Italian Waffen-SS marching

SS-Totenkopfverbände (SS-TV), meaning "Death's-Head Units", was the SS organization responsible for administering the Nazi concentration camps for the Third Reich.

The SS-TV was an independent unit within the SS with its own ranks and command structure. It ran the camps throughout Germany, such as Dachau and Buchenwald; in Nazi-occupied Europe, it ran Auschwitz in German occupied Poland and Mauthausen in Austria as well as numerous other concentration and death camps. The death camps' primary function was genocide and included Treblinka, Bełżec extermination camp and Sobibor. It was responsible for facilitating the Final Solution, known since as the Holocaust, in collaboration with the Reich Main Security Office and the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office or WVHA.

At the outbreak of WWII one of the first combat units of the Waffen-SS, the SS Division Totenkopf, was formed from SS-TV personnel. It soon developed a reputation for ferocity and fanaticism, participating in several war crimes such as the Le Paradis massacre in 1940 during the Fall of France and the murder of Russian civilians in Operation Barbarossa.
While the Totenkopf was the universal cap badge of the SS, the SS-TV also wore the insignia on the right collar to distinguish itself from other SS units.

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