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SS-Wachverbände

Death's Head Units
SS-Totenkopfverbände (SS-TV)
SS Totenkopf.jpg
Right collar insignia (second version, 1934-1945)
Bundesarchiv Bild 192-206, KZ Mauthausen, SS-Männer vor Gefangenen.jpg
SS-TV officers at Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp (October 1941)
Agency overview
Formed June 1934
Dissolved 8 May 1945
Type Paramilitary Organisation
Jurisdiction Germany Nazi Germany
Occupied Europe
Headquarters Oranienburg, near Berlin
52°45′16″N 13°14′13″E / 52.75444°N 13.23694°E / 52.75444; 13.23694
Employees 22,033 (SS-TV 1939 and
SS Division Totenkopf c.1942)
Minister responsible
Agency executives
Parent agency Flag of the Schutzstaffel.svg Schutzstaffel

SS-Totenkopfverbände (SS-TV), rendered in English as Death's Head Units, was the SS organization responsible for administering the Nazi concentration camps for the Third Reich, among similar duties. While the Totenkopf (skull) was the universal cap badge of the SS, the SS-TV also wore the Death's Head insignia on the right collar when needed; to distinguish itself from other Nazi Schutzstaffel (SS) formations.

The SS-TV created originally in 1933 was an independent unit within the SS with its own ranks and command structure. It ran the camps throughout Germany and later, Nazi-occupied Europe. Camps in Germany included Dachau, Bergen-Belsen, and Buchenwald; camps elsewhere in Europe included Auschwitz-Birkenau in German occupied Poland and Mauthausen in Austria among the numerous other concentration camps, and death camps handled with the utmost of secrecy. The extermination camps' function was genocide; they included Treblinka, Bełżec, and Sobibór built specifically for Aktion Reinhard, as well as the original Chełmno extermination camp, and Majdanek which was fitted with mass killing facilities, along with Auschwitz. They were responsible for facilitating what the Nazis called the Final Solution, known since the war as the Holocaust; perpetrated by the SS within the command structure of the Reich Main Security Office subordinate to Heinrich Himmler, and the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office or WVHA.


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