Original Item: Only One Available. This is a lovely condition of a genuine WWII German SS leaders periodical printed in accordance with the Danish and Norwegian editions. The booklet is dated 1943 and is the 3rd Volume, 3rd and 4th edition.

SS-Leitheft ("SS-lead-booklet") was an NSDAP periodical from 1934 to 1945.

This "SS-leadership magazine", as it is often called, was published in German in Berlin from 1934 onward, and in the beginning mostly circulated among professional officers in the SS. The publisher was the SS-Hauptamt, the main office of the Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, and the printing was done by M. Müller and Sohn in Berlin.

When war came, with need for new recruits, the SS-Leitheft was also published at the Germanische Leitstelle in Oslo, Norway; Copenhagen, Denmark; Brussels, Belgium; and Den Haag, the Netherlands; that is to say, in Norwegian, Danish, Flemish and Dutch. There was an Estonian edition. The normative texts were usually translated from German, but with more room for national diversity as war went on.

Very little is known of the staff work in general, but the writer Eystein Eggen has given a detailed description regarding the Leitheft's Norse version, his father being the Norwegian editor-in-chief.

Each issue of SS Leitheft contained historical and ideological material specifically aimed at the officer corps of the Allgemeine SS and Waffen SS. Typically informative articles and inspirational photographs were interspersed throughout the 9” x 6 ½” magazine with quotations from Adolf H, Heinrich Himmler and other SS leaders.

This particular issue contains various German poems about life in German and the current ideologies exhibited within the NSDAP. There are various pictures and sketches featured throughout the booklet.

One of the poems is displayed along with an image of a SS trooper sitting at a piano playing while his comrade stands behind listening to him play. The translated poem is as follows:

“You bitterly missed happiness,
It binds us with a sacred bond of fidelity!
Yes, only in longing do you live out here,
The love of our heart,
And in the midst of the Realm of Death”

The condition is very nice, but unfortunately a section of the glue on the binding has deteriorated and a few pages are loose bur still in place.

A wonderful opportunity to add a rare periodical from 1943 to your collections. Comes ready to display!

Waffen-SS Foreign Volunteers and Conscripts
During World War II, the Waffen-SS recruited significant numbers of non-Germans, both as volunteers and conscripts. In total some 500,000 non-Germans and ethnic Germans from outside Germany, mostly from German-occupied Europe, were recruited between 1940 and 1945. The units were under the control of the SS Führungshauptamt (SS Command Main Office) beneath Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler. Upon mobilization, the units' tactical control was given to the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (High Command of the Armed Forces).