In Nazi Germany, they were called the Schutzstaffel. The world would know them as the dreaded SS—the most loyal and ruthless enforcers of the Third Reich…
It began as a small squad of political thugs. Yet by the end of 1935, the SS had taken control of all police and internal security duties in Germany—ranging from local village “gendarmes” all they way up to the secret political police and the Gestapo. And by 1944 the militarized Waffen SS had more than eight hundred thousand men serving in the field, even …
