26 Nov. 45
MR. ALDERMAN: Did you have reference to the last
paragraph headed "Working principles"?
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, the one after that.
MR. ALDERMAN: Yes. Might I ask that the German interpreter read
that, as it can be translated into the other languages. It is on Page
16 of the original.
BY THE INTERPRETER: "Page 16. Purpose:
"1. Study of the entire problem;
"2. Study of the events;
"3. Study of the means needed;
"4. Study of the necessary training.
"Men with great powers of imagination and high technical
training must belong to the staff, as well as officers with sober
sceptic powers of understanding.
"Working principles:
"1. No one is to take part in this, who does not have to
know of it.
"2. No one can find out more than he must know.
"3. When must the person in question know it at the very
latest? No one may know anything before it is necessary that he know
it.
"On Göring's question, the Führer decided that:
a) The armed forces determine what shall be built;
b) In the shipbuilding program nothing is to be changed;
c) The armament programs are to be modeled on the years 1943 or
1944."--Schmundt certified this text.
MR. ALDERMAN: Mr. President, the translation was
closer than I had anticipated.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes.
MR. ALDERMAN: We think, as I have just said, that this document
leaves nothing unproved in those allegations in the Indictment. It
demonstrates that the Nazi conspirators were proceeding in accordance
with a plan. It demonstrates the cold-blooded premeditation of the
assault on Poland. It demonstrates that the questions concerning
Danzig, which the Nazis had agitated with Poland as a political
pretext, were not true questions, but were false issues, issues
agitated to conceal their motive of aggressive expansion for food and
"Lebensraum."
In this presentation of condemning documents, concerning the
initiation of war in September 1939, I must bring to the attention of
the Tribunal a group of documents concerning an address by Hitler to
his chief military commanders, at Obersalzberg on