20 Dec. 45

heavier, there were occasions when some men drafted for compulsory military service were assigned to units of the Waffen-SS rather than to the Wehrmacht. Those instances were relatively few. Evidence of the recruiting standards of the Waffen-SS in 1943, which I quoted yesterday, has shown that the membership in that branch was as essentially voluntary and highly selective as in the other branches. Doubtless some of the members of the SS, or of other organizations alleged to be unlawful in the Indictment, might desire to show that their participation in the organization was a small or innocuous one, that compelling reasons drove them to apply for membership, that they were not fully conscious of its aims or that they were not mentally responsible when they became members. Such facts might or might not be relevant, if such a person were on trial. But in any event this is not the forum to try out such matters. The question before this Tribunal is simply this: whether the SS was or was not an unlawful organization. The evidence has finally shown what the aims and activities of the SS were. Some of those aims were stated in publications which I have quoted to the Court. The activities were so widespread and so notorious, covering so many fields of unlawful endeavor, that the illegality of the organization could not have been concealed. It was a notorious fact, and Himmler himself in 1936, in a quotation which I read to the Tribunal yesterday, admitted that when he said:

"I know that there are people in Germany now who become sick when they see these black coats. We know the reason and we do not expect to be loved by too many."

It was, we submit, at all times the exclusive function and purpose of the SS to carry out the common objectives of the defendant conspirators. Its activities in carrying out those functions involved the commission of the crimes defined in Article 6 of the Charter. By reason of its aims and the means used for the accomplishment thereof, the SS should be declared a criminal organization in accordance with Article 9 of the Charter.

COL. STOREY: If the Tribunal please, the next presentation will be the Gestapo, and it will take just a few seconds to get the material here.

If the Tribunal please, we are now ready to proceed, if Your Honors are.

THE PRESIDENT: Yes.

COL. STOREY: We first pass to the Tribunal document books marked "Exhibit AA." Your Honors will notice they are in two volumes, and I will try at each time to refer to which volume. They are separated into the D documents, the L documents, the PS documents, et cetera.