The training schedule

Senior armed SS commanders wanted their men to be "supple, adaptable soldiers, athletic of bearing, capable of more than average endurance on the march and in combat", and to be "as much at home on the battlefield as on the athletic field". Recruits were roused from their beds at 06:00 hours each morning. They were then subjected to extensive physical training to toughen them up so that eventually they could run 3km (1.86 miles) in 20 minutes wearing full combat kit. Extra physical training was put on the schedule during bad weather to "harden" up the recruits. Later in the morning, recruits underwent training with their weapons on firing ranges. Afternoons were spent doing sports and athletics to help build up recruits' stamina and team spirit. Military skills had a high priority, so drill and parades were a low priority during the training of SS recruits, except for potential Leibstandarte men who had to parade in public in Berlin. The final ingredient of SS training was ideological indoctrination to ensure that recruits were fully prepared to be foot soldiers in the coming war for racial supremacy against the untermenschen. As training progressed, recruits underwent increasingly sophisticated training, including fire-and-manoeuvre training with live ammunition to teach them how to assault enemy strongpoints using the aggressive "stormtrooper" tactics perfected in the later years of World War I.

Specialist units

While the early armed SS units were predominantly infantry, by the late 1930s the first specialist armoured car, motorcycle, artillery, engineer and communications units started to be formed. The SS began to create its own training schools to turn out these specialist soldiers to a high level of skill. Many of the instructors were former army specialists who had been attracted to the armed SS. Next, the SS formed its own junior noncommissioned officer school at Lauenburg to train its troops to command small groups of men in combat situations. During the war the Waffen-SS established an artillery school at Glau and a panzergrenadier school at Keinschlag.

SS officer training

The SS put great emphasis on the selection and training of its officers. Although the first generation of senior SS men, such as Dietrich and Eicke, were old hands from the Nazi Party's street-fighting days, it was recognized that to turn the armed SS into an élite fighting force a more professional officer corps was needed. The recruitment of professional staff officers, such as Hausser, to set up the SS-VT Inspectorate helped improve the quality of the armed SS's higher echelons. There was still, however, a big skills gap at the junior and middle-ranking level. Only SS men who had served two years in the ranks were accepted for officer training. This meant they were already highly trained before they attended either of the Junkerschule at Bad Tölz or Braunschweig.

Potential SS officers were put through an even more rigorous regime, which included far more extensive use of live ammunition in training than for ordinary SS recruits. The results were impressive, the training turned out highly aggressive and self-confident young officers who soon proved themselves in the early Blitzkrieg campaigns of the war. By the end of 1937, the officer training system was running at high gear, turning out 400 officers a year. Before these men could rise through the ranks, the middle- and higher-level command positions in SS units had to be filled by many of the old-guard SS men. This led to accusations that SS officers were not on a par with their Wehrmacht counterparts. Such accusations would continue for many years, until the brutal rigour of combat culled the "dead wood" and allowed the young talent to rise up the ranks.

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