SS-Totenkopfverbände
Encyclopedia : S : SS : SST : SS-Totenkopfverbände
The SS-Totenkopfverbände (SS-TV) — the Skull or "Death's Head" Formations — were made up of Nazi Germany's concentration camp guards. During World War II the SS-TV also provided troops for one of the first combat unit of the Waffen-SS, the Totenkopfdivision, which eventually evolved into one of Nazi Germany's most formidable combat formations.
The SS-TV was established by Brigadeführer Theodor Eicke to provide the personnel for the manning of the concentration camps, such as Dachau (where the first unit was established), Sachsenhausen and Oranienburg, the town north of Berlin where the Eicke's office had been established.
Following the Night of the Long Knives, a purge ordered by Adolf Hitler of potential political rivals in the Sturmabteilung, or SA in June 1934, Eicke, who had played a major role in that affair, was appointed the Inspector of Concentration Camps and Commander of SS guard formations (Inspekteur der Konzentrationslager und Führer der SS Wachverbände); he was also promoted to the rank of SS-Gruppenführer. On March 29, 1936, the Reichsführer-SS officially designated these units as the SS-Totenkopfverbände. The term Totenkopf, or "Death's Head", remained until the dissolution of the SS in 1945, although the nature of the organization had changed dramatically before and during the war.
External links
| |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SS branches | |||||
| Allgemeine-SS | Waffen-SS | |||||
| Leadership | |||||
| Reichsführer-SS | Regional leaders | Personnel | |||||
| Headquarters | |||||
| Office of the Reichsführer-SS | Head Administrative Office | Head Operational Office | Reich Central Security Office | Police Office | Economics and Administration Office | Office of Race and Settlement | Main Office for Ethnic Germans | Office of the Reich Commissioner for Germanic Resettlement | SS Courts Office | Personnel Office | Education Office | |||||
| Special services | |||||
| Concentration camp guards | Death squads | Hitler's bodyguards | Intelligence service (SD) | |||||
| Police units | |||||
| Regular police (Orpo) | Criminal police (Kripo) | Secret police: Gestapo and Sipo | |||||
| Waffen-SS units | |||||
| | Waffen-SS divisions | |||||
| SS publications | |||||
| Das Schwarze Korps | |||||
| SS-controlled businesses | |||||
Holdings: Ostindustrie | Deutsche Wirtschaftsbetriebe
| |||||
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.