From the very beginning the "SA" was a strictly voluntary organization.
This principle stayed in force during the whole process of development of the shock units.
From the Munich Putsch in 1923 till the seizure of power by the Hitlerites in 1933, the "SA" remained a legal weapon in the hands of the Hitlerite fascist clique, securing for it the "mastery of the streets" and the elimination of political opponents.
With the "SS", the shock units were an integral part of the Hitlerite party. This fact was officially declared in the ordinance of March 1935 (Reichsgesetzblatt, 1935, part I, page 502) and the same was to be found in the organizational charter of the Hitlerite party.
In his pamphlet "The SA", the SA-Sturmfuehrer Bauer wrote:
"The public opinion would never have learned of the stirring speeches and the propaganda of our small faction in the Reichstag or of the aspirations and aims of the party, if it had not have been hearing the steps of the marching SA units and their battle songs".
But the "steps of the marching SA and their battle songs" were not the only things heard by the German "public opinion". It perceived far mere, the blows of rubber bludgeons, the shots fired at political opponents and the pogroms in the working wards. For the chief fascist conspirators the basic value of the SA was precisely their function as a weapon for pogroms and terror.
During the period of struggle for power and thereafter, the shock units were first of all a weapon of rough coercion, a means of elimination and extermination of political opponents.
This situation was very frankly depicted by Goebbels in a speech delivered by him in 1935, He then stated:
"The internal political opponents did not disappear by means of some unknown secret reasons. No, they disappeared because our movement had at its disposal the strongest weapon in the country, and this strongest weapon was the "SA" units".
The Tribunal will remember the evidence given by the witness Gisevius of the terror applied by the shock units in the streets of German towns, of the "pogrom-makers" in SA uniforms, who beat, killed, scoffed at human dignity and transformed the headquarters of the SA into houses of torture.
It is true that when the Hitlerites came to power another terroristic organization was practically formed which became the principal executor of their plan, and with the SA formed the reserve of that great police machinery which was set up by German fascism. These were the SS, and the brownshirt-men surrounding Hitler had to stand aside and give place to the head of the Hitlerite party organization to the "black corps" of the SS.
The official biographer of Goering speaks of the wide use of the SS as a reserve of the political police. He notes that when forming the Gestapo, Goering included into the personnel of this organization, one of the most dangerous criminal organization of German fascism, many members of the SA, "they being the most reliable, from the political point of view."
Evidence has already been presented to the Tribunal, showing that as the SS members of the SA, after the fascists came to power, formed detachments for the guard of concentration camps.
Describing the concentration camp of Oranienburg, the SA Sturmbannfuehrer Schaefer states:
"The most tested and daring members of the SA were chosen for work in the camp, that is, they were the constant guards of the camp. In this way we formed a staff of experienced guards, who were always ready for action."
It seems unnecessary for me to dwell on the treatment of the prisoner in these camps and the line of conduct in the concentration camps of the men of one shock units in their role of executioners.
The men of the shock units directly accomplished the first antisemitic pogroms. This is proved by the original reports of the commanders of units and detachments of the SA, contained in other documents submitted by the Prosecution. As the SS, the SA were formed in the same spirit of ferocious anti-semitism, which ended up by the establishment of Treblinka and Chelmno.
However, in analyzing the criminal character of the SA organization another of its important functions in the execution of the general plan of development of the Hitlerite conspiracy must not be omitted.
The SA was the organization under whose cover was carried out the mass training of the military personnel for the Wehrmacht. This personnel was later on called upon to execute the plans of aggression of the Hitlerites.
This criminal activity was executed with a maximum of secrecy for the outer world.
"In addition to my instructions... dated 11 July 1933, I find cause to ask all SA authorities to exercise the greatest caution with regard to any publicity given to the SA service not only in the press, but also in the information and news shoots of the individual Sa units. Only during the last few days, the Reich Ministry of the Interior, at the request of the Foreign Office, has given strict instructions to all Reich authorities according to which the most severe control is to be exercised on all publications which night give other countries an opening to construe German infringments of the terns of the Versailles Treaty."
This secret order of the Chief of Staff of the SA fully refutes the assertion of the defense relative to the "peaceful character" of the shock units and the "purely sport" character of their activities.
The organizational structure of the shock units with their brigades and regiments had a purely military character. From the moment of their creation, under the guidance of the most reactionary officers of the Reich wehr, who joined the Hitlerites - the SA units began the preparation of the cadres for future war.
Later, after the seizure of power by the Hitlerites, the SA became a weapon of mass military training, and officers of the Wehrmacht, in SA uniforms, carried out in these units a purely military training of the shock units men.
The leaders of the SA well understood the position occupied by them in the realization of the Hitlerite plans of aggression, after the seizure of power.
In this connection it is pertinent to present again to the Tribunal a short excerpt of an article published in the organ of the shock units, "Der SA Mann" of the 6th of January 1934:
"... the SA man, following the will of the Fuehrer, stands as defender of the National Socialist revolution before the gates of power and will remain standing there for all times. For still gigantic missions await fulfilment which would not be thinkable without the presence and the active cooperation of the SA.
What has been accomplished up until now, the taking over of the power in the state and the ejection of those elements which are responsible for the pernicious developments of the post war years as bearers of marxism, liberalism and capitalism are only the preliminaries, the spring-board for the real aims of National Socialism."
In the entire subsequent development at Hitlerism, the SA men were a loyal weapon in the hands of the criminal Hitlerite clique.
During the war, by a special instruction, the members of the SA were charged with the guarding of prisoners of war and of the "workers from the cast", not permitting any weakening of the brutal man-exterminating regime established for then. Members of the SA acted as guards in several "worker camps."
The SA was one of the most criminal mass organization of the Hitler party.
The criminal activity of its members, with the exception of the "union of veterans" and persons involved in the sport societies of the SA, is fully proved, by the court proceedings.
The shock units of the German fascist party, whose activity forms a greater part of the crimes of the Hitler regime, must undoubtedly be found by the Tribunal as a criminal organization.
The Gestapo was founded by Defendant Goering on the 26th of April, 1933, at the time when the latter was Prime Minister of Prussia, and during the early period of its existence itwas directed by him personally.
Gradually, however, Reichsfuehrer of the SS, Heinrich Himmler, centered all direction of the political police of the Reich territory in his own hands. The law of 10 February, 1936, declared Gestapo a "special police" organ, for the whole Reich. By his decree of 17 July, 1936, Hitler appointed Himmler the Chief of the German Police, thus making legitimate the "personal unity" already achieved by the SS and the Police on the whole.
In harmony with this principle of "personal unity", i.e., unity of leadership, by his very first decree on the structure of the German Police, dated 25 June, 1936, Himmler appointed Reinhardt Heydrich the Chief of the SIPO (Security Police) which already embraced within the some system both the Gestapo and the Criminal police. Heydrich's successor, after the latter's death, was defendant Kaltenbrunner.
In 1939, in consequence of the consolidation of the loading role of SD in the general security scheme of the Nazi State and for purposes of further unification of the police under single leadership, a reorganization of the central security organizations took place.
This resulted in the fusion of "the Chief SS security Administration with the "Chief Administration of the Security Police" into a single SS semi-governmental semi-party organization - "Reich Security Head office" i.e., the RSHA.
Thus the Secret State Police, then briefly known as "Gestapo", and up to then existing as part of the "Chief Administration of the SIPO", became the IV Section of RSHA.
The Functions of Gestapo.
The functions of the Gestapo in the general system of the security organs of the Third Reich were clearly defined by the same Heydrich in an article published in the German periodical "The German Police." While defining the role of SD as that of political intelligence within both the Nazi Party and the Nazi State whose task included the study and analysis of the political atmosphere and of the political trends and tendencies both inside and outside the bounds of the Reich for purposes of informing the Nazi leadership, Heydrich saw the function of the Secret State Police as revealing and rendering harmless those politcial elements within the Nazi regime which were hostile and unreliable.
The whole of Gestapo with its system of central, regional, peni tenciary and other special branches and formations, was geared to the accomplishment of this cardinal point of its program.
The fulfillment of this function required most careful individual selection of the Gestapo personnel. These were selected from among the most experienced cadres of the general police and of the administration, who were already proven to be the fanatical adherents of the Hitlerite regime, and also from among the regular employees of the SD. The latter were usually given supervisory postions in the Gestapo.
The affidavit submitted by the former chief of the IV Section of the RSHA, Walter Schellenberg, establishes that 75 % of Gestapo employees were also members of the SS. They had either been member of the SS prior to entering the Gestapo or else they became member as they began their careers in this punitive and terroristic organization.
The numbered of Gestapo employees in the period of 1943-45 reached between 40 and 50 thousand. Such staff, to quote Fouche, allowed Gestapo "to have eyes to see everywhere and hands to seize anyone."
The criminal activity of the Gestapo did not confine itself merely to the territory of the Reich.
During the period of preparations for aggression, it was the Gestapo that received the task, jointly with the SD, to organize one of the first operational groups, the Einsatzgruppen, meant to function on the territory of the Czechoslovak Republic.
With the beginning of hostilities and in conformance with the already prepared and approved plan, Gestapo put at the disposal of the Armed forces a certain percentage of its experienced workers to organize the so-called "Secret Field Police" - GFP. The GFP units in the army had the functions of both the Gestapo and the SIPO in the Reich and were also empowered with wide, police and punitive rights directed against the civilian population and the guerilla fighters in theatres of military operations.
From the very beginning of its existence the Gestapo had wide powers in connection with extra-legal reprisal measures directed against elements "threatening" the Nazi State or the Nazi Party.
One of the main types of reprisal used against such elements was the utilization of the right of "preventive arrest" and "preventive imprisonment" which the Gestapo used widely both on the territory of the Reich and in the areas later annexed or occupied by Germany.
The places of preventive arrest were the widely known and notoriously dismal German concentration camps. Confinement to a concentration camp could take place through a simple written directive on the part of the Security police and the SD Chief Heydrich, whose place was later taken by Kaltenbrunner, or at the order of the Chief of the IV Section of the RSHA-Mueller. Frequently the order of confinement to a concentration camp was issued personally by the Reichsfuehrer of the SS and simultaneous ly Chief of the German Police - Heinrich Himmler.
Never did the victim of preventive arrest know for just how long a period of torture and suffering he was being confined, the length of confinement depended entirely on the arbitrary wild of the Gestapo. Even when Gestapo knew the length of time that it planned to keep the man in prison, it still was strictly forbidden to disclose this either to the prisoner or to his kin.
These concentration camps were the prototype of the extermination camps which materialized in the subsequent period of aggressive operations and which generations to come are bound to remember with tremor, namely the Maidanek, the Auschwitz, the Treblinka, and many others.
As the punitive executive organization of the Nazi State, the Gestapo had close connections with the Nazi Party.
In the appendic to the Decree of both the Reich and the Prussian Cabinet Minister dated 20 September, 1936, it states without any ambiguity that "the special functions of the Security Police demand the clossest and fullest mutual understanding and collaboration... also with the Gauleiter of the NSDAP..." In studying the decree of 14 December, 1938 concerning the collaboration of the party organs with the Gestapo it is easy to see that there existed the closest contact among the various organizations of the Fascist consprators, specifically between the Gestapo and the party leadership. Defendants Hess and Hermann were always careful to maintain close contact between the party and the Gestapo.
Gestapo Participation in Plans for Aggression.
As I have already stated, together with other criminal fascist organizations, Gestapo participated actively in preparing plans for the seizure of territory belonging to other states.
The list of 4.000 Yugoslav citizens, compiled in 1938 an seized in May 1945 in the Gestapo quarters in Maribor, testifies beyond doubt to the effect that the Gestapo participated in plans for the invasion of Yugoslavia in its own special way. We also see from the testimony of Dragomir Jovanovich, one of Yugoslav quislings, who was chief of the Serbian Police during the German occupation, that the Gestapo organizations for Yugoslavia were Planned beforehand. In accordance with a pro--conceived plan the police posts were distributed among the German residents of Yugoslavia.
USSR Exhibit No. 509, submitted to the Tribunal by the Soviet Prosecution, likewise shows that also for Czechoslovakia, the chief Reich security branches, planned the functions of the SD and the Gestapo, long before the actual occupation of the country The report of the Czechoslovak Government points out still another type of participation of the Gestapo in planned aggression.
The Administrative Headquarters of Reich Security also planted in Czechoslovakia agents for assassination or for lidnapping and whishing away to Germany of the known anti-fascists. The facts of the Gestapo participation in Germany's aggressive plans are also confirmed by a series of documents dealing with lists of persons, personnel files, and other data regarding important officials of the government organs and the community leaders of the Soviet Union who were to be annihilated -- long before the actual perpetration of the treacherous attack on Russia by these Hitlerite blackguards. For instance, together with the SD and the Criminal Police, the Gestapo prepared, the "Special Intelligence Guide for the USSR," "The German Intelligence Guide" "Lists of Persons Whose Residence Must Be Determined," and other similar intelligence Reference books and lists of persons.
The criminal activity of the Gestapo connected with plans for aggression, both within the Reich itself and in the West, has already been dealt with by my respected colleagues.
For that reason I shall pass on to the subject of the Gestapo crimes in the to temporarily occupied territories of the USSR, Yugoslavia, Poland, and Czechoslovakia.
THE PRESIDENT:General Rudenko, what is the reference to "The German Intelligence Guide," "Lists of Persons Whose Residence Must Be Determined", and other similar intelligence reference books and lists of persons? USSR-3 is what I've got. Is that the right document?
GENERAL RUDENKO:Yes, USSR-3, quite right Mr. President, USSR-3
THE PRESIDENT:Thank you.
GENERAL RUDENKO:
The Crimes of Gestapo in Czechoslovakia, Yugosloavia, and Poland.
The crimes which the Hitlerites had committed with the help of the police organization in the temporarily occupied territories of Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Poland are of the same pattern The various Gestapo organs were the executive machinery which served to realize most of these crimes.
The very first mass operation of annihilating the Polish intelligentzia, the so-called "Operation AB" was conceived by Frank, approved by Hitler, and perpetrated by the Gestapo. It was the a agents of the Gestapo, who with the aid of several SS units and under the direction of the SS and Police Chief for Poland, Obergruppenfuehrer Krueger as well as Brigadefuehrer Strechenbach managed to exterminate several thousand Polish intellectuals, carrying out this atrocious mass operation.
In accordance with Frank's decree of 9 October, 1943, the notorious "Standgerichte", created "to suppress attacks on German construction in the Government-General", also consisted of Gestapo agents.
Again it was the Gestapo rich put into effect the terrible reprisal against the clergy which resulted in the murder of about 700 priests and the imprisonment of about 3000 clergymen, as early as January 1941. As it is thoroughly proven by the documents submitted by the Soviet Prosecution, the Gestapo established special mass *---* ination centers for the Jewish popolation of Poland.
In contrast to such extermination camps as Majdanek and Auschw which were under the jurisdiction of the Administrative Command of the SS, the secret extermination camp in Helmno, where over three hundred and forty thousand Jews were done away with by mean of murder vans, was both founded and directly administered by the Gestapo which created for the purpose a special unit, "Senderkom mando Kulmhof. This Gestapo Senderkommando was under the administrative supervision of the Gestapo Chief in the City of Lodz Brautfisch.
It was also the Gestapo which founded Treblinka - this pretoty of all subsequent extermination camps.
Eichmanns Plan for the extermination of Jews in Europe with the help of special extermination camps created for the purpose by the "D" Section of SS, originated in the Gestapo where Eichmann worked as subordinate of the Gestapo official Mueller.
It was the Gestapo who was responsible for the annihilation of 3,200,000 Jews in Poland, 112.000 in Czechoslovakia, and 65,000 Jews in Yugoslavia.
It was the Gestapo that introduced and practised in the occupi territories of Eastern Europe the criminal system of hostages and the principle of collective responsivility, thus arbitratily and constantly widening the number of persons liable to reprisals. For example, it was the Gestapo that together with Defendant Frank issued the notorious decree of mass reprisals with regard to the "families of saboteurs", be the decree which stated that "not only should the seized saboteurs be immediately executed on the spot but also all the male kin of offenders should be immediately shot while all female relatives over 16 years of age, should be confined to concentration camps."
What went on in Poland does not typify the Gestapo behavior in Poland alone but applies also to Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia 200,000 persons passed through the Gestapo Prison in Brno, Czechoslovakia, only during the period of occupation alone.
Only 50,000 of these were freed. Others were killed or sent to slow death in the concentration camp.
The order of 9 March, 1942, gave Gestapo the right to use "preventive confinement" and "protective custody".
Thousands of Czech patriots, particularly doctors, teachers, lawyer and clergymen were arrested even prior to the war. In addition lists were compiled in each region of persons liable to be arrested as hostages at the first sign of disturbance of the social order or security. Karl Hans Frank addressing leaders of the "movement for national unity" announced in 1940 that 2,000 Czech hostages - then in concentrations camps - would be shot unless Czech leaders sign a declaration of loyalty.
When an attempt on Heydrich's life took place, many of the hostages were executed.
In 1939 the Gestapo called together factory directors and warehouse supervisors of the various Czech industrial concerns. They were made to sign the following statement: " I am cognizant of the fact that I shall be shot immediately if the plant stops work without a justifiable cause".
Schoolteachers in Czechoslovakia similarly had to sign declarations making themselves responsible for the loyalty of their students.
It was the Gestapo which was responsible for that unheard-of crime of the annihilation of the village of Lidice and of it population.
The Gestapo terror in Yugoslavia assumed an especially vicious character.
The confirmation of the fact can be found in the following quotation from the Report No. 6 of the Yugoslav State commission for the Investigation of War Crimes:
"A group of hostages was hanged in Celsje (Zilli) on hooks used by butchers to suspend uncut meat. In Maribor, victims worked, in groups of five, placing vodies of shot hostages into boxes and then loading then on to trucks. As each five-man team finished its job, it was shot and the next group of five persons replaced it in the loading job. This went on continuously. The Sodna Street in Mar ber was covered with vlood from these lorries. The given number of 50,000 victims appears too small several hundred were shot each time, in Granz even as many as 500 being murdered at once."
Numerous documents have been submitted, to the Tribunal, dealing with the mass shooting of hostages and signed by the appropriate regiona chiefs of the Gestapo in Yugoslavia. I shall not well upon the details of these documents, as I suppose the Tribunal still has them clearly in mind. The Crimes of the Gestapo on the Temporarily-Occupied Territories of the USSR.
The legal proceedings have thoroughly revealed those monstrous crimes which the Gestapo had committed on the temporarily-occupied Soviet territory. There the Gestapo personnel functioned either among the operational units, i.e. the Einsatzaruppen, the Einsatzkommandos, and the Senderkommandos of the SD and of the Security police, or else it comrised the staff of the Secret Field Police, which was usually staffed, with both the Gestapo and the Criminal police employees. As a rule, it was the Gestapo official who on all occasions carried out themselves the inhuman "executions" and "mass actions," acting under the general political leadership of the members of the SD staff and with the assistance of officials of other police organizations, as well as units of the "Waffen-SS", widely used for these purposes.
Numerous cases of mass murder and torture of Soviet peaceful citizens by the Gestapo, have been established at the Tribunal. As an example I shall content myself with the description of separate characteristic facts.
In the small town of Wjasma alone, by order of the chief of the Gestapo, several thousands of peaceful citizens were killed or tortured to death. The fascist monsters not only killed their victims, but made them dig their own graves.
In the village Zaitchiki, in the Smolensk district, the Gestapo men drove into one house 23 old men, women add children, set the house on fire, burning alive all those who were inside. In the psychiatric hospitals of Riga, the Gestapo men exterminated all the inmates of these asylums.
As it is stated in the report of the Extraordinary State Commission on the crimes of the German fascist usurpers in the town of Rovno, in the Rovno district, as retaliation to each act of resistance, the Gestapo men had recourse to mass murder.
When a German, judge was killed by an unknown person in November 194in Rovno, the Gestapo shot more than 350 prisoners, detained in the town prison.
It is known from the report of the Extraordinary State Commission on the crimes of the German-Fascist usurpers, that the Gestapo men used "dead-vans" for the extermination of Soviet citizens. In the town of Krasnodar and the Krasnodar region, the Gestapo men, forming part of operational groups, exterminated through poisoning by carbon oxide, more than 6.700 Soviet citizens, including women, old men and children, who were in treatment in the Krasnodar hospital as well as persons held in the Gestapo prison.
In the outskirts of the town of Krasnodar in a big anti-tank trench were buried several thousands of corpses of Soviet citizens who had been poisoned by gas and thrown in there by the Gestapo.
In the Stavropol region 54 children who were seriously ill and were being treated at the health - resort of Tiberda, were poisoned by gas in dead-vans, as were also 660 patients of the Stavropol psychiatric hospital.
The evidence given by Kovaltchouk, who lived in the Stavropol region gives us an idea of the tortures practiced by the Gestapo-men. They interrogated at night only. These interrogations word made in a separate room, where special torture devices had been set up, amongst them chains with metal bars fixed in the concrete floor and to when the prisoner's arms and looks were chained. The arrested person was first of all stripped naked then lain on the floor, his hands and legs shackled, after which he was broken with rubber sticks. Sometimes a wooden board was placed on the back of the victim and sharp blows were then dealt with heavy weights, on the bound.
The torture chamber was arranged in such a way that when an arrested person was tortured, the other arrested people who were in an adjoining ward awaiting torture, were able to follow the scone. After the tortures the unconscious prisoner was temporarily thrown aside by the "modern inquisiters" and the next victim, in most cases already half unconscious, was dragged into the room.
These unheard of tortures, were used by the Gestapo even against women.
I shall mention one example only. Such tortures during interrogation were most extensively used through but the occupied territories of the USSR.
Recourse to medieval tortures during interrogations ensued on the basis of special orders emanating from the RSHA and Mueller, chief of the Gestapo. In one of those strictly secret orders the authorities gave the following instructions: "Third degree can include the following treatment: a very simple diet (bread and water); a hard berth, a dark cell, deprival of sleep, an exhausting drill, beating with birch rods".
The intelligentzia, including distinguished men of science and art who where in the Soviet territories remporarily occupied by the Germans, were likewise subjected by the Gestapo to unheard of torture and persecutions.
The persecution by the Gestapo of representatives of the intelligentzia was carried out following a plan which had been elaborated before hand. For instance, before the German troops had occupied Lwow, detachments of the Gestapo had in their possession lists of the principal representatives of the Lwow intelligentzia who were to be exterminated.
Immediately after the occupation of Lwow by the Germans, mass arrests and shooting of professors, physicians, lawyers, writers and artists started to occur. Paying no heed to the human merit of their victims, the Gestapo subjected the arrested scientists to the most refined tortures after which they finally shot them.
An investigation carried out by the units of the Red army, after Lwow had been freed from the German occupants, showed that over 70 prominent scientists, technicians and artists had been killed by the Germans, their bodies being subsequently burned by the Gestapo.
Fearing to be held responsible for these acts, the fascist jackals painstakingly tried to conceal the facts about the extermination of the Lwow intelligentzia.
The Gestapo also took part in the torturing and killing of prisoners of war During the court proceedings we heard a directive of department IV of the Reich Security Head Office, dated the 17th of June 1941; it concerned the activity of detachments of the security police and SD, in the prisoner of war camps.
Your Honors also know the directive of Mueller dated the 9th of November 1941 sent to all departments of the Gestapo and which related to the throwing away of the bodies of people who had died on their way to the place of execution.
The written testimony of Kurt Lindorf, a former employee of the Gestapo, is at the disposal of the tribunal. This document concerns the execution of Soviet political commissars, and also deals with an order of the Chief of the security police and SD transmitted to the local organs of the Gestapo concerning the sending of certain categories of escaped officers from prisoner of war camps, to the Hauthausen concentration camp for the carrying out of the "Kugel" (bullet) acting The Tribunal is acquainted with the order of the commander of the 6th milit ry district, dated July 27th, 1944, stating that recaptured escaped prisoners of war lose their rights and are to be turned over to the Gestapo, as well as with Keitel's order to the armed forces, dated August 4th, 1942, which stated that the adoption of action against separate paratroopers and groups of paratroopers belongs to the jurisdiction of the SD and the Gestapo.
The Gestapo actively cooperated in the deportation to German slave labor of thousands of peaceful citizens from the territories temporarily occupied by Germ ny and inflicted cruel repressive measures upon these persons on their arrival: Germany. In a like manner, Mueller, the chief of the Gestapo, in his telegram D 16 December 1942, stated that the Gestapo could arrest some 45,000 Jews to serve as workers in the concentration camps.
In the directive of December 17, 1942, Mueller writes of this in connection with 35,000 Jews.
In the secret order of July 18th, 1941, Mueller instructed the Gestapo above the indispensable measures to be taken in order to prevent agitation among fore workers.
The criminal activity of the Gestapo is especially horrible in connection with the extermination of Jews.
The affidavit of Wilhelm Goetl dated November 7th 1945 establishes the fact that the Gestapo exterminated some 6 million Jews.
In the reports of the Extraordinary State Commission set up for the investi-
gation of German-fascist atrocities on the territory of the USSR and in other documents as well are brought forward innumerable facts of torture, of different ou rages and mass murder of Jews by the Gestapo-men.
The Court proceedings have fully confirmed the submitted charge against the criminal activity of the Gestapo.
As an organization of mass sanguinary terror, the Gestapo must be recognized as a criminal organization.
THE SECURITY SERVICE - "SD".
The Security Service or "Sicherheitsdienst" was usually referred to in the official police documents under the abbreviation of "SD". It originated as a muta organization of the Party and the SS which was to be a secret intelligence, organization of a conspiratorial and strictly under cover nature. The SD, as well as the SS, was organized by Himmler.
SD was that secret organization within the SS system which, after the seizur of power by the Hitlerites, had most speedily merged with the police agencies and had promptly installed into the leading secret police positions the cadres of bet the SA and the SS. It had played a leading role in the German scheme of political intelligence and "preventive extermination" of the undesirable elements both before and after the formation of the RSHA.
The SD stood particularly close to the Central Headquarters of the criminal Nazi conspirators i.e. the Party Leadership. And that is why the SD participated most actively in planning those police activities which invariably accompanied all Hitlerite plans of aggression.
As will be shown below it was the SD which created the first "Einsatzgruppen supplied these predatory organizations of German fascism with executive personnel and organizationally helped with atrocities later committed in the occupied territories of Poland, Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union, as well as in other countries.
Attempting to extempt this criminal organization from the responsibities with which it is charged, the Defense started an argument about the meaning of the very term "SD".
The reasons for the Defense starting this terminological discussion are quite clear.
The Defense endeavoured to support Kaltenbrunner', version of SD as an organization whose functions were strictly limited to the Intra-Reich information services and which remaine entirely alien to all police functions. The Defense began this argument so that only the most apparent part of the criminal activity of the SD would be revealed while the rest could hide behind such terms as "general information services of trends and tendencies among the different circles of German society". All the political and the police functions of the SD, as leading organization of the Police-SS machinery, would stand unrevealed. In reality, however, SD was a widely spread espionage organization of German fascism, which actively contributed to the realization of the criminal plans of aggression and operated both inside and outside Germany, in the occupied regions and abroad. Along with the Gestapo, it was the SD cadres who formed the backbone of Einsatzgruppen, where it was always the SD personnel that occupied leading posts. The functions of SD can be subdivided as follows: 1/ The "General Information" function which covered, as shown by the SD official documents, the "Lebensgebiete" or spheres vi tal to the German Reich, all governmental offices, and all the best social circles of fascist Germany.
2/ The "Special Function" referring to personnel care files and lists of persons, primarily in countries which were to be in vaded.
The card files and lists contained names of people who were to be subjected to the "special regime" i.e. either destroyed or confined to concentration camps.
3/ The function of supplying personnel to those criminal or ganizations which were directly concerned with the realiza tion of the Hitlerite plans for the annihilation of the poli tically undesirable elements and of the intellectuals in the occupied territories and which were conducting the bestial act of terrorism and execution.
The entire staff of SD consisted of SS men. This is understandable, considering that SD was an offspring of the SS and up to the very last moment was referred to as the "SD of the Reichsfuehrer SS". The many-brached SD system included the following:
The III Department of RSHA (i.e.Amt III which consted of the Domestic and Occupied Regions Political Intelligence Service); the VI Department of RSHA (consisting of the Foreign Intelligence Services and headed by one of the closest associates of Himmler -Walter Schellenberg whose testimony is well known to the Tribunal); and the VII Department (Amt-VII), sometimes called the "Department for Ideological Warfare". The latter also included a number of very important auxiliary branches which made up the analysis organizations for data resulting from both foreign and domestic espionage activities of the SD. In order to refute the statements of the Defense I should like to refer to one of the documents showing the actual position of the SD in the police and SD scheme of Hitlerite Germany. I am speaking now of the document entitled: "Utilization of SD in case of emergency in Cechoslovakia". The document is marked; "Secret - Of State Importance" and is dated June 1938 i. e. more than nine months before the actual seizure of Czechoslovakia. It was found by the Red Army amongthe Berlin files of the SD and has been submitted to the Tribunal by the Soviet Prosecation. The contents of the document leave no doubts first, as to the facts of the active SD participation in the preparation and realization of the criminal plans of aggression, and secondly in the fact that it was specifically the SD that both initiated and organized the Einsatzgruppen. I have some excerpts from this document, but I will skip them.