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Volume V · Page 212
| Verwaltungshauptamt), commonly called the
WVHA. It was they who procured the material, money, and slaves to support the
SS state. It was they who supervised the lawless jungles which were
concentration camps. It was they who were the greatest users of slave labor. As
Eugen Kogon has said, "No super-Jew of Streicher's ever accomplished what SS
Obergruppenfuehrer Pohl succeeded in doing — the rationalization of
turning corpses into money on a mass basis." The crimes which are the subject of this trial run the gamut of "man's inhumanity to man" — the systematic commission of atrocities in concentration camps; the utilization of slave labor under brutal and inhumane conditions; the extermination of the Jews, and so-called "useless eaters"; criminal medical experimentation on concentration camp inmates; the destruction of the Warsaw ghetto; and the confiscation of property on a gigantic scale. The defendant Pohl and his collaborators in the WVHA were parties to all of these crimes and many more. Since this case is concerned with the criminal activities of one of the Main Offices of the SS, it is necessary to understand something of the history and organization of the SS in general and the WVHA in particular. To assist the Tribunal in this regard, the prosecution has prepared and delivered to the Tribunal a brief containing basic information on the SS and the WVHA. This has also been made available to defense counsel in both German and English. It includes a glossary of German words and expressions which will be used frequently in the course of the trial, a table of equivalent ranks of the American Army and the German Wehrmacht and the SS,¹ and two charts showing the organization of the SS and the WVHA ². The Schutz Staffeln or SS was the protective guard of the National Socialist Party (NSDAP). It was formed in 1925 to protect leaders and speakers at Party meetings and above all to protect the person of the Fuehrer. As the "Fuehrer" or leader of the Nazi Party, Hitler was the "Oberste Fuehrer" or Supreme Leader of the SS. In January 1929 Heinrich Himmler was appointed Reich Leader SS. As such, he was the commander of the SS and subordinated directly to Hitler as head of the Nazi Party. At that time, the SS numbered only about 280 men and was much less important than the Sturmabteilung or SA, which was a Nazi pari-military unit under the ambitious Captain Ernst Roehm. Patiently and unobtrusively, Himmler set about creating out of the SS an aristocracy within the Nazi Party. He called this aristocracy the |
¹ Table of Comparative Ranks is contained in appendix.
² Table of Organization of WVHA (NO-111, Pros. Ex. 38), is reproduced on pp, 313-319.
