The SS was the Nazi party’s alternative army for Germany, a political force that grew to hundreds of thousands strong by World War II. It fielded a massive battlefield army of feared soldiers called the Waffen-SS, and it also ran Germany’s terror machine, from the Gestapo and Security Police to the Einsatzgruppen death squads and the concentration camps. All of this was under the control of the feared and despised Heinrich Himmler, Hitler’s most loyal follower.
But where did it come from? The birth of the SS was slow. The organization emerged out of much bigger Nazi party organizations, and its origins were as an elite bodyguard for Hitler, in effect a Nazi Praetorian guard. This is the story of the genesis of the SS and its emergence to completely dwarf the organizations that spawned it in the violent time the Nazis called the years of struggle, between Hitler’s joining the party in 1919 and his assumption of the chancellorship of Germany in 1933.
Hitler was a target for assassins long before he became German Chancellor in 1933. Mired in rough street politics, his extreme views made him a target from the earliest days of the National Socialist movement. Hitler therefore required protection virtually from the first. In the beginning, his bodyguards were no more than enthusiastic thugs, but Hitler’s personal protection would slowly evolve through the 1920s and early 30s from its street fighting origins into the prototype multi-layered security that is so familiar to anyone who has seen an American president interacting with his public. At the heart of that professional protection would be the SS.
Given the extremely violent times that he inhabited, Hitler realized early on that if he was not to fall victim to assassination, he needed protection. Hitler said that he required bodyguards who were “men who would march even against their own brothers.” He was not to be disappointed.
Hitler’s first protection detail was a small collection of trusted heavies appointed in 1920. At this time, the Nazi party was simply the German Workers Party, or DAP, and its name was changed in April 1920 by the addition of the words “National Socialist” at the beginning. Political meetings in Munich were extremely rowdy, and the heavies would violently eject hecklers from mass gatherings when Hitler spoke. Their basic function was to protect Hitler from getting beaten up during his early and often very dangerous public appearances. Their weapons were fists, boots, and truncheons.
They were known informally as the Saal-Schutz Abteilung, or Hall Defense Detachment, and they were under the command of Emil Maurice, a former watchmaker and former soldier. Maurice, age 23, had been a personal friend of Hitler’s since the year before.
On the 3rd of August 1921, Hitler refined the unit, now that he had been confirmed as supreme leader of the Nazi party. In order not to antagonize the Bavarian government, Hitler chose the rather innocent sounding title Party Gymnastics and Sports Division. It was well organized, particularly after command was handed to an ex-naval officer, Hans Ulrich Klintzsch, and consisted mainly of ex-soldiers and street fighters.
In September 1921, the unit became the Sturmabteilung, or Storm Division, the SA. It was quickly dubbed the Brown Shirts after the color of their uniforms. Maurice was appointed Oberster SA-Führer, or Supreme SA Leader.
Throughout the 1920s, Hitler’s inner circle of bodyguards consisted of only five trusted men. Ulrich Graf, a former wrestler, was Hitler’s personal protection officer. Emil Maurice was his driver, a job that often necessitated violent evasive maneuvers. Christian Weber, a rather unsavory part-time pimp and horse dealer, acted as the Führer’s private secretary. Julius Schaub was Hitler’s valet, and SA Oberführer Wilhelm Brückner acted as his adjutant. Brückner was well liked, a former Bavarian army officer and Freikorps man who was affable and straightforward.
These men were kept busy. For example, in November 1921, Hitler spoke at a beer hall in Munich to an audience of around 300 heavy drinking supporters and enemies. The audience began arguing among themselves and then throwing beer steins, followed by chairs and eventually fists. During the resulting melee, unknown assailants fired several shots at Hitler. His bodyguards, and possibly Hitler himself, who was routinely armed, returned fire with their pistols. No one was killed, but it was a lucky escape for Hitler.
Meanwhile, the SA grew in size and influence, now under the decorated war hero and secret homosexual SA Chief of Staff Ernst Röhm. Hitler’s personal security detail was augmented and expanded in 1923. The SA-Stoßtrupp, or Assault Squad, was formed around Hitler’s five-man protection team, and it would eventually number 100 trusted men.
Another assassination attempt took place in 1923 when Hitler spoke in Troia. Shots were fired at him from the crowd, and later when he was driving through Leibach, more shots were fired at his car.
Five Stosstrupp members were killed from the abortive Beer Hall Putsch in Munich in November 1923, when Hitler disastrously attempted to seize power in Bavaria by force from the Bavarian government. This was the moment when Hitler had come closest to being killed, ironically not by political opponents but by professional soldiers, a situation that was to be repeated several times during the Second World War.
The Beer Hall Putsch was a defining moment in the history of the Nazi party and also of Hitler’s personal security. Marching at the head of 2,000 SA and other Nazi supporters, Hitler was in the front row alongside First World War hero General Erich Ludendorff when a 100-strong Reichswehr and police detachment opened fire outside the Feldherrnhalle, or Field Marshals Hall, a monumental loggia and audience platform in Munich. The Feldherrnhalle was built in 1841 to 1844 at the behest of King Ludwig I as a symbol of the honors of the Bavarian Army.
The initial volley cut down several top Nazis, including Hermann Göring, who was shot through the thigh. Hitler’s bodyguard Ulrich Graf actually dislocated Hitler’s shoulder as he tried to protect him from the gunfire, dragging him violently down to the pavement. In total, 16 Nazis died, including five of Hitler’s protection team. Hitler fled the scene by car and was arrested two days later.
Hitler was jailed for his role in the putsch, imprisoned alongside Rudolf Hess and Emil Maurice, both men helping him to prepare his famous book Mein Kampf. When Hitler was released from Landsberg prison in 1925, both the Nazi party and the SA, dissolved in 1923, were rapidly recreated. Maurice was appointed commander of the newly formed Stabswache, or Staff Guard.
From the rebirth of Nazism emerged an entire new and sinister organization that was charged with protecting Hitler. The Stabswache was renamed the Schutzstaffel, or Protection Squad, and this was the moment the infamous SS was born. Eventually, the SS would entirely supplant the power of the SA.
Its first commander was 28-year-old Julius Schreck, a close friend of Hitler and a fellow First World War and Freikorps veteran. Schreck had also been imprisoned at Landsberg alongside Hitler and the other Nazi leaders in 1923 to 1925. Emil Maurice, holding SS membership number two, was appointed Hitler’s full-time driver, but only until he was abruptly sacked by the Führer for having an affair with Hitler’s niece Geli Raubal.
The SS would remain part of the SA for a long time. When formed in 1925, the SS consisted of a single 30-man company of bodyguards. In September 1925, all local Nazi party officers were ordered to create 10-man bodyguard units from among their most promising SA Stormtroopers. The next year, six SS-Gaue were established supporting all such units. They answered directly to the SS-Oberleitung, or headquarters unit, commanded by Schreck. Schreck in turn took his orders from the office of the Supreme SA Leader, Franz Pfeffer von Salomon.
In 1926, Schreck stood down as Reichsführer-SS, being replaced by former junior army officer Josef Berchtold. Schreck later became an SS-Standartenführer, or Colonel, and continued to serve Hitler as his personal driver following Maurice’s sacking for many years, until his sudden death in 1936 from meningitis.
In 1927, Reichsführer-SS Erhard Heiden replaced Berchtold. Before 1929, the SS wore brown SA uniforms, but with black ties and a black cap adorned with the silver death’s head skull and bones symbol borrowed from earlier Imperial Cavalry uniforms. It was a minuscule organization in comparison with the now three million strong SA from which it recruited its members, but it was an organization that owed its allegiance not to the Nazi party but to the body and person of Hitler, and Hitler alone. The SS was literally the new Praetorian guard, and its men were the brightest and best that the SA had to offer, men whose loyalty to Hitler was sacred.
Unlike the SA, a mostly working-class organization, many SS men came from the middle classes. Their motto, engraved on their silver belt buckles, was “Meine Ehre heißt Treue,” meaning “My honor is loyalty,” and this was taken quite literally.
In 1929, the leadership of the SS changed when a 29-year-old, spectacled Bavarian chicken farmer and former Imperial Army officer cadet took over. His name was Heinrich Himmler. His loyalty to Hitler was pathological. He once said, “If Hitler were to say I should shoot my mother, I would do it and be proud of his confidence.”
With men such as Himmler at his disposal, Hitler’s protection underwent a revolution, evolving from a rough gang of street toughs and bruisers into a professional organization that quickly gained both numbers and responsibilities. Himmler changed the look of the SS to differentiate it from the SA. The SS uniform now incorporated black breeches, black boots and belts, and black edges to the Nazi armband. In 1932, the organization adopted a completely new all-black uniform manufactured by Hugo Boss.
Although still a tiny organization, the SS was nonetheless quickly gaining Hitler’s trust, and Himmler was building up and expanding his power base. By March 1933, the SS had grown from 280 to 50,000 men. It was decided to form a new bodyguard unit to protect Hitler. The men were mostly drawn from the first SS-Standarte in Munich. Its new commander, a former Army Sergeant Major named Sepp Dietrich, selected 117 men to form SS-Stabswache Berlin. Many of the 117 originals went on to spectacular careers during the war, three becoming divisional commanders and eight winning the Knight’s Cross, Germany’s highest gallantry award.
Two training units were also formed, SS-Sonderkommando Zossen and SS-Sonderkommando Jüterbog. In September 1933, the three units were amalgamated into one, and at a ceremony in November outside the Feldherrnhalle in Munich, a holy place in Nazi ideology because of the Beer Hall Putsch, the unit swore a personal oath of allegiance to Hitler and received the title Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler, or Lifeguard Regiment. In April 1934, Himmler changed the unit name to Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler to clearly differentiate the troops from the SA and the Reichswehr.
The LSSAH provided sentries for the old Reich Chancellery in Berlin, who dressed in full black SS uniforms, red Nazi party armbands, and black steel helmets that were an intentionally intimidating sight.
In 1932, Sepp Dietrich had also been ordered to create a permanent close protection group for Hitler. During the crucial year the Führer spent campaigning for the Reichstag, Dietrich created the SS-Begleitkommando des Führers, or SS Escort Command of the Leader, consisting of 12 ruthless and coldly efficient SS officers dressed in black uniforms and red party armbands. They accompanied Hitler everywhere. Later in the war, they reverted to a standard field-grey SS uniform with a special cuff band.
On the 15th of March 1933, Himmler, keen to place his men as close to Hitler as possible, founded a new unit that was also tasked with protecting the Führer, called the Führerschutzkommando, or Leader Protection Command, or FSK. Its commander was 35-year-old SS Colonel Johann Rattenhuber, a Bavarian. Rattenhuber was a former policeman and First World War infantryman and would remain at Hitler’s side until the very end. He only joined the Nazi party after he was appointed to lead the FSK, his police skills being more important than his ideology.
Hitler faced many threats both during his rise to power and after he became Chancellor, from various groups, from the left, from Communists, from foreign assassins, and also interestingly from the SA, the Sturmabteilung, or Brown Shirts. The leader of the SA, Ernst Röhm, frightened many Germans, particularly the Reichswehr general staff and prominent industrialists, when he constantly alluded to the SA replacing the regular army and creating a true socialist state. There was also a fear that Röhm had his eye on replacing Hitler as leader of Germany.
The SA numbered three million, while the Treaty of Versailles had limited the regular army to just 100,000 men. Generals and industrialists made representations to the new Chancellor Hitler to curb Röhm’s power, but Hitler initially was reluctant to move against the very people who had done so much to put him into power.
Other Nazi leaders wanted the SA leadership smashed. Chief among them were Hermann Göring and Heinrich Himmler. Hitler eventually moved against Röhm when Göring and Himmler fed a fabricated plot to him. This suggested that the SA was planning to depose Hitler as Führer.
Hitler had ordered the SA leadership to meet at the Hanselbauer Hotel at Bad Wiessee on the 10th of June 1934. Hitler, accompanied by his SS bodyguards, stormed into the hotel and placed the leaders under arrest. Elsewhere in Germany, SA leaders were simply shot. Hitler initially reprieved Röhm because of his vital role in the early days of the movement, but under pressure from Göring and Himmler, Hitler changed his mind. Röhm refused to take his own life, so two SS officers shot him to death in his cell. Altogether, upwards of 200 senior SA leaders were murdered in the purge, and the Brown Shirts were brought severely to heel.
The Night of the Long Knives, when Hitler used his SS bodyguards to smash the power of the SA, was the event that would establish the SS as the new power in Germany. After this, Himmler and his Black Knights were in the ascendant. The SA was severely reduced in numbers, and although it survived until 1945, it was sidelined, and most of its personnel were drafted into the armed forces during the war.
So from 1934 to 1945, Himmler worked assiduously to expand the power of the SS into every aspect of German society and economy. By war’s end in 1945, Himmler’s empire encompassed over 900,000 SS members.