17 Dec. 45
COL. STOREY: Your Honor, in connection with the policy
directives, the Führerprinzip goes from the top to the bottom; and
if that policy is adopted, they may, by directive, send it as far as the
Blockleiter. He says to discuss it in connection with the Reichsleiter,
who are the Party directors; and I assume that, if the Party directors
establish it as a policy, then they were to issue appropriate directives
to the other subordinate members. Mr. Lambert ,has suggested also that
it would not be possible to discuss this matter with all the Leadership
Corps and therefore they discussed it with the Party directors.
THE TRIBUNAL (Mr. Biddle): Does that show they did discuss it with the
directors?
COL. STOREY: No, Sir, that doesn't follow; but it shows that it was a
subject of discussion for the board of directors of the Nazi Party.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, but the question is, who are the directors?
COL. STOREY: Five or six of them sit here; a total of 16.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, but I thought that you were asking us to declare
the whole of the organization down to the Blockleiter as criminal.
COL. STOREY: That is true, Your Honor, but this is one evidence, one
instance of the criminality of the organization and we cannot prove at
each stage that all of them knew about it. We are trying to select
different offenses and different crimes that were committed within the
Party.
Document 107-PS, Exhibit USA-351, which we now offer in evidence, is a
circular letter, dated 17 June 1938, addressed by the Defendant Bormann
as Reichsleiter and Deputy of the Führer to all Reichsleiter and
Gauleiter. Bormann's letter encloses a copy of rules, prepared by
Reichsleiter Hierl, setting forth certain restrictive regulations with
respect to participation of the Reich Labor Service in religious
celebrations. I quote pertinent portions of the directions issued by
Reichsleiter Hierl, beginning with the first paragraph in the list of
directions in Document 107-PS, on Page 1 of the English translation:
"The Reich Labor Service is a
training school in which the German youth should be educated to
national unity in the spirit of National Socialism ...
"What religious beliefs a person has is not a decisive factor,
but it is decisive that he first of all feels himself a German.
"All confessional discussions are forbidden in the Reich Labor
Service because it disturbs the comrade-like harmony of all the Labor
Service men and the Labor Service women.