed in the face of frustrated objectives" exhibited by the "SS-Totenkopf" division during the invasion were typical of the SS troops as a whole.


title: Schutzstaffel

text: At the close of the campaign, Hitler expressed his pleasure with the performance of the "SS-Leibstandarte", telling them: "Henceforth it will be an honor for you, who bear my name, to lead every German attack." The SS-VT was renamed the Waffen-SS in a speech made by Hitler in July 1940. Hitler then authorized the enlistment of "people perceived to be of related stock", as Himmler put it, to expand the ranks. Danes, Dutch, Norwegians, Swedes, and Finns volunteered to fight in the Waffen-SS under the command of German officers. They were brought together to form the new division "SS-Wiking". In January 1941, the "SS-Verfügungs" Division was renamed "SS-Reich" Division (Motorized), and was renamed as the "2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich" when it was reorganized as a "Panzergrenadier" division in 1942.


title: Schutzstaffel

text: In April 1941, the German Army invaded Yugoslavia and Greece. The LSSAH and "Das Reich" were attached to separate army Panzer corps. Fritz Klingenberg, a company commander in the "Das Reich", led his men across Yugoslavia to the capital, Belgrade, where a small group in the vanguard accepted the surrender of the city on 13 April. A few days later Yugoslavia surrendered. SS police units immediately began taking hostages and carrying out reprisals, a practice that became common. In some cases, they were joined by the Wehrmacht. Similar to Poland, the war policies of the Nazis in the Balkans resulted in brutal occupation and racist mass murder. Serbia became the second country (after Estonia) declared "Judenfrei" (free of Jews).


title: Schutzstaffel

text: In Greece, the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS encountered resistance from the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and Greek Army. The fighting was intensified by the mountainous terrain, with its heavily defended narrow passes. The LSSAH was at the forefront of the German push. The BEF evacuated by sea to Crete, but had to flee again in late May when the Germans arrived. Like Yugoslavia, the conquest of Greece brought its Jews into danger, as the Nazis immediately took a variety of measures against them. Initially confined in ghettos, most were transported to Auschwitz concentration camp in March 1943, where they were killed in the gas chambers on arrival. Of Greece's 80,000 Jews, only 20 percent survived the war.


title: Schutzstaffel

text: On 22 June 1941, Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. The expanding war and the need to control occupied territories provided the conditions for Himmler to further consolidate the police and military organs of the SS. Rapid acquisition of vast territories in the East placed considerable strain on the SS police organizations as they struggled to adjust to the changing security challenges.


title: Schutzstaffel

text: The 1st and 2nd SS Infantry Brigades, which had been formed from surplus concentration camp guards of the SS-TV, and the SS Cavalry Brigade moved into the Soviet Union behind the advancing armies. At first, they fought Soviet partisans, but by the autumn of 1941, they left the anti-partisan role to other units and actively took part in the Holocaust. While assisting the "Einsatzgruppen", they formed firing parties that participated in the liquidation of the Jewish population of the Soviet Union.


title: Schutzstaffel

text: On 31 July 1941, Göring gave Heydrich written authorization to ensure the cooperation of administrative leaders of various government departments to undertake genocide of the Jews in territories under German control. Heydrich was instrumental in carrying out these exterminations, as the Gestapo was ready to organize deportations in the West and his "Einsatzgruppen" were already conducting extensive murder operations in the East. On 20 January 1942, Heydrich chaired a meeting, called the Wannsee Conference, to discuss the implementation of the plan.


title: Schutzstaffel

text: During battles in the Soviet Union in 1941 and 1942, the Waffen-SS suffered enormous casualties. The LSSAH and "Das Reich" lost over half their troops to illness and combat casualties. In need of recruits, Himmler began to accept soldiers that did not fit the original SS racial profile. In early 1942, "SS-Leibstandarte", "SS-Totenkopf", and "SS-Das Reich" were withdrawn to the West to refit and were converted to "Panzergrenadier" divisions. The SS-Panzer Corps returned to the Soviet Union in 1943 and participated in the Third Battle of Kharkov in February and March.


title: Schutzstaffel

text: The SS was built on a culture of violence, which was exhibited in its most extreme form by the mass murder of civilians and prisoners of war on the Eastern Front. Augmented by personnel from the Kripo, Orpo (Order Police), and Waffen-SS, the "Einsatzgruppen" reached a total strength of 3,000 men. "Einsatzgruppen" A, B, and C were attached to Army Groups North, Centre, and South; "Einsatzgruppe" D was assigned to the 11th Army. The "Einsatzgruppe" for Special Purposes operated in eastern Poland starting in July 1941. The historian Richard Rhodes describes them as being "outside the bounds of morality"; they were "judge, jury and executioner all in one", with the authority to kill anyone at their discretion. Following Operation Barbarossa, these "Einsatzgruppen" units, together with the Waffen-SS and Order Police as well as with assistance from the Wehrmacht, engaged in the mass murder of the Jewish population in occupied eastern Poland and the Soviet Union. The greatest extent of "Einsatzgruppen" action occurred in 1941 and 1942 in Ukraine and Russia. Before the invasion there were five million registered Jews throughout the Soviet Union, with three million of those residing in the territories occupied by the Germans; by the time the war ended, over two million of these had been murdered.


title: Schutzstaffel

text: The extermination activities of the "Einsatzgruppen" generally followed a standard procedure, with the "Einsatzgruppen" chief contacting the nearest Wehrmacht unit commander to inform him of the impending action; this was done so they could coordinate and control access to the execution grounds. Initially, the victims were shot, but this method proved impracticable for an operation of this scale. Also, after Himmler observed the shooting of 100 Jews at Minsk in August 1941, he grew concerned about the impact such actions were having on the mental health of his SS men. He decided that alternate methods of murder should be found, which led to the introduction of gas vans. However, these were not popular with the men, because removing the dead bodies from the van and burying them was a horrible ordeal. Prisoners or auxiliaries were often assigned to do this task so as to spare the SS men the trauma.


title: Schutzstaffel

text: In response to the army's difficulties in dealing with Soviet partisans, Hitler decided in July 1942 to transfer anti-partisan operations to the police. This placed the matter under Himmler's purview. As Hitler had ordered on 8 July 1941 that all Jews were to be regarded as partisans, the term "anti-partisan operations" was used as a euphemism for the murder of Jews as well as actual combat against resistance elements. In July 1942 Himmler ordered that the term "partisan" should no longer be used; instead resisters to Nazi rule would be described as "bandits".


title: Schutzstaffel

text: Himmler set the SS and SD to work on developing additional anti-partisan tactics and launched a propaganda campaign. Sometime in June 1943, Himmler issued the "Bandenbekämpfung" (bandit fighting) order, simultaneously announcing the existence of the "Bandenkampfverbände" (bandit fighting formations), with SS-"Obergruppenführer" Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski as its chief. Employing troops primarily from the SS police and Waffen-SS, the "Bandenkampfverbände" had four principal operational components: propaganda, centralized control and coordination of security operations, training of troops, and battle operations. Once the Wehrmacht had secured territorial objectives, the "Bandenkampfverbände" first secured communications facilities, roads, railways, and waterways. Thereafter, they secured rural communities and economic installations such as factories and administrative buildings. An additional priority was securing agricultural and forestry resources. The SS oversaw the collection of the harvest, which was deemed critical to strategic operations. Any Jews in the area were rounded up and killed. Communists and people of Asiatic descent were killed presumptively under the assumption that they were Soviet agents.


title: Schutzstaffel

text: After the start of the war, Himmler intensified the activity of the SS within Germany and in Nazi-occupied Europe. Increasing numbers of Jews and German citizens deemed politically suspect or social outsiders were arrested. As the Nazi regime became more oppressive, the concentration camp system grew in size and lethal operation, and grew in scope as the economic ambitions of the SS intensified.


title: Schutzstaffel

text: Intensification of the killing operations took place in late 1941 when the SS began construction of stationary gassing facilities to replace the use of "Einsatzgruppen" for mass murders. Victims at these new extermination camps were killed with the use of carbon monoxide gas from automobile engines. During Operation Reinhard, run by officers from the "Totenkopfverbände", who were sworn to secrecy, three extermination camps were built in occupied Poland: Bełżec (operational by March 1942), Sobibór (operational by May 1942), and Treblinka (operational by July 1942), with squads of Trawniki men (Eastern European collaborators) overseeing hundreds of "Sonderkommando" prisoners, who were forced to work in the gas chambers and crematoria before being murdered themselves. On Himmler's orders, by early 1942 the concentration camp at Auschwitz was greatly expanded to include the addition of gas chambers, where victims were killed using the pesticide Zyklon B.


title: Schutzstaffel

text: For administrative reasons, all concentration camp guards and administrative staff became full members of the Waffen-SS in 1942. The concentration camps were placed under the command of the "SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt" (SS Main Economic and Administrative Office; WVHA) under Oswald Pohl. Richard Glücks served as the Inspector of Concentration Camps, which in 1942 became office "D" under the WVHA. Exploitation and extermination became a balancing act as the military situation deteriorated. The labor needs of the war economy, especially for skilled workers, meant that some Jews escaped the genocide. On 30 October 1942, due to severe labor shortages in Germany, Himmler ordered that large numbers of able-bodied people in Nazi-occupied Soviet territories be taken prisoner and sent to Germany as forced labor.


title: Schutzstaffel

text: By 1944, the SS-TV had been organized into three divisions: staff of the concentration camps in Germany and Austria, in the occupied territories, and of the extermination camps in Poland. By 1944, it became standard practice to rotate SS members in and out of the camps, partly based on manpower needs, but also to provide easier assignments to wounded Waffen-SS members. This rotation of personnel meant that nearly the entire SS knew what was going on inside the concentration camps, making the entire organization liable for war crimes and crimes against humanity.


title: Schutzstaffel

text: In 1934, Himmler founded the first SS business venture, Nordland-Verlag, a publishing house that released propaganda material and SS training manuals. Thereafter, he purchased Allach Porcelain, which then began to produce SS memorabilia. Because of the labor shortage and a desire for financial gain, the SS started exploiting concentration camp inmates as slave labor. Most of the SS businesses lost money until Himmler placed them under the administration of Pohl's "Verwaltung und Wirtschaftshauptamt Hauptamt" (Administration and Business office; VuWHA) in 1939. Even then, most of the enterprises were poorly run and did not fare well, as SS men were not selected for their business experience, and the workers were starving. In July 1940 Pohl established the "Deutsche Wirtschaftsbetriebe GmbH" (German Businesses Ltd; DWB), an umbrella corporation under which he took over administration of all SS business concerns. Eventually, the SS founded nearly 200 holding companies for their businesses.


title: Schutzstaffel

text: In May 1941 the VuWHA founded the "Deutsche Ausrüstungswerke" GmbH (German Equipment Works; DAW), which was created to integrate the SS business enterprises with the burgeoning concentration camp system. Himmler subsequently established four major new concentration camps in 1941: Auschwitz, Gross-Rosen, Natzweiler-Struthof, and Neuengamme. Each had at least one factory or quarry nearby where the inmates were forced to work. Himmler took a particular interest in providing laborers for IG Farben, which was constructing a synthetic rubber factory at Auschwitz III–Monowitz. The plant was almost ready to commence production when it was overrun by Soviet troops in 1945. The life expectancy of inmates at Monowitz averaged about three months. This was typical of the camps, as inmates were underfed and lived under disastrously bad living conditions. Their workload was intentionally made impossibly high, under the policy of extermination through labor.


title: Schutzstaffel

text: In 1942, Himmler consolidated all of the offices for which Pohl was responsible into one, creating the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office ("Wirtschafts- und Verwaltungshauptamt"; WVHA). The entire concentration camp system was placed under the authority of the WVHA. The SS owned Sudetenquell GmbH, a mineral water producer in Sudetenland. By 1944, the SS had purchased 75 percent of the mineral water producers in Germany and were intending to acquire a monopoly. Several concentration camps produced building materials such as stone, bricks, and cement for the SS-owned "Deutsche Erd- und Steinwerke" (German Earth And Stone Works; DEST). In the occupied Eastern territories, the SS acquired a monopoly in brick production by seizing all 300 extant brickworks. The DWB also founded the "Ost-Deutsche Baustoffwerke" (East German Building Supply Works; GmbH or ODBS) and "Deutsche Edelmöbel" GmbH (German Noble Furniture). These operated in factories the SS had confiscated from Jews and Poles.


title: Schutzstaffel

text: The SS owned experimental farms, bakeries, meat packing plants, leather works, clothing and uniform factories, and small arms factories. Under the direction of the WVHA, the SS sold camp labor to various factories at a rate of three to six "Reichsmarks" per prisoner per day. The SS confiscated and sold the property of concentration camp inmates, confiscated their investment portfolios and their cash, and profited from their dead bodies by selling their hair to make felt and melting down their dental work to obtain gold from the fillings. The total value of assets looted from the victims of Operation Reinhard alone (not including Auschwitz) was listed by Odilo Globocnik as 178,745,960.59 Reichsmarks. Items seized included of gold worth 843,802.75 RM, as well as of silver, of platinum, 249,771.50 American dollars, 130 diamond solitaires, 2,511.87 carats of brilliants, 13,458.62 carats of diamonds, and 114 kg of pearls. According to Nazi legislation, Jewish property belonged to the state, but many SS camp commandants and guards stole items such as diamonds or currency for personal gain or took seized foodstuffs and liquor to sell on the black market.


title: Schutzstaffel

text: On 5 July 1943, the Germans launched the Battle of Kursk, an offensive designed to eliminate the Kursk salient. The Waffen-SS by this time had been expanded to 12 divisions, and most took part in the battle. Due to stiff Soviet resistance, Hitler halted the attack by the evening of 12 July. On 17 July he called off the operation and ordered a withdrawal. Thereafter, the Germans were forced onto the defensive as the Red Army began the liberation of Western Russia. The losses incurred by the Waffen-SS and the Wehrmacht during the Battle of Kursk occurred nearly simultaneously with the Allied assault into Italy, opening a two-front war for Germany.


title: Schutzstaffel

text: Alarmed by the raids on St Nazaire and Dieppe in 1942, Hitler had ordered the construction of fortifications he called the Atlantic Wall all along the Atlantic coast, from Spain to Norway, to protect against an expected Allied invasion. Concrete gun emplacements were constructed at strategic points along the coast, and wooden stakes, metal tripods, mines, and large anti-tank obstacles were placed on the beaches to delay the approach of landing craft and impede the movement of tanks. In addition to several static infantry divisions, eleven panzer and "Panzergrenadier" divisions were deployed nearby. Four of these formations were Waffen-SS divisions. In addition, the "SS-Das Reich" was located in Southern France, the LSSAH was in Belgium refitting after fighting in the Soviet Union, and the newly formed panzer division "SS-Hitlerjugend", consisting of 17- and 18-year-old Hitler Youth members supported by combat veterans and experienced NCOs, was stationed west of Paris. The creation of the "SS-Hitlerjugend" was a sign of Hitler's desperation for more troops, especially ones with unquestioning obedience.


title: Schutzstaffel

text: The Normandy landings took place beginning on 6 June 1944. 21st Panzer Division under "Generalmajor" Edgar Feuchtinger, positioned south of Caen, was the only panzer division close to the beaches. The division included 146 tanks and 50 assault guns, plus supporting infantry and artillery. At 02:00, "Generalleutnant" Wilhelm Richter, commander of the 716th Static Infantry Division, ordered 21st Panzer Division into position to counter-attack. However, as the division was part of the armored reserve, Feuchtinger was obliged to seek clearance from OKW before he could commit his formation. Feuchtinger did not receive orders until nearly 09:00, but in the meantime, on his own initiative he put together a battle group (including tanks) to fight the British forces east of the Orne. "SS-Hitlerjugend" began to deploy in the afternoon of 6 June, with its units undertaking defensive actions the following day. They also took part in the Battle for Caen (June–August 1944). On 7–8 and 17 June, members of the "SS-Hitlerjugend" shot and killed twenty Canadian prisoners of war in the Ardenne Abbey massacre.


title: Schutzstaffel

text: The Allies continued to make progress in the liberation of France, and on 4 August Hitler ordered a counter-offensive (Operation Lüttich) from Vire towards Avranches. The operation included LSSAH, "Das Reich", 2nd, and 116th Panzer Divisions, with support from infantry and elements of the 17th SS Panzergrenadier Division "Götz von Berlichingen" under SS-"Oberstgruppenführer" Paul Hausser. These forces were to mount an offensive near Mortain and drive west through Avranches to the coast. The Allied forces were prepared for this offensive, and an air assault on the combined German units proved devastating. On 21 August, 50,000 German troops, including most of the LSSAH, were encircled by the Allies in the Falaise Pocket. Remnants of the LSSAH which escaped were withdrawn to Germany for refitting. Paris was liberated on 25 August, and the last of the German forces withdrew over the Seine by the end of August, ending the Normandy campaign.


title: Schutzstaffel

text: Waffen-SS units that had survived the summer campaigns were withdrawn from the front line to refit. Two of them, the 9th SS and 10th SS Panzer Divisions, did so in the Arnhem region of Holland in early September 1944. Coincidentally, on 17 September, the Allies launched in the same area Operation Market Garden, a combined airborne and land operation designed to seize control of the lower Rhine. The 9th and 10th Panzers were among the units that repulsed the attack.


title: Schutzstaffel

text: In December 1944, Hitler launched the Ardennes Offensive, also known as the Battle of the Bulge, a significant counterattack against the western Allies through the Ardennes with the aim of reaching Antwerp while encircling the Allied armies in the area. The offensive began with an artillery barrage shortly before dawn on 16 December. Spearheading the attack were two panzer armies composed largely of Waffen-SS divisions. The battlegroups found advancing through the forests and wooded hills of the Ardennes difficult in the winter weather, but they initially made good progress in the northern sector. They soon encountered strong resistance from the US 2nd and 99th Infantry Divisions. By 23 December, the weather improved enough for Allied air forces to attack the German forces and their supply columns, causing fuel shortages. In increasingly difficult conditions, the German advance slowed and was stopped. Hitler's failed offensive cost 700 tanks and most of their remaining mobile forces in the west, as well as most of their irreplaceable reserves of manpower and materiel.


title: Schutzstaffel

text: During the battle, SS-"Obersturmbannführer" Joachim Peiper left a path of destruction, which included Waffen-SS soldiers under his command murdering American POWs and unarmed Belgian civilians in the Malmedy massacre. Captured SS soldiers who were part of "Kampfgruppe Peiper" were tried during the Malmedy massacre trial following the war for this massacre and several others in the area. Many of the perpetrators were sentenced to hang, but the sentences were commuted. Peiper was imprisoned for eleven years for his role in the murders.


title: Schutzstaffel

text: In the east, the Red Army resumed its offensive on 12 January 1945. German forces were outnumbered twenty to one in aircraft, eleven to one in infantry, and seven to one in tanks on the Eastern Front. By the end of the month, the Red Army had made bridgeheads across the Oder, the last geographic obstacle before Berlin. The western Allies continued to advance as well, but not as rapidly as the Red Army. The Panzer Corps conducted a successful defensive operation on 17–24 February at the Hron River, stalling the Allied advance towards Vienna. The 1st and 2nd SS Panzer Corps made their way towards Austria but were slowed by damaged railways.


title: Schutzstaffel

text: Budapest fell on 13 February. Hitler ordered Dietrich's 6th Panzer Army to move into Hungary to protect the Nagykanizsa oilfields and refineries, which he deemed the most strategically valuable fuel reserves on the Eastern Front. "Frühlingserwachsen" (Operation Spring Awakening), the final German offensive in the east, took place in early March. German forces attacked near Lake Balaton, with 6th Panzer Army advancing north towards Budapest and 2nd Panzer Army moving east and south. Dietrich's forces at first made good progress, but as they drew near the Danube, the combination of muddy terrain and strong Soviet resistance brought them to a halt. By 16 March the battle was lost. Enraged by the defeat, Hitler ordered the Waffen-SS units involved to remove their cuff titles as a mark of disgrace. Dietrich refused to carry out the order.


title: Schutzstaffel

text: By this time, on both the Eastern and Western Front, the activities of the SS were becoming clear to the Allies, as the concentration and extermination camps were being overrun. Allied troops were filled with disbelief and repugnance at the evidence of Nazi brutality in the camps.


title: Schutzstaffel

text: On 9 April 1945 Königsberg fell to the Red Army, and on 13 April Dietrich's SS unit was forced out of Vienna. The Battle of Berlin began at 03:30 on 16 April with a massive artillery barrage. Within the week, fighting was taking place inside the city. Among the many elements defending Berlin were French, Latvian, and Scandinavian Waffen-SS troops. Hitler, now living in the "Führerbunker" under the Reich Chancellery, still hoped that his remaining SS soldiers could rescue the capital. In spite of the hopelessness of the situation, members of the SS patrolling the city continued to shoot or hang soldiers and civilians for what they considered to be acts of cowardice or defeatism. The Berlin garrison surrendered on 2 May, two days after Hitler committed suicide. As members of SS expected little mercy from the Red Army, they attempted to move westward to surrender to the western Allies instead.


title: Schutzstaffel

text: Heydrich held the title of "Chef der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD" (Chief of the Security Police and SD) until 27 September 1939, when he became chief of the newly established Reich Security Main Office (RSHA). From that point forward, the RSHA was in charge of SS security services. It had under its command the SD, Kripo, and Gestapo, as well as several offices to handle finance, administration, and supply. Heinrich Müller, who had been chief of operations for the Gestapo, was appointed Gestapo chief at this time. Arthur Nebe was chief of the Kripo, and the two branches of SD were commanded by a series of SS officers, including Otto Ohlendorf and Walter Schellenberg. The SD was considered an elite branch of the SS, and its members were better educated and typically more ambitious than those within the ranks of the "Allgemeine" SS. Members of the SD were specially trained in criminology, intelligence, and counter-intelligence. They also gained a reputation for ruthlessness and unwavering commitment to Nazi ideology.


title: Schutzstaffel

text: Heydrich was attacked in Prague on 27 May 1942 by a British-trained team of Czech and Slovak soldiers who had been sent by the Czechoslovak government-in-exile to assassinate him in Operation Anthropoid. He died from his injuries a week later. Himmler ran the RSHA personally until 30 January 1943, when Heydrich's positions were taken over by Ernst Kaltenbrunner.


title: Schutzstaffel

text: Beginning in 1938 and throughout World War II, the SS enacted a procedure where offices and units of the SS could form smaller sub-units, known as "SS-Sonderkommandos", to carry out special tasks, including large-scale murder operations. The use of "SS-Sonderkommandos" was widespread. According to former "SS Sturmbannführer" Wilhelm Höttl, not even the SS leadership knew how many "SS-Sonderkommandos" were constantly being formed, disbanded, and reformed for various tasks, especially on the Eastern Front.