I
A new man, the storm trooper, the élite of central Europe. A completely new race, cunning, strong, and packed with purpose … battle proven, merciless to himself and others.
Ernst Jünger, winner of Imperial Germany’s highest bravery award, the Pour le Mérite (the ‘Blue Max’) at the age of 23 in the First World War and author ofStorm of Steel.
The Waffen-SS
In the near-anarchy of Germany’s Weimar Republic of the 1930s it was commonplace at political meetings for fights to break out and speakers to be physically attacked by thugs from opposing parties. This was especially true for Communist and Nazi events, and the parties organised their supporters into paramilitary groups to both protect themselves and attack opponents. The Nazis enshrined this activity in the brown-shirtedSturmabteilung (the SA– Storm Troop), but as the size of the SA ballooned it became harder to control. Under the increasingly strident leadership of the flamboyant ex-soldier Ernst Röhm, the SA began to demand revolutionary social change in Germany that was unacceptable both to Hitler and his backers in the German Army (theReichswehr) and big business. Hitler needed a counter-balance to the SA and he found it in the concept of a small, élite, political police force answerable only to him – the SS.
Originally a tiny 20-man group of toughs recruited to protect Hitler personally as Nazi Party leader, the pre-warSchützstaffel (the SS – Protection Squad) was the brainchild of one of his subordinates, the bespectacled and unprepossessing Heinrich Himmler. Hitler bestowed upon him the rather grandiose title of Reichsführer-SS and encouraged a rivalry with the SA. Himmler was loyal but also possessed of vaulting ambition, and he used his talents as a ruthless political intriguer and administrator to take Hitler’s original idea and, in less than a decade, create nothing less than a state within a state, and a multi-faceted organisation whose malign power and influence spread across Germany and all the occupied lands.
As the SS gradually became a byword for every aspect of Nazi activity, Himmler did not forget its original purpose; indeed it was central to his plans for the future. Sitting in his headquarters, in a former art school on the Prinz Albrecht Strasse in Berlin, or in the restored Gothic grandeur of the Schloss Wewelsburg in Westphalia, the strict vegetarian and one-time chicken farmer dreamed of an SS empire that stretched from the Atlantic to the Urals. That empire was to be created and safeguarded by a new force, not the existing German Army, but by a ‘second army of the state’, utterly loyal and dedicated to the ideology of National Socialism – the ‘Armed’ orWaffen-SS.
Political soldiers
For the new Waffen-SS, Himmler translated Hitler’s vague concept into a fully-fledged programme encompassing everything from unbelievably strict entrance criteria, to exacting training standards, to views on religion and morality, even down to the minutiae of uniforms. As ever with Himmler the key was ‘detail’. All nations’ armed forces have entry standards, usually physical, educational and moral ones. Recruits must have the physical fitness and level of education that enables them to perform their duties, while being of good character and not a convicted felon. For the Waffen-SS these baseline requirements were taken to a hitherto unheard of extreme. Recruits had to be aged between 17 and 22, and a minimum of 5’9” tall (168cm – above the average for the time and also Himmler’s height). They had to be physically fit and at least of secondary education standard, although university graduates were quite rare, unlike in the Army.
While these standards weren’t unduly strict in themselves, they were overlaid with a ‘racial and political’ element that was exacting to say the least. From 1935 onwards Himmler instituted the requirement for every would-be SS recruit to prove their ‘pure’ Aryan genealogy, dating back to 1800 for enlisted men and 1750 for officer candidates –great-grandparents and beyond. Having to produce a family tree to enlist was unheard of i
