IMT01-T182
VolumeVolume I — Page 182
strict military lines, and as early as 1933 the Wehrmacht was cooperating in providing pre-military training for the Reich Youth.
The Nazi Government endeavored to unite the Nation in support of their policies through the extensive use of propaganda. A number of agencies was set up, whose duty was to control and influence the press, the radio, films, publishing firms, etc., in Germany, and to supervise entertainment and cultural and artistic activities. All these agencies came under Goebbels' Ministry of the People's Enlightenment and Propaganda, which together with a corresponding organization in the NSDAP and the Reich Chamber of Culture, was ultimately responsible for exercising this supervision. The Defendant Rosenberg played a leading part in disseminating the National Socialist doctrines on behalf of the Party, and the Defendant Fritzsche, in conjunction with Goebbels, performed the same task for the State.
The greatest emphasis was laid on the supreme mission of the German People to lead and dominate by virtue of their Nordic blood and racial purity; and the ground was thus being prepared for the acceptance of the idea of German world supremacy.
Through the effective control of the radio and the press, the German People, during the years which followed 1933, were subjected to the most intensive propaganda in furtherance of the regime. Hostile criticism, indeed criticism of any kind, was forbidden, and the severest penalties were imposed on those who indulged in it.
Independent judgment, based on freedom of thought, was rendered quite impossible.
During the years immediately following Hitler's appointment as Chancellor, the Nazi Government set about re-organizing the economic life of Germany, and in particular the armament industry. This was done on a vast scale and with extreme thoroughness.
It was necessary to lay a secure financial foundation for the building of armaments, and in April 1936 the Defendant Göring was appointed coordinator for raw materials and foreign exchange, and empowered to supervise all State and Party activities in these fields. In this capacity he brought together the War Minister, the Minister of Economics, the Reich Finance Minister, the President of the Reichsbank and the Prussian Finance Minister to discuss problems connected with war mobilization, and on 27 May 1936, in addressing these men, Göring opposed any financial limitation of war production and added that "all measures are to be considered from the standpoint of an assured waging of war." At the Party Rally in Nuremberg in 1936, Hitler announced the establishment of the
