Thread: The SS
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Old 09-07-2007, 10:02 PM   #24 (permalink)
T. A. Gardner
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With SS recruiting the problem for the service was they were initially very limited in the number of men they could enlist. Pre-war, the Heer had sufficent pull to ensure only a small number of men went into the SS. After the war started, Himmler sought ways to increase his force size. The first choice was through using "Volksdeutsche." That is people of "Germanic" decent who were not German citizens. This was then loosened to include those propely predisposed towards Nazi ideals. Hence the recruitment of Muslims in Yugoslavia etc.
In September 1944 Himmler took over the entire German military replacement system and began to allocate troops as he pleased. The previous Werkreise system broke down and troops were basically being herded together and sent to the front to wherever the system ordered them. The Volksgrenadier division system was administered by the SS and obstensively, these too were technically now SS units even though they were not so designated.
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