Command staff Reichsführer SS

The Reichsführer SS command staff was created on May 6, 1941 by renaming the command staff of the Reichsführer SS at the SS Leadership Main Office, which Heinrich Himmler had already formed on April 7, 1941 as a commanding body for mobile killing units . Initially assigned to the SS leadership main office, the RFSS command staff was later directly subordinate to Himmler.

The two SS infantry brigades and the SS cavalry brigade , which consisted of the SS regiments that were renamed SS-Totenkopf-Standarten 7, 8, 9, 10, in SS-Infanterie- Regiments or the SS-Totenkopf-Reiter-Standarten 1 and 2 in SS-Kavallerie-Regiments 1 and 2 were created. Motorized units of the SS postal protection as so-called "SS security battalions" were subordinate to the command staff.

On June 30, 1941, the strength of the RFSS command staff is given as 18,438 men.

Structure and composition of the command staff Reichsführer SS (after Cüppers)

Chief of Staff: SS Brigade Leader Kurt Knoblauch

Department I (management department)

Ia SS-Obersturmbannführer Fritz Friday

Ic SS-Hauptsturmführer Rudolf May

Id SS-Sturmbannführer Ernst Rode

Ig SS-Obersturmbannführer Dr. Ernst Höhne

Department II (Adjutantur)

Head of the Adjutantur : SS-Hauptsturmführer Alfons Zeitler

IIa SS-Hauptsturmführer Alfons Zeitler, from November 1942 to probably 1943 Bernhard Frank

IIb SS-Hauptsturmführer Emil Reichherzer

Department III (judiciary)

Command judge: SS-Obersturmbannführer Horst Bender

Department VI (ideological training and troop support)

Head of department: SS-Obersturmbannführer Karl-Heinz Bürger

Quartermaster's Department

Chief Quartermaster : SS-Standartenführer Wilhelm Hartenstein

Qu.1 SS-Hauptsturmführer Harro With

Qu.2 SS-Hauptsturmführer Franz Liebermann

H-mot. SS-Obersturmbannführer Georg-Henning von Bassewitz-Behr

IVa SS-Sturmbannführer Josef Spacil

IVb SS Brigade Leader Ernst-Robert Grawitz

IVc SS-Hauptsturmführer Hermann-Josef Held

The use of the command staff RFSS in Russia

By the end of 1941, at least 85,000 people had been killed by the RFSS command staff. In the years 1942 and 1943 the importance of the RFSS command staff declined steadily, while the units subordinate to it were more and more called in to "fight partisans and gangs" under the Higher SS and Police Leader Central Russia from Bach-Zelewski , which continues with extensive murder of Jews .

After the war, Bach-Zelewski appeared as a key witness in the Nuremberg trial of the main war criminals ; he incriminated Himmler (suicide May 23, 1945) and his former colleagues from the police leadership corps. In May 1951 he was sentenced to ten years in a labor camp by a court in Nuremberg.

Whereabouts

As early as the summer of 1942, the cavalry brigade was used to set up the SS Cavalry Division (later the 8th SS Cavalry Division "Florian Geyer" ).
The 2nd SS Infantry Brigade (motorized) was reclassified in the following spring 1943: the SS Volunteer Legions "Flanders" and "Nederland" were withdrawn, the association was replenished with Latvian protection teams and converted into Latvian SS Volunteers Brigade renamed. In March 1944 it was reclassified to the 19th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (Latvian No. 2) . The Flemish Legion formed the SS Sturmbrigade Langemarck , which in turn was renamed the 27th SS Volunteer Grenadier Division "Langemarck" (Flemish No. 1) at the end of 1944 . The Dutch Legion was officially dissolved in Grafenwoehr on May 20, 1943 , because there were not enough volunteers available for a planned Dutch division. The 4th SS Volunteer Panzer Grenadier Brigade "Nederland" was formed from the existing staff and operated as the SS Division from February 1945 .
At the end of 1943 the 1st SS Infantry Brigade (motorized) was relocated to Croatia (NDH), where it formed the cadre for the 18th SS Volunteer Panzer Grenadier Division "Horst Wessel" .

literature

F. Baude u. a. (Ed.): "Our honor means loyalty." War diary of the RFSS Command Staff. Europe, Vienna 1965.
Yehoshua Büchler: Command staff Reichsführer-SS. Himmler's Personal Murder Brigades in 1941. In: Holocaust and Genocide Studies I, No. 1, 1986, pp. 11-25. ISSN 8756-6583 .
Martin Cüppers : pioneer of the Shoah. The Waffen-SS, the Reichsführer SS command staff and the extermination of the Jews 1939–1945. WBG Darmstadt 2005. ISBN 3-534-16022-3 (also with the title: … Shoa .. without h); New edition ibid. 2011, additionally Primus-Verlag Darmstadt 2011 ISBN 3-89678-758-6 .

Individual evidence

↑ Wulff E. Brebeck (Ed.): Endzeitkampf. Ideology and Terror of the SS. (= Series of publications of the District Museum Wewelsburg. Volume 8) Accompanying volume to the permanent exhibition “Ideology and Terror of the SS” in the “ Wewelsburg Memorial and Memorial Site 1933–1945 ” of the District Museum Wewelsburg , Deutscher Kunstverlag, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-422-02327-7 , p. 74.
↑ Der Spiegel 2/1959: The dead stand up . 5 years of pre-trial detention were credited to him - he did not serve the prison sentence

[1] Wulff E. Brebeck (Ed.): Endzeitkampf. Ideology and Terror of the SS. (= Series of publications of the District Museum Wewelsburg. Volume 8) Accompanying volume to the permanent exhibition “Ideology and Terror of the SS” in the “ Wewelsburg Memorial and Memorial Site 1933–1945 ” of the District Museum Wewelsburg , Deutscher Kunstverlag, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-422-02327-7 , p. 74.

[2] Der Spiegel 2/1959: The dead stand up . 5 years of pre-trial detention were credited to him - he did not serve the prison sentence