The SS

 

by Heinrich Himmler

 

The history of our people

 

If we look at the history of our people, it is the most sorrowful history that a people, blessed with all the gifts of the spirit and the body, could have and had in the last 2000 years.

 

We ask the big question of why?

 

I would like to limit myself to give a few examples, which only a few of the great series can do, and then I will try to give an answer.

 

The liberator of Germania from the rule of the Roman Empire was, as mentioned, Hermann the Cherusfer. He fell, killed by men of his own fine blood, after his father-in-law had played his own daughter, the wife of the liberator, into the hands of the Romans.

 

I recall the whole living centuries of the Roman Empire, whose rule and greatness were underpinned, because, beginning with Caesar, whose close collaborator and friend, a Teuton, organized Gaul for Rome, up to the times of the migration of the peoples again and again Germanic creative power, Germanic genius as a leader, Germanic ability as a leader and Germanic solvency served the corrupt Roman state, which had already been condemned to death, against its own blood.

 

I recall the desperate struggle of Widukind, which had to be lost because the nobles of his own tribe and his own people, men of the same blood, who had not been able to submit before, played into the hands of his own duke.

 

I remember the often mentioned battle of the Alemanni, which was lost because their own free Germanic tribes did not tolerate that their dukes, of the same blood as they were, to fight the battle on horseback, because they would have been half a human length taller than they were.

 

I remember the peasant wars, in which a death-defying struggle was confronted with a great disorder, fragmentation and lack of discipline, in which a pure will and the wisely conceived ideal of the best peasantry for a German state, after a lost battle, fell into the pit together with the bloody corpses of ignorant Germanic peasants, and at the end of which only the tragic and inventive death would befall them.

 

Certainly, one of our most important virtues is our irrepressible will for freedom. Certainly, the best inheritance, which has been preserved until our present time, is the purity of our blood, the goodness of our righteousness. Both of them alone, however, as they are in our principles of the German nation, which were developed by the people who loved freedom, were not only the incentive and impetus for cultural greatness and heroic struggle, but just as much the obstacles to the formation of a great state of all Germans and also the cause of all the defeats that we had to accept in our entire history, century after century.

 

It was not possible, due to the overspread estimation of the value of the I, proud of equal good blood, that one noble obeyed the other, that one duke was loyal to the other, that one subordinated himself to the other. Our leaders and our State Treasurers, which without doubt were often present - starting from Widukind up to Florian Geyer - were never given the possibility by the Teutons of the same blood to create the German state. And in the end, because of these mistakes, empire after empire fell into ruin, be it the empires of the Goths, the Vandals, the Burgundians, the Alemanni and many others.

 

Now that in the German area a state formation created by Germans and filled with German spirit did not come into being, the rule and conquest into an empire dictated by other Germans, but with a foreign spirit in blood and tears and misery, had to be accepted under the hardest fist.

 

Every time we see the same picture: the disobedience, the non-submission, the undercutting of the opponent and an unrealistic wishing of conditions, of political sayings and of realities that were just not there. And again and again we were confronted with an opponent in some form, who, soberly, calculating with the real realities of the political struggle of this earth, advanced step by step and, in spite of the inferior quality and inferior culture, overcame us again and again.

 

Our people - we want to establish it for ourselves as Germans - went the other way of the last 2000 years by our own fault. Do not reproach any adversary for being victorious and demanding our blood; for the law of the wide world of God, the law of this earth and the law of the nations does not count the one who means better in his overflowing heart, but counts the one who is victorious.

 

One will now silently, reproachfully, raise the question: why the terrible statements of guilt and faults despite all virtues? Do we have a vision for the future?

 

We want to say openly that nothing strengthens us in our faith in the future of our people and our blood as much as the fact that our people and our people, despite all mistakes and despite all suffering, are still alive today and have risen to greatness again. We believe in the destiny and the issue of our blood and see in the history of the last two millennia not only defeat and misfortune, but a way of necessary learning from our own failures.

 

The way to obedience

 

At the beginning of our millennium, according to the commandment of the Church, almost all the descendants of the best German families entered the service of the Church as its priests and church leaders. A great number of them took up the cross and walked the way of the cross of German blood in the far east, in the desert and in the sand. A part of these knightly orders brought with them German valor, German leadership, German imperturbability and went to the school of obedience, submission and state authority in the order of the Roman Church, a school that was already older than the Church itself.

 

Thus, the Order of Knights participated in the creation of the first modern state of Frederick II in Sicily, built on the principles of state administration and authoritarian obedience. In the first half of the thirteenth century, the Order was transplanted close to the German East by the civic wisdom of the priestly nobleman Hermann of Salza, who established here the most famous German state of the Order in the Eastern region.

 

It was easy to introduce obedience for the first time in the German area, because besides the absolute rule of the Christian religion, the circumstance contributed to the fact that a knighthood of the noblest families, racially selected from the best German blood by struggle, was placed as a leading class above peoples and blood mixtures, which racially were not equal in value to the people, so that besides the ecclesiastical obedience, the value difference of performance and personality arose.

 

The principles of the organization of administration, cleanliness and, above all, unconditional obedience were applied to Prussia, which was taken over by the Electors of Brandenburg as kings. The Prussian army with its mercenaries became the first great school of absolute discipline in the inner Germany. Discipline was not only based on noble motives of the human soul, but in many cases on the power of the strongest, on the state, on pay and livelihood, and on the fear of the subordinate officer’s chastisement.

 

This lasted for some time until a heroic spirit, the greatest Prussian king, the Old Friz, himself led this disciplined army in three great wars. It is true that even in the greatest battles of the third Silesian war, behind the musketeer, there was the Prussian officer with a fine sense of spontaneity, who had been educated in the Cadet Forces to the level of a leader. And in spite of that, this honor was already ennobled by the love for the leader, by the love for the future fatherland Prussia, by the honor to be able to be not only a mercenary, but also an army hero of the heroic Prussian army.

 

The next step leads over a terrible defeat to the people’s army of the wars of liberation from 1812 to 1815, in which the citizen’s son and student already feel it as an honor to be able to join the Prussian army in voluntary service. And further on the history goes in more and more rapid steps. More and more the concepts of freedom and honor as well as of obedience have begun to approach the people.

 

In 1864 and 1866, Prussia, with the army of a strong spirit, was able not only to physically conquer the freedom-loving Schleswig-Holsteiners, Bavarians, Württembergers, and the other southern Germans, who are of our blood, but who had not gone along the straight path, but also conquered them internally and integrated them into the order of the German empire.

 

And once again the battle goes half a century ahead in our side, in the world war. Honor, freedom and obedience find each other even closer. And two million of the prayerful Germans not only volunteer to fight for freedom, but also willingly to join the order of the powerful organization, the German army.

 

Four years we are assaulted, and once again the fate shows us that we had not yet learned. Fate showed it to those who commanded and who forgot in some places that the last command in the time of the greatest, most severe test, when all crowns, symbols and outer insignia of state authority are soaked in hardship, mud and misery, is only given by the people of the same blood to leaders, and only when honor, freedom and command are not forgotten.

 

And now, as we hope, the last school of our way to obedience began for the unhinged German people. The fate found the leader. As an obedient soldier of the great German army, he carried the whole fight for freedom, honor and goodwill of our people and took us to a fine school. In now 15 years of struggle and victory he educated first a few, then more and more of the most freedom-loving minds, the members of the militant German blood into National Socialists, into men who consciously find the value of our race and our blood, knowing that blood is the necessary prerequisite for culture and greatness. He also strengthened the will for freedom and honor of the fanatics to even stronger energy, to no more unbending will, and thirdly, he tamed the forces of the same value of the blood, of the unrestrained will for freedom and of the sharply felt sense of honor in a voluntary and the more obliging obedience arising from blood, honor and the will for freedom.

 

I believe that the clear history and the self-inflicted suffering of our people should be viewed with those eyes of ours, and I believe that it reveals a meaning to the eternal, benevolent God of the world, and thus becomes at the same time an indication and a commitment that our people is not at the end, but at the beginning of its mission and task given to it within the framework of the peoples of the earth.

 

This brings me to the SS itself, which is a part of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party created and educated by Adolf Hitler and which, within the framework of the movement, has been given by the Führer its special task of safeguarding the Reich internally.

 

The Creation of the SS

 

Years ago, in 1925, when the Führer gave the order to establish the SS, and then, in January 1929, the order was given for the larger organization of the unit, it was not in 1929 that the SS could fulfill its task only if it was established to the greatest extent possible in accordance with the principles and virtues instilled in it by the Fuehrer of the movement.

 

Knowledge of the value of blood and selection

 

The knowledge of the value of the blood and the blood products was and is valid for us as the first guideline. This principle was valid in the year 1929 and will be valid as long as there will be a SS.

 

Like the seed breeder, who is breeding an old, good variety, which is mixed and degraded, pure again, we first went over the field, to the so-called perennial selection, to remove purely externally the people, whom we thought we could not use for the building up of the SS.

 

The type of selection focused on the selection of those who physically most closely resembled the desired image, the Nordic-determined man. External characteristics such as height and racially representative appearance played and still play a role.

 

I do not need to explain that this principle has been developed more and more over the years as we have gained more and more experience. We are fully aware that there can never be a standstill in the implementation of this principle. Year after year our demands are becoming firmer and firmer, just as the rise of German mankind is increasing as a result of the impact of the German racial movements and the ever more awakening awareness of blood and breeding.

 

It must be so that the standards which in a hundred or more years will be set by our successors will demand many times more from the individual than it can be the case today.

 

We also know that the selection made from external points of view - today from genealogical tables and many interviews - can only be the first, but also the very first selection principle, that a selection process going through all the years of life in the SS must be the continuation and that the selection of those who are not suitable for us in terms of character, will, heart and therefore blood must follow.

 

By means of the laws which we give ourselves, we want to ensure for the future that not every son of an SS family registered in the SS clan book has the eligibility or even the right to become an SS man again, but we want to ensure that only a part of the sons of these families will be accepted by us as SS men, that only a portion of the sons of these families will be accepted and recognized by us as SS men, and we will continue to insist that the selection and the flow of German blood of the gathered people into the SS should be constant. This is to the principle of selection.

 

Performance tests

 

The second guideline and virtue, which we try to instill in the SS and give it as an inherent, irredeemable characteristic for the future, is the will for freedom and the fighting spirit.

 

We have always had the ambition to be the best in every fight and in every place. We are happy about every man and every association that equals ours or surpasses us with fine efforts and fine fighting spirit, for every one who comes to us is a gain for Germany and would be proof for us that we had too little strength in us and that we should redouble our efforts, purify our will to fight and still increase our toughness against us.

 

By means of hard schooling, through which each one of us has to pass throughout his life, and by means of training examinations to be taken year after year, we ensure that the courage and fighting spirit of each individual, but above all of the Fuehrer Corps, is put to the test again and again. At the same time, through the annual examinations demanded of us, we will prevent the coziness that has often become a deadly danger to the German people from entering our ranks. Furthermore, a community from which physical and volitional efforts are demanded in the same conditions up to old age will remain simple and in the long run will refuse things which may be fine for a leisurely life, but which could diminish our strength for Germany and bring the fighting spirit to a standstill.

 

Loyalty and honor

 

As the third guideline and virtue, which is necessary for building and working of the shooting squadron, the concepts of loyalty and honor are to be mentioned. Both are inseparable from each other. They are laid down in two words, in the command which the Fuehrer gave us: “My honor is called fidelity” and in the sentence of the old German saying: “All honor comes from loyalty.”

 

Many things we teach the SS man can be forgiven on this earth, but one thing never can: disloyalty. Whoever misplaces fidelity, is out of our society. For fidelity is a matter of the heart, never of the touch. The fidelity may be a matter of trust. This is sometimes harmful, but never ever unjustifiable. The heart, however, always has the right pulsation to beat, and if it stops, the man dies, just as a nation dies when it breaks faithfulness. By this we mean loyalty of every kind, loyalty to the Führer and thus to the Germanic Volk, to fine weapons and fine ways, loyalty to blood, to our ancestors and descendants, loyalty to our clan, loyalty to comrades and loyalty to the unfailing blessings of decorum, cleanliness and chivalry. A person offends against loyalty and honor not only when he is unfaithful or when he lets the honor of the SS be misplaced, but especially when he does not respect the honor of others, when he betrays things that others find sacred, or when he does not stand up for those who are averse, weak, or shot in a manly and decent way.

 

Obedience

 

The fourth guideline and virtue that applies to us is that of obedience; the obedience that comes unconditionally from the highest voluntarism, from the service to our world view, which is ready to make any, but also any sacrifice of push, of external honors and all that is personally dear and worthy to us; of obedience that never once hesitates, but unconditionally obeys every order that comes from the leader or is rightfully given by those in front of us; of obedience, who, even in the time of political struggle, when the will for freedom believes that it is necessary to outrage him, refuses to do so, who, with his senses wide open and his attention on the enemy at its utmost, if it is forbidden, does not lift a finger, who obeys unconditionally and goes on the attack, even if he thinks that he cannot overcome it in his heart.

 

We find it honest not to claim that we have grasped all the battles to the last man and to the deepest understanding. But we believe to be able to assert that in 9 years now the SS has started, has been built up and is working according to those guidelines. We want to incorporate more and more of these virtues, year after year, and to make them more and more a part of the field life of the SS man. We are convinced that if, sooner or later, we do not find the same virtues in the next generation, we will be able to pass them on as a full heritage, as a tradition, to those who will find us SS men close by.

 

Marriage law

 

We have been following these guidelines and virtues and have set up the life of our community and paved the way for a distant future. - The first law issued in 1931 was the SS order, which required marriage and engagement licenses for every man. We drew the conclusion from the knowledge of the value of the blood. We have come to the conclusion that it would be unwise to try to gather men together and not to think of the clan. We did not want and will not want make the mistake of the soldiers’ and unions of the past, which may well survive for centuries and then, because the bloodstream of breeding and the tradition of the clan are missing, sink into nothingness, we know from deep, inner conviction that a community will only be able to go the way into the future if it lives in awe of the ancestors of the distant and gray past, convinced of the eternal origin of its people. We want, that only the knowledge of the whole blood to be passed on as a sacred inheritance, for then a race and the Volk will have eternal life. We are imbued with the conviction that only the generation which is embedded between ancestors and grandchildren takes the right measure for the greatness of its task and its heritage and for the minuteness of its own and transient significance.

 

The victory of the child

 

We have learned that only the man of this conviction learns to be modest even in times of success and to avoid the mistake of arrogance, that likewise only the following people endure the times of heavy burden with the same zealous calmness as they survive the times of happiness with pity and spartan simplicity. Therefore, we teach our SS-men to go beyond the command to marry, beyond the education to choose the right kind of woman, because all our struggle, the death of the two millions of the World War, the political struggle of our fifteen years, the building up of our defense for the protection of our borders would be in vain and futile, if the victory of the German child would not follow the victory of the German child.

 

We have made it one of our tasks to lead the way here, not by word and speech, but by deed and example in our own ranks. Today and in the future we will impress upon our men that the most sacred and valuable person of our people is the mother of our blood, who is conscious of the sacredness of her duty, and that the most valuable asset is the German child.

 

Honorary seal of the SS man

 

As another law, on November 9, 1935, it was established by order that every SS man had the right and duty to defend his honor with arms. At the same time it was laid down in the order that SS-man, in the sense of joining the Order, will be accepted into SS after a period of 1 1/2 years as an aspirant, after taking the fine SS-oath to the Führer, after honorably taking the fine oath of service and military service at the age of 21 years is awarded the SS-dagger, the weapon, and is thus accepted as a full SS-man in the Order of the SS. An SS-man is every one of us, whether man by rank or ReichsFührer-SS. We have given ourselves this honorary rank because we are convinced that only the man who knows that he will be called to account for his fine deeds and fine words at some point will grasp the living meaning of our community and learn again to serve as a blamelessly clean soldier of life. For this honor obliges him to preserve his own honor, as it is demanded of him by the attitude of others, and as it is our duty to do, with all our basic generosity, kindness and generosity toward fine comrades, fine soldiers and fine fellow men.

 

I may now comment on a few problems. In a booklet entitled “ 50 Questions and Answers for the SS-Man”.

 

The first question is: “What is your oath?”

 

The answer is: “We swear allegiance and bravery to you, Adolf Hitler, as Führer and Chancellor of the German Empire. We pledge to you and to the people you have appointed obedience until death. So help us God!”

 

The second question is: “So you believe in a God?”

 

The answer is: “Yes, I believe in a Lord God.”

 

The third question is: “What do you think of a person who does not believe in a God?”

 

The answer is: “I think he is arrogant, a megalomaniac, and stupid; he is not suitable for us.”

 

I have given these three questions an answer in order to clearly state our position on religion. We would not be able to be this united corps if we did not have the conviction and faith in a Lord God who is above us, who has given us our fatherland, our Volk and the earth, and who has given us our Führer.

 

Blood and soil

 

The idea of blood, which has been advocated in the SS from the very beginning, would be condemned to death if it were not inextricably linked to the conviction of the value and sanctity of the soil. From the very beginning, the Race and Settlement Main Office has put down in fine name the concept of “blood and soil” in other words, but in the same sense. I may declare that it is a fine coincidence that the ReichsbauernFührer of the German Reich has been a member of the SS for years, just as it is a fine coincidence that I am a farmer by descent, blood and soil, and a member of the Reichsbauernrat. Farmers and SS-men do not belong to the kind of men who chase many kind and friendly words. However, here it is clearly and perceptibly stated: the way it was before, it will be fine for the future, too, according to our will. Where the peasants stand by Adolf Hitler, they will always have the SS at their side as a loyal friend, just as we want that where the SS stands by Adolf Hitler, the German peasant stands by him as a true comrade and friend. So it is today and so it will be for all the future.

 

Security and police

 

I know that there are some people in Germany who feel bad when they see our black skirt; we understand that and do not expect that we are loved by too many. We will and should be respected by all those who care about Germany, but we should be feared by those who at some time or other have a guilty conscience towards the Führer and the nation. For these people we have built up an organization called SD, and likewise we as SS provide the leaders and men for service in the German police. We will ceaselessly fulfill our task of being the guarantors of Germany’s security at home, just as the German Wehrmacht guarantees the Reich’s honor, greatness and peace to the outside world. We will fight for it, because never again in Germany, the heart of Europe, from within or by emissaries from without, the Jewish revolution of the Untermenschen can be unleashed. Mercifully, we will be a readied sword against all these forces, whose existence and activity we know, on the day of even the slightest attempt, be it today, in decades or in centuries.

 

Bolshevism is not a daily phenomenon.

 

I would like to emphasize that we do not see in Bolshevism a phenomenon of the day which could easily be debated out of the world or removed according to our wishes. We recognize the Jews, this people, which from the overflowing perfumes of all peoples and nations has gathered the globe and has stamped all of them with its Jewish blood, whose desire is the world terror, whose desire is destruction, whose will is extermination, whose religion is godlessness, whose idea is Bolshevism. We do not underestimate the Jew, because we have fancied him since the beginning of time, we do not overestimate him, because we believe in the divine mission of our people and in our power, which has been reestablished by Adolf Hitler’s leadership and work.

 

The black corps

 

In this newly rebuilt nation, we, the SS, have been founded and established by the Fuehrer’s order. If I tried to describe the organization, structure and task of the SS, no one will be able to understand it who does not try to understand it with fine blood and fine heart. It cannot be explained why we, so few in number, within the framework of the German people about two hundred thousand men, have the power within us. It is not possible to explain logically why today each of us who wears the black skirt, no matter where he is, is carried by the power of our community; It may be that he fits in the saddle of the racing horse, fights on the sports field, it may be that he serves as a civil servant, it may be that he carries stones as a worker on the building site, or it may be that he venerates in the highest position of state, that he serves as a soldier, it may be that he creates works of German spirit of a different kind, it may be that he has to be a fine man somewhere - perhaps unheard of - in human terms. Each of us knows that he does not stand alone, but that the unheard-of strength of two hundred people, who have come together, gives him immeasurable strength, just as he knows that he, as representative of this black corps, has to do honor to this fine community through his foundation in fine work. Thus we find ourselves marching, after an unalterable blessing, as a national socialist, soldierly order of Nordic men and as a vowed community of their clans, the way into a new future, wishing and believing that we do not only want to honor the grandchildren who have lived through it, but also the ancestors of the latest generations necessary for the eternal life of the Germanic people.