20 Dec. 45
"These articles of equipment had to
be prepared, and one day some man from the SS or the SD — the
name is on the official diary of the War Department — fetched
them."
The war erupted and
the Waffen-SS again took its place in the van of the attacking forces.
During the war great use was made of the peculiar qualities possessed
by the SS, qualities not only of its combat forces but of its other
components as well. I turn now to a consideration of some of the tasks
in which the SS was engaged during the war — tasks which embraced
the commission of War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity described in
the Indictment.
The Tribunal has already received in evidence our Document 447-PS as
Exhibit Number USA-135. It is a directive issued by the Defendant
Keitel, on the 13th of March 1941, covering some of the preparations
made 3 months in advance for the attack on Russia. Paragraph 2b of that
directive, which was read into the record, provided that in the area of
operations the Reichsführer SS was entrusted with special tasks for
the preparation of the political administration, tasks which would
result from the struggle about to commence between two opposing
political systems.
One of the steps taken by the Reichsführer SS to carry out those
special tasks" was the formation and use of so-called "anti-partisan"
units. They were discussed by Himmler in his Posen speech, our Document
1919-PS, at Page 3 of the translation, Paragraph 5, Page 57 of the
original, last paragraph. I read those two paragraphs in which he
discusses the anti-partisan units:
"In the meantime, I have also set up
the office of the chief of the anti-partisan units. Our comrade SS
Obergruppenführer Von dem Bach is chief of the anti-partisan
units. I considered it necessary for the Reichsführer SS to be in
authoritative command in all these battles, for I am convinced that we
are best in position to take action against this enemy struggle, which
is decidedly a political one. Except where units which had been
supplied and which we had formed for this purpose were taken from us
to fill in gaps at the front, we have been very successful.
"It is notable that by setting up this agency by division,
corps, army in turn, we have gained for the SS the next higher
step-which is the High Command of an army or even a group, if you wish
to call it that."
What the
SS did with its divisions, corps, and army out of which the
anti-partisan units were formed, is illustrated in the reports rendered
as to the activities of such units. I offer in evidence the Activity and
Situation Report 6 of the task forces of the Security Police and SD in
the U.S.S.R., covering the period from the 1st to