SIXTEENTH DAY

Monday, 10 December 1945

Morning Session
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal has received a letter from Dr. Dix on behalf of the Defendant Schacht. In answer to that the Tribunal wishes the defendants' counsel to know that they will be permitted to make one speech only in accordance with Article 24 (h) of the Charter, and this speech will be at the conclusion of all the evidence.

At the conclusion of the case for the Prosecution, the defendants' counsel will be invited to submit to the Tribunal the evidence they propose to call; but they will be strictly confined to the names of the witnesses and the matters to which their evidence will be relevant, and this submission must not be in the nature of a speech. Is that clear? In case there should be any misunderstanding, what I have just said will be posted up on the board in the defendants' Counsel Room so that you can study it there.

MR. ALDERMAN: May it please the Tribunal, when the Tribunal rose Friday, I had just reached the point in my discussion of aggression against the U.S.S.R. where, with the campaign in the West at an end, the Nazi conspirators had begun the development of their plans to attack the Soviet Union. Preliminary high level planning and action was in progress. Hitler had indicated earlier in November that more detailed and definite instructions would be issued. These would be issued as soon as the general outline of the Army's operational plans had been submitted to him and approved by him. We had thus reached the point in the story indicated on the outline submitted last Friday as Part 3 of the Plan Barbarossa.

By the 18th of December 1940, the general outline of the Army's operational plan having been submitted to Hitler, the basic strategical directive to the High Command of the Army, Navy, and the Air Force for Barbarossa — Directive Number 21 — was issued. This directive, which for the first time marks the plan to invade the Soviet Union, was specifically referred to in an order although the order was classified top secret. It also marked the first use of the code word Barbarossa to denote this operation. The directive is Number 446-PS, and was offered in evidence in the course of my opening statement as Exhibit USA-31. Since it was fully discussed at that time, it is, I believe, sufficient now