19 Dec. 45
a few moments ago, directing the substitution of
General SS members to the Death's-Head Units in the event of
mobilization. It is unnecessary to repeat the evidence of wholesale
brutality, torture, and murder committed by SS guards. They were not the
sporadic crimes committed by irresponsible individuals but a part of a
definite and calculated policy, a policy necessarily resulting from SS
philosophy, a policy which was carried out from the initial creation of
the camps.
Himmler bluntly stated the SS view as to the inmates of the camps in
his article, "Organization and Obligations of the SS and the
Police," Exhibit Number USA-439, our Document 1992(a)-PS. I quote
from Page 7 of the translation, last paragraph; from Page 148 of the
original, third paragraph:
"It would be extremely instructive
for everyone — to some members of the Wehrmacht I could give the
opportunity — to inspect such a concentration camp. Once you have
seen it, you are convinced of the fact that no one has been sent there
unjustly; that it is the offal of criminals and freaks. No better
demonstration of the laws of inheritance and race, as set forth by Dr.
Guett, exists than such a concentration camp. There you can find
people with hydrocephalus, people who are cross-eyed, deformed, half
Jewish, and a number of racially inferior products. All that is
assembled there. Of course, we distinguish between those inmates who
are only there for a few months for the purpose of education and those
who are to stay for a long time. On the whole, education consists only
of discipline, never of any kind of instruction on an ideological
basis, for the prisoners have, for the most part, slave-like souls and
only very few people of real character can be found there."
Then, omitting the next two sentences, he continues with this striking
remark:
"Education thus means order. The
order begins with these people living in clean barracks. Such a thing
can really be accomplished only by Germans; hardly another nation
would be as humane as we are. The laundry is frequently changed. The
people are taught to wash themselves twice daily and to use a
toothbrush, a thing with which most of them have been unfamiliar."
Having heard the evidence and seen the pictures as to conditions in
concentration camps, this Tribunal can appreciate how grim and savage
that callous jest was. He made no such pretense in his speech to his own
Gruppenführer at Posen, our Document 1919-PS, Exhibit Number
USA-170. I quote from Page 43 of the