SS Rontgen Sturmbann

15/03/2018

https://www.facebook.com/AmericanRoentgenRaySociety/posts/10155430237938549

During World War I, Marie Curie left her lab behind, inventing a mobile X-ray unit that could travel to the battlefront and training 150 women to operate these 'Little Curies.'

15/04/2017

A Time to Heal by Don Stivers

19/09/2015

German mobile xray units

19/09/2015

German xray unit 1941

19/09/2015

The successful deployment of new equipment at the National Socialist Party’s Reich Party Rally in 1938 motivated SS-Standartenführer Hans Holfelder to form a motorised mobile X-ray unit. An expanded group of employees made up of selected SS medics and the new mobility of the X-ray equipment now enabled other geographical areas of application. The “motorised X-ray unit,” called the “Röntgensturmbann SS-Hauptamt,” performed a major, multi-week operation in the summer of 1939 in which the entire population of the German state of Mecklenburg underwent radiological screening. The X-ray vehicles did not just drive through German districts; they also followed the Wehrmacht on their military campaign into the East. The X-ray unit’s flexible equipment enabled mass radiological screenings while also offering staff and equipment that could serve as an X-ray unit in the field, taking over the usual radiological tasks related to field hospitals.
Until the end of the Second World War, however, the unit’s primary purpose was to search for tuberculosis carriers. The unit received its orders for these missions from the Reich Health Leader, who was also responsible for organizing health services for the resettlement of ‘ethnic Germans.’

The immense population movements that were unleashed by the “Master Plan for the East” displaced people according to “affiliations of blood and ethnicity” within the greater European region. One of the results was the westward migration of ‘ethnic Germans,’ who however were first subjected to physical examinations.

In 1941, the maximum strength of what was now called the “Röntgen-Sturmbann of the SS-Führungshauptamt,” still under the leadership of Prof. Dr. Holfelder, was massively increased, and the unit was tasked with fighting tuberculosis beyond the borders of the Reich. Germans “and other peoples” were now to be included in the screenings. The screening of the Polish population for tuberculosis, however, was not for the purpose of identifying those infected in order to begin therapy; this was clear from communications among those responsible for this policy, including Dr. Kurt Blome. The two fates for an estimated 35,000 Polish people infected with tuberculosis were either to be shot or confined in a ‘reservation,’ “such as the ones we are familiar with from those with leprosy,” in which Blome proposed that entire families should be interned. The family members could then care for their ill until they died.

17/09/2015

.50 cal bullet in neck

17/09/2015

The first units of the SS Medical Corps began to appear in the 1930s. Within each SS-Sturmbann (battalion), there existed one company of SS personnel whose duty was to serve as medical support personnel to the rest of the SS battalion.

Known as the Sanitätsstaffel, these formations were originally small units under the command of local SS leaders. After 1931, however, the SS formed a headquarters office known as Amt V, which was the central office for SS medical units. At this same time, a special SS unit was formed known as theRöntgensturmbann SS-HA, or the Hauptamt X-Ray Battalion. This formation comprised 350 full-time SS personnel who toured Germany offering X-ray diagnostics to any SS member. While the Röntgensturmbann was an independent office, the local Sanitätsstaffelwere under dual command of both the SS Medical Office (Amt V), and the leaders of the various SS-Sturmbann and Standarten.

When the N***s came to power in 1933, the SS was reorganized and an office of the SS Surgeon General was established. Commanded by an SS-Obergruppenführer, the SS Surgeon General was a member of the personal staff of the Reichsführer-SS, with the SS Medical Corps, as a whole, losing the status of a headquarters office. This was an important development in changing the nature of service for members of the SS Medical Corps.

By 1935, the SS Medical Corps was considered an 'auxiliary duty', and all members of the medical corps were also attached to regular SS formations. To denote medical corps status, the SS authorized a serpent crest to be worn on the collar patches of SS unit insignia. Because SS Medical Corps members could now serve in any branch of the SS, this expansion allowed medical professionals to join every SS office and participate in a variety of duties.

When World War II began in 1939, the SS Medical Corps extended itself in the Armed wing of the SS which would, by 1941, be known as the Waffen-SS. Waffen-SS doctors were highly trained both in medical skills and combat tactics with many such doctors receiving high combat awards.