When several SA men were convicted for mistreatment of inmates of the Hohnstein concentration camp, two members of the jury which had voted the conviction were expelled from the party (784-PS).
Finally, when Himmler, Reich Leader of the SS, organized the SD, Hess issued an order establishing the SD as the sole political information service of the Nazi Party, its functions to be exercised through the SS (3385-PS).
Hess also sought to destroy the influence of the independent churches among the German people, in order to wipe out every opposition to the aims of the conspirators. Thus, Hess’s Chief of Staff, Bormann, issued numerous orders and communications from Hess’s office against the independent churches. Among these were the Secret Order of 27 July 1938 making clergymen ineligible for party offices (113-PS); the Party Directive of 14 July 1939 making the clergy and theology students ineligible for Party membership (840-PS); the letter of 22 February 1940 discussing ways and means of eliminating religious instruction from the schools (098-PS); the report of 25 April on the progressive substitution of National Socialist mottoes in place of morning prayers in the schools (070-PS); the letter to Rosenberg of 17 January 1940 concerning the undesirability of religious literature for members of the Wehrmacht (101-PS); the instructions of 8 March 1940 against the further issuance of newsprint to confessional newspapers (089-PS); and the letter to the Minister of the Interior, in May 1938, agreeing to the invalidation of the Concordat between Austria and the Holy See (675-PS; 838-PS and 107-PS).
D. PREPARATION FOR WAR.
Hess was one of the members of the conspiracy who professed as early as 1933 the aim of complete world domination (2385-PS).
In pursuance of that aim Hess threw the power of the Party which he directed, behind the war preparations of the conspiracy. Hess himself described the Party, in this connection, as the mechanism with which to “organize and direct offensively and defensively the spiritual and political strength of the people” (2426-PS).
Hess’s tasks in the preparations for aggressive wars fell mainly into the fields of military preparedness, political planning, and fifth-column activities.
(1) Rearmament. Even before 1933 Hess took a personal interest in the secret military training program of the uniformed Party organizations (1143-PS).
After the conspirators had come to power, Hess was one of those who echoed the cry of “guns for butter” in his speeches (2426-PS).
Hess signed the law which reintroduced universal military conscription in Germany on 16 March 1935 (1654-PS). Hess admitted that signing this law was no mere formality for him, but rather the realization of one of his most important aims, when he declared in a speech to Army officers in 1937: