Hitler's SS: Murder and Loyalty

Hitler's SS: Murder and Loyalty

What role did the SS, or Schutzstaffel play for Germany?

The SS, or Schutzstaffel, played a variety of roles before and during World War II, showing a twisted versatility between loyalty to Hitler and patriotism.   From their beginning as personal bodyguards, through their emergence as an elite fighting force, to their establishment of a vast business of concentration camps, these "men in black" used power as a stepping stone to an elite status.   Carefully weeded out through strict and rigorous standards, members of the SS were given an elitist dogma to follow.   The standards by which the SS were trained and carried out their orders actually began during the First World War.
The SS was the brainchild of Captain Rohr of the Imperial German Army long before Adolf Hitler or Heinrich Himmler were known.   During the trench warfare of World War I, the German General Staff realized that a more highly mobile unit was needed.   Early experiments did not produce much promise, until Captain Rohr perfected the idea of using highly trained and superbly fit men.   These men received special treatment, were distinguished by a different uniform, and did not suffer the hardship in the trenches except when absolutely needed for a job.   The leaders of these men were young officers in "prime physical condition," fiercely loyal, and believing that the war had been lost because of a lack of support from the homeland.     After World War I, these men were used to maintain order in the Republic, which led way to the Freikorps.   The SS evolved further in 1923, when they were known as Hitler’s Shock Troops and became a "defined elite" within the National Socialist movement.  
In 1929, Heinrich Himmler took control of the SS as Reichsfuehrer.   Himmler had been deeply influenced by Richard Walther Darre, who had spent much of his life studying the European peasant class, with great interest in the racial background and history of the German peasantry. Darre would later become head of...