8 Jan. 46
excerpt from Rühle, Das Dritte Reich. I
read from the fourth paragraph of the excerpt, if Your Honor pleases,
which is an excerpt from a decree signed by Hitler, and it reads as
follows:
"Minister President, Colonel General
Göring will take the measures necessary for the accomplishment of
the tasks given to him and has the authority to issue decrees and
general administrative directives. He, for this purpose, is authorized
to question and issue directives to all authorities, including the
highest Reich authorities, and all agencies of the Party, its
formations and attached organizations."
In this capacity Göring convened the War Minister, the Defendant
Schacht as Minister of Economics and President of the Reichsbank, and
the Finance Minister for the Reich and the State of Prussia to discuss
inter-agency problems connected with war mobilization. At a meeting of
this group on the 12th of May 1936, when the question of the prohibitive
cost of synthetic raw material substitutes arose, Göring decided:
"If we have war tomorrow we must help
ourselves by substitutes. Then money will not play any role at all. If
that is the case, then we must be ready to create the prerequisites
for that in peacetime."
A
few days later, on the 27th of May 1936, at a meeting of the same group
Göring opposed any limitations dictated by orthodox financial
policies. He said that "all measures are to be considered from the
standpoint of an assured waging of war."
The well-known Four Year Plan was proclaimed by Hitler at the 1936
Nuremberg Party Day. Göring was appointed Plenipotentiary in charge
of the program, which was intended to achieve national self-sufficiency.
Furthermore, Göring commented in 1936 that his chief task as
Plenipotentiary was "to put the whole economy on a war footing
within 4 years." I would like to offer into evidence, as Exhibit
Number USA-579, our Document EC-408, so that I may direct the Tribunal's
attention to a memorandum, dated the 30th of December 1936, of the
Defense Division of the Wehrmacht, entitled, "Memorandum on the
Four Year Plan and Preparation of the War Economy"; and in the
third paragraph of the translation, or at Page 2, in the middle of
Paragraph Number 3 in the German original, there is the statement
registered in the protocol, in the memorandum, that:
"Minister President General Göring
as Commissioner for the Four Year Plan, by authority of the Führer
and Reich Chancellor, granted 18 of October 1936.