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."
He tried to minimise the significance of the SA. after 1934 but his evidence was quite clear.
"Q. In their less important role, did they contine the policy and practice that they had been carrying out before, the persecution of the Jews?
"A. There is no doubt. were the "strongest strong arm of the movement" and that the Nazi Government was an "anti-Jewish Government". SA, after 1934, why should Lutze, Chief of Staff of the SA speaking to the Diplomatic Corps and deputies of the foreign press in January 1936, have had to explain away the title with which the foreign press so often branded the SA -- "The bearer of a barbaric and uncivilized race struggle"? Why should all those articles have been appearing in the "SA-Mann" almost monthly during the years 1935-1939 in wording so similar to that favoured by 'Der Sturmer'? The titles are sufficient to indicate their nature. I only draw attention to four: persecuting the Jews after 1934, how is it possible to account for the part they played in the demonstrations of November 1938. You will remember the instructions received by the SA 50th Brigade at Darmstadt in the early morning of the 10th November:
"On the order of the Gruppenfuehrer all the Jewish synagogues within the 50th Brigade are to be blown up or set on fire immediately... The action is to be carried out in civilian clothes". leave the next paragraph and go on to the last paragraph on that page where I say: would have you believe, an exception to the policy of the SA Leadership and to the general behaviour of SA members in the rest of Germany. Altogether 267 synagogues were destroyed that night.
We can properly ask: Why should the 50th, 51st and 151st Brigades alone have received instructions to destroy all synagogues? Why should Juettner himself have issued to all SA units the orders from Hess that all offices of the Party and its branches which had safeguarded valuable property, were to hand it over to the nearest office of the Gestapo?
We ask you to say that that evidence is in itself conclusive. Nevertheless you have in addition the report of the proceedings of the Supreme Party Court in connection with the murders of Jews which took place during those demonstrations. Fifteen SA men committed murder. They did so all over Germany; in East Prussia; in Dessau, in Hanover, in Bremen, in Saxony, and in Munich. Were they, too, all isolated incidents?
Goering's biographer wrote of the SA in 1937:
"The present reorganization of the Security Police is hardly noticed by the public. Their ranks are strengthened by the SA, the most reliable instrument of the movement". Hardly could any organization have received a more damning testimony. I pass to the Preparation for War and Wartime Activities, with which the Nazis commenced their preparation for aggressive war. Geist, the American Counsel, tell you:
"Particularly through the years 1933 and 1934 hordes of Stormtroopers SA were much in evidence practising military exercises. They were being converted into a military organization. I frequently encountered the Stormtroopers deployed in fields and forests engaged in military technical exercises. This was all part of a general plan to prepare German's manpower for war".
Geist's assumption is confirmed by Lutze himself writing in 1939: the extensive mission of this SA... The SA shall be the bearer of the military thought of a free people. In the same sense the Fuehrer said in his book? 'Mein Kampf':
'Give the German nation six million perfectly trained have created an army out ? them in loss than 2 years.
' "The men never forget the mission of the Fuehrer to require the military training of the German man and to reconstruct the military spirit in the German people"."The SA did not have any military character and did not desire to have it.
..."
29 Aug M LJG 11-1b Perrin "The SA always preserved the non-military character of its training programme". and purpose of the SA and of its intensive training and preparation for war.
Dr. Ernst Bayer, writing on the orders of the Supreme SA HQ in 1938, yet again describes the aims of the SA:
"The SA was commissioned to obtain an increase and preservation of a warlike power and a warlike spirit as the expression of an aggressive attitude." Command of the SA should be represented on the Reich Defense Council, and I add that there was a pencil note added that that was done. A regular officer was appointed to the SA to assist them in "military" training, "For the purpose of camouflage he was to wear SA uniform". We know the form which the training took from 1933 until 1939 from the training directives and other documents - some issued by Lutze himself - shooting, grenade throwing, judging distance, map reading, end marching.
We know also that as early as early as July 1933 the SA had formed specialised units such as signal and motorized companies and separate air wings. The SA Command was anxiously stressing the need for secrecy in the case of any publications "which might give other countries an opening to construe German infringement of the terms of the Versailles Treaty".
The publication of pictures " enabling other countries to prove the alleged formation of technical troop units" was forbidden It is hardly necessary again to quote Dr. Ernst Bayer to see the purpose of these technical units, but I quote him:
"There originates in those technical units of the SA a trained crow whose capabilities and knowledge are not the last things of extraordinary value in the service for defense of the country".
Similarly he wrote of the Reiter Corps:
"At present the Sa each year is able to furnish many thousands of young trained cavalrymen to our Wehrmacht".
29 Aug M LJG 11-2b Perrin all this was loading when the Chief of Staff himself was saying publicly that the training principle of the SA was "always the spiritual, moral and physical culture of militarization of the whole German nation"? the SA and the Reich Defense Ministry in connection with all "A" tasks. Juettner has explained what these "A" tasks were - training and border protection". Did border protection mean preparations for the military seizure of the Rhineland, Austria and Czechoslavakia? the Rhineland an armed staff with a heavy machine gun company.
Early in 1934 the SA were also making plans -- I quote:
"to have the Austrian formations in Bavaria march into Austria around the 8th or 9th February. Then a military dictatorship would be proclaimed." Putsch is before you. When the time eventually came for the Anschluss, SA units were among the first to enter Austria.
THE PRESIDENT: Sir David -
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Your Lordship -
(A recess was taken) (The Tribunal reconvened at 1400 hours.)
SIR DAVID MAXWELL FYFE: My Lord, I continue with the military activities of the SA, with the last sentence on Page 62. Corps. In October 1938, a few weeks after the Munich crisis, the OKW Liaison Officer with the Free Corps reported:
"Supplies had been organized by the SA, arms supplied by the Austrian
SA. With magnificent camaraderie and unselfishness, the SA Leadership had looked after the Free Corps materially.
Equipping and feeding remained in the care of the NSDAP and the SA."
document there will be found a list of the prisoners, the booty taken by the Free Corps, and the casualties inflicted by them in what was a time of peace. This support to the Free Corps was certainly included in "border control" as Juettner himself admitted.
The crimes of the SA did not end with the outbreak of war. Again I quote from the witness Juettner:
"At the beginning of the war with Poland the SA Group Sudeten carried out transports of prisoners of war into the camp.
Other SA groups.
in the East may have been used for similar purposes. Later on the SA question."
When you consider the evidence you have heard of the appalling conditions in which these prisoners from the East were transported into their camps, are you satisfied that that task of guarding transports was as innocent as it appears? of the SA in the war. In the communicating zones its members gave assistance to the Political Leaders in their tasks of education and orientation. Twenty-one groups of SA men were being used for guarding prisoners. The organization of the SA groups in Danzig, Posen, Silesia and the Baltic Provinces is described in these words:
"In these Regions also as in combat, the SA was the assault unit of the Party.
....In these Regions also the SA service, practically speaking, is directed towards strengthening the defensive forces.
It was extraordinary appearance and bearing into keeping with SA standards."
what was taking place in these eastern and Baltic provinces. its inmates were guarded by SA guards. Some of the Jews were made to live, enchained in deep pits where the SA "fastened chains round both ankles and round the waist; they weighed 2 kilos each and we could only take small steps when wearing them.
We were them permanently for 6 months.
The SA said that if any man removed the chains he would be hanged."
Their work consisted of digging up mass graves:
"We dug up altogether 68,000 bodies.....Amongst those I dug up I found my own brother."
the teech of their dead brothers with prongs, washing it in benzine and packing it into 8 kilogram boxes which the SA officer in charge personally took away.
DR. BOEHM: Mr. President, I believe that with regard to the statements which were just made I can refer to Affidavit D 964, the submission of which was rejected by the Court, Affidavit GB 597. The whole affidavit is printed here on Page 64, and the content of the statement's just made refers to this affidavit, the submission was not approved.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL FYFE: My Lord, I respectfully disagree with Dr. Boehm. I have the affidavit in front of me, D-964, which has the exhibit number GB 597. Paragraph 7 reads:
"Our work consisted in digging up mass graves and piling the bodies on the funeral pyres and burning them."
THE PRESIDENT: Yes. But, Sir David, what Dr. Boehm was saying is that we rejected the affidavit.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL FYFE: My Lord, not this affidavit. I distinctly remember reading it. It has an exhibit number. Szloma Gol was the affidavit I selected with regard to Vilna.
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Boehm, what ground do you have for saying that it was rejected? If it was rejected, you must have some reasons for thinking so.
Where is the transcript? Do you have the transcript with you?
DR. BOEHM: I am of the opinion that this affidavit was among those affidavits which the Court rejected. At the moment, of course, I cannot investigate, but I shall be glad to do so after the session. I believe that this affidavit was among the affidavits which were rejected.
THE PRESIDENT: This was not one of the eleven affidavits which were rejected?
SIR DAVID MAXWELL FYFE: No, My Lord. Your Lordship will remember that I had about a half dozen Jewish witnesses from the Baltic provinces, and the Tribunal said that I could call three, and that they were to be available for cross-examination by Dr. Boehm. I selected, and I put in this affidavit, which received the exhibit number GB 597. Jones and Major Barrington, who were helping me at the time. And the fact it has an exhibit number is prima facie evidence that the Tribunal accepted it.
THE PRESIDENT: I think you had better go on. If Dr. Boehm can produce evidence that it was rejected, it will be stricken from your speech and will be disregarded.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL FYFE: Very well, My Lord.
The ghetto of Schaulen, south of Riga, was in charge of the SA. 700 to 800 men were there, recognizable by their brown uniforms and swastika armlets.
"In August 1941 the SA surrounded the whole ghetto and numbers of them lorries and drove them away.
I saw all this myself. It was done exclusively by SA.
I saw them take children by the hair and throw them into the lorries.
I did not see what happened to them but a Lithuanian told me afterwards that they had been driven 20 km.
away and shot.
He said he had seen the SA make them undress and shoot them with automatic pistols."
The SA guarded the ghetto of Kaunas where 10,500 Jews were shot in the dreadful "action" of 28 October 1941. So also did they guard the labor camps of Sakraw, Mechtal, Markstedt, Klettendorf, Lanbielaw, Faulbrueck, Reichenbach and Anaberg in Upper Silesia, where Poles, Frenchmen, Belgians, Dutch and Greeks slaved and died through ill-treatment and malnutrition and where "the methods of the SA by no means lagged behind those of the SS." years of nightmare in the ghettos and labor camps in the East. Not only are the conditions they describe confirmed again and again from other sources and from the Germans' own documents, but even the identification of a particular SA man they mention is corroborated. Leib Kibart gave you the name of the District Commissioner in whose courtyard the Jews from the Schaulen ghetto were daily cursed and beaten by their SA guards. He told you he was called Gewecke and that he was a member of the SA. We have the signature of Gewecke on one of his own letters dated 8 September 1941 complaining that the SS were interfering in his arrangements for the "orderly confiscation of Jewish property." The letter heading on that document is "the Regional Commissar in Schaulen."
Nor was it only in guarding duties that the SA were employed. They were forming Einsatz Commandos of their own units of the SA were sharing in the bloody work of annihilating the partisans. The Regional Commander of the Security Police and SD in Cracow, in writing to the defendant Frank, tells of the work of a special SA Einsatz Commando which was formed for the purpose of collecting workers from the civilian population.
"By order of the Chief of band combatting SS Obergruppenfuehrer von dem Bach, units of the Wehrmannschaften have also participated in the operation. SA Standartenfuehrer Kunze was in command of the Wehrmannschaften." That action to which the General Kommissar referred was the terrible operation Cottbus which you will remember and of which the General Commissar reported "the political effect upon the peaceful population is simply dreadful in view of the many shootings of women and children."
The SA had been organized in the Government General in 1941. Speaking in December 1943 the Defendant Frank said :
"When 2 1/2 years ago I gave orders for the SA to be formed, I was guided by a thought which today fills me more emphatically than ever. I strove to ensure ...... that an emergency reserve of absolutely unshakable National Socialists should, under all circumstances, exist in the Government General. It is quite clear that this emergency reserve of pronounced National Socialize fighters can only be the SA ...... Here as an SA comrade with my SA comrades. I can, within the framework of the SA truly cultivate what has to do with the Volk in a way which I cannot do in the political existence of the area, where I have to take numerous things into account and have to have a whip in my head without interruption, like a lion-tamer in a lion's cage, in order to keep the bandits in check. That is a point of view which a Gauleiter in the Reich never need take into account...... It (the SA) has for the first time been employed here in a new area with new methods and tasks which however, have been solved owing to the very fact that the SA is here the same as it was in the period of struggle in the Reich."