18 Dec. 45
with the notorious SS, but also tends to establish, as
charged in the Indictment, that the Reichsregierung was responsible for
the policies adopted and put into effect by the Government, including
those which comprehended and involved the commission of crimes referred
to in the Indictment. But a mere working alliance would be meaningless
unless there was power. And the Reichsregierung had the power. Short of
Hitler himself, it had practically all the power a government can
exercise. The Prosecution has already offered evidence on how Hitler's
Cabinet and the other Nazi conspirators secured the passage by the
Reichstag of the "Law for the Protection of the People and the
Reich" of 24 March 1933, which has been previously referred to in
Document 2001-PS, which law vested the Cabinet with legislative powers
even to the extent of deviating from previously existing constitutional
law; how such powers were retained even after the members of the Cabinet
were changed; and how the several states, provinces, and municipalities,
which had formerly exercised semi-autonomous powers, were transformed
into the administrative organs of the central government. The ordinary
Cabinet emerged all-powerful from this rapid succession of events. The
words of the Defendant Frick are eloquent upon that achievement. Here is
an article in Document 2380-PS, which I offer in evidence as Exhibit
USA-396; and it is from the 1935 National Socialist Yearbook. I
quote from Page 213 of the original, and it is on Page 1 of the English
translation, the second paragraph:
"The relationship between the Reich
and the States has been put on an entirely new basis never known in
the history of the German people. It gives to the Reich Cabinet" —
Reichsregierung — " unlimited power; it even makes it its
duty to build a completely unified leadership and administration of
the Reich. From now on there is only one national authority: that of
the Reich. Thus, the German Reich has become a unified state; and the
entire administration in the states is carried out only by order of,
or in the name of, the Reich. The state borders are now only
administrative-technical boundaries, but no longer boundaries of
sovereignty. In calm determination, the Reich Cabinet realizes step by
step, supported by the confidence of the entire German people, the
great longing of the nation: the creation of the unified National
Socialist German State."
THE
PRESIDENT: Colonel Storey, that document seems to me to be merely
cumulative. You have established, and other counsel on behalf of the
United States have established, that the Reich Ministers had power to
make laws, and the question is whether you have given any evidence as to
the criminal nature of the Reich Cabinet.