29.4Heinrich Himmler, “Speech to SS Officers in Posen” As the leader of the SS (Schutzstaffel), one of the Nazi Party’s paramilitary organizations, Heinrich Himmler played a central role in the Holocaust. The SS’s role was diverse, but it’s most important duty was carrying out the racial policies of the Nazi regime, including the extermination of European Jewry and the millions of other victims, including the Roma and Sinti peoples, homosexuals, and other untermenschen (subhumans) who lived in Eastern Europe. In this excerpt on October 4, 1943 from a speech Himmler delivered to SS officers in German-occupied Poland, Himmler acknowledges the toll this process took on the perpetrators, but demands that it continue for the good of Germany. In his description of the horror of the Holocaust, he also reveals that the murder of millions occurred as much through face-to-face violence as it did in the industrial process of extermination camps such as Auschwitz. ‘I also want to mention a very grave matter here before you in complete frankness,’ said Himmler, during the speech. ‘We can talk about it quite openly among ourselves, but we shall never speak of it in public. Just as we did not hesitate to do our duty as we were ordered to on 30 June 1934, and stand comrades who had lapsed against the wall and shoot them, so we have never spoken about it, and we shall never speak of it. It was a matter of tact, for all us, thank God, never to speak of it, never to talk of it. It appalled everyone, and yet everyone was absolute in his mind that he would do it again if ordered to do so, and if it should be necessary. I am referring now to the evacuation of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish people. It is one of those things which is easy to talk about. ‘The Jewish people will be exterminated,’ says every Party comrade, ‘It’s clear, it’s in our programme. Elimination of the Jews, extermination – we’ll do it.’ And then they all come along, these worthy 80 million Germans, and every one of them produces his decent Jew. Of course, it’s quite obvious that the others are swine, but this one is a fine Jew. Not one of those who speak this way has watched it happening, not one of them has been through it. Most of you know what it means when 100 bodies lie side by side, or when 500 or a 1,000 lie there. To have stuck it out – apart from exceptions caused by human weakness – and to have remained decent, that has made us tough. This is a glorious entry in our history which has never been written, and can never be written. For we know how difficult it would be for us if we still had the Jews, as secret saboteurs, agitators and trouble makers, amongst us now, in every city on top of the bombing raids, together with the suffering and deprivations of the war. We would probably already be in the same situation as in 1916/17 if the Jews were still part of the body of the German people.’ By October 1943, as Himmler stood and spoke these words, the Nazi state was in trouble ...

1. 29.4Heinrich Himmler, “Speech to SS Officers in Posen”
As the leader of the SS (Schutzstaffel), one of the Nazi Party’s
paramilitary organizations, Heinrich Himmler played a central
role in the Holocaust. The SS’s role was diverse, but it’s most
important duty was carrying out the racial policies of the Nazi
regime, including the extermination of European Jewry and the
millions of other victims, including the Roma and Sinti peoples,
homosexuals, and other untermenschen (subhumans) who lived
in Eastern Europe. In this excerpt on October 4, 1943 from a
speech Himmler delivered to SS officers in German-occupied
Poland, Himmler acknowledges the toll this process took on the
perpetrators, but demands that it continue for the good of
Germany. In his description of the horror of the Holocaust, he
also reveals that the murder of millions occurred as much
through face-to-face violence as it did in the industrial process
of extermination camps such as Auschwitz.
‘I also want to mention a very grave matter here before you in
complete frankness,’ said Himmler, during the speech. ‘We can
talk about it quite openly among ourselves, but we shall never
speak of it in public. Just as we did not hesitate to do our duty
as we were ordered to on 30 June 1934, and stand comrades who
had lapsed against the wall and shoot them, so we have never
spoken about it, and we shall never speak of it. It was a matter
of tact, for all us, thank God, never to speak of it, never to talk
of it. It appalled everyone, and yet everyone was absolute in his
mind that he would do it again if ordered to do so, and if it
should be necessary.
I am referring now to the evacuation of the Jews, the
extermination of the Jewish people. It is one of those things
which is easy to talk about. ‘The Jewish people will be
exterminated,’ says every Party comrade, ‘It’s clear, it’s in our
programme. Elimination of the Jews, extermination – we’ll do
it.’ And then they all come along, these worthy 80 million
Germans, and every one of them produces his decent Jew. Of

2. course, it’s quite obvious that the others are swine, but this one
is a fine Jew. Not one of those who speak this way has watched
it happening, not one of them has been through it.
Most of you know what it means when 100 bodies lie side by
side, or when 500 or a 1,000 lie there. To have stuck it out –
apart from exceptions caused by human weakness – and to have
remained decent, that has made us tough. This is a glorious
entry in our history which has never been written, and can never
be written. For we know how difficult it would be for us if we
still had the Jews, as secret saboteurs, agitators and trouble
makers, amongst us now, in every city on top of the bombing
raids, together with the suffering and deprivations of the war.
We would probably already be in the same situation as in
1916/17 if the Jews were still part of the body of the German
people.’
By October 1943, as Himmler stood and spoke these words, the
Nazi state was in trouble. The battle of Stalingrad had been lost
at the start of the year and in the summer the German offensive
at Kursk had been held by the Red Army. With Americans
pouring into Britain, in preparation for D-Day, it was hard to
see how the war could be won by the Nazis. So Himmler, in
speaking as frankly as he did about the ‘Final
Solution
’, was making sure that knowledge of the crime was spread
widely amongst the Nazi elite. Part of this may have been
almost a perverse sense of ‘pride’ in what his SS had
accomplished, but in large measure – surely – Himmler was
ensuring that everyone who heard his words was implicated in
what had happened. How much harder would it be for these key

3. people to turn against the regime in the difficult days ahead,
now that they knew of the mass murder of the Jews?
On 6 October, two days later, Himmler gave a similar speech to
Nazi party leaders – Reichsleiter and Gauleiter. But this time he
also specifically addressed what he knew was one of the aspects
of the mass killing of the Jews that caused disquiet – the murder
of children. He said that the Jewish children had to be killed so
that a group of ‘avengers’ did not grow up ‘for our sons and
grandchildren’. Thus he argued: ‘The difficult decision had to
be taken to have this people disappear from the earth.’
Himmler, across both his speeches, gives us a number of
insights into his mentality. The first is the revealing comparison
he makes between the killing of the Jews and the role of the SS
in the 1934 ‘night of the long knives’ action against Ernst
Roehm and other leaders of the SA, the Nazi stormtroopers.
Here, too, he says, the SS did its ‘duty’ (and remember the
motto of the SS was ‘Meine Ehre heisst Treue’ – ‘my honour is
my loyalty’). Thus, since the SS was also doing its ‘duty’ in
killing the Jews, the actual order to murder them could only
have come from a higher authority than Himmler – Adolf Hitler.
The reference to having been ‘tough’ in taking this action was
typical SS talk. ‘We must be hard as granite, otherwise the work
of our Fuehrer will perish,’ said Reinhard Heydrich, Himmler’s
key lieutenant. It was also redolent of the underlying belief in
Nazism that life was a permanent struggle in which the strong

4. had the right to advance their position by killing the weak.
There was, for the Nazis, no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ in this struggle –
it was simply the way life was. As Hitler said in a speech, as
early as 1928: ‘Struggle is the father of all things… It is not by
the principles of humanity that man lives or is able to preserve
himself above the animal world, but solely by means of the most
brutal struggle.’ And so in Hitler’s universe there could be no
moral condemnation of the Nazis for killing the Jews – they
destroyed them because they, the Nazis, were stronger, and
because, ultimately, they could.
The next insight centres around Himmler’s reference to
‘1916/17’. One of the key reasons Hitler gave for acting against
the Jews was his desire to prevent them ‘stabbing Germany in
the back’ as he believed – falsely, of course – they had done in
the First World War. And here in this speech Himmler simply
echoes that attempted justification. It’s a common theme and
one that was prevalent much lower down the Nazi chain of
command. Oskar Groening, who worked as a member of the SS
at Auschwitz, told how ‘the general society I lived in made us
aware that the Jews were the cause of the First World War and
had also ‘stabbed Germany in the back’ at the end. And that the
Jews were actually the cause of the misery in which Germany
found herself…. What happened in the First World War must be
avoided, namely that the Jews put us into misery.’
Finally, Himmler’s reference to killing the Jewish children also

5. allowed the perpetrators to think that they were preserving the
lives of their own children by murdering the children of their
enemy. ‘The children are not the enemy at the moment,’ said
Oskar Groening. ‘The enemy is the blood in them. The enemy is
their growing up to become a Jew who could be dangerous. And
because of that the children were also affected.’ Significantly,
Himmler’s words did not provoke outrage amongst his audience.
On the contrary, the response was enthusiastic. These Nazis
gave every sign of being pleased that the mass murder of the
Jews was taking place.
29.4
Exercise
· This speech can be classified as a kind of rally to the troops,
encouraging them to do their solemn duty for their country. But
the tasks being asked of these officers are horrific, a fact
acknowledged, if only implicitly, by Himmler himself. How
does Himmler justify the extermination of the Jewish people
and do you think these reasons were convincing to his audience?
29.4
Heinrich Himmler, “Speech
to SS Officers in Posen”
As the leader of the SS (Schutzstaffel), one of the Nazi Party’s

6. paramilitary organizations, Heinrich Himmler played a central
role in the Holocaust. The SS’s role was diverse, but it’s most
important duty was carrying out the racial policies of the Nazi
r
egime, including the extermination of European Jewry and the
millions of other victims, including the Roma and Sinti peoples,
homosexuals, and other
untermenschen
(subhumans) who lived
in Eastern Europe. In this excerpt on October 4, 1943 from a
speech Him
mler delivered to SS officers in German
-
occupied
Poland, Himmler acknowledges the toll this process took on the
perpetrators, but demands that it continue for the good of
Germany. In his description of the horror of the Holocaust, he
also reveals that the
murder of millions occurred as much
through face
-
to
-

7. face violence as it did in the industrial process
of extermination camps such as Auschwitz.
‘I also want to mention a very grave matter here before you in
complete
frankness,’ said Himmler, during the spe
ech. ‘We can talk about it quite openly
among ourselves, but we shall never speak of it in public. Just
as we did not
hesitate to do our duty as we were ordered to on 30 June 1934,
and stand
comrades who had lapsed against the wall and shoot them, so
we ha
ve never
spoken about it, and we shall never speak of it. It was a matter
of tact, for all us,
thank God, never to speak of it, never to talk of it. It appalled
everyone, and yet
everyone was absolute in his mind that he would do it again if
ordered to do
so,
and if it should be necessary.
I am referring now to the evacuation of the Jews, the
extermination of the Jewish

8. people. It is one of those things which is easy to talk about.
‘The Jewish people
will be exterminated,’ says every Party comrade, ‘It’s cl
ear, it’s in our programme.
Elimination of the Jews, extermination
–
we’ll do it.’ And then they all come along,
these worthy 80 million Germans, and every one of them
produces his decent
Jew. Of course, it’s quite obvious that the others are swine, but
th
is one is a fine
Jew. Not one of those who speak this way has watched it
happening, not one of
them has been through it.
Most of you know what it means when 100 bodies lie side by
side, or when 500
or a 1,000 lie there. To have stuck it out
–
apart from ex
ceptions caused by
29.4Heinrich Himmler, “Speech

9. to SS Officers in Posen”
As the leader of the SS (Schutzstaffel), one of the Nazi Party’s
paramilitary organizations, Heinrich Himmler played a central
role in the Holocaust. The SS’s role was diverse, but it’s most
important duty was carrying out the racial policies of the Nazi
regime, including the extermination of European Jewry and the
millions of other victims, including the Roma and Sinti peoples,
homosexuals, and other untermenschen (subhumans) who lived
in Eastern Europe. In this excerpt on October 4, 1943 from a
speech Himmler delivered to SS officers in German-occupied
Poland, Himmler acknowledges the toll this process took on the
perpetrators, but demands that it continue for the good of
Germany. In his description of the horror of the Holocaust, he
also reveals that the murder of millions occurred as much
through face-to-face violence as it did in the industrial process
of extermination camps such as Auschwitz.
‘I also want to mention a very grave matter here before you in
complete
frankness,’ said Himmler, during the speech. ‘We can talk about
it quite openly
among ourselves, but we shall never speak of it in public. Just
as we did not
hesitate to do our duty as we were ordered to on 30 June 1934,
and stand
comrades who had lapsed against the wall and shoot them, so

10. we have never
spoken about it, and we shall never speak of it. It was a matter
of tact, for all us,
thank God, never to speak of it, never to talk of it. It appalled
everyone, and yet
everyone was absolute in his mind that he would do it again if
ordered to do so,
and if it should be necessary.
I am referring now to the evacuation of the Jews, the
extermination of the Jewish
people. It is one of those things which is easy to talk about.
‘The Jewish people
will be exterminated,’ says every Party comrade, ‘It’s clear, it’s
in our programme.
Elimination of the Jews, extermination – we’ll do it.’ And then
they all come along,
these worthy 80 million Germans, and every one of them
produces his decent
Jew. Of course, it’s quite obvious that the others are swine, but
this one is a fine
Jew. Not one of those who speak this way has watched it
happening, not one of
them has been through it.
Most of you know what it means when 100 bodies lie side by
side, or when 500

11. or a 1,000 lie there. To have stuck it out – apart from exceptions
caused by
Topic: US Criminal Justice System and Covid-19....because all
our lives have been so impacted by the pandemic, I think it is
timely and important for us to consider the lives and risk of US
prisoners at this time. Whether you choose option 1 or 2, please
answer ALL five of the following questions to shape your major
assignment for the class:
1. How have local and national authorities reacted with respect
to arrests, releases, and visits as covid-19 cases surge in the
US? (feel free to use media sources to answer this a it has
happened too recently to rely on academic research literature)
2. Why is the US prison population so important in our
collective response to reducing the spread of the virus?
3. How are carceral institutions (jails and prisons) and those
that live in them at high risk for infection and spread? What are
the features of the prisons themselves that contribute to this?
4. Why are prisoners being released early in some locations?
How might this help reduce the spread of the virus? How will
this serve the greater public good? Please critique those actions
by thinking through the consequences for families as well as
what you have learned about the challenges faced by returning
citizens.
**5. Please research (briefly) the history/impact of pandemics

12. among prisoners and relate what is happening now in the US to
those historical events (see Maruschak, Sabol, Potter, Reid,
& Cramer, 2009 as a start)
Research Paper
If you choose to communicate in a more traditional manner,
please write a 5 page, 2500 words, single-spaced (1 inch
margins, 12 point font, NO cover sheet) research paper. You
should cite at least 10 sources (3 media sources and 7 academic
or government sources) and these should conform to APA 7th
edition style guidelines. Your paper should b4 a literature
review that addresses the 5 questions posed above. Please
include a brief (1/2 page max) introduction to the topic, and a
similarly brief conclusion. You should review and synthesize
the media and academic articles into no more than a 5-6 page
literature review.