Judgment:
[Page 75]
Structure and Component Parts: The Prosecution has named Die
Schutzstaffeln der Nationalsocialistischen Deutschen
Arbeiterpartei (commonly known as the SS) as an organisation
which should be declared criminal. The portion of the
Indictment dealing with the SS also includes Der
Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsfuehrer-SS (commonly known as
the SD). This latter organisation, which was originally an
intelligence branch of the SS, later became an important
part of the organisation of Security Police and SD and is
dealt with in the Tribunal's Judgment on the Gestapo.
[Page 76]
The SS was originally established by Hitler in 1925 as an
elite section of the SA for political purposes under the
pretext of protecting speakers at public meetings of the
Nazi Party. After the Nazis had obtained power the SS was
used to maintain order and control audiences at mass
demonstrations and was given the additional duty of
"internal security" by a decree of the Fuehrer. The SS
played an important role at the time of the Roehm purge of
30th June, 1934, and, as a reward for its services, was made
an independent unit of the Nazi Party shortly thereafter.
In 1929, when Himmler was first appointed as Reichs Fuehrer
the SS consisted of 280 men who were regarded as especially
trustworthy. In 1933, it was composed of 52,000 men drawn
from all walks of life. The original formation of the SS was
the Allgemeine SS, which by 1939 had grown to a corps of
240,000 men, organized on military lines into divisions and
regiments. During the war its strength declined to well
under 40,000.
The SS originally contained two other formations, the SS
Verfuegungstruppe, a force consisting of SS members who
volunteered for four years' armed service in lieu of
compulsory service with the Army, and the SS Totenkopf
Verbaende, special troops employed to guard concentration
camps, which came under the control of the SS in 1934. The
SS Verfuegungstruppe was organized as an armed unit to be
employed with the Army in the event of mobilization. In the
summer of 1939, the Verfuegungstruppe was equipped as a
motorized division to form the nucleus of the forces which
came to be known in 1940 as the Waffen SS. In that year the
Waffen SS comprised 100,000 men, 56,000 coming from the
Verfuegungstruppe and the rest from the Allgemeine SS and
the Totenkopf Verbaende. At the end of the war it is
estimated to have consisted of about 580,000 men and 40
divisions. The Waffen SS was under the tactical command of
the Army, but was equipped and supplied through the
administrative branches of the SS and under SS disciplinary
control.
The SS Central Organisation had 12 main offices. The most
important of these were the RSHA, which has already been
discussed, the WVHA or Economic Administration Main Office
which administered concentration camps along with its other
duties, a Race and Settlement Office together with auxiliary
offices for repatriation of racial Germans
(Volksdeutschemittelstelle). The SS Central Organisation
also had a legal office and the SS possessed its own legal
system; and its personnel were under the jurisdiction of
special courts. Also attached to the SS main offices was a
research foundation known as the Experiments Ahnenerbe. The
scientists attached to this organisation are stated to have
been mainly honorary members of the SS. During the war an
institute for military scientific research became attached
to the Ahnenerbe which conducted extensive experiments
involving the use of living human beings. An employee of
this institute was a certain Dr. Rascher, who conducted
these experiments with the full knowledge of the Ahnenerbe,
which were subsidized and under the patronage of the
Reichsfuehrer SS who was a trustee of the foundation.
Beginning in 1933 there was a gradual but thorough
amalgamation of the police and SS. In 1936 Himmler, the
Reichsfuehrer SS, became Chief of the German Police with
authority over the regular uniformed police as well as the
Security Police. Himmler established a system under which
Higher SS and Police Leaders, appointed for each Wehrkreis,
served as his personal representatives in coordinating the
activities of the Order Police, Security Police and SD and
Allgemeine SS within their jurisdictions. In 1939 the SS and
police systems were coordinated by taking into the SS all
officials of the Security and Order Police, at SS ranks
equivalent to their rank in the police.
[Page 77]
Until 1940 the SS was an entirely voluntary organisation.
After the formation of the Waffen SS in 1940 there was a
gradually increasing number of conscripts into the Waffen
SS. It appears that about a third of the total number of
people joining the Waffen SS were conscripts, that the
proportion of conscripts was higher at the end of the war
than at the beginning, but that there continued to be a high
proportion of volunteers until the end of the war.
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The Accused Organisations:
The
SS
(Part 6 of 10)
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