HERR BOEHM: Yes, that may apply to my first three questions in a way.
[Turning to the witness.] I should like to ask further in what way you influenced the SA in connection with the Versailles Treaty? Did you tell the people that the Versailles Treaty should be annulled by diplomatic means or by war?
GÖRING: This question is extremely difficult to answer. If I made a speech to my SA men in 1923 I could not very well say much about diplomacy. They would not have understood that. Rather the question was quite simply to be rid of Versailles. The ordinary SA man was not at all concerned with the “how” or the “what.” That is the task of the leadership. I did not say, “I promise that you will never have war”; or that we were only a purely pacific organization and that we should try by protests only to rid the world of Versailles. But neither did I say to them, “In the next few years we will march out and make war.” In reality I did not tell them anything. I said that they would have to be obedient and have confidence in the leadership, and leave what was to be done to the leadership—that that was proper, and a basic attitude—every SA man knew that from our speeches and from the Party program. Among all the people the wish was—of every decent German, I hope—to be rid of Versailles.
HERR BOEHM: According to your knowledge, and apart from the period of 1923, from 1921 to 1945, was the SA and also the organ of the SA, that is, the leadership of the SA as well as the individual member, informed that the NSDAP intended after the seizure of power to dominate other states and to make war with that purpose in mind, even in disregard of the rules of war and the laws of humanity if need be?
GÖRING: I do not quite know just what one imagines the SA leadership and the entire SA to be. It is quite impossible that anyone should stand up and say, Listen, we wish: (1) to overthrow and subjugate and dominate all other states; (2) to wage war continuously; (3) to destroy everything and act as inhumanly as possible; and (4) to pay thereby no attention to any law of war.
I cannot imagine that anyone but an insane person would have made such statements before the SA or anyone else. The SA was never instructed politically in any way. It was told: “You will march tomorrow, and the day after leaflets will be distributed and then . . .” as I have already explained.
HERR BOEHM: During the time of the seizure of power there were various excesses on the part of the SA. Was this a matter of measures undertaken by individual members, or were these measures in accordance with instructions of the SA leadership?
GÖRING: In no case, I believe, in accordance with instructions from the middle or even the higher SA leadership offices. In an organization of a million young people there will always be a certain percentage of rowdies, especially in the large cities. As I have already mentioned, there was a considerable number of agitators in the organization; that thereby individual excesses on the part of individuals or groups of like-minded persons will occur, is entirely inevitable.
HERR BOEHM: Did the SA leadership in principle ever sanction individual actions on the part of its members?
GÖRING: I have already stated that I had very little to do with the leadership of the SA, but I do not think so.