The Character of the Nazi SS

Abstract

I NTERPRETATIONS of the Nazi SS or Schutzstaffel have recently undergone considerable change, but older and newer images jostle each other so vigorously in the literature that it is probably fair to say that few historians agree on the character and significance of the SS. The purpose of this short paper is to analyze the major interpretations and to offer a partial explanation of the difficulties involved.' Ever since 1925, the term Schutzstaffel has also been used in the plural: Schutztaffeln-guard squads. Unlike the Storm Troopers. or SA, the SS was designed for special assignments rather than as a Nazi party army. The original SS men were used as. bodyguards, strongarm men at meetings, political spies, and distributors of the party newspaper, the Vdlkischer Beobachter. Heinrich Himmler took charge of them in 1929 and, with the help of Reinhard Heydrich after 1931, developed the corps into a kind of internal party police, restraining the firebrands in the SA and fighting party figures who threatened d.isloyalty to Hitler. Himmler was thus. able to capture the secret police and later the whole police system of the Third Reich. Hermann G6ring assisted with this in return for SS participation in crushing the SA in 1934. The SS began training special military units (Verfiigungstruppen) and in 1934 and 1935 created a special corps of concentration camp guards (Totenkopfverbiinde), sworn. and trained to unques.tioning execution of any order. During the war these groups became the cadre of a field-SS or Waffen. SS whose ranks were swelled by drafting Reich Germans and ethnic Germans from abroad and by recruiting volunteers from occupied countries. The SS grew from 280 men in 1929 to 52,000 in 1933, to 300,000 in. 1939, and. to a maximum of 950,000 in 1944.2 Much of our SS image stems from non-historical literature highly colored by the motives and interests of the authors. For example, the libraries are full of the older anti-fascist writings with their interpretation of the SS as a gangster underworld and identical with the Gestapo.3 Also, the reports of SS military atrocities and the murder squads of World War II became merged in the literature of the Nuremberg era into the doctrine of criminal conspiracy and