It Started With Eight Men ...


On April 4, 1925, Julius Schreck ...



... a close confidante of Adolf Hitler founds a small troop that will in future ensure Hitler's safety during his public speeches:

Schreck, convinced Nazi and NSdAP member of the first hour (member number 53), who will later also work as Hitler's personal driver and bodyguard (the "Führer" does not have a driver's license!), is looking for eight handpicked party members for this new task out.

Their names are:

Joseph Berchtold ...



...Ulrich Graf...



...Emil Maurice...



...Christian Weber...



...Josef Dietrich...



...Rudolf Heß...



...Jakob Grimminger...



...und Walter Buch...:



Since the bodyguards - like all party branches of the NSdAP - are supposed to be in uniform, Schreck puts them in SA uniforms.

Only one detail is different:

They get black ski hats, the SA wears brown ones. Here is the "Führer" between SA men (left) and his SS Praetorians ...:



Now a special badge is still missing!

That copies Schreck from a former "Freikorps" (volunteer corps) made up of right-wing extremist soldiers, the "Erhardt Marine Brigade" ...



... and who previously served as a badge for the two Prussian Leibhusar-regiments (also a kind of bodyguard) in the German Empire ...:








It's a skull (which will be changed twice in the design later!) ...:






The eight men were called "Saal-Schutz" ("hall protection"), later - when they became more numerous - "Schutzstaffel" ("Protection Squad"). Both are abbreviated in the same way.
What began with those eight men that Julius Schreck selected was the hour of birth of the SS ...!

Julius Schreck will not see them grow into an army of millions, a gang of murderers and a state within a state, because he will die of meningitis in 1936.

The remaining first seven first SS men will had all a special career:

Joseph Berchtold was the first "Reichsführer SS" and thus the predecessor of Himmler until he was replaced in 1927 and transferred to the SA. He died in 1962 - unmolested.


Ulrich Graf made it to the position of brigade leader in the SS (1943). In 1948 he was sentenced to five years in a labor camp. He died in 1950.


Emil Maurice also became the personal chauffeur of Adolf Hitler and his duo friend, rose to SS-Oberführer and was sentenced in 1948 to four years in a labor camp and the confiscation of 30 percent of his property. He died in 1950.


Christian Weber became a politician (NSDAP), member of the Reichstag, SS brigade leader and Munich councilor. Between 1933 and 1945 he held a variety of offices. He died - probably! - in May 1945 near Heilbronn by suicide.


Josef "Sepp" Dietrich will be the commander of the "Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler" and the SS-Oberst-Gruppenführer and Colonel-General of the Waffen-SS, the highest-ranking SS commander next to Karl Hauser (and after SS- "Reichsführer " Heinrich Himmler)...:



Dietrich, who was the only commander of the murder gang ever to wear gold SS badges, was sentenced to a total of 18 months imprisonment after the war as one of the people responsible for the Malmedy massacre and because of his role in murders in connection with the so-called Röhm putsch, of which he served six months from August 1958 to February 1959 in the Landsberg correctional facility before he was released early because of a heart condition.

He remained a staunch Nazi until his death in 1966.

Jakob Grimminger will later bear the "blood flag" - that is the swastika flag that was carried during the "Hitler putsch" in Munich in 1923 - foiled by the Bavarian police - and has the status of a relic for Nazis.

All SS men were sworn in on this flag ...:



Grimminger only made it as far as SS-Standartenführer (1943). After the end of the Second World War, Grimminger was brought before an Allied court because of his membership in the SS. Alt

He died completely impoverished in 1969.

Rudolf Hess made the steepest career, became SS-Obergruppenführer andd will even rise to the position of "Deputy Leader" in the Nazi hierarchy - and in 1987 he was the last inmate to commit suicide in the war crimes prison in Berlin-Spandau ...: