GISEVIUS: Yes, certainly.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: You see, it is very difficult for us, with all the documents we have, Doctor, to get the picture of the day to day events, and you were there and we were not.
Now, let me make another question:
“The chronicle of that private army is colorful and stirring. It teemed with beer hall brawls, street fights, knifings, shootings, and fist fights, altogether a mad rough and tumble affair, where naturally there was no question of crises of leadership or of mutinies. In this brotherhood of the wild men of German nationalism there was undoubtedly much idealism, but at the same time the SA was the repository for political derelicts. The failures of all classes found refuge there. The discontents, the disinherited, the desperados streamed to it wholesale. The core, the paid permanent group, and particularly the leaders, were recruited, as time went on, more and more from the riffraff of a period of political and social decay.”
Is that a correct statement of your observations of the SA at that time?
GISEVIUS: Yes, quite.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: May I call your attention to another question:
“The SA organized huge raids. The SA searched houses. The SA confiscated property. The SA cross-examined people. The SA put people in jail. In short, the SA appointed themselves permanent auxiliary police and paid no attention to any of the principles of the so-called system period (Weimar Republic). The worst problem for the helpless authorities was that the SA never returned its booty at all. Woe unto anyone who gets into their clutches!
“From this time dated the ‘Bunker,’ those dreaded private prisons of which every SA Storm Troop had to have at least one. ‘Taking away’ became the right of the SA. The efficiency of a Standartenführer was measured by the number of arrests he had made, and the good reputation of an SA man was based on the effectiveness with which he ‘educated’ ”—in quotation marks, the quotation marks being yours—“ ‘educated’ his prisoners. Brawls could no longer be staged in the fight for power, yet the ‘fight’ went on, only the blows were now struck in the full enjoyment of power.”
Is that a correct statement of your observations of the SA?