Text: English     International Military Tribunal "Blue Series," Vol. 2, p. 229
		23 Nov. 45 the Reich Defense Council would immediately undertake to prepare for war emergency He stressed the urgency of the task of organizing a war economy, and announced that the Council stood ready to brush aside all of their obstacles. Fully aware of the fact that their action was in flagrant violation of the Treaty of Versailles, the Defendant Keitel emphasized the extreme importance of absolute secrecy when he said, and I quote from the document bearing the number EC-177, on Page 5 of that document. Colonel Keitel is speaking, and he said: "No document ought to be lost, since otherwise it may fall into the hands of the enemies' intelligence service. Orally transmitted matters are not provable; they can be denied by us in Geneva." The singleness of purpose with which the Nazi conspirators geared the German economy to the forging of a war machine is even further shown by the secret minutes of the sixth meeting of the working committee of the so-called Reich Defense Council, held on the 7th of February 1934, as shown in the document bearing the number EC-404, marked "Secret Command Matter", and dated the 7th of February 1934. At this meeting, Lieutenant General Beck pointed out that: "The actual state of preparation is the purpose of this session." Parenthetically, I might say that on the first page of that document it appears that besides Lieutenant General Beck, the Defendant Jodl was present, then Lieutenant Colonel Jodl. There was a Captain Schmundt; and there was a Colonel Guderian there; and there was a Major General Von Reichenau; there was a Major Warlimont; and these are names that Your Honors will hear more of in the course of the presentation of this case. Detailed measures of financing a future war were discussed and it was pointed out that the financial aspects of the war economy would be regulated by the Reich Finance Ministry and the Reichsbank, which was headed by the Defendant Schacht. On May 31st of 1935--as stated earlier in this morning's discussion--the Defendant Schacht was secretly appointed plenipotentiary-general of the war economy, and he had the express function of placing all economic forces of the nation in the services of the Nazi war machine. By the secret defense law of May 21, 1935, under which Schacht received this secret appointment, he was in effect, given charge of the entire war economy. In case of war, he was to be virtual economic dictator of Germany. His task was to place all economic forces into the service for the conduct of the war and to secure economically the life of the German people. The Ministers of 229
		Text: English     International Military Tribunal "Blue Series," Vol. 2, p. 229     Last modified: October 10, 1998 Copyright © 1998 The Mazal Library and The Holocaust History Project. All rights reserved. Technical/administrative contact: webmaster@holocaust-history.org Find a typo? Let us know.