The selection methods and ideological education of Waffen SS men furnished such good grounding that a few weeks of practice was all that was required to turn them into excellent exterminators. Himmler’s proud boast of the part that the SS played in the extermination of the Jews occurs in his Posen Speech:
“Most of you must know what it means when 100 corpses are lying side by side, or 500 or 1,000. To have stuck it out and at the same time—apart from the exceptions caused by human weakness—to have remained decent fellows, that is what has made us hard. This is a page of glory in our history which has never been written and is never to be written * * *.” (1919-PS)
(6) Functions and activities with respect to preparing for and waging aggressive war. From the very beginning the SS made prime contributions to the conspirators’ aggressive aims. First, it served as one of the para-military organizations under which the conspirators disguised their building up of an Army in violation of the Versailles Treaty. Second, through affiliated SS organizations in other countries and through some of the departments in its own Supreme Command, it fostered Fifth Column movements outside Germany and prepared the way for aggression. Third, through its militarized units, it participated in the aggressive actions which were eventually carried out.
(a) The SS as a para-military organization. The para-military character of the General SS is apparent from the military character of its structure, the military discipline required of its members, and the steps it took to enlist in its ranks young men of military age. In addition to this volunteer Army the SS created, as early as 1933, fully armed professional soldiers who complied with the requirement for compulsory military service by performing duties in the SS. These were the SS Vorfuegungstruppe and the Death Head Units.
(b) The SS as a fifth column agency. While building up the SS as a military force within Germany, the conspirators also utilized it in other countries to lay the groundwork for aggression. During the seizure of Austria, the SS Standarte 89 was directly involved in the murder of Chancellor Dolfuss, and a memorial placque was erected in Vienna as a tribute to the SS men who participated in that murder (L-273; 2968-PS). Subsequently, on the night of 11 March 1938, the SS with the SA marched into Vienna and occupied all government buildings and important posts in the city. (See the report of Gauleiter Rainer to Reich Commissioner Buerckel (812-PS); and the record of the telephone conversations between Goering and Dambrowski (2949-PS)).
The same pattern was repeated in Czechoslovakia. Henlein’s Free Corps played in that country the part of fifth column which the SS had played in Austria and was rewarded, in September 1938, by being placed under the jurisdiction of the Reichsfuehrer SS (388-PS, Items 37, 38). Moreover, a Most Secret OKW order of 28 September 1938, reveals that the SS had its own armed units, four battalions of Totenkopf Verbaende, actually operating in Czechoslovakian territory before the Munich Pact was signed (388-PS, Item 36).
But SS preparations for aggression were not confined to military forces. One of the departments of the SS Supreme Command, the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle, was a center for fifth column activity. At the secret meeting between Ribbentrop and Henlein in March 1938, at which the line to be followed by the Sudeten German Party was determined, the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle was represented by Professor Haushofer and SS Obergruppenfuehrer Lorenz (2788-PS). And when the Foreign Office in August 1938 awarded further subsidies to Henlein’s Sudeten Party, the memorandum of that recommendation (3059-PS) contained the significant footnote:
“Volksdeutsche Mittlestelle will be informed.” (3059-PS)
(c) SS participation in aggressive war. When at last the time came to strike, the SS was ready. In the words of the National Socialist Yearbook for 1940 (2164-PS):
“When the march into the liberated provinces of the Sudetenland began on that memorable October 1, 1938, Verfuegungstruppe as well as the Death Head Units were along with those in the lead. * * *”