Nazi military and SS ranks

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Before the Nazis took power, Germany had a well-established system of military ranks. The early Sturmabteilung (SA) ("Braunhemden", "brownshirts") saw itself as a revolutionary alternative to the traditional Army, and developed its own rank system. While the SA was a largely irrelevant force after 1934, the successor Schutzstaffel (SS) ("Schwarzhemden", "blackshirts") essentially continued the SA system.

There was not a perfect mapping between SA/SS and military ranks. Complicating the system was that the heads of the SS, Heinrich Himmler, and of the Luftwaffe, Hermann Göring, insisted on having unique ranks senior to all others.

Another confusing factor, not unique to Germany, is that the military (but not the SS) had no rank of brigadier general. In both Germany and the Soviet Union, the "Generalmajor" rank was equivalent to the "one-star" rank, and all the other ranks shifted: "Generalleutnant" was equivalent to two-star, not to lieutenant general.

Naval rank structure differed from Anglo-American usage, but were consistent with other Continental navies, with multiple grades of "captain" rather than having a "commander" rank; the Soviets had "captain first rank" through "captain third rank".