Berlin, January 30, 1943 The Reichsführer SS at the installation of SS Group Leader Dr. Kaltenbrunner, Berlin
My SS Leaders! Comrade Kaltenbrunner! I have ordered and summoned you, the closest personnel of the Reich Security Main Office, you who hold the higher positions of responsibility, to this room, just as in June of last year, 1942, when your commander had been killed. I gathered the department heads in this room and held the first meeting here, with the full and clear awareness that the creator of the Reich Security Main Office, the Security Service, and the Security Policy, Obergruppenführer Heydrich, created this tasteful and beautiful room as one of his last accomplishments in life, which spoke for him and his nature, and which should always speak for the nature of this Aryan security service of the Germanic nation. In the same way, the entire security service and the entire security police bore his stamp, were of his nature, of his character.
For ten years now we have been a National Socialist state. In an hour or two it will be ten years since we marched through the Brandenburg Gate. I believe Heydrich was also part of that march back then. Let me look back one more time, so that we may then look toward the future.
In 1930, it was necessary for the party to set up an intelligence service in order to get a picture of the communist, Jewish, masonic, and reactionary opponents. At the recommendation of then-Group Leader von Eberstein, I acquired the retired navy lieutenant Reinhardt Heydrich. Getting him was actually based on a misunderstanding, which is something very few people know about. It was said that Heydrich was an information officer. Back then, in 1930, I didn't pay much attention; I thought an information officer was a man who procures information. Heydrich was an information officer in the sense of an information devices officer; he was a radio officer who used communication devices as his trade. He came to see me in the small house in Waldtrudering at the time and explained to me: "Well, Reichsführer, I am not at all the person you are looking for; I was a radio officer." I looked him over: tall and blond with decent, keen, and kind eyes. I said to him: "Look here, that doesn't matter, it doesn't bother me at all; sit down in the room, I'll be back in fifteen minutes, and write down how you picture an intelligence service of the NSDAP." In those fifteen minutes he wrote down what he had in mind. I said: "Yes, I agree; alright, I'll take you." Then the salary was set for this head of the security service, as we called him. The 4th Regiment in Schleswig-Holstein undertook to pay 80 Reichsmark a month; that was the first part. From the rest of the budget I took, I believe, another 40 Reichsmark. In the initial period he also got something from the navy. I told myself, you'll be able to help him out in the immediate future; at any rate, we'll give it a try. Untersturmführer Heydrich began with the 120 borrowed marks after he had joined the SS in Hamburg, had hung around the port with the Hamburg boys who were jobless, had done his service honestly, and had settled down splendidly as a former lieutenant.