22 Nov. 45

THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal thinks that the Defense Counsel should each have a copy of these briefs.

MAJOR WALLIS: That will be done, Sir.

THE PRESIDENT: Members of the Defense Counsel: You will understand that I have directed on behalf of the Tribunal that you should each have a copy of this brief.

DR. DIX: We are very grateful for this directive, but none of us has seen any of these documents so far. I assume and hope that these documents will be given to the Defense in the German translation.

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, Major Wallis.

MAJOR WALLIS: I now direct your attention to the rise to power of the Nazi Party.

The 9th of November 1923 warranted the end as well as the beginning of an era. On the 9th of November occurred the historical fact popularly known as the Hitler Putsch. During the night of November 8th to 9th Hitler, supported by the SA under the Defendant Göring, at a meeting in Munich, proclaimed the National Revolution and his dictatorship of Germany, and announced himself as the Chancellor of the Reich. On the following morning the duly constituted authorities of the State, after some bloodshed in Munich, put an end to this illegal attempt to seize the Government. Hitler and some of his followers were arrested and tried, and sentenced to imprisonment.

The new era in the National Socialist movement commences with Hitler's parole from prison in December 1924. With the return of its leader, the Party took up its fight for power once again. The prohibitions invoked by the Government against the Nazi Party at the time of the Munich Putsch gradually were removed and Hitler the Führer of the Party, formally announced that in seeking to achieve its aims to overthrow the Weimar Government, the Party would resort only to "legal" means. A valid inference from these facts may well be suggested, namely that the Party's resort to ``legality" was in reality only a condition on which it was permitted to carry on its activities in a democratically organized state. But consistent with its professed resort to "legality", the Party now participated in the popular elections of the German people and generally took part in political activity. At the same time it engaged in feverish activity to expand the Party membership, its organizational structure and activities. The SA and the SS recruited numerous new members. Hitler's Mein Kampf appeared in 1925. The Hitler Youth was founded. Newspapers were published, among them the Völkischer Beobachter of