Chapter 5
Nations often maintain elite troops to supplement regular military forces. They serve as personal bodyguards for the ruler, perform ceremonial functions, and in wartime deploy where the fighting is the hardest. From the Persian Immortals and Roman Praetorians of the Ancient World throughout the ages, elite formations uphold traditions of prowess in combat and loyalty. During World War II, France’s Chasseurs Alpins, British Royal Marines, Soviet Guard divisions and the U.S. Marine Corps were among units retaining this select status.
In addition to the prestigious army divisions Brandenburg, Feldherrnhalle and Grossdeutschland, as well as the airborne, Germany fielded an entire service branch of elite ground forces: the Waffen (armed) SS. It evolved from four pre-war internal security regiments into a dauntless and respected front-line troop. It challenged official German policy and dogma and helped introduce significant amendments. Considering the obedience to state authority customarily drilled into military establishments, this was an unusual wellspring for political and social reform. The maturation of the Waffen SS demonstrates how National Socialism’s emphasis on personal initiative created the opportunity for flexibility and development on an unprecedented scale.
The SS traces its origin to the early years of the NSDAP. Fewer than 100 men formed the “Adolf Hitler Shock Troop” in Munich in 1923. This was a personal bodyguard recruited from SA men displaying personal loyalty to the Führer. Its members generally possessed better comprehension of the movement’s political objectives than the rank-and-file SA. The troop received its final name, Schutzstaffel (Security Echelon), in April 1925. It maintained strict discipline and a small, selective affiliation. Heinrich Himmler became chief of the SS in January 1929, and proved a talented organizer and a match for political rivals in the party. Once Hitler gained power in 1933, Himmler sought to enroll affluent persons, such as successful businessmen and aristocrats, to enhance the organization’s prestige. Private contributions through a public sponsorship program helped finance the administration. The SS grew from 280 members in 1929 to 52,000 by 1933.1
National security issues led to the formation of an SS military branch. When Hitler became chancellor, Communists were still numerous in Germany. They hijacked 150 tons of explosives, of which just 15 tons had been recovered by the police by mid-March 1933.2 The exiled Communist Wilhelm Piech issued a proclamation in September, calling for a general strike and “armed insurrection by the majority of the German proletariat” to topple the “Hitler dictatorship."3 The police were neither equipped nor trained to suppress a possible uprising. The German army was not psychologically suited to wage urban warfare against elements of the indigenous population.
After discussions with War Minister Werner von Blomberg, Hitler decided that the task of combating potential civil unrest should fall to a party formation. Blomberg’s decree of September 24, 1934, defined its purpose as “for special, internal political missions assigned by the Führer to the SS."4 This was the birth of the Waffen SS, officially titled the Verfügungstruppe from 1935-1940. Abbreviated to VT, the expression translates literally as “Availability Troop,” meaning ready for immediate deployment. Hitler himself stated, “The SS Verfügungstruppe is neither a part of the armed forces nor of the police. It is a standing armed troop available exclusively for my use."5
The VT consisted of the Leibstandarte, Hitler’s Berlin-based bodyguard, which performed primarily ceremonial functions, the Deutschland regiment garrisoned in Munich, Germania in Hamburg, plus an engineer battalion in Dresden and a signals battalion in Berlin. A fourth motorized infantry regiment, Der Führer, mustered in Vienna in 1938. With army approval, the SS established a military academy to train VT officers at Bad Tölz in October 1934. General Paul Hausser, who had retired from the army in 1932, received a commission to found a second school in Brunswick. Each institution offered a ten-month curriculum to commission officers. The VT soldier’s pay was the same as that of the regular army. Adding an artillery regiment, as well as anti-aircraft, anti-tank, and reconnaissance battalions, the VT numbered 18,000 men by May 1939.6Though the army assisted in instruction, the VT’s training departed from military convention. Its senior commanders had been junior officers during World War I. They witnessed how battles of materiel had decimated the army’s long-standing cadre of well-schooled professional officers, non-commissioned officers (NCO’s) and reservists. The quality of personnel declined as hastily-trained replacements filled the void. The general staff failed to break the deadlock of trench warfare. Frontline regiments began forming small, independent units called shock troops. They re-trained behind the lines to fight in close coordination using flame throwers, smoke canisters, machine guns, pistols, and grenades. Officers displayed boldness and initiative, directly leading their men into combat.
The commander of the Deutschland regiment, Felix Steiner, wrote that during World War I, the officers “assembled the best, most experienced soldiers the front could spare. . . . They realized the shock troop concept of spontaneity, rapid assault, and the mechanics of the little troop’s trade within the framework of entire formations. They were of different spirit than the mobilized masses. . . . In a world of standardization of soldiering, they proved that better trained, hand-picked soldiers, mastering the military technology of the times, were a match for any vastly superior, collective soldierly mass."7
After World War I, the German general staff reverted to the pre-war concept of a disciplined professional army without particular emphasis on improvisation. Though the army still trained officers at lower command levels to take initiative and be decisive in battle, the program did not include forming shock troops. Steiner exploited the comparative independence of the VT to develop a contemporary fighting force less constrained by customary military regimen. “Not the form of Prussian drill still in part practiced in the army, but training and educating men to become modern, individual fighters was the goal,” wrote the former SS Captain Fritz Schutter.8 Though Steiner acknowledged that mass armies are an indispensable element of total war, he considered rapidly mobile elite formations distributed among the army decisive, in order to “disperse the enemy through lightning-fast blows and destroy his scattered units.” In the words of one historian, the training program Steiner introduced to the Deutschland regiment “broke the preeminence of mechanical barracks drill."9
Physical education also played a significant role in the VT. It promoted the “soldier-athlete” concept. Competitive sports supplanted calisthenics and forced marches as the focus of the training. Enlisted personnel competed against their officers and NCO’s in sports contests. The purpose was not just to weld leader and followers into a cohesive fighting unit. It also taught officers to rely on their ability to command and strength of character to gain the confidence and respect of the men, rather than on the customary aloofness and strict discipline of military protocol. In the same spirit, the VT dropped the practice of soldiers addressing officers as “sir” or speaking in the third person. Through such steps, “the relationship between the leadership and men became much more personal and ultimately more binding."10 Officers and men dined together in the same mess hall.11
Pastor Karl Ossenkop, a former army captain transferred to the Waffen SS, recalled, “contrary to the army, disparity in rank was no barrier dividing person from person. There was no pedantic structure held together by fear of punishment. This did not lead to a lack of discipline, but to a voluntary discipline such as I have seldom experienced. . . . In this corps one felt completely free."12 A former director of the Tölz academy summarized, “The authority of the officers, who were scarcely older than the men, rested far more on esteem for their character, performance, and care for the men’s welfare."13 A soldier in the Germania regiment in 1937 and future officer, Heinrich Springer, wrote this of his first platoon commander: “He was not just a military instructor, but guided us in cultivating a decent personal bearing, inwardly and outwardly perceptible. Throughout the entire time as a recruit, I never once heard him shout at or curse the men."14
The former general staff officer Hausser patterned the instruction at the Brunswick academy to be similar to army institutions. The two SS Junkerschulen, or Schools for Young Gentlemen, assigned top priority to preparing candidates for field operations and tactical combat command. Instructors also placed emphasis on personality development. As Lieutenant Colonel Richard Schulze wrote, “The Junker Schools' goal was to produce men of refined, fearless character, chivalrous with an unblemished sense of honor and obedience, displaying helpfulness, camaraderie, and willingness to accept responsibility. Impeccable deportment in public and cultivation of family values were also prerequisites."15 The staff encouraged cadets to exhibit a respectful, but never subservient demeanor toward superiors. The VT educated field officers to exercise audacity as well as initiative.
The Junker Schools did not select candidates from among the general SS, but from enlisted members of the VT. Only men who had already served in the ranks could receive an appointment to Bad Tölz or to Brunswick. In the German army, a university degree was sufficient for an applicant to be accepted into a war college. Education had no influence on VT standards for enrollment. Many Junker School cadets did not possess a high school diploma.16 The institutions nonetheless graduated capable officers. The English historian Gerald Reitlinger concluded, “Under the influence of Hausser’s cadet schools, the Waffen SS developed the most efficient of all military training systems of the Second World War."17
Georg Jestadt, who belonged to the 12th SS Panzer Division in 1944, wrote this of the men he served under: “We had fantastic superior officers, from platoon leaders to the battalion commanders and upward, who were genuine ideals for the men. Looking back, I can objectively state that during the Normandy operation, amid all the inferno and terror, I never saw a superior officer suffer a breakdown or lose his nerve. Again and again, when things looked so hopeless and critical, they mastered the situation calmly and with presence of mind."18
When Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, the VT fell under armed forces command. The OKW distributed most VT formations among army divisions participating in the campaign. The SS soldiers acquitted themselves well in battle, and expansion and reorganization of the VT followed. Hausser formed Deutschland, Germanid, Der Führer, and their combat support units into a single division in October 1939. That same month, the SS transferred 15,000 law enforcement personnel to create the SS Police Division. Yet another new division, Totenkopf (Death’s Head), filled its roster largely from concentration camp guards and incorporated the Home Guard Danzig. Together with Hitler’s bodyguard, the Leibstandarte, the military branch of the SS now numbered 100,000 men.19 The entire force deployed in the 1940 campaign against Holland, Belgium, and France, fighting side by side with the regular army.
The SS had accomplished the expansion of the VT, renamed the Waffen SS in 1940, by shifting men from other contingents under Himmler’s command. This was necessary because the OKW, which had jurisdiction over the draft, limited the number of indigenous recruits whom the Waffen SS could induct. In order to increase its quantity of divisions, the chief of SS recruitment, Gottlob Berger, developed a fresh source of manpower. He introduced a campaign to encourage enlistment from among the expansive ethnic German colonies in Southeastern Europe. In May 1939, 1,080 members of Rumania’s German community left the country to join the Waffen SS. They preferred to avoid service in the Rumanian army, whose officers treated ethnic German recruits badly. During the war, the roster of ethnic Germans from beyond the Reich’s frontier who served in the Waffen SS would greatly increase; over 60,000 of them came from Rumania alone.20 In time, Berger’s solution for increasing manpower would significantly redefine the character of the Waffen SS.