Women in the SS: The Women’s SS Corps

(Last modified 2003) 

This study focuses on the motives of women who joined the SS as members of the SS Women’s Corps and or became female employees within the SS apparatus as well as their activities in the SS and their personal and family backgrounds. This biographical-statistical analysis is based on personnel records for 2 369 members of the women’s SS Corps and 396 female SS employees. Evaluation of this data offers the foundation for a differentiated description of the social structure and the development of the SS Women’s Corps. Individual characteristics such as the professions of members’ fathers, their own education, occupational training, and employment history prior to joining the SS Corps or becoming SS employees are considered to be indicative of their social origins. Data on when they entered the Bund Deutscher Mädchen, on their participation in the Land Year program, the Pflichtjahr, or the Labor Service for female youths, or on when they joined the NSDAP or other political organizations have been evaluated as reference points for the women’s political socialization. The study also examines case studies that reveal where female SS Corps members and employees worked and in what functions they were involved in the Nazi politics of annihilation.