LEGAL REFERENCES AND LIST OF DOCUMENTS RELATING TO THE STURMABTEILUNG (SA)
| Document | Description | Vol. | Page |
| Charter of the International Military Tribunal, Article 9. | I | 6 | |
| International Military Tribunal, Indictment Number 1, Section IV (H); Appendix B. | I | 29, 72 | |
| ———— | |||
| Note: A single asterisk (*) before a document indicates that the document was received in evidence at the Nurnberg trial. A double asterisk (**) before a document number indicates that the document was referred to during the trial but was not formally received in evidence, for the reason given in parentheses following the description of the document. The USA series number, given in parentheses following the description of the document, is the official exhibit number assigned by the court. | |||
| ———— | |||
| 392-PS | Official NSDAP circular entitled “The Social Life of New Germany with Special Consideration of the German Labor Front”, by Prof. Willy Mueller (Berlin, 1938). (USA 326) | III | 380 |
| *787-PS | Memorandum to Hitler from Public Prosecutor of Dresden, 18 June 1935, concerning criminal procedure against Vogel on account of bodily injury while in office. (USA 421) | III | 568 |
| *1395-PS | Law to insure the unity of Party and State, 1 December 1933. 1933 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, p. 1016. (GB 252) | III | 978 |
| *1721-PS | Confidential report of SA Brigadefuehrer, November 1938, concerning destruction of Jewish property. (USA 425) | IV | 214 |
| 1725-PS | Decree enforcing law for securing the unity of Party and State, 29 March 1935. 1935 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, p. 502. | IV | 224 |
| *1759-PS | Affidavit of Raymond H. Geist. (USA 420) | IV | 288 |
| *1856-PS | Extract from book entitled “Hermann Goering—Speeches and Essays”, 3rd edition 1939, p. 27. (USA 437) | IV | 496 |
| *1893-PS | Extracts from Organization Book of the NSDAP, 1943 edition. (USA 323) | IV | 529 |
| *2168-PS | Book by SA Sturmfuehrer Dr. Ernst Bayer, entitled “The SA”, depicting the history, work, aim and organization of the SA. (USA 411) | IV | 772 |
| 2260-PS | Settlement of Relationship between NSDAP and Stahlhelm (Steel Helmets) published in National Socialist Party Press Service release, 21 June 1933. | IV | 933 |
| *2354-PS | Extracts from Organization Book of NSDAP, 5th, 6th and 7th editions, concerning SA. (USA 430) (See Chart No. 17.) | IV | 1091 |
| *2383-PS | Ordinance for execution of decree of Fuehrer concerning position of the Head of Party Chancellery of 16 January 1942, published in Decrees, Regulations, Announcements. (USA 410) | V | 9 |
| *2407-PS | Order concerning the Roehm purge and appointment of Lutze as Chief of Staff, published in Voelkischer Beobachter, 1934. (USA 412) | V | 82 |
| *2471-PS | Pamphlet No. 12 in a series entitled “Here Speaks the New German”. Speech made in January 1936 by Victor Lutze, Chief of Staff of SA, subject: “The Affairs and Tasks of SA”. (USA 413) | V | 211 |
| 2532-PS | Extract from The Third Reich, by Gerd Ruehle. | V | 268 |
| *2660-PS | Distribution Plan for Gaue, Kreise, and Ortsgruppen, from The Bearers of Sovereignty, 2nd Issue, 3rd Year, February 1939. (USA 325) | V | 365 |
| *2760-PS | Extract from Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler, 1933 edition. (USA 256) | V | 396 |
| *2820-PS | General Service Regulations for the SA of the NSDAP, published in Munich, 12 December 1933. (USA 427) | V | 456 |
| 2821-PS | Memorandum from Supreme SA Headquarters, 19 March 1934, concerning organization of the SA and collaboration between Wehrmacht and SA. (USA 431) | V | 458 |
| 2822-PS | Letter from the Reich Military Ministry, 26 May 1933, suggesting that an SA branch and Reich Defense Council be united. | V | 459 |
| *2823-PS | Memorandum of SA Headquarters, January 1934, concerning assignment of Wehrmacht officer to Training Division of SA. (USA 429) | V | 459 |
| *2824-PS | Extract from book entitled “Concentration Camp Oranienburg”. (USA 423) | V | 461 |
| **3036-PS | Affidavit of Gottlob Berger on the composition and activity of the Henlein Free Corps in September 1938. (Objection to admission in evidence upheld.) (USA 102) | V | 742 |
| **3050-A-E-PS | Excerpts from The SA Man. (USA 414; USA 415; USA 416; USA 417; USA 418) (Referred to but not offered in evidence.) | V | 777 |
| *3054-PS | “The Nazi Plan”, script of a motion picture composed of captured German film. (USA 167) | V | 801 |
| *3211-PS | Goebbels to the SA, 17 October 1935, from The Archive, Vol. 19, October 1935, p. 939. (USA 419) | V | 928 |
| 3212-PS | Excerpt from The Archive, Vol. 34, January 1937, p. 1452. | V | 929 |
| 3213-PS | Excerpt from The Archive, Vol. 50, May 1938, pp. 156-157. | V | 929 |
| 3214-PS | Excerpt from The Archive, Vol. 55, October 1938, p. 1069. (USA 432) | V | 930 |
| *3215-PS | Excerpt from The Archive, Vol. 60, March 1939, p. 1834. (USA 426) | V | 930 |
| *3216-PS | Excerpt from The Archive, Vol. 97, April 1942, p. 54. (USA 434) | V | 933 |
| 3217-PS | Excerpt from The Archive, Vol. 97, April 1942, p. 54. | V | 933 |
| 3218-PS | Excerpt from The Archive, October 1933, pp. 482-485. | V | 934 |
| *3219-PS | Excerpt from The Archive, Vol. 125, August 1944, p. 367. (USA 433) | V | 934 |
| *3220-PS | Excerpt from Organization Book of NSDAP, 1943 edition, p. 358. (USA 323) | V | 935 |
| *3221-PS | Affidavit of William F. Sollman, 26 October 1945. (USA 422) | V | 936 |
| *3232-PS | Affidavit of Walter Schellenberg, 26 November 1945. (USA 435) | V | 937 |
| *3252-PS | Extract from book Hermann Goering, The Man and His Work, by Eric Gritzbach, 1937. (USA 424) | V | 957 |
| *3259-PS | Extract from book Hermann Goering, The Man and His Work, by Eric Gritzbach, p. 69. (USA 424) | V | 1007 |
| *D-44 | Circular, 25 July 1933, referring to publications of SA activities. (USA 428) | VI | 1024 |
| Affidavit F | Affidavit of Josef Dietrich, 20-21 November 1945. | VIII | 631 |
| L-198 | State Department Dispatch by Consul General Messersmith, 14 March 1933, concerning molesting of American citizens in Berlin. | VII | 1026 |
| L-199 | Newspaper clippings from Berliner Tageblatt, 29 March 1933, regarding boycott action. | VII | 1034 |
| Statement IX | My Relationship to Adolf Hitler and to the Party, by Erich Raeder, Moscow, fall 1945. | VIII | 707 |
| Statement XIII | Outline of Defense of Dr. Robert Ley, written in Nurnberg prison, 24 October 1945. | VIII | 749 |
| **Chart No. 8 | Organization of the SA. (Enlargement displayed to Tribunal.) | End of VIII | |
| *Chart No. 17 | Foreign Organization of the NSDAP. (2354-PS; USA 430) | End of VIII | |
5. THE SCHUTZSTAFFELN (SS)
In the early weeks of the trial, there appeared in a newspaper circulated in Nurnberg an account of a correspondent’s visit to a camp in which SS prisoners of war were confined. The thing which particularly struck the correspondent was the one question asked by the SS prisoners: Why are we charged as war criminals? What have we done except our normal duty?
The evidence which follows will answer that question. It will show that just as the Nazi Party was the core of the conspiracy, so the SS was the very essence of Nazism. For the SS was the elite group of the Party, composed of the most thorough-going adherents of the Nazi cause, pledged to blind devotion to Nazi principles, and prepared to carry them out without any question and at any cost. It was a group in which every ordinary value was so subverted that today its members can ask, what is there unlawful about the things we have done?
In the evidence of the conspirators’ program for aggressive war, for concentration camps, for the extermination of the Jews, for enslavement of foreign labor and illegal use of prisoners of war and for the deportation and Germanization of inhabitants of conquered territories, in all this evidence the name of the SS runs like a thread. Again and again that organization and its components are referred to. It performed a responsible role in each of these criminal activities, because it was and indeed had to be a criminal organization.
The creation and development of such an organization was essential for the execution of the conspirators’ plans. Their sweeping program and the measures they were prepared to use and did use, could be fully accomplished neither through the machinery of the government nor of the Party. Things had to be done for which no agency of government and no political party even the Nazi Party, would openly take full responsibility. A specialized type of apparatus was needed—an apparatus which was to some extent connected with the government and given official support, but which, at the same time, could maintain a quasi-independent status so that all its acts could be attributed neither to the government nor to the Party as a whole. The SS was that apparatus.
Like the SA, it was one of the seven components or formations of the Nazi Party referred to in the Decree on Enforcement of the Law for Securing the Unity of Party and State of 29 March 1935 (1725-PS). But its status was above that of the other formations. As the plans of the conspirators progressed, it acquired new functions, new responsibilities, and an increasingly more important place in the regime. It developed during the course of the conspiracy into a highly complex machine, the most powerful in the Nazi State, spreading its tentacles into every field of Nazi activity.
The evidence which follows will be directed toward showing first, the origin and early development of the SS; second, how it was organized—that is, its structure and its component parts; third, the basic principles governing the selection of its members and the obligations they undertook; and finally, its aims and the means used to accomplish them.
The history, organization, and publicly announced functions of the SS are not controversial matters. They are not matters to be learned only from secret files and captured documents. They were recounted in many publications, circulated widely throughout Germany and the world—in official books of the Nazi Party itself, and in books, pamphlets, and speeches by SS and State officials published with SS and Party approval. Throughout this section there will be frequent reference to and quotation from a few such publications.