Editing Schutzstaffel (section)

==SS units and branches==
{{Main|Units and commands of the Schutzstaffel}}

===Reich Security Main Office===
Heydrich held the title of ''Chef der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD'' (Chief of the Security Police and SD) until 27 September 1939, when he became chief of the newly established Reich Security Main Office (RSHA).{{sfn|Longerich|2012|p=470}}{{sfn|Headland|1992|p=22}} From that point forward, the RSHA was in charge of SS security services. It had under its command the SD, Kripo, and Gestapo, as well as several offices to handle finance, administration, and supply.{{sfn|Longerich|2012|p=470}} [[Heinrich Müller (Gestapo)|Heinrich Müller]], who had been chief of operations for the Gestapo, was appointed Gestapo chief at this time.{{sfn|Weale|2010|p=131}} [[Arthur Nebe]] was chief of the Kripo, and the two branches of SD were commanded by a series of SS officers, including [[Otto Ohlendorf]] and [[Walter Schellenberg]]. The SD was considered an elite branch of the SS, and its members were better educated and typically more ambitious than those within the ranks of the ''Allgemeine SS''.{{sfn|Langerbein|2003|p=21}} Members of the SD were specially trained in criminology, intelligence, and counterintelligence. They also gained a reputation for ruthlessness and unwavering commitment to Nazi ideology.{{sfn|Langerbein|2003|pp=21–22}}

Heydrich was attacked in Prague on 27 May 1942 by a British-trained team of Czech and Slovak soldiers who had been sent by the [[Czechoslovak government-in-exile]] to assassinate him in [[Assassination of Reinhard Heydrich|Operation Anthropoid]]. He died from his injuries a week later.{{sfn|Höhne|2001|pp=494–495}}{{efn|In an act of reprisal, upwards of 10,000 Czechs were arrested; 1,300 were shot, including all male inhabitants from the nearby town of [[Lidice]] (where Heydrich's assassins had supposedly been harboured), and the town was razed.{{sfn|Höhne|2001|pp=495–496}} }} Himmler ran the RSHA personally until 30 January 1943, when Heydrich's positions were taken over by Kaltenbrunner.{{sfn|Longerich|2012|p=661}}

===<span id="Special_action_units"></span> ''SS-Sonderkommandos''===
{{about|the units within the SS|the Jewish inmates of death camps who were forced to assist in camp operations|Sonderkommandos|section=yes}}
Beginning in 1938 and throughout World War II, the SS enacted a procedure where offices and units of the SS could form smaller sub-units, known as ''SS-Sonderkommandos'', to carry out special tasks, including large-scale murder operations. The use of ''SS-Sonderkommandos'' was widespread. According to former SS-''[[Sturmbannführer]]'' [[Wilhelm Höttl]], not even the SS leadership knew how many ''SS-Sonderkommandos'' were constantly being formed, disbanded, and reformed for various tasks, especially on the Eastern Front.{{sfn|Diner|2006|p=123}}

An ''SS-Sonderkommando'' unit led by SS-''Sturmbannführer'' [[Herbert Lange]] murdered 1,201 psychiatric patients at the [[Nowy Dwór Gdański|Tiegenhof]] psychiatric hospital in the [[Free City of Danzig]],{{sfn|Laqueur|Baumel|2001|p=228}} 1,100 patients in [[Owińska]], 2,750 patients at [[Kościan]], and 1,558 patients at [[Działdowo]], as well as hundreds of Poles at [[Fort VII]], where the mobile gas van and gassing bunker were developed.{{sfn|Montague|2012|pp=188–190}}{{sfn|Friedlander|1997|p=138}} In 1941–42, ''SS-Sonderkommando Lange'' set up and managed the first extermination camp, at [[Chełmno extermination camp|Chełmno]], where 152,000 Jews were killed using gas vans.{{sfn|Stackelberg|2007|p=220}}

After the [[Battle of Stalingrad]] ended in February 1943, Himmler realised that Germany would likely lose the war and ordered the formation of [[Sonderaktion 1005|'' Sonderkommando'' 1005]], a special task force under SS-''[[Standartenführer]]'' [[Paul Blobel]]. The unit's assignment was to visit mass graves on the Eastern Front to exhume bodies and burn them in an attempt to cover up the genocide. The task remained unfinished at the end of the war, and many mass graves remain unmarked and unexcavated.{{sfn|Rhodes|2003|pp=258–260, 262}}

The ''Eichmann Sonderkommando'' was a task force headed by [[Adolf Eichmann]] that arrived in Budapest on 19 March 1944, the same day that [[German invasion of Hungary (1944)|Axis forces invaded Hungary]]. Their task was to take a direct role in the deportation of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz. The ''SS-Sonderkommandos'' enlisted the aid of antisemitic elements from the Hungarian gendarmerie and pro-German administrators from within the Hungarian Interior Ministry.{{sfn|Laqueur|Baumel|2001|p=195}} Round-ups began on 16 April, and from 14 May, four trains of 3,000 Jews per day left Hungary and travelled to the camp at Auschwitz II-Birkenau, arriving along a newly built spur line that terminated a few hundred metres from the gas chambers.{{sfn|Longerich|2010|p=408}}{{sfn|Cesarani|2005|pp=168, 172}} Between 10 and 25 per cent of the people on each train were chosen as forced labourers; the rest were killed within hours of arrival.{{sfn|Longerich|2010|p=408}}{{sfn|Cesarani|2005|p=173}} Under international pressure, the Hungarian government halted deportations on 6 July 1944, by which time over 437,000 of Hungary's 725,000 Jews had been murdered.{{sfn|Longerich|2010|p=408}}{{sfn|Cesarani|2005|pp=160, 183}}

===''Einsatzgruppen''===
[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-A0706-0018-030, Ukraine, ermordete Familie.jpg|thumb|SS murders in [[Zboriv]], Ukraine, 1941; a teenage boy is brought to view his dead family before being shot himself]]
The ''[[Einsatzgruppen]]'' had its origins in the ad hoc ''Einsatzkommando'' formed by Heydrich following the ''[[Anschluss]]'' in Austria in March 1938.{{sfn|Streim|1989|p=436}} Two units of ''Einsatzgruppen'' were stationed in the Sudetenland in October 1938. When military action turned out not to be necessary because of the [[Munich Agreement]], the ''Einsatzgruppen'' were assigned to confiscate government papers and police documents. They secured government buildings, questioned senior civil servants, and arrested as many as 10,000 Czech communists and German citizens.{{sfn|Streim|1989|p=436}}{{sfn|Longerich|2012|pp=405, 412}} The ''Einsatzgruppen'' also followed ''Wehrmacht'' troops and killed potential partisans.{{sfn|Stackelberg|2007|p=161}} Similar groups were used in 1939 for the [[Occupation of Czechoslovakia (1938–1945)|occupation of Czechoslovakia]].{{sfn|Flaherty|2004|p=109}}

Hitler felt that the planned extermination of the Jews was too difficult and important to be entrusted to the military.{{sfn|Hilberg|1985|p=102}} In 1941 the ''Einsatzgruppen'' were sent into the Soviet Union to begin large-scale genocide of Jews, Romani people, and communists.{{sfn|Langerbein|2003|pp=15–16}} Historian [[Raul Hilberg]] estimates that between 1941 and 1945 the ''Einsatzgruppen'' and related agencies murdered more than two million people, including 1.3 million Jews.{{sfn|Rhodes|2003|p=257}} The largest mass shooting perpetrated by the ''Einsatzgruppen'' was at [[Babi Yar]] outside [[Kyiv|Kiev]], where 33,771 Jews were massacred in a single operation on 29–30 September 1941.{{sfn|Flaherty|2004|pp=120–123}} In the [[Rumbula massacre]] (November–December 1941), 25,000 victims from the [[Riga Ghetto|Riga ghetto]] were murdered.{{sfn|Rhodes|2003|pp=210–214}} In another set of mass shootings (December 1941 – January 1942), the ''Einsatzgruppe'' massacred over 10,000 Jews at [[Drobytsky Yar]] in [[Kharkiv|Kharkov]].{{sfn|Zentner|Bedürftig|1991|p=228}}

The last ''Einsatzgruppen'' were disbanded in mid-1944 (although some continued to exist on paper until 1945) due to the German retreat on both fronts and the consequent inability to continue extermination activities. Former ''Einsatzgruppen'' members were either assigned duties in the ''Waffen-SS'' or concentration camps. Twenty-four ''Einsatzgruppen'' commanders were tried for war crimes following the war.{{sfn|Rhodes|2003|p=274}}

===SS Court Main Office===
The [[SS Court Main Office]] (''Hauptamt SS-Gericht'') was an internal legal system for conducting investigations, trials, and punishment of the SS and police. It had more than 600 lawyers on staff in the main offices in Berlin and Munich. Proceedings were conducted at 38 regional SS courts throughout Germany. It was the only authority authorised to try SS personnel, except for SS members who were on active duty in the ''Wehrmacht'' (in such cases, the SS member in question was tried by a standard military tribunal). Its creation placed the SS beyond the reach of civilian legal authority. Himmler personally intervened as he saw fit regarding convictions and punishment.{{sfn|McNab|2009|pp=37, 40, 41}} Historian [[Karl Dietrich Bracher]] describes this court system as one factor in the creation of the Nazi totalitarian police state, as it removed objective legal procedures, rendering citizens defenceless against the "summary justice of the SS terror."{{sfn|Bracher|1970|p=214}}

===SS Cavalry===
Shortly after Hitler seized power in 1933, most horse riding associations were taken over by the SA and SS.{{sfn|Krüger|Wedemeyer-Kolwe|2009|p=34}} Members received combat training to serve in the ''Reiter-SS'' (SS Cavalry Corps).{{sfn|Krüger|Wedemeyer-Kolwe|2009|p=35}} The first SS cavalry regiment, designated ''SS-Totenkopf Reitstandarte 1'', was formed in September 1939. Commanded by then SS-''Standartenführer'' [[Hermann Fegelein]], the unit was assigned to Poland, where they took part in the extermination of Polish intelligentsia.{{sfn|McNab|2013|pp=224–225}}{{sfn|Pieper|2015|p=38}} Additional squadrons were added in May 1940, for a total of fourteen.{{sfn|McNab|2013|p=225}}

The unit was split into two regiments in December 1939, with Fegelein in charge of both. By March 1941 their strength was 3,500 men.{{sfn|Miller|2006|p=308}}{{sfn|Pieper|2015|pp=52–53}} In July 1941, they were assigned to the [[Pripyat Marshes massacres]], tasked with rounding up and exterminating Jews and partisans in the [[Pripet Marshes|Pripyat swamps]].{{sfn|Pieper|2015|pp=81–90}} The two regiments were amalgamated into the [[SS Cavalry Brigade]] on 31 July, twelve days after the operation started.{{sfn|Pieper|2015|pp=81–82}} Fegelein's final report, dated 18 September 1941, states that they killed 14,178 Jews, 1,001 partisans, and 699 Red Army soldiers, with 830 prisoners taken.{{sfn|Pieper|2015|pp=119–120}}{{sfn|Miller|2006|p=310}} Historian Henning Pieper estimates the actual number of Jews killed was closer to 23,700.{{sfn|Pieper|2015|p=120}} The SS Cavalry Brigade took serious losses in November 1941 in the [[Battle of Moscow]], with casualties of up to 60 per cent in some squadrons.{{sfn|Pieper|2015|pp=146–147}} Fegelein was appointed as commander of the [[8th SS Cavalry Division Florian Geyer|8th SS Cavalry Division ''"Florian Geyer"'']] on 20 April 1943. This unit saw service in the Soviet Union in attacks on partisans and civilians.{{sfn|McNab|2013|p=182}}{{sfn|Stockert|1997|p=229}} In addition, SS Cavalry regiments served in Croatia and Hungary.{{sfn|McNab|2013|pp=225–230}}

===SS Medical Corps===
[[File:Selection Birkenau ramp.jpg|thumb|[[History of the Jews in Hungary|Hungarian Jews]] on the ''Judenrampe'' (Jewish ramp) after disembarking from the [[Holocaust trains|transport trains]]. Photo from the [[Auschwitz Album]], May 1944]]
{{Main|SS Medical Corps}}
The SS Medical Corps were initially known as the ''Sanitätsstaffel'' (sanitary units). After 1931, the SS formed the headquarters office ''Amt'' V as the central office for SS medical units. An SS medical academy was established in Berlin in 1938 to train ''Waffen-SS'' physicians.{{sfn|Proctor|1988|p=86}} SS medical personnel did not often provide actual medical care; their primary responsibility was medicalised genocide.{{sfn|Lifton|1986|p=147}} At Auschwitz, about three quarters of new arrivals, including almost all children, women with small children, all the elderly, and all those who appeared on brief and superficial inspection by an SS doctor not to be completely fit were killed within hours of arrival.{{sfn|Levy|2006|pp=235–237}} In their role as ''Desinfektoren'' (disinfectors), SS doctors also made selections among existing prisoners as to their fitness to work and supervised the murder of those deemed unfit. Inmates in deteriorating health were examined by SS doctors, who decided whether or not they would be able to recover in less than two weeks. Those too ill or injured to recover in that time frame were killed.{{sfn|Lifton|1986|pp=148–149}}

At Auschwitz, the actual delivery of gas to the victims was always handled by the SS, on the order of the supervising SS doctor.{{sfn|Piper|1994|p=170}}{{sfn|Lifton|Hackett|1994|p=304}} Many of the SS doctors also conducted inhumane medical experiments on camp prisoners.{{sfn|Yahil|1990|p=368}} The most well-known SS doctor, [[Josef Mengele]], served as a medical officer at Auschwitz under the command of [[Eduard Wirths]] of the camp's medical corps.{{sfn|Yahil|1990|p=369}} Mengele undertook selections even when he was not assigned to do so in the hope of finding subjects for his experiments.{{sfn|Levy|2006|pp=248–249}} He was particularly interested in locating sets of twins.{{sfn|Posner|Ware|1986|p=29}} In contrast to most of the doctors, who viewed undertaking selections as one of their most stressful and horrible duties, Mengele undertook the task with a flamboyant air, often smiling or whistling a tune.{{sfn|Posner|Ware|1986|p=27}}{{sfn|Lifton|1985}} After the war, many SS doctors were charged with war crimes for their medical experiments and for their role in gas chamber selections.{{sfn|Pringle|2006|pp=294–296}}

===Other SS units===
====''Ahnenerbe''====
The ''[[Ahnenerbe]]'' (Ancestral Heritage Organisation) was founded in 1935 by Himmler and became part of the SS in 1939.{{sfn|Spielvogel|1992|p=108}} It was an umbrella agency for more than fifty organisations tasked with studying German racial identity and ancient Germanic traditions and language.{{sfn|Spielvogel|1992|p=108}}{{sfn|Yenne|2010|pp=132–133}} The agency sponsored archaeological expeditions in Germany, Scandinavia, the Middle East, Tibet, and elsewhere to search for evidence of Aryan roots, influence, and superiority.{{sfn|Yenne|2010|pp=128–131, 139, 142}} Further planned expeditions were postponed indefinitely at the start of the war.{{sfn|Yenne|2010|p=141}}

====''SS-Frauenkorps''====
The ''SS-Frauenkorps'' was an auxiliary reporting and clerical unit,{{sfn|Lower|2013|p=108}} which included the ''SS-Helferinnenkorps'' (Women Helper Corps), made up of female volunteers. Members were assigned as administrative staff and supply personnel and served in command positions and as guards at women's concentration camps.{{sfn|Schwarz|1997|pp=223–244}}{{sfn|Lower|2013|pp=108–109}} While female concentration and extermination camp guards were civilian employees of the SS, the ''SS-Helferinnen'' who completed training at the ''Reichsschule für SS-Helferinnen'' in Oberehnheim (Alsace) were members of the ''Waffen-SS''.{{sfn|Mühlenberg|2011|pp=13–14}} Like their male equivalents in the SS, females participated in the mass murder of Jews, Poles, and others.{{sfn|Lower|2013|p=109}}

In 1942, Himmler set up the ''Reichsschule für SS Helferinnen'' (Reich School for SS Helpers) in [[Obernai|Oberehnheim]] to train women in communications so that they could free up men for combat roles. Himmler also intended to replace all female civilian employees in his service with ''SS-Helferinnen'' members, as they were selected and trained according to Nazi ideology.{{sfn|Century|2011}}{{sfn|Rempel|1989|pp=223–224}} The school was closed on 22 November 1944 due to the Allied advance.{{sfn|Mühlenberg|2011|p=27}}

====''SS-Mannschaften''====
The ''SS-Mannschaften'' (Auxiliary-SS) were not considered regular SS members, but were conscripted from other branches of the German military, the Nazi Party, the SA, and the ''[[Volkssturm]]'' for service in concentration camps and extermination camps.{{sfn|Benz|Distel|Königseder|2005|p=70}}