When he came back to Himmler’s personal staff, Peiper resumed his function. In October 1940 he accompanied his boss to Madrid where the latter had to meet with Franco. After passing through Metz, they stopped in Dax where Himmler met with the commander of the SS division Totenkopf, Theodor Eicke. It is after this trip that on 14 November 1940, Peiper was appointed first adjutant of Himmler.[27]
At the beginning of the next year Himmler went for an inspection circuit of the Nazi concentration camps and was accompanied by his first adjutant, Peiper. On 14 January 1941, they visited Ravensbrück; on 21 they were in Dachau.[28] In March 1941, together with Karl Wolff and Fritz Bracht, they went to Auschwitz.[29] It was during this visit that Himmler instructed Höss to build the Birkenau concentration camp, but no precise information was yet given as to its final location.[30] During this period the idea of the "Final Solution" was taking form and it seems unlikely that in his capacity as first adjutant that Peiper would not have known something about it. To sustain this theory one needs to remember that during a trial in the 1960s it was demonstrated that Werner Grothmann (Peiper’s successor as first adjutant) was fully aware of the details of the genocide.[27]
The fact that Peiper approved of Himmler can maybe be found in a letter of his spouse to Hedwig Potthast, Himmler’s mistress:
"You know how much he loves, adores and admires KH"
In fact KH was an acronym for König Heinrich (King Heinrich), which also tells much about the advanced stage of familiarity of Sigurd Peiper with the circle of Himmler’s close relations.[31]
Heinrich Himmler and Jochen Peiper with officers of the Waffen-SS Division Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler, Greece, 1941.
It was February 1941 that Himmler informed his subordinate of the plan to invade the Soviet Union.[28] The following months were devoted to preparing the SS for this war in the east. Himmler and his entourage travelled to Norway, Austria, Poland and the Balkans, in Greece.[32] These travels included a visit to the Lodz Ghetto about which 30 years later Peiper stated an account:
It was a macabre image: we saw how the Jewish Ghetto police, who wore hats without rims and were armed with wooden clubs, inconsiderately made room for us. The Jewish elders also presented Himmler with a bouquet of flowers
and more at..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joachim_Peiper#Back_to_Himmler.E2.80.99s_personal_staff
Waffen SS units were batter equipped and brain washed units of fanatics, they were in main stream of nazi propaganda which called them elite and as I see it is still working ... -I wonder if it is right to call them elite ? There were many units which deserved much more to call them elite. most of waffen SS operations ended as complete disaster and it is quite normal because they were commanded by party leaders who got promotions thank to theirs devotion to Hitler (and that was also Peiper way)