Conclusions: The SS was utilized for purposes
which wore criminal under the Charter involving the persecution and
extermination of the Jews, brutalities and killings in concentration
camps, excesses in the administration of occupied territories the
administration of the slave labor program and the mistreatment and
murder of prisoners of war. The Defendant Kaltenbrunner was a member
of the SS implicated in these activities. In dealing with the SS the
Tribunal includes all persons who had been officially accepted as
members of the SS including the members of the Allgemeine SS, members
of the Waffen SS, members of the SS Totenkopf Verbände, and the
members of any of the different police forces who were members of the
SS. The Tribunal does not include the so-called SS riding units. Der
Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführer SS (commonly known as the SD)
is dealt with in the Tribunal's Judgment on the Gestapo and SD.
The Tribunal declares to be criminal within the meaning of the
Charter the group composed of those persons who had been officially
accepted as members of the SS as enumerated in the preceding
paragraph who became or remained members of the organization with
knowledge that it was being used for the commission of acts declared
criminal by Article 6 of the Charter, or who were personally
implicated as members of the organization in the commission of such
crimes, excluding, however, those who were drafted into membership by
the State in such a way as to give them no choice in the matter, and
who had committed no such crimes. The basis of this finding is the
participation of the organization in War Crimes and Crimes against
Humanity connected with the war; this group declared criminal cannot
include, therefore, persons who had ceased to belong to the
organizations enumerated in the preceding paragraph prior to 1
September 1939.
THE SA
Structure and Component Parts: The
Prosecution has named Die Sturmabteilungen der
Nationalsozialistischen Deutschen Arbeiterpartei (commonly known as
the SA) as an organization which should be declared criminal. The SA
was founded in 1921 for political purposes. It was organized on
military lines. Its members wore their own uniforms and had their own
discipline and regulations. After the Nazis had obtained power the SA
greatly increased in membership due to the incorporation within it of
certain veterans organizations. In April 1933 the Stahlhelm, an
organization of 1 1/2 million members, was transferred into the SA,
with the exception of its members over 45 years of age and some
others, pursuant to an agreement between their leader Seldte and
Hitler. Another veterans organization, the so-called Kyffhauserbund,
was