The Waffen-SS set out to build a new kind of officer, and this is what it looked like. Where the German army drew its leaders largely from an old caste of Prussian professionals, the SS created its own officer academies — the Junkerschulen at Bad Tölz and Braunschweig — and picked young men less for pedigree than for physical hardness, tactical aggression and ideological conviction. The result was a corps trained to lead from the very front, sharing the risks of their men and driving them forward with a fanatical belief in the cause. It made SS units formidable in the attack and heedless of loss: their officers died at rates that would have crippled a more careful army. Calm and determined, as the copy says — and, too often, remorseless.

The figure is a Waffen-SS field officer on the move among his troops — camouflage smock over field uniform, peaked field cap with goggles, an MP40 in one hand and a message or map in the other, pistol and map case at his belt. He commands the collection's combat squad: the SS Squad Leader under him, the riflemen Advancing Under Fire he drives forward, and the MG34 Gun Team anchoring his line. In a diorama the officer is the figure that makes a scatter of soldiers a unit — the will directing the fight.

Model: WS394 / King & Country / 1/30 (60mm) scale / matte finish / 1 piece set