page_title: Gottlob Berger
section_title: Re-organisation
hierarchical_section_title: Gottlob Berger / Chief of the SS-Hauptamt / 1939–40 / Re-organisation
context_page_description: Gottlob Christian Berger was a senior German Nazi official who held the rank of SS-Obergruppenführer und General der Waffen-SS and was the chief of the SS Main Office responsible for Schutzstaffel recruiting during World War II. After the war, he was convicted as a war criminal and spent six and a half years in prison. While serving in the German Army during World War I, he was wounded four times and awarded the Iron Cross First Class. Immediately after the war, he was a leader of the Einwohnerwehr militia in his native North Württemberg. He joined the Nazi Party in 1922 but lost interest in right-wing politics during the 1920s, training and working as a physical education teacher.
  In the late 1920s, he rejoined the Nazi Party and became a member of the paramilitary Sturmabteilung in 1931. He clashed with other leaders of the SA and joined the Allgemeine-SS in 1936. Initially responsible for physical education in an SS region, he was soon transferred to the staff of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler as head of the sports office. In 1938, he was appointed as head of the recruiting office of the SS Main Office and took over as chief of the SS-HA the following year.
context_section_description: In August 1940, Berger reorganised the SS-HA to focus better on its main role of recruiting for the Waffen-SS, creating separate sections to deal with recruiting inside and outside the Reich. The section targeting recruits from outside of the Reich developed out of a briefing he received from the Chief of the SS-Führungshauptamt (SS Command Main Office, or SS-FHA) SS-Brigadeführer Hans Jüttner on Hitler's expectations of the Waffen-SS for the upcoming invasion of the Soviet Union, which included the raising of a fourth division and the expansion of the LSSAH to a motorised brigade. Berger realised that the Wehrmacht quotas for the Waffen-SS would fall short of its manpower needs by at least 6,000 per year.
  Berger's SS-HA had a problematic relationship with the SS-FHA, which was responsible for organising, training and equipping the Waffen-SS. The SS-FHA wanted the Waffen-SS to be a small elite corps, but Berger and Himmler knew that Hitler needed as many divisions as possible, even if that meant some Waffen-SS formations would be of lesser quality. Jüttner's initial efforts at integrating the recruits from western Europe and Scandinavia were inadequate, with insufficient emphasis on training and appointing officers and non-commissioned officers from the ranks of the new recruits. The SS-FHA had also paid scant attention to retention of ranks for former members of national armed forces, liaison with home territories, and even mail. Berger's well-researched report to Himmler on these failures was damning, and the Reichsführer-SS soon issued detailed instructions on the handling of these new recruits, from the moment they joined the Waffen-SS. Berger's criticisms of Jüttner must be seen in the light of the advantages Berger considered he would achieve if Jüttner's position with Himmler was weakened.
  One of the obvious sources for Waffen-SS manpower was the nearly 40,000 troops of the SS-TV regiments, which consisted of youths below conscription age for the Wehrmacht, as well as older Allgemeine-SS reservists. These regiments were under Himmler's control, and were deployed across German-occupied Europe as political police, but the security functions they carried out were clearly within the capabilities of the Orpo. In late 1940, in order to ensure that Himmler's instructions were carried out,  Berger established a special camp at Sennheim in occupied Alsace, where non-Reich German recruits could be brought up to physical standards and ideologically indoctrinated prior to Waffen-SS training. This was an attempt to address the concerns of some commanders about the quality of these recruits, and their ability to be integrated into units composed mostly of Reich Germans. Recruits sent to this camp included Volksdeutsche (ethnic Germans from outside the Reich), Danes, Norwegians, Dutch and Flemings. Berger also created a network of offices throughout German-occupied Europe to ensure the welfare of the families of such recruits, influence the local communities to support Waffen-SS recruiting, and prepare potential recruits for indoctrination. This network and its activities was strongly resisted by the Main Welfare Office for Ethnic Germans (German: Hauptamt Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle or VoMi) the Nazi Party arm responsible for guiding the ethnic German communities outside the Reich. Himmler, unhappy with the work of VoMi in supporting SS recruiting, did not abolish VoMi, he just authorised Berger to circumvent it.
  By the end of 1940, SS-Nordland and SS-Westland had become the basis for the formation of the fourth division, SS-Division Wiking. Casting about for another source of recruits, Berger struck upon the idea of enlisting convicted criminals, who were concentrated in the Sonderkommando Dirlewanger, commanded by Berger's friend, Dirlewanger. Dirlewanger had returned from Spain and been reinstated as a SS-Standartenfuhrer der Reserve in the Allgemeine-SS at Berger's instigation. In September 1940, Dirlewanger's unit had been deployed to the area of occupied Poland, where they established defensive positions and provided guard
caption: Himmler inspecting the SS-Division Wiking in September 1942. The "Germanic" regiments SS-Nordland and SS-Westland had been used to help form the division at the end of 1940.
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