4 Jan. 46

Afternoon Session
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will sit tomorrow in closed session to consider matters of procedure, and there will therefore be no public session tomorrow.

COL. TAYLOR: Your Lordship, I have just one more document dealing with this subject of the structure of the group before passing on to the substantive charges of criminality.

This document is C-78, which is already in evidence as Exhibit Number USA-139. That will be found in Volume II of the document book: This document is the official command invitation to participate in the consultation at the Reich Chancellery on 14 June 1941, 8 days prior to the attack on the Soviet Union. This is one of the meetings that was referred to in the last paragraph of the affidavits by Halder and Von Brauchitsch, which were read into the record this morning. It is signed by Colonel Schmundt, the chief Wehrmacht adjutant to Hitler, and is dated at Berchtesgaden, 9 June 1941. It begins:

"In re: Conference Barbarossa" — that being the code for the attack on the Soviet Union — "the Führer and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces has ordered reports on Barbarossa by the commanders of army groups and armies and naval and air commanders of equal rank."

That is, as the Tribunal will see once again, the very group specified in the bottom line of the chart on the wall, army groups, armies, naval, and air commanders of similar rank.

This document likewise includes a list of the participants in this conference, and I would just like in closing on this subject to run through that list to point out who the participants in this conference were and how closely they parallel the structure of the group as we find it in the Indictment. The Tribunal will see that the list of participants begins at the foot of Page 1 of the translation:

General Field Marshal Von Brauchitsch, who was the Commander-in-Chief of the Army and a member of the group; General Halder, who was Chief of the Army Staff and a member of the group; then three subordinates, who were not members of the group: Paulus, Heusinger, and Gyldenfeldt.

Navy: Captain Wagner, who was Chief of the Operations Staff, Operations Division of the naval war staff, not a member of the group. On the air side: General Milch, State Secretary and General Inspector of the Air Force, again not a member of the group; Jeschonnek, Chief of the General Staff of the Air Force and a member of the group; and two of his assistants.