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Coordinates:  52°30′25″N 13°22′58″E

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"SS" redirects here. For the German letter 'ss', see ß. For other uses, see SS (disambiguation).
"ᛋᛋ" redirects here. For the archaic Greek letter, see ϟ. For the Old Italic letter, see 𐌔.

Schutzstaffel

SS flag
 Clockwise from top left:

 Adolf Hitler inspecting the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler,

1938

 Men of the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler receiving awards

 SS headquarters in Berlin

 Women and children captured during the Warsaw Ghetto

Uprising by SD men, 1943

 Majdanek concentration camp, 1944

 Heinrich Himmler inspecting a prisoner of war camp in the

Soviet Union, 1941

Agency overview

Formed 4 April 1925[1]

Preceding agencies  Sturmabteilung (SA)

 Stabswache
 Dissolved 8 May 1945

Type Paramilitary

Jurisdiction Germany and Occupied Europe

Headquarters Prinz-Albrecht-Straße, Berlin

52°30′25″N 13°22′58″E

Employees 800,000 (c. 1944)

Reichsführer responsible  Heinrich Himmler (longest

serving)

Julius Schreck (first)

Karl Hanke (last)

Parent agency Nazi Party

Sturmabteilung (until July 1934)

Child agencies  Allgemeine SS

 Waffen-SS
 SS-Totenkopfverbände (SS-TV)
 Sicherheitspolizei (SiPo; until
1939, when folded into

the RSHA)

 Sicherheitsdienst (SD)
 Ordnungspolizei (Orpo)

The Schutzstaffel (SS; also stylized as ᛋᛋ with Armanen runes; German pronunciation: [ˈʃʊts

ˌʃtafl̩ ] ( listen); "Protection Squadron") was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf
Hitler and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany, and later throughout German-occupied
Europe during World War II.
It began with a small guard unit known as the Saal-Schutz ("Hall Security") made up of
party volunteers to provide security for party meetings in Munich. In 1925, Heinrich
Himmler joined the unit, which had by then been reformed and given its final name.
Under his direction (1929–1945) it grew from a small paramilitary formation during
the Weimar Republic to one of the most powerful organizations in Nazi Germany. From
the time of the Nazi Party's rise to power until the regime's collapse in 1945, the SS was
the foremost agency of security, mass surveillance, and state terrorism within Germany
and German-occupied Europe.
The two main constituent groups were the Allgemeine SS (General SS) and Waffen-
SS (Armed SS). The Allgemeine SS was responsible for enforcing the racial policy of
Nazi Germany and general policing, whereas the Waffen-SS consisted of the combat
units of the SS, with a sworn allegiance to Hitler. A third component of the SS, the SS-
Totenkopfverbände (SS-TV; "Death's Head Units"[2]), ran the concentration
camps and extermination camps. Additional subdivisions of the SS included
the Gestapo and the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) organizations. They were tasked with the
detection of actual or potential enemies of the Nazi state, the neutralization of any
opposition, policing the German people for their commitment to Nazi ideology, and
providing domestic and foreign intelligence.
The SS was the organization most responsible for the genocidal murder of an estimated
5.5 to 6 million Jews and millions of other victims during the Holocaust.[3] Members of all
of its branches committed war crimes and crimes against humanity during World War II
(1939–45). The SS was also involved in commercial enterprises and exploited
concentration camp inmates as slave labor. After Nazi Germany's defeat, the SS and
the Nazi Party were judged by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg to be
criminal organizations. Ernst Kaltenbrunner, the highest-ranking surviving SS main
department chief, was found guilty of crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg
trials and hanged in 1946.

Origins
Forerunner of the SS

Nazi Party supporters and stormtroopers in Munich during the Beer Hall Putsch, 1923

By 1923, the Nazi Party led by Adolf Hitler had created a small volunteer guard unit
known as the Saal-Schutz (Hall Security) to provide security at their meetings
in Munich.[4][5] The same year, Hitler ordered the formation of a small bodyguard unit
dedicated to his personal service. He wished it to be separate from the "suspect mass"
of the party, including the paramilitary Sturmabteilung ("Storm Battalion"; SA), which he
did not trust.[6] The new formation was designated the Stabswache (Staff Guard).
[7]
 Originally the unit was composed of 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 renamed Stoßtrupp (Shock Troops) in May 1923.[8]
[9]
The Stoßtrupp was abolished after the failed 1923 Beer Hall Putsch, an attempt by the
Nazi Party to seize power in Munich.[10] In 1925, Hitler ordered Schreck to organize a
new bodyguard unit, the Schutzkommando (Protection Command).[1] It was tasked with
providing personal protection for Hitler at party functions and events. That same year,
the Schutzkommando was expanded to a national organization and renamed
successively the Sturmstaffel (Storm Squadron), and finally the Schutzstaffel (Protection
Squad; SS).[11] Officially, the SS marked its foundation on 9 November 1925 (the second
anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch).[12] The new SS protected party leaders throughout
Germany. Hitler's personal SS protection unit was later enlarged to include combat
units.[13]
Early commanders
Schreck, a founding member of the SA and a close confidant of Hitler, became the first
SS chief in March 1925.[14] On 15 April 1926, Joseph Berchtold succeeded him as chief
of the SS. Berchtold changed the title of the office to Reichsführer-SS (Reich Leader-
SS).[15] Berchtold was considered more dynamic than his predecessor but became
increasingly frustrated by the authority the SA had over the SS. [16] This led to him
transferring leadership of the SS to his deputy, Erhard Heiden, on 1 March 1927.
[17]
 Under Heiden's leadership, a stricter code of discipline was enforced than would have
been tolerated in the SA.[16]
Between 1925 and 1929, the SS was considered to be a small Gruppe (battalion) of the
SA.[18] Except in the Munich area, the SS was unable to maintain any momentum in its
membership numbers, which declined from 1,000 to 280 as the SA continued its rapid
growth.[19] As Heiden attempted to keep the SS from dissolving, Heinrich
Himmler became his deputy in September 1927. Himmler displayed good organizational
abilities compared to Heiden.[18] The SS established a number of Gaus (regions or
provinces). The SS-Gaue consisted of SS-Gau Berlin, SS-Gau Berlin Brandenburg, SS-
Gau Franken, SS-Gau Niederbayern, SS-Gau Rheinland-Süd, and SS-Gau Sachsen.[20]
Himmler appointed

Heinrich Himmler (with glasses, to the left of Adolf Hitler) was an early supporter of the Nazi Party.

With Hitler's approval, Himmler assumed the position of Reichsführer-SS in January

1929.[21][22] There are differing accounts of the reason for Heiden's dismissal from his
position as head of the SS. The party announced that it was for "family
reasons."[23] Under Himmler, the SS expanded and gained a larger foothold. He
considered the SS an elite, ideologically driven National Socialist organization, a
"conflation of Teutonic knights, the Jesuits, and Japanese Samurai".[24] His ultimate aim
was to turn the SS into the most powerful organization in Germany and the most
influential branch of the party.[25] He expanded the SS to 3,000 members in his first year
as its leader.[24]
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-Gaue were divided into three SS-
Oberführerbereiche areas, namely the SS-Oberführerbereich Ost, SS-
Oberführerbereich West, and SS-Oberführerbereich Süd.[26] The lower levels of the SS
remained largely unchanged. Although officially still considered a sub-organization of
the SA and answerable to the Stabschef (SA Chief of Staff), it was also during this time
that Himmler began to establish the independence of the SS from the SA. [27] 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
Nazi Party to power.[28] By the end of 1933, the membership of the SS reached 209,000.
[29]
 Under Himmler's leadership, the SS continued to gather greater power as more and
more state and party functions were assigned to its jurisdiction. Over time the SS
became answerable only to Hitler, a development typical of the organizational structure
of the entire Nazi regime, where legal norms were replaced by actions undertaken
under the Führerprinzip (leader principle), where Hitler's will was considered to be
above the law.[30]
In the latter half of 1934, Himmler oversaw the creation of SS-Junkerschule, institutions
where SS officer candidates received leadership training, political and ideological
indoctrination, and military instruction. The training stressed ruthlessness and
toughness as part of the SS value system, which helped foster a sense of superiority
among the men and taught them self-confidence. [31] The first schools were established
at Bad Tölz and Braunschweig, with additional schools opening
at Klagenfurt and Prague during the war.[32]
Ideology
Main article: Ideology of the SS

The SS was regarded as the Nazi Party's elite unit. [33] In keeping with the racial policy of
Nazi Germany, in the early days all SS officer candidates had to provide proof of Aryan
ancestry back to 1750 and for other ranks to 1800.[34] Once the war started and it
became more difficult to confirm ancestry, the regulation was amended to just proving
the candidate's grandparents were Aryan, as spelled out in the Nuremberg Laws.
[35]
 Other requirements were complete obedience to the Führer and a commitment to the
German people and nation.[36] Himmler also tried to institute physical criteria based on
appearance and height, but these requirements were only loosely enforced, and over
half the SS men did not meet the criteria.[37] Inducements such as higher salaries and
larger homes were provided to members of the SS since they were expected to produce
more children than the average German family as part of their commitment to Nazi
Party doctrine.[38]
The crypt at Wewelsburg was repurposed by Himmler as a place to memorialize dead SS members. [39] Artwork
commemorating the Holocaust now hangs on the walls.

Commitment to SS ideology was emphasized throughout the recruitment, membership

process, and training.[40] Members of the SS were indoctrinated in the racial policy of
Nazi Germany and were taught that it was necessary to remove from Germany people
deemed by that policy as inferior.[41] Esoteric rituals and the awarding of regalia and
insignia for milestones in the SS man's career suffused SS members even further with
Nazi ideology.[42] Members were expected to renounce their Christian faith, and
Christmas was replaced with a solstice celebration.[43] Church weddings were replaced
with SS Ehewein, a pagan ceremony invented by Himmler. [44] These pseudo-religious
rites and ceremonies often took place near SS-dedicated monuments or in special SS-
designated places.[45] In 1933, Himmler bought Wewelsburg, a castle in Westphalia. He
initially intended it to be used as an SS training center, but its role came to include
hosting SS dinners and neo-pagan rituals.[46]
In 1936, Himmler wrote in the pamphlet "The SS as an Anti-Bolshevist Fighting
Organization":
We shall take care that never again in Germany, the heart of Europe, will the Jewish-
Bolshevik revolution of subhumans be able to be kindled either from within or through
emissaries from without.[47]
The SS ideology included the application of brutality and terror as a solution to military
and political problems.[48] The SS stressed total loyalty and obedience to orders unto
death. Hitler used this as a powerful tool to further his aims and those of the Nazi Party.
The SS was entrusted with the commission of atrocities, illegal activities, and war
crimes. Himmler once wrote that an SS man "hesitates not for a single instant, but
executes unquestioningly ..." any Führer-Befehl (Führer order).[49] Their official motto
was "Meine Ehre heißt Treue" (My Honour is Loyalty).[50]
As part of its race-centric functions during World War II, the SS oversaw the isolation
and displacement of Jews from the populations of the conquered territories, seizing their
assets and deporting them to concentration camps and ghettos, where they were used
as slave labor or immediately killed.[35] Chosen to implement the Final Solution ordered
by Hitler, the SS were the main group responsible for the institutional murder
and democide of more than 20 million people during the Holocaust, including
approximately 5.2 million[51] to 6 million[3] Jews and 10.5 million Slavs.[51] A significant
number of victims were members of other racial or ethnic groups such as the
258,000 Romani.[51] The SS was involved in murdering people 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 that opposed the regime (religious, political, social, and
otherwise), or those whose views were contradictory to the goals of the Nazi Party
government, were rounded up in large numbers; these included clergy of all
faiths, Jehovah's Witnesses, Freemasons, Communists, and Rotary Club members.
[52]
 According to the judgments rendered at 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 organization that carried out
the Holocaust.[53]

Pre-war Germany
After Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power on 30 January 1933, the SS was
considered a state organization and a branch of the government. [54] Law enforcement
gradually became the purview of the SS, and many SS organizations became de
facto government agencies.[55]

Reinhard Heydrich (right) was Himmler's protégé and a leading SS figure until his assassination in 1942.

The SS established a police state within Nazi Germany, using the secret state police
and security forces under Himmler's control to suppress resistance to Hitler. [56] In his role
as Minister President of Prussia, Hermann Göring had in 1933 created a
Prussian secret police force, the Geheime Staatspolizei or Gestapo, and
appointed Rudolf Diels as its head. Concerned that Diels was not ruthless enough to
use the Gestapo effectively to counteract the power of the SA, Göring handed over its
control to Himmler on 20 April 1934. [57] Also on that date, in a departure from long-
standing German practice that law enforcement was a state and local matter, Hitler
appointed Himmler chief of all German police outside Prussia. Himmler named his
deputy and protégé Reinhard Heydrich chief of the Gestapo on 22 April 1934. Heydrich
also continued as head of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD; security service).[58]
The Gestapo's transfer to Himmler was a prelude to the Night of the Long Knives, in
which most of the SA leadership were arrested and subsequently executed. [59] The SS
and Gestapo carried out most of the murders. On 20 July 1934, Hitler detached the SS
from the SA, which was no longer an influential force after the purge. The SS became
an elite corps of the Nazi Party, answerable only to Hitler. Himmler's title
of Reichsführer-SS now became his actual rank – and the highest rank in the SS,
equivalent to the rank of field marshal in the army (his previous rank
was Obergruppenführer).[60] As Himmler's position and authority grew, so in effect did his
rank.[61]
On 17 June 1936, all police forces throughout Germany were united under the purview
of Himmler and the SS.[55] Himmler and Heydrich thus became two of the most powerful
men in the country's administration.[62] Police and intelligence forces brought under their
administrative control included the SD, Gestapo, Kriminalpolizei (Kripo; criminal
investigative police), and Ordnungspolizei (Orpo; regular uniformed police).[63] In his
capacity as police chief, Himmler was nominally subordinate to Interior Minister Wilhelm
Frick. In practice, since the SS answered only to Hitler, the de facto merger of the SS
and the police made the police independent of Frick's control. [54][64] In September 1939,
the security and police agencies, including the Sicherheitspolizei (SiPo; security police)
and SD (but not the Orpo), were consolidated into the Reich Security Main
Office (RSHA), headed by Heydrich.[65] This further increased the collective authority of
the SS.[66]
During Kristallnacht (9–10 November 1938), SS security services clandestinely
coordinated violence against Jews as the SS, Gestapo, SD, Kripo, SiPo, and regular
police did what they could to ensure that while Jewish synagogues and community
centers were destroyed, Jewish-owned businesses and housing remained intact so that
they could later be seized.[67] In the end, thousands of Jewish businesses, homes, and
graveyards were vandalized and looted, particularly by members of the SA. Some 500
to 1,000 synagogues were destroyed, mostly by arson. [68] On 11 November, Heydrich
reported a death toll of 36 people, but later assessments put the number of deaths at up
to two thousand.[69][70] On Hitler's orders, around 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and
sent to concentration camps by 16 November. [71] As many as 2,500 of these people died
in the following months.[69] It was at this point that the SS state began in earnest its
campaign of terror against political and religious opponents, who they imprisoned
without trial or judicial oversight for the sake of "security, re-education, or prevention". [72]
[73]

In September 1939, the authority of the SS expanded further when the senior SS officer
in each military district also became its chief of police. [74] Most of these SS and police
leaders held the rank of SS-Gruppenführer or above and answered directly to Himmler
in all SS matters within their district. Their role was to police the population and oversee
the activities of the SS men within their district. [75] By declaring an emergency, they could
bypass the district administrative offices for the SS, SD, SiPo, SS-
Totenkopfverbände (SS-TV; concentration camp guards), and Orpo, thereby gaining
direct operational control of these groups. [76]
Hitler's personal bodyguards
Main article: Adolf Hitler's bodyguard

Troop inspection of the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler in Berlin, 1938

As the SS grew in size and importance, so too did Hitler's personal protection forces.
[77]
 Three main SS groups were assigned to protect Hitler. In 1933, his larger personal
bodyguard unit (previously the 1st SS-Standarte) was called to Berlin to replace the
Army Chancellery Guard, assigned to protect the Chancellor of Germany.[78] Sepp
Dietrich commanded the new unit, previously known as SS-Stabswache Berlin; the
name was changed to SS-Sonderkommando Berlin. In November 1933, the name was
changed to Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler. In April 1934, Himmler modified the name
to Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler (LSSAH). The LSSAH guarded Hitler's private
residences and offices, providing an outer ring of protection for the Führer and his
visitors.[79] LSSAH men manned sentry posts at the entrances to the old Reich
Chancellery and the new Reich Chancellery.[80] The number of LSSAH guards was
increased during special events.[81] At the Berghof, Hitler's residence in
the Obersalzberg, a large contingent of the LSSAH patrolled an extensive cordoned
security zone.[82]
From 1941 forward, the Leibstandarte became four distinct entities, the Waffen-SS
division (unconnected to Hitler's protection but a formation of the Waffen-SS), the Berlin
Chancellory Guard, the SS security regiment assigned to the Obersalzberg, and a
Munich-based bodyguard unit which protected Hitler when he visited his apartment and
the Brown House Nazi Party headquarters in Munich.[83][84] Although the unit was
nominally under Himmler, Dietrich was the real commander and handled day-to-day
administration.[85]
Two other SS units composed the inner ring of Hitler's protection. The SS-
Begleitkommando des Führers (Escort Command of the Führer), formed in February
1932, served as Hitler's protection escort while he was traveling. This unit consisted of
eight men who served around the clock protecting Hitler in shifts. [86] Later the SS-
Begleitkommando was expanded and became known as
the Führerbegleitkommando (Führer Escort Command; FBK). It continued under
separate command and remained responsible for Hitler's protection. [87] The Führer
Schutzkommando (Führer Protection Command; FSK) was a protection unit founded by
Himmler in March 1933.[88] Originally it was charged with protecting Hitler only while he
was inside the borders of Bavaria. In early 1934, they replaced the SS-
Begleitkommando for Hitler's protection throughout Germany. [89] The FSK was renamed
the Reichssicherheitsdienst (Reich Security Service; RSD) in August 1935. [90] Johann
Rattenhuber, chief of the RSD, for the most part, took his orders directly from Hitler.
[90]
 The current FBK chief acted as his deputy. Wherever Hitler was in residence,
members of the RSD and FBK would be present. RSD men patrolled the grounds and
FBK men provided close security protection inside. The RSD and FBK worked together
for security and personal protection during Hitler's trips and public events, but they
operated as two groups and used separate vehicles. [91] By March 1938, both units wore
the standard field grey uniform of the SS. [92] The RSD uniform had the SD diamond on
the lower left sleeve.[93]
Concentration camps founded

Crematorium at Dachau concentration camp, May 1945 (photo taken after liberation)

The SS was closely associated with Nazi Germany's concentration camp system. On 26
June 1933, Himmler appointed SS-Oberführer Theodor
Eicke as commandant of Dachau concentration camp, one of the first Nazi
concentration camps.[94] It was created to consolidate the many small camps that had
been set up by various police agencies and the Nazi Party to house political prisoners.
[95]
 The organizational structure Eicke instituted at Dachau stood as the model for all later
concentration camps.[96] After 1934, Eicke was named commander of the SS-
Totenkopfverbände (SS-TV), the SS formation responsible for running the concentration
camps under the authority of the SS and Himmler.[97] 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. Leadership at the camps was divided into five
departments: commander and adjutant, political affairs division, protective custody,
administration, and medical personnel.[98] By 1935, Himmler secured Hitler's approval
and the finances necessary to establish and operate additional camps. [99] Six
concentration camps[a] housing 21,400 inmates (mostly political prisoners) existed at the
start of the war in September 1939.[101] By the end of the war, hundreds of camps of
varying size and function had been created, holding nearly 715,000 people, most of
whom were targeted by the regime because of their race. [102][103] The concentration camp
population rose in tandem with the defeats suffered by the Nazi regime; the worse the
catastrophe seemed, the greater the fear of subversion, prompting the SS to intensify
their repression and terror.[104]

SS in World War II
By the outbreak of World War II, the SS had consolidated into its final form, which
comprised three main organizations: the Allgemeine SS, SS-Totenkopfverbände, and
the Waffen-SS, which was founded in 1934 as the SS-Verfügungstruppe (SS-VT) and
renamed in 1940.[105][106] The Waffen-SS evolved into a second German army alongside
the Wehrmacht and operated in tandem with them, especially with the Heer (German
Army).[107] However, it never obtained total "independence of command", nor was it ever
a "serious rival" to the German Army. Members were never able to join the ranks of the
German High Command and it was dependent on the army for heavy weaponry and
equipment.[108] Although SS ranks generally had equivalents in the other services, the SS
rank system did not copy the terms and ranks used by the Wehrmacht's branches.
Instead, it used the ranks established by the post-World War I Freikorps and the SA.
This was primarily done to emphasize the SS as being independent of the Wehrmacht.
[109]

Invasion of Poland

Polish Jews arrested by the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) and police, September 1939

In the September 1939 invasion of Poland, the LSSAH and SS-VT fought as separate
mobile infantry regiments.[110] The LSSAH became notorious for torching villages without
military justification.[111] Members of the LSSAH committed atrocities in numerous towns,
including the murder of 50 Polish Jews in Błonie and the massacre of 200 civilians,
including children, who were machine-gunned in Złoczew. Shootings also took place
in Bolesławiec, Torzeniec, Goworowo, Mława, and Włocławek.[112] Some senior members
of the Wehrmacht were not convinced the units were fully prepared for combat. Its units
took unnecessary risks and had a higher casualty rate than the army.
[113]
 Generaloberst Fedor von Bock was quite critical; following an April 1940 visit of
the SS-Totenkopf division, he found their battle training was "insufficient". [114] Hitler
thought the criticism was typical of the army's "outmoded conception of chivalry." [115] In its
defense, the SS insisted that its armed formations had been hampered by having to
fight piecemeal and were improperly equipped by the army. [113]
After the invasion, Hitler entrusted the SS with extermination actions
codenamed Operation Tannenberg and AB-Aktion to remove potential leaders who
could form a resistance to German occupation. The murders were committed
by Einsatzgruppen (task forces; deployment groups), assisted by local paramilitary
groups. Men for the Einsatzgruppen units were drawn from the SS, the SD, and the
police.[116] Some 65,000 Polish civilians, including activists, intelligentsia, scholars,
teachers, actors, former officers, and others, were killed by the end of 1939. [117][118] When
the army leadership registered complaints about the brutality being meted out by
the Einsatzgruppen, Heydrich informed them that he was acting "in accordance with the
special order of the Führer."[119] The first systematic mass shooting of Jews by
the Einsatzgruppen took place on 6 September 1939 during the attack on Kraków.[120]

Execution of civilians by Einsatzgruppen in Kórnik, Poland, 1939

Satisfied with their performance in Poland, Hitler allowed further expansion of the armed
SS formations but insisted new units remain under the operational control of the army.
[121]
 While the SS-Leibstandarte remained an independent regiment functioning as Hitler's
personal bodyguards, the other regiments—SS-Deutschland, SS-Germania, and SS-
Der Führer—were combined to form the SS-Verfügungs-Division.[122][113] A second SS
division, the SS-Totenkopf, was formed from SS-TV concentration camp guards, and a
third, the SS-Polizei, was created from police volunteers. [123][124] The SS gained control
over its own recruitment, logistics, and supply systems for its armed formations at this
time.[124] The SS, Gestapo, and SD were in charge of the provisional military
administration in Poland until the appointment of Hans Frank as Governor-General on
26 October 1939.[125][126]
Battle of France
On 10 May 1940, Hitler launched the Battle of France, a major offensive against France
and the Low Countries.[127] The SS supplied two of the 89 divisions employed. [128] The
LSSAH and elements of the SS-VT participated in the ground invasion of the Battle of
the Netherlands.[129] Simultaneously, airborne troops were dropped to capture key Dutch
airfields, bridges, and railways. In the five-day campaign, the LSSAH linked up with
army units and airborne troops after several clashes with Dutch defenders. [129]
Himmler inspecting a Sturmgeschütz III of the 1st SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler in Metz,
France, September 1940

SS troops did not take part in the thrust through the Ardennes and the river Meuse.
[129]
 Instead, the SS-Totenkopf was summoned from the army reserve to fight in support
of Generalmajor Erwin Rommel's 7th Panzer Division as they advanced toward
the English Channel.[130] On 21 May, the British launched an armored counterattack
against the flanks of the 7th Panzer Division and SS-Totenkopf. The Germans then
trapped the British and French troops in a huge pocket at Dunkirk.[131] On 27 May, 4
Company, SS-Totenkopf perpetrated the Le Paradis massacre, where 97 men of the
2nd Battalion, Royal Norfolk Regiment were machine-gunned after surrendering, with
survivors finished off with bayonets. Two men survived.[132] By 28 May the SS-
Leibstandarte had taken Wormhout, 10 mi (16 km) from Dunkirk. There, soldiers of the
2nd Battalion were responsible for the Wormhoudt massacre, where 80 British and
French soldiers were murdered after they surrendered. [133] According to historian Charles
Sydnor, the "fanatical recklessness in the assault, suicidal defense against enemy
attacks, and savage atrocities committed in the face of frustrated objectives" exhibited
by the SS-Totenkopf division during the invasion were typical of the SS troops as a
whole.[134]
At the close of the campaign, Hitler expressed his pleasure with the performance of
the SS-Leibstandarte, telling them: "Henceforth it will be an honor for you, who bear my
name, to lead every German attack."[135] The SS-VT was renamed the Waffen-SS in a
speech made by Hitler in July 1940. [106] Hitler then authorized the enlistment of "people
perceived to be of related stock", as Himmler put it, to expand the ranks. [136] Danes,
Dutch, Norwegians, Swedes, and Finns volunteered to fight in the Waffen-SS under the
command of German officers.[137] They were brought together to form the new
division SS-Wiking.[136] In January 1941, the SS-Verfügungs Division was renamed SS-
Reich Division (Motorized), and was renamed as the 2nd SS Panzer Division Das
Reich when it was reorganized as a Panzergrenadier division in 1942.[138]
Campaign in the Balkans
In April 1941, the German Army invaded Yugoslavia and Greece. The LSSAH and Das
Reich were attached to separate army Panzer corps. Fritz Klingenberg, a company
commander in the Das Reich, led his men across Yugoslavia to the capital, Belgrade,
where a small group in the vanguard accepted the surrender of the city on 13 April. A
few days later Yugoslavia surrendered.[139][140] SS police units immediately began taking
hostages and carrying out reprisals, a practice that became common. In some cases,
they were joined by the Wehrmacht.[141] Similar to Poland, the war policies of the Nazis in
the Balkans resulted in brutal occupation and racist mass murder. Serbia became the
second country (after Estonia) declared Judenfrei (free of Jews).[142]
In Greece, the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS encountered resistance from the British
Expeditionary Force (BEF) and Greek Army.[143] The fighting was intensified by the
mountainous terrain, with its heavily defended narrow passes. The LSSAH was at the
forefront of the German push.[144] The BEF evacuated by sea to Crete, but had to flee
again in late May when the Germans arrived. [145] Like Yugoslavia, the conquest of
Greece brought its Jews into danger, as the Nazis immediately took a variety of
measures against them.[146] Initially confined in ghettos, most were transported
to Auschwitz concentration camp in March 1943, where they were killed in the gas
chambers on arrival. Of Greece's 80,000 Jews, only 20 percent survived the war. [147]

War in the east

On 22 June 1941, Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet
Union.[148] The expanding war and the need to control occupied territories provided the
conditions for Himmler to further consolidate the police and military organs of the SS.
[149]
 Rapid acquisition of vast territories in the East placed considerable strain on the SS
police organizations as they struggled to adjust to the changing security challenges. [150]
The 1st and 2nd 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, but 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, they formed firing parties that
participated in the liquidation of the Jewish population of the Soviet Union. [151][152]
On 31 July 1941, Göring gave Heydrich written authorization to ensure the cooperation
of administrative leaders of various government departments to undertake genocide of
the Jews in territories under German control.[153] Heydrich was instrumental in carrying
out these exterminations, as the Gestapo was ready to organize deportations in the
West and his Einsatzgruppen were already conducting extensive murder operations in
the East.[154] On 20 January 1942, Heydrich chaired a meeting, called the Wannsee
Conference, to discuss the implementation of the plan. [155]
During battles in the Soviet Union in 1941 and 1942, the Waffen-SS suffered enormous
casualties. The LSSAH and Das Reich lost over half their troops to illness and combat
casualties.[156] In need of recruits, Himmler began to accept soldiers that did not fit the
original SS racial profile.[157] In early 1942, SS-Leibstandarte, SS-Totenkopf, and SS-Das
Reich were withdrawn to the West to refit and were converted
to Panzergrenadier divisions.[158] The SS-Panzer Corps returned to the Soviet Union in
1943 and participated in the Third Battle of Kharkov in February and March.[159]
The Holocaust

Murder of Jews by Einsatzgruppen in Ivanhorod, Ukraine, 1942

The SS was built on a culture of violence, which was exhibited in its most extreme form
by the mass murder of civilians and prisoners of war on the Eastern Front.
[160]
 Augmented by personnel from the Kripo, Orpo (Order Police), and Waffen-SS,
[161]
 the Einsatzgruppen reached a total strength of 3,000 men. Einsatzgruppen A, B, and
C were attached to Army Groups North, Centre, and South; Einsatzgruppe D was
assigned to the 11th Army. The Einsatzgruppe for Special Purposes operated in eastern
Poland starting in July 1941.[162] The historian Richard Rhodes describes them as being
"outside the bounds of morality"; they were "judge, jury and executioner all in one", with
the authority to kill anyone at their discretion. [163] Following Operation Barbarossa,
these Einsatzgruppen units, together with the Waffen-SS and Order Police as well as
with assistance from the Wehrmacht, engaged in the mass murder of the Jewish
population in occupied eastern Poland and the Soviet Union. [163][164][165] The greatest extent
of Einsatzgruppen action occurred in 1941 and 1942 in Ukraine and Russia. [166] Before
the invasion there were five million registered Jews throughout the Soviet Union, with
three million of those residing in the territories occupied by the Germans; by the time the
war ended, over two million of these had been murdered. [167]
The extermination activities of the Einsatzgruppen generally followed a standard
procedure, with the Einsatzgruppen chief contacting the nearest Wehrmacht unit
commander to inform him of the impending action; this was done so they could
coordinate and control access to the execution grounds. [168] Initially, the victims were
shot, but this method proved impracticable for an operation of this scale. [169] Also, after
Himmler observed the shooting of 100 Jews at Minsk in August 1941, he grew
concerned about the impact such actions were having on the mental health of his SS
men. He decided that alternate methods of murder should be found, which led to the
introduction of gas vans.[170][171] However, these were not popular with the men, because
removing the dead bodies from the van and burying them was a horrible ordeal.
Prisoners or auxiliaries were often assigned to do this task so as to spare the SS men
the trauma.[172]
Anti-partisan operations
Further information: Bandenbekämpfung

In response to the army's difficulties in dealing with Soviet partisans, Hitler decided in
July 1942 to transfer anti-partisan operations to the police. This placed the matter under
Himmler's purview.[173][174] As Hitler had ordered on 8 July 1941 that all Jews were to be
regarded as partisans, the term "anti-partisan operations" was used as a euphemism for
the murder of Jews as well as actual combat against resistance elements. [175][176] In July
1942 Himmler ordered that the term "partisan" should no longer be used; instead
resisters to Nazi rule would be described as "bandits". [177]
Himmler set the SS and SD to work on developing additional anti-partisan tactics and
launched a propaganda campaign.[178] Sometime in June 1943, Himmler issued
the Bandenbekämpfung (bandit fighting) order, simultaneously announcing the
existence of the Bandenkampfverbände (bandit fighting formations), with SS-
Obergruppenführer Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski as its chief. Employing troops
primarily from the SS police and Waffen-SS, the Bandenkampfverbände had four
principal operational components: propaganda, centralized control and coordination of
security operations, training of troops, and battle operations. [179] Once the Wehrmacht
had secured territorial objectives, the Bandenkampfverbände first secured
communications facilities, roads, railways, and waterways. Thereafter, they secured
rural communities and economic installations such as factories and administrative
buildings. An additional priority was securing agricultural and forestry resources. The SS
oversaw the collection of the harvest, which was deemed critical to strategic operations.
[180]
 Any Jews in the area were rounded up and killed. Communists and people of Asiatic
descent were killed presumptively under the assumption that they were Soviet agents. [181]
Death camps

Jews from Carpathian Ruthenia arriving at Auschwitz concentration camp, 1944

After the start of the war, Himmler intensified the activity of the SS within Germany and
in Nazi-occupied Europe. Increasing numbers of Jews and German citizens deemed
politically suspect or social outsiders were arrested. [182] As the Nazi regime became more
oppressive, the concentration camp system grew in size and lethal operation, and grew
in scope as the economic ambitions of the SS intensified. [183]
Intensification of the killing operations took place in late 1941 when the SS began
construction of stationary gassing facilities to replace the use of Einsatzgruppen for
mass murders.[184][185] Victims at these new extermination camps were killed with the use
of carbon monoxide gas from automobile engines. [186] During Operation Reinhard, run by
officers from the Totenkopfverbände, who were sworn to secrecy, three extermination
camps were built in occupied Poland: Bełżec (operational by March
1942), Sobibór (operational by May 1942), and Treblinka (operational by July 1942),
  with squads of Trawniki men (Eastern European collaborators) overseeing hundreds
[187]

of Sonderkommando prisoners,[b] who were forced to work in the gas chambers and

crematoria before being murdered themselves. [188] On Himmler's orders, by early 1942
the concentration camp at Auschwitz was greatly expanded to include the addition of
gas chambers, where victims were killed using the pesticide Zyklon B.[189][190]
For administrative reasons, all concentration camp guards and administrative staff
became full members of the Waffen-SS in 1942. The concentration camps were placed
under the command of the SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt (SS Main Economic
and Administrative Office; WVHA) under Oswald Pohl.[191] Richard Glücks served as
the Inspector of Concentration Camps, which in 1942 became office "D" under the
WVHA.[192][193] Exploitation and extermination became a balancing act as the military
situation deteriorated. The labor needs of the war economy, especially for skilled
workers, meant that some Jews escaped the genocide. [194] On 30 October 1942, due to
severe labor shortages in Germany, Himmler ordered that large numbers of able-bodied
people in Nazi-occupied Soviet territories be taken prisoner and sent to Germany
as forced labor.[195]
By 1944, the SS-TV had been organized into three divisions: staff of the concentration
camps in Germany and Austria, in the occupied territories, and of the extermination
camps in Poland. By 1944, it became standard practice to rotate SS members in and
out of the camps, partly based on manpower needs, but also to provide easier
assignments to wounded Waffen-SS members.[196] This rotation of personnel meant that
nearly the entire SS knew what was going on inside the concentration camps, making
the entire organization liable for war crimes and crimes against humanity.[197]

Business empire
In 1934, Himmler founded the first SS business venture, Nordland-Verlag, a publishing
house that released propaganda material and SS training manuals. Thereafter, he
purchased Allach Porcelain, which then began to produce SS memorabilia. [198] Because
of the labor shortage and a desire for financial gain, the SS started exploiting
concentration camp inmates as slave labor.[199] Most of the SS businesses lost money
until Himmler placed them under the administration of Pohl's Verwaltung und
Wirtschaftshauptamt Hauptamt (Administration and Business office; VuWHA) in 1939.
[193]
 Even then, most of the enterprises were poorly run and did not fare well, as SS men
were not selected for their business experience, and the workers were starving. [200] In
July 1940 Pohl established the Deutsche Wirtschaftsbetriebe GmbH (German
Businesses Ltd; DWB), an umbrella corporation under which he took over
administration of all SS business concerns.[201] Eventually, the SS founded nearly 200
holding companies for their businesses.[202]
Extermination through labor. At Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp, inmates were forced to carry heavy
granite blocks out of the quarry on the "Stairs of Death".

In May 1941 the VuWHA founded the Deutsche Ausrüstungswerke GmbH (German

Equipment Works; DAW), which was created to integrate the SS business enterprises
with the burgeoning concentration camp system.[203] Himmler subsequently established
four major new concentration camps in 1941: Auschwitz, Gross-Rosen, Natzweiler-
Struthof, and Neuengamme. Each had at least one factory or quarry nearby where the
inmates were forced to work.[204] Himmler took a particular interest in providing laborers
for IG Farben, which was constructing a synthetic rubber factory at Auschwitz III–
Monowitz.[205] The plant was almost ready to commence production when it was overrun
by Soviet troops in 1945.[206] The life expectancy of inmates at Monowitz averaged about
three months.[207] This was typical of the camps, as inmates were underfed and lived
under disastrously bad living conditions. Their workload was intentionally made
impossibly high, under the policy of extermination through labor.[208]
In 1942, Himmler consolidated all of the offices for which Pohl was responsible into one,
creating the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office (Wirtschafts- und
Verwaltungshauptamt; WVHA).[191] The entire concentration camp system was placed
under the authority of the WVHA.[192] The SS owned Sudetenquell GmbH, a mineral
water producer in Sudetenland. By 1944, the SS had purchased 75 percent of the
mineral water producers in Germany and were intending to acquire a monopoly.
[209]
 Several concentration camps produced building materials such as stone, bricks, and
cement for the SS-owned Deutsche Erd- und Steinwerke (German Earth And Stone
Works; DEST).[210] In the occupied Eastern territories, the SS acquired a monopoly in
brick production by seizing all 300 extant brickworks.[209] The DWB also founded the Ost-
Deutsche Baustoffwerke (East German Building Supply Works; GmbH or ODBS)
and Deutsche Edelmöbel GmbH (German Noble Furniture). These operated in factories
the SS had confiscated from Jews and Poles.[211]
The SS owned experimental farms, bakeries, meat packing plants, leather works,
clothing and uniform factories, and small arms factories. [212][213] Under the direction of the
WVHA, the SS sold camp labor to various factories at a rate of three to
six Reichsmarks per prisoner per day.[214] The SS confiscated and sold the property of
concentration camp inmates, confiscated their investment portfolios and their cash, and
profited from their dead bodies by selling their hair to make felt and melting down their
dental work to obtain gold from the fillings. [215] The total value of assets looted from the
victims of Operation Reinhard alone (not including Auschwitz) was listed by Odilo
Globocnik as 178,745,960.59 Reichsmarks. Items seized included 2,909.68 kg
(6,414.7 lb) of gold worth 843,802.75 RM, as well as 18,733.69 kg (41,300.7 lb) of
silver, 1,514 kg (3,338 lb) of platinum, 249,771.50 American dollars, 130 diamond
solitaires, 2,511.87 carats of brilliants, 13,458.62 carats of diamonds, and 114 kg of
pearls.[216] According to Nazi legislation, Jewish property belonged to the state, but many
SS camp commandants and guards stole items such as diamonds or currency for
personal gain or took seized foodstuffs and liquor to sell on the black market. [217]

Military reversals
On 5 July 1943, the Germans launched the Battle of Kursk, an offensive designed to
eliminate the Kursk salient.[218] The Waffen-SS by this time had been expanded to 12
divisions, and most took part in the battle.[219] Due to stiff Soviet resistance, Hitler halted
the attack by the evening of 12 July. On 17 July he called off the operation and ordered
a withdrawal.[220] Thereafter, the Germans were forced onto the defensive as the Red
Army began the liberation of Western Russia.[221] The losses incurred by the Waffen-SS
and the Wehrmacht during the Battle of Kursk occurred nearly simultaneously with
the Allied assault into Italy, opening a two-front war for Germany.[222]
Normandy landings

Troops of the Indian Legion of the Waffen-SS guarding the Atlantic Wall in Bordeaux, France, 21 March 1944

Alarmed by the raids on St Nazaire and Dieppe in 1942, Hitler had ordered the
construction of fortifications he called the Atlantic Wall all along the Atlantic coast, from
Spain to Norway, to protect against an expected Allied invasion. [223] Concrete gun
emplacements were constructed at strategic points along the coast, and wooden
stakes, metal tripods, mines, and large anti-tank obstacles were placed on the beaches
to delay the approach of landing craft and impede the movement of tanks. [224] In addition
to several static infantry divisions, eleven panzer and Panzergrenadier divisions were
deployed nearby.[225][226] Four of these formations were Waffen-SS divisions. [227] In addition,
the SS-Das Reich was located in Southern France, the LSSAH was in Belgium refitting
after fighting in the Soviet Union, and the newly formed panzer division SS-Hitlerjugend,
consisting of 17- and 18-year-old Hitler Youth members supported by combat veterans
and experienced NCOs, was stationed west of Paris.[228] The creation of the SS-
Hitlerjugend was a sign of Hitler's desperation for more troops, especially ones with
unquestioning obedience.[229]
The Normandy landings took place beginning on 6 June 1944. 21st Panzer
Division under Generalmajor Edgar Feuchtinger, positioned south of Caen, was the only
panzer division close to the beaches. The division included 146 tanks and 50 assault
guns, plus supporting infantry and artillery.[230] At 02:00, Generalleutnant Wilhelm Richter,
commander of the 716th Static Infantry Division, ordered 21st Panzer Division into
position to counter-attack. However, as the division was part of the armored reserve,
Feuchtinger was obliged to seek clearance from OKW before he could commit his
formation.[231] Feuchtinger did not receive orders until nearly 09:00, but in the meantime,
on his own initiative he put together a battle group (including tanks) to fight the British
forces east of the Orne.[232] SS-Hitlerjugend began to deploy in the afternoon of 6 June,
with its units undertaking defensive actions the following day. They also took part in
the Battle for Caen (June–August 1944).[233] On 7–8 and 17 June, members of the SS-
Hitlerjugend shot and killed twenty Canadian prisoners of war in the Ardenne Abbey
massacre.[234]
The Allies continued to make progress in the liberation of France, and on 4 August
Hitler ordered a counter-offensive (Operation Lüttich) from Vire towards Avranches.
[235]
 The operation included LSSAH, Das Reich, 2nd, and 116th Panzer Divisions, with
support from infantry and elements of the 17th SS Panzergrenadier Division Götz von
Berlichingen under SS-Oberstgruppenführer Paul Hausser. These forces were to mount
an offensive near Mortain and drive west through Avranches to the coast. The Allied
forces were prepared for this offensive, and an air assault on the combined German
units proved devastating.[236] On 21 August, 50,000 German troops, including most of the
LSSAH, were encircled by the Allies in the Falaise Pocket.[237] Remnants of the LSSAH
which escaped were withdrawn to Germany for refitting. [238] Paris was liberated on 25
August, and the last of the German forces withdrew over the Seine by the end of
August, ending the Normandy campaign.[239]
Battle for Germany
Waffen-SS units that had survived the summer campaigns were withdrawn from the
front line to refit. Two of them, the 9th SS and 10th SS Panzer Divisions, did so in
the Arnhem region of Holland in early September 1944. Coincidentally, on 17
September, the Allies launched in the same area Operation Market Garden, a combined
airborne and land operation designed to seize control of the lower Rhine.[240] The 9th and
10th Panzers were among the units that repulsed the attack. [241]
German infantry traveling on foot in the Ardennes, December 1944

In December 1944, Hitler launched the Ardennes Offensive, also known as the Battle of
the Bulge, a significant counterattack against the western Allies through the Ardennes
with the aim of reaching Antwerp while encircling the Allied armies in the area. [242] The
offensive began with an artillery barrage shortly before dawn on 16 December.
Spearheading the attack were two panzer armies composed largely of Waffen-SS
divisions.[243] The battlegroups found advancing through the forests and wooded hills of
the Ardennes difficult in the winter weather, but they initially made good progress in the
northern sector. They soon encountered strong resistance from the US 2nd and 99th
Infantry Divisions. By 23 December, the weather improved enough for Allied air forces
to attack the German forces and their supply columns, causing fuel shortages. In
increasingly difficult conditions, the German advance slowed and was stopped.
[244]
 Hitler's failed offensive cost 700 tanks and most of their remaining mobile forces in
the west,[245] as well as most of their irreplaceable reserves of manpower and materiel. [246]
During the battle, SS-Obersturmbannführer Joachim Peiper left a path of destruction,
which included Waffen-SS soldiers under his command murdering American POWs and
unarmed Belgian civilians in the Malmedy massacre.[247] Captured SS soldiers who were
part of Kampfgruppe Peiper were tried during the Malmedy massacre trial following the
war for this massacre and several others in the area. Many of the perpetrators were
sentenced to hang, but the sentences were commuted. Peiper was imprisoned for
eleven years for his role in the murders.[248]
American POWs murdered by SS forces led by Joachim Peiper in the Malmedy massacre during the Battle of
the Bulge, December 1944

In the east, the Red Army resumed its offensive on 12 January 1945. German forces
were outnumbered twenty to one in aircraft, eleven to one in infantry, and seven to one
in tanks on the Eastern Front.[249] By the end of the month, the Red Army had made
bridgeheads across the Oder, the last geographic obstacle before Berlin. [250] The western
Allies continued to advance as well, but not as rapidly as the Red Army. [251] The Panzer
Corps conducted a successful defensive operation on 17–24 February at
the Hron River, stalling the Allied advance towards Vienna. [252] The 1st and 2nd SS
Panzer Corps made their way towards Austria but were slowed by damaged railways. [253]
Budapest fell on 13 February.[254] Hitler ordered Dietrich's 6th Panzer Army to move into
Hungary to protect the Nagykanizsa oilfields and refineries, which he deemed the most
strategically valuable fuel reserves on the Eastern Front. [255]
[252]
 Frühlingserwachsen (Operation Spring Awakening), the final German offensive in the
east, took place in early March. German forces attacked near Lake Balaton, with 6th
Panzer Army advancing north towards Budapest and 2nd Panzer Army moving east
and south.[256] Dietrich's forces at first made good progress, but as they drew near the
Danube, the combination of muddy terrain and strong Soviet resistance brought them to
a halt.[257] By 16 March the battle was lost.[258] Enraged by the defeat, Hitler ordered the
Waffen-SS units involved to remove their cuff titles as a mark of disgrace. Dietrich
refused to carry out the order.[259]
By this time, on both the Eastern and Western Front, the activities of the SS were
becoming clear to the Allies, as the concentration and extermination camps were being
overrun.[260] Allied troops were filled with disbelief and repugnance at the evidence of
Nazi brutality in the camps.[261]
On 9 April 1945 Königsberg fell to the Red Army, and on 13 April Dietrich's SS unit was
forced out of Vienna.[262] The Battle of Berlin began at 03:30 on 16 April with a massive
artillery barrage.[263] Within the week, fighting was taking place inside the city. Among the
many elements defending Berlin were French, Latvian, and Scandinavian Waffen-SS
troops.[264][265] Hitler, now living in the Führerbunker under the Reich Chancellery, still
hoped that his remaining SS soldiers could rescue the capital. In spite of the
hopelessness of the situation, members of the SS patrolling the city continued to shoot
or hang soldiers and civilians for what they considered to be acts of cowardice or
defeatism.[266] The Berlin garrison surrendered on 2 May, two days after Hitler committed
suicide.[263] As members of SS expected little mercy from the Red Army, they attempted
to move westward to surrender to the western Allies instead. [267]

SS units and branches

Main article: Units and commands of the Schutzstaffel

Reich Security Main Office

Heydrich held the title of Chef der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD (Chief of the Security
Police and SD) until 27 September 1939, when he became chief of the newly
established Reich Security Main Office (RSHA).[65][268] From that point forward, the RSHA
was in charge of SS security services. It had under its command the SD, Kripo, and
Gestapo, as well as several offices to handle finance, administration, and supply.
[65]
 Heinrich Müller, who had been chief of operations for the Gestapo, was appointed
Gestapo chief at this time.[269] Arthur Nebe was chief of the Kripo, and the two branches
of SD were commanded by a series of SS officers, including Otto Ohlendorf and Walter
Schellenberg. The SD was considered an elite branch of the SS, and its members were
better educated and typically more ambitious than those within the ranks of
the Allgemeine SS.[48] Members of the SD were specially trained in criminology,
intelligence, and counter-intelligence. They also gained a reputation for ruthlessness
and unwavering commitment to Nazi ideology.[270]
Heydrich was attacked in Prague on 27 May 1942 by a British-trained team of Czech
and Slovak soldiers who had been sent by the Czechoslovak government-in-exile to
assassinate him in Operation Anthropoid. He died from his injuries a week later.[271]
[c]
 Himmler ran the RSHA personally until 30 January 1943, when Heydrich's positions
were taken over by Ernst Kaltenbrunner.[273]
SS-Sonderkommandos
This section is about the units within the SS. For the Jewish inmates of death camps who were
forced to assist in camp operations, see Sonderkommandos.

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, including large-scale murder operations.
The use of SS-Sonderkommandos was widespread. According to
former SS Sturmbannführer 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.[274]
An SS-Sonderkommando unit led by SS-Sturmbannführer Herbert Lange murdered
1,201 psychiatric patients at the Tiegenhof psychiatric hospital in the Free City of
Danzig,[275] 1,100 patients in Owińska, 2,750 patients at Kościan, and 1,558 patients
at Działdowo, as well as hundreds of Poles at Fort VII, where the mobile gas van and
gassing bunker were developed.[276][277] In 1941–42, SS-Sonderkommando Lange set up
and managed the first extermination camp, at Chełmno, where 152,000 Jews were
killed using gas vans.[278]
After the Battle of Stalingrad ended in February 1943, Himmler realized that Germany
would likely lose the war, and ordered the formation of Sonderkommando 1005, a
special task force under SS-Standartenführer Paul Blobel. The unit's assignment was to
visit mass graves on the Eastern Front to exhume bodies and burn them in an attempt
to cover up the genocide. The task remained unfinished at the end of the war, and many
mass graves remain unmarked and unexcavated. [279]
The Eichmann Sonderkommando was a task force headed by Adolf Eichmann that
arrived in Budapest on 19 March 1944, the same day that Axis forces invaded Hungary.
Their task was to take a direct role in the deportation of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz.
The SS-Sonderkommandos enlisted the aid of antisemitic elements from the Hungarian
gendarmerie and pro-German administrators from within the Hungarian Interior Ministry.
[280]
 Round-ups began on 16 April, and from 14 May, four trains of 3,000 Jews per day left
Hungary and traveled to the camp at Auschwitz II-Birkenau, arriving along a newly built
spur line that terminated a few hundred meters from the gas chambers. [281][282] Between 10
and 25 percent of the people on each train were chosen as forced laborers; the rest
were killed within hours of arrival.[281][283] Under international pressure, the Hungarian
government halted deportations on 6 July 1944, by which time over 437,000 of
Hungary's 725,000 Jews had been murdered.[281][284]
Einsatzgruppen

SS murders in Zboriv, 1941; a teenage boy is brought to view his dead family before being shot himself

The Einsatzgruppen had its origins in the ad hoc Einsatzkommando formed by Heydrich

following the Anschluss in Austria in March 1938.[285] Two units of Einsatzgruppen were
stationed in the Sudetenland in October 1938. When military action turned out not to be
necessary because of the Munich Agreement, the Einsatzgruppen were assigned to
confiscate government papers and police documents. They secured government
buildings, questioned senior civil servants, and arrested as many as 10,000 Czech
communists and German citizens.[285][286] The Einsatzgruppen also followed Wehrmacht
troops and killed potential partisans.[287] Similar groups were used in 1939 for
the occupation of Czechoslovakia.[288]
Hitler felt that the planned extermination of the Jews was too difficult and important to
be entrusted to the military.[289] In 1941 the Einsatzgruppen were sent into the Soviet
Union to begin large-scale genocide of Jews, Romani people, and communists.
[290]
 Historian Raul Hilberg estimates that between 1941 and 1945
the Einsatzgruppen and related agencies killed more than two million people, including
1.3 million Jews.[291] The largest mass shooting perpetrated by the Einsatzgruppen was
at Babi Yar outside Kiev, where 33,771 Jews were killed in a single operation on 29–30
September 1941.[292] In the Rumbula massacre (November–December 1941), 25,000
victims from the Riga ghetto were killed.[293] Another mass shooting early in 1942 claimed
the lives of over 10,000 Jews in Kharkov.[294]
The last Einsatzgruppen were disbanded in mid-1944 (although some continued to exist
on paper until 1945) due to the German retreat on both fronts and the consequent
inability to continue extermination activities. Former Einsatzgruppen members were
either assigned duties in the Waffen-SS or concentration camps. Twenty-
four Einsatzgruppen commanders were tried for war crimes following the war. [295]
SS Court Main Office
The SS Court Main Office (Hauptamt SS-Gericht) was an internal legal system for
conducting investigations, trials, and punishment of the SS and police. It had more than
600 lawyers on staff in the main offices in Berlin and Munich. Proceedings were
conducted at 38 regional SS courts throughout Germany. It was the only authority
authorized to try SS personnel, except for SS members who were on active duty in the
Wehrmacht (in such cases, the SS member in question was tried by a standard military
tribunal). Its creation placed the SS beyond the reach of civilian legal authority. Himmler
personally intervened as he saw fit regarding convictions and punishment. [296] The
historian Karl Dietrich Bracher describes this court system as one factor in the creation
of the Nazi totalitarian police state, as it removed objective legal procedures, rendering
citizens defenseless against the "summary justice of the SS terror." [297]
SS Cavalry
Shortly after Hitler seized power in 1933, most horse riding associations were taken
over by the SA and SS.[298] Members received combat training to serve in the Reiter-
SS (SS Cavalry Corps).[299] The first SS cavalry regiment, designated SS-Totenkopf
Reitstandarte 1, was formed in September 1939. Commanded by then SS-
Standartenführer Hermann Fegelein, the unit was assigned to Poland, where they took
part in the extermination of Polish intelligentsia. [300][301] Additional squadrons were added in
May 1940, for a total of fourteen.[302]
The unit was split into two regiments in December 1939, with Fegelein in charge of
both. By March 1941 their strength was 3,500 men. [303][304] In July 1941, they were
assigned to the Pripyat swamps punitive operation, tasked with rounding up and
exterminating Jews and partisans.[305] The two regiments were amalgamated into the SS
Cavalry Brigade on 31 July, twelve days after the operation started. [306] Fegelein's final
report, dated 18 September 1941, states that they killed 14,178 Jews, 1,001 partisans,
and 699 Red Army soldiers, with 830 prisoners taken. [307][308] The historian Henning Pieper
estimates the actual number of Jews killed was closer to 23,700. [309] The SS Cavalry
Brigade took serious losses in November 1941 in the Battle of Moscow, with casualties
of up to 60 percent in some squadrons.[310] Fegelein was appointed as commander of
the 8th SS Cavalry Division Florian Geyer on 20 April 1943. This unit saw service in the
Soviet Union in attacks on partisans and civilians. [311][312] In addition, SS Cavalry regiments
served in Croatia and Hungary.[313]
SS Medical Corps

Hungarian Jews on the Judenrampe (Jewish ramp) after disembarking from the transport trains. Photo from
the Auschwitz Album, May 1944

Main article: SS Medical Corps

The SS Medical Corps were initially known as the Sanitätsstaffel (sanitary units). After
1931, the SS formed the headquarters office Amt  V as the central office for SS medical
units. An SS medical academy was established in Berlin in 1938 to train Waffen-SS
physicians.[314] SS medical personnel did not often provide actual medical care; their
primary responsibility was medicalized genocide. [315] At Auschwitz, about three-quarters
of new arrivals, including almost all children, women with small children, all the elderly,
and all those who appeared on brief and superficial inspection by an SS doctor not to be
completely fit were killed within hours of arrival. [316] In their role
as Desinfektoren (disinfectors), SS doctors also made selections among existing
prisoners as to their fitness to work and supervised the murder of those deemed unfit.
Inmates in deteriorating health were examined by SS doctors, who decided whether or
not they would be able to recover in less than two weeks. Those too ill or injured to
recover in that time frame were killed.[317]
At Auschwitz, the actual delivery of gas to the victims was always handled by the SS, on
the order of the supervising SS doctor.[318][319] Many of the SS doctors also conducted
inhumane medical experiments on camp prisoners.[320] The most infamous SS
doctor, Josef Mengele, served as a medical officer at Auschwitz under the command
of Eduard Wirths of the camp's medical corps.[321] Mengele undertook selections even
when he was not assigned to do so in the hope of finding subjects for his experiments.
[322]
 He was particularly interested in locating sets of twins. [323] In contrast to most of the
doctors, who viewed undertaking selections as one of their most stressful and horrible
duties, Mengele undertook the task with a flamboyant air, often smiling or whistling a
tune.[324][325] After the war, many SS doctors were charged with war crimes for their
inhumane medical experiments and for their role in gas chamber selections. [326]
Other SS units
Ahnenerbe
The Ahnenerbe (Ancestral Heritage Organization) was founded in 1935 by Himmler and
became part of the SS in 1939.[327] It was an umbrella agency for more than fifty
organizations tasked with studying German racial identity and ancient Germanic
traditions and language.[327][328] The agency sponsored archaeological expeditions in
Germany, Scandinavia, the Middle East, Tibet, and elsewhere to search for evidence of
Aryan roots, influence, and superiority.[329] Further planned expeditions were postponed
indefinitely at the start of the war.[330]
SS-Frauenkorps
The SS-Frauenkorps was an auxiliary reporting and clerical unit, [331] which included
the SS-Helferinnenkorps (Women Helper Corps), made up of female volunteers.
Members were assigned as administrative staff and supply personnel and served in
command positions and as guards at women's concentration camps. [332][333] While female
concentration and extermination camp guards were civilian employees of the SS,
the SS-Helferinnen who completed training at the Reichsschule für SS-Helferinnen in
Oberehnheim (Alsace) were members of the Waffen-SS. [334] Like their male equivalents
in the SS, females participated in atrocities against Jews, Poles, and others. [335]
In 1942, Himmler set up the Reichsschule für SS Helferinnen (Reich school for SS
helpers) in Oberehnheim to train women in communications so that they could free up
men for combat roles. Himmler also intended to replace all female civilian employees in
his service with SS-Helferinnen members, as they were selected and trained according
to Nazi ideology.[336][337] The school was closed on 22 November 1944 due to the Allied
advance.[338]
SS-Mannschaften
The SS-Mannschaften (Auxiliary-SS) were not considered regular SS members, but
were conscripted from other branches of the German military, the Nazi Party, the SA,
and the Volkssturm for service in concentration camps and extermination camps. [339]

Foreign legions and volunteers

See also: Waffen-SS foreign volunteers and conscripts

Beginning in 1940, Himmler opened up Waffen-SS recruiting to ethnic Germans that

were not German citizens.[340] In March 1941, the SS Main Office established
the Germanische Leitstelle (Germanic Guidance Office) to establish Waffen-SS
recruiting offices in Nazi-occupied Europe.[341] The majority of the resulting foreign
Waffen-SS units 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 SS-Wiking and SS-Nordland.[342] Swiss German speakers
joined in substantial numbers.[343] Belgian Flemings joined Dutchmen to form the SS-
Nederland legion,[344] and their Walloon compatriots joined the SS-Wallonien.[345] By the
end of 1943 about a quarter of the SS were ethnic Germans from across Europe, [346] and
by June 1944, half the Waffen-SS were foreign nationals. [347]
Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Amin al-Husseini greeting Bosnian Waffen-SS volunteers before their departure to
the Eastern Front, 1943

Additional Waffen-SS units were added from the Ukrainians, Albanians from Kosovo,

Serbians, Croatians, Turkic, Caucasians, Cossack, and Tatars. The Ukrainians and
Tatars, who had suffered persecution under Stalin, were likely motivated primarily by
opposition to the Soviet government rather than ideological agreement with the SS.
[348]
 The exiled Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Amin al-Husseini was made an SS-
Gruppenführer by Himmler in May 1943.[349] He subsequently used antisemitism and anti-
Serb racism to recruit a Waffen-SS division of Bosnian Muslims, the SS-Handschar.
[350]
 The year-long Soviet occupation of the Baltic states at the beginning of World War II
resulted in volunteers for Latvian and Estonian Waffen-SS units. The Estonian
Legion had 1,280 volunteers under training by the end of 1942. [351] Approximately 25,000
men served in the Estonian SS division, with thousands more conscripted into Police
Front battalions and border guard units. [352] Most of the Estonians were fighting primarily
to regain their independence and as many as 15,000 of them died fighting alongside the
Germans.[353] In early 1944, Himmler even contacted Pohl to suggest releasing Muslim
prisoners from concentration camps to supplement his SS troops. [354]
The Indian Legion was a Wehrmacht unit formed in August 1942 chiefly from
disaffected Indian soldiers of the British Indian Army captured in the North African
Campaign. In August 1944 it was transferred to the auspices of the Waffen-SS as
the Indische Freiwilligen-Legion der Waffen-SS.[355] There was also a French volunteer
division, SS-Charlemagne, which was formed in 1944 mainly from the remnants of
the Legion of French Volunteers Against Bolshevism and French Sturmbrigade.[356]

Ranks and uniforms

Main article: Uniforms and insignia of the Schutzstaffel
See also: Runic insignia of the Schutzstaffel

The SS established its own symbolism, rituals, customs, ranks, and uniforms to set itself
apart from other organizations. Before 1929, the SS wore the same brown uniform as
the SA, with the addition of a black tie and a black cap with a Totenkopf (death's head)
skull and bones symbol, moving to an all-black uniform in 1932. [14][357] In 1935, the SS
combat formations adopted a service uniform in field grey for everyday wear. The SS
also developed its own field uniforms, which included reversible smocks and helmet
covers printed with camouflage patterns.[358] Uniforms were manufactured in hundreds of
licensed factories, with some workers being prisoners of war performing forced labor.
Many were produced in concentration camps.[359]
Hitler and the Nazi Party understood the power of emblems and insignia to influence
public opinion.[360] The stylized lightning bolt logo of the SS was chosen in 1932. The logo
is a pair of runes from a set of 18 Armanen runes created by Guido von List in 1906. It
is similar to the ancient Sowilō rune, which symbolizes the sun, but was renamed as
"Sig" (victory) in List's iconography.[360] The Totenkopf symbolized the wearer's
willingness to fight unto the death, and also served to frighten the enemy. [361]

SS membership estimates 1925–1945

After 1933 a career in the SS became increasingly attractive to Germany's social elite,
who began joining the movement in great numbers, usually motivated by political
opportunism. By 1938 about one-third of the SS leadership were members of the upper
middle class. The trend reversed after the first Soviet counter-offensive of 1942. [362]

Year Membership Reichsführer-SS

1925 200[9] Julius Schreck[363]

1926 200[364] Joseph Berchtold[365]

1927 200[364] Erhard Heiden[364]

1928 280[366] Erhard Heiden[364]

1929 1,000[367] Heinrich Himmler[368]

52,000[9]
1930– Heinrich Himmler[368] (establishment of Nazi Germany)
(Nazis come to power in 1933)
33 [369]
[370]

1934–
240,000[371] Heinrich Himmler[368]
39
 Year Membership Reichsführer-SS

1940–
800,000[372] Heinrich Himmler[368]
44

1944–
Unknown Heinrich Himmler[368] and Karl Hanke[373]
45

SS offices
By 1942 all activities of the SS were managed through twelve main offices. [374][375]

 Personal Staff Reichsführer-SS

 SS Main Office (SS-HA)
 SS-Führungshauptamt (SS Main Operational Office; SS-FHA)
 Reich Security Main Office (RSHA)
 SS Main Economic and Administrative Office (WVHA)
 Ordnungspolizei Hauptamt (Main Office of the Order Police)
 SS Court Main Office
 SS Race and Settlement Main Office (RuSHA)
 SS Personnel Main Office
 Hauptamt Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle (Racial German Assistance Main Office;
VOMI)
 SS Education Office
 Main Office of the Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German
Nationhood (RKFDV)

Austrian SS
Main article: Austrian SS

Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Heinrich Himmler, August Eigruber, and other SS officials visiting Mauthausen

concentration camp, 1941
The term "Austrian SS" is often used to describe that portion of the SS membership
from Austria, but it was never a recognized branch of the SS. In contrast to SS
members from other countries, who were grouped into either the Germanic-SS or
the Foreign Legions of the Waffen-SS, Austrian SS members were regular SS
personnel. It was technically under the command of the SS in Germany but often
acted independently concerning Austrian affairs. The Austrian SS was founded in
1930 and by 1934 was acting as a covert force to bring about the Anschluss with
Germany, which occurred in March 1938. Early Austrian SS leaders were
Kaltenbrunner and Arthur Seyss-Inquart.[376] Austrian SS members served in every
branch of the SS. Austrians constituted 8 percent of the Third Reich's population
and 13 percent of the SS; 40 percent of the staff and 75 percent of commanders at
death camps were Austrian.[377]
After the Anschluss, the Austrian SS was folded into SS-Oberabschnitt Donau. The
third regiment of the SS-Verfügungstruppe (Der Führer) and the
fourth Totenkopf regiment (Ostmark) were recruited in Austria shortly thereafter. On
Heydrich's orders, mass arrests of potential enemies of the Reich began
immediately after the Anschluss.[378] Mauthausen was the first concentration camp
opened in Austria following the Anschluss.[379] Before the invasion of the Soviet
Union, Mauthausen was the harshest of the camps in the Greater German Reich. [380]
The Hotel Metropole was transformed into Gestapo headquarters in Vienna in April
1938. With a staff of 900 (80 percent of whom were recruited from the Austrian
police), it was the largest Gestapo office outside Berlin. An estimated 50,000 people
were interrogated or tortured there. [381] The Gestapo in Vienna was headed by Franz
Josef Huber, who also served as chief of the Central Agency for Jewish Emigration
in Vienna. Although its de facto leaders were Adolf Eichmann and later Alois
Brunner, Huber was nevertheless responsible for the mass deportation of Austrian
Jews.[382]

Post-war activity and aftermath

Following Nazi Germany's collapse, the SS ceased to exist. [383] Numerous members
of the SS, many of them still committed Nazis, remained at large in Germany and
across Europe.[384] On 21 May 1945, the British captured Himmler, who was in
disguise and using a false passport. At an internment camp near Lüneburg, he
committed suicide by biting down on a cyanide capsule. [385] Several other leading
members of the SS fled, but some were quickly captured. Kaltenbrunner, chief of the
RSHA and the highest-ranking surviving SS main department chief upon Himmler's
suicide, was captured and arrested in the Bavarian Alps.[386] He was among the 22
defendants put on trial at the International Military Tribunal in 1945–46.[387]
Some SS members were subject to summary execution, torture, and beatings at the
hands of freed prisoners, displaced persons, or Allied soldiers. [388][389] American
soldiers of the 157th Regiment, who entered the concentration camp at Dachau in
April 1945 and saw the human deprivation and cruelty committed by the SS, shot
some of the remaining SS camp guards.[390] On 15 April 1945, British troops entered
Bergen-Belsen. They placed the SS guards on starvation rations, made them work
without breaks, forced them to deal with the remaining corpses, and stabbed them
with bayonets or struck them with their rifle butts if they slowed their pace. [391] Some
members of the US Army Counter Intelligence Corps delivered captured SS camp
guards to displaced person camps, where they knew they would be subject to
summary execution.[392]
International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg
Main article: Nuremberg trials

The body of Ernst Kaltenbrunner after his execution on 16 October 1946

The Allies commenced legal proceedings against captured Nazis, establishing the
International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg in 1945. [393] The first war crimes trial of 24
prominent figures such as Hermann Göring, Albert Speer, Joachim von
Ribbentrop, Alfred Rosenberg, Hans Frank, and Kaltenbrunner took place beginning
in November 1945. They were accused of four counts: conspiracy, waging a war of
aggression, war crimes, and crimes against humanity in violation of international
law.[393] Twelve received the death penalty, including Kaltenbrunner, who was
convicted of crimes against humanity and executed on 16 October 1946. [394] The
former commandant at Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss, who testified on behalf of
Kaltenbrunner and others, was tried and executed in 1947. [395]
Additional SS trials and convictions followed.[396] Many defendants attempted to
exculpate themselves using the excuse that they were merely following superior
orders, which they had to obey unconditionally as part of their sworn oath and duty.
The courts did not find this to be a legitimate defense. [397] A trial of 40 SS officers and
guards from Auschwitz took place in Kraków in November 1947. Most were found
guilty, and 23 received the death penalty. [398] In addition to those tried by the Western
allies, an estimated 37,000 members of the SS were tried and convicted in Soviet
courts. Sentences included hangings and long terms of hard labor. [399] Piotr Cywiński,
the director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum, estimates that of the 70,000
members of the SS involved in crimes in concentration camps, only about 1,650 to
1,700 were tried after the war.[400] The International Military Tribunal declared the SS
a criminal organization in 1946.[401]
Escapes
See also: Ratlines (World War II aftermath)

Red Cross passport under the name of "Ricardo Klement" that Adolf Eichmann used to enter Argentina in
1950

After the war, many former Nazis fled to South America, especially to Argentina,
where they were welcomed by Juan Perón's regime.[402] In the 1950s, former Dachau
inmate Lothar Hermann discovered that Buenos Aires resident Ricardo Klement
was, in fact, Adolf Eichmann, who had in 1948 obtained false identification and a
landing permit for Argentina through an organization directed by Bishop Alois Hudal,
an Austrian cleric with Nazi sympathies, then residing in Italy. [403] Eichmann was
captured in Buenos Aires on 11 May 1960 by Mossad, the Israeli intelligence
agency. At his trial in Jerusalem in 1961, he was found guilty and sentenced to
death by hanging. Eichmann was quoted as having stated, "I will jump into my grave
laughing because the fact that I have the death of five million Jews [or Reich
enemies, as he later claimed to have said] on my conscience gives me extraordinary
satisfaction."[404] Franz Stangl, the commandant of Treblinka, also escaped to South
America with the assistance of Hudal's network. He was deported to Germany in
1967 and was sentenced to life in prison in 1970. He died in 1971. [405]
Mengele, worried that his capture would mean a death sentence, fled Germany on
17 April 1949.[406] Assisted by a network of former SS members, he traveled
to Genoa, where he obtained a passport under the alias "Helmut Gregor" from
the International Committee of the Red Cross. He sailed to Argentina in July.
[407]
 Aware that he was still a wanted man, he moved to Paraguay in 1958 and Brazil
in 1960. In both instances he was assisted by former Luftwaffe pilot Hans-Ulrich
Rudel.[408] Mengele suffered a stroke while swimming and drowned in 1979. [409]
Thousands of Nazis, including former SS members such as Trawniki guard Jakob
Reimer and Circassian collaborator Tscherim Soobzokov, fled to the United States
under the guise of refugees, sometimes using forged documents. [410] Other SS men,
such as Soobzokov, SD officer Wilhelm Höttl, Eichmann aide Otto von Bolschwing,
and accused war criminal Theodor Saevecke, were employed by American
intelligence agencies against the Soviets. As CIA officer Harry Rositzke noted, "It
was a visceral business of using any bastard so long as he was anti-Communist ...
The eagerness or desire to enlist collaborators means that sure, you didn't look at
their credentials too closely."[411] Similarly, the Soviets used SS personnel after the
war; Operation Theo, for instance, disseminated "subversive rumours" in Allied-
occupied Germany.[412]
Simon Wiesenthal and others have speculated about the existence of a Nazi fugitive
network code-named ODESSA (an acronym for Organisation der ehemaligen SS-
Angehörigen, Organization of former SS members) that allegedly helped war
criminals find refuge in Latin America.[413] British writer Gitta Sereny, who conducted
interviews with SS men, considers the story untrue and attributes the escapes to
postwar chaos and Hudal's Vatican-based network. While the existence of ODESSA
remains unproven, Sereny notes that "there certainly were various kinds of Nazi aid
organizations after the war — it would have been astonishing if there hadn't been." [414]

See also
 Germanic SS
 Glossary of Nazi Germany
 HIAG
 List of SS personnel
 List of Waffen-SS divisions
 Myth of the clean Wehrmacht

Informational notes
1. ^ Buchenwald, Dachau, Flossenbürg, Mauthausen, Ravensbrück, and Sachsenhausen.
[100]

2. ^ Not to be confused with SS-Sonderkommandos, ad hoc SS units that used the same

name.
3. ^ In an act of reprisal, upwards of 10,000 Czechs were arrested; 1,300 were shot,
including all male inhabitants from the nearby town of Lidice (where Heydrich's assassins
had supposedly been harbored), and the town was razed. [272]

Citations
1. ^ Jump up to:a b Weale 2010, p. 26.
2. ^ McNab 2009, p. 137.
3. ^ Jump up to:a b Evans 2008, p. 318.
4. ^ Evans 2003, p. 228.
5. ^ Michael & Doerr 2002, p. 356.
6. ^ McNab 2009, pp. 14, 16.
7. ^ McNab 2009, p. 14.
8. ^ Weale 2010, p. 16.
9. ^ Jump up to:a b c McNab 2009, p. 16.
10. ^ Hein 2015, p. 10.
11. ^ Weale 2010, pp. 26–29.
12. ^ Koehl 2004, p. 34.
13. ^ Cook & Bender 1994, pp. 17, 19.
14. ^ Jump up to:a b Laqueur & Baumel 2001, p. 604.
15. ^ Weale 2010, p. 30.
16. ^ Jump up to:a b Weale 2010, p. 32.
17. ^ Hein 2015, p. 12.
18. ^ Jump up to:a b Weale 2010, pp. 45–46.
19. ^ Weale 2010, pp. 32–33.
20. ^ Miller & Schulz 2012, pp. 1–2.
21. ^ McNab 2009, p. 18.
22. ^ Weale 2010, p. 47.
23. ^ Longerich 2012, p. 113.
24. ^ Jump up to:a b Burleigh & Wippermann 1991, pp. 272–273.
25. ^ Weale 2010, pp. 45–47, 300–305.
26. ^ Miller & Schulz 2012, pp. 2–3.
27. ^ Kershaw 2008, pp. 308–314.
28. ^ Baranowski 2010, pp. 196–197.
29. ^ Zentner & Bedürftig 1991, p. 901.
30. ^ Zentner & Bedürftig 1991, p. 903.
31. ^ Laqueur & Baumel 2001, p. 606.
32. ^ Allen 2002, p. 112.
33. ^ Höhne 2001, pp. 146, 147.
34. ^ Stackelberg 2002, p. 116.
35. ^ Jump up to:a b Jacobsen 1999, pp. 82, 93.
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38. ^ Langerbein 2003, p. 19.
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41. ^ Weale 2010, pp. 65–66.
42. ^ Höhne 2001, pp. 150–151.
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44. ^ Yenne 2010, p. 94.
45. ^ Laqueur & Baumel 2001, p. 608.
46. ^ Yenne 2010, pp. 111–113.
47. ^ Himmler 1936.
48. ^ Jump up to:a b Langerbein 2003, p. 21.
49. ^ Himmler 1936, p. 134.
50. ^ Weale 2012, pp. 60–61.
51. ^ Jump up to:a b c Rummel 1992, pp. 12–13.
52. ^ Rummel 1992, p. 12.
53. ^ International Military Tribunal 1946.
54. ^ Jump up to:a b Williams 2001, p. 77.
55. ^ Jump up to:a b Buchheim 1968, p. 157.
56. ^ Hein 2015, pp. 66–71.
57. ^ Evans 2005, p. 54.
58. ^ Williams 2001, p. 61.
59. ^ Hildebrand 1984, pp. 13–14.
60. ^ Kershaw 2008, pp. 313, 316.
61. ^ McNab 2009, pp. 9, 17, 26–27, 30, 46–47.
62. ^ Reitlinger 1989, p. 90.
63. ^ Dear & Foot 1995, pp. 814–815.
64. ^ Longerich 2012, p. 204.
65. ^ Jump up to:a b c Longerich 2012, p. 470.
66. ^ Hein 2015, pp. 70–71.
67. ^ Read 2005, pp. 512–514.
68. ^ Evans 2005, p. 584.
69. ^ Jump up to:a b Read 2005, p. 515.
70. ^ Evans 2005, p. 590.
71. ^ Evans 2005, p. 591.
72. ^ Hildebrand 1984, pp. 61–62.
73. ^ Weale 2010, p. 85.
74. ^ Hildebrand 1984, p. 61.
75. ^ Koehl 2004, pp. 144, 148, 169, 176–177.
76. ^ McNab 2009, p. 165.
77. ^ Spielvogel 1992, pp. 102–108.
78. ^ Cook & Bender 1994, pp. 8, 9.
79. ^ Cook & Bender 1994, pp. 9, 12, 17–19.
80. ^ Hoffmann 2000, pp. 157, 160, 165.
81. ^ Hoffmann 2000, p. 166.
82. ^ Hoffmann 2000, pp. 181–186.
83. ^ Cook & Bender 1994, pp. 17–19.
84. ^ Hoffmann 2000, pp. 157, 160, 165, 166, 181–186.
85. ^ Cook & Bender 1994, pp. 19, 33.
86. ^ Hoffmann 2000, pp. 32, 48, 57.
87. ^ Hoffmann 2000, pp. 36–48.
88. ^ Joachimsthaler 1999, p. 288.
89. ^ Hoffmann 2000, p. 32.
90. ^ Jump up to:a b Hoffmann 2000, p. 36.
91. ^ Felton 2014, pp. 32–33.
92. ^ Hoffmann 2000, pp. 36, 48.
93. ^ Felton 2014, p. 18.
94. ^ Padfield 2001, pp. 128–129.
95. ^ Weale 2010, p. 95.
96. ^ Evans 2005, p. 85.
97. ^ Hilberg 1985, p. 222.
98. ^ Hein 2015, p. 63.
99. ^ Wachsmann 2010, p. 22.
100. ^ Weale 2010, pp. 106–108.
101. ^ Weale 2010, p. 108.
102. ^ Evans 2008, pp. 366–367.
103. ^ Weale 2010, pp. 108–109.
104. ^ Ayçoberry 1999, p. 273.
105. ^ Stein 2002, p. 23.
106. ^ Jump up to:a b Flaherty 2004, p. 156.
107. ^ Stein 2002, pp. 285–287.
108. ^ Stein 2002, pp. 18, 287.
109. ^ Mollo 1991, pp. 1–3.
110.^ Stein 2002, p. 27.
111.^ Butler 2001, p. 45.
112.^ Rossino 2003, pp. 114, 159–161.
113.^ Jump up to:a b c Flaherty 2004, p. 149.
114.^ Hein 2015, p. 82.
115.^ Stone 2011, p. 127.
116.^ Longerich 2010, pp. 144–145.
117.^ Evans 2008, pp. 14–15.
118.^ Flaherty 2004, pp. 109–111.
119.^ Kershaw 2001, p. 246.
120. ^ Laqueur & Baumel 2001, p. xxxi.
121. ^ Reynolds 1997, pp. 6, 7.
122. ^ Stein 2002, p. 32.
123. ^ Stein 2002, pp. 33–35.
124. ^ Jump up to:a b McNab 2009, p. 66.
125. ^ Hildebrand 1984, p. 50.
126. ^ Weale 2010, p. 229.
127. ^ Hellwinkel 2014, p. 9.
128. ^ Reitlinger 1989, p. 147.
129. ^ Jump up to:a b c Stein 2002, p. 61.
130. ^ Butler 2003, p. 64.
131. ^ Manning 1999, p. 59.
132. ^ Sydnor 1977, p. 93.
133. ^ Weale 2012, p. 251.
134. ^ Sydnor 1977, p. 102.
135. ^ Flaherty 2004, p. 143.
136. ^ Jump up to:a b Stein 2002, pp. 150, 153.
137. ^ Koehl 2004, pp. 213–214.
138. ^ Mattson 2002, pp. 77, 104.
139. ^ Flaherty 2004, pp. 162, 163.
140. ^ Weale 2012, p. 297.
141. ^ Bessel 2006, pp. 110–111.
142. ^ Bessel 2006, p. 110.
143. ^ Flaherty 2004, pp. 163, 165.
144. ^ Flaherty 2004, pp. 163–166.
145. ^ Evans 2008, p. 155.
146. ^ Bessel 2006, p. 111.
147. ^ Frusetta 2012, p. 266.
148. ^ Glantz 2001, pp. 7–9.
149. ^ Bracher 1970, p. 409.
150. ^ Blood 2006, p. 64.
151. ^ Windrow & Burn 1992, p. 9.
152. ^ Heer & Naumann 2000, p. 136.
153. ^ Browning 2004, p. 315.
154. ^ Hilberg 1985, p. 164.
155. ^ Kershaw 2008, pp. 696–697.
156. ^ Flaherty 2004, p. 168.
157. ^ Flaherty 2004, p. 171.
158. ^ Reynolds 1997, p. 9.
159. ^ Flaherty 2004, p. 173.
160. ^ Fritz 2011, pp. 69–70, 94–108.
161. ^ Krausnik 1968, p. 77.
162. ^ Longerich 2010, p. 185.
163. ^ Jump up to:a b Rhodes 2003, pp. 159–160.
164. ^ Bessel 2006, pp. 118–119.
165. ^ Stackelberg 2007, p. 163.
166. ^ Laqueur & Baumel 2001, p. 164.
167. ^ Bessel 2006, p. 119.
168. ^ Zentner & Bedürftig 1991, p. 227.
169. ^ Evans 2008, pp. 256–257.
170. ^ Longerich 2012, p. 547.
171. ^ Gerwarth 2011, p. 199.
172. ^ Rhodes 2003, p. 243.
173. ^ Blood 2006, pp. 70–71.
174. ^ Longerich 2012, p. 625.
175. ^ Longerich 2010, p. 198.
176. ^ Longerich 2012, pp. 626, 629.
177. ^ Longerich 2012, p. 627.
178. ^ Blood 2006, pp. 71–77.
179. ^ Blood 2006, p. 121.
180. ^ Blood 2006, pp. 152–154.
181. ^ Longerich 2012, pp. 628–629.
182. ^ Wachsmann 2010, p. 27.
183. ^ Wachsmann 2010, pp. 26–27.
184. ^ Gerwarth 2011, p. 208.
185. ^ Longerich 2010, pp. 279–280.
186. ^ Evans 2008, p. 283.
187. ^ Evans 2008, pp. 283, 287, 290.
188. ^ McNab 2009, p. 141.
189. ^ Evans 2008, pp. 295, 299–300.
190. ^ Wachsmann 2010, p. 29.
191. ^ Jump up to:a b Longerich 2012, p. 559.
192. ^ Jump up to:a b Koehl 2004, pp. 182–183.
193. ^ Jump up to:a b Weale 2012, p. 115.
194. ^ Gruner 2012, pp. 174–175.
195. ^ Longerich 2012, p. 629.
196. ^ Reitlinger 1989, p. 265.
197. ^ Stein 2002, pp. 258–263.
198. ^ Weale 2012, p. 114.
199. ^ Flaherty 2004, pp. 119, 120.
200. ^ Mazower 2008, pp. 312–313.
201. ^ Longerich 2012, p. 485.
202. ^ Longerich 2012, p. 482.
203. ^ Allen 2002, p. 95.
204. ^ Longerich 2012, pp. 480–481.
205. ^ Longerich 2012, p. 480.
206. ^ Steinbacher 2005, p. 129.
207. ^ Steinbacher 2005, p. 56.
208. ^ Longerich 2010, p. 316.
209. ^ Jump up to:a b Longerich 2012, p. 484.
210. ^ Weale 2012, pp. 114–115.
211.^ Allen 2002, p. 102.
212. ^ Weale 2012, pp. 115–116.
213. ^ Longerich 2012, p. 483.
214. ^ Frei 1993, p. 128.
215. ^ Weale 2012, p. 116.
216. ^ International Military Tribunal 1950.
217. ^ Baxter 2014, p. 67.
218. ^ Evans 2008, p. 486.
219. ^ Bessel 2006, p. 143.
220. ^ Evans 2008, pp. 488–489.
221. ^ McNab 2009, pp. 68, 70.
222. ^ Fritz 2011, p. 350.
223. ^ Ford & Zaloga 2009, p. 30.
224. ^ Ford & Zaloga 2009, pp. 54–56.
225. ^ Whitmarsh 2009, pp. 12, 13.
226. ^ Ford & Zaloga 2009, pp. 60, 63, 122, 275.
227. ^ Stein 2002, p. 219.
228. ^ McNab 2013, p. 295.
229. ^ Rempel 1989, p. 233.
230. ^ Whitmarsh 2009, p. 73.
231. ^ Ford & Zaloga 2009, p. 230.
232. ^ Wilmot 1997, p. 282.
233. ^ McNab 2013, p. 297.
234. ^ McNab 2009, p. 73.
235. ^ Wilmot 1997, pp. 399–400.
236. ^ Stein 2002, pp. 222–223.
237. ^ Wilmot 1997, p. 420.
238. ^ McNab 2013, p. 197.
239. ^ Shirer 1960, pp. 1085–1086.
240. ^ Weinberg 1994, p. 701.
241. ^ Murray & Millett 2001, pp. 439–442.
242. ^ Weinberg 1994, pp. 765–766.
243. ^ Murray & Millett 2001, p. 465.
244. ^ Weinberg 1994, pp. 767–769.
245. ^ Weinberg 1994, p. 769.
246. ^ Stein 2002, p. 232.
247. ^ Murray & Millett 2001, p. 468.
248. ^ Parker 2012, p. 278.
249. ^ Kershaw 2011, p. 168.
250. ^ Beevor 2002, p. 70.
251. ^ Beevor 2002, p. 83.
252. ^ Jump up to:a b Duffy 2002, p. 293.
253. ^ Ziemke 1968, p. 439.
254. ^ Beevor 2002, p. 82.
255. ^ Seaton 1971, p. 537.
256. ^ Duffy 2002, p. 294.
257. ^ Stein 2002, p. 238.
258. ^ Ziemke 1968, p. 450.
259. ^ Messenger 2001, pp. 167–168.
260. ^ Wachsmann 2015, pp. 542–548.
261. ^ Fritz 2004, pp. 50–55.
262. ^ Stein 2002, p. 237.
263. ^ Jump up to:a b Kershaw 2011, p. 302.
264. ^ Stein 2002, p. 246.
265. ^ McNab 2013, pp. 328, 330, 338.
266. ^ Moorhouse 2012, pp. 364–365.
267. ^ Stein 2002, pp. 248–249.
268. ^ Headland 1992, p. 22.
269. ^ Weale 2010, p. 131.
270. ^ Langerbein 2003, pp. 21–22.
271. ^ Höhne 2001, pp. 494–495.
272. ^ Höhne 2001, pp. 495–496.
273. ^ Longerich 2012, p. 661.
274. ^ Diner 2006, p. 123.
275. ^ Laqueur & Baumel 2001, p. 228.
276. ^ Montague 2012, pp. 188–190.
277. ^ Friedlander 1997, p. 138.
278. ^ Stackelberg 2007, p. 220.
279. ^ Rhodes 2003, pp. 258–260, 262.
280. ^ Laqueur & Baumel 2001, p. 195.
281. ^ Jump up to:a b c Longerich 2010, p. 408.
282. ^ Cesarani 2005, pp. 168, 172.
283. ^ Cesarani 2005, p. 173.
284. ^ Cesarani 2005, pp. 160, 183.
285. ^ Jump up to:a b Streim 1989, p. 436.
286. ^ Longerich 2012, pp. 405, 412.
287. ^ Stackelberg 2007, p. 161.
288. ^ Flaherty 2004, p. 109.
289. ^ Hilberg 1985, p. 102.
290. ^ Langerbein 2003, pp. 15–16.
291. ^ Rhodes 2003, p. 257.
292. ^ Flaherty 2004, pp. 120–123.
293. ^ Rhodes 2003, pp. 210–214.
294. ^ Zentner & Bedürftig 1991, p. 228.
295. ^ Rhodes 2003, p. 274.
296. ^ McNab 2009, pp. 37, 40, 41.
297. ^ Bracher 1970, p. 214.
298. ^ Krüger & Wedemeyer-Kolwe 2009, p. 34.
299. ^ Krüger & Wedemeyer-Kolwe 2009, p. 35.
300. ^ McNab 2013, pp. 224–225.
301. ^ Pieper 2015, p. 38.
302. ^ McNab 2013, p. 225.
303. ^ Miller 2006, p. 308.
304. ^ Pieper 2015, pp. 52–53.
305. ^ Pieper 2015, pp. 81–90.
306. ^ Pieper 2015, pp. 81–82.
307. ^ Pieper 2015, pp. 119–120.
308. ^ Miller 2006, p. 310.
309. ^ Pieper 2015, p. 120.
310. ^ Pieper 2015, pp. 146–147.
311.^ McNab 2013, p. 182.
312. ^ Stockert 1997, p. 229.
313. ^ McNab 2013, pp. 225–230.
314. ^ Proctor 1988, p. 86.
315. ^ Lifton 1986, p. 147.
316. ^ Levy 2006, pp. 235–237.
317. ^ Lifton 1986, pp. 148–149.
318. ^ Piper 1994, p. 170.
319. ^ Lifton & Hackett 1994, p. 304.
320. ^ Yahil 1990, p. 368.
321. ^ Yahil 1990, p. 369.
322. ^ Levy 2006, pp. 248–249.
323. ^ Posner & Ware 1986, p. 29.
324. ^ Posner & Ware 1986, p. 27.
325. ^ Lifton 1985.
326. ^ Pringle 2006, pp. 294–296.
327. ^ Jump up to:a b Spielvogel 1992, p. 108.
328. ^ Yenne 2010, pp. 132–133.
329. ^ Yenne 2010, pp. 128–131, 139, 142.
330. ^ Yenne 2010, p. 141.
331. ^ Lower 2013, p. 108.
332. ^ Schwarz 1997, pp. 223–244.
333. ^ Lower 2013, pp. 108–109.
334. ^ Mühlenberg 2011, pp. 13–14.
335. ^ Lower 2013, p. 109.
336. ^ Century 2011.
337. ^ Rempel 1989, pp. 223–224.
338. ^ Mühlenberg 2011, p. 27.
339. ^ Benz, Distel & Königseder 2005, p. 70.
340. ^ Flaherty 2004, p. 160.
341. ^ Koehl 2004, pp. 212–213.
342. ^ Koehl 2004, pp. 214–219.
343. ^ Gutmann 2017, Chapter 3.
344. ^ McNab 2013, pp. 272–273.
345. ^ McNab 2013, pp. 321–323.
346. ^ Höhne 2001, p. 458.
347. ^ Weale 2012, p. 306.
348. ^ Reitlinger 1989, pp. 200–204.
349. ^ Reitlinger 1989, p. 199.
350. ^ Hale 2011, pp. 264–266.
351. ^ Bishop 2005, p. 93.
352. ^ Bishop 2005, pp. 93–94.
353. ^ Müller 2012, p. 169.
354. ^ Motadel 2014, p. 242.
355. ^ Stein 2002, p. 189.
356. ^ McNab 2013, pp. 326–330.
357. ^ McNab 2013, p. 90.
358. ^ Flaherty 2004, pp. 88–92.
359. ^ Givhan 1997.
360. ^ Jump up to:a b Yenne 2010, p. 64.
361. ^ Yenne 2010, p. 69.
362. ^ Ziegler 2014, pp. 132–134 and note 13.
363. ^ Weale 2012, p. 26.
364. ^ Jump up to:a b c d Weale 2012, p. 32.
365. ^ Weale 2012, p. 30.
366. ^ Weale 2012, p. 46.
367. ^ Weale 2012, p. 49.
368. ^ Jump up to:a b c d e Weale 2012, p. 33.
369. ^ Ziegler 2014, p. 133.
370. ^ Ziegler 2014, p. 131.
371. ^ Snyder 1994, p. 330.
372. ^ Laqueur & Baumel 2001, p. 609.
373. ^ Evans 2008, p. 724.
374. ^ Yerger 1997, pp. 13–21.
375. ^ Stackelberg 2007, p. 302.
376. ^ Browder 1996, pp. 205–206.
377. ^ Art 2006, p. 43.
378. ^ Gerwarth 2011, pp. 120–121.
379. ^ Weale 2012, p. 107.
380. ^ Gerwarth 2011, p. 121.
381. ^ Anderson 2011.
382. ^ Mang 2003, pp. 1–5.
 383. ^ Höhne 2001, p. 580.
384. ^ Evans 2008, pp. 739–741.
385. ^ Longerich 2012, p. 736.
386. ^ Weale 2012, p. 410.
387. ^ Burleigh 2000, pp. 803–804.
388. ^ MacDonogh 2009, p. 3.
389. ^ Murray & Millett 2001, pp. 565–568.
390. ^ Lowe 2012, pp. 83–84.
391. ^ Lowe 2012, pp. 84–87.
392. ^ Brzezinski 2005.
393. ^ Jump up to:a b Evans 2008, p. 741.
394. ^ Evans 2008, pp. 741–742.
395. ^ Evans 2008, p. 743.
396. ^ Burleigh 2000, p. 804.
397. ^ Ingrao 2013, pp. 240–241.
398. ^ Evans 2008, pp. 743–744.
399. ^ Burleigh 2010, p. 549.
400. ^ Bosacki, Uhlig & Wróblewski 2008.
401. ^ Zentner & Bedürftig 1991, p. 906.
402. ^ Levy 2006, pp. 143–144.
403. ^ Cesarani 2005, p. 207.
404. ^ Arendt 2006, p. 46.
405. ^ Evans 2008, pp. 746–747.
406. ^ Levy 2006, p. 263.
407. ^ Levy 2006, pp. 264–265.
408. ^ Levy 2006, pp. 269, 273.
409. ^ Levy 2006, pp. 294–295.
410. ^ Lichtblau 2014, pp. 2–3, 10–11.
411.^ Lichtblau 2014, pp. 29–30, 32–37, 67–68.
412. ^ Biddiscombe 2000, pp. 131–143.
413. ^ Segev 2010, pp. 106–108.
414. ^ Sereny 1974, p. 274.

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Further reading
 Browder, George C. (1990).  Foundations of the Nazi Police State: The Formation of Sipo and
SD. Lexington: University of Kentucky.  ISBN  978-0-8131-1697-6.
 Gellately, Robert (1990).  The Gestapo and German Society: Enforcing Racial Policy, 1933–
1945. New York: Oxford University Press.  ISBN  978-0-19-822869-1.
 Johnson, Eric (1999).  Nazi Terror: The Gestapo, Jews, and Ordinary Germans. New York:
Basic Books.  ISBN  978-0-465-04906-6.
 Miller, Michael (2015). Leaders of the SS and German Police, Vol. 2. San Jose, CA:
Bender.  ISBN  978-1-932970-25-8.
 Segev, Tom (1988).  Soldiers of Evil: The Commandants of the Nazi Concentration Camps.
New York: McGraw Hill.  ISBN  978-0-07-056058-1.

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Comprehensive report of Einsatzgruppe A up to 15 October 1941

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