“The SS was so omnipresent a force in German society that typewriters manufactured while it existed had a special key that, with one press of a finger, produced two s’s on the typed page.”
Uhhh...I have to call BS on this.
There is a character used in German writing called a scharfes-S or eszett (lit. “sharp S”). It looks like a capital B or Greek “beta”, and is used to represent a long-S or -SZ sound in front of a vowel. In more recent years the trend has been to replace it with “ss” in writing, and apparently Switzerland has completely phased out its use.
This key sounds more like a high-speed/professional-grade substitution for the eszett character.
In addition, I looked online at several pictures of vintage German typewriters, and *none* of them had an “SS” key like the author describes.
Question for the poster - is the author of this article a liar, or an idiot?
In any event, he has no credibility.
I thought one appears in the movie Mother Night (as seen in the trailer)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYbXUWw61ug