HERR BÖHM: Would not the position be that all the SA members were drafted into the Wehrmacht as ordinary soldiers, and had to rise from the ranks in the same way as any Wehrmacht soldier?
JODL: The SA were drafted into the Wehrmacht the same as any other German. I know of many cases where high SA leaders started their service in the Wehrmacht in the very lowest positions as soldiers or as noncommissioned officers.
HERR BÖHM: Then, the Prosecution also assert that after 1934 the SA trained not only 22,000 to 25,000 leaders and assistant leaders, but that 25,000 officers, commissioned and noncommissioned, were trained by the SA for the Wehrmacht. Do you know anything about this?
JODL: What I said before about assistant leaders is true to an even much greater extent among the officers. The officers were trained only in the military schools of the Army and nowhere else.
HERR BÖHM: The Prosecution assert further—and I ask whether you know anything about this—that in the course of extending the war effort, 86 percent of the professional leadership corps were made available.
JODL: I cannot give a binding answer to that. I do not know about that.
HERR BÖHM: And the Prosecution assert further that the SA sent 70 percent of its millions of members straight to the Wehrmacht. It may be that 70 percent of the SA members did their military service. I want to ask you whether these 70 percent were taken straight from the SA or whether they were called up in the ordinary groups which applied to the able-bodied male population?
JODL: No importance whatsoever was attached to the SA when men were drafted into the Army. The SA man was drafted like any other German who was called up for military service. Whether or not a man had been in the SA previously, did not matter in the slightest.
HERR BÖHM: Did the Wehrmacht ever take SA signal units (Stürme), engineer units, or cavalry units, or medical units, and use them in action inside or outside a division of the Wehrmacht?
JODL: I personally knew of no case where any SA unit appeared in action outside Germany during the war.