SS Officers - After The Nazi Seizure of Power

After The Nazi Seizure of Power

After the Nazi seizure of power, the mission of the SS expanded from the protection of the person of Adolf Hitler to the internal security of the Nazi regime. In 1936 Himmler described this new mission of the SS in his pamphlet, "The SS as an Anti-Bolshevist Fighting Organization".

We shall unremittingly fulfill our task, the guaranty of the security of Germany from the interior, just as the Wehr-macht guarantees the safety, the honor, the greatness, and the peace of the Reich from the exterior. We shall take care that never again in Germany, the heart of Europe, will the Jewish-Bolshevistic revolution of subhumans be able to be kindled either from within or through emissaries from without. Without pity we shall be a merciless sword of justice for all those forces whose existence and activity we know, on the day of the slightest attempt, may it be today, may it be in decades or may it be in centuries.

Following Hitler's assumption of power in Germany, the SS became regarded as a state organization and a branch of the established government. The Headquarters Staff, SD, and Race Office became full-time paid employees, as did the leaders of the SS-Gruppen and some of their command staffs. The rest of the SS were considered part-time volunteers, and in this concept the Allgemeine-SS came into being.

By the autumn of 1933, Hitler's personal bodyguard (previously the 1st SS Standarte located in Munich) had been called to Berlin to replace the Army Chancellery Guard as protectors of the Chancellor of Germany. In November 1933, the SS guard in Berlin became known as the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler. In April 1934, Himmler modified the name to Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler (LSSAH). The LSSAH would later become the first division in the Order of Battle of the Waffen-SS.