Chapter 11 (1)

If the Court will look at the extract from Page 256, it reads as follows:

“Had it not been possible for them to employ members of the
inferior race which they conquered, the Aryans would never have
been in a position to take the first steps on the road which led
them to a later type of culture; just as, without the help of
certain suitable animals which they were able to tame, they
would never have come to the invention of mechanical power,
which has subsequently enabled them to do without these
beasts. . . .

“For the establishment of superior types of civilization the
members of inferior races formed one of the most essential
prerequisites . . . .”

And in a later passage in _Mein Kampf_, at Page 344, Hitler applies these general ideas to Germany:

“If in its historical development the German people had
possessed the unity of the herd by which other people have so
much benefited, then the German Reich would probably be mistress
of the globe today. World history would have taken another
course, and in this case no man can tell if what many blinded
pacifists hope to attain by petitioning, whining, and crying may
not have been reached in this way: namely, a peace which would
not be based upon the waving of olive branches by tearful
misery-mongering of pacifist old women, but a peace that would
be guaranteed by the triumphant sword of a people endowed with
the power to master the world and administer it in the service
of a higher civilization.”

In these passages which I have quoted, the Tribunal will have noticed Hitler’s love of war and scorn of those whom he described as pacifists. The underlying message of the whole of this book, which appears again and again, is: Firstly, that the struggle for existence requires the organization and use of force; secondly, that the Aryan German is superior to other races and has the right to conquer and rule them; thirdly, that all doctrines which preach peaceable solutions of international problems represent a disastrous weakness in the nation that adopts them.

Implicit in the whole of the argument is a fundamental and arrogant denial of the possibility of any rule of law in international affairs.

It is in the light of the general doctrines of _Mein Kampf_ that I invite the Tribunal to consider the more definite passages in which Hitler deals with specific problems of German foreign policy.

The very first page of the book contains a remarkable forecast of Nazi policy. It reads—Page 1, Column 1:

“German Austria must be restored to the great German motherland;
and not, indeed, on any grounds of economic calculation
whatsoever. No, no. Even if the union were a matter of economic
indifference, and even if it were to be disadvantageous from the
economic standpoint, still it ought to take place. People of the
same blood should be in the same Reich. The German people will
have no right to engage in a colonial policy until they shall
have brought all their children together in one state. When the
territory of the Reich embraces all the Germans and finds itself
unable to assure them a livelihood, only then can the moral
right arise from the need of the people, to acquire foreign
territory. The plough is then the sword; and the tears of war
will produce the daily bread for the generations to come.”

Hitler in this book also roundly declares that the mere restoration of Germany’s frontiers as they were in 1914 would be wholly insufficient for his purposes. At Page 553 he writes:

“In regard to this point I should like to make the following
statement: To demand that the 1914 frontiers should be restored
is a glaring political absurdity that is fraught with such
consequences as to make the claim itself appear criminal. The
confines of the Reich as they existed in 1914 were thoroughly
illogical because they were not really complete, in the sense of
including all the members of the German nation. Nor were they
reasonable, in view of the geographical exigencies of military
defense. They were not the consequences of a political plan
which had been well considered and carried out, but they were
temporary frontiers established in virtue of a political
struggle that had not been brought to a finish; and indeed, they
were partly the chance result of circumstances.”

In further elaboration of Nazi policy, Hitler does not merely denounce the Treaty of Versailles; he desires to see a Germany which is a world power with territory sufficient for a future German people, of a magnitude which he does not define.

In the next quotation, from Page 554, the first sentence reads:

“For the future of the German nation the 1914 frontiers are of
no significance.”

And in the third paragraph the Court sees:

“We National Socialists must stick firmly to the aim that we
have set for our foreign policy, namely, that the German people
must be assured the territorial area which is necessary for it
to exist on this earth. And only for such action as is
undertaken to secure those ends can it be lawful in the eyes of
God and our German posterity to allow the blood of our people to
be shed once again; before God, because we are sent into this
world with the commission to struggle for our daily bread, as
creatures to whom nothing is donated and who must be able to win
and hold their position as lords of the earth only through their
own intelligence and courage.

“And this justification must be established also before our
German posterity, on the grounds that for each one who has shed
his blood the life of a thousand others will be guaranteed to
posterity. The territory on which one day our German peasants
will be able to bring forth and nourish their sturdy sons will
justify the blood of the sons of the peasants that has to be
shed today. And the statesmen who have decreed this sacrifice
may be persecuted by their contemporaries, but posterity will
absolve them from all guilt for having demanded this offering
from their people.”

Then, the next quotation; Hitler writes at Page 557:

“Germany will either become a world power or will not continue
to exist at all. But, in order to become a world power, it needs
that territorial magnitude which gives it the necessary
importance today and assures the existence of its citizens.”

And, finally, he writes:

“. . . we must take our stand on the principles already
mentioned in regard to foreign policy, namely, the necessity of
bringing our territorial area into just proportion with the
number of our population. From the past we can learn only one
lesson, and this is that the aim which is to be pursued in our
political conduct must be twofold, namely: (1) The acquisition
of territory as the objective of our foreign policy, and (2) the
establishment of a new and uniform foundation as the objective
of our political activities at home, in accordance with our
doctrine of nationhood.”

Now these passages from _Mein Kampf_ raise the question: Where did Hitler expect to find the increased territory beyond the 1914 boundaries of Germany? To this Hitler’s answer is sufficiently explicit. Reviewing the history of the German Empire from 1871 to 1918, he wrote in an early passage of _Mein Kampf_, at Page 132:

“Therefore, the only possibility which Germany had of carrying a
sound territorial policy into effect was that of acquiring new
territory in Europe itself. Colonies cannot serve this purpose
so long as they are not suited for settlement by Europeans on a
large scale. In the nineteenth century it was no longer possible
to acquire such colonies by peaceful means. Therefore, any
attempt at such a colonial expansion would have meant an
enormous military struggle. Consequently, it would have been
more practical to undertake that military struggle for new
territory in Europe rather than to wage war for the acquisition
of possessions abroad.

“Such a decision naturally demanded that the nation’s undivided
energies should be devoted to it. A policy of that kind, which
requires for its fulfillment every ounce of available energy on
the part of everybody concerned, cannot be carried into effect
by half measures or in a hesitant manner. The political
leadership of the German Empire should then have been directed
exclusively to this goal. No political step should have been
taken in response to considerations other than this task and the
means of accomplishing it. Germany should have been alive to the
fact that such a goal could have been reached only by war, and
the prospect of war should have been faced with calm and
collected determination.

“The whole system of alliances should have been envisaged and
valued from that standpoint.”

And then this is the vital sentence:

“If new territory were to be acquired in Europe, it must have
been mainly at Russia’s cost, and once again the new German
Empire should have set out on its march along the same road as
was formerly trodden by the Teutonic Knights, this time to
acquire soil for the German plough by means of the German sword
and thus provide the nation with its daily bread.”

To this program of expansion in the East, Hitler returned again at the end of _Mein Kampf_. After discussing the insufficiency of Germany’s pre-war frontiers, he again points the path to the East and declares that the ‘Drang nach Osten’ (the drive to the East) must be resumed; and he writes:

“Therefore we National Socialists have purposely drawn a line
through the line of conduct followed by pre-war Germany in
foreign policy . . . . We put an end to the perpetual Germanic
march towards the south and west of Europe and turn our eyes
towards the lands of the East. We finally put a stop to the
colonial and trade policy of pre-war times and pass over to the
territorial policy of the future.

“But when we speak of new territory in Europe today we must
principally think of Russia and the border states subject to
her.”

Now Hitler was shrewd enough to see that his aggressive designs in the East might be endangered by a defensive alliance between Russia, France, and England. His foreign policy, as outlined in _Mein Kampf_, therefore was to detach England and Italy from France and Russia and to change the attitude of Germany towards France from the defensive to the offensive.

The final quotation from _Mein Kampf_ comes from Page 570:

“As long as the eternal conflict between France and Germany is
waged only in the form of a German defense against the French
attack, that conflict can never be decided, and from century to
century Germany will lose one position after another. If we
study the changes that have taken place, from the 12th century
up to our day, in the frontiers within which the German language
is spoken, we can hardly hope for a successful issue to result
from the acceptance and development of a line of conduct which
has hitherto been so detrimental for us.

“Only when the Germans have taken all this fully into account
will they cease allowing the national will-to-live to wear
itself out in merely passive defense and will rally together for
a last decisive contest with France. And in this contest the
essential objective of the German nation will be fought for.
Only then will it be possible to put an end to the eternal
Franco-German conflict which has hitherto proved so sterile.

“Of course it is here presumed that Germany sees in the
suppression of France nothing more than a means which will make
it possible for our people finally to expand in another quarter.
Today there are 80 million Germans in Europe. And our foreign
policy will be recognized as rightly conducted only when, after
barely a hundred years, there will be 250 million Germans living
on this continent, not packed together as the coolies in the
factories of another continent, but as tillers of the soil and
workers whose labor will be a mutual assurance for their
existence.”

I submit, therefore, that, quite apart from the evidence already submitted to the Tribunal, the evidence of _Mein Kampf_, taken in conjunction with the facts of Nazi Germany’s subsequent behavior towards other countries, goes to show that from the very first moment that they attained power, and indeed long before that time, Hitler and his confederates, the defendants, were engaged in planning and preparing aggressive war as is alleged against them in this Indictment.

Events have proved in the blood and misery of millions of men, women, and children that _Mein Kampf_ was no mere literary exercise to be treated with easy indifference, as unfortunately it was treated before the war by those who were imperiled, but was the expression of a fanatical faith in force and fraud as the means to Nazi dominance in Europe, if not in the whole world. The Prosecution’s submission is that, accepting and propagating the jungle philosophy of _Mein Kampf_, the Nazi confederates who are indicted here deliberately pushed our civilization over the precipice of war.

THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will now adjourn for 10 minutes.

[_A recess was taken._]

SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: May it please the Tribunal, the next stage of the Prosecution is the presentation of the cases against the individual defendants under the Counts One and Two of the Indictment. Before that is begun the chief prosecutors for the United States and Great Britain wish, with the permission of the Tribunal, to make four points perfectly clear:

The object of this part of the case is to collect for the benefit, first, of the members of the Tribunal and, secondly, of the Defense Counsel concerned, the evidence against each defendant under Counts One and Two which has been presented by the American and British Delegations. Otherwise it would be easy among the many documents already before the Court to miss relevant pieces of evidence which the Tribunal might wish to consider and to which the defendants may wish to make a reply.

This does not mean that the case against these defendants has in any way ended. Vital and important parts of the case remain concerning the actual atrocities, both War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity. The evidence in regard to these will shortly be presented by the French Delegation and the Delegation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and when the massive documentation of these crimes is placed before the Court, the French and Soviet Delegations will have the opportunity of relating them to the individual defendants in the dock.

It has been the desire of all the chief prosecutors to delimit as clearly as possible the evidence under the respective Counts of the Indictment. The documents in evidence, however, were not written with a view to this Trial, and therefore many of them inevitably deal with offenses under more than one Count. It is by reason of this alone that some overlapping and repetition necessarily exists.

Similarly it may occur that as the French and Soviet cases are developed documents may come to light which bear on the common plan or the initiation of wars of aggression or on other material connected with Counts One and Two. The American and British Delegations will welcome any addition to the evidence on these parts of the case which such documents may provide and gladly receive such reinforcement from their French and Soviet colleagues.

With this explanation, and I am very grateful to the Tribunal for allowing me to make it, I call on my friend Mr. Albrecht to commence this part of the case.

DR. THOMA: Colonel Wheeler in his accusation concerning the oppression of the Christian churches in the Eastern territory also named the Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories, the Defendant Rosenberg, and held him responsible. I have, however, neither in the speech of the Prosecution nor in the document book, found any proof that such persecution of the Church also took place in the territories administered by Rosenberg. I wish rather to direct the attention of the Tribunal to Document 1517-PS, in which there is a note signed by Rosenberg concerning a discussion on questions of the East. This document contains the following statement made by Rosenberg, “The Führer agrees with Rosenberg’s Edict of Tolerance.”

THE PRESIDENT: Am I to understand that you are making a motion at this stage?

DR. THOMA: I have a request to make to the Prosecution: that it should, if possible, subsequently substantiate its charge against Rosenberg.

THE PRESIDENT: Is your point that this Document 1517-PS has not yet been in, or what is your point?

DR. THOMA: To my knowledge this document has already been submitted, and that was in connection with Hitler’s opinion that the Crimea question should be cleared up completely. But in my present request I am concerned with the fact that the Prosecution stated that in the Government General and likewise in Warthegau and in the Eastern countries, and in the areas administered by the Defendant Rosenberg as well, persecution of the Church took place. The Prosecution has produced documents concerning the first three territories, but as far as the latter territory is concerned, I have learned of no such documents being either in the document book or in the personal presentation made by the Prosecution.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, you must understand that the Tribunal are not at this stage accepting everything that has been said by the Prosecution. You will have full opportunity when you present the case on behalf of the Defendant Rosenberg to present any documents which may be relevant and to comment upon any documents which have been cited by the Prosecution and to make any argument that you think right; but this is not the appropriate time to make any such argument. We are still considering the case for the Prosecution, and you will have full opportunity hereafter. Do you understand?

DR. THOMA: Then I ask the High Tribunal to consider my present explanation as a statement.

THE PRESIDENT: We will do so, but it is not convenient for Counsel for the Defense to intervene with statements of this sort; otherwise each one of the defendants’ counsel might be doing it all the time. We must ask you therefore to withhold such statements until your time comes to answer the case for the Prosecution.

MR. RALPH G. ALBRECHT (Associate Trial Counsel for the United States): May it please the Tribunal, I have been charged by the Chief of Counsel for the United States with the duty of pointing out, on the basis of evidence already admitted and of additional evidence that will be offered, the individual responsibility of some of these defendants for the crimes specified in Counts One and Two of the Indictment.

When these defendants chose to abandon everything that had been recognized as good in German life and affirmatively participated in the work of achieving the objectives of the Party, we submit that they well knew what National Socialism stood for. They knew of the program announced by the Nazi Party and they also had knowledge of Nazi methods. The official NSDAP program with its 25 points was open and notorious. Announced and published to the world in 1920, it was published and republished and adverted to throughout the years. The Nazis made no secret of their intentions to make the Party program the fundamental law of the German State. The Nazis made no secret of their intentions generally. For all to read there was _Mein Kampf_, the product of the warped brain of the Führer, and there were the prolific writings and utterances of many other leaders who rose to prominence, some of whom are not sitting in the defendants’ box. And Hitler himself had announced, that the Nazis would use force if necessary to achieve their purposes.

Among these conspirators there were those who, like the Defendants Hess, Rosenberg, and Göring, were associated with Hitler since the very inception of the conspiracy. These men were among the original planners. They were the men who subsequently set the pace and cast the mould for the future. But there were also other conspirators (the balance of the defendants in the dock fit into this category), who voluntarily joined the conspiracy later.

While these men may be characterized perhaps as cruel, callous, or inhuman, they certainly may not be called dull or stupid. They knew, and had had the opportunity to observe, the manifestations of Nazi violence and Nazi methods as the pattern of the swastika developed. They knew the nature of what they were getting into. Therefore they must be presumed to have had the desire to participate—and participate they did—voluntarily, and so we submit that it may not validly be inferred that they did not join the stream of the conspiracy with their eyes open, _scienter_, as the conspiracy gathered momentum and developed into a rushing torrent.

Much evidence has already been admitted by the Tribunal of the overt acts of these defendants, as well as of their fellow conspirators. We shall make no effort at this time to present an exhaustive recital of all crimes planned or initiated by these defendants for which they must bear full responsibility beyond peradventure. The world already knows more of the evil deeds of these men and of their co-conspirators than the Prosecution possibly could hope to establish within the reasonable limits of time and of men’s patience. At this point we shall attempt to focus attention merely to illustrative criminal conduct of the individual conspirators.

There is an advantage to proceeding, we submit, as we propose to do, with the permission of the Tribunal, to show in outline the extent to which these defendants have become implicated in the serious charges against them. In the case of many of these conspirators, a recital of their crimes will relate to their planning of several of the categories of crimes described in Counts One and Two of the Indictment. We shall draw these various threads together and show, as I have said, the outline of the completed proof, as it were, within Count One of the Indictment, against the individual conspirators.

Thus, on behalf of the United States, I shall commence to show how some of these defendants fit into the broad stream of the Common Plan or Conspiracy to wage aggressive war and the extent of their individual responsibility for their acts in pursuance of that conspiracy.

First of all, we mention the late Defendant Robert Ley who, by recourse to self-destruction, has escaped all punishment for his participation in the conspiracy.

Next we mention Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, the action against whom has been severed from this proceeding.

Nevertheless, it should be noted that documentary proof has been offered and will be offered in support of the allegations of the Indictment that implicate both Ley and Krupp as co-conspirators, for whose crimes the remaining defendants also must accept responsibility.

Next we consider the Defendant Fritz Sauckel. The case against Sauckel has been completely stated and supported by a wealth of damning evidence by my learned colleague Mr. Dodd in his presentation of the case on slave labor. We submit that it is unnecessary to add anything further to the case against Sauckel to demonstrate how completely he filled his place in the stream of the conspiracy.

The next defendant to be considered is Albert Speer. Like his fellow-conspirator Sauckel, Speer is deeply implicated as a member of the conspiracy and much of the case against him has been presented by Mr. Dodd in the case on slave labor. But, unlike Sauckel, Speer’s criminal activity went substantially beyond the realm of slave labor. His was one of the master minds in the plan for the systematic robbery and spoliation of the lands overrun by the German war machine. Documentary proof of Speer’s participation in the spoliation practices in the countries of Western Europe, as well as in the Occupied Eastern Territories, will be presented subsequently by our learned colleagues, the Chief Prosecutor representing the Soviet Union and the Chief French Prosecutor, under the remaining Counts of the Indictment. This is essentially the case that proves Speer to have been a member of the conspiracy.

There is, however, one additional exhibit that I would like to offer into evidence at this time. It was received only a few days ago from the Ministerial Document Center at Kassel and it is a dossier maintained on the Defendant Speer in the offices of the Reichsführer SS. I offer this file as Exhibit Number USA-575. It is our Document 3568-PS and I shall read from the dossier. I shall read from the letter dated the 25th of July 1942, from the second paragraph:

“Reich Minister Speer was enrolled as an SS man on the personal
staff of the Reichsführer SS under SS Number 46104, with effect
from the 20th of July 1942, by order of the Reichsführer SS.”

And I think that is all I need to read from that letter. But I should like to call the Tribunal’s attention to the annexed document, which is a questionnaire, and right at the beginning of the same it is related that Albert Speer was in the SS since the autumn of 1932, and his membership number in the Party was 474481.

I next mention the Defendant Ernst Kaltenbrunner, whose case has been completely presented in connection with the presentation on the Gestapo and the SD as criminal organizations. We submit that further proof is not needed to prove how completely this enemy of his own fatherland, Austria, had been carried along in the stream of the conspiracy.

We pass then to the case of perhaps the most important conspirator on trial before this Tribunal—the Number Two Nazi, the Nazi who stood next to the Führer himself, the Nazi who was in some respects even more dangerous than the Führer and other leading Party leaders.

We say that he was more dangerous because, unlike many leading Nazis, including Hitler, who were morally and socially on the fringes of society before the Nazi Party rode to success in 1933, this conspirator was known to come of substantial family which had furnished officers to the army and important civil servants to the country, in the past. Moreover, he was possessed of substantial appearance, an ingratiating manner, a certain affability. But all of these facets of character were but deceptions, because they helped to conceal the man’s core of steel, his vindictiveness, his cruelty, his lust for self-adornment, self-glorification, and power.

This man was most dangerous, furthermore, because the outward characteristics to which I have called attention and which he has to some extent demonstrated here in the presence of the Tribunal were useful in deceiving the representatives of foreign states who, in their concern, sought to learn from him the true intentions of the Nazi State which, by its repeated floutings of its international commitments, had so seriously disturbed the tranquillity of the world since 1933.

And I think that the record should show how throughout the earlier stages of this Trial, that is, before the nature of the documentary evidence offered by the Prosecution—too grim and almost implausible—much of the benevolence of this conspirator, his ever-ready smile and ingratiating manner, were daily in evidence in this chamber. His ready affirmation, by a pleasant nod for all to see, of the correctness of statements made or the contents of documents offered by counsel, his chiding shake of the head when he disagreed with such facts were commonplace.

THE PRESIDENT: I don’t think the Tribunal is interested in this, Mr. Albrecht.

MR. ALBRECHT: I shall pass on, then, with the presentation, with the permission of the Tribunal, and I shall give an account of certain facts already established by the documents in evidence; and with the permission of the Tribunal I shall not, unless it is so wished, refer to the exhibit numbers or citations of most of the old evidence that I shall allude to. These are all set forth in the trial brief that has already been distributed.

Against the background of this factual account, into which we have drawn the main threads of the case already presented that show the complicity of the Defendant Göring, we shall offer certain additional documentary evidence which we believe necessary to demonstrate Göring’s connection and responsibility for certain phases of the conspiracy.

I should have said before, if Your Honors please, that there have been distributed and are now before you three volumes of document books bearing the letters “DD,” which contain substantially all the documents, new as well as old, bearing on the individual responsibility of this defendant.

We shall first deal with the individual responsibility of this conspirator for Crimes against Peace. These crimes include Göring’s participation in the acquisition and consolidation of power in Germany, the economic and military preparations for war, and the waging of aggressive war.

For more than two decades Göring’s activities extended over nearly every phase of the conspiracy. He was one of the conspirators associated with Hitler from the very beginning. A member of the Party since 1922, he participated in the Munich Putsch of November 1923 at the head of the SA, a Nazi organization shown to have been committed to the use of violence.

Göring fled the country after the Putsch in order to escape arrest. After his return he became more than a commander of street fighters. He was designated Hitler’s first political assistant. A measure of the man may be gleaned from an exhibit already in evidence, namely, Gritzbach’s official biography of Göring, in which are recorded his dealings with the Brüning Government, his attempts to break down the barrier around President Von Hindenburg, and his coup as Reichstag President in September 1932 in procuring a vote of no confidence against the Von Papen Government just before the Reichstag was dissolved.

Göring’s writings show him not to be backward in taking credit for his efforts to advance the cause of the Party. Full credit has also been accorded him by Hitler, and Göring has boasted that no title and no decoration could make him so proud as the designation given to him by the German people, and I quote, “the most faithful paladin of our Führer.” That short quotation, may it please the Court, comes from our Exhibit Number USA-233, our Document 2324-PS.

With the advent of the Nazis to power in January 1933 Göring became acting Minister of the Interior and Prime Minister of Prussia. In these capacities he proceeded promptly to establish a regime of terror in Prussia designed to suppress all opposition to the Nazi program.

His chief tool in that connection was the Prussian Police, which remained under his jurisdiction until 1936. As early as February 1933, he directed the entire police force to render unqualified assistance to the para-military organizations supporting the new government, such as the SA and the SS, and to crush all political opponents with firearms, if necessary, and regardless of the consequences. The Tribunal will take judicial notice of the directives of the 10th and 17th of February 1933, which are cited on Page 7 of our brief and which appear in that collection of decrees known as the _Ministerialblatt für die Preussische Innere Verwaltung_ of 1933.

Göring has frequently and proudly acknowledged his personal responsibility for the crimes committed pursuant to orders of this character, and I recall his words which he uttered before thousands of his fellow Germans:

“Each bullet which leaves the barrel of a police pistol now is
my bullet. If one calls this murder, then I have murdered; I
ordered all this, I back it up. I assume the responsibility and
I am not afraid to do so.”

That quotation, may it please the Tribunal, comes from our Exhibit Number USA-233, already in evidence, our Document 2324-PS.

Soon after he became Prime Minister of Prussia, in pursuance of the conspiracy, Göring began to develop the Gestapo or Secret State Police, the details of which organization of terror were presented to the Court by my learned colleague, Colonel Storey. As early as the 26th of April 1933, he signed the first law officially establishing the Gestapo in Prussia; and, pursuant to a decree which he signed, he named himself Prime Minister, Chief of the Prussian Secret State Police.

Göring was undoubtedly an efficient conspirator. He was impatient to consolidate the power of the Party at home. Already in spring 1933 the concentration camps were established in Prussia. Men and women, so-called “Marxists” and other political opponents, taken into custody by the Gestapo were thrown into concentration camps without trial. Göring said, “Against the enemies of the state we must proceed ruthlessly.” That statement appears in our Document 2324-PS, which is already in evidence as Exhibit Number USA-233.

The range of political terrorism under his leadership was almost limitless. A glance at a few of his police directives in those early days will indicate the extent and thoroughness with which every dissident voice was silenced. I ask the Tribunal to take judicial notice of some of these decrees in the same collection I mentioned a short while ago, entitled the _Ministerialblatt für die Preussische Innere Verwaltung_, and we have cited these decrees on Pages 9 and 10 of our brief. These include:

A directive of the 22d of June 1933, which required all officials to watch the statements of civil servants and to denounce to the Defendant Göring those who made critical remarks. The failure to make such reports was to be regarded as proof of hostile attitude. Then there was the directive of the 23rd of June 1933, which suppressed all activities of the Social Democratic Party, including meetings and the party press, and ordered the confiscation of its property. There was the directive of the 30th of June 1933, which directed the Gestapo authorities to report to the Labor Trustees on the political attitude of the workers. There was the directive of the 15th of January 1934, which ordered the Gestapo and the frontier police to keep track of _émigrés_, particularly political _émigrés_ and Jews residing in neighboring countries, and to arrest them and to put them in concentration camps if they returned to Germany.

The essential ruthlessness of Göring is further illustrated by a well-known bloody episode. After the elimination of the forces of the opposition, the Nazis felt it necessary to dispose of non-conformists within their own ranks. This they accomplished in what has become known as the Röhm Purge of the 30th of June 1934. The Defendant Frick, a chief conspirator in his own right, stated in that connection, in an affidavit, that many people were murdered who had nothing to do with the internal SA revolt, but who were “just not liked very well.”

Göring’s role in this sordid affair was related less than 2 weeks after the event by Hitler in a speech to the Reichstag, and I would like to offer in evidence as Exhibit Number USA-576 our Document 3442-PS, in which is contained the speech of Hitler made on the 13th of July 1934 in the Reichstag. It is published in _Das Archiv_, Volume 4, at Page 505. I quote:

“Meanwhile Minister President Göring, had already received my
instructions that in case of a purge he was to take analogous
measures at once in Berlin and in Prussia. With an iron fist he
beat down the attack on the National Socialist State before it
could develop.”

With the accession of the Nazis to power Göring at once assumed a number of the highest and most influential positions also in the Reich. The proof already presented on the composition and functions of the Reich Cabinet and of the offices held by Göring shows him to have been, in fact, the most important executive of the Nazi State.

A member of the Reichstag since 1928 and its President since 1932, he was a member of the Cabinet from the beginning as Reich Minister without Portfolio. Shortly thereafter he received the portfolio as Reich Minister for Air. When, in an early meeting, the Cabinet discussed the pending Enabling Act, which gave the Cabinet plenary powers of legislation, he offered the suggestion that the required two-thirds majority might be obtained simply by refusing admittance to Social Democratic delegates. I offer in evidence, as Exhibit Number USA-578, our Document 2962-PS, which contains the minutes of that meeting. If Your Honors will note, that meeting was held on the 15th of March 1933, and there were present, besides the Defendant Göring, the Defendants Von Papen, Von Neurath, Frick, and Funk. I read from Page 6 of that document:

“Reich Minister Göring expressed his conviction that the
Enabling Act would be passed with the necessary two-thirds
majority. Possibly a majority could be obtained by banishing
several Social Democrats from the hall. Possibly the Social
Democrats would even refrain from voting on the Enabling
Act. . . .”

In 1935, with the unmasking of a secret Luftwaffe, Göring became its Commander-in-Chief. He sat as a member and the Führer’s Deputy on the Reich Defense Council, established by the secret law of the 21st of May 1933. The purpose of that Council was, as stated by the Defendant Frick in an affidavit that is in evidence—and I quote:

“To plan preparations and decrees in case of war, which later on
were published by the Ministerial Council for the Defense of the
Reich.”

His assumption of ever greater responsibility seemed limitless. In 1936 Göring was made Plenipotentiary for the Four Year Plan, whereby he acquired plenary legislative and administrative powers over all German economic life. In 1938 he became a member of the Secret Cabinet Council, which had been established to act as “an advisory board in the direction of foreign policy.”

The Ministerial Council for the Defense of the Reich, created in 1939, took over, in effect, all of the legislative powers of the Cabinet which had not been reserved otherwise, and Göring became its chairman.

His efficient and ruthless services were recognized by Hitler in 1939, when he designated Göring as his successor, as heir apparent to the “New Order.”

In April 1936 Göring was appointed Coordinator for Raw Materials and Foreign Exchange and empowered to supervise all State and Party activities in these fields. I offer in support of that fact, as Exhibit Number USA-577, our Document 2827-PS, which is an excerpt from Rühle, _Das Dritte Reich_. I read from the fourth paragraph of the excerpt, if Your Honor pleases, which is an excerpt from a decree signed by Hitler, and it reads as follows:

“Minister President, Colonel General Göring will take the
measures necessary for the accomplishment of the tasks given to
him and has the authority to issue decrees and general
administrative directives. He, for this purpose, is authorized
to question and issue directives to all authorities, including
the highest Reich authorities, and all agencies of the Party,
its formations and attached organizations.”

In this capacity Göring convened the War Minister, the Defendant Schacht as Minister of Economics and President of the Reichsbank, and the Finance Minister for the Reich and the State of Prussia to discuss inter-agency problems connected with war mobilization. At a meeting of this group on the 12th of May 1936, when the question of the prohibitive cost of synthetic raw material substitutes arose, Göring decided:

“If we have war tomorrow we must help ourselves by substitutes.
Then money will not play any role at all. If that is the case,
then we must be ready to create the prerequisites for that in
peacetime.”

A few days later, on the 27th of May 1936, at a meeting of the same group Göring opposed any limitations dictated by orthodox financial policies. He said that “all measures are to be considered from the standpoint of an assured waging of war.”

The well-known Four Year Plan was proclaimed by Hitler at the 1936 Nuremberg Party Day. Göring was appointed Plenipotentiary in charge of the program, which was intended to achieve national self-sufficiency. Furthermore, Göring commented in 1936 that his chief task as Plenipotentiary was “to put the whole economy on a war footing within 4 years.” I would like to offer into evidence, as Exhibit Number USA-579, our Document EC-408, so that I may direct the Tribunal’s attention to a memorandum, dated the 30th of December 1936, of the Defense Division of the Wehrmacht, entitled, “Memorandum on the Four Year Plan and Preparation of the War Economy”; and in the third paragraph of the translation, or at Page 2, in the middle of Paragraph Number 3 in the German original, there is the statement registered in the protocol, in the memorandum, that:

“Minister President General Göring, as Commissioner for the Four
Year Plan, by authority of the Führer and Reich Chancellor,
granted 18 of October 1936.

“As regards the war economy, Minister President, Colonel General
Göring sees it as his task ‘within 4 years to put the entire
economy in a state of readiness for war.’”

The exhibit from which I have just read is of interest because of another document that has just been brought to the attention of the Prosecution. It is a note for the files, dated December 2, 1936, written in longhand on the letterhead of “Minister President General Göring,” and is in the handwriting of Colonel Bodenschatz, Göring’s Chief of Staff. I offer this memorandum as Exhibit Number USA-580. It is our Document 3474-PS, and I direct the Tribunal’s attention to the fact that the date of this document is the 2d of December 1936. That was a conference, apparently, at which all the chief officers and generals of the Air Force, the German Air Force, met. Besides the Defendant Göring, there were General Milch, General Kesselring, Rüdel, Stumpff, Christiansen, and all the top commanders of the Air Force, and I read:

“World press excited about the landing of 5,000 German
volunteers in Spain. Official complaint by Great Britain; she
gets in touch with France.

“Italy suggests that Germany and Italy send, each, one division
ground troops to Spain. It is, however, necessary that Italy, as
interested Mediterranean power, issue a political declaration
first. A decision can be expected only within a few days.

“The general situation is very serious. Russia wants the war.
England rearms speedily. Command therefore: Beginning today
‘höchste Einsatzbereitschaft’”—apparently the translator did
not see fit to translate those words, which mean the “highest
degree of readiness”—“regardless of financial difficulties.
Göring takes over full responsibility.”

“Peace until 1941 is desirable. However, we cannot know whether
there will be implications before. We are already in a state of
war. It is only that no shot is being fired so far.”

THE PRESIDENT: Perhaps that would be a convenient time to break off.

[_A recess was taken until 1400 hours._]

_Afternoon Session_

MR. ALBRECHT: May it please the Tribunal, two important conferences which have already been adverted to by the Prosecution show clearly how the Defendant Göring inspired and directed the preparation of the German economy for aggressive war. On the 8th of July 1938 he addressed a number of the leading German aircraft manufacturers and laid the groundwork for a vast increase in aircraft production. He stated that war with Czechoslovakia was imminent and boasted that the German Air Force was already superior in quality and quantity to the English. He said that:

“. . . if Germany wins the war. Then she will be the greatest
power in the world, dominating the world market, and Germany
will be a rich nation. For this goal, risks must be
taken. . . .”

That quotation, may it please the Court, is taken from Document R-140, Exhibit Number USA-160.

A few weeks after the Munich Agreement, on the 14th of October 1938, at another conference held in Göring’s office, he made the statement that Hitler had instructed him to organize a gigantic armament program which would make insignificant all previous achievements. He indicated that he had been ordered to build as rapidly as possible an air force five times as large, to increase the speed of army and navy rearmament, and to concentrate on offensive weapons, principally heavy artillery and heavy tanks; and at that meeting he proposed a specific program designed to accomplish those ends. That is a short summary of facts which appear from Exhibit Number USA-123 already in evidence, our Document 1301-PS.

In his dual role as Reich Air Minister and Commander-in-Chief of the German Air Force it was Göring’s function to develop the Luftwaffe to practical war strength. As early as the 10th of March 1935, in an interview with the correspondent of the _London Daily Mail_, the mask of hypocrisy was removed and Göring frankly announced to the world that he was in the process of building a true military air force.

Two months later, in a speech to 1,000 Air Force officers, Göring spoke in a still bolder vein. I offer in evidence from Exhibit Number USA-437, our Document 3441-PS—which is Göring’s _Reden und Aufsätze_—another excerpt that has not yet been read in evidence, from Page 242. Göring said:

“I repeat: I intend to create a Luftwaffe which, if the hour
should strike, shall burst upon the foe like a chorus of
revenge. The enemy must have the feeling of being lost already
before having fought.”

In the same year, on the 16th of March 1935, he signed his name to the conscription law which provided for compulsory military service and constituted an act of defiance on the part of Nazi Germany in violation of the Versailles Treaty. The Tribunal will take judicial notice of that decree, which is our Document 1654-PS, from which I shall not read, with the permission of the Tribunal—the Law for the Organization of the Armed Forces; it is cited in 1935 _Reichsgesetzblatt_, Part I, Page 369.

As is demonstrated by the affidavit of Ambassador Messersmith already in evidence, Göring’s statements during this period left no doubt in the minds of Allied diplomats that Germany was engaged in full mobilization of air power for an impending war.

Göring was in fact the central figure in German preparation for military aggression. In German economic development, too, he held the key positions throughout the pre-war period. Although he held no official position in the field of foreign affairs, as the Number Two Nazi, history records that he was prominent in all major phases of Nazi aggression between 1937 and 1941.

In the Austrian affair Göring was the prompter and director of the diplomatic “tragicomedy” enacted before a shocked but silent world.

The Tribunal is familiar with Göring’s complicity in the aggression against Austria. However, some additional documents have just come to our notice which show that Göring not only participated actively, but may even have been in direct charge of the German plan to bring about the Austrian Anschluss. I will offer the first of these documents, our Document 3473-PS, as Exhibit Number USA-581. I shall not read from that exhibit, if Your Honors please, but I would like to call the attention of the Tribunal to the letter from Keppler, who was one of Göring’s agents, addressed to the Defendant Göring. It is dated the 6th of January 1938. From its context it would seem that a valid inference can be drawn that Göring was already active in the Austrian matter in 1937. Our prior evidence brought him into the picture much later. The Prosecution believes this document to be of great significance, as it shows that the Defendant Seyss-Inquart actually had Göring’s mandate to carry out the orders of the Nazi conspirators in Vienna. The document itself will be read and discussed in the presentation of the case showing the individual responsibility of the Defendant Seyss-Inquart; and I shall not take the time of the Tribunal at this time.

The second document I wish to introduce is Exhibit Number USA-582, our Document 3472-PS. This exhibit would seem to show that the conspirators attempted to create the impression that the Anschluss, when it took place, was achieved by “legal” means. The command apparently was given the members of the NSDAP in Austria to keep “hands off” in order to permit the deviltry to be worked out by the official Reich agencies, that is, through the Defendant Göring and, presumably, the Defendant Von Papen, by direct contact with the Austrian officials.

I read from that document:

“Yesterday information reached me to the effect that
Landesleiter Leopold”—and may I interrupt for a moment to point
out that the word “Landesleiter” is the title of the leader of
the Nazi community in Austria—“also on his part has started
negotiations with Chancellor Schuschnigg. Thereupon I have asked
the Foreign Office to investigate the truth of this information
and, in case it is true, to take care that such negotiations are
not held because they would merely disturb the proceedings of
the other negotiations.

“Just now I got word from the Foreign Office that they received
a report from the embassy in Vienna confirming the facts. I
therefore would like to know whether it would not be more
appropriate to forbid Landesleiter Leopold and the other members
of the country’s leadership to negotiate with Chancellor
Schuschnigg as well as with any Austrian Government authorities
as to the execution of the pact of the 11th of July 1936, unless
it is done after contacting and in agreement with the
authorities in charge in the Reich.”

Now below, if I may call the attention of the Tribunal to the note that appears in this letter. It is written in blue pencil, and, while the translator has not indicated the initial below that note, it is a large “G”; and I have no doubt that that note was written by the Defendant Göring. It reads:

“Agreed, Minister Hess or Herr Bormann can give this order best!
Keppler ought to ask therefore by telephone!”

If I may direct your attention to the upper right corner, there is another note in pencil, “Transmitted to Herr Keppler on the 11th of February 1938 by Fräulein Ernst;” and it is signed with initial “G,” which in this case, however, we are quite sure is the initial of Miss Grundmann, who was one of Göring’s secretaries.

The third document I offer as Exhibit Number USA-583, our Document 3471-PS. The first letter of this exhibit is written by the same Keppler to the same Bodenschatz mentioned a short while ago, but who is now a general. I shall not read from this exhibit, with the permission of the Tribunal, but I shall briefly summarize it. This letter and the annexes show that Leopold, the Nazi Landesleiter in Austria, was apparently not completely amenable to the orders given by Berlin and pursued his own methods for accomplishing an Anschluss. The second annex to this letter, addressed to Keppler, who appears from this letter to have been an SS Gruppenführer, shows that prominent Nazis had declared themselves in favor of a Major Klausner to succeed Leopold as Landesleiter; and I would like to call the Tribunal’s attention to the fact that in the left margin of the covering letter appear some red crayon marks in the characteristic color employed on several occasions, to our knowledge, by Göring; and they would seem to show that Göring personally had seen these documents and that General Bodenschatz had brought them to his attention. In any event these letters again demonstrate that Göring was one of the principal conspirators in the Austrian affair.

When the time finally came, on 11 March 1938, to consummate the Anschluss, Göring was in complete command. Throughout the afternoon and evening of that day he directed by telephone the activities of the Defendant Seyss-Inquart and of the other Nazi conspirators in Vienna. The pertinent portions of these telephone conversations, it will be remembered, were read into the record.

It will be recalled that early on the same evening of 11 March he dictated to the Defendant Seyss-Inquart the telegram which the latter was to send to Berlin, requesting the Nazi Government to send German troops to “prevent bloodshed.” Two days later he was able to call the Defendant Ribbentrop in London and gleefully relate to him of his success and that “this story that we had given an ultimatum is just foolish gossip.”

If I may interrupt for a moment, that passage I just alluded to was read into the record at Page 581 (Volume II, Page 424).

Similarly, Göring played an important role in the attack on Czechoslovakia. In March of 1938, at the time of the Anschluss, he had given a solemn assurance to the Czechoslovakian Minister in Berlin that the developments in Austria would in no way have a detrimental influence on the relations between Germany and Czechoslovakia and he had emphasized the continued earnest endeavor on the part of Germany to improve these relations. In this connection Göring had used the expression, “Ich gebe Ihnen mein Ehrenwort” (“I give you my word of honor”).

That expression was read previously into the record at Page 962 (Volume III, Page 192).

On the other hand, in his address to German airplane manufacturers on the 8th of July 1938, which I have already mentioned, he made his private views on this subject, which were hardly consistent with his solemn official statements, abundantly clear.