The Code of Honour of the SS - Regarding the Behaviour of the Soldier Towards Foreign Women

You are an SS Man. That means you are not a mercenary who is recruited to fight for something simply for a salary, even if it’s of no other concern to you. As an SS Man, you represent your own people, your own blood. Aside from that, you also represent the SS, a community, an order within your people, whose special tasks are the keeping pure of the blood, the elevation of the worth of the race. When you stand in a foreign land, with a weapon in your hand, you thus have a double duty: you must represent your people and you must be worthy of the SS.

However, you behave unworthy when you - wearing the uniform of the Führer with the badges of the Waffen SS - run around in taverns and restaurants with those girls and women who do not share the pain and concern of their own people, who do not notice the pain of their people, simply because they lack any feeling. These are not the decent women and girls of these foreign people. That’s something you can take for granted. For those girls whose brothers, and those women whose husbands, have been defeated by you and your comrades would certainly not want to throw their arms around you. You also know what typo of harm can befall you from such careless association.

How can you claim the right of unavoidable hardness, if you let yourself go? How can you maintain a clear view and a proper bearing, if you lose your self-respect? Many of you had opportunity in this war to assume more responsibility that you would have ever been able to have in peace time. You must all prove yourselves worthy of this responsibility. We know that you are brave in war. But you also have to learn to be calm, disciplined, and moderate, even when you are not standing in formation. That is what we hope for the sake of our people’s future.

What should you do after you have read these lines? I’ll tell you. You have to have clear eyes and an honest heart. You know what I mean. You know how I mean this. Perhaps you also know that one or another of your comrades has not behaved like he should have. Until now, you just looked away and figured it didn’t concern you. Believe me, it does concern you. It concerns all of us. First try the way of true comradeship: take your friend to the side and speak with him clearly and reasonably. Tell him what it means. Tell him of the fatal hour our people find themselves in. Impress upon him, that the Führer cannot relinquish a single ran.

Always remember that the months and years you wear the uniform with the SS Runes will remain unforgettable for the rest of your life. For a German, these are the most decisive years in life. Not only because the young SS volunteer matures into a man, or because his chest becomes broader, or his step more certain, or his sight more keen. His spirit is a so formed. And he learns in the SS community something that will always remain with him: order, discipline, conscientiousness, punctuality, sacrifice and a sense of duty towards the community. Do not spoil this memory by not doing your duties the way your people expect from you. If you disregard this, you hurt yourself more than anyone else.

There was once a time which pronounced “the right of one’s own body.” That was the period that gave its blessing if a black man married a white woman or if a German married a Jew - the time that also protected those who killed the unborn child in its mother’s body if its arrival would inconvenience the parents. The champions of that time, whom we have already overcome through the struggle of the Führer in Germany, now stubbornly stand on all fronts against us.

If you believe that you can do what you want with your own body and your own blood, whatever your desires wish, then you help the enemies of our people and of our worldview. You’re only the master of yourself, in reality, when you can bring up enough strength and pride to live within the laws under which your people, your SS, and you yourself are assembled.

Whoever spoils his blood,

Ruins his people.

*****

The most private things of the individual are the most public things of the community. For the most important thing is decided in them: the physical existence and future of our people.

- Wilhelm Pleyer