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The
SS originally contained two other formations,
the SS Verfügungstruppe, a force consisting
of SS members who volunteered for four years'
armed service in lieu of compulsory service with
the Army, and the SS Totenkopf Verbände,
special troops employed to guard concentration
camps, which came under the control of the SS in
1934. The SS Verfügungstruppe was organized
as an armed unit to be employed with the Army in
the event of mobilization. In the summer of
1939, the Verfügungstruppe was equipped as
a motorized division to form the nucleus of the
forces which came to be known in 1940 as the
Waffen SS. In that year the Waffen SS comprised
100,000 men, 56,000 coming from the Verfügungstruppe
and the rest from the Allgemeine SS and the
Totenkopf Verbände. At the end of the war
it is estimated to have consisted of about
580,000 men and 40 divisions. The Waffen SS was
under the tactical command of the Army, but was
equipped and supplied through the administrative
branches of the SS and under SS disciplinary
control.
The
SS Central Organization had 12 main offices. The
most important of these were the RSHA, which has
already been discussed, the WVHA or Economic
Administration Main Office which administered
concentration camps along with its other duties.
a Race and Settlement Office together with
auxiliary offices for repatriation of racial
Germans (Volksdeutschemittelstelle). The SS
Central Organization also had a legal office and
the SS possessed its own legal system; and its
personnel were under the jurisdiction of special
courts. Also attached to the SS main offices was
a research foundation known as the Experiments
Ahnenerbe. The scientists attached to this
organization are stated to have been mainly
honorary members of the SS. During the war an
institute for military scientific research
became attached to the Ahnenerbe which conducted
extensive experiments involving the use of
living human beings. An employee of this
institute was a certain Dr. Rascher, who
conducted these experiments with the full
knowledge of the Ahnenerbe, which were
subsidized and under the patronage of the
Reichsführer SS who was a trustee of the
foundation.
Beginning
in 1933 there was a gradual but thorough
amalgamation of the police and SS. In 1936
Himmler, the Reichsführer SS, became Chief
of the German Police with authority over the
regular uniformed police as well as the Security
Police. Himmler established a system under which
Higher SS and Police Leaders, appointed for each
Wehrkreis, served as his personal
representatives in coordinating the activities
of the Order Police, Security Police and SD and
Allgemeine SS within their jurisdictions. In
1939 the SS and police systems were coordinated
by taking into the SS all
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