“5. They will take into protective custody all persons, with regard to whom the Higher SS and Police Fuehrer has applied for revocation of their naturalization and will order their imprisonment in a Concentration Camp.” (R-112)
In the final stage of the process, the resettlement of the conquered lands by racially and politically desirable Germans, still other SS agencies participated. The National Socialist Yearbook for 1941 states that:
“Numerous SS-leaders and SS-men helped with untiring effort in bringing about this systematic migration of peoples, which has no parallel in history.
“There were many authoritative and administrative difficulties which, however, were immediately overcome due to the unbureaucratic working procedure. This was especially guaranteed above all by the employment of SS leaders.
“The procedure called ‘Durchschleusung’ (literally, ‘passing through the lock’) takes 3 to 4 hours as a rule. The resettler is passed through 8 to 9 offices, following each other in organic order: registration office, card-index office, certificate and photo-office, property office, and biological hereditary and sanitary test office. The latter was entrusted to doctors and medical personnel of the SS and of the Armed Forces. The SS-Corps Areas [Oberabschnitte] Alpenland, North-West, Baltic Sea, Fulda-Werra, South and South East, the SS-Main Office [SS-Hauptamt], the NPEA (National Political Education Institution) Vienna, and the SS-Cavalry-School in Hamburg provided most of the SS-Officer and SS-Non-Coms who worked at this job of resettlement.”
* * * * * *
“The settlement, establishment and care of the newly won peasantry in the liberated Eastern territory will be one of the most cherished tasks of the SS in the whole future.” (2163-PS)
E. Defendant’s Membership in the SS.
In the course of its development from a group of strong armed bodyguards, some 200 in number, to a complex organization participating in every field of Nazi endeavor, the SS found room for its members in high places. Persons in high places moreover, found for themselves a position in the SS. Of the defendants charged in the indictment at least 7 were high ranking officers in the SS. They are the defendants Ribbentrop, Hess, Kaltenbrunner, Bormann, Sauckel, Neurath, and Seyss-Inquart. The vital part that Kaltenbrunner played in the SS, the SD, and the entire Security Police system is discussed in Section 6 on the Gestapo.
With respect to the other six defendants, the facts as to their membership in the SS are to be found in two official publications. The first is the membership list of the SS as of 1 December 1936. On line 2, page 8, of that publication, there appears the name “Hess, Rudolf,” followed by the notation, “By authority of the Fuehrer the right to wear the uniform of an SS Obergruppenfuehrer.” In the 1937 edition of the same membership list, line 50, page 10, there appears the name “Bormann, Martin,” and in line with his name on the opposite page, under the heading “Gruppenfuehrer,” appears the following date “20.4.37.” In the same edition, line 56, page 12, is the name “von Neurath, Konstantin” and on the opposite page, under the column headed “Gruppenfuehrer,” the date “18.9.37.”