Membership is finally confirmed by the issuance of a membership card or a membership book.  Anyone who becomes a party member does not merely join an organization but he becomes a soldier in the German freedom movement and that means much more than just paying his dues and attending the members’ meetings.  He obligates himself to subordinate his own ego and to place everything he has in the service of the people’s cause.  Only he who is capable of doing this should become a party member.  A selection must be made in accordance with this idea.

Readiness to fight, readiness to sacrifice, and strength of character are the requirements for a good National Socialist.  Small blemishes, such as a false step which someone has made in his youth, should be overlooked; the contribution in the struggle for Germany should alone be decisive.  The healthy will naturally prevail over the bad if the will to health finds sufficient support in leadership and achievement.  Admission to the party should not be controlled by the old bourgeois point of view.  The party must always represent the elite of the people.[73]

German blood is one of the prerequisites for party membership.  The Party Organization Book for 1940 (document 7, post p. 186) also states, “Only those racial comrades who possess German citizenship are eligible for admission."[74]

Party members shall not exceed ten per cent of the German population of the region.  “The ideal proportion of the number of party members to the number of racial comrades is set at ten per cent.  This proportion is to apply also to the individual Province [Gau]."[75]

3.  Pledges and Symbols of Allegiance

Party members take an oath of loyalty to the Fuehrer in the following terms:  “I pledge allegiance to my Fuehrer, Adolf Hitler.  I promise at all times to respect and obey him and the leaders whom he appoints over me."[76]

(a) The Hitler Salute

A pledge of allegiance to the Fuehrer is also implied in the Nazi salute, which is usually accompanied by the greeting, “Heil Hitler.”  The phrase mit deutschen Gruss, which is commonly used as a closing salutation in letters, is another form of the Hitler greeting. Knaurs Konversations-Lexikon (Knaur’s Conversational Dictionary), published in Berlin in 1934, contains the following definition: 

German greeting, Hitler greeting:  by raising the right arm; used by the old Germans with the spear as a greeting of arms [Waffengruss]. Communal greeting of the National Socialists; introduced into general use in 1933.

That this greeting was used by the Nazis as early as 1923 is demonstrated by a photograph which appeared in Das Buch der NSDAP, Werden, Kampf and Ziel der NSDAP (The Book of the NSDAP, Growth, Struggle, and Goal of the NSDAP) by Walter M. Espe (Berlin, 1934), illustration 34 (document 10, post p. 214).