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Nazism and the Third Reich -

The Schutzstaffel (SS) had humble origins. In 1923, Adolf Hitler established a small guard unit known as the Saal-Schutz to provide security for Nazi Party meetings in Munich.

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Founding of the Nazi Party -

The Nazi Party had been founded in 1920. An early subscriber was Heinrich Himmler, seated wearing spectacles in this 1925 photograph. He was an enthusiastic volunteer member of the Saal-Schutz, or "Hall Security."

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Beer Hall Putsch -

As his popularity grew, Hitler decided to create a personal bodyguard, a unit he called the Stabswache (Staff Guard). This formation was later renamed Stoßtrupp (Shock Troops), but was ultimately abolished after the failed 1923 Beer Hall Putsch—an attempt by the Nazi Party to seize power in Munich.

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Julius Schreck (1898–1936) -

In 1925, Hitler ordered senior Nazi official Julius Schreck to organize a new bodyguard unit. The Schutzstaffel, or "Protection Squad," marked its foundation on November 9, 1925, and Schreck became its first chief.

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Heinrich Himmler (1900–1945) -

The man forever associated with this sinister paramilitary organization, however, is Heinrich Himmler. With Hitler's approval, he assumed the position of Reichsführer-SS in January 1929. Under Himmler, the SS developed into an elite corps of the Nazi Party based on race-nationalist visions of "racial purity" and loyalty to the Führer.

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Gestapo and the SS -

The SS was built on a culture of violence. It established a police state within Germany designed to suppress resistance to Hitler. In 1934, in a move that consolidated Himmler's iron grip on the internal mechanisms of the Third Reich, Hermann Göring handed the Reichsführer-SS full control of the Gestapo... and the purges began.

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Night of the Long Knives -

The Gestapo's transfer to Himmler was a prelude to the Night of the Long Knives. Hitler ordered the annihilation of the Sturmabteilung (SA), the Nazis' paramilitary organization, known colloquially as the "Brownshirts," which he saw as a direct threat to his own powerbase. On June 30, 1934, the SS together with the Gestapo murdered most of the SA leadership, including its chief Ernst Röhm (pictured with Himmler).

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Rise of Reinhard Heydrich -

Meanwhile, Himmler had named high-ranking SS official Reinhard Heydrich as head of the Gestapo. Both men would achieve lasting notoriety as the principal architects of the Holocaust.

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Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler -

As the SS grew in size and influence, so too did Hitler's need for a personal protection force. Himmler created the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler, an elite unit responsible for guarding the Führer's person, offices, and residences.

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SS gains full control -

By the end of 1934, the SS was an independent organization answerable only to Hitler. Besides the Gestapo, the SS had full control over Germany's police force and the Sicherheitsdienst, or SD, the party's intelligence agency.

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Kristallnacht -

The SS clandestinely coordinated violence against Jews in what became known as Kristallnacht, the systematic destruction of Jewish-owned businesses and synagogues across Germany on November 9–10, 1938. Hundreds died in the violence. By the following week on Hitler's orders, around 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps.

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Theodor Eicke (1892–1943) -

Nazi Germany's concentration camp system had been established in 1933 with the opening of Dachau. SS-Oberführer Theodor Eicke was its first commandant. In 1939, Eicke became commander of the feared SS Division Totenkopf. The Division Totenkopf, or "Death's Head Unit," was the SS formation responsible for running the concentration camps in Germany and in occupied territories.

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SS Division Totenkopf -

As Reichsführer-SS, Himmler personally visited a number of concentration camps, including Dachau and Mauthausen, in Austria.

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The SS at Auschwitz -

Auschwitz hosted three of the most cruel and inhumane SS members. Pictured enjoying a social retreat outside of the camp perimeter is (left to right) commandant Richard Baer, Josef Mengele (the "Angel of Death"), and former Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss.

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Photographic evidence -

In this image from the famous Auschwitz Album, an SS officer selects Jews for extermination in gas chambers. Several sources believe the photographer to have been SS officers Ernst Hoffmann or Bernhard Walter.

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Outbreak of the Second World War -

The Second World War brought with it a catalogue of atrocities perpetrated in the field by the Waffen-SS, the combat division of the SS. During the invasion of Poland, SS units fought alongside the Wehrmacht but quickly became notorious for torching villages without military justification. Pictured are regular German Army soldiers breaking down the border barrier and crossing into Poland at Sopot on September 1, 1939.

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Origins of the Waffen-SS -

The origins of the Waffen-SS can be traced back to the selection of a group of 120 SS men in March 1933 by Sepp Dietrich to form the Sonderkommando Berlin. Dietrich would later command the crack 1st SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler and bore much of the responsibility for the Malmedy massacre, the killing of American prisoners of war and Belgian civilians by the Waffen-SS during the Battle of the Bulge in 1944.

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Sepp Dietrich (1892–1966) -

Prior to 1929, Dietrich was Adolf Hitler's chauffeur and bodyguard. Along with Paul Hausser, Dietrich was the highest-ranking officer in the Waffen-SS, achieving the rank of SS-Oberst-Gruppenführer, or colonel group leader.

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Jürgen Stroop (1895–1952) -

Another especially infamous member of the SS was Jürgen Stroop. He led the suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943 and wrote the 'Stroop Report,' a book-length account of the operation. This image of a group of Jewish civilians being held at gunpoint by German SS troops after being forced out of a bunker where they were sheltering is one of the most famous photographs to come out of the Uprising and, indeed, the entire war.

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Origin of the SS double rune symbol -

The SS double rune symbol for the Nazi Schutzstaffel was designed in 1929 by Walter Heck. At the time, Heck was a company commander in the Sturmabteilung (SA), and would later join the SS.

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Tailored to foster fear -

The black SS uniform was tailored to project authority and foster fear. It was designed by Karl Diebitsch and manufactured in its thousands by the clothing company that eventually became Hugo Boss.

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"Blood and soil" -

SS ideology emphasized a racist vision of "racial purity," primarily based on anti-Semitism and loyalty to Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. It upheld the nationalist slogan "blood and soil"— a racially defined national body ("blood") united with a settlement area ("soil").

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SS-Junker Schools -

Officer candidates of the SS were trained at special leadership training facilities known as SS-Junker Schools. Only the most promising and dedicated cadets were selected.

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Lebensborn -

A particularly obscene SS instrument was Lebensborn. Founded by Himmler, it was a Nazi organization that provided maternity homes and financial assistance to the wives of SS members and to unmarried mothers. The Cross of Honor of the German Mother was awarded to the women who bore the most Aryan children. Abortion was legalized and endorsed for disabled and non-Germanic children.

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SS cult-site -

Himmler appropriated Wewelsburg Castle in Westphalia and expanded it into a complex that would serve as the central SS cult-site. It served as a school to ensure a unified ideological training of the SS leadership.

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Ahnenerbe institute -

Himmler was looking beyond the Third Reich when he founded the Ahnenerbe, a research institute that fostered the idea that the German people descended from an Aryan race that was racially superior to other racial groups. SS affiliated scholars were dispatched to places as far away as Tibet (pictured) to prove Germanic ancestors had spread across many countries over the centuries and that reacquiring these territories was viewed by the SS as its mission.

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Emil Maurice (1897–1972) -

One very rare exception to the Aryan view adopted by the SS was the strange case of Emil Maurice. A founder member of the Schutzstaffel, Maurice was also of mixed Jewish and ethnic German ancestry. He was Hitler's first personal chauffeur and the Nazi leader remained friends with him despite Himmler's objections. He is pictured second left with Hitler and Hermann Kriebel, Rudolf Hess, and Friedrich Weber in 1924.

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Ernst Kaltenbrunner (1903–1946) -

The end of the Second World War saw a number of prominent SS members escape or at least temporarily elude justice, among them the aforementioned Josef Mengele and the likes of Adolf Eichmann, Erich Priebke, and Alois Brunner. One man who did meet the hangman, though, was Ernst Kaltenbrunner. He was the highest-ranking member of the SS to face trial (Himmler took his own life in May 1945) at the Nuremberg trials.

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Joachim Peiper (1915–1976) -

And what of Sepp Dietrich, who ordered the execution of American POWs at Malmedy? Incredibly, he was spared the death sentence and instead imprisoned for just 10 years. Likewise, Joachim Peiper, also convicted for his role in the massacre, only spent a decade behind bars. In 1976, however, Peiper was murdered by French anti-Nazis at his home in Traves.  

Sources: (Holocaust Encyclopedia) (Britannica) (History) (Yad Vashem)

See also: Notorious wartime acts of sabotage

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