Background on the SS -
Schutzstaffel
The SS was formed in 1925 as a personal guard unit for Nazi leader Adolf Hitler ("Die Schutz-Staffel der NSDAP" [Shield Squadron of the NSDAP]). Under the leadership of Heinrich Himmler between 1929 and 1945, the SS grew from a small
paramilitary formation to become one of the largest and most powerful organizations in
Nazi Germany. The Nazis regarded the SS as an elite unit, the party's "Praetorian Guard," with all SS personnel (originally) selected on the principles of racial purity and unconditional loyalty to the Nazi Party. In the early days of the SS, officer candidates had to prove German ancestry to 1750. They also were required to prove that they had no Jewish ancestors. Later, when the requirements of the war made it impossible to confirm the ancestry of officer candidates, the proof of ancestry regulation was dropped.
In contrast to the political wing of the SS, the black-uniformed
Allgemeine-SS, the military wing, the
Waffen-SS, evolved into a second German army aside the regular one, the
Wehrmacht, operating in tandem with them. The
Waffen-SS gained a reputation for barbarity; its units helped wipe out resistance in both the
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the
Warsaw Uprising, and perpetrated the
Malmedy massacre during the
Battle of the Bulge in 1944.
The SS was distinguished from other branches of the German military, the National Socialist Party, and German state officials by its own
rank structure,
unit insignia, and
uniforms. The all-black SS uniform was designed by
SS-Oberführer Prof. Karl Diebitsch and Walter Heck (graphic designer) and made by
Hugo Boss, some workers being prisoners of war forced into labor.
[1] (The SS also developed its own field uniforms, including the first widespread use of camouflage.)
As the
Nazi party monopolized political power in Germany, key government functions such as law enforcement were absorbed into the SS, while many SS organizations became the de facto government agencies. To maintain the political power of the
Nazi party, the SS was given authority to establish and run the
Sicherheitsdienst (SD), the security and intelligence service, and the
Geheime Staatspolizei (
Gestapo), the secret police, effectively putting the SS above the law.
Himmler, the leader of the SS, was the chief architect of the
Final Solution. The SS
Einsatzgruppen death squads, formed by Himmler, murdered many civilian non-combatants, mostly
Jews, in the countries occupied by Germany during
World War II. Himmler was responsible for establishing and operating
concentration camps and
extermination camps in which
millions of inmates died of systematic mass gassing, inhumane treatment, overwork, malnutrition, or
medical experiments. After the war, the judges of the
Nuremberg Trials declared part of the SS, the SD, a criminal organization responsible for the implementation of racial policies of
genocide and committing
war crimes and
crimes against humanity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS
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