SS leadership

A key feature of SS officer training was instilling leadership and self-sacrifice. There was none of the social élitism of the army officer corps, which was still dominated by aristocratic families. SS officers were taught to endure the same hardships as their men and to lead by example. There was much talk of the SS being a "brotherhood" in which every member was equal, no matter what his formal rank, and united by shared hardships and loyalty to Hitler. Thus officers and enlisted men often referred to each other by first names. An SS officer was taught to gain his men's trust and respect through demonstrating that he was fitter, a better shot or a superior driver than his men. Once he had proved to them he could do their job, they would respect him as a man and soldier. Then, in the heat of battle, they would follow him come what may.

Within the armed SS there was a unique brand of élitism, which was cultivated by the distinctive character of the early regiments formed during the 1930s. The officers and men of these units often remained together throughout the war. They became close-knit fighting units that learnt their trade together and shared the glory of victory and the privations of defeat. This level of unit cohesion was unsurpassed in the German military during World War II and can account for much of the battlefield success of the Waffen-SS.

The Leibstandarte

The Leibstandarte under Dietrich operated largely under its own agenda during the 1930s, even though it was officially part of the SS-VT. Its role as the Führer's bodyguard meant its soldiers spent much of their time in Berlin standing sentry duty outside the Reich Chancellery. They were a law unto themselves because of Dietrich's direct access to the Führer, and this frustrated Hausser's initial attempts to involve the Leibstandarte in his efforts to professionalize the armed SS. Hausser was at first only allowed to "attend" Leibstandarte parades and had no power to issue regulations or orders to the unit. As the SS-VT became a more professional military organization, the other units started to joke that the Leibstandarte were "asphalt soldiers" because all they seemed to do was march up and down in Berlin. These jokes touched a nerve, and Dietrich soon began to draft in more of the new officers from the Junkerschule into his unit, and then began to allow the exchange of company and battalion commanders from other SS units.

The SS hierarchy

The other units of the SS-VT had their own distinctive traditions and characters, and they all became highly competitive to prove they were better than their rivals. While the Leibstandarte were the "aristocrats" of the SS-VT, Hausser's men in the Germania and Deutschland Regiments liked to boast about their new-found military prowess. There was great rivalry between Dietrich and Hausser. The former stressed his man-management and leadership skills because of his closeness to "his boys"; Hausser liked to portray himself as a skilled tactician and professional staff officer.

The "lowest of the low" in the SS hierarchy were the Totenkopfverbönde, who were perceived as little more than over-dressed jail guards by combat-trained SS men. Eicke's guards were always considered outsiders by the other armed SS men because they had their own training schools and owed their loyalty to the concentration camp boss rather than to Hausser or Dietrich. Even after the Totenkopf Division was formally absorbed into the Waffen-SS in 1940, it remained a very different unit, and it was rare for officers from other divisions to serve in its ranks.

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