23 Nov. 45
The significance of the economic measures adopted and applied by
the conspirators can, of course, be properly appraised only if they
are placed in the larger social and political context of Nazi
Germany. The economic measures were adopted while the conspirators
were, as has already been shown, directing their vast propaganda
apparatus to the glorification of war. They were adopted while the
conspirators were perverting physical training into training for war.
They were adopted while, as my colleagues will show, these
conspirators were threatening to use force and were planning to use
force to achieve their territorial and political objects. In short,
if Your Honors please, these measures constitute in the field of
economics and government administration the same preparation for
aggressive war which dominated every aspect of the Nazi State.
In 1939 and 1940 after the Nazi aggression upon Poland, Holland,
Belgium, and France it became perfectly clear to the world that the
Nazi conspirators had created probably the greatest instrument of
aggression in history.
That machine was built up almost in its entirety in" a
period of less than one decade. In May of 1939 Major General George
Thomas, former Chief of the Military-Economic Staff in the Reich War
Ministry, reported that the German Army had grown from seven Infantry
divisions in 1933 to thirty-nine Infantry divisions, among them four
fully motorized and three mountain divisions, eighteen Corps
Headquarters, five Panzer divisions, twenty-two machine gun
battalions. Moreover, General Thomas stated that the German Navy had
greatly expanded by the launching, among other vessels, of two
battleships of 35,000 tons, four heavy cruisers of 10,000 tons, and
other warships; further, that the Luftwaffe had grown to a point
where it had a strength of 260,000 men, 21 squadrons, consisting of
240 echelons, and 33 anti-aircraft batteries.
He likewise reported that out of the few factories permitted by
the Versailles Treaty there had arisen, and I am quoting, if Your
Honors please, from the document bearing our number EC-28, which
consists of a lecture delivered by Major General Thomas on the 24th
of May 1939 in the Nazi Foreign Office. General Thomas said in
part--or rather he reported--that out of the few factories permitted
by the Versailles Treaty there had arisen:
" . . .the mightiest armament
industry now existing in the world. It has attained the performances
which in part equal the German wartime performances and in part even
surpass them. Germany's crude steel production is today the largest
in the world after America's. The aluminum production exceeds that of
America and of the other countries of the world very considerably.
The output of our rifle, machine