officials of the Security and Order Police, at SS ranks equivalent to their rank in the police.

Until 1940 the SS was an entirely voluntary organization. After the formation of the Waffen SS in 1940 there was a gradually increasing number of conscripts into the Waffen SS. It appears that about a third of the total number of people joining the Waffen SS were conscripts, that the proportion of conscripts was higher at the end of the war than at the beginning, but that there continued to be a high proportion of volunteers until the end of the war.

Criminal Activities: SS units were active participants in the steps leading up to aggressive war. The Verfügungstruppe was used in the occupation of the Sudetenland, of Bohemia and Moravia, and of Memel. The Henlein Free Corps was under the jurisdiction of the Reichsführer SS for operations in the Sudetenland in 1938, and the Volksdeutschemittelstelle financed fifth-column activities there.

The SS was even a more general participant in the commission of War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity. Through its control over the organization of the Police, particularly the Security Police and SD, the SS was involved in all the crimes which have been outlined in the section of this Judgment dealing with the Gestapo and SD. Other branches of the SS were equally involved in these criminal programs. There is evidence that the shooting of unarmed prisoners of war was the general practice in some Waffen SS divisions. On 1 October 1944 the custody of prisoners of war and interned persons was transferred to Himmler. who in turn transferred prisoner-of-war affairs to SS Obergruppenführer Berger and to SS Obergruppenführer Pohl. The Race and Settlement Office of the SS together with the Volksdeutschemittelstelle were active in carrying out schemes for Germanization of occupied territories according to the racial principles of the Nazi Party and were involved in the deportation of Jews and other foreign nationals. Units of the Waffen SS and Einsatzgruppen operating directly under the SS main office were used to carry out these plans. These units were also involved in the widespread murder and ill-treatment of the civilian population of occupied territories. Under the guise of combatting partisan units, units of the SS exterminated Jews and people deemed politically undesirable by the SS, and their reports record the execution of enormous numbers of persons. Waffen SS divisions were responsible for many massacres and atrocities in occupied territories such as the massacres at Oradour and Lidice.

From 1934 onwards the SS was responsible for the guarding and administration of concentration camps. The evidence leaves no doubt that the consistently brutal treatment of the inmates of concentration camps was carried out as a result of the general policy