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The Allgemeine-SS (General SS) is what is normally thought of as the SS. Allgemeine means 'general'. It was the the non-military or combat branch of the SS. The Allgemeine-SS units were, however, organized in a military fashion. They were divided into Standarten, Abschnitte, and Oberabschnitte. Many Allgemeine-SS men were employed in civil service programs, the NAZI Party, and the police which were absorbed into the SS structure. All members of the Allgemeine-SS were essentially reservists, in part because satus, both personal and careerwise came through military service. Many served in the German military or the Waffen-SS during the War. This often meant separate military and SS ranks. The Allgemeine-SS is the organization that had all of the SS administrative units as well as the police command and concentration camps. The organization was huge and the dtructure is probably best described as labyrinthian. It was still not fully understood at the time of the Nuremberg IMT trials following the War. We have a much better understanding today. It was within the Allgemeine-SS that the Holocaust was planned as well as Generalplan Ost and even more ambitious murder plan to to essentially remake the ethnic map of Europe by murdering tens of millions of people. Only the survival of the Red Army after Hitler launched Barbarossa prevented the SS from fully executing the Plan. From the beginning, race was at the heart of Himmler's SS. He saw the SS as the modern reconstitution of the Teutonic Knights with himself as the new grand master. It was his goal to oversee the breeding of a new Herrenvolk aristocracy based on traditional Germanic values of honor, obedience, courage and loyalty. The SS was to be instrument of a vast racial engineering project which Himmler saw as based on science. Thus the Allgemeine-SS units included a range of study groups concerned with race and resettlement as well other issue of interest to Himmler like archeology and anthropolgy--the Ahnenerbe. As well as his pet project--Lebensborn. A very important economic unit built around the Holocaust and slave labor from the concentration camps.
the Allgemeine-SS was the principal part of the SS. It was originally established to protect Hitkler and other NAZI leaders. Hitler's body guard was SS-men. With the appointmenbt of the Reichührer Heinrich Himmler the SS acivities and functions began to expand (1929) and even more so after Hiler sized power (1933). The SS's primary function was to guarantee the NAZI hold on power through the agressive police use of police power. The enabling Act passed after the Reichstag Fire made this possible. Opponests were arested an interned outside the legal system in the new concebntratiin camos. Dachau was the first (1933). This elininated opponents or ciowed them into silence. The SS also dealt with opponents within the Party, supressing the Sa in the Night of the Long Knives. Ironically this helped gain the Army's support which feared the SA as a possible competitor, but the would create its own competitor--the Waffen SS. While security was the oprimary function, Himmler added another main function--achieving racial purity, a goal he shared with Hutler. Hitler thus used the SS to carry out the Holacaust. This was to be the beginning of a far wider racially inspired effort--Generalplan Ost. It was a plan to rmake the ethnic ans political map of Europe by murdering tens of millions of Slavs and Balts. He told a SS grouop, "Gentlemen, it is much easier in many cases to go into combat with a company than to suppress an obstructive population of low cultural level, or to carry out executions or to haul away people or to evict crying and hysterical women."
Tge Allgemeine-SS had a a major impact on all aspects of life in NAZI Germany. It was niot only the principal security agency, but carried out Hitler’s deadly racial policies. This included operating commercial ventures, steakling Jewish property and then killing Jews, and preparing a similar operation against the Balts and Sklavs to cklear the occupied East. They also operted reserch institutes and funded research to provide scientific support for NAZI racial docrines. World War II histories tend to focus on the brutal, but effective Waffen-SS, but it was the largely methodical and faceless Allgemeine-SS that was not only the power supporting Hitler in Germany, but
resoponsible for most of the Holocaust killing. The only group whivh was responsibkle for killinmg om such a cale was the Ministry of Food through its Hunger Plan.
The Allgemeine-SS (General SS) is what is normally thought of as the SS. Allgemeine means 'general'. It was the the non-military or combat branch of the SS. The Allgemeine-SS units were, however, organized in a military fashion. They were divided into Standarten, Abschnitte, and Oberabschnitte. Many Allgemeine-SS men were employed in civil service programs, the NAZI Party, and the police which were absorbed into the SS structure. All members of the Allgemeine-SS were essentially reservists, in part because satus, both personal and careerwise came through military service. Many served in the German military or the Waffen-SS during the War. This often meant separate military and SS ranks.
The Allgemeine-SS is the organization that had all of the SS administrative units as well as the police command and concentration camps. The organization was huge and the dtructure is probably best described as labyrinthian. More units were added after the War was launched, but by 1942 the 122 major units were all functioning. It was still not fully understood at the time of the Nuremberg IMT trials following the War. We have a much better understanding today. It was within the Allgemeine-SS that the Holocaust was planned as well as Generalplan Ost and even more ambitious murder plan to to essentially remake the ethnic map of Europe by murdering tens of millions of people. Only the survival of the Red Army after Hitler launched Barbarossa prevented the SS from fully executing the Plan. From the beginning, race was at the heart of Himmler's SS. He saw the SS as the modern reconstitution of the Teutonic Knights with himself as the new grand master. It was his goal to oversee the breeding of a new Herrenvolk aristocracy based on traditional Germanic values of honor, obedience, courage and loyalty. The SS was to be instrument of a vast racial engineering project which Himmler saw as based on science. Thus the Allgemeine-SS units included a range of study groups concerned with race and resettlement as well other issue of interest to Himmler like archeology and anthropolgy--the Ahnenerbe. As well as his pet project--Lebensborn. A very important economic unit built around the Holocaust and slave labor from the concentration camps.
Hauptamt means main office. This was the Personal Staff of SS-Reichührer Himmler.
This was the main Administrative Office.
this was the SS Main Operational Office meaning the military command for the Waffen-SS.
This was the SS's Main Legal Office. This was interesgting because the SS often acted outside the law, such as in the concentratiion camps. The Germans has, however, a penchant for both law and order. Thus this office was assigned for developing a new legal structure underwhich the SS could operate.
This was the SS Main Office of Race and Settlement. Himmler took a special interest in its work and assigned Richard Walther Darré to lead it when it was established (1930). A year earlier, Darré. Walther was a late comer to the NAZIS, but he had studied the racial background and history of the German peasantry which attracted Himmler's interest. Himmler gave him a important assignment of winning over the German peasantry to the NAZI Party. [Weingartner, p. 62.] Darré popularized the 'Blut und Boden' phrase as the NAZIs were rising to power. [Darré] He was a strong proponent of eugenics. Hitler upon seizing power rewarded Darré by appointing him Minister of Food and Agriculture.
After Poland surrendered (October 7, 1939), Hitler appointed Himmler Reich Commissar for the Strengthening of German Ethnic Stock (Reichskommissar für die Festigung deutschen Volkstums-RKFDV). He authorized the SS to plan, initiate, and control the pace of German settlement and population transfer projects in occupied Poland, and, subsequently in the occupied Soviet Union. Himmler delegated the RKFDV projects to SS organizations, imckuding the RuSHA. They were tasked with deciding who was German, where ethnic Germans should live, and whhich people shoid be fiorced out or murdered to make room for the new German settlers. One of Himmler's pet projects was the Lebensborn e.V. It was a state supported, registered state association supported by state funds. It was overseen by the RuSHA, but funding was obtained from state and private sources. The SS used its police power to support the effort. Mzny of the Lebensborn homes were facilities seized from Jews and Jewish charities.
This was the SS Main Office for personnel matters.
Hitler and the NAZIs strove to create a police state from as soon as Hitler was appointed chancellor. There were at first condtitutional difficulties, especially the fact that police power was difused among the various German states. Hitler;s approached was to begin by seize control of the police in two major states, Prussia and Bavaria. Göring was placed in charge of the Prussian police and Himmler the Bavarian police. From that beginning the NAZIs steadily expanded their control of the German police, kncreasing bits aithority, reducing judicial authotity, and centralizing the force. The final step in the process of centralizing the police undervNAZI command was the creation of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA -- Reich Security Office). Just before Hitler launched World War II, he ordered the centralization of all agencies of state security within the SS, bluring the lines between a NAZI Party agency and a central government police agency. The RSHA thus became a SS unit responsible for combating the enemies of National Socialism. Reinhard Heydrich, Himmler's most poweful subordinate and with direct access to the Führer, was appointed to head the RSHA. Under Himmler's deft hand, the RHSA was created (1939). It combined the NAZI security aparatus under one command. It included the Sicherheitsdienst (SD -- Security Police), Kriminalpolizei (state criminal police--Kripo), and the Geheime Staatspolizei (state secret police--Gestapo). Many authors refer to the Gestapo as the NAZI secret police. In fact the Gestap was only one part of the NAZI security aparatus. The correct term is the RSHA. A unit of the RSHA was Amt VI headed by SS Colonel Adolph Eichmann who oversaw the mechanics of the Holocaust. The planning for Generalplan Ost (GPO) was another RSHA undertaking.
This was the Main Office of the Ordnungspolizei (Order Police--Orpo). The Ordnungspolizei or Orpo (Order Police) were the uniformed regular police force in Germany. The two major branches were the Schupo (Municipal Police) and Gendarmerie (Rural Police). Hitler issued a decree naming Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler Chef der Deutschen Polizei im Reichsministerium des Innern (Chief of German Police in the Interior Ministry) (1936). It was a mjeasure seeking to 'unify the control of police duties in the Reich'. Thus the Order Police came under Himmler's control (1936) who moved to absorbed into the Nazi police RSHA system. The nen wore green uniforms and were commmonly called the Grüne Polizei (green police). Under NAZI control, the Orpo became a centralized organisation uniting the municipal, city, and rural uniformed forces that had been varuiously organized organised on a state-by-state basis. Himmler sought to bring in virtually all of Germany's unifornmed law-enforcement agencies abd and emergency response organizations (including fire brigades, coast guard, civil defense, and even night watchmen) within the organization confines of the Orpo. The Orpo played an important role in the Holocaust, not only in the Reich, but in the occupied countrues as well. The Orpo were commanded by SS-Oberstgruppenführer Kurt Daluege.
As Germany moved toward war, military Orpo units were organized (1938). They included: police battalions, police regiments, and Schupo regiments. After the War began, these units were deployed in the occupied countries to main order abd NAZI control. They performed police duties, attempted gto supress the opartisans, and supported regular Wehrmacht troops. They played an important role in the Holocaust. They guarding the ghettos establisghed in Poland abd helped execute the various evacuations, deportations, and mass murder Aktions. Orpo men heped make up the Einsatzgruppen organized by the RSHA.
This was the Economic and Administration Main Office which among other functions administered the concentration camp system. The SS-WVHA was responsible for managing the Allgemeine-SS's finances, supply, and business operations. It was also given responsibility ran the concentration camps. It had a role in implementing the Holocaust Final Solution through its Concentration Camps Inspectorate and SS camp guards (Totenkopfverbände). The great bulk of the killing was done by RSHA units in the death camps and the Einsatzgruppen, also RSHA formations. There were, however, economic aspects to the Holocaust. Property was stolen from Jews under various guises until ultimately they were forced to turn over their last personal belongings before being shot or gassed. Even after death gold fillings were extracted. SS-Obergruppenführer Oswald Pohl worked with Reichswirtschaftsminister Walter Funk concerning financial aspects of the Holocaust. These items were transported from occupied Poland to Berlin in WVHA-marked crates for processing at the Reichsbank, the German central bank. The Reichbank director was Emil Puhl. Some 76 WVHA transports reached Berlin (August 1942-January 1945). This was some of the most vissible property. The SS-WVHA also managed slave labor which they in some cases rented to out to German corporations involved in the war economy.
This was the Racial German Assistance Main Office responsible for efforts to assis or more correctly exploit the Volksdeutsche (ethnic Germans) living outside the Reich. Interesting the largest such population was in the United States. This was politically expolsive, but potentially useful as Hitler wanted to keep the United States neutral and out if the war until he completed the conquest of Europe. In this regards the hevily German populated Midwest was a main stay of the Isolationist movement in the United States. As the war developed, the VOMI became involved in the Lebensraum (living space) effort in Eastern Europe. VOMI worked with the ethnic Germans who on Hitker's orders retuned Home to the Reich from the Baltic before the war and from northeastern Romanian before it was seized by the Sioviets. Himmler planned to use them to reppopulare western Poland after it was ioccupied by the Wehermacht at the onset of the war. Before doing so this office was to evaluate them for both ethnic purity and political reliability.
This was the SS Education Office created by SS-Obergruppenführer August Heissmeyer whon had been put in charge iof the NAZI Political Training Schools (NAPOLA).
This was the Main Office of the Hauptamt Reichskommissar für die Festigung Deutschen Volkstums Reich (Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Nationhood -- RKFVD/RKF). After the victory in Poland, Hitler issud a decree authorizing SS-Reichführer to proceed to Germanize occupied Oolabnd (October 7, 1939). Hitler ordered the Baltic Germans Home to the Reich before the Soviets moved into the Baltic Republics. The same occurred in Riomania. This left a great deal o be done. Tghe Germans returning to the Reich had to be assessed. And the existing popuilarion in Poland had to be assessed and the Poles forced into the General Government. Other issues included
the 'elimination of the injurious influence' of 'national foreign populations on German folk community' as ell as the 'the design of new German settlements through relocation'. Thiosas put in motion by the German-Soviet Border and Friendship Treaty (September 28, 1939) designed to regulated the relarions between the two counties that had invaded abnd occupied Poland.
Darré, Richard Walther. Neuadel aus Blut und Boden (A New Nobility Based On Blood And Soil) (1930).
Weingartner, James, J. "Thev Race and Settlement Main Office: Towards an orden of blood and soil," The Historian Vol. 34, Issuie 1 (November 1971), pp. 62-77.
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