The precursor organization of the SS was the ‘Stoßtrupp Adolf Hitler’ (Adolf Hitler Assault Squad), founded in 1923. After the Nazi Party had been banned and re-established in 1925, a new black-uniformed corps was formed under the name Schutzstaffel (Protection Squadron), which reported directly to the NSDAP party leadership and was intended to provide “hall security“ and, in particular, protect leading party members at events. In January 1929, Heinrich Himmler took over the position of Reichsführer-SS. In the course of the rapid growth of the Nazi Party, he succeeded in expanding the corps of a few hundred men into a paramilitary unit with a strength of over 50,000 men (end of 1932).
The SS was initially subordinate to the SA and was distinguished from it by its elitist self-image and unconditional loyalty to the party leadership; accordingly, Hitler assigned it “police duties“ within the Nazi movement in 1930. After coming to power in 1933, Himmler initially took over the Bavarian Political Police (BPP) and set up a concentration camp in Dachau, the guarding of which he transferred to the SS. Himmler gradually subordinated the political police in the various states under his control. The SS played a crucial role in the forcible elimination of the SA leadership on June 30, 1934 and was then directly subordinated to Hitler. The SS took over and reorganized the entire system of concentration camps and was allowed to set up its own military units.
After Himmler was appointed head of the German Police in 1936, he pursued a “merger“ of the SS and police with the aim of creating a “state security corps“. The elitist role of the “Black Order“ was underlined by the “racial selection“ of its members and their wives, by a commitment to ideological principles and a catalog of special “SS virtues“ as well as by an independent SS cult. With the shift to foreign policy expansion in 1938 and the outbreak of the war in 1939, the SS assumed critical roles in Nazi war and occupation strategies and in the genocide of European Jews:
- In October 1939, Hitler assigned Himmler to manage the entire resettlement policy for the “consolidation of German nationhood“. In the following years, the SS drew up gigantic plans for the “new order” of the European continent and drove hundreds of thousands of people from their homes.
- After the outbreak of the war, the armed formations of the SS were expanded into the Waffen-SS, which recruited a significant portion of its personnel mainly from outside Germany.
- For the first time during the annexation of the Sudetenland in 1938, and then during all subsequent occupations of foreign territories, security police task forces were deployed to combat political opponents. During the conquest of Poland, the task forces systematically murdered members of the elite in particular, and after the attack on the Soviet Union, especially the Jewish population.
- The SS was the central instrument of the National Socialist persecution of Jews and organized the deportation of European Jews to special extermination camps (Holocaust) from 1941 onwards. It was also responsible for the persecution and murder of the Sinti and Roma.
- The SS established regimes of terror in the occupied territories of Europe to enforce the political and economic goals of the occupying government.
- By expanding the concentration camps, the SS supplied the German economy with an army of slave laborers who were deployed according to the principle of “extermination through labor“.
The Reichsführer SS Himmler took over the Reich Ministry of the Interior in 1943 and became Chief of the Reserve Army in 1944.
Overall, the SS thus took on central roles in various areas in the intended “new order“ of Europe in line with the radical ideological guidelines of the Nazi regime.
