10 Dec.
45
"The Reich Minister for Foreign
Affairs then stressed again that, without any doubt, this year
presented the most favorable opportunity for Japan, if she felt strong
enough and had sufficient anti-tank weapons at her disposal, to attack
Russia, which certainly would never again be as weak as she was at the
moment."
I now wish to come
to that aspect of this conspiracy which is in a large measure
responsible for the appearance of millions of Americans in uniform all
over the world.
The Nazi preparations and collaboration with the Japanese against the
United States, as noted by the United States Chief of Counsel in his
opening statement, present a two-fold aspect; one of preparations by the
Nazis themselves for an attack from across the Atlantic, and the other
of fomenting war in the Pacific.
In the course of my presentation of the Nazi exhortations to the
Japanese to war against the British Commonwealth and the U.S.S.R., I
have referred to some documents and quoted some sentences relating to
the United States. I shall take those documents up again in their
relevant passages to show their particular application. I have also, in
the treatment of Ribbentrop's urging the Japanese to war against the
U.S.S.R., gone beyond the dates of 7 December and 11 December 1941, when
the Japanese and German Governments respectively initiated and declared
aggressive war against the United States.
Apart from the advantage and convenience of presentation, these
documents have indicated the Nazi awareness and acceptance of the
direction in which their actions were leading, as well as the universal
aspects of their conspiracy and of their alliance with the Japanese.
Their intentions against the United States must be viewed in the focus
of both their over-all plan and their immediate commitments elsewhere.
That their over-all plan involved ultimate aggressive war against the
United States was intimated by the Defendant Göring in a speech on
8 July 1938, when these conspirators had already forcibly annexed
Austria and were perfecting their plans against Czechoslovakia.
This speech was delivered to representatives of the aircraft industry,
and the copy that we have was transmitted as the enclosure to a secret
memorandum from Göring's adjutant to General Udet, who was then in
charge of experimental research for the Luftwaffe. It is contained in
our Document R-140, which I now offer as Exhibit USA-160.
I invite the Tribunal's attention to the statement in the covering
memorandum that the enclosure is a copy of the shorthand minutes of the
conference. I shall not go through the long speech in which Göring
called for increased aircraft production and pointed to the