On the Eastern Front, the mass shootings of Polish and Soviet civilians in Operation Barbarossa were the work of Einsatzgruppen mobile death squads and their subgroups called Einsatzkommando.

[6][7] After taking national power in 1933, the Nazi Party launched a new programme of mass incarceration of the so-called enemies of the state.

Springing up in every town across Germany "like mushrooms after the rain" (Himmler's quote),[8] the early camps utilized lockable spaces usually without infrastructure for permanent detention (i.e. engine rooms, brewery floors, storage facilities, cellars).

[9] Following the fall from power of the paramilitary Brownshirts of the SA during the NSDAP purge known as the Night of the Long Knives (30 June to 2 July 1934), the SS took control of the fledgling camp system.

[11] On 26 June 1933, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler appointed SS-Oberführer Theodor Eicke the Kommandant of the Dachau concentration camp.

Following the Night of the Long Knives, Eicke – who played a role in the affair by shooting SA chief Ernst Röhm – was again promoted to the rank of SS-Gruppenführer and officially appointed Inspector of Concentration Camps and Commander of the SS-Wachverbände.

When the SS-Totenkopfverbände were formally established in March 1936, the group was organized into six Wachtruppen situated at each of Germany's major concentration camps.

By 1936, Eicke had begun to establish military formations of concentration camp personnel which eventually became the Totenkopf Division and other units of the Waffen-SS.

In the early days of the military camp service formation, the group's exact chain of command was contested since Eicke as Führer der Totenkopfverbände exercised personal control of the group but also, as it was considered an armed SS formation, authority over the armed units was claimed by the SS-Verfügungstruppe (SS-VT), which had been first formed in 1934 as combat troops for the Nazi Party.

[21] On 17 August 1938 Hitler decreed, at Himmler's request, the SS-TV to be the official reserve for the SS-VT;[22] this would over the course of the war lead to a constant flux of men between the Waffen-SS and the concentration camps.

That is why I have prepared, for the moment only in the East, my ‘Death's Head’ formations with orders to kill without pity or mercy all men, women, and children of Polish descent or language.

[27] The behavior of these Standarten in Poland elicited some protests from officers of the army, including 8th Army commander Johannes Blaskowitz who wrote a memorandum to Walther von Brauchitsch detailing the SS-TV atrocities,[28] unaware that they were planned years in advance by the Central Unit II P-Poland under Heydrich who himself coordinated secret extermination actions including Operation Tannenberg and the Intelligenzaktion both targeting more than 61,000 members of Polish elites during the opening stages of World War II.

[29] At the beginning of war in Europe, the SS forces consisted of roughly 250,000 servicemen spread out across multiple branches,[3] with transferable ranks and service records from police regiments and the army.

[31] The Totenkopf was initially formed from concentration camp guards of the Standarten (regiments) of the SS-TV and soldiers from the SS-Heimwehr "Danzig.

Members of other SS militias were transferred into the division in early 1940; these units had been involved in multiple massacres of Polish civilians, political leaders and prisoners of war.

[32] From fall 1939 to spring 1940 a massive recruitment effort in Germany raised no fewer than twelve new TK-Standarten (four times the size of the SS-Verfügungstruppe) in anticipation of the coming attack on France.

Both Eicke personally and his Totenkopf Division performed poorly during Fall Gelb therefore Himmler resolved to curb his decisions which had spurred a conflict with Hausser and Dietrich; especially his designation of TK-Standarten as reserves for his Totenkopf Division alone, and the fact that the SS-Verfügungstruppe military supplies were stored at Eicke's concentration camps.

The Totenkopf Division still had close ties to the camp service and its members continued to wear the Death's-Head as their unit insignia.

It received command of the SS-Verfügungstruppe (the Leibstandarte and the SS-Verfügungs-Division, renamed Reich) and the armed SS-TV regiments (the Totenkopf-Division together with the independent Totenkopf-Standarten).

[2] By 1940, the CCI came under the control of the Verwaltung und Wirtschaftshauptamt Hauptamt (VuWHA; Administration and Business office) which was set up under Oswald Pohl.

[38] By 1941, prior to the "Final Solution", the concentration camps run by SS-TV, both in Germany and across occupied territories, grew into a massive system of institutionalized forced labour for the SS.

The Jewish Sonderkommando workers in turn, were terrorised by up to around 100 mostly collaborator Trawniki men per camp, called Wachmannschaften (security guards or watchmen).

In 1942 Glücks was increasingly involved in the administration of the Endlösung, supplying personnel to assist in Aktion Reinhardt (although the death camps of Belzec, Treblinka and Sobibor were administered by SS-und Polizei-führer Odilo Globocnik of the General Government).

Himmler was most concerned about covering up Nazi crimes ever since the Polish 22,000 victims of the Soviet Katyn massacre were discovered well preserved underground near Smolensk.

"Immediately after their seizure by the Russians on May 9–10, 1945 – wrote Sydnor – the officers and men in the Totenkopf Division were transported to several detention camps inside the Soviet Union.

Within six months of the end of the war, many prominent SSTK officers, including Becker, disappeared, most likely the victims of secret executions.

This environment of formalized brutality influenced some of the SS-TV's most infamous commandants including Rudolf Höß, Franz Ziereis, Karl Otto Koch, Max Kögel, and Amon Göth.

[50] In the last days of World War II, a special group called the "Auxiliary-SS" (SS-Mannschaft) was formed as a last-ditch effort to keep concentration camps running and allow regular SS personnel to escape.

Slave labour at the camps was sold to private companies, or used to run lucrative SS-run industries,[51] while the cost of prisoner upkeep was minimal.