The SS (Schutzstaffel), formed in 1925, developed into an important force in Germany prior to and during the Second World War, simultaneously representing and carrying out the Nazi Party's racist ideology. Led by Heinrich Himmler, the group -- which grew in power largely due to its loyalty to Adolf Hitler -- initally was comprised of an order of men claiming superiority in racial purity. At the same timer, the SS was primarily responsible for the crimes against humanity committed by the Nazi regime.
The orgination, which grew out of the Sturmabteilung (SA), was formed as an elite security force for Hitler and other Nazi leaders. Until 1929, when Himmler was appointed as SS leader, the group numbered about 280. Within four years Himmler had expanded the organization to over 209,000 members. By the time World War II began, the 250,000 men were both fighting alongside the regular German army (a division known as the Waffen SS) while simultaneously helping to carry out the Nazi's barbaric racist vision in Eastern Europe. At its height in 1944, the SS had as many as 800,000 members.
After eliminating the organization from which it spawned, the SA, Himmler split the SS into separate paramilitary units called the Emergency Troops (SSVT) and the Death's Head Formations. The former, under the command of Paul Hausser, had extensive military training and took part in the invasions of sovereign lands conquered by Germany. The latter, meanwhile, ran the concentration and death camps in which many millions were exterminated.
Over time, the powerful SS took over multiple government agencies and acted as the supreme law enforcement arm both within Germany and in the conquered lands. As a result, its power and brutality went unchecked. The SS umbrella included arms as far-flung as the secret police (the Gestapo) and programs set up to coordinate Germanization in the occupied territories (the RKFdV). Another branch, the VoMi, was charged with aiding ethnic Germans.
Over time, as Germany's military expansion continued, the SS incorporated new responsibilities. One such responsibility was for the depopulation via starvation, deportation and forced labor practices in areas of the occupied lands later to become part of the Soviet Union.
The most brutal responsibilities of the SS were carried out by the Einsatzgruppen death squads. Formed by Himmler, the Einsatzgruppen murdered many civilian non-combatants, mostly Jews, in the countries occupied by Germany. Its first operation was in Poland in 1939 where tens of thousands members of the country's elite were murdered to avoid the possibility of a Polish resistance. By 1941 the Einsatzgruppen was sent further east into Russia to begin the large scale extermination of "undesirables" such as Jews, Gypsies and Communists. The most notorious of these occured in September 1941 when SS firing squads massacred 33,371 Jewish civilians in Babi Yar, a ravine in Kiev.
Beginning with the Wannsee declaration in January 1942, the SS began massive scale killings in concentration camps. Using Zyklon B pellets to create a cyanide gas, gas chambers were erected such as those in the Auschwitz camp capable of gassing and cremating up to 20,000 people per day. At this single camp alone, located in Southern Poland and chosen for its easy access via railroad, as many as 1.6 million people were killed by SS forces. It was also at Auschwitz that SS doctors such as Josef Mengele and Carl Clauberg carried out gruesome experiments on prisoners.
Even as the German Army began suffering defeats from Allied Forces both on the Eastern and Western fronts, the brutal work of the SS continued. Retreating into central Germany in the spring of 1945, SS officers were the last holdouts against the Russian Army in the Battle of Berlin and were still defending Hitler's bunker when he commited suicide on April 30. Ironically, the organization which once represented the best of the Nazi's ideals of racially pure Aryan was comprised of largely Eastern Europeans at its end and it was a French SS brigade which soldiered Hitler's bunker until May 2, 1945.
Although Himmler had hoped that the SS could be maintained as a police force in post-war Germany, the Allied forces condemed the SS as a criminal organization during the Nuremburg Trials. However of the estimated 70,000 members of the SS involved in crimes in German concentration camps, less than 1700 were tried after the war. Many, including prominent SS members such as Mengele and Adolf Eichmann -- the man most responsible for the logistics of mass deportations and killings -- were able to find at least temporary refuge in South America.

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