17 Dec. 45
CAPT. HARRIS: Implicit in Defendant Rosenberg's
statement that the Hague Regulations are, not applicable to the Soviet
Union is the recognition by him that the conspirators' actions in the
Soviet Union flagrantly violated the Hague Regulations. The statement
indicates that the conspirators were utterly contemptuous of applicable
principles of international law.
Mr. Dodd has already introduced into evidence Document 294-PS, now
Exhibit Number USA-185, in connection with the slave labor presentation.
This document is a top-secret memorandum, dated 25 October 1942, which
was found in Defendant Rosenberg's files. It was written by Bräutigam,
who was a high official in Defendant .Rosenberg's Ministry for the
Occupied Eastern Territories. I should like to quote two additional
passages from this document. I quote from the English text Page 1, the
first full paragraph, line 17 to 20. The German text is at Page 1, the
first full paragraph, lines 22 to 25.
"In the East, Germany is carrying on
a three-fold war: A war for the destruction of bolshevism, a war for
the destruction of the Greater Russian empire, and finally a war for
the acquisition of colonial territory for colonizing purposes and
economic exploitation....
"With the inherent instinct of the Eastern peoples, the
primitive man soon found out also that for Germany the slogan:
'Liberation from Bolshevism' was only a pretext to enslave the Eastern
peoples according to her own methods."
This completes, Your Honors, the list of the exhibits with respect to
the Soviet Union which we propose to introduce at this time. As I
mentioned at the outset of this presentation, these exhibits do not
disclose all of the conspirators' plans with respect to the occupied
countries but they do, we submit, show a constant pattern, a pattern of
ruthless Germanization and destruction.
In conclusion we desire to offer in evidence two documents which
disclose that German industrialists and financiers aided and abetted
Himmler in his relentless program of Germanization, exploitation,
oppression, and destruction.
I first offer in evidence Document Number EC-454, which is Exhibit
Number USA-321. This document was found in the vaults of the Stein Bank
in Cologne among the files of the banker Baron Kurt von Schröder by
a joint British-American team, headed by Colonel Kellam on the British
side and Captain Roth on the American side. It is a carbon copy of a
letter from Von Schröder to Himmler, dated 27 August 1943, and
bears Von Schröder initials. I quote it in its entirety:
"My very honorable Reichsführer
With great joy I learn of your appointment as Reich Minister of the
Interior and take