War-time conscription eroded the SS’s elite self-selected character

Evidence

In the course of the war, when the ranks of the Waffen-SS had to be filled with enlistments owing to losses at the front, the Waffen-SS lost its elite character within the SS to such an extent that now the General SS, i.e., the higher Fuehrer Corps, once again represented the real nuclear elite of the movement. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2662

Categorization

• XREF: Illustrates the movement-vs-mass distinction: elite cohesion required voluntary self-selection that conscription destroyed — relevant to how bureaucratic recruitment dilutes ideological intensity.