The widespread system of the SD included the following: Department III of the RSHA (i.e., Amt III, which consisted of the Political Intelligence Service at home and in the occupied regions); Department VI of the RSHA (Amt VI, consisting of the Foreign Intelligence Services and headed by one of Himmler’s closest associates - Walter Schellenberg - whose testimony is well known to the Tribunal); and Department VII (Amt VII), sometimes called the “Department for Ideological Warfare,” which in addition included a number of very important subsidiary institutions which constituted the analytical machinery both for the foreign and domestic espionage activities of the SD.

In order to rebut the statements of the defence, I should like to refer to one of the documents showing the actual position of the SD in the police and SS machinery of Hitlerite Germany.

I am now speaking of the document entitled: “Employment of the SD in the case of Czechoslovakia.” The document is marked: “Secret - Of State Importance” and is dated June, 1938, i.e., more than nine months before the actual seizure of Czechoslovakia. It was found by the Red Army in the Berlin files of the SD and has been submitted to the Tribunal by the Soviet prosecution.

The contents of this document leave no doubt, first, as to the facts of the active participation of the SD in the preparation and realization of the criminal Hitlerite plans of aggression, and second, in the fact that it was specifically the SD that both initiated and organised the Einsatzgruppen.

I quote some excerpts from this document. It is stated there that:

“The SD should be held in readiness to act in case of complications between the German Reich and Czechoslovakia. The SD should follow, whenever possible, on the heels of the entering troops and take over duties similar to those it held in Germany, ensure the security of political life and, as far as possible, the security of all enterprises indispensable for the national as well as for the war economy.”

The entire territory of Czechoslovakia, in accordance with the territorial structure of the SD in Germany, was, beforehand, separated into large (Oberabschnitt) and small (Unterabschnitt) territorial units, and for each of these units special Einsatzgruppen and Einsatzkommandos were prepared and staffed. In the text of the document we can read that a system of Oberabschnitte for Prague, Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, and others, was prepared and planned. The staffing of the Einsatzgruppen and Einsatzkommandos was entirely a matter within the competence of the SD. In the text of the document we can read in this connection:

“The staffing of the SD agencies should be conducted with the following considerations in mind:

1. Requirements of the SD per se.

2. Requirements of an economy nature.”

An entire programme for training agents of the Einsatzgruppen recruited from collaborators in foreign countries and Germans from the Sudetenland was prepared. The utilisation of “suitable persons” of German origin living in Czechoslovakia was equally envisaged, and special mention was made of the point that: “one must bear in mind that in spite of all precautionary measures we shall not have many such people at our disposal since, under certain conditions, a considerable number will be arrested, deported or killed.”

The Einsatzgruppen, organised and prepared in German territory, were to concentrated near the German-Czechoslovak border in order to move info Czechoslovak territory jointly with the invading armies. In this connection document says:

“2. As soon as any district is free from the enemy, i.e., when occupied, the allocated groups are immediately sent to the district administration centre, following the leading troops. With them at the same time, definite groups appointed for the next regions to be freed from the enemy, in order to gain a hold there.”

For refuting the statement of the defence concerning the relations between the SD and the Gestapo, the fifth part of the document is of considerable interest, this passage being specially dedicated to the delimitation of the activities of the SD and the Gestapo. It says there: “Measures in the Reich are carried out under the direction of the Gestapo. The SD assist them. Measures in the occupied regions are under the leadership of a senior SD leader. The Gestapo officials are appointed to certain special purpose staffs.”

There is therefore no possible doubt that it was precisely the members of the SD who played the leading role in the activities of the Einsatzkommandos in Czechoslovakia. They were to stand at the head of the Einsatzkommandos, executing directly the tasks assigned to them by the Reichsfuehrer SS, for the extermination of the Czech patriots, the annihilation of the intellectuals and the suppression of any kind of national movement of liberation in the occupied country.

We have to pay special attention to the fact that members of the SD specially detailed to the Einsatzgruppen had to establish, as we can see from Paragraph 7 of the document, a liaison with the units of the armed SS forces, or with the SS units of special task units called the “Totenkopf.” The Einsatzkommando, specially formed by the SD before the invasion of the Czechoslovak territory, had to accomplish, in Germany, a preparatory criminal task. This consisted in the creation of the so-called “M Index Card.” These index cards were prepared in duplicate for each district. The names of persons who for one reason or another were to be eliminated were entered on these “M Index Cards.” Questions of life and death were decided by a simple note entered on the index cards by an agent of the SD.

In the document quoted by me it is said in this respect:

“(c) The card index, when filled in, must bear the references: arrest, dismissal, removal from office, observation, confiscation, police surveillance, deprival of passport, etc.”

The compiling from the card index of all kinds of reference books in which were entered the names of these people captured in the temporarily occupied territories, who were to be physically eliminated, was in general one of the inalienable tasks of the SD. The direct physical elimination was realized later by the Gestapo or by the special SS units, by the Sonderkommandos, and the regular police.

In preparing the aggression against the Soviet Union, the members of the SD carefully compiled a whole series of reference books and investigation lists, in which were entered the names of the representatives of the Soviet intellectuals and political leaders who were to be exterminated in accordance with the inhuman directives of the Hitlerite criminals.

Appendix No. 2 to Operational Order No. 8 of the Chief of Security Police of the SD, dated 17th July, 1941, said that long before the beginning of the war against the Soviet Union, the Security Service had compiled the “German Research Book,” “Lists of the Addresses,” and a “Special Research Book for the USSR,” in which are entered all the names of “Soviet Russians considered as dangerous.”

We know from these instructions of Heydrich what the intentions of the Hitlerite criminals in respect to those “dangerous Russians” were.

All of them, without any judicial sentence whatsoever, were to be exterminated by the Sonderkommandos in conformity with instructions No. 8 and No. 14 of the RSHA, dated 17th July and 29th October, 1941, respectively.

The same criminal task was carried out by the SD prior to the invasion of Yugoslavia. The Soviet prosecution presented to the Tribunal a “Research Book” prepared by the German Balkan Institute; the so-called “Sud-Ost Deutches Institut,” pertaining to the SD. This book contained the names of over 4,000 Yugoslav citizens who were to be arrested immediately after the invasion of Yugoslavia. The book, previously prepared by the SD, was transmitted to the executive police, i.e., the Gestapo, which was to operate these arrests directly.

The book was found in the registry office of the Gestapo at Maribor and bore the following stamp made by an SD member: “The persons mentioned in the text are to be arrested and the RSHA to be informed immediately about the completion of the task.”

This institute of the SD carried on a special and undermining activity by preparing Fifth Column agents in Yugoslavia. A fellow worker in the SD, a lecturer in Graz University, Hermann Ibler, prepared on this occasion a special work entitled Des Reiches Sudgrenze, which bears the stamp “top secret” and includes a list of Fifth Column agents in Yugoslavia.

It was the SD who staged political provocation abroad. The former Chief of the Security Police and SD, Kaltenbrunner, had to confess to this, when interrogated by the representative of the Soviet prosecution. He could not even deny his signature on the letter to Ribbentrop, concerning the allocation by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of one million tomans for bribing voters in Iran.

The workers in the SD fully understood the part assigned to them in the occupied territories for the realization of the inhuman Hitlerite plans for the extermination of the enslaved nation.

From this point of view a German document captured by the units of the Polish Army in the Blockstelle of the SD at Mogilno (Poland) and presented to the Tribunal by the Soviet prosecution is most characteristic.

In this letter addressed to the intelligence agents of the SD, a certain chief of a Blockstelle, a Hauptsturmfuehrer SS, informs them of Himmler’s speech of 15th March, 1940, in which the latter requested the commanders of the concentration camps scattered over Poland first to utilise the qualified Polish workers in the system of the military industries of the concentration camps, and later to exterminate all these Poles. In his turn this Hauptsturmfuehrer SS from Mogilno, therefore, requested all his “trusted intelligence agents” of the SD to prepare lists of Poles whom they considered as dangerous in order to exterminate them at a later date.

The SD was one of the most important links in the inhuman SS police machinery of German Fascism. It was an espionage and intelligence organisation spread over the entire territory both of the “Old Reich,” as well as throughout all the temporarily occupied regions and countries. In certain instances it was the agents of the SD who initiated the most cruel police measures of the Hitlerites.

For this reason the Soviet prosecution, supported by irrefutable evidence, considers that the entire system of the SD is to be declared criminal.