18 Dec. 45

Where political considerations of foreign policy required that another select group be chosen to act as advisors, the secret Cabinet was created and populated with members of the ordinary Cabinet.

The Reichsregierung was dominated by the Nazi Party through the control exercised over its legislation by the Deputy of the Führer, Hess, and later by the Leader of the Party Chancellery, Bormann. Party control was also effected through the individual membership of all members and the union of various key Cabinet and Party positions in one man. As a result of this fusion of the Party and State, an enormous concentration of political power was gathered into the Cabinet.

The laws enacted by the Cabinet established the framework within which the Nazi conspirators established their control of Germany, set forth in Count One of the Indictment, by virtue of which they were enabled to commit the crimes alleged in Counts One, Two, Three, and Four of the Indictment. The Cabinet enacted harsh penal laws, discriminatory laws, confiscatory laws, in violation of the principles of justice and humanity. Decrees enacted by the' Ministerial Council during the war clothed the criminal acts of the Nazi conspirators with a semblance of legality. As an instrument of the Party, the Cabinet effectively implemented the notorious points of the Party program. Finally, the Cabinet, almost immediately upon the coming into power of Hitler, became a war-planning group through its establishment in 1933 of a Reich Defense Council and its active participation in the schemes and plans for waging aggressive war.

It is therefore most respectfully submitted that, by virtue of all of the foregoing, the Reichsregierung, as defined in Appendix D, Page 35, of the Indictment, should be declared a criminal group within the meaning of Article 9 of Section II of the Charter.

That concludes, if Your Honor pleases, this presentation, and the next subject is the SA. It will take just about a couple of minutes to be ready for that.

May it please the Tribunal, I passed up Document Book Y, which contains the English translations of the documents relied upon in this presentation.

The organization which I shall now present for your consideration is the Sturmabteilung, the organization which the world remembers as the "Brown Shirts" or "Storm Troops," the gangsters of the early days of Nazi terrorism. It came to be known in later years as the SA, and I shall refer to it in that manner in the course Of my presentation.

The SA was the first of the organizations conceived and created by the Nazis as the instrument and weapon to effectuate their evil