Heinrich Himmler

“ We shall indoctrinate our boys with the laws of the SS-organization. I consider it to be absolutely necessary to the life of our peoples, that we should not only impart the meaning of ancestry, grandchildren and future, but feel these to be a part of our being. Without there being any talk about it, without our needing to make use of rewards and similar material things, it must be a matter of course that we have children. It must be a matter of course that the most copious breeding should be from this racial super-stratum of the Germanic people. ”

“ We must continue to do this -- we, -- if I may say so, we older men -- for twenty years full of toil and work, so that a tradition 30, 35, 40 years, a generation, may be created. Then this organization will march forward into the future young and strong, revolutionary and efficient to fulfill the task of giving the German people, the Germanic people the super-stratum of society which will combine and hold together this Germanic people and this Europe, and from which the brains which the people needs for industry, farming, politics, and as soldiers, statesmen and technicians, will emerge. ”

“ The Communists in the Reich I don't believe the Communists could attempt any action, for their leading elements, like most criminals, are in our concentration camps. And here I must say this -- that we shall be able to see after the war what a blessing it was for Germany that, in spite all the silly talk about humanitarianism, we imprisoned all this criminal sub-stratum of the German people in concentration camps: I'll answer for that. If they were going about free, we should be worse off. ”

“ It must so come about in war and in peace -- in peace this will be above all a training task -- that we SS-men no longer conclude written agreements, but that among us, as used to be the case formerly, the giving of one's word and the hand-shake signify the contract, and that the hand-shake of one SS-man is -- if necessary -- certainly for 1 million or more. It must so happen that the hand-shake or the promise of an SS-man is more proverbially reliable than mortgage upon the greatest value of anybody else's. ”

“ Our concern, our duty is our people and our blood. It is for them that we must provide and plan, work and fight, nothing else. We can be indifferent to everything else. I wish the SS to adopt this attitude to the problem of all foreign, non-Germanic peoples, especially Russians. All else is vain, fraud against our own nation and an obstacle to the early winning of the war.
Foreigners in the Reich We must also realize that we have 6 to 7 million foreigners in Germany. ”

“ One basic principle must be the absolute rule for the SS man: we must be honest, decent, loyal, and comradely to members of our own blood and to nobody else. What happens to a Russian, to a Czech does not interest me in the slightest. What the nations can offer in the way of good blood of our type, we will take, if necessary by kidnapping their children and raising them here with us.
Whether nations live in prosperity or starve to death [verrecken-to die-used of cattle] interests me only in so far as we need them as slaves for our Kultur; otherwise, it is of no interest to me. ”

“ That makes no difference to nature, to the fate of the earth, to the fate of the world. Reality, that is, Nature, Fate, removes the impostor after a time-time not reckoned in generations of man but in historical periods. ”

“ A number of SS men -- there are not very many of them -- have fallen short, and they will die, without mercy. We had the moral right, we had the duty to our people, to destroy this people which wanted to destroy us. ”

“ Let the German people show, by unparal- leled and wholehearted loyalty on the part of each one of its men and each one of its women that is worthy of being permitted to live at the time of an Adolf Hitler, and worthy of this leader having arisen for it, who has dedicated his life full of care, full of responsibility. ”

“ If anyone thinks that an order is based on a misunderstanding on the part of the superior or on a false basis it goes without saying that it is his duty and responsibility -- that is, the duty and responsibility of every one of you -- to say so, and also to state his reasons truthfully like a man if he is convinced that they deprecate the order. ”

“ We see into the distant future, because we know what it will be. That is why we are doing our duty more fanatically than ever, more devoutly than ever, more bravely, more obediently and more thoroughly than ever. ”

“ Alien peoples have swept over this people and left their heritage behind them. Alien blood-streams have flowed into this people, but it has, nevertheless in spite of terrible hardships and terrible blows of fate, still had strength in the very essence of its blood to win through. Thus this whole people is saturated with, and held together by Nordic-Phalian-Germanic blood, so that after all one could, and can, still speak of a German people. ”

“ If we make a promise, it must be kept. If one Reichsfuehrer-SS pledges to anyone support for his organization -- as may very often be the case now in the Balkans -- this pledge must be kept. We must acquire such a reputation for the keeping of contracts in the whole world, we in the SS, that we thereby gain for Germany advantages of the greatest value, namely faith through confidence. Many will come to us, who will not approach official departments. The Balkans are always in a state of confusion. ”

“ If within the sphere of your knowledge there is ever anyone who is disloyal to the Fuehrer or to the Reich, even if it is only in thought, you must see to it that this man is thrown out of the organization and we will see to it that he departs this life. ”

“ Only I think that we could not be answerable for it to Germany, and to Germania, for this Germanic Reich needs the SS organization. She needs it at least for the next few centuries. Then, in a hundred, a thousand, or two thousand years another form will surely be found. When we are dead and gone, some remnant of us with a few of our fundamental ideas will pull through and carry on. ”

“ I hope that our generation will successfully bring it about that every age-group has fought in the East, and that every one of our divisions spends a winter in the East every second or third year. Then we shall never grow soft, then we shall never get SS members who only come to us because it is distinguished or because the black coat will naturally be very attractive in peace-time. ”

“ The SS in war-time Now I come to our own development, to that of the SS in the past months. Looking back on the whole war, this development was fantastic [p. 51] . It took place at an absolutely terrific speed. Let us look back a little to 1939. At that time we were a few regiments, guard units [Wachverbaende] 8 to 9,000 strong, -- that is, not even a division, all in all 25 to 28,000 men at the outside. True, we were armed, but really only got our artillery regiment as our heavy arm two months before the war began. ”

“ Wherever it may form, we will cauterize it. Altogether however, we can say, that we have fulfilled this most difficult duty for the love of our people. And our spirit, our soul, our character has not suffered injury from it. ”

“ Whether it is a question of building a road, if a tunnel is not going ahead somewhere, or if it is an invention which for sheer red-tape does not come to fruition, or anything else; where we can get to work, we get to work. What we are doing in our armament works will be a remarkable and noteworthy achievement, even if we can only assess it and prove it when the war is ended.
The Clearing out of the Jews I also want to talk to you, quite frankly, on a very grave matter. ”

“ We would now probably have reached the 1916/17 stage when the Jews were still in the German national body.
We have taken from them what wealth they had. I have issued a strict order, which SS-Obergruppenfuehrer Pohl has carried out, that this wealth should, as a matter of course, be handed over to the Reich without reserve. We have taken none of it for ourselves. Individual men who have lapsed will be punished in accordance with an order I issued at the beginning, which gave this warning; Whoever takes so much as a mark of it, is a dead man. ”

“ The law of nature is just this: What is hard is good; what is vigorous is good; whatever wins through in the battle of life, physically, purposefully and spiritually, that is what is good-always tak­ing the long view. ”

“ Whether 10,000 Russian females fall down from exhaustion while digging an anti-tank ditch interests me only in so far as the anti-tank ditch for Germany is finished. We shall never be rough and heartless when it is not necessary, that is clear. ”

“ We Germans, who [p. 24] are the only people in the world who have a decent attitude towards animals, will also assume a decent attitude towards these human animals. But it is a crime against our own blood to worry about them and give them ideals, thus causing our sons and grandsons to have a more difficult time with them. ”

“ We tackle the most thankless tasks and-I must give this its [p. 64] due -- whether in the concentration camps, in Pohl's in- dustrial works, or outside at the offices of the Senior Executive SS and Police Officers or in the workshops of the Head Office of SS administration, one thing is obvious :wherever we are, we are SS-men. Where things are in a bad way, we act. I want every subordinate trained to this end. We want to help, unhampered by quibbles regarding authority, for we want to win the war. What we are doing, we are doing for Germany. ”

“ But we have not the right to enrich ourselves with so much as a fur, a watch, a mark, or a cigarette or anything else. Because we have exterminated a bacterium we do not want, in the end, to be infected by the bacterium and die of it. ”

“ In addition, we have formed Police Rifle Regiments by merging the police battalions of the "savage peoples". Thus we did not leave these police battalions un­touched but blended them in the ratio of about 1:3. That is why we have, at the present moment of crisis, a far greater stability than could be seen among the other units made up of natives or local inhabitants.
SS-industrial concerns I now come to other individual great spheres of activity, of which it is important for you all to know [p. 63] . We have huge armament works in the concentration camps. ”

“ It is a matter of course that the little man must obey. It is even more a mat- ter of course that all the senior leaders of the SS, that is, the whole corps of Gruppenfuehrer, are a model of blind obedience. ”

“ Huber who -- when he can -- makes illegal trips, or does not hesitate [p. 84] to order a new telephone or new pencils, who, that is, never saves, -- suddenly be­gins to save for the German Reich. He says for instance: This Jew has 1200 RM. What, that means I would have to pay out to the Pole who denounced him 4000 RM. No, I'll save that for Germany. The Pole shall only get 400 RM. So a little man goes and breaks the promise of a whole organization. ”

“ We have formed roughly 30 police regiments from police reservists and former members of the police-police officials as they used to be called. The average age in our police battalions is not lower than that of the Security battalions of the Armed Forces. Their achievements are beyond all praise. ”

“ Truthfulness I now come to a fourth virtue, which is very rare in Germany, to truthfulness. One of the greatest evils which has spread during the war is the lack of truthfulness in messages, reports, and statements whlch subordinate departments in civil life, in the state, the party and the Services send in to the departments over them. The message, the report is the basis of every decision. ”