Text: English     International Military Tribunal "Blue Series," Vol. 3, p. 365
		10 Dec. 45 far beyond any legitimate exploitation under the Geneva Convention principles for military purpose. Undoubtedly the demands of the German war economy for food and raw material served to revive the attractiveness on the economic side of this theory while the difficulties Germany was experiencing in defeating England reaffirmed for the Nazi conspirators the temporarily forgotten Nazi political imperative of eliminating, as a political factor, their one formidable opponent on the continent. As early as 1923 Hitler outlined this theory in some detail in Mein Kampf where he stated, and I quote from Page 641 of the Houghton Mifflin English edition, as follows: "There are two reasons which induce me to submit to a special examination the relation of Germany to Russia: (1) Here perhaps we are dealing with the most decisive concern of all German foreign affairs; and (2) this question is also the touchstone for the political capacity of the young National Socialist movement to think clearly and to act correctly." And again at Page 654 of the same edition: "And so we National Socialists consciously draw a line beneath the foreign policy tendency of our pre-war period. We take up where we broke off 600 years ago. We stop the endless German movement to the south and west, and turn our gaze toward the land in the East. At long last we break off the colonial and commercial policy of the pre-war period and shift to the soil policy of the future. "If we speak of soil in Europe today, we can primarily have in mind only Russia and her vassal border states." The political portion of this economy or purpose is clearly reflected in the stated purposes of the organization which the Defendant Rosenberg set up to administer the Occupied Eastern Territories. I have already discussed this material and need not repeat it now. In a speech, however, which he delivered 2 days before the attack to the people most interested in the problem of the East, Rosenberg re-stated in his usual somewhat mystic fashion the political basis for the campaign and its inter-relationship with the economic goal. I should like to read a short extract from that speech, which is Document Number 1058-PS and which I now offer in evidence as Exhibit USA-147. The part I read is from Page 9 of the German text: "The job of feeding the German people stands this year, without a doubt, at the top of the list of Germany's claims in the East; and here the southern territories and the northern Caucasus will have to serve as a balance for the feeding of the German people. We see absolutely no reason for any obligation on our part to feed also the Russian people with the 365
		Text: English     International Military Tribunal "Blue Series," Vol. 3, p. 365     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.