Re: Who was WWII's most important leader?
Because the SS was many things to many people, where the SA was far more unified.
Your basic SS soldier was a combination soldier/policeman/Comissar. He believed in the Nazi ideals and enforced the law - often brutally, but also professionally. The organization saw itself as elite, and many of it's members tried to live up to that.
Then there was the Waffen-SS, part of the same organization, but separate. And the Waffen-SS was highly variable - there were units that upheld the highest standards of professional soldierly conduct. And there were also the Totenkopf (Death's Head) units that ran the extermination camps.
In comparison, consider that the entire SA could have been considered Totenkopf units.