The Nizkor Project: Remembering the Holocaust (Shoah)

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Last-Modified: 1996/12/28

A final order designed to assure continuance of good SS
blood was issued on 15 August 1942, entitled "SS Orders to
the Last Sons", also published in "The Soldier Friend":

     "You SS men have been withdrawn from the front lines by
     order of the Fuehrer because you are the last sons.
     This measure has been taken because the people and the
     State have an interest in seeing that your families do
     not die out.
     
     "It has never been the nature of SS men to submit to a
     fate without attempting to effect a change. It is your
     duty to see to it that you are no longer the last sons
     by producing as many children of good blood as
     possible." (2825-PS)

These orders were not the product of some benevolent
theorist in eugenics who was interested in large and happy
SS families for their own sake. They stemmed from a basic
idea of the conspiracy, the plan to insure Germany's
continued capacity to wage war for generations. Himmler put
this theory very bluntly in his speech to officers of the SS
Leibstandarte "Adolf Hitler" on the "Day of Metz":

     "*** If we once had not enough sons, those who will
     come after us will have to become cowards. A nation
     which has an average of four sons per family can
     venture a war; if two of them die, two transmit the
     name. The leadership of a nation having one son or two
     sons per family will have to be faint-hearted at any
     decision on account of their own experience, because
     they will have to tell themselves: We cannot afford it.
     Look at France, which is the best example.. . France
     had to accept from us a dictate." (1918-PS)

(b) The SS as an exterminator of "inferior" races.

Domination of Europe through a Nazi Elite required more,
however than the positive side of racism -- that is, the
building up of a numerous "biologically superior" group. It
necessarily meant also the destruction of other races. The
SS had to be, and was, taught not merely to breed, but to
exterminate. In a speech delivered at Kharkov in April 1943,
Himmler declared:

     'We have -- I would say, as very consistent National
     Socialists -- taken the question of blood as our
     starting point. We were the first really to solve the
     problem of blood by action, and in this connection by
     problem of blood, we of course do not mean
     antisemitism. Antisemitism is exactly the same as
     delousing. Getting rid of lice is not a question of
     ideology. It is a matter of cleanliness. In just the
     same way, antisemitism
     
                                                  [Page 192]
                                                            
     for us, will soon have been dealt with. We shall soon
     be deloused. We have only 20,000 lice left, and then
     the matter is finished within the whole of Germany."
     (1919-PS)
     
But it was not merely against Jews that SS efforts were
directed. All non-Nordic races were similarly condemned. In
his Posen speech, Himmler stated this basic principle of the
SS:

     "One basic principle must be the absolute rule for the
     SS men: We must be honest, decent, loyal and comradely
     to members of our own blood and to nobody else. What
     happens to a Russian, to a Czech, does not interest me
     in the slightest. What other nations can offer in the
     way of good blood of our type, we will take, if
     necessary, by kidnapping their children and raising
     them here with us. Whether nations live in prosperity
     or starve to death interests me only so far as we need
     them as slaves for our culture; otherwise; it is of no
     interest to me. Whether 10,000 Russian females fall
     down from exhaustion while digging an antitank ditch
     interests me only insofar as the antitank ditch for
     Germany is finished."
                           *******
     "That is what I want to instil into this SS and what I
     believe I have instilled in them as one of the most
     sacred laws of the future." (1919-PS)

(c) Indoctrination of members in SS racial theories. These
were the principles which were publicly reiterated, over and
over again, so that the newest recruit was thoroughly
steeped in them. In his Kharkov speech to the commanding
officers of three Waffen SS divisions, Himmler strongly
insisted on indoctrinating all SS members in his theories of
the racial struggle.

     "This is what is important for us as SS men, for our
     province of duty and our mission (it is a task
     additional to those of the whole German armed forces
     and the whole German people): That is what I would like
     to impress upon you. This is what I beg you as
     commanding officers, as chiefs and as leaders, to teach
     the young men again and again in their ideological
     instruction. That is what I demand and exact of you --
     that you really concern yourself with the man, the
     young fellow of 17 or 18 who comes to us, and with many
     who are in our ranks not as volunteers but as
     conscripts. I ask you to look after them, and guide
     them, and not let them go before they are really
     saturated with our spirit and are fighting as the old
     guard fought before us -- that is what I request and
     demand of you.
     
     "We have only one task -- to stand firm and carry on
     the racial struggle without mercy." (1919-PS)

                                                  [Page 193]
                                                            
This function of the SS men in the racial struggle was
publicly proclaimed in the Organizations Book of the NSDAP
for 1943:

     "He openly and relentlessly fights against the most
     dangerous enemies of the State: Jews, Freemasons,
     Jesuits and political clergymen." (2640-PS)

(2) The Obligation of Obedience. Indoctrination of the
organization in principles of racial hatred was not enough.
The members had to be ready and willing tools, prepared to
carry out tasks of any nature, however distasteful, illegal
or inhuman. Absolute obedience was the necessary second
foundation stone of the SS. The Organizations Book of the
NSDAP for 1943 thus describes this fundamental requirement:

     "Obedience must be unconditional. It corresponds to the
     conviction that the National Socialist ideology must
     reign supreme. He who is possessed by it and fights for
     it passionately subjects himself voluntarily to the
     obligation to obey. Every SS man is prepared,
     therefore, to carry out blindly every order which is
     issued by the Fuehrer or which is given by his
     superior, irrespective of the heaviest sacrifices
     involved." (2640-PS)
     
The same point was emphasized by Himmler in the Posen
speech:

     "I would like here to state something clearly and
     unequivocally. It is a matter of course that the little
     man must obey. It is even more a matter of course that
     all the senior leaders of the SS, that is the whole
     corps of Gruppenfuehrers, are a model of blind
     obedience." (1919-PS)

3) The SS as a Terroristic Agency. A necessary corollary of
these two fundamental principles of race and of blind
obedience u ruthlessness. Subsequent evidence of SS
activities will prove how successfully the SS learned the
lesson it was taught. The SS had to and did develop a
reputation for terror which was carefully cultivated.
Himmler himself attested to it as early as 1936 in a Speech
publicly delivered at the Peasant's Day Rally and
subsequently published and circulated in pamphlet form under
the title he SS as an Anti-bolshevist Fighting
Organization":

     "I know that there are some people in Germany who
     become sick when they see their black coats. We
     understand the reason for this and do not expect that
     we shall be loved by too many." (1851-PS)

4) Continence of the Elite and Voluntary Character of the
SS.

The role which the SS was to play required that it remain
constantly the essence of Naziism, and that its elite Nazi
quality never

                                                  [Page 194]
                                                            
be diluted. For this reason the SS was for a time
temporarily closed to new members, and those who had proved
unfit were weeded out. Himmler described this process in his
article "Organization and Obligations of the SS and the
Police" (1992-A-PS). Referring to the influx of new
adherents to the Party and its organizations in 1933, he
said:

     "A very difficult question confronted us at that time.
     It was a question of deciding whether to close the
     Party and its organizations to further membership and
     thus remain pure in quality but small in volume, or of
     opening them to further membership to increase their
     volume."

     "The SS too was endangered by this menace. Therefore I
     closed it while some of the other organizations
     accepted as great a number of people as possible. This
     way I had the SS again under my control in April and
     said: We shall accept no more people. From the end of
     1933 to the end of 1935 we expelled all those of the
     newly accepted members who proved unsuitable." (1992-A-
     PS)

These standards were not abandoned later. Indeed, in 1943
the Organizations Book of the Nazi Party stated that: "The
demands with respect to racial purity of the SS are being
increased every year."

And in the same year, 1943, Himmler emphasized this point in
a letter written to Kaltenbrunner (2768-PS).

This letter from the Reichsfuehrer SS, which bears the date
24 April 1943, states in part as follows:

     "Referring again to the matter which I discussed some
     time ago, i.e., the admission of SIPO officials into
     the SS. I wish to clarify again: I want an admission
     only if the following conditions are fulfilled:
     
     "1. If the man applies freely and voluntarily;
     
     "2. If, by applying strict and peacetime standards, the
     applicant fits racially and ideologically into the SS,
     guarantees according to the number of his children a
     really healthy SS stock, and is neither ill, degenerate
     nor worthless."
                           *******
     "I beg you not only to act accordingly in the future,
     but especially also that numerous admissions into ranks
     of the SS in the past be reexamined and revised
     according to these instructions." (2768-PS)


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