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generals and, theoretically at least, enjoyed no privileged position. Indeed, his lack of front-line experience during the First World War led to his being despised by many of the old campaigners, who looked upon him as a figure of fun who had weasled his way to the top. The leader of SS-Gruppe Ost, for example, SS-Gruppenführer Kurt Daluege of Stennes putsch fame, had by 1934 acquired considerable powers with Göring’s patronage and felt himself to be so strong that he refused to deal with anyone but Hitler and Röhm, and certainly not with ‘that Bavarian chicken-breeder Himmler’. He was by no means unique in his attitude. The fall of Röhm, however, altered the situation completely. Himmler’s elevation to the newly created rank of Reichsführer-SS, or RfSS, which set him above all others, suddenly made him untouchable.

    Himmler and his Old Guard SS leaders in Munich, 1933.
    So far as the armed SS units were concerned, Himmler was soon Reichsführer in name only, for the Leibstandarte, SS-VT and SS-TV came to be regarded not as being in the official employ of the party but as public services of the Reich, on the model of the army. Their expenses were charged to the state, and the Reich Finance Minister, Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk, maintained his impartiality in the allocation of national funds to the armed SS by consistently refusing Himmler’s offers of honorary SS rank. In contrast, the Allgemeine-SS always retained its political status as an independent Gliederung, or organisation, of the NSDAP and it was never maintained by the state. Its expenses were paid solely from party funds and its finances were ultimately controlled by the Reichsschatzmeister der NSDAP, or Party Treasurer, Franz Xaver Schwarz, who was renowned as a fist-grasping admin-istrator. However, Schwarz, a veteran of the Munich putsch, was also very close to Himmler, who made him the highest ranking General Officer in the whole SS, second on the seniority list only to the Reichsführer himself. Consequently, the party never actually exercised any close independent supervision over Allgemeine-SS funds. Through his contacts with big business and his mutual back-scratching exercises with Schwarz, Himmler ensured that the Allgemeine-SS got any cash it needed, often at the expense of other party branches such as the NSKK and NSFK. So the Allgemeine-SS, unlike the military side of the organisation, remained totally under the Reichsführer’s control until 1945, immune from outside state interference. Himmler’s position at the top of the Allgemeine-SS hierarchy was, therefore, unchallenged and his power unbridled by any potential financial constraints. As a result, the highest levels of the Allgemeine-SS organisation centred around him personally.
    During the autumn of 1934, Himmler quickly went about the business of once again reorganising his high command structure. The Reichsführung-SS was set up as the supreme authority, comprising two staffs, the Kommandostab RfSS, which was an executive administrative staff at Himmler’s personal headquarters, and the Persönlicher Stab RfSS, a much larger and more loosely organised body consisting of a number of advisory officials including the heads of the main SS departments and certain other special offices. The fresh administrative burdens later imposed by the war made it necessary to create a much larger and more complex command structure than had sufficed during peacetime. By 1942, subject to Himmler’s controlling authority and that of the Reichsführung-SS, the day-to-day work of directing, organising and administering the SS was carried out by the eight main departments, or Hauptämter, listed below, each of which is duly covered in turn.
    In addition, there were a number of minor offices and departments not of Hauptamt status.
    The functions of the various Hauptämter were continually adapted to meet new exigencies and by far the greater