SS Membership Numbers
Adolf Hitler, as the Führer of Germany, was by default the supreme commander of the SS and outranked Heinrich Himmler, who served as "Reich leader" of the entire SS. After 1930 Hitler was the Oberster SA-Führer and supreme commander of the Sturmabteilung stormtroopers. Hitler's supreme SA rank, when the SS was still under the authority of the SA, could be seen as a rank superior to that of Reichsführer-SS. Hitler also was considered SS member #1, Emil Maurice (considered the founder of the SS) was member #2, while Himmler was SS member #168. Based on the seniority system of SS membership number, this made Hitler senior in the SS to all other members even if not by rank.
After the Night of the Long Knives, when the SS became independent from the SA, Hitler was listed on SS officer rolls as member #1 and considered supreme commander of the entire SS by virtue of his position as the Führer of Germany. There is no photographic record of Hitler wearing an SS uniform, and there was no special SS insignia for Hitler above that worn by Himmler.
Read more about this topic: Uniforms And Insignia Of The Schutzstaffel
Famous quotes containing the words membership and/or numbers:
“The two real political parties in America are the Winners and the Losers. The people don’t acknowledge this. They claim membership in two imaginary parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, instead.”
—Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (b. 1922)
“The barriers of conventionality have been raised so high, and so strangely cemented by long existence, that the only hope of overthrowing them exists in the union of numbers linked together by common opinion and effort ... the united watchword of thousands would strike at the foundation of the false system and annihilate it.”
—Mme. Ellen Louise Demorest 1824–1898, U.S. women’s magazine editor and woman’s club movement pioneer. Demorest’s Illustrated Monthly and Mirror of Fashions, p. 203 (January 1870)