The 6-1/2 x 9 inch SS-Leitheft ("SS-lead-booklet") was a Nazi periodical from 1934 to 1945. This "SS-leadership magazine", as it is often called, was published in German in Berlin from 1934 onward, and in the beginning mostly circulated among professional officers in the SS. The publisher was the SS-Hauptamt, the main office of the Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, and the printing was done by M. Müller and Sohn in Berlin. When war came, with need for new recruits, the SS-Leitheft was also published at the Germanische Leitstelle in Oslo, Norway; Copenhagen, Denmark; Brussels, Belgium; and Den Haag, the Netherlands; that is to say, in Norwegian, Danish, Flemish and Dutch, entitled ‘Germanische Leithefte’. There was an Estonian edition. The normative texts were usually translated from German, but with more room for national diversity as war went on. The periodical's spiritual leader was Dr. Franz Riedweg, a Swiss physician who had joined the SS and become the head of Germanic Volunteer Recruiting, a division of the Berlin Main SS-Office.
The ‘Germanische Leithefte’ where first intended for the volunteers of the SS-Division Wiking. In 1943 they where published for the volunteers of the III. SS-Panzer-Korps. In 1941 the ‘Germanische Leithefte’ where first published by the SS-Hauptamt for the education of the Germanic volunteers. They where published in German under the title ‘Germanische Leithefte’, and they where translated in Dutch for the Dutch and Flemish volunteers under the same German title (with the caption 'Den Haag' or 'Antwerpen'). There was also a Norwegian translation under the title ‘Germansk Budstikke’, as well as a Danish translation with the same title. In 1944 the ‘Germanische Leitheften’ where replaced by new ‘Leithefte’. There was the ‘Leitheft voor Vlaanderen’, for the Flemish volunteers, the ‘Leitheft voor Nederland’, for the Dutch volunteers, the ‘Annales’, for the Walloon volunteers and the ‘Leitheft Eestikeelne Väljaanne’ for the Estonian volunteers. There were also ‘Leithefte’ for the volunteers from Norway, Denmark, France or the other occupied countries in Eastern-Europe. The content of these ‘new’ ‘Leithefte’ was the same as the German ‘Leithefte’.