Waffen-SS: Yugoslavia and Greece, 1941

Background

Himmler's plans to expand his new army were coming to fruition, and in August 1940 he formally established the Waffen-SS as a branch of his SS organization. The term had been in general usage since late in 1939 to describe armed SS units, but Himmler now created the Kommando der Waffen-SS inside his SS headquarters.

Eicke's battalions

By the summer there were more than 100,000 men in SS combat units, and the system to train, equip and organize them was in desperate need of being streamlined. Crucially, the new organization brought under central control the Totenkopfverbönde's byzantine network of reserve units that Eicke used as his personal pool of battle casualty replacements to keep his division up to strength. Eicke had built up 15 regiments of reservists and two cavalry regiments during the previous two years, making him one of the most powerful officers in the SS. The other armed SS units had no such facility, and Himmler believed it was essential to take charge of them if his Waffen-SS units were not to be bled dry by heavy battle casualties. The army was still imposing restrictions on the number of recruits the SS could take, so Himmler considered it a matter of urgency to streamline the recruitment of the Waffen-SS.

While the rationalizing of the SS's personnel management system was at the heart of the dispute between Himmler and Eicke, the SS supremo also saw the Totenkopf commander as a potential rival for Hitler's favour and wanted to clip his wings before he became too powerful. Dietrich was also not happy with having to report to the new Waffen-SS headquarters, but he soon worked out how to ignore it and make use of his "back channels" to communicate directly with Hitler. A Leibstandarte guard battalion protected Hitler at all times, so Dietrich could get through to the Führer if need be.

New Waffen-SS divisions

The extra manpower authorized by the armed SS in 1939 started to come on-line in the summer of 1940. Rather than disband temporary units, such as the Polizei Division, that had been created in late 1939 to allow the SS to deploy three combat divisions, Himmler persuaded Hitler to keep them in place and to use the newly trained manpower to create more Waffen-SS divisions.

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