22 Nov. 45

trial briefs and documents on the other phases of the Common Plan or Conspiracy up to 1939.

RALPH G. ALBRECHT (Associate Trial Counsel for the United States): May it please the Tribunal, the Prosecution will now allude briefly to certain facts, which may well be considered to be within Judicial purview, the consideration of which the Prosecution has found useful in understanding and evaluating the evidence that will be presented in the course of the Trial, in support of the allegations of the Indictment.

In the opinion of the Prosecution, some preliminary references must be made to the National Socialist German Labor Party, the NSDAP, which in itself is not one of the defendant organizations in this proceeding, but which is represented among the defendant organizations by its most important formations, namely the Leadership Corps of the NSDAP, which you will hear referred to as Das Korps der Politischen Leiter der NSDAP, the SS (Die Schutzstaffeln der NSDAP), and the SA (Die Sturmabteilungen) of the Party.

With the permission of the Tribunal the Prosecution will offer at this point, as its first exhibit, a chart showing the structure and organization of the NSDAP, substantially as it existed at the peak of its development in March 1945. This chart has been prepared by the Prosecution on the basis of information contained in important and well-known official publications of the National Socialist Party with which the defendants must be presumed to have been well acquainted. We refer particularly to the Organization Book of the Party, (Das Organisationsbuch der NSDAP), and to the National Socialist Year Book, (Nationalsozialistisches Jahrbuch), of both of which, be it noted, the late Defendant Robert Ley was the chief editor or publisher. Both books appeared, in the course of time, in many editions and in hundreds of thousands of copies, throughout the period when the National Socialist Party was in control of the German Reich and of the German people. The chart furthermore, which we are offering has been certified on its face as correct by a high official of the Nazi Party, namely Franz Xaver Schwarz, its treasurer (Reichsschatzmeister der NSDAP) and its official in charge of Party administration; and his affidavit is being submitted with the chart, and I now wish to offer this chart in evidence. (Document Number 2903-PS, Exhibit USA-2.)

We have been able to have this chart duplicated, and, with the permission of the Tribunal, we are making it available to all concerned.

Before I offer some remarks of explanation concerning the organizatlon of the National Socialist German Labor Party, which, we believe, will be found useful in connection with the Prosecution's