Waffen-SS: Bodyguards for Hitler

The SS oath

The personal oath taken by each SS man encapsulated the fact that, from the moment he entered the service of Hitler, he owed his loyalty to the Führer alone and to no one else. How Hitler built up his personal guard from a small team of beer-hall bodyguards into a force of several hundred thousand in the final year of World War II is a remarkable story.

"I swear to you, Adolf Hitler, as Führer and Reich Chancellor, loyalty and bravery. I vow to you and those you have named to command me, obedience unto death. So help me God."

The aftermath of World War I

Germany in the aftermath of World War I was gripped by anarchy and political violence. The old political order of the kaiser, Wilhelm II, and the Prussian royal family was replaced by the democratic Weimar Republic. On the streets, ultra-right-wing Freikorps (mainly composed of former officers, demobilized soldiers and fanatical nationalists) battled communists. Polish troops were skirmishing with German militia units on the country's eastern borders, while British, French and American troops occupied the Rhineland. The country's economy was desperately trying to adjust from war to peace. At the same time, under the terms of the controversial Versailles Treaty, Germany had to pay huge reparations to the countries that had been the "victims" of its "aggression" during the war. Unemployment was rife as hyper-inflation destroyed many companies and demobilized soldiers found they had no jobs to return to. The treaty also forced Germany's military to be reduced to no more than 100,000 professional soldiers, and forbade it from having an air force, tanks, submarines and heavy battleships.

Extremist politics

In this climate of chaos, radical political parties proliferated as the German people sought a saviour to give them hope that their country had a future, or at least to provide answers to their problems. In the eyes of many, the new Weimar Republic lacked legitimacy, and was seen as little more than a foreign-imposed government of "traitors". Politics in post-World War I Germany was a brutal and unforgiving business. On the radical fringes it had more in common with urban warfare than rational debate. Every extreme right- and left-wing party seemed to employ a private army of heavily armed ex-soldiers, who were used to break up rivals' meetings or attempt to overthrow local governments not to their liking. Such groups included the so-called Stahlhelm (Steel Helmet), a nationalist ex-servicemen's association formed in 1918. On the left, the Red Front Fighters' Association was the army of the communists. The police and the much reduced army, the Reichswehr (Defensive Land Forces), were hard pressed to maintain order, and street battles were common in most major German cities during the early 1920s.

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