19 Dec. 45
been created. No better witness to this fact could be
called upon than the Reichsführer SS whose every endeavor was to
insure the complete unity of the organization. I quote his words, taken
from his Posen speech, our Document 1919-PS, Exhibit Number USA-170. I
read from Page 103 of the original, third line from the bottom of the
page, from the English translation, Page 8:
"It would be an evil day if the main
offices, in performing their tasks with the best, but mistaken,
intentions made themselves independent by each having a downward chain
of command. I really think that the day of my overthrow would be the
end of the SS. It must be, and so come about, that this SS
organization with all its branches — the General SS which is the
common basis of all of them, the Waffen-SS, the regular uniformed
police, the Sipo, with the whole economic administration, schooling,
ideological training, the whole question of kindred is, even under the
10th Reichsführer SS, one bloc, one body, one organization."
And continuing about the middle of Page 8 of the translation and at the
bottom of Page 104 of the original speech:
"The regular uniformed police and
Sipo, General SS and Waffen-SS, must now gradually amalgamate, too,
just as this is and must be the case within the Waffen-SS. This
applies to matters concerning filling of. posts, recruiting,
schooling, economic organization, and medical services. I am always
doing something towards this end, a bond is constantly being drawn
around these sections of the whole to cause them to grow together.
Alas, if these bonds should ever be loosened, then everything —
you may be sure of this — would sink back quickly into its old
insignificance within one generation."
I now turn to the underlying philosophy of the SS, the principles by
which its members were selected and the obligations imposed upon them.
To understand this organization the theories upon which it was based
must be kept clearly in mind. They furnish the key to all its
activities. It is necessary, therefore, to consider them in some detail.
The fundamental principle of selection was what Himmler called that of
blood and elite. The SS was to be the living embodiment of the Nazi
doctrine of the superiority of Nordic blood — the carrying into
effect of the Nazi conception of a master race. To put it in Himmler's
own words the SS was to be a "National Socialist Soldier Order of
Nordic Men." In describing to the Wehrmacht the reasons behind his
emphasis on racial standards of selection and the manner in which they
were carried out he said —