MAJOR FARR: I think I can only give you these figures: I earlier quoted some figures from D’Alquen in his book published in 1939, in which he said that the total strength of the General SS was about 240,000. That is the General SS, which was not at that time engaged in the guarding of concentration camps. The Totenkopf Verbände (the Death’s-Head Units) at that time consisted of some three or four regiments at the most. They were the guards; so that of the personnel who were employed in actual guard duty there were, in 1939, about three or four regiments.
The Court will recall that after the war had started, the Totenkopf Verbände were no longer employed in that duty and that the members of the General SS took it up. How many were employed is something that is difficult to estimate. The concentration camp program was constantly expanding; and of course, as more camps were added more personnel was needed. I can’t give the Tribunal figures on the number of persons involved in guarding the camps, but one of the matters I think significant is this: We have not only guards, we have administrative personnel; we have the whole of the WVHA which, as I want to show by evidence, had complete control of the management of the concentration camps. The members of the staff office, WVHA, were derived from the General SS; so you have on the one hand the guard personnel, Death’s-Head Units up to 1939, and then you have after 1939 more guards from the Allgemeine SS. You have, after 1939, more guards from the General SS and also administrative personnel from WVHA.
I do not have figures on how many persons were engaged in one or another phase of the concentration camp activities. You have, of course, the SD and Security Police involved in it, insofar as they went out and seized victims. You have WVHA, the entire administrative personnel of that section involved in it, insofar as they handled administrative matters.
Some conception of the number of persons who must have been engaged in the activity may be gained from noting the number of persons involved in a camp. I have a document, a report by WVHA in August 1944, which reports the number of prisoners who were then on hand in the camps and the new arrivals who were expected. That document is our Document Number 1166-PS, which I will now offer in evidence as Exhibit Number USA-458.
THE PRESIDENT: I don’t think we had better go into that tonight. What will you be dealing with tomorrow?
MAJOR FARR: Tomorrow, Sir, I intend to offer evidence showing how WVHA and other SS personnel were involved in the control of every phase of the concentration camp program. That is the first thing. The second thing is to point out the role that the SS played in the persecution of the Jews and their extermination; not with a view to repeating the substantive evidence to show that such acts took place, but to show how many components, how many parts, of the organization were involved in that program.
Then I shall consider the role of the SS with respect to preparations for aggressive war and the Crimes against Peace—a relatively brief discussion—and then pass on to the role that the SS played in War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity, set out in Counts Three and Four of the Indictment; and finally, the role of the SS in the colonization program.
THE PRESIDENT: Colonization?
MAJOR FARR: That may be an unfortunate word. Perhaps I should have said Germanization program, a program of resettlement, evacuation, colonization, and exploitation of the conquered territories.
Those, I think, are the four main functions of the SS which remain to be considered; and I shall endeavor not to go again into the substantive crimes which have already been shown to the Tribunal, but to try to show how almost every department—in fact, every department of the SS and every component—was involved in one or more—and mostly more—of these crimes.