Appointed Reichsf�hrer of
the SS, Heinrich Himmler (1900-1945), built it into a para-state and paramilitary
force which would eventually embody the ideal qualities
of the race. As head of the SS and of the German police
from 1936, Himmler created the terror apparatus which
would eventually run the Gestapo, the concentration
camps, and the extermination system.
*
*
*
*
*
The Law of Honour of the SS-Man
In a slim volume called 50 Questions and
Answers for the SS-Man the first question is:
"What is your oath?" The answer is: "We
swear to you, Adolf Hitler, loyalty and bravery as leader
and chancellor of the German Reich. We vow to you and to
the principles laid down by you obedience to the point of
death. So help us God!" The second question is:
"Thus 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
consider him arrogant, stupid, and a megalomaniac; he is
not suited for us."
I have reminded you of these three
questions and answers in order to make our attitude to
religion completely clear. Be in no doubt that we would
not be able to be this body of men bound by a solemn oath
if we did not have the firm belief in a Lord God who
rules over us, who has created us and out Fatherland, our
people and this earth, and who sent us our leader.
We have the holy conviction that
according to the eternal laws of this world we are
accountable for every deed, for every word, and every
thought, that nothing our mind thinks up, our tongue
speaks, and our hand does is completed with the act
itself, but is a cause which will have its effect, which
in an inevitable, inexorable cycle redounds on ourselves
and our people in the form of a blessing or curse.
Believe me, men with this conviction are anything but
atheists.
Blood and Soil
There is a second declaration I would like to
make to you, German peasants, as SS Reichsf�hrer,
being myself in ancestry, blood and nature a peasant: the
blood principle which has always been embodied in the
Schutzstaffel from the very beginning would be condemned
to death if it were not inextinguishably bound up with
the belief in the value and holiness of the soil. . . . I
can assure you it is no coincidence if the National
Peasant Leader of the German Reich has for years been an
SS leader and, as Chief Section Leader, is head of the SS
Race-and Settlement Office, just as it is no coincidence
that I am a peasant and belong to the Reich's Peasant Council. . . .
Bolshevism is No Transitory
Phenomenon
I return to my starting-point and would like to
stress once more that we do not see Bolshevism as a
transitory phenomenon which can be simply debated out of
existence or eliminated by wishful thinking. We know the
Jew all too well, this race which has been compounded
from the dregs of all the peoples and nations of this
planet and which he has stamped his Jewish racial
character, who takes pleasure in destruction, whose will
is to annihilate, whose religion is godlessness, whose
idea is Bolshevism. We do not underestimate him because
we have known him for centuries; we do not underestimate
him because we believe in the divine mission of our
people and in our strength which as been renewed through
the leadership and work of Adolf Hitler.
The Schutzstaffel
We, the Schutzstaffel, have been formed and
grown within our newly resurrected people on the command
of the F�hrer. . . . We have formed ranks, and now, obeying
unalterable laws, march as a National Socialist order of
soldiers infused with a Nordic sensibility...into a
distant future. We believe we will be not just the
grandchildren who fought the fight more resolutely, but
also the ancestors of later generations necessary for the
eternal life of the German and Germanic people.
[Source: Himmler, Die Schutzstaffel als
antibolschewistische Kampforganisation (The SS as an
Anti-Bolshevik Fighting Organization), 1937, quoted in Roger
Griffin, ed., Fascism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995),
pp. 146-148.]
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