Originally members of these units guarded the concentration camps. In 1938 they participated, alongside the Verfügunstruppen, in the occupation of Austria, the Sudetenland and Czechoslovakia. In 1939, 6,500 of their most experienced members, under the command of the former commandant of the concentration camp Dachau, and Inspector of Concentration Camps 1933-1939, Theodore Eicke, formed the first Waffen SS unit, the Totenkopfdivision. Until mid-1941 its units were employed in policing occupied territories, and the supervision and implementation of deportations and executions. Immediately prior to the assault on the USSR, the Totenkopfverbände were incorporated in units of the Waffen SS.