Military Effectiveness of the Waffen SS

My apologies for not explaining myself.  I meant that there were upwards of 35 Waffen SS divisions that had existed at one time or another by the end of the war.  Not all at the same time.

 

Same goes for the almost a million men fighting in the Waffen SS; almost a million men had fought in the Waffen SS at some point during the war, not all ~900,000 of them at the same time.  Hope that clarifies things. 

 

Correction:  there were almost a million men in the Waffen SS in 45'.  I knew what I had said didn't seem right. 

 

The SS usually got the best material. But this wasn't the most important point. They were very encouraged, especially the officers. They led their troops from the top and not from behind and were more open for modern tactics. But unfortunately for the ss leading from top was the reason that ss officers had a very high rate of casualties. That weakend the SS troops by the years as well.

 

Then there was the Verf�gungs-SS. They served in the KZ's. They were different to the Waffen-SS but usually men from both parts could serve in the other. When ss men were hurt or so they could be send to the Verf�gungs-SS e.g. In this SS there served e.g. criminals who were let free.

 

I look for some more data.

 

You're right, I'm sorry. I didn't care about these theme for long. The Verf�gungs-SS is the later Waffen-SS (since 1940). What I meant is the Totenkopf-SS. They looked for the KZs. They started in 1933 under SS-Standartenf�hrer (colonel) Eicke in Dachau. 1934 became Eike, as Brigadef�hrer (brigadier general), inspector of the KZs and leader of the Totenkopf-SS. So these parts were no longer under the control of the Allgemeine SS (common SS). These troops did not only serve in the KZs. They joined the occupation of Austria, the Sudetenland and of CSR. They educated the members of the Allgemeine SS as well. When the war started about 40.000 reservists from the Allgemeine SS were drafted by the Totenkopf-SS. 6.500 man from the Totenkopf-SS were installed as SS-Totenkopf-Division under SS-Gruppenf�hrer Eicke. A short time before the war with the SU the Totenkopf-troops were included in the Waffen-SS. For the KZs they use members of the Allgemeine SS. When the casualties increased, the most members were send to the front. Members of the SA, wounded soldiers of the Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS were send to the KZ troops.

 

The SS was founded to protect Hitler and other prominent Nazis. It was a small group during a lot of years. But in January 1933 it increased to 50.000 men. That wasn't good for the high standard. So a new unit was created, the Leibstandarte. There was a Politische Bereitschaft troop , too. So beside of the Allgemeine SS there were three other units. They weren't stronger than an Inf.Reg in 1934. They weren't good educated in warfare and had no good equipment. After the R�hm-Putsch it changed. In march 1935 he ordered the Verf�gungs-SS as fighting division, but the 1st division was installed 1939. After the retiring of Fritsch and Blomberg Hitler made the SS to a combat unit beside the Wehrmacht. There were about 25.000 men for the Verf�gungs-SS in 1939. In 1940 there were about 150.000 SS men, 1942 about 200.000 an d1943 about 350.000 men. The totenkopf-SS men had to be taller than 1,70 and those of the Verf�gungs-SS and of Leibstandarte had to be between 17 and 22 and taller than 1,70, sometimes 1,68. Only the Elite-Leibstandarte was searching for men taller than 1,80. There were a lot of voluntaries for the Waffen-SS but not for the Totenkopf-SS, so old men of the Allgemeine SS were commanded to them.

 

Before the war the SS soldiers for the Leibstandarte had to be taller than 1,80m, the other had to be taller than 1,78m, untill 1936 there was no man allowed to join the SS with a plombed tooth. Later there were two Kosak-Cavalery-Divisions, one East-Turkish unit, a Caucasian unit, a Serbian Voluntary corps, an Indish Legion, a British Free corps, romanian and bulgarian Regiments, a norvegian batallion, a lethuanian and aestonian grenadier division, the SS-Mountain-division Skanderbeg and Kama from Albania and Croatia, they were later transformed to the SS voluntary-Grenadier division Nederland, there were to hungarian divisions, to from Belgium, two Russian and  one french. But sometimes the name division is not really correct, because they just had the amount of regiments.

 

In eastern Europe served 42000 Volksdeutsche from Hungary, about 20.000 from Serbia, 54000 from Romania and 17000 from Croatia.

There wer about 20.000 voluntaries from Estonia and Lethuania. There was a muslim-division wich was planned with 26000 men, but  I don't know hom many served laster. In 1943 there were 100.000 voluntary Ukrainians, but just only 30.000 joined the SS.

 

In 1941 the Indian Legion was build, with EIGHT men, it became bigger as a fact of british POWs until a maximum of 2000 soldiers. The Britisch Freecorps started in 1944 under John Amery, a son of one of Churchill's ministers. There were about 50 voluntaries, but the corps was not more than an instrument of propaganda.

 

The motivation of these soldiers was very different. It was sometimes the believing to the Nazi movement, a lot of adventures, hopeless people, people who hated the Bolschewists or the Serbians and so on.