The SS equestrian units, 1930 to 1945 / by Paul Wilson.

This study examines the SS Equestrian Units and their importance to perhaps the most notorious organization in history, the SS. The Equestrian Units helped link the urban SS with rural Germany, and they provided the SS with elite support and social prestige. They were also the only SS organization acquitted at the Nuremburg trials. This study is based essentially on primary sources. Various personnel files of equestrian unit leaders were examined, along with documents and microfilm from various archives, to assess the importance of the Equestrian Unit to its parent organization and to decide whether the Nuremburg Tribunal acted properly in excluding the Equestrian SS from condemnation. The evidence suggests that the Equestrian Units were an integral SS component which allowed the organization to penetrate rural society. They were intended to be an SS cavalry and security force, a function that was realized in World War II, and they should have been included in the Nuremburg Tribunal's guilty verdict on the SS.