10 Dec.
45
"2. The reports will be made on
Saturday, 14 June 1941, at the Reich Chancellery, Berlin.
"3. Timetable:
"a) 1100 hours, "Silver Fox"; b) 1200 hours-1400
hours, Army Group South; c) 1400 hours-1530 hours, lunch party for all
participants in conference; d) from 1530 hours, Baltic, Army Group
North, Army Group Center, in this order."
It is signed by Schmundt.
There is attached a list of participants and the order in which they
will report which I shall not read. The list includes, however, a large
number of the members of the Defendant High Command and General Staff
group as of that date. Among those to participate were, of course, the
Defendants Göring Keitel, Jodl, and Raeder.
I believe that the documents which I have introduced and quoted from
are more than sufficient to establish conclusively the premeditation and
cold-blooded calculation which marked the military preparations for the
invasion of the Soviet Union. Starting almost a full year before the
commission of the crime, the Nazi conspirators planned and prepared
every military detail of their aggression against the Soviet Union with
all of that thoroughness and meticulousness which has come to be
associated with the German character. Although several of these
defendants played specific parts in this military phase of the planning
and preparation for the attack, it is natural enough that the leading
roles were performed, as we have seen, by the military figures the
Defendants Göring Keitel, Jodl, and Raeder.
Next, preparation for plunder — plans for the economic
exploitation and spoliation of the Soviet Union.
Not only was there detailed preparation for the invasion from a purely
military standpoint, but equally elaborate and detailed .planning and
preparation was undertaken by the Nazi conspirators to ensure that their
aggression would prove economically profitable.
A little later in my presentation I shall discuss with the Tribunal the
motives -which led these conspirators to attack, without provocation, a
neighboring power. I shall at that time show that the crime was
motivated by both political and economic considerations. The economic
basis, however, may be simply summarized at this point as the greed of
the Nazi conspirators for the raw material, food, and other supplies
which their neighbor possessed and which they conceived of themselves as
needing for the maintenance of their war machine. To these defendants
such a need was translated indubitably as a right, and they early began
planning and preparing with typical care and detail to ensure that every
bit of the plunder which it would be possible to reap in the course of
their aggression would be exploited to their utmost benefit.