dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: It (the SA) has for the first time been employed here in a new area with new methods and tasks which, however, have been solved owing to the very fact that the SA is here, the same as it-was in the period of struggle in the Reich" (2233-PS). Meanwhile at home in the Reich the SA were taking over--I quote: "...the functions which had previously been entrusted only to the SS and Sipo and Army, for instance, the guarding of concentration camps, prisoner-of-war camps, supervision of forced laborers in Germany and occupied territories. This co-operation of the SA was planned and arranged by high offices in Berlin as early as the middle of 1943" (3232-PS, USA-435). In Styria the camp of Frauenberg was being operated as a labor camp for habitual drunkards, delinquents, and shirkers. 300 inmates worked in the neighboring stone quarries and on road construction. SA men provided the guards. Can we picture the conditions in which these shirkers and delinquents lived-or died? Violence and murder and mastery of the -streets during the years of struggle! Illegal arrest, unauthorized concentration camps, unbelievable sadism during the years of triumph, 1933 and 1934! Ruthless suppression and brutal persecution of Jews and Christians and of every opposition, coupled with warlike and aggressive training during the years from 1934 until the outbreak of war! And after that, more concentration camps, more sadism, more suppression and persecution, this time of the allegedly racially inferior peoples they had conquered; and violence and murder, but not, as it had been in the distant days of 1933, of individuals; now it was of whole peoples. It is the same pattern running through the years. Can your decision frank these men again to terrorize the peoples of Germany and Europe? My Lord, I do not conceive it to be necessary to deal at any length with the evidence against the SS. You are already too well aware of the character of this organization and of the activities of its members.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: The letters SS appear in connection with almost every one of the crimes, great and small, of which you have now heard daily over the course of almost 10 months. It may all be summarized, even if understated, in the words of their leader Himmler, I quote: "I know there are some people in Germany who become sick when they see these black coats. We understand the reason and do not expect that we shall be loved by too many" (1851-PS, USA-440). I would therefore address you only upon one or two particular points that have arisen and to which the Prosecution attach particular importance. The history of the development of the SS may be stated in a few words. Created originally as an elite bodyguard for the protection of Hitler himself, together with the SA it formed a private Nazi army and the basis of what was to become the vital instrument in the conspiracy to wage aggressive war. Its value as a thoroughly reliable "instrument of the Fuehrer" was demonstrated in June 1934 when it performed the function of executioner in the blood purge which accompanied the murder of the SA Leader Roehm. I quote: "It appalled everyone," said Himmler later, "and yet everyone was certain that he would do it again if such orders were issued and if it were necessary" (1919-PS, USA-170). The willingness of the SS to do it again was to be exemplified a millionfold in the ensuing years. Until January 1933 the SS consisted of a single unit. There were no special branches, and, apart from their common role with the SA and their special position as Hitler's bodyguard, they had no other particular tasks. After the Nazi Party had come to power, however, and particularly after 1934, its members increased and its organization expanded and became more complex. New units were created, such as the SS Totenkopfverbaende, the task of which was, and continued to be, the guarding of concentration camps. A few selected units were given arms and in effect became Himmler's private army, known as the SS Verfuegungstruppe.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: At the same time certain functions became the speciality of other groups which, while not having a separate organizational status, came to be designated as separate branches, for instance, the SD, who were the intelligence service of the SS and who were later to work in such close co-operation with the Gestapo. Although it became customary to distinguish between the several branches and formations of the SS by name, in terms of administration and command they were parts of the one SS, all under the command of the Reichsfuehrer SS and all administered and controlled through the various main offices of the SS Supreme Command. At the outbreak of war the majority of the Allgemeine SS, the great mass of the SS membership which had remained unarmed, were drafted into the Wehrmacht. New recruits were enrolled in the Verfuegungstruppe, which was expanded to form the, fighting divisions of the SS and it was these fighting divisions which in about 1940 came to be known as the Waffen-SS. The Tribunal has seen from the report of the SS Statistical Institute how the SS had developed by 30 June 1944. By then it had a total membership of 794,941. The Allgemeine SS-the original nucleus of the SS-had declined in importance during the war because more than half of its 200,000 members had been called up, to the Wehrmacht, the Labor Service, or other special Nazi agencies. The remaining 594,000 belonged to the Waffen-SS. The Tribunal has seen how 368,000 of the Waffen-SS were in field units. About 160,000 were in reinforcement, training, and reserve units; 26,544 were in other units and offices directly subordinate to the Operational Headquarters of the SS High Command; 39,415 were in the SS Main Offices. It is particularly significant to see how these 39,415 men of the Waffen-SS were distributed. The Tribunal will see that there I attached a total. Witnesses have told you that the Waffen-SS had nothing to do with the concentration camps.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: But no less than 24,000 of them were in the WVHA, the offices which organized and were responsible for the administration and personnel of the concentration camps. That 24,000 did not include the Totenkopf SS which provided the guards. Waffen-SS men also provided the manpower of the various Nazi genocide organizations operating, within and on behalf of the SS, the Race and Settlement Main Office, the Office of the Reichskommissar for the Consolidation of German Folkdom, the central office for persons of German race, the personal staff of Himmler, including Sievers' infamous Ahnenerbe. It is said of the Waffen-SS that it was in effect a purely military organization the character of which was no different from any unit of the Wehrmacht. On the evidence this is not so. It is true that the Waffen-SS was the combat arm of the SS. But, although its fighting formations came under the command of the Army for operational purposes, they always remained an integral part of the SS. Indeed, the Hitler order regarding the function of the SS on mobilization provided that if placed under the command of the Army it, I quote: "remains a unit of the NSDAP politically." Recruiting, training, promotions, administrations, and supply of the Walffen-SS throughout the war remained the function of the Supreme Command of the SS. It was recruited through the SS Main Office. It was organized, administered, and supplied through the SS Operational Office, which was the seat of its Command Headquarters. Members of the Waffen-SS were subject to jurisdiction by the SS Main Legal Office. Like all other formations of the SS, the Waffen-SS was subject to Himmler's jurisdiction as Reichsfuehrer SS. It was in theory and in practice as much an integral part of the SS organization as any other branch of the SS. You will remember the evidence that Von Rundstedt gave, I quote: "The troop units of the SS were subordinate only to Himmler. I had no disciplinary power nor judicial power over them. I could not give them leaves or issue awards.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: I was responsible only for the technical employment of these divisions, much as I might use a Yugoslav or Hungarian division." These then were the broad outlines of the SS, this all-powerful "state within the state," as General Detzel called it. The Defense now seeks to divide this all-embracing unity of the SS into various totally separate components united only in the person of Himmler. He and three or four of his subordinates are alone made responsible for the millionfold crimes that were committed. But this contention violates both truth and sense. We are dealing in this Trial not with the murder of 10 men here or 20 there. In this Indictment is charged not only the murder of millions but a demonic plan of genocide, of the planned murder of whole nations, peoples, and races. The SS was the chosen instrument for this plan which "outheroded Herod." This plan could only be executed by the use of the whole of the SS, of every branch of the SS working in unison and in co-operation with each other. The evidence given in this Trial has shown that the crimes of the Nazi conspirators could not have been executed in an improvised way by sporadic criminal acts. They were carefully planned, prepared, and put into action through the SS and other criminal organizations. The men of the SS were particularly qualified for this plan of crime. Physically trained and selected, they were politically indoctrinated in Nazism and were committed to blind obedience to the commands of Hitler and Himmler and the rest of the Nazi leaders. "Orders must be sacred," said Himmler. Not only was membership voluntary during the first 16 years of the existence of the SS from 1925 on, it was subject to most careful selection in an endeavor to produce what the SS called a "male racial elite," a "super-stratum," a "band of definitely Nordic German men." SS men had to be fanatical Nazis of "Aryan" descent. Much emphasis has been made by the Defense that during the course of the war the voluntary basis of the recruitment was replaced by compulsory drafting.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: The witness Brill gave evidence that "at the end of the war there were more draftees in the Waffen-SS than volunteers." It may be helpful to the Tribunal if I very shortly discuss the evidence of that witness. While it is not questioned that at some stage during the war considerable numbers of men were arbitrarily drafted into the Waffen-SS, the date when this practice commenced and the extent to which it was carried, as they have been given by the witness Broil, are both challenged. He told you that the first 36,000 were conscripted between the autumn of 1939 and the spring of 1940. To say that the 36,000 were compulsorily drafted into the SS is deliberately misleading. When he was cross-examined before the Commissioner upon a similar statement he admitted that those 36,000 were already members of the Allgemeine SS which they had voluntarily joined. They were not conscripted: they were simply posted from one part of the SS to another. Figures of the subsequent conscripts which he gave were as follows: During 1942, 30,000; during 1943, 100,000; and during 1944, 210,000, making a total of 340,000. Even on these figures he is far short of justifying his statement that by the end of the war there were more conscripts than volunteers. He gave the grand total of the Waffen-SS as 910,000--a figure which included its strength in 1940 and all subsequent reinforcements, both voluntary and compulsory; 340,000 amounts to only just over one-third of that total. On the question of the date at which recruits were first conscripted into the SS there is considerable evidence to refute this witness. In February 1940 Hess was instructing the Party offices to assist in the voluntary recruitment for the SS. In the decrees which he issued there was no suggestion of compulsory drafting. In April 1942 a recruiting pamphlet was emphasizing the voluntary basis of the Waffen-SS in these words, I quote: "Every youth in the National Socialist Reich knows that he must himself initiate proceedings in order to complete his military service in the Waffen-SS.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: That so many young Germans have volunteered for the Waffen-SS is a living testimonial of the confidence of today's young generation in the Waffen-SS, its spirit, and above all, its leadership" (3429-PS, USA-446). The Soldier's Friend , a pocket diary for the German Armed Forces published in 1943, the year in which Brill would have you believe that 100,000 men were conscripted without choice, was describing the members of the SS as hopeful young men who had "voluntarily decided to join the ranks of the Waffen-SS." It stated, I quote: "Everyone has acquainted himself with the comprehensive manual for the Waffen-SS. The principal points are as follows: "1. Service in the Waffen-SS counts as military service. Only volunteers are accepted" (2825-P9, USA-441). In April of the same year Himmler was directing the Defendant Kaltenbrunner on the admission of Sipo officials into the SS: "I wish to make it clear again,"--he said--"I want an admission only if the following conditions are fulfilled: "1. If the man applies freely and voluntarily" (2768-PS, USA-447). And the Organization Book for 1943 explains that the Waffen-SS, by admitting volunteers for the duration of the war, makes it possible for these volunteers to fight in the battle for the evolution of the National Socialist idea. I am entitled also to make this comment upon Brill's evidence. You will remember that I have already referred you to the statements which this witness made upon the activities of the SS Division Leibstandarte which must, in my respectful submission, be regarded as perjured testimony. In view of the suspect nature of his evidence and of the evidence there is to contradict it, it is my submission that whatever may have been the extent of compulsory service in the SS it was very much less and came into being at a very much later date than he contends. But whatever the truth of this matter may be, it is our submission that the fact that a number of men were compulsorily enrolled ought not and cannot afford this organization a defense.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: The instances of crime committed by the SS during the war are so widespread, so constant, and so vast that you are compelled to infer that the vast majority of its members, whether in the first place they joined voluntarily or otherwise, readily accepted the tradition of the SS and themselves became willing parties to its criminal activities. May I consider in outline only some of the evidence upon which that conclusion must be drawn. You know already the form of education and training that the SS man received--a training for "the racial struggle" which Himmler commanded them to prosecute "without mercy." Racial theories, geopolitics, eugenics--that was their curriculum. Mein Kampf was their Bible. Their basic philosophy was expressed by Himmler: "It must be a matter of course that the most copious breeding should be from this racial super-stratum of the Germanic people. In 20 to 30 years we must really be able to present the whole of Europe with its leading class. If the SS, together with the farmers ... then run the colony in the East on a grand scale without any restraint, without any question about any kind of tradition, but with nerve and revolutionary impetus, we shall in 20 years push the national boundary 500 kms. eastwards" (1919-PS, USA-170). The propagation of ideas like these could only have accustomed SS men to the conception of a world in which the destruction, enslavement, and degradation of "inferior" peoples were regarded as an honorable duty. Pangs of conscience did not and could not trouble these men. The Tribunal will remember the words of Von dem Bach-Zelewski when he was asked whether the murder of 90,000 Jews by one small Einsatz group (to which, incidentally, the Waffen-SS provided most of the killers) was in keeping with Nazi philosophy.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: He said: "I am of the opinion that when, for years, for decades, the doctrine is preached that the Slav race is an inferior race and Jews not even human, then such an outcome is inevitable." Not only were SS generals like Von dem Bach-Zelewski and Ohlendorf themselves infected by this poison. It is our submission that it did--and must have--poisoned the ordinary SS man who did the killing. Their extermination of Jews was regarded as, I quote: "A page of honor in our history." Honor! Cold-blooded mass murder regarded as honor! Do we need further evidence to prove the type of man this filthy education bred? Long before they had enrolled themselves in the SS their members had been saturated with racial hatred and Fuehrer worship. SS training was only a more advanced course. When they joined the SS, to whatever part they went they saw the practical application of all that they had learnt before. Everywhere, in every office, in every unit, murder was the trade. And wherever murder was to be done it was the members of the SS that were enrolled to do it. The Ahnenerbe was a department of the SS. Its list of members included the names of over one hundred professors and other educated men--all SS members, who relied upon the murderous business of hundreds of other SS members to supply them with the bodies for their experiments and the specimens for their collections--bodies of commissars who were to be taken alive and then decapitated, care being taken that, I quote: "the head should not be damaged." Professor Hirt wrote: "By procuring the skulls of the Jewish-Bolshevik commissars, who represent the prototype of the repulsive but characteristic sub-human, we have the chance now to obtain a scientific document" (085, GB-574). The Office for the Consolidation of German Folkdom was an office of the SS, the office responsible for the awful crime of genocide and all that it entailed. The RSHA and the WVHA, controlling and responsible for the concentration camps, were manned by SS.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: The crimes of the SS in the concentration camps need no further mention except to emphasize that the inquiries instituted by the SS judicial system, of which the witness Morgen gave evidence, were not inquiries into mass murder but into cases of corruption by SS officials. That witness is another whom I have already suggested to be unworthy of belief. How can the story of an investigation by an SS judge into the murders by Hoess at Auschwitz, which were interrupted by the advance of the Allies, be taken seriously? What further investigation could have been needed when Morgen himself knew all the details of the Auschwitz killings some time in 1943 or 1944? Do you doubt that had the Allies lost the war Hoess would still be committing mass murder in that concentration camp and that SS judges would still be investigating corruption and isolated crimes? The Einsatzkommandos were primarily SS. They show 'in miniature the co-operation between the various branches of Himmler's system and the unity of the SS. Action Group "A" was composed as follows: Waffen-SS 34.4 percent; SD 3.5 percent; Criminal Police 4.1 percent; Gestapo 9.0 percent; Auxiliary Police 8.8 percent; other Police 13.4 percent. The system of exterminating Jewry was handled by SS. The Warsaw ghetto is but one example. The deportation, murder, and robbery of the Poles and other peoples occupying territory which was required for German settlement was undertaken by SS. You will remember the Globocznik report, the action in which thousands of Poles were removed from their homes and 178 million Reichsmark acquired for the WVHA and which, in the words of Globocznik himself, was, I quote: "...carried out by order"--of the Reichsfuehrer SS--"and only the decency and honesty as well as the surveillance of the SS men used for this purpose could guarantee a complete delivery" (4024-PS, GB-550).
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: One is surprised that he did not add " pecunia non olet ." The Waffen-SS came to be the spearhead of Nazi wars of aggression, particularly in the invasion of the Soviet Union, and exemplified the tyranny and slaughter which were inherent in Nazi domination. I quote: "We will never let that excellent weapon, the dread terrible reputation which preceded us in the battles of Kharkov, fade, but will constantly add new meaning to it." So said Himmler to the officers of three SS divisions in Kharkov in 1943 (1919-PS, USA-170). The Waffen-SS succeeded in constantly adding new meaning to its reputation for terror. Numerous instances have been submitted to the Tribunal of the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity by units of the Waffen-SS. They. are fresh in the Tribunal's mind and I will not recapitulate them. I would only remind the Tribunal that some 6f the worst atrocities took place in 1943 and 1944, at which time a proportion of the Waffen-SS were conscripts. How can it be contended that the members of the SS, and particularly of the Waffen-SS, were merely soldiers--soldiers who had no knowledge and took no part in these crimes? How can it be said that it was not they whose aims were criminal? Wherever we find Nazi crimes being committed we find also SS men involved. Always it is said that these SS men were something special, members of the SD or some other particular branch, members of the SS who had been drafted away to serve with special units such as the Einsatzkommandos, members of the SS who were not really SS men at all, but doctors or Police. Can this be really so? Let us ignore the evidence of the concentration camps, of the Einsatzkommandos, of the vast and brutal crimes against the populations of their invaded territories, of the mass exterminations of Jews throughout half the countries of Europe, of the legion instances of individual crime and sadism, of the legion other instances of murder in battle, and of every other breach of the laws of warfare.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Let us ignore the evidence of all these crimes, although each one of them was committed by different SS men in different towns and villages throughout the length and breadth of the Greater Reich. Let us ignore them although they did not constitute one sudden wave of crime but were being done day after day over the years. Let us ignore the fact that in almost no instance of crime of which we have heard were any other than SS men involved. Let us ignore all this if you wish. Without it the criminality of the SS, from the highest to the lowest, is established by the records which we have of those three speeches that Himmler made to the officers of his SS units. In April of 1941 he was talking to all of the officers of the SS Division Leibstandarte. In October 1943 he was addressing his major generals at Posen. In the same month the commanding officers of every regiment in three of his SS divisions were listening to what he said at Kharkov. Those speeches have been quoted to you again and again and you know the sentiments that were expressed and the subject-matter that they covered. Will you try to imagine a general from your own countries talking to all the officers of one of your own divisions of hauling into slavery "thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands" of people; of shooting "thousands of leading Poles"? Will you try to imagine a British or an American or a Soviet or a French army commander telling his major generals: "What happens to a Russian, to a Czech, does not interest me in the slightest.... Whether 10,000 Russian females fall down from exhaustion while digging an anti-tank ditch interests me only insofar as the anti-tank ditch for Germany is finished" (1919-PS, USA-170, Page 23). Or saying this: "I also want to talk to you, quite frankly, on a very grave matter.... I mean the clearing out of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish race.