17 Dec. 45
of the war of aggression against Norway, the Office
for; Colonial Policy, the Office for Genealogy, and the Office of Racial
Policy.
As will be shown by the chart of the Leadership Corps in the folder
which Your Honors have, certain of the main offices and offices within
the Reichsleitung would appear again within the Gauleitung, or Gau Party
Directorate, and the Kreisleitung, or Party county directorate. It is
thus shown that the Reichsleiter and the main office and officeholders
within the Reichsleitung exercised, through functional channels through
the subordinate offices on lower regional levels, a total control over
the various sectors of the national life of Germany.
I shall next take up the Gauleiter. As will be seen from this
organizational chart of the Nazi Party now before the Tribunal as
Exhibit Number USA-2, for Party purposes Germany was divided into major
administrative regions, Gau, which in turn were subdivided into Kreise
(counties), Ortsgruppen (local chapters), Zellen (cells), and in Blocks
(blocks). A Gauleiter, who was the political leader of the Gau, was in
charge of each Gau or district. Each Gauleiter was appointed by and was
directly responsible to Hitler. I quote from Page 18 of this same
document, 1893-PS, the Organization Book of the NSDAP:
"The Gau represents the concentration
of a number of Party counties" — or Kreise —
"The Gauleiter is directly subordinate to the Führer . . . "The
Gauleiter bears over-all responsibility to the Führer for the
sector of sovereignty entrusted to him. The rights, duties, and
jurisdiction of the Gauleiter result primarily from the mission
assigned by the Führer and apart from that, from detailed
directives."
The
responsibility and function of the Gauleiter and his staff officers or
officeholders were essentially political, namely, to insure the
authority of the Nazi Party within his area, to co-ordinate the
activities of the Party and all its affiliated and supervised
organizations, and to enlarge the influence of the Party over the people
and life in his Gau generally. Following the outbreak of the war, when
it became imperative to co-ordinate the various phases of the German war
effort, the Gauleiter were given additional important responsibilities.
The Ministerial Council for the Defense of the Reich, which was a sort
of general staff for civilian defense and the mobilization of the German
war economy, by a decree of 1 September 1939, 1939 Reichsgesetzblatt,
Part I, page 1565, appointed about 16 Gauleiter as Reich Defense
Commissars, concerning which I ask the Tribunal to take judicial notice.
Later, under the impact of mounting military reverses and an
increasingly strained war economy, more and more important
administrative functions were put on a Gau