Artwork Collection – Still Life

Josef Jurutka (1880-1945) – Stillleben „Beethoven” (1937)

Still Life „Beethoven“ (1937)

 

Karl Truppe (1887-1959) – Mutterhände (1942)

Mother Hands (1942)

 

Ludwig Platzöder (1898-1976) – Stillleben mit Posthorn (1943)

Still Life with Post Horn (1943)

 

Josef Burger (1887-1966) – Blumenstück (1943)

Floral Piece (1943)

 

Adolf Ziegler (1892-1959) – Blumenstilleben (1942)

Still Life with Flowers (1942)

 

Herbert Kampf (geb. 1896) – Blumenstück (1942)

Floral Piece (1942)

 

Wolf Thaler (1895-1952) – Blumenpracht II (1941)

Floral Splendour II (1941)

 

Adolf Schorling (1895-1952) – Malven und Dahlien (1943)

Mauves and Dahlias (1943)

 

Anton Kürmaier (1890-1943) – Krebsstilleben (1941)

Still Life with Crabs (1941)

 

Josef Schuster (1812-1890) – Bauernstilleben (1939)

Peasant Still Life (1939)

 

Robert Knaus (geb. 1900) – Bauernstilleben (1940)

Peasant Still Life (1940)

 

Robert Knaus (geb. 1900) – Heringe (1938)

Herrings (1938)

 

Albert Henrich (1899-1971) – Ländliches Stillleben (1940)

Rural Still Life (1940)

Postcards Collection – Knight Cross Holders – Part XII

Part XII

 

Herbert Schramm

 

Karl Ketterer

 

Egon Mayer

 

Albert Scheidig

 

Walther von Hünersdorf

 

Rudolf Pannier

 

Herbert Lamprecht

 

Adelbert Schulz

 

Gotthard Kummer

 

Erich Schopper

The Reich in Photos – Adolf Hitler’s Visit in Wilhelmshaven for the launching of the battleship “Tirpitz”, April 1939 – Part I

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Die Deutsche Wochenschau – Newsreel No. 632, 14 October 1942

1. Germany.

 

A gathering at the Berlin Sports Palace on the occasion of the National Socialist holiday, Harvest Day.

 

– The appearance of Reich Marshal Hermann Göring and Reich Minister of Propaganda, Gauleiter of Berlin Dr. Joseph Goebbels.

 

– State Secretary of the Reich Ministry of Food Supply Herbert Bake announces the awarding of high honours to the most deserving figures and organisers of agricultural production.

 

– Farm director Kurt Lettler, who works in the occupied eastern territories, receives the Knight’s Cross with Swords.

 

– Farmer Ernst Ritter is awarded the Knight’s Cross.

 

– Hermann Göring presents the awards on behalf of the Führer.

 

– Hermann Göring’s speech on the importance of the ‘eastern territories’ captured by Germany for supplying Germany.

 

– Ovations in the hall.

 

– Hermann Göring leaves the Sports Palace.

 

– Together with two new Knights of the Iron Cross, he passes the guard of honour.

 

Arrival of a train carrying food supplies from Ukraine.

 

– This is a gift from Gauleiter Erich Koch, Reichskommissar of Ukraine, to Gauleiter Dr. Joseph Goebbels of Berlin.

 

– Unloading of crates.

 

– Soldiers unload eggs, poultry, etc.

 

– Statistics on the consumption of bread, meat and fats in Germany between 1917 and 1942, diagrams.

 

– Data on key indicators of agricultural production.

 

– The announcer talks about the failure of plans to starve Germany.

 

2. USSR. Caucasian Front.

 

Military operations and daily life of German mountain troops in the mountains.

 

– Soldiers on a mountain road at an altitude of 3,000 metres above sea level.

 

– Distribution of food, mail, cigarettes.

 

– The convoy prepares to continue its journey.

 

– Soldiers against the backdrop of the Caucasus Mountains.

 

Elbrus, German battery in the mountains.

 

– Repelling attacks by Soviet troops.

 

– German artillery in action.

 

– Soviet soldiers surrendering.

 

– Battlefield: corpses of Soviet soldiers lying on the ground.

 

Stalingrad Front.

 

– Map.

 

– German artillery fires on Soviet tanks.

 

– View of tanks in a field from above.

 

– German officer looks through binoculars.

 

– Operations of German bombers.

 

– Destroyed Soviet tanks.

 

– German tanks break through to the northern part of Stalingrad, tanks drive past a fence, along the street.

 

– A self-propelled anti-aircraft gun with artillerymen is moving.

 

– Ruins of a factory, houses, an elevator building is visible.

 

– Awarding of the Knight’s Cross to Senior Sergeant Karl Freundner.

 

– With his self-propelled anti-tank gun, he destroyed ten Soviet tanks in just half an hour.

 

– Soviet prisoners of war near Stalingrad walking across a field.

 

3. USSR. Military operations south of Lake Ladoga.

 

German artillery and infantry on the offensive.

 

– USSR. Military operations south of Lake Ladoga.

 

– A tank unit receives its orders; the commander looks at the map.

 

– Tanks on the offensive.

 

– Destruction caused by German bombing.

 

– Craters, dead soldiers lying on the ground.

 

– Burnt forest.

 

– German anti-aircraft artillery repels an attack by a Soviet aircraft.

 

– The aircraft crashes.

 

– Military operations in the Ilmen Lake area, map.

 

– A balloon rises with an observer in the basket.

 

– German artillery in action.

 

– German soldiers are sleeping and are awakened.

 

– An SS unit in trenches before an assault, an attack.

 

– Mud in the trenches, soldiers’ boots get stuck.

 

– Sappers clear mines from the battlefield.

 

– Soviet soldiers surrender, prisoners sit, among them a woman.

 

– German planes fly, bombing Soviet transport, the road and the sea are visible.

 

– A carpet of bombs in the sky.

The Biological Meaning of Selection

 

Source: SS Leitheft No. 7, 1942

 

Since Darwin, like Linnaeus, was no longer satisfied with defining a system of species, but also questioned their origin and tried to find an answer, the idea of selection has gained new momentum. In the past decades, efforts were already being made to apply it to humans. Today, the idea of selection is one of the key elements of the National Socialist worldview. Since its victorious eruption, the public domain has also taken a keen interest in it. Added to this is the fact that all the questions concerning the selection and orientation of men, their type of function and the distribution of tasks are particularly bright today.

 

Races and species are created through selection and elimination

 

Two fundamentally opposed answers have been given to the causes of the origin of the species and races on Earth. One looks for driving factors in external impulses, in the environment, in the „milieu”. The other, on the other hand, speaks of the laws of hereditary transmission, and locates the basis of the origin, conservation and consolidation of the characteristic traits of the species at the heart of the living plasma itself. We feel closer to the second answer than to the first. We know, for example, that the loss of a limb due to freezing or the environment does not result in the disappearance of that limb in the offspring. Nor would this be the case if the cooling were to be repeated over several generations. Despite this, there are deep interrelationships between the origin of species and habitat conditions that we cannot consider from the point of view of any superficial theory of the environment. Homogeneous human groups, i.e., entire racial groups as well as specific races, only acquire the homogeneous characteristic of their own physical and psychic features in the course often to one hundred thousand years in harmonious connection with a living area appropriate to the species in question. Under the effect of all its geological, climatic and biological conditions, the area of life gradually brings about the consolidation and internal harmonisation of a perfectly determined hereditary trait. This was not the result of „the hereditary transmission of acquired qualities”, but of selection in a positive sense and elimination in a negative sense.

 

The habitat produces a specific type of selection

 

The selection and elimination carried out in a territory specific to a given species means that only those that have grown up under the conditions of that particular area reproduce in the long term. Conversely, those that do not overcome these conditions disappear. An example: As the researcher v. Eickstedt has done, let us assume that the light-skinned Europoid Nordic mankind was particularly marked by the uniform and isolated North Eurasian (Siberian) habitat of the Ice Age. We can easily imagine the consequences of natural selection and elimination in this area. Only those who had been subjected to the harshest conditions could survive and perpetuate themselves over the following millennia. Reproduction and growth were given only to those who ultimately proved superior to this climate and inhospitable aspect of the earth, those who were ultimately stronger than nature through their inflexibility and hardness. Only those qualities that enabled the victorious man to overcome nature were perpetuated and consolidated through hereditary transmission. During the war in the East, the winter gave us a foretaste and a vivid illustration of what it means for people who are living beings not only to be subject to an all- powerful nature but to defy it victoriously.

 

Overcoming nature means more than having two specific qualities. Muscular strength or insensitivity to cold are not enough. Overcoming nature and the environment refers to the general character traits of body and soul. Nature must be overcome by physical toughness and an inflexible will to live. It must also be overcome by spiritual strength and great zeal. Already in our earliest ancestors, it fostered those qualities that we still feel in our souls today as the highest: defiance of external obstacles, toughness towards ourselves, an insatiable will to live, depth and belief in the victory of the soul, as well as all our higher qualities and strengths.

 

The origin of species is not the result of an easy adaptation process

 

We can never regard the triumph over stingy nature and the harshness of its living conditions as the result of easy adaptation. It is obvious that man also adapts and follows the path of least resistance, as far as he is allowed to do so. But escaping from the environment circumscribed by the ice age and surrounded by powerful natural barriers was often impossible or only to a limited extent during long periods of evolution. When the natural barriers gradually disappeared and could be overcome, the conquest of more favourable living spaces, then as now, was only possible by confronting other human groups already established there.

 

The birth of a species is not the product of an easy adaptation to an environment and to a „milieu”. Rather, it is a gradual crystallisation and accentuation of all the qualities that make it possible to face the harsh conditions of life victoriously. Only the heaviest sacrifice makes this possible. The being who cannot stand the test delivered by elemental nature disappears and is ruthlessly eliminated. We therefore feel a deep respect for this process, which encourages us to be responsible for the preservation and reproduction of the humans of our species.

 

The progress of civilisation facilitates the conditions of existence and thus also modifies the original biological laws of selection

 

The more a human group succeeds in mastering and transforming the conditions of its living area through the establishment of a culture faithful to the law of life, the more easily the individual succeeds in preserving himself and avoiding elimination. The laws of selection and elimination, which are severe at the beginning, gradually disappear and become less severe. The older a culture gets and the later it reaches the stage of civilising eras, the more it loses its vigour. It even produces the opposite process. Weak and sick individuals can also survive and reproduce; different racial types mix. The law creating the species no longer seems to act.

 

When culture develops its own spiritual evolution and at the same time produces greatly facilitated conditions of existence, the spirit and nature of selection are greatly compromised. The preservation of purity, further education and the evolution of the species developing over millennia are gradually called into question.

 

Cultural selection replaces biological selection

 

Species and races were the magnificent result of natural biological selection. The civilisation that evolves as a result of the change in its conditions of existence imposes a certain form of selection on its side. This kind of selection results from the conditions of existence, the necessities and the fundamental ideas of the dominant culture and its spirit. The objective of selection pursued by a culture may have a different relationship to the original biological natural selection. This relationship determines our assessment of the value of cultural selection and its justification. It does not matter by what means it is carried out. It is of secondary importance whether it requires certain skills, a minimum degree of education, places the preservation of life at the top of its values, or uses the means of modern science to get to know man.

 

Different forms of cultural selection

 

The most favourable case of the relationship between cultural selection and the original biological natural selection is when the objective of the latter is pursued by the former. Thanks to a keen sense of the law governing the origin of their species, peoples such as the Spartans resorted in their selection to the same principles of inflexible severity originally prescribed by nature, even after their arrival on more hospitable territories. Other peoples of the Nordic race, such as our Germanic ancestors, naturally obeyed the biological laws governing the creation of their species.

 

On the other hand, we know that other forms of natural selection are totally contrary to the biological laws of species origin, or even hostile to them. This is mainly the case when the civilising spirit comes from outside and is not the product of the species itself. The acceptance, as well as the forcible establishment, of an alien culture of mind produces other types of selection and ultimately leads to the denial and destruction of the original and specific character of the species. The intrusion of Christianity into the culture of our Germanic ancestors gave rise to a form of selection which, from the very beginning, proved hostile to our species and its laws of evolution. The Christian priestly elite selects suitable and usable men for their purposes, but forbids them the perpetuation and preservation of the best racial heritage by forcing them into celibacy. A form alien to the principles of cultural selection, it makes advantageous use of the consequences of natural biological selection hundreds of thousands of years old. It makes use of the rich treasure of physical-spiritual talents of our race, but consciously and instinctively refuses to let them be preserved and renewed. For centuries it has lived on this capital, a process the full extent of which we are only now realising. We see that this capital of talent is already under threat and is by no means inexhaustible.

 

The spirit behind the forms of cultural selection of our time

 

The current forms of cultural selection are closely related to the cultural level itself.

 

Insofar as culture already has the characteristics of a late civilising action, „selection“ has already turned into a frightening counter-selection. This is the result of protecting the sick and inferior as a result of the misguided „interest” in the value of the individual alone. Moral depravity, welfare, decadence of feeling and loss of all natural instincts are the cause. Our view of all this is clear and needs no explanation.

 

Apart from this automatically resulting civilising counter-selection, there are many attempts to practice conscious and methodical cultural selection. Its aim and intention is always „to put the right man in the right place”. No one will dispute the practicality of such efforts. All the important institutions and organisations in our cultural life are now concerned to provide their offspring with a sufficient number of qualities. The great historical tasks which fate has assigned to our people no longer allow for the development of existing gifts. It is therefore all the more necessary to put the right man in the right place.

 

The problematic biological character of our cultural selection

 

In order to assess the significance of the attempts at selection made by our time, we cannot only start by looking at its undoubted immediate success. We must constantly ask ourselves whether they are consistent with the biological laws of species conservation. We must examine whether they both promote and prosper the millennial species, or at least conserve it, apart from their momentary practical effect. When we take this necessity into account, we find that our forms of cultural selection have lost sight of the original biological meaning of all selection. In some cases, we even come to a total unconsciousness or indifference, sometimes even to an instinctive and manifest hostility. This last case particularly concerns all forms of „purely spiritual” selection.

 

From a practical point of view, cultural selection is mainly carried out on superior individuals adapted to particular cultural purposes. The original biological meaning of selection, i.e., that good men should be favoured in their reproduction, is mostly not taken into account, or even intentionally denied. Many culturally conditioned forms of life and organisations prevent their members from reproducing through the establishment of multiple economic or moral barriers. For example, the incentive to follow excessively long training courses makes it economically and practically impossible to start a family. The number of children is limited because education requires enormous sacrifices. Other cultural organisations, which naturally claim the right to choose the best, erect moral barriers instead. A class morality, for example, in which the sense of biological duty is not well regarded, which condemns early marriage as vulgar as well as many children or young parents, betrays the original meaning of biological selection. The classes that express their „distinguished” cavalier morality by the formula: „Fall in love often, get engaged rarely, never marry”, therefore have no moral right to participate in the selection within our race.

 

Cultural selection also has the opposite effect at the biological level when the best are chosen whose existence is endangered because they have to risk their lives to accomplish their tasks. The current war is a clear example of this, where the best of us are prevented from reproducing fully by death.

 

When we look at the big picture, cultural selection is still carried out today, in the most varied fields despite different reasons, in a biological way that is totally similar to the selection of the Church, which is constantly feeding on the capital of talent. While it rightly, yet deceptively, strives to put the right man in the right place, it often fails to realise the original meaning of any selection because of its narrow historical-temporal, ideological and moral horizon. And not infrequently, it even believes that it must disdainfully reject biological viewpoints on ‘spiritual’ grounds. It thus becomes a form of counter-selection that is frightening at the practical level because it is perfectly concealed. Added to this is the soundness and correctness of its partly highly developed selective procedures.

 

We cannot forgo the immediate result of good cultural selection in the gigantic struggle for the existence of our people. But this must not be achieved at the cost of an impoverishment of our popular and racial substance rich in talent, accelerated by the most refined means. That would be short-sighted politics. What civilising counter-selection gradually produces, i.e., the extinction and drying up of the good and even the best blood by the simultaneous increase of all that is mediocre, would then be accelerated by conscious processes. What, left to itself, would be a process spread over centuries, would take place in a few decades: a cultured race would see its final concentrated and exalted forces disappear all the more rapidly and dramatically! This would be tragic heroism in the Spenserian sense! Seeing this danger means fighting it by all means.

 

The reproduction of good people is more important than any cultural selection

 

Our point of view is clear: Any cultural selection – no matter what means it employs – must be exculpated and justified in the face of the millennial history of our race. In the light of the God-given principles governing our species, it has no reason to exist insofar as it opposes biological laws in a hostile, indifferent or unconscious manner. Voluntarily or not, it encourages the destructive exploitation of the highest and most eminent works of creation. Nature and the creator then apply the only sanction, namely the disappearance, the death of the species. Any conscious selection with its immediate successes, which may be assessed over years and decades, must be able to take place over centuries, millennia and hundreds of millennia. Otherwise, it loses all credit with the history of our species and ultimately with its divine creator.

 

Our right to selection

 

National Socialism can only conceive of its demand for selection with the aim of bringing it into line with the biological laws of the origin of the species. It must therefore ensure that the idea of selection is defended and applied only in terms of the entire National Socialist world view. All its partial and rational applications produce the opposite effect. So far, the SS has become its most suitable instrument. Its laws of order and its institutions are animated by the spirit of biological duty. As early as 1931, the Reichsführer SS promulgated the order on engagement and marriage in this spirit. The SS order of 28 October 1939, concerning the entire SS and police, emanates from the same sense of duty to the race, of submission to the Creator, and for this reason it has been misunderstood and misinterpreted by those who do not think biologically.

 

Ludwig Eckstein

 

(Author’s note: the order of 28 October stipulates that assistance and support must be given indiscriminately to the children, legitimate or not, of SS personnel who died at the front. The religious and reactionary camps saw this as an intolerable moral violation).

The Waffen SS

 

I. The SS as an Order

 

As can be seen from this brief overview, over the years the tasks of the SS became more diverse and their fulfilment was only possible through the unification of the entire Protection Troop.

 

Until 1929, the SS was a tried and tested troop for the protection of leaders and speakers. The Reichsführer made it an Order of Honour, Loyalty, Service and Combat for the Führer and the Reich.

 

The SS is a Nordic Order. Adolf Hitler based his world view on the unchanging essence of the Nordic species. The people and the Empire must be the structural future of this Nordic nature. As the leader of the Germanic peoples, the German people have the predestined task of being the first to lead the fight for the rebirth of Germanism. The Nordic race is also the major source of the Nordic blood heritage. The first objective of National Socialism must therefore be to pursue a sound racial policy. This requires a purification of the German people from all foreign influences in blood and character.

 

The SS therefore selects its members according to the ideal of the Nordic race in order to form a free Germanic type. Since the value of a man’s soul cannot be judged at first sight, the selection is made according to the physical ideal of the Nordic race and according to his height. Experience has shown that a man’s worth and ability are mainly determined by what his racial appearance suggests.

 

The selection criteria of the SS thus became ever stricter. The racial policy of the Reich encouraged the Nordicisation of the entire population. The closer one gets to this goal, the stricter the racial criteria of the SS become.

 

The SS does not aspire to acquire a privileged position among the people. It is an order which, through its combat action, serves to carry out a racial selection of the community and realizes the principles of racial politics as a distant goal for the community. In this way, the SS applies a fundamental law of our socialist scale of values, according to which each person receives his or her place according to the value of the result achieved within the popular community.

 

The SS sees clearly that it must be more than just a Männerbund. It builds its ideas of the Order on the community of dans. It wants to be an Order of dans which will produce men of the best Nordic kind to serve the Reich. Thus, selection will increasingly judge not the individual, but the worth of an entire clan.

 

Absolute clarity and consensus are needed in the ideological questions concerning this principle of a Nordic racial clan community. This is the necessary condition for the strength of the SS and gives it its assurance.

 

With the basic laws of the SS, the Reichsführer gave each SS member guidelines for action.

 

The first of these fundamental laws is the Order on Engagement and Marriage of 31 December. This order introduces a “marriage licence” for all unmarried members of the SS, considering that the future of our people lies in the selection and preservation of hereditarily healthy racial blood. Therefore, this marriage licence, which every SS member must obtain before marriage, is granted only and solely on the basis of racial and hereditary considerations.

 

This order was necessarily the result of the desire to create a community of clans. Because a biological selection will only be successful if the choice of spouses and the offspring of the selected individuals are controlled. The SS must marry a woman of at least equal value. The man and the woman must be racially and conjugally valid. Such a law is not a constraint, but a link to a God-given order. It is natural that individuals of the Nordic species value those of their own kind.

 

It is not only the value of the hereditary heritage that determines the strength of a people. In the struggle for a living space and the right to life, the fertility of a people, the number of children, is decisive. An order such as the SS must therefore create a broad biological selection ground for itself. There must always be a large number of offspring. According to the best marital choice, the most worthy must always provide the Order with a rich progeny.

 

“The Golden Age is where there are children. Children are the greatest happiness of the SS. He himself, his will and his desires, his feeling and his thought live in them. What he receives from the chain of generations he gives to his children and thus confers eternal life on the people and the Reich of fighting men and faithful women, the guardians of the species and of civilisation.

 

The SS also takes care of the single mother. Love and procreation are the eternal laws of life that will always break down the barriers of custom and law. Here, too, the SS is closely linked to life. It knows no false morality and also deals with the illegitimate child of good blood. Thus, the racially and hereditarily healthy man can follow his destiny in the community and the people benefit from the strength, the value of a whole generation and thus from a future hereditarily healthy offspring.

 

As an Order, the SS has inscribed on its flag the preservation and perpetuation of the Nordic race, and is also leading a frontline fight for biological victory. Only the victory of the cradles gives the soldier’s victory a historically lasting character.

 

After the outbreak of the present war, the Reichsführer SS once again summarised these fundamental views of racial policy with a particular reference to the bloodshed that the present war entails. He said in this order: "The old wisdom that only he who has sons and children can die in peace must again become the watchword for the Protection Troop in this war. He can die in peace who knows that his clan, that all that he and his ancestors strived for and wanted, finds its continuation in the children. The greatest gift to the widow of a dead fighter is always the child of the man she loved.

 

In the Widow and Orphan Assistance Act of 1937, the Reichsführer stipulates that the SS community must take responsibility for the care of the widow and child in the event that a member should give his or her life in the fight for the Führer and the people. The unit commanders are personally responsible for the support of all clans in their district.

 

The “Lebensborn” (source of life) also ensures the preservation and increase of pure blood. The dedication of the entire SS ensures that this requirement is met. Pure-blooded children were brought into the world in maternity homes and raised in the Lebensborn nurseries.

 

The racial idea also determines the importance given by the SS to physical exercises. Every SS member had to be able to perform well in sports. The Reichsführer ordered sport in the SS, not to achieve individual feats but to ensure general physical fitness.

 

The internal unity of the Protection Troop is also expressed in a law of honour determined by the Reichsführer. A special law on the sanctity of property teaches the troop an exemplary conception of property, honour and probity.

 

II. The Waffen SS

 

With the practical knowledge of National Socialist selection, leadership and education, the Waffen SS (SS in arms) was created on the basis of the Allgemeine SS by setting up the SS-Verfügungstruppen (SS troops at disposal) and the SS-Totenkopfverbände (skull and crossbones units) after the takeover. It subsequently evolved into its present form.

 

It has already been said that it was created by the Führer to give the SS acting inside the country the possibility of having a force for action outside, in case of danger.

 

Units of the Waffen SS regiments, the Leibstandarte SS “Adolf Hitler”, the Standarten “Deutschland” and “Germania” as well as parts of the former Totenkopfverbände faced the enemy with the German army when the Polish borders were crossed in September 1939 in a rapid offensive.

 

These regiments became organised divisions, built and run under the Protection Troop’s own responsibility, thanks to the Führer’s trust.

 

Even today, it is impossible to estimate the level of development of the Waffen SS achieved during the war. With all its divisions together, it consists only of volunteers selected according to the basic laws of the Protection Troop. It was only after the war that the German people became aware of the enormous amount of work that had been done by the SS-Hauptamt (SS High Office) to enable the constant recruitment of new units. It is a result that has taken a special place in the history of the German war. The task of the SS-Führungshauptamt (SS higher leadership office) was to set up, equip and train the units.

 

The harsh winter of 1941/42 demonstrated the importance of the Waffen SS in the conduct of the war. From Karelia to the Sea of Azov, Waffen SS divisions were in the thick of the fighting everywhere. Thanks to them, the Reichsführer SS gave the Führer units of steel which, even during that winter, did not reach their limits.

 

This winter, which tested the mettle of the German people so mercilessly, also tested this Waffen SS. It was up to the task. When, in front of the Reichstag on 26 April 1942, the Führer made clear to the German people what that winter had really meant, he praised the Waffen SS, touching every one of our brave comrades.

 

“Speaking of this infantry, I would like to emphasize for the first time the consistent and exemplary bravery and toughness of my brave SS divisions and SS police units. From the very beginning I have regarded them as an unshakable, obedient, faithful and courageous troop in war, as they have promised to be during peace.

 

The fight of the Waffen SS was part of the proud tradition of the National Socialist Protection Troop. Here, too, the principle of selection, the temperament of a type of man and the consciousness of representing an idea proved effective.

 

III. German volunteers and the German SS

 

The Führer’s order to establish the ‘Nordland’ and ‘Westland’ units within the Waffen SS at the beginning of 1941 was fundamentally new in its nature and scope. A clear understanding of the implications of this order is essential to understanding the principles of the new European order planned by Germany and the development of the Empire in a National Socialist spirit. The establishment of the volunteer units was not the reparation of an oversight and a mark of generosity, but a political act The enemies of National Socialism saw this immediately. It was a clear decision on the question of the formation of the future political order and the principle of German organisation in the living space conquered by hard fighting.

 

The fact that this order of the Führer found such an echo among German youth proves how much the meaning of our struggle was understood in all circles. It also reveals a strong desire to participate in this struggle. At the same time, it is a great proof of the esteem in which the Waffen SS, still so young, is held after the first confrontation, and of the trust placed in the SS in general regarding its vanguard position. Countless young comrades from German-speaking countries found their destiny in its ranks.

 

When the first volunteers joined the Waffen SS, the front was mainly against England. But the situation changed completely with the entry into the war against Bolshevism. In the last few years, the hostility provoked by the Bolshevist system in almost all European countries prompted Germany to consider participating in the struggle on a much larger scale. This was an opportunity to set up homogeneous units in each country. Naturally, the contribution to this movement in the German-speaking world was particularly high. The Norwegian and Dutch legions, the Flanders legion, the ‘Denmark’ free corps and the Finnish volunteer battalion came into being. These units also fought as part of the Waffen SS. Their struggle meant more than a pragmatic stand; it also represented a legal commitment of national forces to the power available for combat.

 

The conditions for admission to the Waffen SS were the same for all countries as for the Reich. Entry into the legion depended on character and suitability for service. Assistance and support in accordance with the provisions in force were regulated in the broadest sense for German volunteers, including family support. Particular support might be necessary for young National Socialists whose families were exposed to economic or political coercive measures in their homeland as a result of this voluntary commitment.

 

A special German section was created within the SS-Hauptamt to assist the volunteers. Together with its branches it was responsible for planning all political work in the German-speaking area. A strong Germanic Protection Troop was being created in Flanders, the Netherlands and Norway. In addition, there were also the recruitment commandos of the Waffen SS as well as the newly formed units and the entire complement of the legions, all of which depended on the German Volunteer Section.

 

Already during the war, the SS considered it its task to bring together the forces of the individual German-speaking countries with its own resources and to lay the foundations for close, joint work in the future.

 

IV. The SS and the police

 

Already long before the war the Reichsführer SS wanted to create a new German police force whose officers and men would meet the criteria of the SS and also be members of the Protection Troop. The present situation was therefore a development of the organisation. The nature of police work also changed under the influence of the National Socialist world view. Today, its primary function is educational: rather than punishing offences, it is more important to prevent wrongdoing, to protect the people and the state from acts that are harmful or dangerous to the community. Today, the SS not only ensures political security but also protects the people from the actions of anti-social elements. It has therefore created a specific institution for this purpose, the concentration camps. Under the old system, these elements had become the focus of professional criminality and caused great harm to the people. By the maxim above the entrance gate “work makes you free”, these men are exhorted to productive work in these large educational centres because they are not yet lost to the community. They can regain their freedom through a strict education and their being brought to their senses.

 

An intelligence apparatus had to be created to support the preventive work of the police. As there was a lack of examples at the national level, one could only refer to the security service of the SS Reichsführer, which, under the leadership of SS-Obergruppenführer Heydrich, had already been created by the SS as a party organisation. The joining of the security police and the security service represented a particular fusion of state and movement forces in an extremely important area.

 

In contrast to the secret state police (Gestapo), which represented the political executive, the criminal police (Kripo) generally took care of the non-political executive, and was wrongly compared to the old criminal police, i.e. the one before 1933. But this is not true. A people’s community that demands that its members follow a certain worldview, a type of state that is penetrated to the extreme by this ideology, must, of course, have a helpful criminal police force that views its tasks in terms of this. Exactly as in the field of the political executive, the absolute rule of the criminal executive requires: the prevention, and therefore the neutralisation of all elements that can harm the public good through their actions on the popular and economic force.

 

Fighting crime therefore means recognising and arresting the criminal, the anti-social element, before further crimes are committed or an antisocial existence is led. Preventive action against criminals is nowadays a generally accepted and approved measure.

 

The work of the security service provides the spiritual basis for the work of the security police. The work of the security service is not about the security police or the state, but about the simple reporting of a situation from material findings to the scientific examination of specific events and phenomena.

 

Similarly, from the time of the seizure of power until the beginning of the war, the overall work of the regular police, the security police and the SD contributed considerably to creating favourable conditions for the conduct of this great war among the German people. It also gave rise to new, more extensive and important tasks. Units and commandos of the order police, the security police and the SD entered all conquered territories with the victorious armies of our proud German Wehrmacht to take measures as quickly as possible – following the example of peacetime – firstly to create conditions that would restore calm to the rear of the fighting troops and, secondly, to establish civil or military administrative centres to facilitate the administrative work of the troops.

 

The events that followed the battles of the past months in the greatest winter war in history forced many police regiments and battalions to intervene at the front. In this battle, the men of the regular police proved their military valour, bravery and tenacity side by side with their comrades of the army and the Waffen SS. In this battle they showed that the German regular police perform their duty seriously wherever they are. The police battalions fought remarkably well. Neither the incessant Soviet attacks nor the relentless and deadly cold could overcome their tenacity and courage.

 

Even today, police units are still engaged in many hot spots on the Eastern Front. Their successful testing in tough battles is ultimately the result of the basic training of officers and men.

 

V. Nation building

 

Germany’s new colonising work in the East found its rightful leader in the Führer’s order of 7 October 1939, by which the Reichsführer SS was appointed Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of the German Nation. Throughout the great periods of its history, the German people have always looked to the East for the deployment of their creative talent But this history also teaches us that military victory alone is not enough to conquer a country. The tragic aspect of German eastern policy in the past centuries is that the movements of the people towards the East did not have a homogeneous objective and thus could not distribute their forces in an organised and planned way.

 

Thus, the Eastern mission is above all a mission of ethnic politics. The ethnic damage caused by the random individual emigration of the past centuries was corrected by the repatriation of the Volksdeutsche and Reichsdeutsche from abroad to the Reich. At the same time, the harmful influence of certain foreign population groups that posed a danger to the German community was stopped. The creation of new areas of German settlement, above all through the immigration and settlement of Volksdeutsche and Reichsdeutsche from abroad, is the third and most important task which the Führer has entrusted to the SS Reichsführer by his order. It includes the reparation of the historical mistake made by the Germans, which caused the popular forces to dry up through lack of comprehensive management of the national destiny.

 

An appropriate and effective apparatus was at the Führer’s disposal to carry out this ethnic policy work immediately. As a doctrinaire who tirelessly taught the idea of the natural link between race and colonisation, the SS Reichsführer gave his Protection Troop a basic National Socialist conception and thus provided it with an executive body to carry out extensive constructive work. The idea of the peasant-soldier which this educational work gave rise to implied, in contrast to the ‘colonies’ of past centuries, that a settlement area had to be created in accordance with the racial character of the men who settled there. Through conscious selection, the SS forms a community in which the best strengths of our people can best flourish creatively. In order to achieve its final reattachment, the Eastern space needs men selected according to criteria of character and worth. This selection, which nature itself makes in groups of men struggling to survive and which future generations need, is guaranteed by the vanguard struggle of the SS.

 

VI. The political soldier

 

We have only been able to deal here with the most important practical tasks of the SS. But the spirit of the SS is not limited to the fulfilment of these tasks, and – it must again be stressed – it sees its ultimate justification in the creation, education and selection of a new type of men and leaders capable of mastering all the great tasks of the future. For them, the concept of ‘political soldiers’ was used. But when the SS speaks of political soldiers, it is not only thinking of a revolution of the political by the military, but also of a revolution of the military by the political. It is not only the “political fighter" who must be selected and educated, but also – in the narrowest sense – the “political fighter”! In view of the war period, this task must be mentioned again in conclusion.

 

Historical development has taken its course since the French Revolution and the Prussian uprising of 1813 made the people the principle of military potential in war. More than ever before, ideology marches side by side and among the people on the battlefields. The racial idea clarifies the fronts.

 

The racial idea melts people and ideology into a solid whole and fights globalist ideologies of all kinds.

 

But the war also became an ideological war. The combination of the political idea and the conduct of war was achieved by a revolution in the art of warfare.

 

The predominance of worldview over politics makes any war with an enemy worldview a matter of survival. The fundamental law of ideological warfare is victory or defeat.

 

The historical situation of war demands of the soldier the utmost firmness and dedication. Each individual must strengthen himself in the idea of triumphing or dying. To consider that the military character is independent of the political and ideological form of life of the people is already a mortal threat and represents, from the start, a weakness in relation to the adversary.

 

Contrary to what many people think, there is no such thing as a good military type as a world view. The military character includes a whole series of virtues: courage, firmness, boldness, obedience, fulfilment of duty, dignity. The world view is the field where all these virtues are best expressed.

 

Arms, equipment and training are not essentially different in modern armed forces. Discipline and duty alone do not win an ideological war either. It is the one who, beyond the fulfilment of duty and obedience, surpasses the opponent by the harshness of the action and the audacity of the risk.

 

The foundation of the best military spirit is not only the fulfilment of moral duty, but above all the constancy of faith. For it is faith that ensures the stability of moral action in the first place.

 

To develop this constancy of faith is the supreme task of the SS. With this faith we will be able to build the future faithfully, in the words of the Reichsführer SS:

 

“Thus we approach and follow the path to a more distant future according to immutable laws as a National Socialist and military order of Nordic men and as a community sworn to its lineages. We wish and believe that we are not only the descendants who have done this best, but above all the ancestors of future generations who are indispensable for the eternal life of the Germanic people.

 

Power is only justified when it implies an obligation to serve. 

Darré