The Himmler's SS (5 page)

SS men prepare to set fire to a collection of placards and flags seized from Berlin communists, March 1933.

SS-Gruppenführer ‘Sepp' Dietrich in conversation with Wilhelm Brückner, Hitler's chief adjutant, at the end of 1933. Dietrich has removed the SS armband from his black service uniform, which was a short-term expedient adopted during this period to set the personnel of the infant Leibstandarte apart from the mass of the Allgemeine-SS.

T
HE
SS R
OLL OF
H
ONOUR

It is noteworthy that eleven (i.e. 33 per cent) of these men were killed
after
the Nazis had actually come to power. On 30 May 1938, they all received posthumous awards of the Blood Order, the highest decoration of the NSDAP.

On 20 July 1934, in thanks for its actions during the Röhm putsch, Hitler declared the 200,000-strong SS an independent formation of the NSDAP and removed it completely from SA control. Its position of ascendancy was now assured and it entered a period of consolidation in which it developed a new command structure under Himmler, whose rank as Reichsführer-SS for the first time actually meant what it implied and made him directly subordinate to Hitler. He immediately shed some 60,000 SS men who had been recruited at a time when the SS was competing for members with the SA, but who did not now conform to the SS image of élitism. The Leibstandarte, SS-VT and SS-TV developed their status as separate military branches, eventually amalgamating and expanding during the Second World War under the all-embracing title of Waffen-SS. From the middle of 1934, the traditional nonmilitary SS, the backbone of the organisation, began to be known as the Allgemeine-SS, or General SS, to distinguish it from the armed branches.

During these early years, thirty-three SS men were killed in street fighting with Hitler's political opponents, and were duly recorded on the SS Ehrentafel, or Roll of Honour. In effect, they became SS martyrs. Their names, units and dates of death are shown in the table above.

2. T
HE
A
LLGEMEINE
-SS

G
ENERAL
O
RGANISATION OF THE
A
LLGEMEINE
-SS

During the period 1926–28, the SS-Oberleitung in Munich ran twelve local SS Staffeln, and oversaw six SS-Gau, as follows:

SS-Gau Berlin-Brandenburg, with 2 Staffeln

SS-Gau Franken, with 5 Staffeln

SS-Gau Niederbayern, with 3 Staffeln

SS-Gau Oberbayern, with 4 Staffeln

SS-Gau Rheinland-Süd, with 5 Staffeln

SS-Gau Sachsen, with 4 Staffeln

In theory, each party Gau should have had an SS-Gau but, in fact, only these six were actually set up, and many of their Staffeln dealt directly with the Oberleitung. A large number of early Staffeln were very short-lived.

By 1929–30, an SS-Oberstab had superseded the Oberleitung, and it was split into five distinct divisions, namely:

Under the Oberstab were three SS-Oberführer, who ran their own areas, or Oberführerbereiche, as follows:

SS-Oberführerbereich Ost

SS-Brigade Berlin-Brandenburg, with 3 Standarten/7 Stürme

SS-Brigade Schlesien, with 4 Standarten/6 Stürme

SS-Brigade Ostpreussen, with 2 Standarten/6 Stürme

SS-Oberführerbereich West

SS-Brigade Rheinland-Nord, with 4 Standarten/10 Stürme

SS-Brigade Rheinland-Süd, with 4 Standarten/9 Stürme

SS-Brigade Südhannover-Braunschweig, with 3 Standarten/8 Stürme

SS-Brigade Hessen-Nassau, with 3 Standarten/9 Stürme

SS-Brigade Thüringen, with 2 Standarten/7 Stürme

SS-Oberführerbereich Süd

SS-Brigade Baden-Württemberg, with 1 Standarte/4 Stürme

SS-Brigade Franken, with 1 Standarte/3 Stürme

SS-Brigade Niederbayern, with 1 Standarte/3 Stürme

SS-Brigade Oberbayern-Süd, with 3 Standarten/8 Stürme

SS-Brigade Österreich, with 1 Standarte/3 Stürme

Again, in theory, every party Gau was supposed to have an SS-Brigade, each comprising several Standarten, in turn made up of around five Stürme. Since there were at this time thirty Gaue, the SS was obviously spread very thinly around the country. Most units were well under their ‘paper' strengths.

Once Himmler had taken control of the SS, things moved apace. Between 1931 and 1933, the whole structure was altered again and again to cope with the increasing administrative and manpower demands placed on the SS command. Two new departments, the SD-Amt and Rasseamt, were established to oversee security and racial matters. A third, the SS-Amt, was the largest of all and was divided into five sections, namely:

At the next level, the Oberführerbereiche were replaced by five SS-Gruppen, viz. Nord, Ost, Südost, West and Süd, containing fifty-eight Standarten.

Yet despite these internal arrangements, the SS of 1933 was still very much subordinate to the SA and its Stabschef or Chief of Staff, Ernst Röhm. The SS command structure was in no way an independent one, and the most senior SS leaders were all attached to the SA Supreme Command, the Oberste SA-Führung. Until the SS became a separate element in July 1934, Himmler ranked merely as an SS-Obergruppenführer who held the post, not the rank, of Reichsführer der SS. He was, therefore, on an equal footing with any of the other SS or SA generals and, theoretically at least, enjoyed no privileged position. Indeed, his lack of front-line experience during the First World War led to his being despised by many of the old campaigners, who looked upon him as a figure of fun who had weasled his way to the top. The leader of SS-Gruppe Ost, for example, SS-Gruppenführer Kurt Daluege of Stennes putsch fame, had by 1934 acquired considerable powers with Göring's patronage and felt himself to be so strong that he refused to deal with anyone but Hitler and Röhm, and certainly not with ‘that Bavarian chicken-breeder Himmler'. He was by no means unique in his attitude. The fall of Röhm, however, altered the situation completely. Himmler's elevation to the newly created rank of Reichsführer-SS, or RfSS, which set him above all others, suddenly made him untouchable.

Himmler and his Old Guard SS leaders in Munich, 1933.

So far as the armed SS units were concerned, Himmler was soon Reichsführer in name only, for the Leibstandarte, SS-VT and SS-TV came to be regarded not as being in the official employ of the party but as public services of the Reich, on the model of the army. Their expenses were charged to the state, and the Reich Finance Minister, Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk, maintained his impartiality in the allocation of national funds to the armed SS by consistently refusing Himmler's offers of honorary SS rank. In contrast, the Allgemeine-SS always retained its political status as an independent Gliederung, or organisation, of the NSDAP and it was never maintained by the state. Its expenses were paid solely from party funds and its finances were ultimately controlled by the Reichsschatzmeister der NSDAP, or Party Treasurer, Franz Xaver Schwarz, who was renowned as a fist-grasping admin-istrator. However, Schwarz, a veteran of the Munich putsch, was also very close to Himmler, who made him the highest ranking General Officer in the whole SS, second on the seniority list only to the Reichsführer himself. Consequently, the party never actually exercised any close independent supervision over Allgemeine-SS funds. Through his contacts with big business and his mutual back-scratching exercises with Schwarz, Himmler ensured that the Allgemeine-SS got any cash it needed, often at the expense of other party branches such as the NSKK and NSFK. So the Allgemeine-SS, unlike the military side of the organisation, remained totally under the Reichsführer's control until 1945, immune from outside state interference. Himmler's position at the top of the Allgemeine-SS hierarchy was, therefore, unchallenged and his power unbridled by any potential financial constraints. As a result, the highest levels of the Allgemeine-SS organisation centred around him personally.