The Role of the SS

• The SS (Schutzstaffel or Protection Squad) was originally set up as a personal bodyguard for Hitler in 1925. Control passed to Heinrich Himmler in 1929. In 1932 Himmler started to distinguish the SS as an elite separate from the SA, by giving it distinctive blackshirts and making it the private police force of the Nazi party.
• After the Night of the Long Knives the SS became increasingly powerful and grew from a few thousand to 240,000 members by the end of the 1930s. It was given overall control of all police and security services.
• Himmler wanted to keep the SS as a ‘racially pure elite’ and recruits had to prove their ‘Aryan ancestry’ and marry only ‘racially pure’ wives.