SS (abbreviation of the words Schutzstaffel « level of protection »)

Military formation of the party German national-Socialist, created in 1925. The SS, which were used initially as bodyguards in Hitler and which were directed by Himmler as from 1929, transfer their manpower to pass from 200 men at the origin to 52 000 men in 1933 and 250 000 in 1939. Until 1934, they depended on SA After the liquidation of the latter (see Nuit of the long knives), they became the principal instrument of the mode Nazi for the maintenance of law and order, as well inside the country as (as from 1939) in the occupied territories. Creation, in 1940, of Waffen-SS instituted, at the sides of Wehrmacht, an army corps of elite (nearly forty divisions), engaged in all the major operations of the war and in particular framing the foreign volunteers combatant in the German army.