Adolf Hitler’s bid for power depends on his most loyal and violent supporters, the SS. They use intimidation, detention, terror and even murder to defeat all the Nazis political enemies. They also put Hitler’s deadly policy of racial purity into practice. Under its leader, Heinrich Himmler, the SS becomes a state within the state, controlling a vast network of concentration camps, deaths camps, prisons, and industrial complexes. Hitler also gives Himmler control of the police and the notorious Gestapo.