NSDAP membership in relation to SS- membership

[lennardg]

Hello, experts - was membership of the NSDAP required for SS- officers or just a matter of personal choice?
Just curious.

[Rajin Cajun]

What part of the SS do you mean?

[TimoWr]

It was required. Recruits usually joined the party at the same time when they joined the SS. Some In cases were SS members are not listed as part members this is usually due to an administrative error or because they denied membership after the war

[sid guttridge]

Hi lennardg,

NSDAP membership in the Waffen-SS officer corps was more assumed than compulsory. On an earlier thread on Feldgrau it was reported that Himmler noticed that a prominent Waffen-SS officer (Meyer, I think) was not wearing a party membership pin. The individual said he was not a member, so Himmler ordered that he be given the lowest available vacant party number. I seem to recall that this character described himself as a National Socialist in later life. I will try to dig out the thread so that you can have a more accurate rendition of the episode.

Cheers,

Sid.

[sid guttridge]

P.S. I have checked through the Search facility above, but can't find the original source, just a reference to it. Have a look at the old thread "Joining the SS". Sid.

[lennardg]

Thanks, I guess that answers my question,

I was referring mainly to the officers of the W-SS formations

One more question: Was membership expected for privates and NCO's too?

I assume foreign volunteers were excluded from membership because they were not German nationals.

[TimoWr]

It was required. Recruits usually joined the party at the same time when they joined the SS. Some In cases were SS members are not listed as part members this is usually due to an administrative error or because they denied membership after the war

[sid guttridge]

Hi Timo,

I stand corrected.

If I remember rightly, the individual I was referring to was originally a member of a riding club that was affiliated en masse to the NSDAP in the early 1930s and he had therefore never applied for personal membership. This would conform with your "administrative error" point.

Cheers,

Sid.

[DXTR]

Thanks, I guess that answers my question,

I was referring mainly to the officers of the W-SS formations

One more question: Was membership expected for privates and NCO's too?

I assume foreign volunteers were excluded from membership because they were not German nationals.

It was not required of danish waffen SS volunteers in the freikorps Danemark to be a member of the danish naziparty DNSAP. But the party did try to encourage the volunteers. The party did manage a great deal of the recruitment throught their recruitment offices.

[Paddy Keating]

There were plenty of Germanic Waffen-SS officers and men who were not NSDAP members.

[Michael Miller / ABR]

I would say the vast majority of non-German Waffen-SS officers were not members of the NSDAP. Such membership was probably (best I can do is a probably as I have no real sources for this) off-limits to most of the non-Reichsdeutsche and Volksdeutsche officers of Latvian, Estonian, "Galician", French, Walloon, and other such units. But a lot of these men were members of fascist and/or national-socialist parties in their native countries (VNV, Dinaso, PPF, Nasjonal-Samling, Perkonkrust, etc.). Unless they were bona fide "Germanics" (like "Henk" Feldmeier, Sverre Riisnæs, Jonas Lie, and a few others), even officers in ranks of Sturmbannführer and higher were not listed in the SS-Dienstalterslisten as they were not officially members of the SS (they were designated, for example, as Waffen-Gruppenführer der SS, Waffen-Sturmbannführer der SS etc.) and therefore were not assigned an SS- or NSDAP-Nr.

I don't believe NSDAP membership was a requirement of SS membership. I've seen numerous SS files and DAL listings that do not include an NSDAP-Nr. or entrance date; too many to be mere clerical errors.


~ Mike

[TimoWr]

It was required. Recruits usually joined the party at the same time when they joined the SS.

I was referring to Lennards question if membership was expected for privates and NCO's too. Not to his question about foreign volunteers.

[Paddy Keating]

It was not a requirement that Waffen-SS men, commissioned or otherwise, be NSDAP members. Not that there was anything to be ashamed of at the time in being an NSDAP member. Most of the rank and file did not understand that Hitler & Co had sold the revolution out to what Sir Oswald Mosley do aptly described as "the moneybags". Most NSDAP men had valid reasons, if you view them in the context of the period.

PK

[sid guttridge]

Hi Paddy,

I accept that most NSDAP nembers joined out of ignorance and/or misplaced nationalism and/or self interest.

Cheers,

Sid.

[Paddy Keating]

It is too easy to blame NSDAP recruits of the late 1920s and early 1930s from today's perspective. You would probably have joined up at the time. I know I would. At the time, the NSDAP offered the only clearly presented alternative, from the working man's viewpoint, to the problems preventing German recovery. There are some parallels between the NSDAP position in 1931 and those of the BNP in Britain and the FN in France, who have both woken up to the vacuum left by 'evolving' labour parties and are now adopting socialist policies to woo disaffected working class and unemployed people. However, the only thing that keeps me from supporting such parties is their indiscriminate, unfocused racism, almost always rooted in skin colours. I rather suspect that I am far from alone in feeling this way. What we need is a modern National Socialist movement, with black and brown faces in the ranks alongside whites. But any potential NS leader who stands up and proclaims this from the proverbial soapbox will be murdered by the powers-that-be, just as they murder anyone who might pose a real challenge to their status quo.

PK