A photographic history of the notorious Nazi fighting force during Operation Barbarossa—from the Emmy Award-winning historian and author. This is the illustrated history of the Waffen-SS—the armed political wing that grew out of the Schutzstaffel or Nazi party protection squads—on the Eastern Front. The life and death of the Waffen-SS can be traced in the surviving photographs, and the brooding saga of the decline from triumph into disaster is told through these powerful images which clearly document the reality of combat on the Russian Front.