--- alias: - Schutzstaffel - Schutzstaffeln - Die Schutzstaffeln der Nationalsozialistischen Deutschen Arbeiterpartei category: Intelligence & Government created: 2026-09-24 end: 1945 location: Germany relations: - fn: 1 reverse: true start: 1925 type: founded with: '[[Adolf Hitler]]' - fn: 1 reverse: true role: Reichsführer SS start: 1929 type: head_of with: '[[Heinrich Himmler]]' start: 1925 summary: The Nazi Party's guard formation, founded by Hitler in 1925 and led by Heinrich Himmler from 1929, which administered the concentration camps and was declared a criminal organization at Nuremberg. tags: - Organization - NaziGermany - HeinrichHimmler - WaffenSS - ConcentrationCamps - Holocaust - NurembergTrials - WorldWarII updated: 2026-09-24 --- The SS (Schutzstaffel) was the guard formation of the Nazi Party. The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg declared it a criminal organization.[^1] ### Origins and Growth "The SS was originally established by Hitler in 1925 as an elite section of the SA for political purposes under the pretext of protecting speakers at public meetings of the Nazi Party." After the Nazis took power it kept order at mass demonstrations and was given the duty of "internal security" by a decree of [Adolf Hitler](/people/adolf-hitler/). It took part in the purge of Ernst Röhm on June 30, 1934, and was made an independent unit of the party shortly afterward.[^1] When [Heinrich Himmler](/people/heinrich-himmler/) became Reichsführer SS in 1929, the SS numbered 980 men. It had 52,000 in 1933. Its original formation, the Allgemeine SS, reached 240,000 men by 1939, organized into divisions and regiments, and fell to well under 40,000 during the war. The SS-Verfügungstruppe, men who volunteered for four years of armed service in lieu of army service, was equipped as a motorized division in 1939 and formed the nucleus of the Waffen SS in 1940, which then had 100,000 men and by the end of the war about 580,000 in 40 divisions, under army tactical command but SS supply and discipline. About a third of those who joined the Waffen SS were conscripts. The SS-Totenkopfverbände guarded the concentration camps, which came under SS control in 1934.[^1] ### Police and Security Service Beginning in 1933 the police and the SS were gradually amalgamated. In 1936 Himmler became Chief of the German Police, and Higher SS and Police Leaders in each military district coordinated the Order Police, the Security Police, the SD and the Allgemeine SS on his behalf. In 1939 all officials of the Security and Order Police were taken into the SS at equivalent ranks. The Sicherheitsdienst (SD), "originally an intelligence branch of the SS," became part of the Security Police and SD, which the Tribunal judged together with the [Gestapo](/organizations/gestapo/).[^1] The SS central organization had twelve main offices, among them the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA); the Economic Administration Main Office (WVHA), which administered the concentration camps; and a Race and Settlement Office. The SS had its own legal system and special courts. Attached to the main offices was the research foundation [Ahnenerbe](/organizations/ahnenerbe/), under the patronage of the Reichsführer SS, to which an institute for military scientific research became attached during the war. It "conducted extensive experiments involving the use of living human beings," and its employee Dr. Rascher conducted them "with the full knowledge of the Ahnenerbe."[^1] ### Camps and Killings From 1934 the SS guarded and administered the concentration camps. After 1942, under the WVHA, the camps were used as a source of slave labor, and under an agreement of September 18, 1942, with the Ministry of Justice, "anti-social elements who had finished prison sentences were to be delivered to the SS to be worked to death." The SS conducted experiments on prisoners of war and camp inmates, including "freezing to death, and killing by poison bullets," and obtained government funds for such research "on the grounds that they had access to human material not available to other agencies."[^1] The Tribunal found that the extermination of the Jews "was carried out under the direction of the SS central organisation" and put into effect by SS formations, including the Einsatzgruppen; that Waffen SS divisions were responsible for massacres at Oradour and Lidice; and that SS units were used in the occupation of the Sudetenland, Bohemia and Moravia, and Memel. In speeches in 1943 Himmler encouraged his men to be "tough and ruthless" and spoke of shooting "thousands of leading Poles."[^1] ### Judgment The Tribunal declared criminal those officially accepted as members of the Allgemeine SS, the Waffen SS, the SS-Totenkopfverbände, and police forces who were members of the SS, if they joined or remained with knowledge of its criminal use or were personally implicated in its crimes. It excluded the SS riding units, persons "drafted into membership by the State in such a way as to give them no choice in the matter, and who had committed no such crimes," and those who had left before September 1, 1939. The defendant Ernst Kaltenbrunner was named as a member implicated in these activities.[^1] ### After 1945 According to the journalist [Annie Jacobsen](/people/annie-jacobsen/), the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency altered, before security review, the records of German scientists whose Nazi party membership, SS membership or wartime conduct would have disqualified them, so that they could be employed in the [United States](/places/united-states/) under [Operation Paperclip](/programs/operation-paperclip/); among them was the rocket engineer [Wernher von Braun](/people/wernher-von-braun/), an SS officer.[^2] [Heinz Felfe](/people/heinz-felfe/), a former officer of the SD, served in the [Gehlen Organization](/organizations/gehlen-organization/) and its successor, the [Bundesnachrichtendienst](/organizations/bundesnachrichtendienst/), while working for Soviet intelligence, the subject of his memoir *Im Dienst des Gegners: 10 Jahre Moskaus Mann im BND*.[^3] [^1]: International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg. "Judgment: The Accused Organizations." Avalon Project, Yale Law School. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/judorg.asp [^2]: Jacobsen, Annie. *Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program That Brought Nazi Scientists to America.* Little, Brown and Company, 2014. [^3]: Felfe, Heinz. *Im Dienst des Gegners: 10 Jahre Moskaus Mann im BND.* Rasch und Röhring, 1986. Breitman, Richard, Norman J. W. Goda, Timothy Naftali, and Robert Wolfe. *U.S. Intelligence and the Nazis.* Cambridge University Press, 2005.