SS Totenkopf France, 1940

"By the end of the Second World War the reputation of Hitler's Schutzstaffel (SS) had become so heavily sullied that the organization was branded criminal and banned in postwar Germany. It's authority in Nazi Germany had been enormous having been made responsible for Reich internal security, it implemented Nazi racial policy and managed the death camps. Most oddly it produced a rival military organization to the German regular army fighting alongside it but never a part of it the Waffen SS....