The role of the armed SS

Over the next three years a tug-of-war took place as the army tried to strangle the SS-VT at birth. The effort was to little avail, as the growth of the élite force had the personal backing of Hitler. In 1938 he issued instructions codifying the role of the SS-VT. It was to be a permanent armed force at his disposal and a formation of the Nazi Party "recruited and trained in ideological and political matters by the Reichsführer-SS" in accordance with directives given by Hitler. In case of an emergency, it was to be used by the commander-in-chief of the army within the framework of the army, subject to military law and instruction. Politically, though, the armed SS was to remain part of the Nazi Party, even if in the field army commanders had operational control.

Ultimately, Hitler envisaged the armed SS as being an "armed state police" that was to "enforce the authority of the Reich in the interior of the country". He declared that this "duty can only be carried out by a state police containing within its ranks men of the best German blood and identified unquestionably with the ideology upon which the Greater German Reich is founded. Only a formation constituted upon these lines will be able to resist subversive influences in times of crisis". Hitler further stated that "in order to ensure that the quality of the men in the Waffen-SS always remains high, the number of units must remain limited ... and should, in general, not exceed five to ten percent of the peacetime strength of the army".

SS ideology

After the setting up of the SS-VT units, a frantic effort began to train the new formations in military skills. While they were already drilled in the use of small arms, they were lacking in expertise in military tactics. Hitler insisted that the new force be fully motorized in line with his view that his élite troops had to have the best equipment available.

To speed up the process of training, each armed SS unit was twinned with a local army unit to allow it to share experience and conduct joint training. Relations between the two organizations were frosty at first, but improved as armed SS and army units participated in joint operations during the reoccupation of the Rhineland in 1936 and the union with Austria in 1938.

The armed SS, however, retained control over the selection of its recruits, their ideological training and their transformation into true Aryan warriors, soldiers who would be the vanguard of National Socialism. Hitler saw his SS troops as Aryan "supermen", who would lead the racial struggle with the untermenschen. "To judge morality properly, it must be replaced by two concepts borrowed from zoology: the taming of a beast and the breeding of a species", wrote Hitler. "The SS man must be hard, unemotional, fiercely loyal. The SS man's basic attitude must be that of a fighter for fighting's sake; he must be unquestionably obedient and become emotionally hard; he must have contempt for all Ôracial inferiors' and for those who do not belong to the order; he must feel the strongest bonds of comradeship with those who do belong, particularly his fellow soldiers, and he must think nothing impossible."

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