Schutzstaffel: Difference between revisions

*Schutzstaffel*
	SS insignia (sig runes)
	SS flag
	; Adolf Hitler inspects the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler on arrival at Klagenfurt in April 1938. Heinrich Himmler is standing slightly behind Hitler's right side.
Agency overview
Formed	April 4, 1925
Preceding agencies	Sturmabteilung; Stabswache;
Dissolved	May 8, 1945
Superseding agency	Sturmabteilung (formerly);
Type	Paramilitary
Jurisdiction	Nazi Germany; German-occupied Europe
Headquarters	SS-Hauptamt, Prinz-Albrecht-Straße, Berlin
Employees	1,250,000 (c. February 1945)
Ministers responsible	Adolf Hitler, Führer; Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer-SS;
Agency executives	Julius Schreck, Reichsführer-SS; (Reich Leader of the SS); (1925–26); Joseph Berchtold, Reichsführer-SS; (1926–27); Erhard Heiden, Reichsführer-SS; (1927–29); Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer-SS; (1929–45); Karl Hanke, Reichsführer-SS; (April–May 1945);
Parent agency	Nazi Party
Child agencies	Allgemeine SS; Waffen-SS (SS-Verfügungstruppe); SS-Totenkopfverbände; RSHA – Sicherheitspolizei (SiPo) and Sicherheitsdienst (SD); Ordnungspolizei (Orpo);

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The Schutzstaffel (SS; also with stylized "Armanen" sig runes; German pronunciation: [ˈʃʊtsˌʃtafəl] ^ⓘ; literally "Protection Squadron") was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP). It began with a small, permanent guard unit known as the "Saal-Schutz" (Hall-Protection) made up of NSDAP volunteers to provide security for Nazi Party meetings in Munich.^[1] Later, in 1925, Heinrich Himmler joined the unit, which had by then been reformed and given its final name. Under Himmler's leadership (1929–45), it grew from a small paramilitary formation to one of the largest and most powerful organizations in the Third Reich.^[2] Built upon the Nazi ideology, the SS under Himmler's command was responsible for many crimes against humanity during World War II (1939–45). The SS, along with the Nazi Party, was declared a criminal organization by the International Military Tribunal, and banned in Germany after 1945.

Origins

Forerunner of the SS

By 1923, a small permanent guard unit known as the Saal-Schutz ("Hall-Protection") made up of NSDAP volunteers provided security for Nazi Party meetings in Munich.^[1] That same year, party leader Adolf Hitler ordered the formation of a small separate bodyguard dedicated to his service rather than "a suspect mass" of the party, such as the paramilitary force the Sturmabteilung ("Storm Battalion"; SA).^[3] It was designated the Stabswache ("Staff Guard").^[4] Originally the unit was composed of only 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 then renamed Stoßtrupp ("Shock Troops") in May 1923.^[5]^[6]

After the failed 1923 Beer Hall Putsch attempt in which the Nazi Party aimed to seize power of Munich, the SA and the Stoßtrupp were abolished. Shortly after Hitler's release from prison, violence remained a large part of Bavarian politics.^[7] In 1925, Hitler ordered Schreck to organise the formation of a new bodyguard unit, the Schutzkommando ("Protection Command").^[7]^[8] It was given the task of providing personal protection for Hitler at Nazi Party functions and events. That same year, the Schutzkommando was expanded to a national level, and renamed successively the Sturmstaffel ("Storm Squadron"), and finally the Schutzstaffel ("Protection Squad"; SS).^[8]^[9] Officially, the SS marked its foundation on 9 November 1925 (the second anniversary of the Beer-Hall Putsch).^[10] The new SS was delegated to be a protection company of various Nazi Party leaders throughout Germany. Hitler's personal SS protection unit was later enlarged to include combat units.^[11]

Early commanders

Julius Schreck was a founding member of the SA and became the first official SS chief in March 1925. Schreck was a close confidant of Hitler and had previously served in a Freikorps unit. On 15 April 1926, Joseph Berchtold became the successor to Schreck as chief of the SS. Berchtold changed the title of the office position which became known as the Reichsführer-SS ("Reich Leader-SS").^[12] Berchtold was considered more dynamic than his predecessor, but became increasingly frustrated by the authority the SA had over the SS. On 1 March 1927, Berchtold transferred leadership of the SS to his deputy, Erhard Heiden. Berchtold had become disillusioned by the SA's control over the SS.^[13]^[14] Under Heiden's leadership a stricter code of discipline was enforced than would have been tolerated in the SA ranks.^[14] Except for the Munich area, the unit was unable to maintain any momentum. Membership of the SS declined from 1000 to 280 as the SS continued to struggle under the rapid-growing SA.^[15] Between 1925 and 1929, the SS was considered merely a small Gruppe (battalion) of the SA. As Heiden attempted to keep the small group from dissolving, Heinrich Himmler became his deputy in September 1927. Himmler had a great enthusiasm and vision for the SS and displayed good organisational abilities.^[16]

Between 1926 and 1928, the SS, although still small in size, established a number of Gau's (German for region or province). The SS-Gau's consisted of SS-Gau Berlin, SS-Gau Berlin Brandenburg, SS-Gau Franken, SS-Gau Niederbayern, SS-Gau Rheinland-Süd, and SS-Gau Sachsen.^[17]

Himmler takes charge

Heinrich Himmler, head of all SS organisations, stated, "Once the Führer himself has made a decision and given the order, it must be carried out, not only according to the word and the letter, but also in spirit."^[18]

With Hitler's approval, Heinrich Himmler assumed the position of Reichsführer-SS in January 1929.^[19]^[20] There are differing accounts of the reason for Heiden's dismissal from his position as head of the SS. The party merely stated that it was for "family reasons".^[21] Under Himmler, the SS expanded and gained a larger foothold. His ultimate aim was to turn the SS into the most powerful organization in Germany and most influential branch of the party.^[22] He became the official face of Hitler's bodyguard squad and over the year expanded the SS to 3,000 members. Himmler considered the SS an elite, ideologically driven National Socialist organization that was a "conflation of Teutonic knights, the Jesuits, and Japanese Samurai".^[23]

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-Gau's were expanded into three SS-Oberführerbereiche areas, namely the SS-Oberführerbereiche Ost, SS-Oberführerbereiche West and SS-Oberführerbereiche Süd.^[24] The lower levels of the SS remained largely unchanged. However, it was during this time that the SS began to establish its independence from the SA, although officially still considered a sub-organization of the SA and answerable to the Stabschef (SA Chief-of-Staff).^[25] By the end of 1933, the membership of the SS reached 209,000.^[26] Under Himmler's leadership the SS continued to gather greater power as more and more state and party functions passed under the jurisdiction of the SS. Over time the SS became an "executive" agency of Hitler, a development which more broadly typified the organizational structure of the entire Nazi regime, where legal norms were replaced by actions undertaken at "the will of the Führer."^[27]

Ideology and culture

In contrast to the Imperial military tradition, the nature of the SS was based on an ideology where commitment, effectiveness and political reliability—not class or education—would determine how far they succeeded in the organization.^[28] The SS stressed total loyalty and obedience to orders unto death. It became a powerful tool used by Hitler and the Nazi state for political ends. The SS ideology and values of the organization were one of the main reasons why the SS was entrusted with the execution of many Nazi atrocities and war crimes of the Nazi state. Along these lines, Himmler once wrote that an SS man "hesitates not for a single instant, but executes unquestioningly any order coming from the Führer".^[18] Additional evidence for the unconditional loyalty of the SS can be found in Himmler's comments concerning the notion of the Führer-Befehl ("Führer order") for members of the SS using religious connotations.^[18]

A main ideology of the SS was to fight against the so-called Untermenschen ("sub-humans"). As illustrated in the pamphlet The SS as an Anti-Bolshevist Fighting Organization of 1936, Heinrich Himmler wrote, "We shall take care that never again in Germany, the heart of Europe, will the Jewish-Bolshevistic revolution of subhumans be able to be kindled either from within or through emissaries from without." ^[29] Once SS candidates successfully passed the racial criteria demanded of them, next came tests much like the Jesuits who underwent two years of intense probing before taking vows of poverty, chastity and obedience; SS men were likewise educated before they were allowed to swear the oath of "kith and kin" (known in German as the Sippeneid), and be counted as members of the SS.^[30] Thereafter, the SS member had to complete a term with the Wehrmacht and the Labour Service, swearing yet another oath to honour the marriage law (made effective 31 December 1931) outlined by the Reichsführer-SS, an oath which prescribed that SS men only marry women of suitable racial makeup and only after approved by both the RuSHA and Himmler.^[31] Commitment to SS ideology is evidenced throughout the entire recruitment and membership continuum and the related esprit de corps which developed in SS men was designed to make them feel elite, committing them in the process to honour the racial tenets of the National Socialist movement and binding them to protect their Führer at all costs.^[32] Suffusing SS members even further with the Nazi covenant were esoteric rituals as well as the awarding of regalia and insignia for key milestones in the SS man's career.^[33] Acting as the vanguards of National Socialism, members of the SS were fed a constant ideological diet which touted the supremacy of Germanic people, the necessity to cleanse the German race of impure genetic material and foreign ideals, obedience to the Führer, and a commitment to the German people and nation.^[34]

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 Nazis to power.^[35] Under Himmler, the SS selected its members according to the Nazi ideology.^[36]

The Nazis regarded the SS as an elite unit, the party's "Praetorian Guard", originally with all SS personnel being selected on the principles of racial purity and loyalty to the Nazi Party and Germany.^[30] The SS was restricted to people who were of "Aryan ancestry", requiring proof of racial purity. In the early days of the SS, it was required for all officer candidates to prove their genealogy had no evidence of any "non-Aryan" ancestors back to 1750 and for other ranks to 1800.^[37]

Later, when the requirements of the war made it impossible to confirm the ancestry of officer candidates, the proof of ancestry regulation was dropped to just proving their grandparents were "Aryan", which was the requirement of the Nuremberg Laws.

During World War II, as a part of its race-centric functions, the SS oversaw the isolation and displacement of Jews from the populations of the conquered territories, seizing their assets and transporting them to concentration camps and ghettos where they would be used as slave labour (pending extermination) or immediately killed.^[38]

Chosen to implement the Nazi "Final Solution" for the Jews and other groups deemed inferior (and/or enemies of the state), the SS led the killing, torture and enslavement of approximately 12 million people. Most victims were Jews or of Polish or other Slavic extraction.^[39] However, other racial/ethnic groups such as the Roma made up a significant number of victims, as well. Furthermore, the SS purge was extended to those 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 (religious, political, social and otherwise) that opposed the regime, or were seen to have views contradictory to the goals of the Nazi government, were rounded up in large numbers; these included clergy of all faiths, Jehovah's Witnesses, Freemasons, Communists and Rotary Club members.^[39]

According to 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 organisation which carried out the Holocaust.^[40]

In contrast to the Allgemeine SS, the Waffen-SS evolved into a second German army alongside of the Wehrmacht and operating in tandem with them; especially with the Heer (German Army). Their official motto was "Meine Ehre heißt Treue" ("My Honour is Loyalty").^[41] The SS rank system was unique in that it did not copy the terms and ranks used by the Wehrmacht's branches, but instead used the ranks established by the post-World War I Freikorps and taken over by the SA. This was mainly done to establish the SS as being independent from the Wehrmacht, although SS ranks generally did have equivalents in the other services.^[42]

Special ranks and uniforms

File:Die Uniformen der Allgemeinen SS 32-45.jpg

The standard all-back uniform for Allgemeine SS members, designed by Professor Karl Diebitsch

The SS had its own rank structure, unit insignia, and uniforms, which distinguished it from other branches of the German military and from German state officials, as well as from the rest of the Nazi Party. Before 1929, the SS wore the same brown uniform as the SA, with the exception of a black tie and a black cap with a Totenkopf ("death's head") skull and bones symbol on it. In that year Himmler extended the black colour to include breeches, boots, belts, and armband edges; in 1932 they adopted the all-black uniform. The all-black SS uniform was designed by SS-Oberführer Professor Karl Diebitsch and graphic designer SS-Sturmhauptführer Walter Heck.^[43] These uniforms were rarely worn after the war began, however, as Himmler ordered that the all-black uniforms be turned in for use by others. They were sent east where they were used by auxiliary police units and west to be used by Germanic-SS units such as the ones in the Netherlands and Denmark.^[44]

In 1935, the military SS formations (the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler and the SS-Verfügungstruppe) adopted a service uniform in what was termed erdgrau (earth-grey) for every day wear.^[a] In 1938, the Allgemeine SS follow suit in adopting a pale-grey uniform.^[44] Later, the Waffen-SS wore a feldgrau (field-grey) uniform similar to the German Army. During the war, Waffen-SS units wore a wide range of items printed with camouflage patterns (such as Platanenmuster, Erbsenmuster, captured Italian Telo Mimetico, etc.), while their feldgrau uniforms became largely indistinguishable from those of the Heer, save for the insignia.^[45]^[46] The SS also developed its own field uniforms. Initially these were similar to standard Wehrmacht wool uniforms but they also included reversible smocks and helmet covers printed with camouflage patterns with a brown–green "spring" side and a brown–brown "autumn" side. In 1944 the Waffen-SS began using a universal camouflage uniform intended to replace the wool field uniform. In 1945, the SS adopted the Leibermuster disruptive camouflage pattern that inspired many forms of modern battle dress, although it was not widely issued before the end of the war.^[46] The various uniforms for the SS were made by hundreds of clothing factories licensed by the RZM, including Hugo Boss, with some workers being prisoners of war forced into labour work. Many were made in concentration camps.^[47]

Membership

SS membership 1925-45
Year	Membership	% increase	Reichsführer-SS
1925	30^[8]	—	Julius Schreck^[8]
1926	130^[12]	333	Joseph Berchtold^[12]
1927	1,000^[12]	669	Erhard Heiden^[12]
1928	280^[15]	−257	Erhard Heiden^[12]
1929	3,000^[20]	971	Heinrich Himmler^[20]
1930-33	52,000^[25]	1,633	Heinrich Himmler^[20]
1933-39	250,000^[48]	380	Heinrich Himmler^[20]
1940-43	800,000^[49]	220	Heinrich Himmler^[20]
1943-45	1,250,000^[50]	56	Heinrich Himmler^[20] and Karl Hanke^[51]

The SS in Nazi Germany

Merger with police and security forces

After Hitler and his Nazi Party legally came to power on 30 January 1933 when he was appointed Chancellor of Germany by the aged President Paul von Hindenburg, the SS became regarded as a state organization and a branch of the established government.^[52]^[53] The most important SS organizations became full-time paid employees. The rest of the SS, such as the Allgemeine-SS, were considered part-time volunteers. Key government functions such as law enforcement were absorbed by the SS, while many SS organisations became de facto government agencies.^[54] To maintain the political power and security of the Nazi Party (and later the nation), the SS established the Sicherheitsdienst (security service) and took over the administration of Gestapo (secret state police), Kripo (criminal investigative police), and the Ordnungspolizei (regular uniformed police).^[54] In September 1939, the security and police agencies (with the exception of the Orpo) were consolidated into the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA), headed by Himmler's protégé Reinhard Heydrich.^[54]

Independence from the SA

The Gestapo's transfer to Himmler in April 1934 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 played a prominent role, carrying out most of the killings. On 20 July 1934, as a token of gratitude for its role, the SS was detached from the SA and became an independent elite corps of the Nazi Party answerable only to Hitler. Himmler's title of Reichsführer-SS now became an actual rank (his formal rank had previously been Obergruppenführer), equivalent to the rank of field marshal in the army.^[55] As Himmler's position and authority grew in Nazi Germany, so did his rank in a "de facto" sense.^[56]

Hitler's personal bodyguards

SS-Begleitkommando des Führers ("Escort Command of the Führer") was an elite SS protection unit formed in February 1932 as Hitler's protection escort while travelling. The unit consisted of eight men chosen for their "outstanding loyalty". They served around the clock protecting the Führer in three eight-hour shifts.^[57]^[58] Later the SS-Begleitkommando was expanded and became known as the Führerbegleitkommando ("Escort Command of the Führer"; FBK). It continued under separate command and remained responsible for Hitler's personal protection.^[58]

Führer Schutzkommando ("Führer Protection Command"; FSK) was a protection unit founded by Himmler in March 1933.^[59] Originally charged with protecting the Führer only while he was inside the borders of Bavaria, its members consisted of police detectives of the Bavarian police. In the spring of 1934, they replaced the SS-Begleitkommando for Hitler's overall protection throughout Germany.^[60] The FSK was renamed the Reichssicherheitsdienst ("Reich Security Service"; RSD) in August 1935.^[61] Thereafter, Himmler finally gained full control over the RSD in October 1935. Johann Rattenhuber remained chief of the RSD and took his orders for the most part from Hitler.^[61] The RSD and FBK worked together to provide personal security and protection for Hitler, but they operated as two groups and used separate vehicles. Rattenhuber was in overall command and the current FBK chief acted as his deputy.^[62]

By the autumn of 1933, Hitler's larger personal bodyguard unit (previously the 1st SS Standarte) had been called to Berlin to replace the Army Chancellery Guard as protectors of the Chancellor of Germany. In November 1933, the SS guard in Berlin became the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler. In April 1934, Himmler modified the name to Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler (LSSAH). The LSSAH would be on guard duty for Hitler's private residences and offices, thereby providing the outer ring of overall protection of the Führer's person and visitors.^[63]^[57] The LSSAH eventually grew into the first division of the Waffen-SS. Although nominally under the command of Himmler, day-to-day administration was handled by Sepp Dietrich.^[57]

Role in World War II

By the outbreak of World War II, the SS had solidified into its final form. Correspondingly, the term "SS" could be applied to three separate organizations, mainly the Allgemeine-SS, SS-Totenkopfverbände and what would become known as the Waffen-SS.^[64] When the war first began, the vast majority of SS members belonged to the Allgemeine-SS, but this statistic changed during the later stages of the war when the Waffen-SS opened up membership for non-Germans.^[65]

Invasion of Poland

During the invasion of Poland in early September 1939, the LSSAH and SS-VT fought as separate, mobile infantry regiments.^[66] Hitler took particular interest in the progress of both units. Yet in spite of the lightning victory over Poland, the regular army felt that the performance of the SS-VT left much to be desired; its units took unnecessary risks and were careless with casualties.^[67] It also showed a tendency to torch villages and brutalize civilians. In defense of his men, Himmler argued that they would have performed better had they been concentrated in one formation rather than fighting piecemeal under senior army commanders whom they did not know.^[67] The poor performance of the Waffen-SS on the battlefield was but one aspect of the Wehrmacht's concern; added to this was their distaste for the activities and excesses of the SS and SS-controlled police units during the occupation.^[68] Undeterred by complaints from the traditional military leadership, Hitler thought their criticism of the SS was typical for the army with their "outmoded conception of chivalry."^[69]

Satisfied with their performance in battle, Hitler agreed to allow further expansion, but insisted the new units remained under the operational control of the army.^[70] While the SS-Leibstandarte remained an independent regiment to function as Hitler's personal bodyguards, the other regiments—SS-Deutschland, SS-Germania and SS-Der Führer—were combined into a complete division, the SS-Verfügungs.^[64]^[71] A second SS division the SS-Totenkopf was formed from the SS-TV units originally created to guard the concentration camps, and a third was created from volunteers from the police, the SS-Polizei.^[72]^[73] The Waffen-SS further obtained control over its recruitment, logistics and supply systems.^[73]

Despite their improved readiness, some senior members of the Wehrmacht were not convinced that the Waffen-SS was fully prepared. Wehrmacht General Fedor von Bock was quite critical of the Waffen-SS for instance; following an April 1940 visit of the SS-Totenkopf division, Bock claimed their battle training was "insufficient" and went on to avow this "would cost much blood" and that it was "a shame to waste such fine human material."^[74] Criticisms of his SS-Totenkopf division aside, SS-Obergruppenführer Theodor Eicke obtained all the arms and equipment to fully outfit his unit before the month was out and he, along with his men, looked forward to the imminent invasion westwards.^[75]

Battle of France

On 10 May 1940, Hitler launched his long-awaited offense against France and the Low Countries.^[76] The LSSAH and parts of the SS-VT helped to speared the invasion of the Netherlands.^[77] Simultaneously, airborne troops were dropped to capture key Dutch airfields, bridges and railways. In the five-day campaign that followed, the LSSAH linked up with the army units and airborne troops after a number of clashes with Dutch defenders.^[77] There was, however, an unfortunate incident in Rotterdam where the Fallschirmjäger (paratrooper) commander, General Kurt Student, was wounded. He suspected it had been due to trigger-happy SS men who had been shooting at Dutch soldiers, although the SS-Leibstandarte strenuously denied it.^[78]

The Waffen-SS did not take part in the thrust throughout the forests of the Ardennes and the river Meuse.^[77] But as they began to advance close to the English Channel, the SS-Totenkopf was summoned from the army reserve to fight in support of General Erwin Rommel's 7th Panzer Division.^[79] On 21 May, the British launched an armored counterattack against the flanks of 7th Panzer Division and SS-Totenkopf. They succeeded in momentarily knocking the Germans off balance, and caused some panic, before the advance Westwards continued.^[67] The Germans then trapped the British and French troops in a huge pocket around the port of Dunkirk.^[80] The LSSAH joined in the fighting to reduce small groups of resistance outside the port that had been cut off by the encirclement. On 27 May a unit from the SS-Totenkopf, the 14 Company, was involved in the Le Paradis massacre, where 99 men of the 2nd Battalion, Royal Norfolk Regiment were machine gunned, with survivors finished off with bayonets.^[81] By 28 May the SS-Leibstandarte had taken Wormhout, only ten miles from Dunkirk.^[82] Soldiers of the 2nd Battalion were responsible for the Wormhoudt massacre, where 80 British and French prisoners of war were killed.^[67] Continuing on in the drive towards Paris, the SS-Leibstandarte reached Saint-Étienne (250 miles south of Paris) and had advanced further into France than any other unit.^[83] By the next day the fighting was over.^[84] Hitler expressed his pleasure with the performance of the SS-Leibstandarte in the Netherlands and France, telling them, "Henceforth it will be an honour for you, who bear my name, to lead every German attack."^[83] The SS-VT was officially renamed the Waffen-SS in a speech made by Hitler in July 1940.^[84]

Characteristic behaviors of the Waffen-SS which were typified by the SS-Totenkopf division throughout the fighting in France included "fanatical recklessness in the assault, suicidal defense against enemy attacks, and savage atrocities committed in the face of frustrated objectives" according to historian Charles Sydnor.^[85] In lieu of their fanaticism, the Blitz campaign in the western theater and the corresponding military success there was only marginally influenced by the participation of the SS since there had only been two full Waffen-SS divisions fighting (SS-Totenkopf and SS-Verfügungs) and a partially armored regiment of the SS-Leibstandarte amid the 89 division employed in total.^[86] Problems still existed between the Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS and despite their shared success in the West, Himmler was still poorly disposed towards the men of the Wehrmacht and General Erich von Manstein in particular, whom he accused of deliberately starving his men of armor and equipment.^[87]

Following the campaign in the West, Himmler was keen on further expanding the Waffen-SS, but the army was concerned that he was stealing recruits.^[67] Hitler therefore only allowed a small expansion, but did allow the enlistment of "people perceived to be of related stock" as Himmler put it.^[88] A number of Danes, Dutch, Norwegians, Swedes and Finns volunteered to fight in the Waffen-SS under the command of German officers.^[89] They were brought together to form the new division SS-Wiking.^[88] By January 1941, the SS-Verfügungs-Division was renamed SS-Infanterie-Division Reich, and in 1942, became known as the SS-Das Reich.^[90]

Campaign in the Balkans

In April 1941, the Germany Army invaded and swiftly defeated the defenses of the pro-British Yugoslavia in little more than two weeks.^[91] The Germans ultimately conquered the country incurring a loss of less than 500 men.^[92] It was one of the fastest military invasions of the war. Its next-door neighbor Greece, also pro-British, fell almost equally as fast.^[93] In both operations, the LSSAH distinguished themselves for their efficiency.^[67]

Fritz Klingenberg, a company commander in the Waffen-SS, led his men in a race to capture the Yugoslav capital, Belgrade, before the army. Although severely hampered by the spring rain which had turned the roads into mud pits, units of his regiment reaches the banks of the Danube first, but was unable to cross because all the bridges leading into the city had been destroyed.^[67] Klingenberg found a single rowing boat and proceeded to cross the river with ten volunteers. They headed for the German embassy which was besieged by an angry crowd. He then used the embassies phone to contact Belgrade's mayor, and threated to call in a massive air strike unless the city, and its remaining soldiers, surrendered immediately. Unaware the small embassy crew had no radio equipment nor authority to call in such an airstrike, the mayor fell for the bluff and gave in. Klingenberg was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross for his achievement. At the same time, the incident was a severe embarrassment for the army.^[67]

Attack on the Soviet Union

On 22 June 1941, Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa and invaded the Soviet Union.^[94] By now the SS-Leibstandarte had been expanded to a fully fledged division, and all other existing Waffen-SS divisions (SS-Das Reich, SS-Totenkopf, SS-Polizei, SS-Wiking and SS-Nord) took part in the initial assault.^[67] The purpose of Barbarossa was to destroy the Soviet Union and seize its vast natural resources to prepare for a greater war against the West.^[94] The army generals soon came to respect the fighting qualities of the Waffen-SS in a war that was more savage then any so far experienced. While the SS-Leibstandarte and the SS divisions were fighting in the front line, behind the lines it was a different story. The 1 SS Infantry and 2 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, however, by the autumn of 1941, they left the anti-partisan role to other units and actively took part in the Holocaust. While assisting the SS-Einsatzgruppen, they participated in the liquidation of the Jewish population of the Soviet Union, forming firing parties when required.^[95]^[96]

The Waffen-SS proved itself during the bitter battles of the Russian winter in 1941 and 1942 through showing its "steadfastness in defence".^[97] That spring three divisions, SS-Leibstandarte, SS-Totenkopf and SS-Das Reich, were withdrawn to the West to refit and be converted to Panzergrenadier divisions through the addition of assault guns, armoured personal carriers and tanks.^[98] Formed into the SS-Panzer Corps, Himmler ensured that these units received the best equipment and were larger than the equivalent army divisions. The SS-Panzer Corps, commanded by Paul Hausser, returned to Russia in 1943 and won a resounding victory for its recapture of Kharkov that spring.^[99] Dietrich, in particular, distinguished himself; Hitler awarded him the Swords to his Knights Cross and gave him a gift of one million Reichsmarks.^[67] By now the Waffen-SS had become a formidable fighting force, notorious for their willingness to fight to the death. Army commanders deployed it as their "fire brigade" by sending its divisions to the most critical points of the battlefield.^[100] While unquestionable obedience remained the cornerstone of the Waffen-SS, relations between officers and privates were less formal then in the army, with much more emphasizes on mutual respect.^[67]

No Waffen-SS units were involved in the disaster at Stalingrad, in early 1943, where an entire German Army was surrounded and forced to surrender.^[101] It was, however, crucially involved in the strategic battle that confirmed the tide of war on the Eastern Front had turned. Following the disaster at Stalingrad, determined SS officers joined leaders of the Hitler Youth in an attempt to stiffen the defenses at home should the enemy push into German territory. Such an alliance between the SS and the Hitler Youth was no surprise since millions of emaciated boys were already digging trenches, setting up tank traps and manning anti-aircraft batteries across Germany.^[102]

In July 1943, the Germans launched a massive offensive designed to eliminate the Kursk salient.^[103] The Waffen-SS had been expanded to 12 divisions and most of these took part in what was the largest tank battle in history.^[104] By the evening of 12 July, Hitler was obliged to halt the attack due to the stiff Russian resistance and anti-tank obstacles.^[103] Thereafter, the Germans were forced onto the defensive as the Red Army began the liberation of Western Russia. The Waffen-SS again became the cornerstone for the German defense; time and again, they counterattacked and broke out of encirclements as the Soviet offensives drove them and the Wehrmacht back, ever further West.^[105] Meanwhile, the losses incurred by the Waffen SS and the Wehrmacht during the Battle of Kursk occurred nearly in-tandem with the Allied assault into Italy, opening the two-front war Hitler dreaded.^[106] By mid-1943 the exigencies of war against the Soviet Army and the Allies alike demanded an increase in the labor reserves of the Reich, a shortage that was supplemented through the use of workers for the production of arms from the among the populations in the east (Ostarbeiters) and concentration camp inmates.^[107]

During the war in the east, the SS-Einsatzgruppen units together with the Waffen-SS, engaged in the "wholesale slaughter" of the Jewish population in eastern Europe and the Soviet union in particular.^[108] Before the Nazis invaded there were approximately 5.1 million registered Jews throughout the USSR with roughly 3 million residing in the territories occupied by the Germans; by the time the war ended, over 2 million of them had been murdered.^[109]

Normandy landings

By the spring of 1944, the German forces in France and the Low Countries stood waiting for the Anglo-American assault.^[110] Behind the coastal guns and beach obstacles of Hitler's "Atlantic Wall", and the infantry divisions that supported it, were deployed 11 panzer and Panzergrenadier divisions.^[111] Four of these formations were Waffen-SS divisions.^[112] In Southern France was the SS-Das Reich. The LSSAH was in Belgium, refitting after bitter fighting in Russia. And west of Paris was the newly formed panzer division SS-Hitlerjugend.^[67] As its name suggest, the SS-Hitlerjugend division consisted of 17- and 18-year-old members of the Hitler Youth, stiffened by combat veterans and experienced NCO's.^[113] Educated totally under Nazi ideology since birth, these were to be some of the most fanatical of all Hitler's political troops.^[113] The creation of the SS-Hitlerjugend within the Waffen-SS expressed a sense of desperation and foreboding doom.^[102]

When the Allies did land in Normandy on D-Day 6 June, only one panzer division was close to the beaches, but its units were too scattered for it to assist in repelling the landings. Hitler had refused to allow the bulk of the panzer divisions to moved without his permission. The Führer slept late that specific day, and no dared waking him, so it was not until the afternoon that the SS-Hitlerjugend began to deploy. Its units began to come into action on 7 June. But rather than being able to mount a decisive counteroffensive to drive the Allies back into the sea, the SS-Hitlerjugend found themselves fighting a desperate defensive battle. They did, however, make themselves notable during the Battle of Caen where they, in spite of their dwindling strength, again and again frustrated British and Canadian efforts to break through and only abandoned the city when the full force of American air power came into action.^[114]

A last ditch effort was ordered by Hitler and on 7 August, the 1st SS, 2nd SS, 2nd and 116th Panzer Divisions with support from infantry and elements of the 17th SS-Panzergrenadier division under SS-Oberstgruppenführer Paul Hausser was launched. His forces were to mount an all-out offensive near Mortain and drive west through Avranches to the coast. Unfortunately, the Americans were prepared for this offensive and an air-assault on the combined German units proved devastating.^[115] By late August, the LSSAH, which had only been committed to battle since 6 July, was fighting for its existence as it was caught in the encirclement by the western Allied armies in the Falaise Pocket which ended the Battle of Normandy with a German defeat. The remnants of the LSSAH which escaped the encirclement were withdrawn to Germany for refitting.^[114] For the Waffen-SS, the loss of France and Belgium was extraordinarily frustrating and they cited as the reason for their defeat, the material superiority of the enemy forces in what they bitterly referred to as the Allied Materialschlacht.^[116]

Battle for Germany

By late 1944, the Waffen-SS soldiers who had survived the summer campaigns were withdrawn from the front line to refit. Two of them, the 9th and 10th Waffen-SS panzer divisions, did so in the Arnhem region of Holland in early September, 1944. This was to prove disastrous for the Allies. On 17 September, the Allies launched a massive airborne operation to seize control over the river Rhine.^[117] Coordinating with the deployment of the American 101st and 82nd Airborne divisions, British and Polish paratroops were dropped at Arnhem. Unfortunately for the airborne troops, the Waffen-SS units were prepared for them and quickly went into action, repulsing the Allied attack. Known now by its military code-name, Operation Market Garden, the intelligence failures and poor planning by the Allies during this endeavor proved costly, which was further exacerbated by having to face experienced fighting units of the Waffen-SS during the offensive. After a week of bitter fighting, the Allied effort had failed and the paratroopers were eventually forced to surrender.^[118]

In late 1944, Hitler launched a massive counterattack attack against the western Allies through the Ardennes sector, harboring dreams of a "second Dunkirk". The plan was to split the British in the north from the Americans in the south.^[119] Spearheading the attack were two panzer armies, one of them commanded by then SS-Oberst-Gruppenführer Dietrich, which consisted largely of Waffen-SS divisions. Shortly before dawn on 16 December 1944 the Germans offensive opened up with a massive artillery barrage.^[120] Dietrich's battle group sliced through the Americans, spreading panic as far as Paris. However, advancing through the forests and wooded hills of the Ardennes was proving difficult during the winter. Initially the Germans made good process in its northern end of the advance. However, they ran into unexpected fierce resistance by the U.S. 2nd and 99th Infantry Divisions. By 23 December, the weather conditions started improving, allowing the Allied air forces to attack. In increasingly difficult conditions, the German advance slowed.^[121] During the Battle of the Bulge (as it became known), SS-Obersturmbannführer Joachim Peiper left a path of destruction in the wake of his retreat, during which, Waffen-SS soldiers murdered American POWs and unarmed Belgian civilians.^[122] Despite the best efforts of the Waffen-SS and the German Army, the fuel shortages, stiff American resistance, including at the town of Bastogne and Allied air-assaults on German supply columns proved too much, costing the Germans 700 tanks and the lion's share of their remaining forces in the west.^[123] Germany could not afford the losses in the Ardennes which meant that Hitler's great gamble, while inflicting serious damage to his western enemies, had failed.^[124]

By the end of 1944 the Red Army had amassed “fifty-five full armies, six tank armies, and thirteen air armies commanding 500 rifle divisions, ninety-four artillery divisions and 149 independent artillery brigades,” with upwards of 15,000 tanks and 15,000 military aircraft ready for the onslaught.^[125] As 1945 began, the well-equipped Red Army prepared for the assault which would take them into the German homeland. The Waffen-SS fought hard and the 4th SS Panzer Corps managed to conduct a successful “spoiling operation” from 17–24 February, “which eliminated the Russian bridgeheads over the Hron River and thereby lessened the immediate threat to Bratislava and Vienna.”^[126] Ultimately, the German efforts at Budapest, while earnest, failed. In the interim, the 1st and 2nd SS Panzer Corps made their way towards Austria, but the going was slow due to damaged railways.^[127]

In Hitler’s estimation, the Nagykanizsa oilfields southwest of Lake Balaton were the most strategically valuable reserves on the Eastern Front.^[126] Correspondingly, Hitler ordered Dietrich’s 6th SS Panzer Army to move from the Ardennes to Hungary in order to protect the oil fields and refineries there.^[128] Around the city of Budapest and along the Danube valley, the Germans fought hard but the overwhelming numerical superiority the Red Army possessed made any lasting defense impossible, yet Hitler somehow believed a major victory was possible there.^[129] The final German offensive in the east took place in early March. Named Frühlingserwachsen (Spring Awakening) the German forces busted out near Lake Balaton with the Sixth SS Panzer Army storming northwards towards Budapest and the 2nd Panzer Army charging eastwards and south.^[130] Unfortunately, Dietrich's army struggled forward in the snow and mud against stiffening Russian resistance.^[131] Within a week, the attack had ground to a halt. So enraged was Hitler, that he ordered members of the Waffen-SS to remove their "Adolf Hitler" armbands so as to overtly mark their disgrace.^[132] Even so, Dietrich's men continued to fight as the western Allies and Russians squeezed the Nazis ever tighter. By now, on both the Eastern and Western Front, the sinister activities of the other organizations within the SS were becoming clear, as the concentration and extermination camps were overrun in lieu of the feeble attempts by the SS to hastily evacuate the inmates and destroy the facilities.^[133] Allied troops working westward encountered the remains of Nazi brutality at the camps in their areas of occupation which elicited understandable expressions of disbelief and repugnance. Most were indescribably angry at what the Germans had done to other human beings.^[134]

On 9 April, 1945, the capital of East Prussia, Königsberg fell to the Russians and on 13 April Dietrich’s SS unit was forced out of Vienna.^[135] The Russian assault on Berlin began on 16 April at 0330 AM with a massive artillery barrage accompanied by searchlights to light the path of the attackers.^[136] Within just a week, fighting was taking place inside the city itself. Among the many elements defending Berlin, were French and Latvian Waffen-SS troops.^[137]^[138] Hitler still hoped that his remaining SS soldiers would produce a miracle and rescue the capital, but he was now living in complete fantasy. Meanwhile, fanatical members of the SS patrolled the city despite the futility of maintaining their discipline, shooting or hanging soldiers and civilians for what they determined were acts of cowardice or defeatism; branding them as traitors, even highly decorated soldiers were treated this way by the SS with military rank mattering none whatsoever.^[139]

The Berlin garrison finally surrendered on 2 May, two days after Hitler had taken his own life and a silence unknown for some time reigned in Berlin – no air-raid sirens, no falling bombs, no artillery fire, no machine-gun fire – it was finally quiet.^[136] Anticipating little mercy from the Russians, there was now a rush among the surviving SS and army formations to surrender to the western allies. A number of Waffen-SS divisions conducted formal surrender campaigns to demonstrate their defiance.^[140] Very few of those who made it into Russian hands ever returned to Germany.

SS offices

By 1942 all activities of the SS were managed through twelve main offices of the Allgemeine-SS.^[141]

Hauptamt Persönlicher Stab Reichsführer-SS, Personal Staff of the Reich Leader SS (i.e., Himmler)
SS-Hauptamt, SS-HA, Main Administrative Office
SS Führungshauptamt, SS-FHA, SS Main Operational Office (military command for the Waffen-SS)
Hauptamt SS-Gericht, Main Office of SS Legal Matters
SS-Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt, RuSHA, SS Office of Race and Settlement
SS Personalhauptamt, SS Personnel Main Office
Reichssicherheitshauptamt, RSHA, Reich Main Security Office
Hauptamt Ordnungspolizei, Main Office of the Order Police
Wirtschafts und Verwaltungshauptamt, SS-WVHA, Economic and Administration Main Office (which administered the concentration camp system)
Hauptamt Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle, VOMI, Racial German Assistance Main Office
Hauptamt Dienststelle Heissmeyer, SS Education Office
Hauptamt Reichskommissar für die Festigung Deutschen Volkstums, RKFDV, Main Office of the Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Nationhood

Foreign Legions

The Waffen-SS maintained several "Foreign Legions" of personnel from conquered territories and countries allied to Germany. The majority wore a distinctive national collar patch and preceded their SS rank titles with the prefix Waffen instead of SS. Volunteers from Scandinavian countries filled the ranks of two divisions, the 5th "Wiking" and 11th "Nordland." Belgian Flemings joined Dutchmen to form the "Nederland" Legion, their Walloon compatriots joined the Sturmbrigade "Wallonien". There was also a French volunteer division, 33rd Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS Charlemagne (1st French) which was formed mainly from the remnants of the Legion of French Volunteers Against Bolshevism (LVF) and French Sturmbrigade in 1944.

Although initially the Waffen-SS was exclusive to only Germans, the restrictions were later relaxed during the war due to military manpower shortages and units were formed from foreign volunteers and conscripts. These included Ukrainian, Albanians from Kosovo, Serbian, Croatian, Turkic, Caucasian, Cossack, and Tatar Legions,^[142] The Ukrainians and the Tatars had both suffered persecution under Joseph Stalin and they were likely motivated primarily by opposition to the Soviet government rather than genuine ideological agreement with the SS. The exiled Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husayni, used anti-Semitism and anti-Serb racism to recruit an entire Waffen-SS division of Bosnian Muslims, the 13th SS Division "Handschar" (Scimitar).^[143] The year-long Soviet occupation of the Baltic states at the beginning of World War II produced volunteers for Latvian and Estonian Waffen-SS units. The Estonian Legion, for example, had 1,280 volunteers under training by the end of 1942.^[144] However, by February 1, 1944 the German military situation on the Eastern front had worsened. As the result, another 10,000 Estonia men were conscripted into the Waffen-SS. Approximately 25,000 men served in the Estonian SS division (with thousands more conscripted into the "Police Front" battalions and border guard units).^[145] After 1943 most men from the east were conscripts. However, some other occupied countries such as Greece, Lithuania, Czechoslovakia, and Poland never formed formal Waffen-SS legions. Nevertheless, some citizens of those countries were in the service of the Waffen-SS. In Greece, the fascist organisation ESPO tried to create a Greek SS division, but the attempt was abandoned when its leader was assassinated.

There was, from August 1944 until the end of the war, an Indische Freiwilligen-Legion der Waffen-SS ("Waffen SS Indian Volunteer Legion") which had been formed as a Heer (German Army) unit in August 1942, chiefly from disaffected Indian soldiers of the British Indian Army, captured by the Axis in North Africa. Many, if not most, of the Indian volunteers who switched sides to fight with the German Army and against the British were strongly nationalistic supporters of the exiled, anti-British, former president of the Indian National Congress, Netaji (the Leader) Subhas Chandra Bose. (See also: Tiger Legion and; Indian National Army.)^[146]

Other non-Europeans who volunteered for military service with Nazi Germany, served with, or were attached to, the Heer (such as the Ostlegionen units), the Kriegsmarine (typically POWs in an unofficial capacity) or with the Luftwaffe (civilians or POWs, in non-flying roles), rather than with the Waffen-SS.

Auxiliary-SS

The Auxiliary-SS (the SS-Mannschaften, or the SS guarding teams) were the auxiliary-SS personnel who were not considered regular SS members, but were conscripted from other branches of the German military, the Nazi Party, SA, Werkschutz, and the Volkssturm for service with the camps, including the extermination camps of Aktion Reinhardt such as Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, and KZ Lublin Majdanek.^[147] From 1944 on, such personnel (the SS-Wachmannschaften) wore a distinctive double-armed Swastika collar patch and served as camp guard and administrative personnel until the surrender of Germany.^[148]

Auxiliary SS members had the distinct disadvantage of being the "last ones in the camp" as the major concentration camps were liberated by allied forces. As a result, many auxiliary SS members, in particular those captured by Russian forces, faced swift and fierce retaliation and were often held personally responsible for the carnage of the camps to which some had only been assigned for a few weeks or even days.

SS and police leaders

During World War II, the most powerful men in the SS were the SS and Police Leaders, divided into three levels: regular leaders, higher leaders, and supreme leaders. Such persons normally held the rank of SS-Gruppenführer or above and answered directly to Himmler in all matters pertaining to the SS in their area of responsibility. Thus, SS and Police Leaders bypassed all other chains of command.

SS units and branches

Within the main branches of the Allgemeine-SS, SS-Totenkopfverbände and Waffen-SS, there further existed sub-branches; some with overlapping duties while other SS commands had little to no contact with each other. In addition, by 1936 the SS had complete control over the German Police, and by 1939 many police members were serving as dual SS members. Most of these branches committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, and many individuals were tried for these offences after the war.

Security services

In addition to running Germany's concentration camps, the SS is well known for establishing the police state of Nazi Germany and suppressing all resistance to Adolf Hitler through the use of secret state police and security forces.

The Sicherheitspolizei (SiPo) was the combined forces of the Kriminalpolizei (Kripo) and the Gestapo, police and security offices.^[52] Reinhard Heydrich is viewed as the mastermind behind the SS security forces and held the title of Chef des Sicherheitspolizei und SD until 27 September 1939 when he became the overall supreme commander of the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA).^[53]

From that point forward, the RSHA was in charge of SS security services and had under its command the Sicherheitsdienst (Security services; SD), the Kripo, and Gestapo as well as several additional offices to handle finance, administration, and supply.^[54] Heinrich Müller, who had been chief of operations for the Gestapo, was appointed its chief.^[149] Arthur Nebe was chief of the Criminal Police (Kripo), and the two branches of SD were commanded by several SS officers, including Otto Ohlendorf and Walter Schellenberg. Heydrich was later assassinated in 1942. In January 1943, his positions were taken over by Ernst Kaltenbrunner following a few short months of Heinrich Himmler personally running the RSHA while searching for Heydrich's replacement.^[150]

Concentration camps and death camps

The SS is closely associated with Nazi Germany's concentration camp system. After 1934, the running of Germany's concentration camps was placed under the total authority of the SS and an SS formation known as the SS-Totenkopfverbände (SS-TV), under the command of Theodor Eicke. 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, the oldest of which was at Dachau. The Dachau camp served as a model for subsequent facilities.^[151] By 1935, Himmler secured the finances necessary to run and establish additional camps with Hitler's approval.^[152] There were more Nazi concentration camps to come, including Sachsenhausen in 1936 and Buchenwald in July 1937. Close to the Czech border, the Flossenbürg concentration camp was opened in May 1938, Mauthausen began operations in August 1938 in upper Austria, and just north of Berlin, Ravensbrück, a camp intended for women was running by May 1939.^[153] During 1939, the Totenkopfverbände expanded into a military division with the establishment of the Totenkopf division, which by 1940 became a full division within the Waffen-SS.^[154]

As the Nazi regime became more oppressive in the last years before the war began, so too did the concentration camp system increase in size and in its lethal operation.^[155] Himmler intensified the activity of the SS both within Germany itself, as increasing numbers of Jews and German citizens deemed politically suspect or social outsider were arrested, but also his reach extended into Nazi occupied Europe as well. The concentration camp system "mirrored the wider reach of Nazi terror" and grew in scope as the economic ambitions of the SS intensified.^[156] The SS operated and owned a large number of economic enterprises, many of them staffed with concentration camp inmates which transformed the camp system from one being operated for the sake of political goals to one of forced labor as well.^[157] Besides working many of the camp inmates to death, the SS also in September 1941 began experimenting at Auschwitz with various means to kill them; inspired to some degree by the euthanasia T4 Program, the SS began using poison gas.^[158] In 1942, for administrative reasons, the guard and administrative staff of all the concentration camps became full members of the Waffen-SS. In addition, to overseeing the large administrative burden of an extensive labor camp system, the concentration camps were placed under the command of the SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt (WVHA). Oswald Pohl commanded the WVHA, while at that time Richard Glücks served as the Inspector of Concentration Camps.^[159]

Consequent to the escalation of World War II, the Totenkopfverbände began an even larger expansion of the concentration camp system, one that developed into three branches covering each type of camp the SS operated.^[160] By 1944, there existed three divisions of the SS-TV, those being the staff of the concentration camps proper in Germany and Austria, the labor camp system in occupied territories, and the guards and staff of the extermination camps in Poland that were involved in the Holocaust. By 1944, with the concentration camps fully integrated with the Waffen-SS and under the control of the WVHA, a standard practice developed to rotate SS members in and out of the camps, based on manpower needs and also to give assignments to wounded Waffen-SS officers and soldiers who could no longer serve in front-line combat.^[161] This rotation of personnel is the main argument that nearly the entire SS knew of the concentration camps, and what actions were committed within, making the entire organization liable for war crimes and crimes against humanity.^[162]

Death squads

The Einsatzgruppen were special units of the SS that were formed on an "as-needed" basis under the authority of the Sicherheitspolizei and later the RSHA, under Heydrich. The first Einsatzgruppen were created in 1938 for use during the Anschluss of Austria and again in 1939 for the annexation of Czechoslovakia.^[163] The original purpose of the Einsatzgruppen was to "enter occupied areas, seize vital records, and neutralize potential threats". In Austria and Czechoslovakia, the activities of the Einsatzgruppen were mainly limited to Nazification of local governments and assistance with the establishment of new concentration camps.

In 1939 the Einsatzgruppen were reactivated and sent into Poland to exterminate the Polish elite (Operation Tannenberg, AB-Aktion), so that there would be no leadership to form a resistance to German occupation.^[163] In 1941 the Einsatzgruppen reached their height when they were sent into Russia to begin large-scale extermination and genocide of "undesirables" such as Jews, gypsies, and communists. The Einsatzgruppen were responsible for the murders of more than one million people. The most notorious massacre of Jews in the Soviet Union was at a ravine called Babi Yar outside Kiev, where 33,771 Jews were killed in a single operation on September 29–30, 1941.^[164]

The last Einsatzgruppen were disbanded in mid-1944 (although on paper some continued to exist until 1945) due to the retreating German forces on both fronts and the inability to carry on with further "in-the-field" extermination activities. Former Einsatzgruppen members were either folded into the Waffen-SS or took up roles in the more established Concentration Camps such as Auschwitz.

Special action units

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 and actions which might involve sending agents or troops into the field to facilitate large-scale murder operations. The use of SS-Sonderkommandos was widespread, and according to former SS Sturmbannführer (Major) 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.^[165]

The best-known Sonderkommandos were formed from the SS Economic-Administrative Head Office, the SS Head Office, and also Department VII of the Reich Main Security Office (Science and Research) whose duties were to confiscate valuable items from Jewish libraries.

The Eichmann Sonderkommando was attached to the Security Police and the SD in terms of provisioning and manpower, but maintained a special position in the SS due to its direct role in the deportation of Jews to the death camps as part of the Final Solution.

The term "Sonderkommando" was also used to describe the teams of Jewish prisoners who were forced to work in gas chambers and crematoria, receiving special privileges and above-average treatment, before then being murdered themselves.^[166] The distinction was that these Jewish "special-action units" were not SS Sonderkommandos; the term was simply applied to these obviously non-SS personnel due to the nature of the tasks which they performed.

SS and police courts

SS and police courts were special tribunals which were the only authority authorized to try SS personnel for crimes. The different SS and Police Courts were:

SS- und Polizeigericht: Standard SS and Police Court for trial of SS officers and enlisted men accused of minor and somewhat serious crimes
Feldgerichte: Waffen-SS Court for court martial of Waffen-SS military personnel accused of violating the military penal code of the German Armed Forces.
Oberstes SS- und Polizeigericht: The Supreme SS and Police Court for trial of serious crimes and also any infraction committed by SS Generals.
SS- und Polizeigericht z.b. V.: The Extraordinary SS and Police Court was a secret tribunal that was assembled to deal with highly sensitive issues which were desired to be kept secret even from the SS itself.

The one exception to the SS and Police Courts jurisdiction involved members of the Allgemeine-SS who were serving on active duty in the regular Wehrmacht. In such cases, the SS member in question was subject to regular Wehrmacht military law and could face charges before a standard military tribunal.

Special protection units

The original purpose of the SS, that of safeguarding the leadership of the Nazi Party (Adolf Hitler) continued until the very end of the group's existence. Hitler had used bodyguards for protection since the 1920s, and as the SS grew in size and importance, so too did Hitler's personnel protection unit. There were three main SS groups most closely associated with protecting the life of Adolf Hitler.

Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler: The Leibstandarte (LSSAH) was the end product of several previous groups which had protected Hitler while he was living in Munich, before he became Chancellor of Germany. By the start of World War II, the Leibstandarte itself had become four distinct entities mainly the Waffen-SS division (unconnected to Hitler's personal protection but a key formation of the Waffen-SS), the Berlin Chancellory Guard, the SS security regiment assigned to the Obersalzberg in Berchtesgaden, and an original remnant of the Munich-based bodyguard unit which protected Hitler when he visited his personal apartment and the Brown House Nazi Party headquarters in Munich.^[63]^[167]
SS-Begleitkommando des Führers: was a small elite SS protection unit formed in February 1932 as Hitler's protection escort while travelling. It was later expanded and became known as the Führerbegleitkommando (FBK). It continued under separate command and remained responsible for Hitler's personal protection.^[58]
Reichssicherheitsdienst: The RSD was a protection unit for Hitler founded by Himmler on 15 March 1933 as the Führerschutzkommando.^[59] The unit was officially renamed the Reichssicherheitsdienst on 1 August 1935.^[61] While the Leibstandarte was concerned with outer security around Hitler, the RSD and FBK worked together for security and personal protection of Hitler during trips and public events, but they operated as two groups and used separate vehicles. RSD chief Johann Rattenhuber was in overall command and the current FBK chief acted as his deputy.^[62]

SS special purpose corps

Another section of the SS consisted of special purpose units which assisted the main SS with a variety of tasks. The first such units were SS cavalry formations formed in the 1930s as part of the Allgemeine-SS (these units were entirely separate from the later Waffen-SS mounted commands).

One of the more infamous SS special purpose corps were the SS medical units, composed mostly of doctors who became involved in both euthanasia and human experimentation. The SS also formed a unit to conduct historical research into Nordic-Germanic origins.

SS Cavalry Corps

The SS Cavalry Corps (German: Reiter-SS) comprised several Reiterstandarten and Reiterabschnitte, which were really equestrian clubs to attract the German upper class and nobility into the SS. In the 1930s, the Reiter-SS was considered as a nucleus for a military branch of the SS, but this idea was phased out with the rise of the SS-Verfügungstruppe (later the Waffen-SS).

By 1941 the Reiter-SS was little more than a social club. Most of the serious cavalry officers transferred to combat units in the Waffen-SS and the SS Cavalry Brigade. Between 1942 and 1945, the Reiter-SS effectively ceased to exist except on paper, with only a handful of members. During the Nuremberg Trials, when the Tribunal declared the SS to be a criminal organization, the Reiter-SS was expressly excluded, due to its insignificant involvement in other SS activities.

SS Medical Corps

The SS Medical Corps first appeared in the 1930s as small companies of SS personnel known as the Sanitätsstaffel. After 1931, the SS formed a headquarters office known as Amt V, which was the central office for SS medical units.

In 1945, after the surrender of Germany, the SS was declared an illegal criminal organization by the Allies. SS doctors, in particular, were marked as war criminals due to the wide range of human medical experimentation which had been conducted during World War II as well as the role SS doctors had played in the gas chamber selections of the Holocaust. The most infamous member, Doctor Josef Mengele, served as a medical officer at Auschwitz under the command of Eduard Wirth of the Auschwitz medical corps. Eduard Wirth was "organizer-in-chief" of selections, which he often attended himself. Josef Mengele also made the daily gas chamber selections of people as well as conducting many experiments at the camp. After the trial of members as to crimes against humanity, it was determined that in the territory of the Krasnodar Territory of the USSR about 7,000 civilians were killed by gas poisoning.^[168]

SS Women's Corps

Realizing that German women constituted a significant number of persons available for war effort along with the overall labor force of carrying out his genocidal plans across Europe, Himmler established a female reporting and clerical unit known as the SS-Frauenkops. Appealing to the cause and to women as more than mere biological contributors to the success of the Reich, Himmler gave a speech in Poznan in October of 1943 where he praised his erstwhile SS leaders for sending their sisters, girlfriends, brides, and daughters to the "elite" training program.^[169] Part of the SS-Frauenkorps also included the SS-Helferinnenkorps ("Women Helper Corps"), an assembly which consisted of women volunteers who joined the SS as auxiliary personnel. The Helferin Corps maintained a simple system of ranks, mainly SS-Helfer, SS-Oberhelfer, and SS-Haupthelfer. Members of the Helferin Corps were assigned to a wide variety of activities such as administrative staff, supply support personnel, and female guards at concentration camps.

Himmler set up the Reichsschule für SS Helferinnen at Oberenheim in 1942 to train a corps of women who, amongst other things, were taught Nazi ideology, specialist communications, "mother schooling", and fitness. The intention was that in addition to facilitating the transfer of men from communications into combat roles, the SS-Helferinnen women would eventually replace all female civilian employees in the service of the Reichsführer. It was postulated that the SS-Helferinnen would be more suitable and reliable because they were to be trained and selected according to NSDAP racist ideology.^[170]^[171] The designation SS-Helferin was used only for those who had been trained at the Reichsschule-SS at Oberehnheim in Elsass, although whether this made them officially accepted SS members has been debated.^[170] In her review of Jutta Muhlenberg's book, Das SS-Helferinnenkorps: Ausbildung, Einsatz und Entnazifizierung der weiblichen Angehörigen der Waffen-SS 1942–1949, Rachel Century writes:

Mühlenberg is very careful not to generalise and tar all the SS-Helferinnen with the same brush. Although all these women were a part of the bureaucratic staff, and were Mittäterinnen, Zuschauerinnen und zum Teil – auch Zeuginnen von Gewalttätigkeiten [accomplices, spectators and sometimes even witnesses of violence] (p. 416), she notes that each woman still had individual responsibility over what she did, saw and knew, and it would be very difficult to identify the individual responsibilities of each SS-Helferin....In later years, the SS-Helferinnen had to go through the de-Nazification process. Within each tribunal it was disputed whether these women were members of the criminal SS organization. As a consequence, there were many different and conflicting decisions in individual proceedings. Despite her acknowledgement of the varying degrees of individual responsibility, Mühlenberg concludes that the guilt of the former SS-Helferinnen lies in their voluntary participation in the bureaucratic apparatus of the SS.^[170]

The Reichsschule für SS Helferinnen was closed on 22 November 1944 as the personnel made a hasty exodus from the Alsace region due to the advance of the Allies.^[172]^[173] From the outset, Himmler intended for women's concentration camps to be run by German women and admonished male members of the SS against entering them.^[169] Female administrators and those who obtained leadership within the SS were placed in commanding positions, particularly within the concentration camp system where they gained unprecedented power as a revered and uniformed member of the Nazi government.^[174] Like their male equivalents in the SS, female members of the SS, whether in integrated environments where they worked as clerical assistants or in places like Ravensbrück concentration camp where they predominated as guards, participated in atrocities against Poles, Jews, and others in the process of making mass murder a standard operating procedure in the Nazi regime.^[174]

SS Scientific Corps

The Scientific branch of the SS which was used to provide scientific and archeological proof of Aryan supremacy was called the Ahnenerbe (Ancestral Heritage Organization).^[175] Formed in 1935 by Himmler, the organization did not become part of the SS until 1939. Its tasks were not only the evaluation of racial identity among the German people, but also concerned itself with ancient Germanic traditions and language, atop pseudo-scientific esoteric endeavors like the connection between house design and race, and even the occult properties of church bells and Runic script.^[175] Through the establishment of this academically-oriented organization, Himmler sought prominence for highly educated members of the SS and pursued "scientific" endeavors under those auspices.^[176] Racial mythology and ultra-nationalism were suffused by the activity of the Ahnenerbe and some scholars like Bettina Arnold associate aspects of Nazi genocide to this organization.^[177] A considerable part of the Germanization (Germanisierung) of Poland in 1940 was the result of collaborative efforts between the RSHA and Nordicist intellectuals from among the SS Ahnenerbe.^[178] During the German invasion eastward and the extermination activities of the SS Einsatzgruppen in Poland, the Balkans and Russia, where upwards of 250,000 persons of Sinti and/or Roma heritage were killed, Himmler asked his SS Ahnenerbe to keep some of them alive on a reservation as an "ethnic curiosity."^[179] Practicing scholarly "science" within Nazi Germany and abroad as the SS did on numerous fronts was subjective at times. Nonetheless, the SS Ahnenerbe attempted to link natural sciences with the arts and accordingly promote a more holistic understanding of the world through an admixture of genetics, geopolitics, philology, anthropology, history, and archaeology - which they blended with astrology, mythology and the occult; all brought together for the sake of legitimizing the Nazi Weltanschauung.^[180]

Other SS groups

Austrian-SS

The term "Austrian-SS" was never a recognized branch of the SS, but is often used to describe that portion of the SS membership from Austria. Both Germany and Austria contributed to a single SS and Austrian SS members were seen as regular SS personnel, in contrast to SS members from other countries which were grouped into either the Germanic-SS or the Foreign Legions of the Waffen-SS.

The Austrian branch of the SS first developed in 1932 and, by 1934, was acting as a covert force to influence the Anschluss with Germany which would eventually occur in 1938. The early Austrian SS was led by Ernst Kaltenbrunner and Arthur Seyss-Inquart and was technically under the command of the SS in Germany, but often acted independently concerning Austrian affairs. In 1936 the Austrian-SS was declared illegal by the Austrian government.

After 1938, when Austria was annexed by Germany, the Austrian SS was folded into SS-Oberabschnitt Donau with the 3rd regiment of the SS-Verfugungstruppe, Der Führer, and the fourth Totenkopf regiment, Ostmark, recruited in Austria shortly thereafter. A new concentration camp at Mauthausen also opened under the authority of the SS Death's Head units.

Austrian SS members served in every branch of the SS, including Concentration Camps, Einsatzgruppen, and the Security Services. One notable Austrian-SS member was Amon Göth, portrayed in the film Schindler's List. The fictional character of Hans Landa in the film Inglourious Basterds was also depicted as a member of the Austrian-SS.

According to political scientist David Art:

Austrians also played a central role in Nazi crimes. Although Austrians comprised only 8 percent of the Third Reich's population, over 13 percent of the SS were Austrian. Many of the key figures in the extermination project of the Third Reich (Hitler, Eichmann, Kaltenbrunner, Globocnik, to name a few) were Austrian, as were over 75 percent of commanders and 40 percent of the staff at Nazi death camps. Simon Wiesenthal estimates that Austrians were directly responsible for the deaths of 3 million Jews.^[181]

Contract workers

To conduct upkeep, house-keeping, and the general maintenance of its many headquarters buildings both in Germany and in other occupied countries, the SS frequently hired civilian contract workers to perform such duties as maids, maintenance workers, and general laborers. The SS also occasionally employed civilian secretaries, but more often used the female SS corps for these duties.

Within the concentration camps, the SS used a different method to gain such work skills, mainly through the use of slave labor by "assigning" concentration camp inmates to work in certain jobs. This included doctors, such as Miklós Nyiszli who, while a Jewish prisoner in Auschwitz, served as Chief Pathologist and personal assistant to Josef Mengele.

In occupied countries, especially France and the Low Countries, various resistance groups made use of the SS need for low-level workers by planting resistance members in certain jobs within SS headquarters buildings. This allowed for intelligence gathering which assisted resistance attacks against German forces; resistance groups in the conquered eastern lands also used this method, with less success, although groups in Norway conducted several assassinations of SS officers through the use of intelligence plants within SS offices. The SS was often aware of such "moles" and actively attempted to locate such persons and, on occasion, even used the resistance plants to German advantage by supplying bad information in an attempt to bring resistance groups out into the open and destroy them.

The French Resistance was by far the most successful in using SS contracted civilian workers to achieve intelligence gathering and conduct partisan operations. At the end of World War II, resistance groups also rounded up local civilians who had worked for the SS, subjecting them to humiliating ordeals; such as, the shaving of heads in public squares.

Several motion pictures have been the subject of local civilians working for the SS, such as A Woman at War, starring Martha Plimpton, and Black Book, starring Christian Berkel.

Post-war activity and legacy

On 23 May 1945, SS Chief Heinrich Himmler was dead by way of a cyanide capsule.^[182] In the funeral pyre of National Socialism, the SS organization dissolved away.^[183] Ranking members of the SS fled but several did not get far.^[184] Chief of the Reich Main Security Office, SS-Obergruppenführer Ernst Kaltenbrunner, who was the ranking member of the SS upon Himmler's suicide, was captured and arrested in the Bavarian Alps, tried at the Nuremberg Tribunal along with other leading Nazis like Hermann Göring, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Alfred Rosenberg, Hans Frank, among others. Kaltenbrunner, like many of the senior Nazis, was convicted of crimes against humanity and executed on 16 October 1946.^[185] Other SS intellectuals and physicians were also brought to trial and punished, especially the SS Ahnenerbe doctors whose adherence to ideology drove them to kill the enfeebled and/or disabled persons deemed "unworthy to live" or who performed medical experiments on concentration camp prisoners.^[186] Although, it is estimated that out of roughly 70,000 members of the SS involved in crimes in German concentration camps, only about 1,650 to 1,700 were tried after the war.^[187]

According to Simon Wiesenthal, toward the end of World War II, a group of former SS officers went to Argentina and set up a Nazi fugitive network code-named ODESSA, (an acronym for Organisation der ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen, "Organization of the former SS members"), with ties in Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, operating out of Buenos Aires, Argentina. ODESSA allegedly helped Adolf Eichmann, Josef Mengele, Erich Priebke, and many other war criminals find postwar refuge in Latin America.

However, SS members who escaped judicial punishment were often subject to summary execution, torture and beatings at the hands of freed prisoners, displaced persons or Allied soldiers.^[188]^[189] During the liberation of Dachau concentration camp some Waffen-SS soldiers were executed by U.S. military. SS-Oberführer Oskar Dirlewanger known as the "most evil man in the SS",^[190] found hiding under a false name in civilian clothes, died around 5–7 June 1945 in a detention camp at Altshausen, probably as a result of ill-treatment.^[191]^[192] In addition, at least some members of the U.S Army Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) delivered captured SS camp guards to displaced persons camps with the intention of them being extrajudicially executed.^[193]

Argentinian citizen and water company worker Ricardo Klement was discovered to be Adolf Eichmann in the 1950s, by former Jewish Dachau worker Lothar Hermann, whose daughter, Sylvia, became romantically involved with Klaus Klement (born Klaus Eichmann in 1936 in Berlin). He was captured by Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, in a suburb of Buenos Aires on May 11, 1960, and tried in Jerusalem on April 11, 1961, where he explicitly declared that he had abdicated his conscience in order to follow the Führerprinzip (the "leader principle", or superior orders). Eichmann was found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging. Nevertheless, Eichmann was quoted as having once stated, "I will jump into my grave laughing, because the fact that I have the death of five-million Jews [Reich enemies] on my conscience gives me extraordinary satisfaction."^[194]

Josef Mengele, disguised as a member of the regular German infantry, was captured and released by the Allies, oblivious of who he was. He was able to go and work in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1949 and to Altos, Paraguay, in 1959 where he was discovered by Nazi hunters. From the late 1960s on, he operated a medical practice in Embu, a small city near São Paulo, Brazil, under the identity of Wolfgang Gerhard, where in 1979, he suffered a stroke while swimming and drowned.

The British writer Gitta Sereny (born in 1921 in Hungary), who conducted interviews with SS men, considers the story about ODESSA untrue and attributes the escape of notorious SS members to postwar chaos, an individual bishop in the Vatican, and the Vatican's inability to investigate the stories of those people who came requesting help.

The Argentine author and journalist Uki Goñi's book, The Real Odessa, claims that such a network in fact existed, and in Argentina was largely run by Argentine President Juan Domingo Perón, a Nazi sympathiser who had been impressed by Benito Mussolini's reign in Italy during a military tour of duty in Italy and Nazi Germany. More recently researched (2002) than Sereny's interviews, counterclaimants point out that it is at a far greater chronological remove—multiple decades, not simply a year or two—from the actual point(s) in time he asserts such events occurred, a remove material enough that it could call into question the veracity of a number of his claims.

In the modern age, several neo-Nazi groups claim to be successor organizations to the SS. There is no single group, however, that is recognized as a continuation of the SS, and most such present-day organizations are loosely organized with separate agendas.

On 21 February 2012, The Council of Europe’s Commission against Racism and Intolerance published its report on Latvia (fourth monitoring cycle), in which it condemned Latvian Legion Day which commemorates persons who had fought in a Latvian unit of the Waffen SS and takes place every year on 16 March. It is held in the centre of Riga.^[195]

Oath of the SS

The full Eidformel der Schutzstaffel (Oath of the SS) consisted of three questions and answers. The following text is cited from a primary source written by Heinrich Himmler.

German	English
Wie lautet Dein Eid? – Ich schwöre Dir, Adolf Hitler, als Führer und Kanzler des Deutschen Reiches Treue und Tapferkeit. Wir geloben Dir und den von Dir bestimmten Vorgesetzten Gehorsam bis in den Tod. So wahr mir Gott helfe! Also glaubst Du an einen Gott? – Ja, ich glaube an einen Herrgott. Was hältst Du von einem Menschen, der nicht an einen Gott glaubt? – Ich halte ihn für überheblich, größenwahnsinnig und dumm; er ist nicht für uns geeignet.^[196]^[197]	What is your oath? – I vow to you, Adolf Hitler, as Führer and chancellor of the German Reich loyalty and bravery. I vow to you and to the leaders that you set for me, absolute allegiance until death. So help me God! So you believe in a God? – Yes, I believe in a Lord God. What do you think about a man who does not believe in a God? – I think he is overbearing, megalomaniacal, and foolish; he is not suitable for us.

Notes

^ In practice, earth-grey was little, if any, different from the army field-grey (feldgrau); however, Himmler resented the army and preferred a distinct SS term.

References

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^ ^a ^b Felton 2014, pp. 32–33.
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^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j ^k ^l "Gladiators of World War II: The Waffen-SS"
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^ Moorhouse 2012, pp. 364–365.
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^ Yerger 1997, pp. 13–21.
^ Robert L. Canfield, Turko–Persia in Historical Perspective p. 212 – "The majority of Central Asian soldiers taken prisoner opted for the enemy – a fact still hidden from the Soviet public today – although systematic starvation and cruel treatment in German hands, which resulted in appalling losses, must have been one of the major inducements to change sides. As Turkistanis they joined the so-called "Eastern Legions", which were part of the Wehrmacht and later the Waffen-SS, to fight the Red Army (Hauner 1981:339-57). The estimates of their numbers vary between 250,000 and 400,000, which include the Kalmyks, the Tatars and members of the Caucasian ethnic groups (Alexiev 1982:33)"
^ Himmler had convinced himself that Bosniaks and Croats were Germanic rather than Slavic, and he admired Islam. SS: Hell on the Western Front. The Waffen SS in Europe 1940–1945, 2003. p. 70
^ Bishop 2005, p. 93.
^ Bishop 2005, pp. 93–94.
^ Stein 1984, p. 189.
^ Am Großen Wannsee (2015). "Konzentrations- und Todeslager" (PDF). Haus der Wannsee-Konferenz: Raum 13. Berlin-Zehlendorf: House of the Wannsee Conference - Memorial Center: 1–21. Retrieved October 21, 2015. The permanent exhibition which documents the Wannsee conference, the events prior to it, and its consequences. Also in: Der Ort des Terrors: Niederhagen. C.H.Beck. 2005. p. 70. ISBN 3406529674 – via Google Books. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |authors= ignored (help)
^ Photo-archive (February 28, 2012). "Soldaten im Einsatz". SS-Mannschaft. Fallschirmjäger. Retrieved October 21, 2015 – via Wayback Machine.
^ Weale 2010, p. 132.
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^ Wachsmann 2010, p. 27.
^ Zentner & Bedürftig 1991, p. 906.
^ Wachsmann 2010, p. 29.
^ Koehl 2004, pp. 182–183.
^ Wachsmann 2015, pp. 196–198.
^ Reitlinger 1989, p. 265.
^ Stein 1991, pp. 258–263.
^ ^a ^b Flaherty 2004, p. 109.
^ Flaherty 2004, pp. 120–123.
^ Diner 2006, p. 123.
^ McNab 2009, p. 141.
^ How Hitler's Bodyguard Worked 2015.
^ Mahoney, ed. 1996, p. 238.
^ ^a ^b Lower 2013, p. 108.
^ ^a ^b ^c Century 2011.
^ Rempel 1989, pp. 223–224.
^ Mühlenberg 2011, p. 27.
^ An online pdf version of the Mühlenberg book is retrievable from: https://download.e-bookshelf.de/download/0000/3731/67/L-G-0000373167-0002317697.pdf
^ ^a ^b Lower 2013, p. 109.
^ ^a ^b Spielvogel 1992, p. 108.
^ Schafft 2004, p. 93.
^ Schafft 2004, p. 97.
^ Ingrao 2013, p. 63.
^ Burleigh & Wippermann 1991, p. 125.
^ Cornwell 2004, p. 192.
^ Art 2006, p. 43.
^ Evans 2008, p. 729.
^ Höhne 2001, p. 580.
^ Weale 2012, p. 410.
^ Wistrich 2001, p. 136.
^ Pringle 2006, pp. 295–296.
^ As stated by Piotr Cywiński, the director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum, in: Marcin Bosacki, Dominik Uhlig, Bogdan Wróblewski (May 2008), "Nikt nie chce osądzić zbrodniarza", Gazeta Wyborcza (in Polish) (2008–05–21), retrieved May 21, 2008{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
^ MacDonogh 2009, p. 3.
^ Murray & Millet 2001, pp. 565–568.
^ Chris Bishop; Michael Williams (2003). SS: Hell on the Western Front. Zenith Imprint. p. 92. ISBN 0760314020.
^ Walter Laqueur; Judith Tydor Baumel (2001). Dirlewanger, Oskar. Yale University Press. p. 150. ISBN 0300084323. Retrieved June 24, 2012. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
^ Walter Stanoski Winter; Struan Robertson (2004). Winter Time: Memoirs of a German Sinto Who Survived Auschwitz. p. 139. ISBN 1-902806-38-7.
^ Matthew Brzezinski, Giving Hitler Hell Washington Post Sunday, July 24, 2005; p. W08
^ Arendt 2006, p. 46.
^ Council of Europe: European Commission Against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) (February 2012). ECRI Report on Latvia (fourth monitoring cycle) (PDF). p. 9. All attempts to commemorate persons who fought in the Waffen SS and collaborated with the Nazis, should be condemned. Any gathering or march legitimising in any way Nazism should be banned.
^ [1]
^ Heinrich Himmler, Die Schutzstaffel (SS) als antibolschewistische Kampforganisation, 1937, p.15

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Cawthorne, Nigel (2012). The Story of the SS. Arcturus Publishing. ISBN 978-1848589476. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Century, Rachel (January 2011). "Review of Das SS-Helferinnenkorps: Ausbildung, Einsatz und Entnazifizierung der weiblichen Angehörigen der Waffen-SS 1942–1949". Reviews in History. Institute of Historical Research. Review no. 1183. Retrieved July 5, 2013.
Cook, Stan; Bender, R. James (1994). Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler: Uniforms, Organization, & History. R. James Bender Publishing. ISBN 978-0-912138-55-8. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Cornwell, John (2004). Hitler’s Scientists: Science, War, and the Devil’s Pact. New York: Penguin Press. ISBN 0-670-03075-9. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Diner, Dan (2006). Beyond the Conceivable: Studies on Germany, Nazism, and the Holocaust. Los Angeles and Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-52021-345-6. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Duffy, Christopher (2002). Red Storm on the Reich: The Soviet March on Germany, 1945. Edison, NJ: Castle Books. ISBN 0-7858-1624-0. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Evans, Richard J. (2008). The Third Reich at War. New York: Penguin Group. ISBN 978-0-14-311671-4. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Felton, Mark (2014). Guarding Hitler: The Secret World of the Führer. Pen & Sword. ISBN 978-1-78159-305-9. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Flaherty, T. H. (2004) [1988]. The Third Reich: The SS. Time-Life. ISBN 1-84447-073-3. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Fischer, Klaus (1995). Nazi Germany: A New History. Continuum. ISBN 978-0-82640-797-9. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Fritz, Stephen (2004). Endkampf: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Death of the Third Reich. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 978-0-81312-325-7. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Fritz, Stephen G (2011). Ostkrieg: Hitler's War of Extermination in the East. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 978-0-81313-416-1. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Glantz, David (October 11, 2001). "The Soviet‐German War 1941–45: Myths and Realities: A Survey Essay" (PDF). Strom Thurmond Institute of Government and Public Affairs, Clemson University. {{cite web}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Goldsworthy, Terry (2010). Valhalla's Warriors: A History of the Waffen-SS on the Eastern Front 1941-1945. Dog Ear Publishing. ISBN 978-1608446391. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Hannes, Heer; Naumann, Klaus (2000). War of Extermination: The German Military in World War II 1941–1944. Berghahn. ISBN 1-57181-232-6. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Hein, Bastian (2015). Die SS: Geschichte und Verbrechen (in German). Munich: C.H.Beck. ISBN 978-3-406-67513-3. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Hellwinkel, Lars (2014). Hitler's Gateway to the Atlantic: German Naval Bases in France 1940-1945. Seaforth Publishing. ISBN 978-1848321991. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Hoffmann, Peter (2000). Hitler's Personal Security: Protecting the Führer 1921–1945. Da Capo Press. ISBN 978-0-30680-947-7. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Höhne, Heinz (2001). The Order of the Death's Head: The Story of Hitler’s SS. Penguin. ISBN 978-0-14139-012-3. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Horvitz, Leslie A.; Catherwood, Christopher (2006). Encyclopedia of War Crimes and Genocide. Facts on File. ISBN 0-8160-6001-0. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Ingrao, Christian (2013). Believe and Destroy: Intellectuals in the SS War Machine. Malden, MA: Polity. ISBN 978-0745660264. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Jacobsen, Hans-Adolf (1999). "The Structure of Nazi Foreign Policy, 1933-1945". In Christian Leitz, ed. (ed.). The Third Reich: The Essential Readings. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 978-0-63120-700-9. {{cite book}}: |editor= has generic name (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Joachimsthaler, Anton (1999). The Last Days of Hitler: The Legends, the Evidence, the Truth. Brockhampton Press. ISBN 978-1-86019-902-8. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Jukes, Geoffrey; O'Neill, Robert (2010). World War II: The Eastern Front 1941-1945. The Rosen Publishing Group. ISBN 978-1435891340. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Kershaw, Ian (2008). Hitler: A Biography. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0-393-06757-6. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Kershaw, Ian (2011). The End: The Defiance and Destruction of Hitler’s Germany, 1944-1945. New York: Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-14312-213-5. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Koehl, Robert (2004). The SS: A History 1919–45. Tempus. ISBN 978-0-75242-559-7. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Leitz, Christian (1999). The Third Reich: The Essential Readings. Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 978-0-63120-700-9. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Lower, Wendy (2013). Hitler's Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN 978-0-54786-338-2. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Lumsden, Robin (2000). A Collector's Guide To: The Waffen–SS. Ian Allan Publishing, Inc. ISBN 0-7110-2285-2. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Lumsden, Robin (2002). A Collector's Guide To: The Allgemeine — SS. Ian Allan Publishing, Inc. ISBN 0-7110-2905-9. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
MacDonogh, Giles (2009). After the Reich: The Brutal History of the Allied Occupation. Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-46500-337-2. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Mahoney, Kevin (1996). In Pursuit of Justice: Examining the Evidence of the Holocaust. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. ISBN 978-0-89604-702-0. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Manning, Jeanne (1999). A Time to Speak. Turner Publishing Company. ISBN 978-1563115608. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
McNab, Chris (2009). The SS: 1923–1945. Amber Books. ISBN 978-1-906626-49-5. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
McNab, Chris (2013). Hitler's Elite: The SS 1939-45. Osprey Publishing. ISBN 978-1782000884. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Messenger, Charles (2001). Hitler's Gladiator: The Life and Military Career of Sepp Dietrich. London: Brassey's. ISBN 978-1-57488-315-2. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Miller, Michael; Schulz, Andreas (2012). Gauleiter: The Regional Leaders Of The Nazi Party And Their Deputies, 1925-1945. R. James Bender Publishing. ISBN 1932970215. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Mollo, Andrew (1991). Uniforms of the SS: Volume 3: SS-Verfügungstruppe. Historical Research Unit. ISBN 1-872004-51-2. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Moorhouse, Roger (2012). Berlin at War. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-46502-855-9. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Mühlenberg, Jutta (2011). Das SS-Helferinnenkorps: Ausbildung, Einsatz und Entnazifizierung der weiblichen Angehörigen der Waffen-SS, 1942–1949 (in German). VerlagsgesmbH. ISBN 978-3-86854-500-5. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Murray, Williamson; Millett, Allan R. (2001). A War To Be Won: Fighting the Second World War. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-67400-680-5. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Pringle, Heather (2006). The Master Plan: Himmler's Scholars and the Holocaust. London: Fourth Estate. ISBN 978-0-00-714812-7. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Rabinbach, Anson; Gilman, Sander L. (2013). The Third Reich Sourcebook. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-52020-867-4. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Reitlinger, Gerald (1989). The SS: Alibi of a Nation, 1922–1945. New York: Da Capo Press. ISBN 978-0-306-80351-2. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Reynolds, Michael Frank (1997). Steel inferno: I SS Panzer Corps in Normandy: The Story of the 1st and 12th SS Panzer Divisions in the 1944 Normandy Campaign. Spellmount. ISBN 1-873376-90-1. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Rempel, Gerhard (1989). Hitler's Children: The Hitler Youth and the SS. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 978-0-8078-4299-7. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Rummel, Rudolph (1992). Democide: Nazi Genocide and Mass Murder. Transaction Publishers. ISBN 1-56000-004-X. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Schafft, Gretchen E (2004). From Racism to Genocide: Anthropology in the Third Reich. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 978-0-25207-453-0. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Schreiber, Gerhard; Stegemann, Bernd; Vogel, Detlef (1995). The Mediterranean, South-east Europe, and North Africa, 1939-1941: From Italy's Declaration of Non-belligerence to the Entry of the United States Into the War. Clarendon Press. ISBN 978-0198228844. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Seaton, Albert (1971). The Russo-German War, 1941-45. New York: Praeger Publishers. ISBN 978-0-21376-478-4. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Sereny, Gitta (1974). Into That Darkness: From Mercy Killings to Mass Murder. Vintage. ISBN 0-394-71035-5. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Spielvogel, Jackson (1992). Hitler and Nazi Germany: A History. New York: Prentice Hall. ISBN 978-0-13393-182-2. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Stackelberg, Roderick (2002). Hitler's Germany: Origins, Interpretations, Legacies. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-0-203-00541-5. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Stein, George H. (1984). The Waffen SS: Hitler's Elite Guard at War, 1939–1945. Cornell University Press. ISBN 0-8014-9275-0. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Stone, David (2011). Shattered Genius: The Decline and Fall of the German General Staff in World War II. Philadelphia: Casemate. ISBN 978-1-61200-098-5. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Sydnor, Charles (1977). Soldiers of Destruction: The SS Death's Head Division, 1933-1945. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ASIN B001Y18PZ6. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Tomasevich, Jozo (1969), "Yugoslavia during the Second World War", Contemporary Yugoslavia: Twenty Years of Socialist Experiment, University of California, ISBN 978-05-200153-6-4 {{citation}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Wachsmann, Nikolaus (2010). "The Dynamics of Destruction". In Jane Caplan; Nicholas Wachsmann, eds (eds.). Concentration Camps in Nazi Germany: The New Histories. New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-41542-651-0. {{cite book}}: |editor2= has generic name (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Wachsmann, Nikolaus (2015). KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 978-0-37411-825-9. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Weale, Adrian (2010). The SS: A New History. Little, Brown. ISBN 978-1-4087-0304-5. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Weale, Adrian (2012). Army of Evil: A History of the SS. New York: Caliber Printing. ISBN 978-0-451-23791-0. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Weinberg, Gerhard (1994). A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-44317-2. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Williams, Max (2001). Reinhard Heydrich: The Biography (Vol. 1). Ulric Publishing. ISBN 0-9537577-5-7. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Windrow, Martin; Burn, Cristopher (1992). The Waffen-SS, Edition 2. Osprey. ISBN 0-85045-425-5. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Wistrich, Robert (2001). Who's Who In Nazi Germany. New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-11888-0. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Yerger, Mark C. (1997). Allgemeine-SS: The Commands, Units, and Leaders of the General SS. Schiffer Publishing. ISBN 0-7643-0145-4. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Zentner, Christian; Bedürftig, Friedemann (1991). The Encyclopedia of the Third Reich. (2 vols.) New York: MacMillan Publishing. ISBN 0-02-897500-6. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)CS1 maint: location (link)
Ziemke, Earl F (1968). Stalingrad to Berlin: The German Defeat in the East. Washington D.C.: Office of the Chief of Military History – U.S. Army. ASIN B002E5VBSE. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

External links

Schutzstaffel on History.com
Schutzstaffel on Encyclopedia Britannica
Schutzstaffel on Jewish Virtual Library
Schutzstaffel on USHMM.com

[45] In practice, earth-grey was little, if any, different from the army field-grey (feldgrau); however, Himmler resented the army and preferred a distinct SS term.

[FOOTNOTELumsden20007-1] Lumsden 2000, p. 7.

[FOOTNOTELumsden200216-2] Lumsden 2002, p. 16.

[FOOTNOTEMcNab200914,_16-3] McNab 2009, pp. 14, 16.

[FOOTNOTEMcNab200914-4] McNab 2009, p. 14.

[FOOTNOTEWeale201016-5] Weale 2010, p. 16.

[FOOTNOTEMcNab200916-6] McNab 2009, p. 16.

[FOOTNOTEWeale201026-7] Weale 2010, p. 26.

[FOOTNOTELumsden200214-8] Lumsden 2002, p. 14.

[FOOTNOTEWeale201026–29-9] Weale 2010, pp. 26–29.

[FOOTNOTEKoehl200434-10] Koehl 2004, p. 34.

[FOOTNOTECookBender199417,_19-11] Cook & Bender 1994, pp. 17, 19.

[FOOTNOTEWeale201030-12] ^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f Weale 2010, p. 30.

[FOOTNOTECookRussell200021–22-13] Cook & Russell 2000, pp. 21–22.

[FOOTNOTEWeale201032-14] Weale 2010, p. 32.

[FOOTNOTEWeale201032,_33-15] Weale 2010, pp. 32, 33.

[FOOTNOTEWeale201045,_46-16] Weale 2010, pp. 45, 46.

[FOOTNOTEMillerSchulz20121,_2-17] Miller & Schulz 2012, pp. 1, 2.

[FOOTNOTEHimmler1936134-18] Himmler 1936, p. 134.

[FOOTNOTEMcNab200918-19] McNab 2009, p. 18.

[FOOTNOTEWeale201047-20] ^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g Weale 2010, p. 47.

[FOOTNOTELongrerich2012113-21] Longrerich 2012, p. 113.

[FOOTNOTEWeale201045–47,_300–305-22] Weale 2010, pp. 45–47, 300–305.

[FOOTNOTEBurleighWippermann1991272–273-23] Burleigh & Wippermann 1991, pp. 272–273.

[FOOTNOTEMillerSchulz20122–3-24] Miller & Schulz 2012, pp. 2–3.

[FOOTNOTEKershaw2008308–314-25] Kershaw 2008, pp. 308–314.

[FOOTNOTEZentnerBedürftig1991901-26] Zentner & Bedürftig 1991, p. 901.

[FOOTNOTEZentnerBedürftig1991903-27] Zentner & Bedürftig 1991, p. 903.

[FOOTNOTELumsden200239-28] Lumsden 2002, p. 39.

[FOOTNOTEHimmler1936220-29] Himmler 1936, p. 220.

[FOOTNOTEHöhne2001146,_147-30] Höhne 2001, pp. 146, 147.

[FOOTNOTEHöhne2001148-31] Höhne 2001, p. 148.

[FOOTNOTEHöhne2001148–149-32] Höhne 2001, pp. 148–149.

[FOOTNOTEHöhne2001150–151-33] Höhne 2001, pp. 150–151.

[FOOTNOTEWeale201062,_67-34] Weale 2010, pp. 62, 67.

[FOOTNOTEBaranowski2010196,_197-35] Baranowski 2010, pp. 196, 197.

[FOOTNOTEBaranowski2010199-36] Baranowski 2010, p. 199.

[FOOTNOTEStackelberg2002116-37] Stackelberg 2002, p. 116.

[FOOTNOTEJacobsen199982,_93-38] Jacobsen 1999, pp. 82, 93.

[FOOTNOTERummel199212-39] Rummel 1992, p. 12.

[40] "Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression"

[FOOTNOTEMollo19911-41] Mollo 1991, p. 1.

[FOOTNOTEMollo19911–3-42] Mollo 1991, pp. 1–3.

[FOOTNOTELumsden200253-43] Lumsden 2002, p. 53.

[FOOTNOTELumsden200256-44] Lumsden 2002, p. 56.

[FOOTNOTEFlaherty200488–92-46] Flaherty 2004, pp. 88–92.

[FOOTNOTELumsden200071–84-47] Lumsden 2000, p. 71–84.

[48] "Clothier Made Nazi Uniforms"

[FOOTNOTEMcNab200917,_23,_151-49] McNab 2009, pp. 17, 23, 151.

[FOOTNOTEMcNab200956,_57,_66-50] McNab 2009, pp. 56, 57, 66.

[The_SS-51] "The SS"

[FOOTNOTEEvans2008724-52] Evans 2008, p. 724.

[FOOTNOTEWilliams200177-53] Williams 2001, p. 77.

[FOOTNOTELumsden200283-54] Lumsden 2002, p. 83.

[FOOTNOTELumsden200280–84-55] Lumsden 2002, pp. 80–84.

[FOOTNOTEKershaw2008316-56] Kershaw 2008, p. 316.

[FOOTNOTEMcNab20099,_17,_26–27,_30,_46–47-57] McNab 2009, pp. 9, 17, 26–27, 30, 46–47.

[World_Media_Rights-58] "How Hitler's Bodyguard Worked"

[FOOTNOTEHoffmann200036–48-59] Hoffmann 2000, pp. 36–48.

[FOOTNOTEJoachimsthaler1999288-60] Joachimsthaler 1999, p. 288.

[FOOTNOTEHoffmann200032-61] Hoffmann 2000, p. 32.

[FOOTNOTEHoffmann200036-62] Hoffmann 2000, p. 36.

[FOOTNOTEFelton201432–33-63] Felton 2014, pp. 32–33.

[FOOTNOTECookBender199417–19-64] Cook & Bender 1994, pp. 17–19.

[FOOTNOTEStein198423-65] Stein 1984, p. 23.

[FOOTNOTELumsden199324-66] Lumsden 1993, p. 24.

[FOOTNOTEButler200123-67] Butler 2001, p. 23.

[Gladiators-68] ^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j ^k ^l "Gladiators of World War II: The Waffen-SS"

[FOOTNOTEStone2011126–127-69] Stone 2011, pp. 126–127.

[FOOTNOTEStone2011127-70] Stone 2011, p. 127.

[FOOTNOTEReynolds19976,_7-71] Reynolds 1997, pp. 6, 7.

[FOOTNOTEFlaherty2004149-72] Flaherty 2004, p. 149.

[FOOTNOTEStein198428,_34-73] Stein 1984, pp. 28, 34.

[FOOTNOTEMcNab200966-74] McNab 2009, p. 66.

[FOOTNOTEHein201582-75] Hein 2015, p. 82.

[FOOTNOTESydnor197772-76] Sydnor 1977, p. 72.

[FOOTNOTEHellwinkel20149-77] Hellwinkel 2014, p. 9.

[FOOTNOTEStein198461-78] Stein 1984, p. 61.

[FOOTNOTECawthorne2012104-79] Cawthorne 2012, p. 104.

[FOOTNOTEButler200364-80] Butler 2003, p. 64.

[FOOTNOTEManning199959-81] Manning 1999, p. 59.

[FOOTNOTEFlaherty2004155–156-82] Flaherty 2004, pp. 155–156.

[FOOTNOTEFlaherty2004154-83] Flaherty 2004, p. 154.

[FOOTNOTEFlaherty2004143-84] Flaherty 2004, p. 143.

[FOOTNOTEFlaherty2004156-85] Flaherty 2004, p. 156.

[FOOTNOTESydnor1977102-86] Sydnor 1977, p. 102.

[FOOTNOTEReitlinger1989147-87] Reitlinger 1989, p. 147.

[FOOTNOTEReitlinger1989150-88] Reitlinger 1989, p. 150.

[FOOTNOTEStein1984150,_153-89] Stein 1984, pp. 150, 153.

[FOOTNOTEKoehl2004213–214-90] Koehl 2004, pp. 213–214.

[FOOTNOTELumsden200028,_31-91] Lumsden 2000, pp. 28, 31.

[FOOTNOTETomasevich197555-92] Tomasevich 1975, p. 55.

[93] "Battlefield S6/E5 Campaign in the Balkans"

[FOOTNOTESchreiberStegemannVogel1995500,_502-94] Schreiber, Stegemann & Vogel 1995, pp. 500, 502.

[FOOTNOTEGlantz20017,_9-95] Glantz 2001, pp. 7, 9.

[FOOTNOTEWindrowBurn19929-96] Windrow & Burn 1992, p. 9.

[FOOTNOTEHannesNaumann2000136-97] Hannes & Naumann 2000, p. 136.

[FOOTNOTELumsden200030-98] Lumsden 2000, p. 30.

[FOOTNOTEAgte200615-99] Agte 2006, p. 15.

[FOOTNOTELumsden200031,_32-100] Lumsden 2000, pp. 31, 32.

[FOOTNOTECarruthers20149-101] Carruthers 2014, p. 9.

[FOOTNOTEJukesO'Neill201044,_45-102] Jukes & O'Neill 2010, pp. 44, 45.

[FOOTNOTERempel1989233-103] Rempel 1989, p. 233.

[FOOTNOTELumsden200033-104] Lumsden 2000, p. 33.

[FOOTNOTEBessel2006143-105] Bessel 2006, p. 143.

[FOOTNOTEMcNab200968,_70-106] McNab 2009, pp. 68, 70.

[FOOTNOTEFritz2011350-107] Fritz 2011, p. 350.

[FOOTNOTEFritz2011334-108] Fritz 2011, p. 334.

[FOOTNOTEBessel2006118–119-109] Bessel 2006, pp. 118–119.

[FOOTNOTEBessel2006119-110] Bessel 2006, p. 119.

[FOOTNOTEWhitmarsh20094,_7-111] Whitmarsh 2009, pp. 4, 7.

[FOOTNOTEWhitmarsh200912,_13-112] Whitmarsh 2009, pp. 12, 13.

[FOOTNOTEStein1984219-113] Stein 1984, p. 219.

[FOOTNOTEGoldsworthy201054-114] Goldsworthy 2010, p. 54.

[FOOTNOTEMcNab2013197-115] McNab 2013, p. 197.

[FOOTNOTEStein1984222–223-116] Stein 1984, pp. 222–223.

[FOOTNOTEStein1984223-117] Stein 1984, p. 223.

[FOOTNOTEWeinberg1994701-118] Weinberg 1994, p. 701.

[FOOTNOTEMurrayMillett2001439–442-119] Murray & Millett 2001, p. 439–442.

[FOOTNOTEWeinberg1994765–766-120] Weinberg 1994, pp. 765–766.

[FOOTNOTEMurrayMillett2001465-121] Murray & Millett 2001, p. 465.

[FOOTNOTEWeinberg1994767-122] Weinberg 1994, p. 767.

[FOOTNOTEMurrayMillett2001468-123] Murray & Millett 2001, p. 468.

[FOOTNOTEWeinberg1994767–769-124] Weinberg 1994, pp. 767–769.

[FOOTNOTEStein1984232-125] Stein 1984, p. 232.

[FOOTNOTESeaton1971527–534-126] Seaton 1971, pp. 527–534.

[FOOTNOTEDuffy2002293-127] Duffy 2002, p. 293.

[FOOTNOTEZiemke1968439-128] Ziemke 1968, p. 439.

[FOOTNOTESeaton1971537-129] Seaton 1971, p. 537.

[FOOTNOTEZiemke1968450-130] Ziemke 1968, p. 450.

[FOOTNOTEDuffy2002294-131] Duffy 2002, p. 294.

[FOOTNOTEFritz2011438-132] Fritz 2011, p. 438.

[FOOTNOTEMessenger2001167–168-133] Messenger 2001, pp. 167–168.

[FOOTNOTEWachsmann2015542–548-134] Wachsmann 2015, pp. 542–548.

[FOOTNOTEFritz200450–55-135] Fritz 2004, pp. 50–55.

[FOOTNOTEStein1984237-136] Stein 1984, p. 237.

[FOOTNOTEKershaw2011302-137] Kershaw 2011, p. 302.

[FOOTNOTEStein1984246-138] Stein 1984, p. 246.

[FOOTNOTEMcNab2013328,_330,_338-139] McNab 2013, pp. 328, 330, 338.

[FOOTNOTEMoorhouse2012364–365-140] Moorhouse 2012, pp. 364–365.

[FOOTNOTEStein1984248–249-141] Stein 1984, pp. 248–249.

[FOOTNOTEYerger199713–21-142] Yerger 1997, pp. 13–21.

[143] Robert L. Canfield, Turko–Persia in Historical Perspective p. 212 – "The majority of Central Asian soldiers taken prisoner opted for the enemy – a fact still hidden from the Soviet public today – although systematic starvation and cruel treatment in German hands, which resulted in appalling losses, must have been one of the major inducements to change sides. As Turkistanis they joined the so-called "Eastern Legions", which were part of the Wehrmacht and later the Waffen-SS, to fight the Red Army (Hauner 1981:339-57). The estimates of their numbers vary between 250,000 and 400,000, which include the Kalmyks, the Tatars and members of the Caucasian ethnic groups (Alexiev 1982:33)"

[144] Himmler had convinced himself that Bosniaks and Croats were Germanic rather than Slavic, and he admired Islam. SS: Hell on the Western Front. The Waffen SS in Europe 1940–1945, 2003. p. 70

[FOOTNOTEBishop200593-145] Bishop 2005, p. 93.

[FOOTNOTEBishop200593–94-146] Bishop 2005, pp. 93–94.

[FOOTNOTEStein1984189-147] Stein 1984, p. 189.

[ghwk-148] Am Großen Wannsee (2015). "Konzentrations- und Todeslager" (PDF). Haus der Wannsee-Konferenz: Raum 13. Berlin-Zehlendorf: House of the Wannsee Conference - Memorial Center: 1–21. Retrieved October 21, 2015. The permanent exhibition which documents the Wannsee conference, the events prior to it, and its consequences. Also in: Der Ort des Terrors: Niederhagen. C.H.Beck. 2005. p. 70. ISBN 3406529674 – via Google Books. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |authors= ignored (help)

[Einsatz-149] Photo-archive (February 28, 2012). "Soldaten im Einsatz". SS-Mannschaft. Fallschirmjäger. Retrieved October 21, 2015 – via Wayback Machine.

[FOOTNOTEWeale2010132-150] Weale 2010, p. 132.

[FOOTNOTELumsden200284-151] Lumsden 2002, p. 84.

[FOOTNOTEWachsmann201020–21-152] Wachsmann 2010, pp. 20–21.

[FOOTNOTEWachsmann201022-153] Wachsmann 2010, p. 22.

[FOOTNOTEWachsmann201023-154] Wachsmann 2010, p. 23.

[FOOTNOTESydnor1977119-155] Sydnor 1977, p. 119.

[FOOTNOTEWachsmann201026-156] Wachsmann 2010, p. 26.

[FOOTNOTEWachsmann201027-157] Wachsmann 2010, p. 27.

[FOOTNOTEZentnerBedürftig1991906-158] Zentner & Bedürftig 1991, p. 906.

[FOOTNOTEWachsmann201029-159] Wachsmann 2010, p. 29.

[FOOTNOTEKoehl2004182–183-160] Koehl 2004, pp. 182–183.

[FOOTNOTEWachsmann2015196–198-161] Wachsmann 2015, pp. 196–198.

[FOOTNOTEReitlinger1989265-162] Reitlinger 1989, p. 265.

[FOOTNOTEStein1991258–263-163] Stein 1991, pp. 258–263.

[FOOTNOTEFlaherty2004109-164] Flaherty 2004, p. 109.

[FOOTNOTEFlaherty2004120–123-165] Flaherty 2004, pp. 120–123.

[FOOTNOTEDiner2006123-166] Diner 2006, p. 123.

[FOOTNOTEMcNab2009141-167] McNab 2009, p. 141.

[FOOTNOTEHow_Hitler's_Bodyguard_Worked_2015-168] How Hitler's Bodyguard Worked 2015.

[FOOTNOTEMahoney,_ed.1996238-169] Mahoney, ed. 1996, p. 238.

[FOOTNOTELower2013108-170] Lower 2013, p. 108.

[FOOTNOTECentury2011-171] Century 2011.

[FOOTNOTERempel1989223–224-172] Rempel 1989, pp. 223–224.

[FOOTNOTEMühlenberg201127-173] Mühlenberg 2011, p. 27.

[174] An online pdf version of the Mühlenberg book is retrievable from: https://download.e-bookshelf.de/download/0000/3731/67/L-G-0000373167-0002317697.pdf

[FOOTNOTELower2013109-175] Lower 2013, p. 109.

[FOOTNOTESpielvogel1992108-176] Spielvogel 1992, p. 108.

[FOOTNOTESchafft200493-177] Schafft 2004, p. 93.

[FOOTNOTESchafft200497-178] Schafft 2004, p. 97.

[FOOTNOTEIngrao201363-179] Ingrao 2013, p. 63.

[FOOTNOTEBurleighWippermann1991125-180] Burleigh & Wippermann 1991, p. 125.

[FOOTNOTECornwell2004192-181] Cornwell 2004, p. 192.

[FOOTNOTEArt200643-182] Art 2006, p. 43.

[FOOTNOTEEvans2008729-183] Evans 2008, p. 729.

[FOOTNOTEHöhne2001580-184] Höhne 2001, p. 580.

[FOOTNOTEWeale2012410-185] Weale 2012, p. 410.

[FOOTNOTEWistrich2001136-186] Wistrich 2001, p. 136.

[FOOTNOTEPringle2006295–296-187] Pringle 2006, pp. 295–296.

[Cywiński-188] As stated by Piotr Cywiński, the director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum, in: Marcin Bosacki, Dominik Uhlig, Bogdan Wróblewski (May 2008), "Nikt nie chce osądzić zbrodniarza", Gazeta Wyborcza (in Polish) (2008–05–21), retrieved May 21, 2008{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

[FOOTNOTEMacDonogh20093-189] MacDonogh 2009, p. 3.

[FOOTNOTEMurrayMillet2001565–568-190] Murray & Millet 2001, pp. 565–568.

[hell-191] Chris Bishop; Michael Williams (2003). SS: Hell on the Western Front. Zenith Imprint. p. 92. ISBN 0760314020.

[Laqueur-192] Walter Laqueur; Judith Tydor Baumel (2001). Dirlewanger, Oskar. Yale University Press. p. 150. ISBN 0300084323. Retrieved June 24, 2012. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)

[193] Walter Stanoski Winter; Struan Robertson (2004). Winter Time: Memoirs of a German Sinto Who Survived Auschwitz. p. 139. ISBN 1-902806-38-7.

[brz-194] Matthew Brzezinski, Giving Hitler Hell Washington Post Sunday, July 24, 2005; p. W08

[FOOTNOTEArendt200646-195] Arendt 2006, p. 46.

[196] Council of Europe: European Commission Against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) (February 2012). ECRI Report on Latvia (fourth monitoring cycle) (PDF). p. 9. All attempts to commemorate persons who fought in the Waffen SS and collaborated with the Nazis, should be condemned. Any gathering or march legitimising in any way Nazism should be banned.

[197] [1]

[198] Heinrich Himmler, Die Schutzstaffel (SS) als antibolschewistische Kampforganisation, 1937, p.15

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@@ Line 208: / Line 208: @@
 ===Attack on the Soviet Union===
-On 22 June 1941, Hitler launched [[Operation Barbarossa]], a preventive surprise attack against his own earlier ally,<ref name="itm1946">{{cite book |title=Trial of the Major War Criminals |author=International Military Tribunal |at=pp. 400-401. Nuremberg, 14 November 1945 - 1 October 1946 |url=http://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Military_Law/pdf/NT_Vol-XV.pdf |via=direct download 20.4 MB in PDF. Testimony of [[Alfred Jodl]], pp. 394-395 in original document. |quote=It was undeniably a purely preventive war. What we found out later on, was the certainty of enormous Russian military preparations opposite our frontier.}}</ref> the [[Soviet Union]].{{sfn|Glantz|2001|pp=7, 9}} By now the ''SS-Leibstandarte'' had been expanded to a fully fledged division, and all other existing ''Waffen-SS'' divisions (''SS-Das Reich'', ''SS-Totenkopf'', ''SS-Polizei'', ''SS-Wiking'' and ''[[6th SS Mountain Division Nord|SS-Nord]]'') took part in the initial assault.<ref name="Gladiators"/> The purpose of Barbarossa was to destroy the Soviet Union and seize its vast natural resources to prepare for a greater war against the West.{{sfn|Glantz|2001|pp=7, 9}} The army generals soon came to respect the fighting qualities of the ''Waffen-SS'' in a war that was more savage then any so far experienced. While the ''SS-Leibstandarte'' and the SS divisions were fighting in the front line, behind the lines it was a different story. The 1 SS Infantry and 2 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]], however, 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|SS-Einsatzgruppen]]'', they participated in the liquidation of the [[Jewish]] population of the Soviet Union, forming firing parties when required.{{sfn|Windrow|Burn|1992|p=9}}{{sfn|Hannes|Naumann|2000|p=136}}
+On 22 June 1941, Hitler launched [[Operation Barbarossa]] and invaded the [[Soviet Union]].{{sfn|Glantz|2001|pp=7, 9}} By now the ''SS-Leibstandarte'' had been expanded to a fully fledged division, and all other existing ''Waffen-SS'' divisions (''SS-Das Reich'', ''SS-Totenkopf'', ''SS-Polizei'', ''SS-Wiking'' and ''[[6th SS Mountain Division Nord|SS-Nord]]'') took part in the initial assault.<ref name="Gladiators"/> The purpose of Barbarossa was to destroy the Soviet Union and seize its vast natural resources to prepare for a greater war against the West.{{sfn|Glantz|2001|pp=7, 9}} The army generals soon came to respect the fighting qualities of the ''Waffen-SS'' in a war that was more savage then any so far experienced. While the ''SS-Leibstandarte'' and the SS divisions were fighting in the front line, behind the lines it was a different story. The 1 SS Infantry and 2 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]], however, 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|SS-Einsatzgruppen]]'', they participated in the liquidation of the [[Jewish]] population of the Soviet Union, forming firing parties when required.{{sfn|Windrow|Burn|1992|p=9}}{{sfn|Hannes|Naumann|2000|p=136}}
 The ''Waffen-SS'' proved itself during the bitter battles of the [[Russian winter]] in 1941 and 1942 through showing its "steadfastness in defence".{{sfn|Lumsden|2000|p=30}} That spring three divisions, ''SS-Leibstandarte'', ''SS-Totenkopf'' and ''SS-Das Reich'', were withdrawn to the West to refit and be converted to ''[[Panzergrenadier]]'' divisions through the addition of assault guns, armoured personal carriers and tanks.{{sfn|Agte|2006|p=15}} Formed into the [[I SS Panzer Corps|SS-Panzer Corps]], Himmler ensured that these units received the best equipment and were larger than the equivalent army divisions. The SS-Panzer Corps, commanded by [[Paul Hausser]], returned to Russia in 1943 and won a resounding victory for its [[Third Battle of Kharkov|recapture]] of [[Kharkov]] that spring.{{sfn|Lumsden|2000|pp=31, 32}} Dietrich, in particular, distinguished himself; Hitler awarded him the Swords to his Knights Cross and gave him a gift of one million ''[[Reichsmark]]s''.<ref name="Gladiators"/> By now the ''Waffen-SS'' had become a formidable fighting force, notorious for their willingness to fight to the death. Army commanders deployed it as their "fire brigade" by sending its divisions to the most critical points of the battlefield.{{sfn|Carruthers|2014|p=9}}  While unquestionable obedience remained the cornerstone of the ''Waffen-SS'', relations between officers and privates were less formal then in the army, with much more emphasizes on mutual respect.<ref name="Gladiators"/>