, the SD was given a central office and a special organizational structure. The German Reich territory was divided into sections to be monitored and upper sections. At this point in time, the SD, like the General SS, represented an independently organized sub-structure within the overall SS. The budget of the SD was fed from the budget of the Reich Treasurer of the NSDAP.
After the seizure of power, the SS under Heinrich Himmler and his closest colleague Reinhard Heydrich seized police powers. In Bavaria, the Bavarian Political Police (BPP) established by the two of them connected institutional state police forces with the SS intelligence service, the SD; this model was later extended to the entire empire and formed the basis of the SS's position of power.
With the SA, which provided various police presidents after the seizure of power, the SS now also competed for police power across the empire. Likewise, many concentration camps were in the hands of the SA, which managed them at their own discretion and in some cases chaotically, while the SS operated the Dachau concentration camp it had founded, certainly not more humane, but more regularly and had an interest in gaining control of other concentration camps.
Decisive for the further rise of the SS under Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich was the disempowerment of the SA, which the SS carried out under the pretext of an alleged "Röhm Putsch". Already on April 20, 1934, Himmler had been appointed inspector of the Prussian Gestapo (and thus its de facto head) with a view to a coming conflict with the SA. From June 30th to July 2nd, 1934, parts of the armed SS units, namely the first and second rifle companies of the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler and the Dachau SS guard "Oberbayern", under the direction of SD officers, murdered the leadership of the competing SA. The pretext was a supposedly planned coup by the SA. Conservatives, other political opponents and bystanders were also among the fatalities.
For the SS their actions paid off institutionally. On July 20, 1934, Hitler decoupled the SS from the SA: "In view of the great merits of the SS, especially in connection with the events of June 20, 1934, I raise it to an independent organization within the NSDAP." On August 23, 1934, Himmler was personally subordinated to Hitler when he was awarded the position of " Reichsleiter SS ". The SS was only bound by instructions to Hitler.
With the appointment of Theodor Eicke, who became the first Reich-wide inspector of the concentration camps after the SA was overthrown, the SS rounded off their control over the concentration camps.
From 1934 the SS turned to the SS-Verfügungstruppe and the SS Death's Head units own military training organizations, with which the SS undermined the military monopoly of the army.
In 1936, Himmler was elevated to the rank of State Secretary by the decree on the appointment of a chief of the German police in the Reich Ministry of the Interior and thus put on an equal footing with the commanders of the armed forces of the Wehrmacht. Nominally, he was subordinate to the Reich Minister of the Interior Wilhelm Frick, in fact the SS led the German police independently. The special position of the SS under National Socialism was consolidated with the establishment of the Security Police and the later Reich Security Main Office and the subordination of the Ordnungspolizei as well as the expansion of the SS-owned military units.
From now on, the merging of party structures with the structures of the state, which is a central element of the Nazi system, had a decisive influence on the Third Reich. The SS was an element of centralization within the diverging Nazi polycracy, which was shaped by the disintegration of state power in favor of party structures and individuals personally responsible for Hitler, such as Reich Commissioners or Gauleiters, which could compete directly with party and state. Although a subdivision of the NSDAP, it actually faced a certain competition with the party, since under Himmler's leadership it consciously saw itself as the leading elite of the NS.
When Heinrich Himmler also succeeded Reich Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick in 1943, it became officially clear that the state Interior Ministry was more likely to be integrated into the SS than the SS into the normal executive branch of the state.
On March 12, 1938, units of the SS disposable troops also took part in the invasion of the Wehrmacht in Austria. The SS standard Der Führer was formed in Vienna.
In October 1938 the SS disposable troops also took part in the occupation of the Sudetenland, which Czechoslovakia had to cede to the German Reich after the Munich Agreement that was imposed on it at the end of September. In March 1939 the so-called “rest of Czech Republic ” was occupied and organized as the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. The SS was charged with crushing the resistance. The head of the Reich Security Main Office, Reinhard Heydrich, later became Deputy Reich Protector of the occupied area. In 1942 he was assassinated, whereupon the Nazi leadership had the residents of Lidice killed as "retaliation".
In the autumn of 1939 the Leibstandarte, the disposal force and the death's head associations were slowly merged into the Waffen-SS. As Reichsführer SS, Heinrich Himmler wanted to expand his Schutzstaffel into a comprehensive state protection corps that was supposed to fight the internal and external enemies of the Nazi state on all fronts. Despite all the differences within the ramified SS organizational structure, the SS remained aligned with a unified ideological goal. Accordingly, there was uniform training for managers in the two SS Junker schools in Bad Tölz and Braunschweig. The military and ideological training made no distinction as to whether the executives were to be deployed in the SS administration, on the military front, in the SD or in the concentration camps.
The first combat deployment of the SS took place during the attack on Poland in 1939. The Wehrmacht feared increasing competition from the SS disposable troops, but could not prevent the amalgamation of the previous regiments Germania, Der Führer, Totenkopf and the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler to form the SS disposable division. The fighting SS units of this SS-VT division were still under the command of the Wehrmacht and were now distributed to different parts of the army ; d. That is, the SS-VT-Division did not fight as a single unit.
During the attack on France, the Waffen SS, which had now been established, already had three divisions ( Das Reich, Totenkopf and the SS Police Division ) and the motorized LAH regiment. The SS divisions suffered heavy losses at the front. Highly motivated as a volunteer force, with equipment that was usually superior to that of the Wehrmacht, these elite units were often used in the most dangerous locations. As in Poland, numerous war crimes were committed by SS units during the French campaign. Massacres of hundreds of surrendering soldiers and a large number of prisoners of war are documented, as well as “retaliatory measures” for actions of the “ Resistance ”. On June 10, 1944, shortly after the Allies landed in Normandy (see Operation Overlord ), members of the SS division “Das Reich” committed the Oradour massacre near Limoges before they perished in northern France.
In the German-Soviet War, the SS units took part in the fight in the east, for example the Totenkopfdivision in the Kessel Battle of Demyansk, which was costly for them, or their tank units in the Orel-Kursk Battle as part of the Citadel operation.
The combat value of the Waffen-SS cannot be assessed uniformly. While Wehrmacht commanders were not enthusiastic about their units in the French campaign, because poor training and daring combat style had led to heavy losses, they later proved themselves better, albeit not uniformly, as the units of the Waffen SS were too different for this. Elite associations stood next to associations that were quickly established and poorly equipped. The Waffen-SS was ideologically more highly ideological than the Wehrmacht, so it was instructed in Nazi ideology by the SS Training Office. The involvement of the SS in crimes also played a not insignificant role - their soldiers knew that they could expect revenge and worse treatment in captivity, and they fought accordingly, especially in the final phase of the war.
From 1943 onwards, conscripted Germans and men from north-western Europe were drafted into the SS-VT division to fight alongside the Wehrmacht soldiers at the front. Later on, SS units from other countries such as B. Albania set up. As a result, around half of the total of around 900,000 soldiers in the Waffen-SS did not come from the Reich: "The Waffen-SS had become a multi-ethnic army in stark contradiction to its own ideology". Non-German SS units, however, had a mixed value. The Albanian SS division “Skanderbeg” disintegrated before its first combat mission, while members of the SS division Charlemagne in 1945 were among the last defenders of Berlin.
During the attack on Poland and in the war against the Soviet Union, other SS units were deployed as so-called Einsatzgruppen behind the front for "cleansing operations" and began the systematic persecution and murder of Jews and members of the Polish and Russian intelligentsia. In accordance with the guidelines for cooperation between the army and the Einsatzgruppen, the SS units moved into the conquered towns