Waffen-SS

The Waffen-SS grew out of the armed SS units of the 1930s: Hitler’s bodyguard, the SS-Verfügungstruppe and the concentration camp guards. The name came into general use in 1940. From a few regiments in 1939 it grew to more than 30 divisions and several hundred thousand men. From 1941 units were raised from volunteers and conscripts from many European countries.

The Waffen-SS fought on every front under the operational command of the Wehrmacht but answered to Himmler. Its men murdered prisoners and civilians and took part in mass shootings in the East and in the Holocaust; its units carried out the massacres at Oradour-sur-Glane and Malmedy and helped crush the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. The Nuremberg tribunal treated it as part of the SS and so as a criminal organisation, conscripts excepted.