Waffen-SS

After the end of 1939, Waffen-SS gradually came to be the established designation for the totality of the various, longstanding armed units of the SS. After these units had participated in the war against Poland as part of the army, even by fall 1939 Himmler had achieved the formation three SS divisions. In detail they comprised the ‘Totenkopfdivision’ (Death’s Head Division), which was formed from the militarily trained concentration camp guards; the ‘SS-Verfügungsdivision’ (SS Special Purpose Division) consisting of SS units designated for internal security tasks and the ‘SS-Polizeidivision’ (SS Police Division) that was primarily formed from the uniformed regular police.

The designation ‘Waffen-SS’ was intended to emphasize the establishment of a force independent from the Wehrmacht as well as the equality of the various SS units. Mid-August 1940 Himmler formed an SS Operations Administration as a command center for the military leadership of the Waffen-SS, a position which he initially reserved for himself. Initially, the Waffen-SS in Germany recruited volunteers, but from 1942 it changed to recruiting recently conscripted young men according to a formula agreed with the Wehrmacht. Outside Germany it conscripted ethnic Germans, particularly in Romania, the former Yugoslavia and in Hungary. It recruited volunteers in the ‘Germanic’ countries of Northern and Western Europe but increasingly also ‘alien’ people in nearly all the occupied territories except Poland. However, a strict distinction was made between different categories: SS Divisions (for Germans and ethnic Germans), SS Volunteer Divisions (for ‘Germanic volunteers’) and Waffen Divisions for ‘aliens’, who because of their origin, were not permitted to join the Regular SS and formed a kind of foreign legion in the service of the SS.

A total of 38 divisions were established, of which only just over half were deployed in the war, mostly as part of their own SS corps, which were integrated into the command hierarchy of the Wehrmacht. The Waffen-SS reached a total strength of almost 600,000 men (1944). They were considered to be a fanatical elite force. Its members had been ideologically trained and had a reputation for particular harshness and brutality. Actually, their proverbial recklessness was often caused by a lack of military experience and errors of leadership. Contrary to widespread belief, the losses of the Waffen-SS were no greater than other comparable Wehrmacht units.

The Waffen-SS were responsible for numerous war crimes, such as the shooting of British POWs in Le Paradis in May 1940, the massacre of Oradour in June 1944 and the shooting of American prisoners at Malmedy in December 1944. The 1st and 2nd SS Brigades and the SS Cavalry Brigade, who were under the direct command of the Reichsführer SS, led the way in initiating the Holocaust in the occupied Soviet Union through the mass shootings they carried out in the summer of 1941.