In the months preceeding the arrest of SA Stabschef Ernst Rohm on 30 June 1934, the only organized armed force that Der Fuhrer could absolutely depend on under all circumstances was the Leibstandarte-SS Adolf Hitler (Adolf Hitler Life Guards), which had only recently been introduced as an oranized force at the Party Congress at Nuremberg in September 1933. Morever, it only had an effective combat strength of approximately 300 men as of 1 January 1934, making it greatly undersized in any potential future conflict with either the Reichswehr (army) or the SA.
		As the ever growing competition between Rohm and the German Army High Command was evolving into a full scale political civil war, the NSDAP government had to realistically plan for the posibility of a number of negative outcomes, any one which could result in the end of the regime itself and the imprisonment or execution of the NSDAP leadership. At worst case, this involved a scenario where the NSDAP might find itself having to physically engage in battle with the Reichswehr (Army) for survival, and/or resist forced replacement by radical elements of the SA leadership, backed by a national revolt in the streets by all SA units, whose effective membership by 30 June 1934 was in excess of 2,000,000 men.
		To deal with either of these fundamental physical threats, the leaders of each Allgemeine SS abschnitt (Administrative SS district) across Germany were quietly instructed in January 1934 to organize a special action force consisting of one hundred of their best fighting men and retain them in barracks for availability on extremely short notice. These Kasernierte Hunderschaft (100 men each) were eventually amalgated in key areas into company or battalion size units, known as Politische Bereitschafen (PB's for short), which were to play a vital role in bringing the Rohm matter to a successful conclusion for the government. In recognition of the importance of that unconditional loyalty to Der Fuhrer, it was decided after Rohm's fall, to maintain this second armed SS unit as an independent fighting force under the command of Paul Hausser, which was appropriately named the SS Verfugungstruppe (emergency force).
		As an aside, it should be noted that this new organization had nothing whatsoever to do with a new, third armed SS entity that also came into existence after the Knight of the Long Knives, which was the SS Wachverbande under the command of Theodor Eicke, which was given singular responsibility for guarding the growing number of inmates in various detention facilities operated by the Allgemeine SS in Germany.