“S.S. men,” says he — and although he speaks only of the Waffen S.S.this applies also to the “allgemeine” — had to measure at least one metre eighty (nearly six feet) and to undergo an extremely severe physical and medical exam-ination. They were not to have a single tooth which had once needed the attention of a dentist.” It strikes me as a remarkable coincidence that this same condition (of not having even a single decaying tooth) was, among others, imposed, in ancient Greece, upon those who wished to become priests of Apollo, the god of Light. I must also add that, apart from re-vealing, at the medical test, a more than average sharp-ness of sight and hearing, S.S. men were all to be pos-sible givers of blood. The letter indicating his particular blood-group — A, B, or O, — was tattooed under the right arm of every one of them, to make things easier in emergency cases. Useless to stress that all S.S. men had to be of irreproachable Aryan blood. The genealogy of each and every one of them was studied with utmost care — generations back — before his admission. The ideal of physical cleanliness and of absolute health — the natural basis of more-than-physical purity — was exalted among them to the supreme degree; exalted in their train-ing as a conscious élite and in their daily life within the barracks and outside. “The rooms in which they lived and all objects which they used had to be washed and scrubbed, polished and shined every day. S.S. men were entitled to have uniforms and equipment of the very best quality, but the obligations imposed upon them with regard to presentation and cleanliness were unbelievable. At the time of the daily in-spection the soldier was expected to look as though he had come ‘fresh out of a box’.... “As a result of the most severe inspection of all — the one that took place before the weekly day’s leave — one man out of three was sent back on account of some trifling omission.”