“* * * If we once had not enough sons, those who will come after us will have to become cowards. A nation which has an average of four sons per family can venture a war; if two of them die, two transmit the name. The leadership of a nation having one son or two sons per family will have to be faint-hearted at any decision on account of their own experience, because they will have to tell themselves: We cannot afford it. Look at France, which is the best example. France had to accept from us a dictate.” (1918-PS)
(b) The SS as an exterminator of “inferior” races.
Domination of Europe through a Nazi Elite required more, however, than the positive side of racism—that is, the building up of a numerous “biologically superior” group. It necessarily meant also the destruction of other races. The SS had to be, and was, taught not merely to breed, but to exterminate. In a speech delivered at Kharkov in April 1943, Himmler declared:
“We have—I would say, as very consistent National Socialists—taken the question of blood as our starting point. We were the first really to solve the problem of blood by action, and in this connection by problem of blood, we of course do not mean anti-semitism. Antisemitism is exactly the same as delousing. Getting rid of lice is not a question of ideology. It is a matter of cleanliness. In just the same way, anti-semitism for us, will soon have been dealt with. We shall soon be deloused. We have only 20,000 lice left, and then the matter is finished within the whole of Germany.” (1919-PS)
But it was not merely against Jews that SS efforts were directed. All non-Nordic races were similarly condemned. In his Posen speech, Himmler stated this basic principle of the SS:
“One basic principle must be the absolute rule for the SS men: We must be honest, decent, loyal and comradely to members of our own blood and to nobody else. What happens to a Russian, to a Czech, does not interest me in the slightest. What other nations can offer in the way of good blood of our type, we will take, if necessary, by kidnapping their children and raising them here with us. Whether nations live in prosperity or starve to death interests me only so far as we need them as slaves for our culture; otherwise, it is of no interest to me. Whether 10,000 Russian females fall down from exhaustion while digging an antitank ditch interests me only insofar as the antitank ditch for Germany is finished.”
* * * * * *
“That is what I want to instill into this SS and what I believe I have instilled in them as one of the most sacred laws of the future.” (1919-PS)
(c) Indoctrination of members in SS racial theories. These were the principles which were publicly reiterated, over and over again, so that the newest recruit was thoroughly steeped in them. In his Kharkov speech to the commanding officers of three Waffen SS divisions, Himmler strongly insisted on indoctrinating all SS members in his theories of the racial struggle.
“This is what is important for us as SS men, for our province of duty and our mission (it is a task additional to those of the whole German armed forces and the whole German people): That is what I would like to impress upon you. This is what I beg you as commanding officers, as chiefs and as leaders, to teach the young men again and again in their ideological instruction. That is what I demand and exact of you—that you really concern yourself with the man, the young fellow of 17 or 18 who comes to us, and with many who are in our ranks not as volunteers but as conscripts. I ask you to look after them, and guide them, and not let them go before they are really saturated with our spirit and are fighting as the old guard fought before us—that is what I request and demand of you.