This is where the whole Leibstandarte began: standing guard. Formed in 1933 as the SS-Stabswache Berlin — Hitler's Berlin staff guard — the unit that grew into the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler started life mounting sentries at the Reich Chancellery, the seat of Nazi power. Guardsmen like these stood watch at the Chancellery gates day and night, and their ceremonial changing of the guard became a public spectacle, drawing crowds to watch the black-uniformed SS drill with parade-ground precision. It was theatre as much as security — the daily, visible face of the regime at its heart in Berlin. Long before the Leibstandarte became a feared combat division, it was these motionless sentries, guarding the man they had sworn their lives to.

The set gives four Leibstandarte guardsmen rigidly at attention, rifles held vertical against the shoulder in the black dress uniform and steel helmet — the sentries of the Chancellery frozen in the guard-mount. They form a block with their companion set at Parade Rest, stand watch over the man at the centre of it all, Adolf Hitler, and belong to the regiment whose story they open, the Leibstandarte. Flanking a gateway or a rostrum in a Berlin diorama, a rank of motionless SS sentries is the quiet, ever-present menace the regime built its capital around.

Model: LAH-S06 / King & Country / 1/30 (60mm) scale / matte finish / 4 piece set