19 Dec. 45

status, so that all its acts could be attributed neither to the Government nor to the Party as a whole. The SS was that apparatus.

Like the SA, it was one of the seven components or formations of the Nazi Party referred to in the "Decree on the Enforcement of the Law for Securing the Unity of Party and State of 29 March 1935, published in the Reichsgesetzblatt for that year, Part 1, Page, 503. That decree will be found in our Document 1725-PS. I shall not read it. I assume that the Court will take judicial notice of it. The status of the SS, however, was above that of the other formations. As the plans of the conspirators progressed, it acquired new functions, new responsibilities, and an increasingly more important place in the regime. It developed during the course of the conspiracy into a highly complex machine, the most powerful in the Nazi State, spreading its tentacles into every field of Nazi activity.

The evidence which I shall present will be directed, first, towards showing very briefly the origin and early development of the SS; second, how it was organized, that is, its structure and its component parts; third, the basic principles governing the selection of its members and the obligations they undertook; and finally, its aims and the means used to accomplish them, the manner in which it carried out the purposes of the conspirators, and thus is a responsible participant in the crimes alleged in the Indictment.

The history, organization, and publicly announced functions of the SS are not controversial matters. They are not matters to be learned only from secret files and captured documents. They were recounted in many publications circulated widely throughout Germany and the world, official books of the Nazi Party itself and books, pamphlets, and speeches by SS and State officials published with SS and Party approval. Throughout the presentation of the case I shall frequently refer to five or six such publications, translations of which — in whole or in part — appear in the document books. Although I shall quote portions of them, I shall not attempt to read them all in full, since I assume that the contents of such authoritative publications may be judicially noticed by the Tribunal.

Now to take up the origin of the SS. The first aim of the conspirators — as the evidence already presented to the Court has shown — was to gain a foothold in politically hostile territory, to acquire mastery of the streets, and to combat any and all opponents with force. For that purpose they needed their own private, personal police organization. Evidence has just been introduced in the case against the SA, showing how that organization was created to fill such a role. But the SA was outlawed in 1923. When Nazi Party activity was again resumed in 1925, the SA remained outlawed. To fill its place and to play the part of Hitler's own personal police small mobile groups known as protective squadrons (Schutzstaffeln)