8 Jan. 46
A directive of the 22d of June 1933, which required all
officials to watch the statements of civil servants and to denounce to
the Defendant Göring those who made critical remarks. The failure
to make such reports was to be regarded as proof of hostile attitude.
Then there was the directive of the 23rd of June 1933, which suppressed
all activities of the Social Democratic Party, including meetings and
the party press, and ordered the confiscation of its property. There was
the directive of the 30th of June 1933, which directed the Gestapo
authorities to report to the Labor Trustees on the political attitude of
the workers. There was the directive of the 15th of January 1934, which
ordered the Gestapo and the frontier police to keep track of émigrés
particularly political émigrés and Jews residing
in neighboring countries, and to arrest them and to put them in
concentration camps if they returned to Germany.
The essential ruthlessness of Göring is further illustrated by a
well-known bloody episode. After the elimination of the forces of the
opposition, the Nazis felt it necessary to dispose of non-conformists
within their own ranks. This they accomplished in what has become known
as the Röhm Purge of the 30th of June 1934. The Defendant Frick, a
chief conspirator in his own right, stated in that connection, in an
affidavit, that many people were murdered who had nothing to do with the
internal SA revolt, but who were "just not liked very well."
Göring's role in this sordid affair was related less than 2 weeks
after the event by Hitler in a speech to the Reichstag, and I would like
to offer in evidence as Exhibit Number USA-576 our Document 3442-PS, in
which is contained the speech of Hitler made on the 13th of July 1934 in
the Reichstag. It is published in Das Archiv, Volume 4, at Page
505. I quote:
"Meanwhile Minister President Göring
had already received my instructions that in case of a purge he was to
take analogous measures at once in Berlin and in Prussia. With an iron
fist he beat down the attack on the National Socialist State before it
could develop."
With the
accession of the Nazis to power Göring at once assumed a number of
the highest and most influential positions also in the Reich. The proof
already presented on the composition and functions of the Reich Cabinet
and of the offices held by Göring shows him to have been, in fact,
the most important executive of the Nazi State.
A member of the Reichstag since 1928 and its President since 1932, he
was a member of the Cabinet from the beginning as Reich