Kommandostab Reichsführer-SS

Kommandostab Reichsführer-SS

Formation	May 1941
Type	Waffen-SS
Purpose	Nazi security warfare in the Army Group Rear Areas and civilian-administered territories (Reichskommissariat) Participation in the Holocaust
Region	Nazi Germany German-occupied Europe
Key people	Heinrich Himmler Kurt Knoblauch

Kommandostab Reichsführer-SS (lit. 'Command Staff Reich Leader-SS') was a paramilitary organisation within the SS of Nazi Germany under the personal control of Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS. Established in 1941, prior to the German invasion of the Soviet Union, it consisted of the Waffen-SS security forces deployed in German-occupied territories. The units perpetrated mass murder against Jews and other civilians.

Function

The organisation was formed on 7 April 1941 out of Waffen-SS troops as “special staff” (Einsatzstab), reporting directly to Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler. It was officially designated as Kommandostab Reichsführer-SS on 6 May. To head the organisation, Himmler appointed a career army officer Kurt Knoblauch who acted as chief of staff for the units. The purpose of the formation was to conduct so-called “pacification operations” in the Army Group Rear Areas and civilian-administered territories (Reichskommissariats).

Prior to the launch of the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, the formations under the Kommandostab included two motorized SS Infantry Brigades (1st and 2nd) and two SS Cavalry Regiments combined into the SS Cavalry Brigade, totaling about 25,000 Waffen-SS troops. Its individual units were subordinated to local Higher SS and Police Leaders (HSSPFs) and used in the murder of Jews, political prisoners and other “undesirables”, in addition to providing rear area security. In the former function, the units activities were indistinguishable from the Einsatzgruppen mobile death squads and the Police Regiments, such as the Police Regiment Centre. Historian Yehoshua Büchler described the formations under the Kommandostab as “Himmler's personal murder brigades”.

Subordinate formations

• SS Cavalry Brigade
• 1st SS Infantry Brigade
• 2nd SS Infantry Brigade

References

Bibliography

• Browning, Christopher (2004). The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939 – March 1942. With contributions by Jürgen Matthäus. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. pp. 291-292. ISBN 0-803-25979-4.
• Förster, Jürgen (2002). "Operation Barbarossa as an Ideological War". In David Cesarani (ed.). The Final Solution: Origins and Implementation. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-15232-1.
• Hale, Christopher (2011). Hitler's Foreign Executioners: Europe's Dirty Secret. The History Press. ISBN 978-0-7524-5974-5. Archived from the original on 2020-10-23. Retrieved 2017-03-24.
• Stein, George (2002) [1966]. The Waffen-SS: Hitler's Elite Guard at War 1939–1945. Cerberus Publishing. ISBN 978-1841451008.

Further reading

• Beorn, Waitman Wade (2014). Marching into Darkness: The Wehrmacht and the Holocaust in Belarus. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-72550-8.
• Brandon, Ray; Lower, Wendy (2008). The Shoah in Ukraine: history, testimony, memorialization. Indiana University Press. p. 12. ISBN 978-0-253-35084-8.
• Cüppers, Martin (2005). Wegbereiter der Shoah: Die Waffen-SS, der Kommandostab Reichsführer-SS und die Judenvernichtung, 1939–1945 [Pioneer of the Shoah: The Waffen-SS, Kommandostab Reichsführer-SS and the Extermination of the Jews, 1939–1945] (in German). Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. ISBN 978-3-534-16022-8.
• Megargee, Geoffrey P. (2007). War of Annihilation: Combat and Genocide on the Eastern Front, 1941. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-0-7425-4482-6.