In the beginning just a handful of men were raised to be Adolf Hitler s personal bodyguard, the SS meaning protection squad this small group eventually became a multi-headed beast with many responsibilities. It ran internal security with ruthless efficiency; it implemented the horrific Nazi racial policy and ran the concentration camps; it was an important, and in the end solely reliable, part of the Reich s intelligence services; and perhaps most strikingly, it developed its own combat units. Numbering over 900,000 soldiers by the end of 1944, the Waffen-SS (Armed SS) campaigned in Poland, western Europe, the Balkans and the Soviet Union, fighting to the end in the ruins of Berlin.