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
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...
.
One of its duties was to oversee the marriages of
SS personnel in accordance with the
racial policy of Nazi Germany. After
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was a German Nazism, Nazi politician and military leader who was the 4th of the (Protection Squadron; SS), a leading member of the Nazi Party, and one of the most powerful p ...
introduced the "marriage order" on 31 December 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.
Formation
The RuSHA was founded in 1931 by ''
Reichsführer-SS
(, ) was a special title and rank that existed between the years of 1925 and 1945 for the commander of the (SS). ''Reichsführer-SS'' was a title from 1925 to 1933, and from 1934 to 1945 it was the highest Uniforms and insignia of the Schut ...
''
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was a German Nazism, Nazi politician and military leader who was the 4th of the (Protection Squadron; SS), a leading member of the Nazi Party, and one of the most powerful p ...
and
Richard Walther Darré
Richard Walther Darré (born Ricardo Walther Óscar Darré; 14 July 1895 – 5 September 1953) was one of the leading Nazism, Nazi "Blood and Soil, blood and soil" () ideologists and served as Reich Ministry of Food and Agriculture, Reich ...
, who later rose to the rank of SS-''
Obergruppenführer
(, ) was a paramilitary rank in Nazi Germany that was first created in 1932 as a rank of the ''Sturmabteilung'' (SA) and adopted by the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) one year later. Until April 1942, it was the highest commissioned SS rank after ...
''. In 1935, it was upgraded to an SS Main Office. Under its first director, Darré, it propagated the Nazi ideology of
blood and soil
Blood and soil (, ) is a nationalist slogan expressing Nazi Germany's ideal of a racially defined Body national, national body ("Blood") united with a settlement area ("Soil"). By it, rural and farm life forms are idealized as a counterweight t ...
. Darré was dismissed by Himmler in 1938 and was succeeded by SS-''
Gruppenführer
__NOTOC__
''Gruppenführer'' (, ) was an early paramilitary rank of the Nazi Party (NSDAP), first created in 1925 as a senior rank of the SA. Since then, the term ''Gruppenführer'' is also used for leaders of groups/teams of the police, fire d ...
''
Günther Pancke, SS-''Gruppenführer''
Otto Hofmann in 1940, and then SS-''
Obergruppenführer
(, ) was a paramilitary rank in Nazi Germany that was first created in 1932 as a rank of the ''Sturmabteilung'' (SA) and adopted by the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) one year later. Until April 1942, it was the highest commissioned SS rank after ...
''
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
Nazi 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. 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 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.
Organization
In 1935 the RuSHA consisted of seven departments ():
*''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.
Leadership
Racial policies
By 1937 more than 300 SS men had been expelled from the SS for violating Nazi race laws (''
Rassenschande
''Rassenschande'' (, "racial shame") or ''Blutschande'' ( "blood disgrace") was an anti-miscegenation concept in Racial policy of Nazi Germany, Nazi German racial policy, pertaining to sexual relations between Aryan race#Nazism, Aryans and non-A ...
''), 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
Nazi Party
The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party ( or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported the ideology of Nazism. Its precursor ...
.
Following the
invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, the RuSHA worked in partnership with
VOMI in the "
germanization
Germanisation, or Germanization, is the spread of the German language, German people, people, and German culture, culture. It was a central idea of German conservative thought in the 19th and the 20th centuries, when conservatism and ethnic nati ...
" of captured territory, monitoring of settler welfare, and the
plantation
Plantations are farms specializing in cash crops, usually mainly planting a single crop, with perhaps ancillary areas for vegetables for eating and so on. Plantations, centered on a plantation house, grow crops including cotton, cannabis, tob ...
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 Nazi occupied Eastern territories and ejecting the native families from those lands.
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'') in connection with:
* Cases where sexual intercourse had occurred between Eastern European POWs or workers and Germans
* Children born to Eastern European workers
* Classification of people of German descent
* Selection of enemy nationals, particularly Poles, for slave labour and Germanization
* Kidnapping of children suitable for Germanization
* Population transfers
* The persecution and liquidation of Jews
The RuSHA also employed
Josef Mengele
Josef Mengele (; 16 March 19117 February 1979) was a Nazi German (SS) officer and physician during World War II at the Russian front and then at Auschwitz during the Holocaust, often dubbed the "Angel of Death" (). He performed Nazi hum ...
for a short time from November 1940 to early 1941, in Department II of its Family Office, where he was responsible for "care of genetic health" and "genetic health tests".
He went on to become one of the team of doctors responsible for the selection of victims to be killed in the
gas chamber
A gas chamber is an apparatus for killing humans or animals with gas, consisting of a sealed chamber into which a poisonous or asphyxiant gas is introduced. Poisonous agents used include hydrogen cyanide and carbon monoxide.
History
Donatie ...
s and for performing deadly
human experiments on prisoners at
Auschwitz concentration camp
Auschwitz, or Oświęcim, was a complex of over 40 Nazi concentration camps, concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany, occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) d ...
.
Postwar

In July 1947, 14 officials from the organization were indicted in the
RuSHA Trial and tried by the
Allied powers at
Nuremberg
Nuremberg (, ; ; in the local East Franconian dialect: ''Nämberch'' ) is the Franconia#Towns and cities, largest city in Franconia, the List of cities in Bavaria by population, second-largest city in the States of Germany, German state of Bav ...
. All were charged with crimes against humanity, war crimes and membership in a criminal organization (the SS). All but one (who was acquitted on the two more serious charges) were found guilty and sentenced to between three and 25 years imprisonment. Hildebrandt was convicted of war crimes and sentenced to 25 years imprisonment. He was then extradited to Poland and tried for his criminal actions there. He was convicted of war crimes and executed.
See also
*
Generalplan Ost
The (; ), abbreviated GPO, was Nazi Germany's plan for the settlement and "Germanization" of captured territory in Eastern Europe, involving the genocide, extermination and large-scale ethnic cleansing of Slavs, Eastern European Jews, and o ...
– the Nazi plan to
ethnically-cleanse occupied Eastern Europe.
*
Office of Racial Policy
*
Denordification
References
Citations
Sources
SS Collections: RuSHA (Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt)*
*
*
*
{{Authority control
Race in Nazi Germany
Holocaust terminology
Heinrich Himmler
Germanization
Allgemeine SS
Migration policy of Germany