19 Dec. 45
In that passage, after having talked at great length
about the racial struggle, Himmler tells his commanding officers —
and he is making this speech to the commanding officers of three
divisions of the Waffen-SS — he tells his officers that the thing
which he wants so thoroughly instilled into every recruit in the
organization that he becomes saturated with it, is the necessity of the
SS standing firm and carrying on the racial struggle without mercy.
On the same point one further quotation — if the Tribunal will
bear with me — and I think this is important because this, again,
is a public quotation, found in the Organization Book of the
Party. That is our Document Number 2640-PS. It is a very short passage,
appearing on Page 418 of the original and Page 1 of the English
translation, the third paragraph from the end of the page in the
translation:
"He openly and unrelentingly fights
the most dangerous enemies of the State: Jews, Freemasons, Jesuits,
and political clergymen."
Now these were the fundamental principles of the SS: racial superiority
and blind obedience. A necessary corollary of these two principles was
ruthlessness. The evidence that we will introduce on these activities
will show how successfully the SS learned the lesson it was taught.
The SS had to, and did, develop a reputation for terror which was
carefully cultivated. Himmler himself publicly attested it as early as
1936 in his pamplet, The SS as an Anti-Bolshevist Fighting
Organization, our Document 1851-PS, which has already been
introduced into evidence as Exhibit Number USA-440. I quote two
sentences which appear at Page 29 of the original pamphlet and on Page 4
of the translation, the first two sentences:
"I know that there are some people in
Germany who become sick when they see these black coats. We understand
the reason for this and do not expect that we shall be loved by too
many."
The role which the SS
was required to play demanded that it remain constantly the essence of
Nazism and that its elite quality should never be diluted.
As evidence that even in 1943 the SS standards were still being
maintained, I offer in evidence a letter written to the Defendant
Kaltenbrunner by Himmler. This letter is our Document Number 2768-PS. It
is a letter from the Reichsführer SS, written at his field command
post and bearing the date 24 April 1943. 1 offer it as Exhibit Number
USA-447. I quote from the first paragraph of that letter:
"Referring again to the matter which
we discussed some time ago-that is, the admission of Sipo officials
into the SS — I