The SS, Alibi of a Nation 1922-1945The SSshort for the German Schutzstaffelnwas a far flung organization, of which the Gestapo was only one branch, that served as the tyrannical expression of Nazi bureaucracy, a politics of terror. Germans in high places still use the SS as a standard excuse for the acts of murder, extortion, and genocide that were facts of daily life under the Nazis. Reitlinger explores the complex social machinery that allowed the SS to operatethe administration and