pool. Himmler sought and obtained a further decree, issued on 18 May 1939, which authorized the expansion of the SS-TV to 50,000 men, and directed the army to provide it with military equipment, something the army had resisted. Invasion of Poland During the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, Eicke's SS-TV field forces numbered four infantry regiments and a cavalry regiment, plus two battalions placed in Free City of Danzig. The SS-TV role in the attack on Poland was not military in spite of close proximity to combat. "Their military capabilities were employed instead in terrorizing the civilian population through acts that included hunting down straggling Polish soldiers, confiscating agricultural produce and livestock, and torturing and murdering large numbers of Polish political leaders, aristocrats, businessmen, priests, intellectuals, and Jews." Eicke's three regiments, Oberbayern, Brandenburg and Thuringen, were reformed as the first Einsatzgruppen; the Oberbayern and the Thuringen (EG II and EG z. B.V) followed the Tenth Army in Upper Silesia; the Brandenburg (EG III) followed the Eight Army across Warthegau. The behavior of these Standarten in Poland elicited some protests from officers of the army, including 8th Army commander Johannes Blaskowitz who wrote a memorandum to Walther von Brauchitsch detailing the SS-TV atrocities, unaware that they were planned years in advance by the Central Unit II P-Poland under Heydrich who himself coordinated secret extermination actions including Operation Tannenberg and the Intelligenzaktion both targeting more than 61,000 members of Polish elites during the opening stages of World War II. At the beginning of war in Europe, the SS forces consisted of roughly 250,000 servicemen spread out across multiple branches, with transferable ranks and service records from police regiments and the army. Himmler's military formations at this time comprised several subgroups, including the SS-Verfügungstruppe, which would become the basis of the Waffen-SS. Hitler approved further expansion of the armed SS formations. By October 1939, a new SS military division the SS-Totenkopf was formed. The Totenkopf was initially formed from concentration camp guards of the Standarten (regiments) of the SS-TV and soldiers from the SS-Heimwehr "Danzig. Members of other SS militias were also transferred into the division in early 1940; these units had been involved in multiple massacres of Polish civilians, political leaders and prisoners of war. From fall 1939 to spring 1940 a massive recruitment effort in Germany raised no fewer than twelve new TK-Standarten (four times the size of the