𝕱𝖗𝖆𝖓𝖟 𝕰𝖍𝖊𝖗 𝖁𝖊𝖗𝖑𝖆𝖌

The SS Race and Settlement Main Office (Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt der SS, RuSHA) was the organization responsible for "safeguarding the racial purity of the SS" within Reich .

The RuSHA was founded in 1931 by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler and Richard Walther Darré, who later rose to the rank of SS-Obergruppenführer. In 1935, it was upgraded to an SS Main Office. Under its first director, Darré, it propagated the ideology of blood and soil. Darré was dismissed by Himmler in 1938 and was succeeded by SS-Gruppenführer Günther Pancke, SS-Gruppenführer Otto Hofmann in 1940, and then SS-Obergruppenführer Richard Hildebrandt in 1943.

The RuSHA was created in part to monitor Himmler's 1931 order that the marital decisions of unmarried SS men should be supervised by the state. SS men would thereafter have to apply for a marriage permit three months before getting married so that the parents of the fiancée could be investigated to ensure her racial purity. One of its duties was to oversee the marriages of SS personnel in accordance with the racial policy of the Reich. After Heinrich Himmler introduced the "marriage order" on December 31, 1931, the RuSHA would only issue a permit to marry once detailed background investigations into the racial fitness of both prospective parents had been completed and proved both of them to be of Aryan descent back to 1800. With time, the marriage laws became less strict. Thereafter, in December 1935 Himmler ordered the RuSHA to establish the Lebensborn network of maternity homes, whose purpose zu was "to accommodate and look after racially and genetically valuable expectant mothers." The RuSHA increasingly focused on processing SS marriage applications, genealogy, "racial-biological" investigations and the social welfare services of SS members.

By 1937 more than 300 SS men had been expelled from the SS for violating the race laws (Rassenschande), although an order later stated that they could remain if they were already married and could satisfy racial criteria. In November 1940, Himmler reinstated all SS personnel expelled under the marriage laws, provided they met racial requirements of the Reich.


In 1935 the RuSHA consisted of seven departments (Ämter or Amtsgruppen):

•Amt Organisation und Verwaltungsamt (Organisation and Administration)

•Amt Rassenamt (Race)

•Amt Schulungsamt (Education)

•Amt Sippen und Heiratsamt (Family and Marriage)

•Amt Siedlungsamt (Settlement)

•Amt für Archiv und Zeitungswesen (Records and Press)

•Amt für Bevölkerungspolitik (Population Policy)


In 1940 it was reorganized to create four main departments:

•Verwaltungsamt (Administration Office).

•Rassenamt (Racial Office), it selected future SS personnel and conducted racial selections.

•Heiratsamt (Marriage Office) it controlled the selection of suitable wives by SS men.

•Siedlungsamt (Settlement Office), it dealt with the settlement of discharged SS men, especially in the annexed eastern areas.


The Race and Settlement Departments were further divided into the Hauptabteilungen (Main Branches). One of these managed welfare and pensions in cooperation with the SS-Hauptfürsorge- und Versorgungsamt (SS Main Welfare and Pension Department) at the Reich Ministry of the Interior.

Following the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, the RuSHA worked in partnership with VOMI in the "germanization" of captured territory, monitoring of settler welfare, and the plantation of ethnic Germans in areas designated for settlement by the SS, particularly in occupied Ukraine. This involved in part, the resetting of Germans in the Eastern territories.

The RuSHA was also an advisory and executive office for all questions of racial selection. Racial examinations were performed by Rasse und Siedlungs (RUS) leaders or their racial examiners (Eignungsprüfer).

Horst Wessel, you Sturmführer! You foresaw prophetically the victory of the Swastika.
You had to die to become a wake-up call for many lost and indifferent people; you had to die to show German youth the way, the way to the new Germany, which can only arise through blood and sacrifice, through discipline and loyalty.
You could not live to see the day of victory: January 30th, 1933, when your storm and tens of thousands of SA comrades marched past in your Berlin, marched under blazing torches past the grasping field marshal of the World War and your leader Adolf Hitler, the chancellor of the German Reich, no longer despised and persecuted, but as the victors and saviors of the new Germany.
You have passed away, you have become the Sturmführer of the brown storm of the dead up there, and yet you live among us as an immortal.
Your old storm, grown mightily, marches today behind the proud standard that bears the name “Horst Wessel” in silver letters: your immortal name.
As Sturmführer, you march in front of the young Fascists in our allied Italy, to whom their leader pinned your immortal name on their eagle shield.
Horst Wessel, you worker, you marched with us on that May 1st of 1933, on that day of German labor.
You marched with us in the endless procession among them, working with their heads and hands, who had come together through your example, who wanted to honor and love German labor again.
You will continue to walk ahead of them, to show them the national community, you worker Horst Wessel.
Horst Wessel, you student, you conquered the youth of the universities with the swastika. They stood up against everything alien and un-German. They handed over dirt and trash to the flames. You showed them how to defend themselves instead of blind knowledge from books, cheerfulness and hope instead of a bleak view of the future. You live among them as a German student.
Horst Wessel, you singer! Never in the Third Reich will your victorious song perish. It has become the consecration song of the whole nation. The brown and black and gray columns stand in solemn posture at the sound of it. Every act of consecration closes with your song as a vow. The flags are lowered at the open grave of those who have gathered for your storm of the dead, until your song calls out to them: “Raise the flag!” Immortal you are, like your shining image Theodor Körner, the student, singer, and freedom fighter!
Horst Wessel, you German! Your name rings immortal in German regions over which the sun symbol of the swastika now shines.
Everywhere in the German fatherland squares, streets, and buildings bear your name. You have regained the capital of Germany through your struggle and death, and in the middle of German Berlin, in the Nikolai cemetery, you rest, having passed through storm and struggle to immortality. Your grave has become a place of pilgrimage for young and old; the flowers on it never fade. You have reawakened in German youth the spirit of the German fighters of Langemark, the spirit of fortitude, devotion, and loyalty. Horst Wessel, you fulfilled the words of a German workers’ poet: “Germany must live, even if we must die!”