Russian prisoners, in particular, died in staggering quantities from disease and starvation, and little attempt was made to treat them as human beings. Particularly in the later stages of the war, when the defendant Berger was Chief of Prisoner of War Affairs, prisoners of war from the eastern front were shockingly treated and died in great numbers.
The last three sub-paragraphs of paragraph 28 of the indictment set forth certain other examples of crimes of this type. Particularly appalling was the now well-known murder of approximately 50 officers of the British Royal Air Force, who had escaped from confinement at Stalagluft III and who were shot on recapture in flagrant violation of the laws of war. The defendants Steengracht and Ritter participated in concealing this murderous affair from the protective power, Switzerland, Equally disgraceful was the brutal and senseless murder of the French General Mesny, a prisoner of war in German custody, in which the defendant Berger was deeply involved and which, again, the defendants Steengracht and Ritter helped to cover up and conceal.
The second main category of War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity:
are Crimes Connected with the German Occupation of Conquered Countries as charged in Counts Five, Six, and Seven.
Under this heading, we will describe the charges of plunder and spoliation in Count Six of the indictment, the slave labor charges in Count Seven, and the various charges in paragraphs 40 to 43, inclusive, of Count Five.
We will turn first to the charges of Plunder and Spoliation:
The Hague regulations provide, in Article 46, that private property "must be respected" and "can not be confiscated" and in Article 52 that "requisitions in kind and services......shall be in proportion to the resources of the country". These and other provisions of international penal law form the basis of the allegations in Count Six, under which sixteen of the defendants are charged.
We believe that there is no need to describe in detail the overall character of German economic policy in the occupied territories. The subject was dealt with at length before the IMT, and is the basis of charges in several other cases before these Tribunals. As the IMT found:1 ......The territories occupied by Germany were exploited for the German war effort in the most ruthless way, without consideration of the local economy, and in consequence of a deliberate design and policy.
There was in truth a systematic "plunder of public or private property", which was criminal under Article 6 (b) of the Charter.
Some of the defendants charged in this count are primarily responsible as creators of the basic legal and administrative framework for these crimes, others are more closely connected with particular acts of plunder and spoliation, and some are involved in both ways. The defendants Lammers and Stuckart, for example, are found at the original root of responsibility inasmuch as they formulated and signed numerous decrees which authorized the execution of the criminal program in the occupied territories generally. The Foreign Office defendants lent general diplomatic support to the spoliation program, particularly in those countries where governments of one sort or another were permitted to exist under the German occupation, as for example in France, The defendant Darre was particularly concerned with the establishment of food stuff quotas for all the occupied areas and for the removal of vast quantities of food to Germany. The defendants Schwerin-Krosigk, Rasche and Kehrl were especially active in the western occupied countries of France, Belgium, and Holland. ------------
1. Vol. I, Trial of the Major War Criminals, p. 239.
German exploitation of Czechoslovakia was particularly extensive and reprehensible, and much of it was done on behalf of the enormous German state-owned iron, steel, and coal combine known as the Hermann Goering Works, in which the defendants Pleiger and Koerner were leading figures. The defendants Kehrl and Rasche were very active in planning and executing the seizure of important Czech coal and steel properties on behalf of the Hermann Goering Works. They were also leaders in the expropriation of Several leading Czech banks; these activities were usually carried out in the interests of the Dresdner Bank, of which Rasche was a leading director.
German exploitation of the occupied territories of the Soviet Union is described by the IMT as "premeditated and systematic looting". Here no pretense of legality was maintained by the German invader. German economic policy was openly based upon the assumption that the laws of war should not be observed. Many of the defendants participated in mapping out the general policies for the exploitation of Soviet economic resources; in their execution, the defendants Koerner, Pleiger, and Kehrl were especially active.
We turn now to Slave Labor: the charge contained in Count Seven:
The IMT found that the German occupation authorities succeeded "in forcing many of the inhabitants of the occupied territory to work for the German war effort, and in deporting at least 5,000,000 persons to Germany to serve German industry and agriculture".1 The German slave labor program, it will be seen, was basically a part -- and a most inhumane and criminal part -- of the overall German program for the economic exploitation of the occupied territories. Like the other parts of this program, the deportation of civilian populations to slave labor was in flagrant violation of international law, including specific provisions of the Hague Conventions. This criminal program, too, was the subject of extensive testimony before the IMT, and forms ------------
1. Vol. I, Trial of the Major War Criminals, p. 243.
the basis of charges in other cases which have been tried or are in the process of trial before these Tribunals. The three major categories of involuntary labor involved in this program -- deported civilian workers, prisoners of war, and concentration camp prisoners-- are dealt with in the following findings of the IMT judgment and I quote:2 "In the early states of the war, manpower in the occupied territories was under the control of various occupation authorities, and the procedure varied from country to country.
In all the occupied territories compulsory labor service waspromptly instituted.
Inhabitants of the occupied countries were conscripted and compelled to work in local occupations, to assist the German war economy.
In many cases they were forced to work on German fortifications and military installations.
As local supplies of raw materials and local industrial capacity became inadequate to meet the German requirements, the system of deporting laborers to Germany wasput into force.
By the middle of April 1940, compulsory deportation of laborers to Germany had been ordered in the Government General; and a similar procedure was followed in other eastern territories as they were occupied.
* * * * * * * * ........the evidence before the Tribunal establishes the fact that the conscription of labor was accomplished in many cases by drastic and violent methods.
* * * * * * * * The resources and needs of the occupied countries were completely disregarded in carrying out this policy.
* * * * * * * * ----------
2. Vol. I, Trial of the Major War Criminals, pp. 243-245.
The concentration camps were also used to increase the supply of labor.
Concentration camp commanders were ordered to work their prisonersto the limits of their physical power.
...Allied prisoners of war were also regarded as a possible source of labor.
....Many of the prisoners of war were assigned to work directly related to military operations, in violation of Article 31 of the Geneva Convention.
They were put to work in munition factories and even made to load bombers, to carry ammunition and to dig trenches, often under the most hazardous con ditions."
In the field of slave labor, we again find the defendants Lammers and Stuckart as the draftsmen and signatories of many of the basic decrees and administrative directives which underlay the program as a whole. And once again, the Foreign Office defendants participated chiefly by bringing pressure to bear upon the governments of occupied and satellite countries to send workers to Germany, and by taking other "helpful" action in the political and diplomatic field. The defendant Berger participated extensively in the actual procurement of slave labor in the eastern territories.
The defendant Darre was one of the originators of this entire program, which brought incalcuable misery to so many millions of people. Shortly after the occupation of Poland, he suggested and ultimately brought about the forcible "recruitment" of Polish agricultural workers to be used on German farms. The defendant Koerner became closely connected with the allocation of industrial manpower as Hermann Goering's deputy in the Four Year Plan, and sugsequently, from 1942 to 1945, he became a member of the Central Planning Board, which determined the labor requirements of the various sections of the German economy. The defendant Kehrl, as high official under both the Central Planning Board and the Reich Minister of Armaments and War Production, is similarly and deeply involved.
A quasi-governmental organization which had important funtions with respect to the procurement and allocation of slave labor in the coal mining industry was the Reich Coal Association (commonly known as the RVK) ox which the defendant Pleiger was the Chairman and dominant figure. One of the largest industrial users of slave labor was the Hermann Goering Works, in which the defendants Pleiger and Koerner were both loading figures. The criminal responsibility of these four -- Darre, Koerner, Pleiger, and Kehrl -- under Count Seven, is, therefore, particularly extensive.
Equally grave within a narrower compassare the slave labor charges against Puhl and Rasche. Heinrich Himmler conceived the delectable idea of augmenting the income of the SS by establishing socalled "SS industries", the labor for which should be furnished largely by the inmates of Himmler's own concentration camps. These industries were administered by a division of the Main Economic and Administrative Office of the SS (WVHA ) Headed by Oswald Pohl; the crimes committed by the exploitation of concentration camp inmates in these industries were the basis of a large part of the judgment of Military Tribunal II in Case No. 4 (United States v. Oswald Pohl, et al.). The defendants Puhl and Rasche were active in financing those enterprises, through the instrumentality of the Reichsbank, of which Puhl was Vice President, and through Rasche's Dresdner Bank.
Other crimes closely connected with the German occupation of conquered territories are described in Paragraphs 40 to 43, inclusive, in Count Five of the indictment. The spread of German dominion was accompanied by a systematic program to evacuate non-German peoples from their homes and land in certain areas, and to "resettle" these areas with so-called "ethnic" Germans. Particularly in Poland, "racial Germans" were resettled in the conquered territory at the expense of "nonGermans" whose homesteads and lands were confiscated. At the same time, individuals of foreign nationality whose general characteristics fulfilled the requirements of Nazi racial superstition, were selected for forcible Germanization.
As usual, the defendants Lammers and Stuckart were-involved in laying the legal and administrative foundations for the "Germanization" program, which was executed chiefly by the Main Race and Resettlement Office (RUSHA) of the SS, of which the defendant Darre was the founder. The leading officials of this organization are now on trial before Military Tribunal I. An analagous criminal program was the forced recruitment into the WaffenSS of prisoners of war and men of military age from the various countries overrun by the Wehrmacht. Special SS division were formed by forceful means from the male population of such territories as Yugoslavia, Albania, the Scandinavian countries, and the Baltic countries. This enforced recruitment violated these provisions of the Hague regulations which forbid compelling the inhabitants of an occupied country to swear allegiance to the hostile power, or to take part in military operations against their own country, and were conducted under the general direction of the defendant Berger.
The other two criminal programs to be noted here were connected with the "pacification" of the occupied territories. To the normal resistance which the German forces encountered from the inhabitants of the countries which the Wehrmacht invaded and despoiled, the Germans had no answer more intelligent than blind and stupid terror. Attacks against German personnel or German property were met by the slaughter of innocent members of the civilian population at ratios as high as 100 to 1. As night be expected, these brutal and murderousmeasures aroused a storm of protest, from the protective powers, from neutral countries, and a variety of other sources; it was the shameful task of Weizsaecker, Steengracht, and the other Foreign Office defendants to deny and camouflage these wholesale murders.
In addition to the slaughter of hostages, the Third Reich used perverted judicial mechanisms to spread the terror. Persons suspected of enmity toward the Reich or the German forces were taken into custody and spirited away to Germany for secret trial and punishment, without notification to their friends of relatives. These Judicial measures of extermination were carried out under the notorious "Night and Fog" decree (Nacht und Nebel E*lass), which was condemned as criminal by the IMT, and which was the subject of an important part of the judgment of Tribunal III in Case No. 3 (United States vs. Alstotter, et al). Tribunal III held that this decree "brought about a systematic rule of vilence, brutality, outrage and terror against the civilian populations of territories" occupied by the "Wehrmacht. The defendants Lammers and Meissner were deeply involved in the administration of the Night and Fog decree.
A third main category -- Atrocities and Offenses Committed on Political, Racial or Religious Grounds:
charged in Counts Four and Five.
The crimes within this category, if committed against German nationals prior to the outbreak of the war, are charged in Count Four of the indictment as crimes against humanity as defined in Paragraph 1 (c) of Article II of Law No. 10. Similar atrocities committed after the outbreak of war are charged in Paragraph 44 to 50, inclusive of Count Five of the indictment; these crimes committed during the course of the war in all cases constituted crimes against humanity and in many cases constituted both war crimes and crimes against humanity. The prosecution is aware that the charges in Count Four involve certain legal questions which we will touch on at the close of this statement.
That the dictatorship of the Third Reich was created and consolidated by the ruthless suppression of civil liberties and the extinction of policitcal, cultural and religious opposition of all kinds is now common knowledge. Apart from the Jewish question, the atrocities connected with the establishment of the Third Reich dictatorship are described in paragraphs 31 to 33, inclusive, of Count 4 of the indictment. In these paragraphs, the murder or imprisonment of political opponents of the Nazi regime, the suppression of the trade unions, and the persecution of the Christian church leaders are described. The defendants who are primarily responsibile for these atrocities are the old-time Nazi executives such as Lammers, Stuckart, Meissner, Dietrich, and Schwerin-Krosigk.
But the evil spark of Nazism was anti-Semitism, and Paragraphs 34 and 35 are concerned with the pre-war atrocities against the Jews. The defendants Dietrich and Darre can be compared only with Goebbels and Streicher as the most vociferous and unrestrained protagonists of anti-Semitic violence. The early riots and boycotts in 1933 and 1934 culminated in the atrocious Nurnberg Laws of 15 September, 1935, which the defendant Stuckart helped to draft and which were voted through the Reichstag with the help of Darre, Keppler and Bohle.
The existence of a Jew in Germany became ever more intolerable through 1936 and 1937, and another climax was reached in November, 1938, when the assassination of a minor German diplomat in Paris was made the pretext for launching a nationwide pogrom.
The defendant Dietrich was the leader in organizing so-called "spontaneous action of the German masses" against the Jews, and the defendant Weizsaecker raised his voice in the hideous chorus. Immediately after this orgy of arson and murder, Hermann Goering called a conference of high government officials, in which the defendants Schwerin-Krosigk, Stuckart and Woermann participated, to devise ways and means of squeezing out all the property and savings of the German Jewish population. Almost all of the defendants participated in one way or another, in making life in Germany dangerous and intolerable for all Jews.
Their efforts led to "The Final Solution" of the Jewish Question: charged in Count Five.
With the outbreak of war, the Nazis threw to the four winds all restraint in dealing with Jews. As Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland were overrun, the Nurnberg Laws and other anti-Semitic German legislation were applied to the conquered territories. But it was in the spring of 1941, when the invasion and occupation of the Soviet Union was being planned, that murderous persecution gave way to a systematic and deliberate program to exterminate all European Jews.
In preparation for the invasion of the Soviet Union, the High Command of the German Army and Heinrich Himmler's SS made one of the most murderous covenants of all time. It was drafted by the defendant Schellenberg, in May, 1941. On its face, it provided that special units, called "Einsatzgruppen", of Himmler's SS should accompany the German armed forces into the Soviet Union and perform "special missions" as directed by Himmler to safeguard the rear areas behind the fighting front. In fact, as was well known to the leaders of the Wehrmacht and the SS alike, the true purpose of these units was to seek out and ruthlessly exterminate all Jews and political functionaries of the Soviet regime. This program was actually carried out and resulted in murder of a million or more Jews and other so-called "undesirables"; progress reports on these killings were brought to the attention of the German Foreign Office.
Twenty odd members of these gangs are now on trial before Military Tribunal II.
Encouraged by the success of the Einsatzgruppen in Russia, the leaders of the Third Reich proceeded to evolve a systematic program for the extermination of all European Jews, the basic plans for which were laid at a series of interdepartmental conferences on the "final solution of the Jewish Question" which took place during 1942. The defendant Stuckart and representatives of the defendants Lammers and Weizsaecker took part in those conferences, which led to a program fro the evacuation of eleven million European Jews to camps in eastern Europe, where they were to be worked to death or slaughtered by methods of mass execution. The extermination of European Jewry was perhaps the most monstrous and certainly the most successful of all the crimes of the Third Reich, and most of the defendants in this case are directly involved in its execution. All of the Foreign Office defendants participated in the deportation of Jews from the puppet and satellite countries dominated by Germany. Within Germany itself, the program was symbolized and consummated by the decree of 1 July, 1943, drafted by the defendant Stuckart and others and signed by the defendant Schwerin-Krosigk, which deprived all Jews in Germany of judicial process and authorized the police to punish "all criminal acts committed by Jews", and provided for the ultimate confiscation of all Jewish property/
The "final solution of the Jewish Question" had gruesome and grotesque byproducts; the assortment of watches, spectacles and jewelry seized from murdered Jews, and the rings and gold teeth pulled from the fingers and dug out of the skulls of Jewish corpses. The defendant Puhl supervised the classification and deposit of these valuables in the Reichsbank, and the proceeds from their disposal were credited to the Reich Treasury under the defendant Schwerin-Krosigk.
A fourth general category of activities of the defendants to which we have referred are: Support of the Membership in Criminal Organizations: charged in Counts Four, Five, Seven and Eight.
Under this heading we are, of course speaking of a form of participation in crime rather than of a distinct type of crime. The organizations with which various of the defendants were connected include, preeminently, the SS, and the so-called "Leadership Corps" of the Nazi Party, both of which were declared criminal organizations by the judgment of the IMT.
Fourteen of the defendants are charged with membership in criminal organizations; all fourteen were high-ranking officers in the SS, one of the fourteen was also member of the "Sicherheistdients", and four were members of the Leadership Corps in the Nazi Party. As to all fourteen the proof will abundantly show that they both knew of and participated in the crimes on the basis of which these organizations were declared to be criminal.
As to several of the defendants, however, the charge of participation in the criminal activities of the SS is not limited to membership therein. We will hear frequent mention in this proceeding of a group called the "Circle of Friends" of Himmler, of which the defendant Keppler was a founder and in which the defendants Rasche and Kehrl were active. The so-called "Himmler Circle" was composed of about thirty of the foremost German business and financial leaders, among whom the defendant Rasche was numbered, several high-ranking government officials, including the defendants Keppler and Kehrl, and a number of the most notorious leaders of the SS, including Himmler himself, his adjutant Karl Wolff, Oswald Pohl, Otto Ohlendorf, and Wolfram Sievers. The business and financial leaders who belonged to the Himmler Circle made large regular annual contributions to Himmler to aid in financing the activities of the SS; the defendant Rasche, for example, procured contributions by the Dresdner Bank of some 50,000 marks per year, and the Dresdner Bank itself served as the depository for these funds. The prominent German industrialist Friedrich Flick, and his associate Otto Steinbrinck, were recently convicted of criminal responsibility for SS activities by virtue of their membership in the Himmler Circle.
The SS, of course, was not solely dependent for its funds upon the voluntary contributions of the Himmler Circle. The defendant Schwerin-Krosigk, as Reich Minister for Finance, furnished fiscal support for the SS.
The Dresdner Bank, by the procurement of the defendant Rasche, furnished credit to the SS for its general activities in Germany and in the occupied territories. The defendant Puhl and Rasche procured credit from the Reichbank and the Dresdner Bank respectively, to finance the SS industries which were operated with concentration-camp labor. And the Reichsbank, as we have seen, acted as the depository for valuables confiscated from Jews murdered by the SS.
We have now completed this statement of the crimes charged by the indictment, and will turn to a summary of the evidence concerning the responsibility of each defendant or group of defendants for the crimes so charged.
THE PRESIDENT:I believe, Mr. Lyon, this would be a suitable time for our noon recess.
MR. LYON:Very well, your Honor.
THE PRESIDENT:The Tribunal will recess to 1:30.
(A recess was taken until 1330 hours, 6 January 1943.)
( AFTERNOON SESSION (The hearing reconvened at 1330 hours, 6 January 1948)
THE MARSHAL:The Tribunal is again in session.
THE PRESIDENT:Mr. Marshal, are all the defendants present in the courtroom?
THE MARSHAL:With the exception of defendant Meissner, sir.
THE PRESIDENT:Mr. Lyon, you may proceed.
MR. LYON:The Prosecution will summarize the evidence against the defendants, individually or in homegeneous groups, according to the five principal categories which we noted at the outset -- foreign affairs, government administration, banking, war economy, and the SS. It will be convenient to begin with the defendants who played important parts in the German war economy, and who, except Kehrl, are charged with responsibility under Counts One and Two for planning and preparing for aggressive warfare.
Following the outline of evidence in the war economy field, which will particularly involve the defendants Koerner, Pleiger, Keppler, and Kehrl, we will, in order, take up the two defendants (Rasche and Puhl) from the banking field, then the Reich Ministers and other high officials in the field of government administration, then the two SS Generals. Finally, we will return to the Foreign Office defendants, whose criminal participation in the commission of crimes against peace has already been described, and outline their comparable responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Now, if the Tribunal please, Mr. Gantt will continue with the reading of the statement.
MR. GANTT:The joint appearance in this dock of Koerner, Keppler, Kehrl, and Pleiger is a natural development growing COURT IV CASE II out of their close collaboration throughout the Third Reich in every important phase of the crimes which may be termed economic or industrial in character -- in economic preparation for aggression, in economic ruination of occupied countries, and in enslavement of their citizens in German industry.
In virtually every important government agency playing a major part in these crimes, we will find one or more, and frequently all four, of these men in leading positions. In the Four Year Plan, the top agency for economic preparation for war, Koerner was second only, to Goering and the other three also had important positions. In fact, they had a good deal to do with the very creation of the Four Year Plan in 1936 and had already worked together for several years under Keppler's leadership in the so-called Buro Keppler, which had laid the groundwork for the Four Year Plan. They were also instrumental in the creation and management of the hoge government corporate colussus, the Hermann Goering Works, which was organized in 1937 as a major project of the Four Year Plan and grew in a few short years to become the largest mining and smelting combine, the largest steel and armament producer, the largest inland shipping company and in general by far the largest industrial combination in Europe. In the Central Planning Board, from 1942 the top war-time agency under the Four Year Plan for economic affairs including slave labor, Koerner was a member of the four man board, along with Milch, Speer, and Funk, who have already been convicted for their roles therein; and the record of the Board's meetings also reveals the prominent parts played by Pleiger and Kehrl.
In the numerous agencies active in plundering and ruthlessly exploiting occupied countries we will find the same story: these four defendants, like the Wehrmacht, COURT IV CASE II fanned out in all directions.
In the western occupied territories the basic plan for spoliation of the textile industry was the so-called "Kehrl Plan". In Czechoslovakia Kehrl and the defendant Rasche of the Dresdner Bank were Special agents of the German government appointed to supervise German absorption of Czech heavy industry, much of it by the Hermann Goering Works. In the eastern territories, the supreme agency for directing the program of plunder was the Economic Executive Staff East, under the direction of Koerner as Goering's representative. Under the general program for spoliation in these eastern territories, numerous specialized organizations were established. Those included: BHO, headed by Koerner and Pleiger, for the mining and smelting industries; the Ost Faser Company, headed by Kehrl for the textile industry and its raw materials; the Kontinentale Oel Company, of which Keppler was a leading official, for oil exploitation; and the DUT, in form a company of which Keppler and Kehrl were corporate officials, but actually an arm of the SS for handling property seized from hapless citizens of eastern countries who were supposed, under the Nazi plans, to give up their land and possessions to German settlers. Finally the Hermann Goering Works, of which Koerner and Pleiger were particularly important officials, reached its enormous size in large part by absorbing industries in occupied countries on a wholesale basis.
The prominence of these four defendants in all these criminal activities properly reflects their position in the regime of the Third Reich and in the part thereof which was Nazi in the strictest sense. All four were highly influential figures in the Party. Three of them were SS officers, Keppler and Koerner holding the rank of Lieutenant General and Kehrl that of Brigadier General.
COURT IV CASE II Their relations to Hitler, Goering and Himmler were very close both before and after 1933. We have already seen that Keppler in 1932 formed a group of industrialists and financiers to advise Hitler, a group which came to be known as the Keppler Circle and later as the Circle of Friends of Himmler, and of which Kehrl and Rasche were members. Keppler's activity in 1932 in promoting Hitler's rise to power was as useful and ubiquitous as it was later to become in the field of both foreign affairs and economics. In November 1932 Keppler was instrumental along with Kurt von Schroeder, the Cologne banker, and the defendant Meissner, in securing signatures of numerous leading industrialists to a petition to Hindenburg to appoint Hitler chancellor. It was Keppler and von Schroeder again who, with Himmler and Hess, arranged the historic meeting of 4 January 1933 between von Papen and Hitler, which led directly to the alliance between Hitler and von Papen that was the necessary foundation for the appointment of Hitler as Chancellor shortly thereafter.
Keppler deserves to be better known to the world than he is for his part in laying the basic economic foundation for Hitler's invasions and wars of aggression. Keppler learned from World War I that Germany needed to be selfsufficient in certain critical materials if she was to have any hope of success in another major conflict. He succeeded in 1934 in having Hitler create and place him in charge of a Special Agency for the Development of German Natural and Synthetic Raw Materials. Here the basis was laid for the successful development of programs for greatly expanding the production of synthetic textiles, synthetic rubber, diesel oil, gasoline lubricants and fats.
Keppler's agency was generally known as Buro Keppler, COURT IV CASE II and in the work of this office, Keppler's closest collaborators included the defendants Kehrl, Koerner, and Pleiger.
In early 1936, the activity of the Buro Keppler was extended, and Keppler and his staff were included in an Advisory Committee on Questions of Raw Material, a group which was presided over by Goering and Schacht, and which included the defendants Koerner, Keppler, Pleiger, Kehrl and von Krosigk, General Keitel and other representatives of the Army and a number of industrialists, including representatives of Krupp and Farben. The general tone of the meetings of this committee is aptly summarized in a statement made by Goering at a meeting of the Ministerial Council on 27 May 1936, attended by the defendant Krosigk, that "All measures are to be considered from the standpoint of an assured waging of war."
In August 1936, Hitler founded the Four Year Plan under Goering as Plenipotentiary, to achieve, as he said, the following tasks:
1. The German Army must be ready for combat within 4 years, 2. The German economy must be mobilized for war within 4 years.
The IMT in its judgment noted that Minister of Economics Funk:1 On October 14, 1939, after the war had begun, made a speech in which he stated that the economic and financial departments of Germany working under the Four Year plan had been engaged in the secret economic preparation for war for over a year.
Numerous other descriptions of the nature of the Four Year Plan, as well as a mass of proof of its actual activities, confirm the accuracy of Funk's statements. Thus, in November 1936, General Thomas, Head of the Military Economic ----------------
1. Vol. I, Trial of the Major War Criminals, p. 132.
COURT IV CASE II Staff of the Wehrmacht, stated that:
...the Four Year Plan is military economy at its purest. A month later, Goering stated to a group of industrialists:
We are already on the threshold of mobilization and we are at war, only the guns are not yet being fired.
One of the major projects of the Four Year Plan in the field of heavy industry was the establishment of the Hermann Goering Works in 1937. The initial purpose of the Hermann Goering Works was the exploitation of deposits of German iron ore which were of such low grade that private industry had not found it profitable to develop them, but had relied upon the importation of iron ore from foreign countries. It is quite obvious that iron was, as Goering stated before the IMT, "a basic prerequisite for the re-establishment of the armament industry".1 These defendants could not fall to know the purpose of the iron ore program, as well as of the Four Year Plan of which it was a part, as one of preparation for aggression.
On the 17th of March 1937 Koerner, Pleiger and Keppler attended a meeting of the Working Committee of the Four Year Plan at which Goering stated:
In the name of the Fuehrer who has specially charged me to declare that he will not deviate from this course, I declare as my standpoint, that it must be possible to mine as much ores from the German soil as are necessary for the actual needs of war.
...
.... the shortage of ores must not endanger the program of munition production or armaments in case of war.
A short time later on 23 July 1937 Goering, in pursuance of the Four Year Plan and on the instigation of Pleiger, announced the establishment of the Hermann Goering Works with the words "Iron is the decisive raw material to win freedom and space for the people". Koerner became chairman of the Supervisory Board and Pleiger technical manager and chairman of the ------------------1. Transcript of IMT Proceedings, p. 6083-6086 COURT IV CASE II Managing Board.
Keppler and Kehrl also were members of the Aufsichtsrat of the Goering Works and of its numerous affiliated companies.
It is impossible to describe here more than the broad outlines of the pervasive authority and activities of the Four Year Plan and of its important offshoot, the Hermann Goering Works. It will appear from the proof that both these organizations, like the Foreign Office, kept pace with each anticipated aggression. Thus for example on 14 October 1938, just two weeks after the Munich Pact, a speech by Goering reveals clearly that in the calculations of officials of the Four Year Plan, not merely the Sudetenland but all of Czechoslovakia was already counted on as belonging to Germany.