The Himmler's SS (38 page)

A Leibstandarte battalion parades past Hitler on his forty-ninth birthday, 20 April 1938. Note the white leather gauntlets worn by the officers in the colour party.

The picture of a new and élite force attracted many ex-officers into the ranks of the Verfügungstruppe. SA-Standartenführer Paul Hausser, a former Reichswehr general, was recruited by Himmler to organise the SS-VT and instil some military know-how into the fledgling SS soldiers. In October 1934 a cadet school was opened at Bad Tölz, and early the following year Hausser took personal charge of a second officer training establishment at Braunschweig. Hausser's solid groundwork attracted a sufficient number of ex-army and police officers, redundant Reichswehr sergeant-majors and young military enthusiasts to form the officer and NCO cadres of the future Waffen-SS. The cadres were distributed to the scattered SS-VT battalions and these were gradually formed into regiments. In Munich, three Sturmbanne amalgamated to become SS-Standarte 1/VT, organised and equipped as a horse-drawn infantry regiment. It was given the honour title ‘Deutschland' at the Nürnberg Rally in September 1935. Members subsequently wore the SS runes alongside the number ‘1' on the right collar patch, and a ‘Deutschland' cuff title. In Hamburg, another three Sturmbanne duly came together to constitute SS-Standarte 2/VT, which was named ‘Germania' at Nürnberg in September 1936. The regimental uniform was characterised by an ‘SS 2' collar patch and ‘Germania' cuff title.

A battalion of the SS-VT Standarte ‘Deutschland' marching past Hitler in 1937. Swallow's nests distinguish the regimental bandsmen in the foreground.

On 1 October 1936, Hausser was appointed Inspector of Verfügungstruppe with the rank of SS-Brigadeführer. He created a divisional staff to supervise the equipping and training of his troops and avidly welcomed newcomers who brought the promise of a certain dynamism to the SS-VT. Foremost among these was SS-Sturm-bannführer Felix Steiner, an ex-Reichswehr officer whose experiences on the western front in the First World War had turned him against the conservative doctrines of Hausser and the army. He favoured the tactics of assault detachments, shock troops and mobile battle groups, to escape from the deadly immobility of trench warfare with one mass army facing another in a mutual battle of attrition. Steiner was given command of the SS-VT Standarte ‘Deutschland', and he tried out his reforms with one of its battalions, the training of which centred on sports and athletics. Officers, NCOs and men competed in teams against each other, to promote a spirit of comradeship and eliminate differences in rank. Experiments were carried out with camouflage clothing, and Steiner replaced the army's regulation rifle with handier and more mobile weapons, primarily submachine-guns and hand grenades. Soon even the Wehrmacht's eyebrows rose as Steiner's troops covered almost two miles in twenty minutes in battle order, for such a thing was unheard of. Steiner implanted in his men the idea that they were a military élite, and the success of his modernisation was so obvious that the Verfügungstruppe began to look upon him as their real commander. According to a somewhat jealous Hausser, Himmler considered Steiner to be ‘his very favourite baby'.

Hilmar Wäckerle, commander of Sturmbann I, SS-VT Standarte ‘Germania', as depicted by Wolfgang Willrich in 1936. Note the ‘SS/small 2' collar patch. Wäckerle had formerly been the guard commander at Dachau concentration camp, and in 1938 transferred to the ‘Der Führer' regiment to lead its 3rd battalion. He was later killed in action while commanding ‘Westland' on the eastern front.

After the annexation of Austria in March 1938, in which ‘Germania' participated alongside the Leibstandarte, Hitler ordered that a new SS-VT Standarte be formed entirely from Austrian personnel, either newly recruited or transferred from other SS units. The resultant regiment was given the honour title ‘Der Führer' at the Nürnberg Rally in September that year, and members were distinguished by an appropriately named cuff title and ‘SS 3' collar patch.

During the mobilisation preceding the occupation of the Sudetenland in October 1938, ‘Deutschland' and ‘Germania' were placed under the command of the army and took part in the operation. All the SS-VT Standarten became motorised regiments at the end of the year, and in the spring of 1939 were used to fill the gaps in a number of armoured divisions which invaded Czechoslovakia. In May, ‘Deutschland' went on exercise at the Münsterlager training area where it carried out extremely tough and hazardous manoeuvres using live am-munition. Hitler, who was present together with the Reichsführer, was so impressed that he gave his permission for the expansion of the SS-Verfügungstruppe into a full division. The idea was temporarily postponed, however, as units of the SS-VT were integrated with those of the army in preparation for the attack on Poland. By the outbreak of the Second World War, the SS-VT comprised not only the ‘Deutschland', ‘Germania' and ‘Der Führer' Standarten, but also an artillery regiment; SS-Regiment z.b.V. ‘Ellwangen' for special deployment; a signals battalion; a pioneer battalion; the so-called SS-Sturmbann ‘N' which was garrisoned at Nürnberg and provided a guard at the annual Nazi party rallies; a reconnaissance battalion; an anti-aircraft machine-gun battalion; and an anti-tank battalion. There were also a number of replacement units, or Ersat-zeinheiten, whose purpose was to make good any wartime losses suffered by the SS-VT.

NCOs and men of Sturmbann III, SS-VT Standarte ‘Germania', outside their barracks at Radolfzell in 1938.

The SS-Verfügungstruppe provided valuable military experience for many SS officers who were later to become prominent personalities in the divisions of the Waffen-SS.

Alongside the Leibstandarte and SS-VT grew a third militarised branch of the SS with a somewhat darker purpose. In March 1933, Himmler set up the first SS-run concentration camp at Dachau to accommodate 5,000 of the 27,000 potential ‘enemies of the state' arrested by the SA and SS after the Reichstag fire. Men of the local Allgemeine-SS from Munich were seconded to a new SS-Wachverbände, or Guard Unit, under SS-Oberführer Theodor Eicke to supervise the inmates of Dachau, who were to be incarcerated on a long-term basis. By the summer of 1934, most of the semiofficial and often ad hoc SA detention camps throughout Germany had been closed, and as a direct result of the ‘Night of the Long Knives', during which Eicke personally killed Ernst Röhm, the remaining camps were removed from the jurisdiction of the SA and civil authorities and were permanently taken over by the SS.

At first, the SS-Wachverbände staffing the concentration camps were lightly armed and were used by the Allgemeine-SS as depositories for poor quality and unwanted personnel. Eicke, however, turned Dachau into a model camp, and in July 1934 he was promoted to SS-Gruppenführer and made Inspector of Concentration Camps with the task of improving the discipline and morale of the SS-Wachverbände. This he accomplished with some considerable success. By March 1935, with new camps opening up on a regular basis to accommodate more and more prisoners, the Wachverbände had expanded to incorporate the following company-sized units, each assigned to a particular camp:

SS-Wachtruppe ‘Oberbayern' at Dachau

SS-Wachtruppe ‘Ostfriesland' at Esterwegen

SS-Wachtruppe ‘Elbe' at Lichtenburg

SS-Wachtruppe ‘Sachsen' at Sachsenburg

SS-Wachtruppe ‘Brandenburg' at Oranienburg and Columbia-Haus

SS-Wachtruppe ‘Hansa' at Hamburg-Fuhlsbüttel

During 1935, these formations were completely removed from the control of the Allgemeine-SS and reorganised into five independent battalions, namely:

SS-Wachsturmbann I ‘Oberbayern' at Dachau

SS-Wachsturmbann II ‘Elbe' at Lichtenburg

SS-Wachsturmbann III ‘Sachsen' at Sachsenburg

SS-Wachsturmbann IV ‘Ostfriesland' at Esterwegen

SS-Wachsturmbann V ‘Brandenburg' at Oranienburg and Columbia-Haus

By December 1935, Eicke was somewhat prematurely styling himself as ‘Führer der Totenkopfverbände', or Commander of Death's Head Units. It was not until 29 March 1936 that the Wachsturmbanne, with a strength of 3,500 men, were officially renamed the SS-Totenkopfverbände, or SS-TV, and allocated distinctive new collar patches bearing the death's head. On 1 July 1937, they were regrouped into the following three regiments, comprising 4,500 men:

Himmler, Hitler and Hausser view the ‘Deutschland' regiment on exercise at Münsterlager, May 1939. The officer on the right is Jochen Peiper, then serving as aide-de-camp to the Reichsführer.

SS-Totenkopfstandarte 1 ‘Oberbayern' at Dachau

SS-Totenkopfstandarte 2 ‘Brandenburg' at Sachsenhausen

SS-Totenkopfstandarte 3 ‘Thüringen' at Buchenwald

In 1938 a fourth regiment, SS-Totenkopfstandarte 4 ‘Ostmark', was formed in Austria to staff the new concentration camp at Mauthausen.

Eicke, a former paymaster of the imperial army, had an undying hatred of the professional officers whom he saw in command of the SS-Verfügungstruppe and one of his primary objectives was to turn the Totenkopfverbände into a sort of brutal working-class counterforce to the SS-VT. Himmler had given him almost complete autonomy in his appointment as Inspekteur der Konzentrationslager, and Eicke kept a jealous watch to ensure that no senior ex-officers infiltrated his organisation to threaten his position. While his troops were heavily armed on army lines, albeit with rather outdated weaponry, Eicke continually warned them against any attempt to ape a military organisation, and he frequently impressed upon them that they belonged neither to the army, nor to the police, nor to the Verfügungstruppe. Their sole task was to isolate the ‘enemies of the state' from the German people. Eicke drummed the concept of dangerous subversives so forcefully and convincingly into his men that they became firmly convinced of their position as the Reich's true guardians. They were the only soldiers who even in peacetime faced the enemy day and night . . . the enemy behind the wire.

The regulations governing the Totenkopfverbände became ever stricter. Any member allowing a prisoner to escape would himself be handed over to the Gestapo, and would probably end up being incarcerated in a concentration camp. Prisoners who tried to escape could be shot without warning, as could any inmate who assaulted a guard. The main forms of punishment in the camps were beatings, hard labour and tying prisoners to trees, and there were several instances of inmates being killed by SS-TV guards, whose hatred of the prisoners was consciously cultivated. Eicke made a point of recruiting ‘big sixteen-year-olds' direct from the Hitler Youth, and most Totenkopf men were under twenty years of age. Almost 95 per cent of them were unmarried, with few or no personal ties. They were ideally suited to be moulded according to Eicke's doctrines for the SS-TV.