Army of Evil: A History of the SS (31 page)

However, this began to change on the Night of the Long Knives—30 June 1934. The majority of the killings on that night and throughout the following week were undertaken by political readiness units, especially the
Leibstandarte
, which provided the firing squad in Stadelheim Prison. Their reward came on 26 July, when Hitler declared
that the SS was now an independent organisation within the NSDAP. This was followed by his directive that the organisation should press ahead with the creation of “a politically dependable SS security force, distinct from the army, upon which he could call for prompt action in times of stress or crisis for the protection of the German people and the State.”
⁹
After discussions in September between Himmler and the Ministry of Defence, a directive was issued on the 24th by Defence Minister General von Blomberg, setting out the organisational structure of the new armed force—the SS-Special Purpose Troops. The directive also stated that they were to be recruited from members of the political readiness units.

As originally envisaged, the force was to comprise three regiments that would be organised, equipped and manned in the same way as regular army infantry regiments, together with a separate signals battalion. (In December 1934, it was decided to add a reconnaissance battalion, based in Satzweld, and an engineering battalion, based in Dresden, to this order of battle.) Training and logistical support were to be provided by the army (which would be reimbursed by the SS); pay would be provided by the Ministry of the Interior, and would follow the appropriate military scales. An official decree issued by Hitler on 2 February 1935 gave these arrangements legal force, and further explained that the Special Purpose Troops would be organised into a division in time of war—with a divisional headquarters, artillery and “divisional troops” supplied by the regular army. This decree also specified that the concentration camp guards of the Death’s Head units were to receive military training under the supervision of the Ministry of Defence.

The command relationships within the Special Purpose Troops in peacetime were complex. Military training and organisation were the responsibilities of the army, through local military district and garrison commanders, but non-military matters were handled by the regional SS command system. In wartime, everything was to be placed under army control.

While all of this was being clarified, Himmler took the opportunity to establish the status of each branch of his organisation.
¹⁰
Henceforth, the SS would consist of three distinct elements: the Special Purpose Troops (including the
Leibstandarte
), which would be the organisation’s full-time military force; the guard units (later the Death’s Head units), comprising concentration camp guards and other specialised guard and security details; and the
Allgemeine-SS
(General-SS), consisting of “all former active SS units not quartered in barracks’
¹¹
—in effect, members of the old political SS who had largely political duties. With this established, Himmler’s primary task was to find volunteers for the new military branch. The
Leibstandarte
and the political readiness units had originally been staffed from the General-SS, but the creation of the Special Purpose Troops had added a new element: service in either them or the
Leibstandarte
would now fulfil an individual’s obligation to perform national military service. Clearly, this required a different type of man from the typical SS political bruiser, but the principle of strict selectivity in recruitment would still apply. The key stipulations were that applicants had to be under twenty-three years of age and prepared to enlist for five years. They also had to be at least 1.7 metres tall and must not need spectacles. On application, they had to show their eligibility for military service by presenting their defence registration number, as well as a certificate of medical fitness, a police reference or a copy of their police record and a reference from a previous employer. Finally, they had to draw up a family tree to prove their “Aryan” ancestry. At this stage, applicants from the General-SS were permitted to transfer into the Special Purpose Troops and retain their existing rank or grade. The application criteria were made a little stricter the next year, when the minimum height was increased to 1.74 metres. Furthermore, members of the General-SS could no longer take their rank with them if they joined the Special Purpose Troops. On the other hand, the enlistment period was reduced to four years.

In December 1936, the selection criteria were reviewed yet again.
The “Leaflet for Enlistment in the SS-Special Purpose Troops and Death’s Head Units” issued the following guidelines:

Seven years later, in a speech to naval officers, Himmler famously remarked: “Until 1936, we did not accept a man in the
Leibstandarte
or Special Purpose Troops if he had even one filled tooth. We were able to assemble the most magnificent manhood in the early Waffen-SS.”
¹³
This was an exaggeration: the stringent conditions set by Himmler were unsustainable and they simply had to be relaxed. In December 1938 he issued
¹⁴
the following instruction:

As the war continued, all pretence at maintaining even these standards was abandoned outside of high-profile, specialised units such as Hitler’s
Kommando
escort. In practice, the physical criterion for SS membership was essentially reduced to no more than basic medical fitness.

*
This incident features in the novel and film
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin.
A further four thousand prisoners subsequently died when the ships transporting them from Cephalonia struck mines and sank.

*
This building is now the headquarters of the Berlin branch of the German Federal Archives.

*
This was a militarised unit of the Prussian Police, rather than the similarly named Luftwaffe unit created some years later.

T
he armed SS units required officers at all levels. In the early days, these were primarily SS members with experience of low-level command in the German Army or the Free Corps—men like Sepp Dietrich, who had been a sergeant major in the Tank Regiment and a police NCO. However, to create a credible force, an injection of higher-level military talent was required, so Himmler began the process of recruiting senior officers. Of course, like their subordinates, all of these men had to display a suitable outlook.

The most important of these officer recruits was Paul Hausser, born in 1880 to an aristocratic Prussian family. He joined the German Army as a cadet in 1892 and graduated from Lichterfelde to become an infantry officer in 1899. In the 1900s, he attended the Prussian
Kriegsakademie
(War College) and was selected for the General Staff—the true elite of the German Army. He was promoted to captain shortly before the outbreak of the First World War.

Hausser’s war record was steady rather than spectacular. He served on the staffs of a number of formations, as well as on Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria’s personal staff, and was a major by the time of the
armistice. Thereafter, he briefly commanded an infantry regiment and border-defence units along Germany’s eastern frontier before joining the newly constituted, post-Versailles 100,000-man army. His career continued in its unspectacular fashion: after a series of promotions, he reached the rank of major general in 1931. The next year, according to Hausser’s SS file, political differences with the army forced his resignation. He left with the honorary rank (and pension) of a lieutenant general.

Hausser then became a regional leader for the broadly nationalist
Stahlhelm
Old Comrades’ Association. When this group was incorporated into the SA, he was happy to accept the “reserve” rank of SA-colonel. A little later, when Himmler came looking for a suitable candidate to oversee the creation of an officer-training system for the SS, Hausser was equally happy to move across to the SS, which he did on 15 November 1934. He became member 239795, a number that reflected the startling growth of the SS since 1929.