The Schutzstaffel, abbreviated in SS, was a Protection Squadron and a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany during World War II.
Official and soldiers of the SS operating in Hungary are described in the novel The Wallenberg Dossier.
The first group was a small guard unit with the duty of providing security for party meetings in Munich called the Saal-Schutz, Hall Security. It was made up of party volunteers. In 1925, Heinrich Himmler joined the unit and under his direction until 1945 it became the most powerful organization in Nazi Germany, with duties that ranged from security agency to surveillance and terror within Germany and German-occupied Europe.
The Schutzstaffel was divided into the Allgemeine SS (General SS)responsible for enforcing the racial policy of Nazi Germany and general policing, the Waffen-SS (Armed SS) consisting of combat units within Nazi Germany’s military, the SS-Totenkopfverbände which ran the concentration camps and extermination camps.
The SS also included the Gestapo division, tasked with the detection of actual or potential enemies of the Nazi state, domestic and foreign intelligence, and the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) tasked with the neutralization of any opposition, policing the German people for their commitment to Nazi ideology.
The SS was the organization most responsible for the genocidal murder of an estimated 6 million Jews and millions of other victims during the Holocaust. Members of all of the SS branches committed systematic war crimes and crimes against humanity during World War II.