Schutzstaffeln

The next series of German soldiers during WWII was the SS (Schutzstaffeln) or "protection squads". They started off only being Hitler's personal bodyguards in 1925. Later they became the most powerful organization in Germany when they were under control of Heinrich Himmler in 1929. There was a few sections of the SS during the war and they all had their own role to play. In 1939, they seperated in two groups, Waffen (Armed) SS and Allgemeine (General) SS. Under the Waffen SS, there was the regular Waffen- SS, which was like a second army. Death's Head SS who ran concentration camps, and their role was to execute Jews and other civilians. The most notorious atrocities were made by the Einsatzgruppen. They were a mobile unit of SS that were attached to the Wehrmacht. Relentlessly, the Einsatzgruppen were responsible for 900,000 civilian deaths in the Soviet Union. If you were back in Nazi Germany and wanted to join the SS, you had to be a true aryan. Blond hair, blue eyes and only from German blood were all the ss soldiers. Throughout the war, SS soldiers were feared by the prisoners in concentration camps to the front lines to following the army and finishing off all the Soviet citizens.