In this connection, Your Honors asked this morning a question about the arresting and police activities of the SA, and I mentioned that they had declined after 1934. For fear there was some misapprehension, I would like to state that as a police organization and as an arresting agency they declined steadily after 1934.
We go now into the phase where they went into military preparations, the next phase; and that is the phase with which I deal now. If Your Honor pleases, I have here all official government publication issued by the British Government in 1943, the title being, The Nazi Party and Organizations; and I should like to quote as to the organization and membership of the SA from that publication. It is the most authoritative that I have been able to find, and I would like to quote briefly from it:
“The SA was founded in 1921 as a para-military organization to protect Nazi meetings and leaders, to throw out interrupters and hecklers, to fight political enemies, and to provide pre-military training at a time when the legal ‘Reichswehr’ was limited to 100,000 men. Their highest leader is Hitler himself; his deputy is called the Stabschef (Chief of Staff) of the SA; from 1930 till June 1934 it was Röhm; from then onwards till his death in May 1943, Victor Lutze; since August 1943, Wilhelm Schepmann. In January 1933 the SA had only 300,000 members. After the seizure of power, its strength increased quickly; at present it has a membership of 1,500,000 to 2,000,000.” (JN-4)
Now, the date of this is 1943. We again find the SA employed to inculcate a particular Nazi ideology into the minds of the people of Germany. At this point it was the function of the SA to prepare Germany mentally for the waging of a vicious and aggressive war.
At all times, and especially during the period from 1933 to 1939, SA leaders emphasized to SA members the duty and responsibility of creating and fostering a militaristic spirit throughout Germany. In 1933 Hitler established the so-called SA sports program; and at that time, according to Sturmführer Bayer, in his pamphlet which I have previously introduced in evidence as 2168-PS—on Page 6 of the English translation—it is just one sentence, and I quote:
“. . . commissioned to increase and to preserve the warlike power and the fighting spirit as the expression of the soldier-like attitude of a people.”
In 1937 Hitler renewed the so-called sports program and, as recited in Document 3050-PS, which is the English translation of these newspaper articles, on Page 12, he made a statement “for the fostering of a military spirit.”
The Organization Book of the Party is to the same effect, in Document 3220-PS, which is Exhibit Number USA-323. I quote from a portion of that document—Paragraphs 1 to 3 on Page 1 of the English translation, beginning at the first paragraph:
“While the political organization of the NSDAP has to carry out the political leadership, the SA is the training and education instrument of the Party for the realization of an ideologically soldier-like attitude.