Schutzstaffel
In 1923, a small volunteer guard unit known as the Saal-Schutz formed to provide security for Nazi Party meetings in Munich. Adolf Hitler ordered the creation of this bodyguard unit to serve him personally, separating it from the larger paramilitary Storm Battalion or SA that he distrusted. The new formation was designated the Stabswache and originally consisted of eight men commanded by Julius Schreck and Joseph Berchtold. By May 1923, the unit had been renamed Stoßtrupp before being abolished following the failed Beer Hall Putsch later that year. In 1925, Hitler instructed Schreck to organize a new protection command called the Schutzkommando tasked with guarding party functions. That same year, the organization expanded into a national entity and received its final name, the Schutzstaffel or SS. Official records mark the foundation date as the 9th of November 1925, coinciding with the second anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch. Heinrich Himmler joined the unit in 1925 and eventually assumed leadership in January 1929 after serving as deputy under Erhard Heiden since September 1927. Under Himmler's direction, membership numbers grew from 280 to 3,000 within his first year alone. By the end of 1933, the SS had swollen to 209,000 members while simultaneously establishing regional divisions known as Gaue across Germany. The organization evolved from a small battalion within the SA into one of the most powerful entities in Nazi Germany.
SS officer candidates were required to prove Aryan ancestry dating back to 1750 during the early years of the organization. Other ranks needed only to demonstrate Aryan grandparents by 1800, though these physical criteria were loosely enforced for over half the men. Members faced demands for complete obedience to the Führer and commitment to the German nation alongside higher salaries and larger homes. Himmler expected SS men to produce more children than the average German family as part of their ideological duty. Recruitment emphasized racial policy indoctrination that taught members it was necessary to remove people deemed inferior from Germany. Esoteric rituals and neo-pagan ceremonies replaced traditional Christian practices including Christmas celebrations and church weddings. In 1933, Himmler purchased Wewelsburg castle in Westphalia to serve as an SS training center hosting dinners and pagan rites. The crypt at Wewelsburg later became a place to memorialize dead SS members with artwork commemorating the Holocaust displayed on its walls today. Himmler wrote in 1936 that SS ideology included applying brutality and terror as solutions to military and political issues. Their official motto stated Meine Ehre heißt Treue or My Honour is Loyalty while Himmler instructed members they should execute orders without hesitation. The organization entrusted itself with war crimes such as the murder of Jewish civilians under the guise of implementing the Final Solution.
On the 20th of April 1934, Hermann Göring transferred control of the Geheime Staatspolizei or Gestapo to Heinrich Himmler after deeming Rudolf Diels insufficiently ruthless. That same date saw Hitler appoint Himmler chief of all German police outside Prussia, breaking long-standing traditions regarding law enforcement jurisdiction. Reinhard Heydrich became head of the Gestapo on the 22nd of April 1934, while continuing his role leading the Sicherheitsdienst security service. By the 17th of June 1936, all police forces throughout Germany were united under Himmler's administrative control alongside the SD, Kriminalpolizei, and Ordnungspolizei. In September 1939, security agencies including the SiPo and SD consolidated into the Reich Security Main Office headed by Heydrich. During Kristallnacht between November 9 and 10, 1938, SS services coordinated violence against Jews while ensuring synagogues were destroyed but businesses remained intact for later seizure. Heydrich reported a death toll of 36 people though later assessments placed fatalities at up to two thousand during the pogrom. Around 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps by November 16 with as many as 2,500 dying in subsequent months. The SS state began its campaign of terror against political and religious opponents who were imprisoned without trial or judicial oversight. By September 1939, senior SS officers in each military district also served as chief of police answering directly to Himmler.
On the 26th of June 1933, Himmler appointed SS-Oberführer Theodor Eicke as commandant of Dachau concentration camp to consolidate numerous small facilities established by various police agencies. Eicke's organizational structure became the model for all future Nazi concentration camps after he was named commander of the SS-Totenkopfverbände in 1934. Six concentration camps housing 21,400 inmates existed at the start of World War II in September 1939 before expanding to hundreds holding nearly 715,000 people by war's end. The population rose in tandem with Nazi defeats prompting intensified repression and terror campaigns against targeted groups. In late 1941, stationary gassing facilities replaced Einsatzgruppen methods using carbon monoxide gas from automobile engines during Operation Reinhard. Three extermination camps opened sequentially: Bełżec operational by March 1942, Sobibór by May 1942, and Treblinka by July 1942. Squadrons of Trawniki men oversaw Sonderkommando prisoners forced to work in gas chambers before being murdered themselves. By early 1942, Auschwitz expanded to include gas chambers where victims were killed using pesticide Zyklon B on Himmler's orders. All concentration camp guards and administrative staff became full members of the Waffen-SS in 1942 under Oswald Pohl's WVHA command. Richard Glücks served as Inspector of Concentration Camps which became office D within the WVHA structure.
The SS-VT was renamed the Waffen-SS following a speech by Hitler in July 1940 authorizing enlistment of perceived related stock including Danes, Dutch, Norwegians, Swedes, and Finns. The LSSAH and elements of the SS-VT participated in ground invasion of the Netherlands while airborne troops captured key airfields and bridges during the five-day campaign. On the 27th of May 1940, Company 4 of the SS-Totenkopf perpetrated the Le Paradis massacre where 97 Royal Norfolk Regiment soldiers were machine-gunned after surrendering with only two survivors. Eighty-one British and French soldiers died at Wormhoudt on May 28 when SS-Leibstandarte took control of that location near Dunkirk. In April 1941, Fritz Klingenberg led men across Yugoslavia to Belgrade accepting city surrender on April 13 before Yugoslavia capitulated days later. During Operation Barbarossa beginning the 22nd of June 1941, the 1st and 2nd SS Infantry Brigades moved into the Soviet Union behind advancing armies fighting partisans initially. By autumn 1941 these units actively participated in Holocaust liquidation of Jewish populations alongside Einsatzgruppen firing parties. The LSSAH and Das Reich lost over half their troops to illness and combat casualties during battles in the Soviet Union in 1941 and 1942 requiring Himmler to accept recruits not fitting original racial profiles. Three SS armored divisions participated in the Battle of Kursk launched the 5th of July 1943 before Hitler halted the attack by evening July 12 due to stiff resistance.
Himmler founded Nordland-Verlag publishing house in 1934 releasing propaganda material and SS training manuals as his first business venture. He subsequently purchased Allach Porcelain which began producing SS memorabilia while exploiting concentration camp inmates as slave laborers due to labor shortages and profit motives. Most enterprises lost money until Himmler placed them under Pohl's Verwaltung und Wirtschaftshauptamt administration in 1939 despite SS men lacking business experience. In May 1941 the VuWHA founded Deutsche Ausrüstungswerke GmbH integrating SS businesses with the burgeoning concentration camp system. Four major new camps including Auschwitz, Gross-Rosen, Natzweiler-Struthof, and Neuengamme were established in 1941 each containing factories or quarries nearby where inmates worked. Life expectancy at Monowitz averaged about three months due to intentionally impossibly high workloads under the policy of extermination through labor. The SS owned Sudetenquell mineral water producer acquiring 75 percent of German producers by 1944 intending monopoly control. Concentration camps produced building materials like stone bricks and cement for DEST while occupying Eastern territories saw seizure of all 300 extant brickworks. Camp labour was sold to various factories at rates between three to six Reichsmarks per prisoner daily according to WVHA direction.
Einsatzgruppen reached total strength of 3,000 men augmented by Kripo Orpo and Waffen-SS personnel operating outside moral bounds as judge jury and executioner combined. Einsatzgruppe A B and C attached to Army Groups North Centre and South while Einsatzgruppe D assigned to 11th Army conducted mass murder operations across occupied eastern Poland and Soviet Union. Before invasion there were five million registered Jews throughout the Soviet Union with three million residing in German-occupied territories; over two million had been murdered by war's end. The greatest extent of Einsatzgruppen action occurred in 1941 and 1942 within Ukraine and Russia following standard procedures coordinating access to execution grounds. Himmler observed shooting of 100 Jews at Minsk in August 1941 growing concerned about mental health impacts on his SS men leading to introduction of gas vans. Between July 1941 and mid-1944 Einsatzgruppen units together with Waffen-SS Order Police and Wehrmacht engaged mass murder of Jewish populations. Historian Raul Hilberg estimates Einsatzgruppen and related agencies murdered more than two million people including 1.3 million Jews between 1941 and 1945. Largest single massacre perpetrated was at Babi Yar outside Kiev where 33,771 Jews were massacred the 29th of September 30, 1941. In November-December 1941, 25,000 victims from Riga ghetto died during the Rumbula massacre while another set of shootings December 1941-January 1942 saw over 10,000 Jews killed at Drobytsky Yar.
The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg judged both the SS and Nazi Party criminal organizations after Germany's defeat. Ernst Kaltenbrunner highest-ranking surviving SS main department chief found guilty of crimes against humanity hanged in 1946 following trial proceedings. Twenty-four Einsatzgruppen commanders tried for war crimes after the conflict ended assigned duties in Waffen-SS or concentration camps instead. Former SS-Standartenführer Paul Blobel led Sonderkommando 1005 tasked with exhuming bodies from mass graves on Eastern Front attempting genocide cover-up before war ended. Adolf Eichmann headed a Sonderkommando arriving Budapest the 19th of March 1944 same day Axis forces invaded Hungary deporting Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz II-Birkenau. Between May 14 and the 6th of July 1944 four trains carrying 3,000 Jews daily left Hungary reaching camp via newly built spur line terminating hundreds meters from gas chambers. Over 437,000 of Hungary's 725,000 Jews murdered by time government halted deportations under international pressure. Many perpetrators sentenced to hang during Malmedy massacre trial though sentences commuted while Joachim Peiper imprisoned eleven years for role in murders. The SS Court Main Office removed objective legal procedures rendering citizens defenseless against summary justice of SS terror throughout Nazi rule.
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Common questions
When was the Schutzstaffel officially founded and by whom?
The Schutzstaffel received its final name on the 9th of November 1925 following instructions from Adolf Hitler to Heinrich Himmler. The organization evolved from a small volunteer guard unit known as the Saal-Schutz formed in 1923 to provide security for Nazi Party meetings.
What were the racial ancestry requirements for joining the Schutzstaffel?
SS officer candidates were required to prove Aryan ancestry dating back to 1750 during the early years of the organization. Other ranks needed only to demonstrate Aryan grandparents by 1800 though these physical criteria were loosely enforced for over half the men.
How did the Schutzstaffel control police forces in Germany after 1934?
Hermann Göring transferred control of the Geheime Staatspolizei or Gestapo to Heinrich Himmler on the 20th of April 1934. By the 17th of June 1936 all police forces throughout Germany were united under Himmler's administrative control alongside the SD Kriminalpolizei and Ordnungspolizei.
When did the SS begin using gas chambers at concentration camps?
By early 1942 Auschwitz expanded to include gas chambers where victims were killed using pesticide Zyklon B on Himmler orders. Stationary gassing facilities replaced Einsatzgruppen methods using carbon monoxide gas from automobile engines during Operation Reinhard starting in late 1941.
What was the total number of people murdered by Einsatzgruppen between 1941 and 1945?
Historian Raul Hilberg estimates Einsatzgruppen and related agencies murdered more than two million people including 1.3 million Jews between 1941 and 1945. The greatest extent of Einsatzgruppen action occurred in 1941 and 1942 within Ukraine and Russia following standard procedures coordinating access to execution grounds.