to interfere in clashes between Germans and terror flyers. Gauleiters were to be informed verbally. was not bearable to use German police to protect murderers. The next day Bormann directed all Gauleiters, Vorhandefuehrers, Kreisleiters and Ortsgruppenleiters that several instances had occurred in which aircraft crews who had bailed out or had made forced landings had been lynched on the spot by the incensed populace.
"No police measures or criminal proceedings were invoked against the German civilians who participated in these incidents". that letter, to have captured a Gauleiter's order taking advantage of the invitation that Bormann had extended. In February 1945 the Gauleiter for Westfalen-South expressly directed his Kreisleiters to encourage the lynching of Allied airmen:
"Fighter bomber pilots" he wrote "who are shot down are on principle not to be protected against the indignation of the people. I expect from all police offices that they will refuse to lend their protection to these gangster types".
You will have soon Gauleiter Hoffmann's evidence before your Commissioners upon this matter and you will pay such attention to it as you think it deserves. Leaders by reminding you of the evidence of two witnesses called in defence of the organization, one Eberstein whom you yourselves heard give evidence for the SS and the other Wahl, a Gauleiter who testified before your commissioners. concentration camps -- they had nothing to do with them, that they knew nothing of what was happening inside them. But what did the witness Eberstein tell you? I quote from his evidence:
"In the beginning of March, 1945, the Gauleiter and Reichs Defense Kommissar Giesler in Munich ordered me to come to him, and demanded that I should influence the Kommandant of Dachau to the effect that when the American troops approached the prisoners -- there were 25,000 people there at the time -were to be shot.
I refused this demand with indignation, and I pointed out that I could not give any orders to the Kommandant, whereupon Giesler said to me that he, as Reichs Defense Kommissar, would see to it that the came would be bombed by our own forces. I told him that I considered it impossible that any German air force commander would be willing to do this. Then Giesler said he would see to it that something would be put into the soup of the prisoners. That is, he threatened to poison them. From my own initiative I sent an inquiry to the inspector of the concentration camp by teletype and asked for a decision from Himmler as to what was to be done with the prisoners in case the American troops approached. Shortly thereafter the news came that the camps were to be surrendered to the enemy. I showed that to Giesler. He was quite indignant because I had frustrated his plans".
And lastly the witness Wahl, Gauleiter of Schwaben gave this evidence:
"Q. Witness, I was asking you about the conversation which you had with your wife on the question whether or not you should resign your position as Gauleiter. Isn't the implication to be drawn from that conversation this:that you were ashamed of what other Gauleiters were doing and that all around you saw things going on which you disapproved and wanted to disassocaite yourself from?
"A. Yes.
"Q. That is true, isn't it?
"A. Yes, that is true."
And in answer to another question he said:
"I want to stress the point that it is not my task and not my wish here to justify all the Gaus. In the Gauleiters there were maniacs and bloodthirsty feels as everywhere else." a word upon the question of voluntary membership. Counsel for the SA has has argued that membership was not voluntary; it is said that great pressure was brought to bear upon the German people to make them join one or other of the Nazi Party organizations and that, in the case of certain sections of the SA, not only was pressure brought to bear but membership was enforced by decree.
On the evidence to which. I shall draw your attention you may well think that it, as in certain cases there undoubtedly was, pressure exerted upon individuals to join the Party, and in some cases, perhaps, to join this particular organization, the consequences of refusal as they have been pictured by the Defense are very much exaggerated. It is submitted that even if you accept without qualification the evidence of some of those witnesses as to particular cases of compulsion, the evidence which you have as to the Organization as a whole is perfectly clear: the membership was from the first until the last voluntary: never was there at any time compulsion recognisable in law as such, either physical or as a result of legal decrees. the English Law on compulsion. I do not want to go over it. It takes the rest of pages 41 and 42, and the cases are summarized in the footnotes. If I might, my Lord, I should like to continue at the top of page 43.
Let me shortly discuss the evidence upon this point. The general service regulations for the SA published in 1933 laid it down that "He who cannot or will not subordinate himself is not suited to the SA andhas to withdraw."
The Organization Book of 1940 states: "Service with the SA is and remains voluntary.....As in recruitment for the SA no advantages may be promised and no pressure whatever may be exercissd. The SA man should have the possibility to withdraw."
The witness Juettner agreed with that statement as correct. He was asked: "Did it always remain a fundamental principle of the SA that membership should be voluntary?" And answered: "That was always the principle adhered to by the leadership." He was asked again: "If a man no longer agreed with the SA views, was he expected to withdraw?"; and answered: "Numerous men left the SA for a variety of reasons." Reiterkorps be said to constitute compulsion, physical or by decree. It is true that the original riding organizations were arbitarily amalgamated into the SA, but as the witness Walle, called on behalf of this branch of the SA, himself admitted: "Membership in the SA was voluntary in 1933 and this did not change....A man could resign from the Reiterkorps but he had to give up his sport inasmuch as the riding installations were no longer at his disposal."
"The Riders Association", he said "submitted to the process of coordination because it enabled them to continue their athletic activity." activities of the SA were more obviously criminal to all the people of Germany than at any other time. How then can the loss of "sporting activities" constitute compulsion and afford an excuse for membership? Is the risk of the loss of horse and stable to be regarded as legal justification for participation in murder? and the Stahlhelm, although those organizations may have been amalgamated with the SA by legal decree, there is no evidence before you that the decrees contained one word which might be construed as compulsion upon individual members to take up membership in the SA.
that the evidence that Juettner gave before the Commission is clearer still. Let me quote from the transcript of his evidence:
Q. "There was nothing, was there, to stop a member of the Stahlhelm withdrawing from the SA when the two organizations were combined in 1933?"
A. "As far as I was concerned in my district no member of the Stahlhelm who did not desire to do so would have been compelled to join the SA."
Q "And that goes generally for the whole of Germany, does it not?"
A. "It is reported that there were instances in which members of the Stahlhelm agreed to transfer only because it was ordered."
Q "But there is no instance where a man was forced to join or continue his membership?"
A "No, sir." servants if they refused to join -- refused to join not the SA, be it noted, but any Party organization. But the witness Boley, who himself gave this evidence, showed how exaggerated it was when he admitted to the Commissioner that in those offices in which he was himself employed, only 18% of the civil servants had become members of the Party or of one of its organizations. And these offices were the Reich Finance Ministry and Reich Chancellery -- the very heart of the Nazi Government. how a German who had the character to stand up for what he believed to be right could continue to do so without any dire results. Himself a civil servant and a leading member of the Stahlhelm in 1933, he resigned on its amalgamation with the SA., refused to join the SA, the Party or my other Party organization, yet nevertheless continued to hold his position until the end of the war. compelled by decree to become members of the SA. This contention has been supported by an order of the SA University Department in Munich, dated 16 April 1934, which is contained in the SA Defence Document Book.
Upon that document I make two submissions. First, the references to "SA service" do not connote membership of the SA but a course of training under SA direction; secondly, the sentence in paragraph 3 "All newly matriculated students are therefore bound to join the SA " is not in accordance with the policy of the SA leadership and does not represent the practice in universities generally.
University Department at Cologne two days before. When that order is read with the Munich order it becomes apparent that this submission is well founded.
29 Aug M LJG 9-1 Feldt Paragraph 1 of both orders is identical.
All students are to be "regimented by the S.A. University Department in order to be physically and mentally trained in a uniform manner in the spirit of the National Socialist revolution." In paragraph 2 it is expressly stated that it is a matter of indifference whether they are members of the S.A. at all. Paragraph 3, while following the same form in both orders, differs essentially. In both cases the orders are said to be based upon the same decree of the Supreme S.A. Leadership of 27 March 1934. We have not seen that decree but paragraph 3 of the Cologne order makes it clear that membership of the S.A. was not intended to be compulsory as is suggested by the Munich order. It is evident also that the S.A. service with which both orders are concerned is something different and independent from membership of the organization. How can compulsory "S.A. service" mean compulsory S.A. membership when it is expressly stated that except during the eleven days from 25 April to 5 May there is a ban on the enrolment of now members? The next words in both orders mark the essential difference between the two. In Munich students "are therefore bound to join the S.A." while in Cologne they are "thereby offered the possibility of joining the S.A." If the S.A. service which was to be compulsory for all German students connoted membership of the S.A., there could be no question of "offering" them "the possibility" of joining. You may think that in Munich, the heart of National Socialism, the decree of the Supreme S.A. Leadership of 27 March was deliberately misinterpreted to suit the desire of a particularly fanatical Sturmfuehrer. On the face of the documents it is apparent that whatever was happening in Munich was not characteristic of every other university in Germany. Juettner confirms the case for the Prosecution. He states:
"I have already expressed that in some instances pressure has been exercised by organizations outside the S.A., for instance, in the case of students and in the case of financing schools." But in answer to the question:
29 Aug M LJG 9-2 Feldt "There was nothing which compelled a student to join the S.A. if he disapproved of what the S.A. stood for?"
he said:
"I share that opinion." I quoted in the evidence of Juettner, there is corroboration in writing of that evidence. The fact is as he explained: where organizations were amalgamated with the S.A. "the vast majority of non were proud of the S.A. and proud to serve in the S.A." If further evidence were wanted of the voluntary nature of this organization, both in theory and in practice, it is to be found in the stops which were taken by the S.A. leadership itself to reduce its members after the large influx that had taken place in 1933 and 1934 by the incorporation of such organizations as the Stahlholm and Reiterkorps and by the large numbers of candidates that flecked to every party organization after the Nazi seizure of power. From 4 1/2 million in 1934 the membership of the S.A. had dropped to 1,500,000 at the outbreak of war in 1939. Juettner explained the causes of this reduction. It was due partly to the Kyffhauserbund, another old soldiers' organization, being excluded from the S.A. But it was due also to the introduction of examinations for their members, failure to pass which resulted in dismissal, and to the fact that those who, " for reasons of their occupation were unable to do us a service and accordingly did not cheerfully continue to serve us in the S.A." were also dismissed. Such a wooding cut and reduction in numbers from 41/2 to 11/2 millions in 5 years is hardly compatible with the story of the whole of the German youth, the whole of the German civil service and of the population generally being compelled to become members of this organization. It is submitted that this is conclusive evidence of the voluntary nature of this organization. number the witness Boley gave as 3 million, a million Stahlhelm members, 100,000 students, 200,000 Reiterkorps members and others 29 Aug M LJG 9-3 Feldt besides were all compelled to join the S.A. when the total membership of that organization in 1939 was only 1,500,000?
was brought to bear; that the consequences of refusal would have been serious. But this issue is to be decided upon recognized and established principles of law. Even were it not so, could we feel sympathy for these people? Did they show sympathy for the thousand of their fellow countrymen that were taken to the dreaded horrors of the concentration camps? Did they sympathize with the thousands of Jews that were slandered and persecuted unceasingly ever the years? Exclusions with the Organizations were argued before you in February, I stated on behalf of the Prosecution that we did not seek a declaration of criminality against certain sections of the S.A. We excluded
1) All wearers of the S.A. Party badge who were not strictly members of the S.A.
2) Members of the S.A. Wehrmannschaften who were not otherwise members of the S.A. You may well think, having heard the evidence that you have of the crimes committed by the Wehrmannschaften in Poland and in the Eastern Territories that that branch of the S.A. ought not to be excluded. Nevertheless, we feel that many members of the units which were involved in these
3) Members of the SA reserve who at no time served in any other
4) The National Socialist League for Disabled Veterans. to obtain a declaration of criminality only against those who bear a major responsibility for the crimes that have been committed. In view of this and in view of the evidence that has been presented to you since February, we desire respectfully to recommend certain additional exclusions from among the general membership of this Organization.
First. The total strength of the S.A. in 1934 was given you by Juettner as 4 1/2 million. That figure included 1,500,000 members of the Kyffhauserbund. Shortly after the amalgamation of that Organization with the S.A. in 1933 the two were again separated. We respectfully recommend the exclusion of all those members of the Kyffhauserbund who did not retain their membership of the S.A. after that separation.
Secondly. We believe that we are also justified in asking for the exclusion of certain sections of the Stahlhelm. So that you may understand the grounds for this recommendation, it may be of assistance if I briefly remind you of the structure and history of that Organization. It was composed of:
1) The Scharnhorst, which was the Stahlhelm youth organization for
2) The Wehr Stahlhelm which included the Jung Stahlhelm (boys from 14 24 years of age) and the Stahlhelm sports formations (men from 23 35 years of age). The total strength of the Wehr Stahlhelm was
3) The Kern Stahlhelm which consisted of men between 36-35 years of age.
Its strength has been given as 450,000.
The total strength of the Stahlhelm was therefore approximately 11/2 million men and boys.
The Scharnhorst was transferred to the Hitler Jugend; the Wehr Stahlhelm to the SA proper; and the Kern Stahlhelm to the SA reserve. Since we have already excluded the SA reserve we are left to consider only that part of the Stahlhelm which was incorporated into the SA proper -- 500,000 members of the Wehr Stahlhelm. Defense Document Book that many of these 500,000 Stahlhelm members were opposed to their transfer to the SA and to the policies and aims of the SA and the Nazi Party. Many, including the witness von Waldenfels, refused to join the SA. It is a possible hypothesis that many more, although opposed to the policies of the SA, were prepared to join in view of the assurance that was given to them that they would retain their independent character, identity and leaders in the same way as did the Reiterkorps, and that they would never be called actively to associate their selves with the SA proper. On the other hand, there can be no doubt whatsoever that many wholeheartedly joined the SA, and participated to the fullest extent in its criminal activities. Juettner himself is an example, and he declared that he was by no means alone. You will remember his evidence:
"Numerous SA men came to me in the first few months who had formerly belonged to the Steel Helmet Society; like myself they felt regret that their fine old organization was no longer in existence.
But participate in this large community of the SA". Speaking of his own district he said:
"Really, after 1935, the nucleus of the SA was my old Steel Helmet organization:
therefore many Steel Helmet men remained in the SA." To exclude the whole of the Stahlhelm would entail the exclusion of men like Juettner and many other Stahlhelm members who were to form the nucleus of the SA. these two classes. In July and August of 1935 the assurance which had been held out to the Stahlhelm that they would retain their independent status side by side with their membership of the SA was broken.
The organization of the Stahlhelm was finally dissolved; their uniforms, their meetings and all their previous activities were prohibited. From that time the Stahlhelm members who remained in the SA were indistinguishable from the rest of that body. They had joined the SA in 1933 knowing, as one of their own witnesses has declared, the criminal nature of the policies and activities of the SA. Now in 1935 they could have had no illusion that by remaining members they would be expected to support that policy and participate in these activities. None who remained members after that date can absolve themselves from a major responsibility for the crimes committed by the SA and by the Nazi Government of which the SA was one of the essential bulwarks. We therefore respectfull recommend for your consideration whether all those members of the Stahlhelm who resigned or were ejected from the SA prior to 31 December 1935 might also be excluded. We submit that those who remained are rightly included in the criminal organization of the SA. SA members involved in these proceedings.
The exclusion of the 1,500,000 Kyffhauserbund and 500,000 Kern Stahlhelm alo reduces Juettner's total to 2 1/2 million and that takes no account of the other exclusions which the Prosecution have suggested.
Lastly, I would say a word about the Reiterkorps. I have already submitted that there is no legal basis for suggesting that their membership was involuntary. The Prosecution recognises, however, that in so far as the Reiterkorps retained its separate organization of riding clubs, its own identity and its own leaders, you may find that it is in a somewhat special position when you are considering the criminal responsibility of the SA. It is of course open to the Tribunal to give effect to that special position of the Reiterkorps if it so desires. You will remember that its membership totalled 200,000. The "SA-Mann" perhaps, to say a word. It has been urged that the weekly paper "The SA-Mann upon which the Prosecution have drawn for a small part of their evi dence against this organization is inaccurate and does not truly represent either the policy or the activities of the SA. You have heard the evidence for and against this proposition. I need only remind you that the paper was published by the official Nazi publishing hourse, the Eher Company, which published also Mein Kampf, the Organization Books, the orders and decrees of the Nazi Government and all other official Nazi publications.
THE PRESIDENT: Sir David, before you pass from the subject of numbers, does the figure which you gave of 2 1/2 million allow for replacements?
SIR DAVID MAXWELL FYFE: No, my Lord; the same applies with regard to replacements, we submit, that it would have to bear against that, the very heavy number of deaths which had occurred during the years of the war. You only got to figure a period of five years after the outbreak of the war. During that period, the 4 1/2 million was reduced to 1,500,000. After that, the replacements we submit would be offset by deaths during the war. Your Lordship will also appreciate that what we are trying to do is to take the original figure, Juettner's original figure of 4 1/2 million. We submit that that reduced that or to 2 1/2 million.
If you accede to out suggestion with regard, to Kyffhauser and the Kern-Stahlhelm alone, that reduces 2 1/2 million, you then have to take into account the suggested exclusion of the Stahlhelm members who left before the end of 1935 and the, of course, we leave the question of the Reiterkorps to the Tribunal but after you have done that, after you have arrived at a figure which may be somewhere about 2 million, the fact is that that figure was reduced in the five years to 1,500,000 according to Juettner's evidence.
I was dealing with the "SA-Mann" and I continue: It carries under its title the description "The official organ of the Supreme SA Leadership" -- Its editor, writing to Rosenberg, describes it without contradiction as the "combat publication and official organ of the Supreme Party Leadership", with a circulation of 750,000.
(PS 4009 - GB-614) Lutze himself recommends it in his annual training directive for 1939 as one of the official "aids to the preparation and carrying out of training". I submit to you that in the face of that evidence the testimony of witnesses for the defence upon this matter ought not to be accepted. connection with this organization. It is all the same -- all about war, about lawless violence, about racial hatred. There is not one word on the ordinary matters of decent living, of the interests and activities and the ways of life of ordinary decent, civilized, peaceful citizens - the things which fill great portions of the newspapers and literature of decent, law abiding, peaceful countries. Compare the literature of the SA with that of any organization or society in any other country in Europe. The SA the organization which prided itself upon its responsibility of educating and training the manhood of Germany, spoke only of militarism, of arrogance, of bullying and hatred. Who need for this if their purpose was what they way?
Aims and Policy I turn to consider very briefly the evidence upon which we be our submission that his organization was criminal. The aims of the SA were the aims of the Nazi Party itself. Training in the SA is described in the Organization Book as "education in training according to the doctrines and aims of the Fuehrer as they are set forth in Mein Kampf and in the Party programme for all phases off our lives and our National Socialist Ideology." 1936 told them: "Then I state in the beginning that the obligations of the SA at those of the Party and vice versa, I only mean that the SA considers the Party" Programme as its own as well. The SA cannot be independant of the National Social movement but can only exist as a part of it, In the framework of the Party the is its protective troops, its fighting shock troops, to which belong the most active members of the movement, politically speaking. The tasks of the SA are to of the Paryt and vice versa. They are therefore of an internal political nature the evidence of how this organization performed its role as "the protective to and "the fighting shock troops" of the Party. All this may well be said already to be a matter of historical fact. In the words of the Indictment, the SA was developed by the Nazi conspirators before their accession to power into a vast disorder and terrorising and eliminating opponents." It is said that the violent at criminal activity of its members, if indeed any such activity existed at all, was purely defensive - forced upon it in order to protect its members and their Partly Leaders from the violence of the Communist and other political parties. It is for you to judge the value of that evidence. In doing so, you will have it in mind that all the documentary evidence upon this question has been submitted to you the defense document book, is of Nazi origin and authorship. You may think that that description of the SA as a defensive organization is wholly inconsistent will the evidence you had from the witness Severing, from Gisevius and in the affidavit you have had from the American Consul.
My Lord, I set out part of the evidence. I don't propose to read it to the Tribunal today. I remind you of what Severing told you about the rowdy battala* and I ask the Tribunal to look at the last words of the quotation at the top of page 52: "Those were not ordinary little fights between political fighters during election fights. That was organized terror."
Juettner. There is corroboration of that evidence.
".....those were not ordinary little fights between political fighters during election fights.
That was organized terror."
"I believe", he said, "that on the whole, Severing describes it correct 1933-34, from the coming into power of the Nazi Government until the Roehm purge is as well established and may be dealt with as shortly. The same violence, the same disregard for the law and for the rights and privileges of all but themselves continued. It is sufficient to remind you of what Gisevius said -- and again, My Lord, I remind you that the statement of Gisevius on the use of the SA auxilliary police, about private prisons, about arrests; and again may I quote the last sentence of that quotation:
"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.
political opponents by members of the SA, the prisons they established and the treatment meted out to their victims:
"It was the bestiality tolerated during the first months that later encouraged the sadistic murders in the concentration camps."
have you the slightest doubt that atrocities were committed by SA men in that camp? You have the evidence of the witness Jodl that the SA established a concentration camp at Wuppertal on the initiative of the local SA Commander. At Hohnstein and at Bredow also SA guards were torturing and murdering their prisoners. You will remember the letter written in June 1935 from the Ministry of Justice to Hitler himself:
"In the camp serious mistreatment of the prisoners has been going on at least since the summer of 1933.
The prisoners were not only, as in tortured in other ways."
Comment is unnecessary except to emphasize that sadism and illegal arrests of this kind were being practised and carried out by SA men throughout the Reich:
"Within six weeks of the Nazis' coming to power in January 1933 the gaols of Prussia included many Socialists and intellectuals."
Brown House in Cologne to be "tortured, beaten and kicked for several hours." In Nuremberg a man called Pfaumer has being beaten on the soles of his feet until he died. In Munich the former editor of the newspaper, "The Lower Bavarian Peasant", Dr. Alois Schlogel, had his house wrecked and was himself illtreated. These are only a few of the incidents of this kind which the Prime Minister of Bavaria describes when he says:
"Of their total number throughout Germany there can be no count."
This was no political revolution. This was no self-protection from Communist opposition. These men were the servants of the Government with the sure knowledge that all Government agencies -- the press, the law and the police -- were under orders to condone and to assist. They ran no risks; their victims had no court nor protection to which they could appeal. This was nothing but sheer sadism, criminal brutality, encouraged by the Party at the SA leadership. You have the evidence of Geist:
"I personally can verify that the police had been instructed not to interfere.
... These officers told me that they and all the other police SA, the SS or the Hitler Youth."
Defendant Goering, speaking on 3rd March 1933 described the role that the SA were to perform from then on. He declared that the Communists would be suppressed by the Brown shirts. The police would not be used as in a bourgeois democracy, I quote:
"I do not have to give justice, my aim is only to destroy and exterminate, nothing more.
... The struggle to the death in which my are the Brown shirts."
those years after 1934. It has been suggested that following the Roehm purge the SA diminished both in numbers and in importance and that the crime activities of its members ceased. That its numbers were reduced is unquestionable -- I have indicated the evidence of the reasons why. That it waned in importance is also true to be extent that official favor was bestowed more and more upon the SS for reasons that are well-known. Nevertheless, the SA both in the eyes of its own leaders, its members and of the Nazi Party authorities remained politically and militarily an important and vital force. or incarcerated. Little wonder then that we have less evidence of those incidents of "mastery of the streets" which filled the history of Germany during previous years. But the aims of the organization remained the same fanatical support of the policy of the Nazi Government; the suppression of such opposition as remained, particularly the churches and the Jews. And in addition intensive preparation for aggressive war.
Already the SA. and the SS had been employed in the action to dissolve the trade unions. The Church and the Jews remained an ever-present problem. I have already referred to the Nazi Party's police of suppression of all Church influence, but I would remind you of the part theSA was playing in this fight during the years after 1934. You remember the incident in Freising church in February 1935 when the Kreislieterin instructed all her Nazi women to accompany SA Storm Troopers to attend the service in Freising church. It was S.A. men who arranged for the bell to ring during the Cardinal's service. It was S.A. men who afterwards led Hans Heidi out into a field at night and beat him unmercifully for his resentment at the interference with the service. You remember the Story, and I set out Hans Heidi's account of the story. incident? When you consider the evidence of wholesale and widespread acts of violence which had characterized the S.A. in the eyes of all Germany and the world during the years of Nazi struggle, can you doubt that similar incidents were taking place throughout Germany in 1935 and afterwards, whenever the occasion presented itself? Does the very nature of an organiz tion such as this change within a few months? If the nature and aims of the SA had changed, why should the "SA-Mann" have been publishing articles in 1937 and 1938 decrying the church in such articles as:
"My dear Franciscans" "The Black Balance - Political Catholicism" "The Church wants to dictate to the State" "Unmasked Political Catholicism" finally "Does the Vatican want War" If the violent manners of the SA had been converted during these years, why should the official organ of its supreme leadership have been recounting stories of its early battles?
Their titles tell their tales:
"We subdue the Red Terror" "Nightly street battles on the Czech border" "The SA breaks the Red Terror" "Bloody Sunday in Berlin" and that description of "9 November 1923 in Nuremberg" when, during the of the disturbances, someone shouted 'The Jewish place will be stormed! Out with the Jews!' dissolves any doubt there may be of the continuing criminality of that organization during the years after 1934.
Of the boycott in April 1933 Goebbels had written in his biography:
"1 April 1933 All Jewish stores are closed.
At their entrances SA sentries are standing."
It was only an example of how throughout all Germany the SA provided the Nazi Government with a means of putting itspolicy into effect. The instructions issued by the Defendant, Streicher, and his Committee had directed:
"The SA and the SS are instructed to warn the population once the boycott has started."
You have the evidence of Kurt Schmidt, Minister of Economics and member of the Reich Cabinet until January 1935:
"I have to say that the SA gained a more and in economic and Jewish matters."
You have the evidence of their own witness, Freiherr von Waldenfels, who as asked:
"Did the SA take an active part in the persecution of the Jews after 1934?
and answered:
"As far as I have been told stories - yes.
originated with individuals I cannot say."