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Origins
The group was first formed in 1923 as a company of the Sturmabteilung (SA), stormtroopers, tasked with protecting senior leaders of the Nazi Party at rallies, speeches, and other public events. Commanded by Emil Maurice, and known as the Stabswache (Staff Guard), they were nicknamed the "Brown Shirts" according to their dress. The original group consisted of eight men and was modeled after the Erhardt Naval Brigade, a violent Freikorps of the time.
After the failed 1923 Putsch by the Nazi Party, the SA and the Stabswache were abolished, yet they returned in 1925. At that time, the Stabswache was reestablished as the Stosstrupp Adolf Hitler, tasked with the personal protection of Hitler at Nazi Party functions and events. That same year, the Stosstrupp was expanded to a national level, and renamed as the Schutzstaffel (SS). The new SS was delegated to be a protection company of various Nazi Party leaders throughout Germany.
Development
Between 1925 and 1929, the SS was considered merely a battalion of the SA and numbered no more than 280 personnel. On January 6, 1929, Adolf Hitler appointed Heinrich Himmler as the leader of the SS, and by the end of 1932, the SS had 52,000 members. By the end of the next year, it had over 209,000 members. Himmler's expansion of the SS was based on models from other groups, such as the Knights Templar and the Italian Blackshirts. According to SS-Obergruppenführer and General of the Waffen-SS, Karl Wolff, it was also based on the model from the Society of Jesus of absolute obedience to the Pope.
Before 1932, the SS wore the same uniform as the SA, with the exception for a black tie and a black cap with a Totenkopf, skull and bones, ("death's head") symbol on it. Later, they adopted a black uniform and then, just before the war, a dove-grey uniform. The Waffen ("armed") SS wore a field-grey (feldgrau) uniform similar to the regular army, or Reichsheer. During the war, Waffen-SS units wore a wide range of camouflage uniforms (Platanenmuster, Telo Mimetico, Erbsenmuster etc.), while their feldgrau uniforms became largely indistinguishable from those of the Heer, save for the insignia. In 1945, the SS adopted the Leibermuster disruptive pattern that inspired many forms of modern battle dress.
Their motto was "Meine Ehre heißt Treue ("My honour is called loyalty.") The SS rank system was unique in that it did not copy the terms used by the Wehrmacht's branches (army, airforce, navy), but instead used the ranks established by the SA.
Heinrich Himmler, together with his right-hand man, Reinhard Heydrich, consolidated the power of the organization. In 1931, Himmler gave Heydrich the assignment to build an intelligence and security service inside the SS, which became the Sicherheitsdienst (SD). By the time World War II began, the number of members rose to 250,000, and the Waffen-SS was formed in December 1940, expanding the earlier armed SS troops who had fought in Poland and France in 1939-40, to serve as part of the Wehrmacht, Germany's regular defense forces. The SS also received control of the Gestapo in 1934, and, that same year, Adolf Hitler had given the SS jurisdiction over all concentration camps.
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