HERR BOEHM: Is it correct that after 1933, like the Stahlhelm, the riding clubs of that time were also taken into the SA through the so-called conformity measures?
GÖRING: I believe that is correct.
HERR BOEHM: Was the SA leadership and its members before or after 1933 at any time informed of the results of cabinet consultations, or of the decisions taken by the Cabinet?
GÖRING: I have already said in my general remarks just how the leadership of the SA should be regarded. No, of course not.
HERR BOEHM: The Indictment states in connection with the presentation of the charge of aggressive war and the participation of the SA in such a war, that the SA took part in its preparation in that before the war it annually trained about 25,000 officers in special schools. You must surely have known something about that?
GÖRING: The training of officers of the Armed Forces was carried out solely in the Armed Forces’ own military schools, and I could never understand how the SA could be in a position from the purely technical point of view, and as regards organization, to train officers for the Armed Forces. In addition, it seems to me that the training of 25,000 officers a year is far in excess of the number of officers needed for the Armed Forces. It would have been very nice if we had had so many, but this number, at all events for several years, is just as incorrect as the statement that the SA had to train officers. The training of officers was done by the Armed Forces entirely and exclusively.
HERR BOEHM: But men do seem to have been trained. Do you know where these men were trained and for what purpose? Do you know anything about Führer Schools?
GÖRING: Yes, there were Führer Schools for every organization. Every organization had its schools where it taught and trained those who in its own cadres were to have some sort of leading position. I can only imagine that the Prosecution confused things perhaps, or perhaps wanted to say that some of the SA leaders had received a certain preliminary pre-military training, in the reading of maps or something similar. That, however, is beyond the scope of my knowledge.
HERR BOEHM: May I ask you to explain the relation of the Feldherrnhalle to the SA or the Armed Forces? Was there a formation, or a regiment by the name of Feldherrnhalle? What was particular about this?
GÖRING: After the SS had been allowed several companies by the Führer as armed units—and these actually represented military formations, as, for instance, the Leibstandarte, Grossdeutschland and others−the SA leadership requested that it be granted at least one unit which it might arm with rifles and small arms, as a parade unit, I might say, and this unit was called Feldherrnhalle. Lutze, the then SA leader, suggested to the Führer that I should be made the head of this unit. It is a position of honor to be the head of a regiment or a unit. When I saw this unit for the first time—I believe in a body at a Party rally at Nuremberg—it pleased me immensely because it was composed of only outstanding, especially selected young men.