The Organization Book of the Party imposes a similar requirement of regular and periodical conferences and meetings upon all the other Hoheitsträger, including the Kreisleiter, Ortsgruppenleiter, Zellenleiter, and Blockleiter.
The clear consequence of such regular and obligatory conferences and meetings by all the Hoheitsträger, both with their own staff officers and with the political leaders and staff officers subordinate to them, was that basic Nazi policies and directives issued by Hitler and the leader of the Party Chancellery, the Defendant Bormann, directly through the chain of command of the Hoheitsträger, and functional policies issued by the various Reichsleiter and Reich officeholders down functional and technical channels, were certain to be notified to, received, and understood by the bulk of the membership of the Leadership Corps.
If I may digress from my text and call attention to this chart, you will see the dotted lines connecting down from the Party level, Gau level, to similar offices in the lower level.
Now I next come to the statistics relating to the Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party and the evidence relating to the size of the Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party. As previously shown, the Leadership Corps comprised the sum of officials of the Nazi Party including, in addition to Hitler and the members of the Reichsleitung, such as the Reichsleiter and the Reich officeholders, a hierarchy of Hoheitsträger, which I have described, as well as the staff officers attached to the Hoheitsträger. I now offer in evidence Document 2958-PS, Exhibit Number USA-325; and this is Issue Number 8, 1939, of the official Leadership Corps organ Der Hoheitsträger, similar to the one I exhibited a moment ago, and this is for the year 1939. This shows that there were: 40 Gaue and 1 Foreign Gau, each led by a Gauleiter—that is 41; 808 Kreisleiter; 28,376 Ortsgruppenleiter; 89,378 Zellenleiter; and 463,048 Blockleiter.
However, as shown by the evidence previously introduced, the Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party was composed not only of the Hoheitsträger, but also of the staff officers or officeholders attached to the Hoheitsträger. The Gauleiter, for example, was assisted by a deputy Gauleiter, several Gau inspectors, and a staff which was divided into main offices (Hauptämter) and offices (Ämter) including such departments as the Gau staff office, treasury, education office, propaganda office, press office, university teachers, communal policy, and so forth. As previously shown, the staff office structure of the Gau was substantially represented in the lower levels of the Leadership Corps organization such as the Kreise, the Ortsgruppen, and so on. The Kreise and the smaller territorial areas of the Party were also organized into staff offices dealing with the various activities of the Leadership Corps. But, of course, the importance and the number of such staff offices diminished as the unit dropped in the hierarchy; so that, while the Kreisleiter staff contained all or most of the departments mentioned for the Gau, the Ortsgruppe had fewer departments and the lower ones fewer still.
Firm figures have not been found as to the total number of staff officers, as distinguished from the Hoheitsträger or political commanders themselves, included within the Leadership Corps.
With respect to the scope and composition of the Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party, the Prosecution adopts the view and respectfully submits to this Tribunal, that in defining the limits of the Leadership Corps, staff officers should only be included down to and including the Kreis. Upon this basis, the Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party did constitute the Führer, the members of the Reichsleitung, the five levels of the Hoheitsträger, and the staff officers attached to the 40-odd Gauleiter and the 800 or 900 Kreisleiter. Adopting this definition of the Leadership Corps, it will be seen that the total figure for the membership of that organization, based upon the statistics cited from the basic handbook for Germany, amounts to around 600,000. And by excepting the staff officers of the lower levels, as is provided in the Indictment, and as just defined, and without prejudice to any later individual action against those excepted, we think the figure of around 600,000 is approximately correct.
It is true that this figure is based upon an admittedly limited view of the size of the membership of the Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party, for the evidence has shown that the Leadership Corps, in effect, embraced staff officers attached to the subordinate Hoheitsträger; and the inclusion of such staff officers in the estimation of the size of the Leadership Corps, if we had so recommended, would have been considerably enlarged so that the final figure, if we had included staff officers to the Blockleiter, would have been 2,000,000, in round numbers.
MR. FRANCIS BIDDLE (Member for the United States): What reason is there for excluding them?
COL. STOREY: For this reason, Your Honor, a person on the last level of Blockleiter might have called on an individual laborer who might have been on his staff; but he certainly did not have the discretion that a staff leader did, for example, or the Gauleiter, say, as a propaganda man who disseminated information down as well as helped participate in plans and policies of the upper organization.
The subordinate staff officers thus excluded were responsible functionally to the higher staff officers with respect to their particular specialty, such as propaganda, Party organization, and so on, and to their respective Hoheitsträger with respect to discipline and policy control and, as I mentioned, likewise such higher staff officers participated in planning and policy and passed those policies down through technical levels or technical channels as opposed to command channels.
“The Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party joined and participated in the Common Plan or Conspiracy” is the next title.
The program of the Nazi Party, proclaimed by Hitler on 24 February 1920, contained the chief elements of the Nazi plan for domination and conquest. I now quote from Document 1708-PS, which is the Year Book for 1941, published by the Party, and edited by the late Robert Ley. This book contains the famous 25 points of the Party which I now offer in evidence as Exhibit Number USA-324. Diverting from the text—I don’t intend to quote these 25 Party objectives, but only refer to a few of them, and I quote from Page 1 of the English translation of Document 1708-PS:
Point 1:
“We demand the unification of all Germans in Greater Germany on the basis of the right of self-determination of peoples.”
Point 2 of that program which I quote demanded unilateral abolition of the Peace Treaties of Versailles and St. Germain:
“We demand equality of rights for the German people in respect to the other nations; abrogation of the Peace Treaties of Versailles and St. Germain.”
Point 3:
“We demand land and territory (colonies) for the sustenance of our people and colonization by our surplus population.”
Point 4:
“Only a member of the race can be a citizen. A member of the race can only be one who is of German blood without consideration of confession. Consequently, no Jew can be a member of the race.”
Point 6:
“We demand that every public office, of any sort whatsoever, whether in the Reich, the county, or municipality, be filled by citizens only. We combat the corrupting parliamentary regime, office-holding only according to party inclinations without consideration of character or abilities.”
Point 22—this is from Page 2 of the English translation of Document 1708-PS:
“We demand the abolition of the mercenary troops and the formation of a National Army.”
Back to Page 1—another quotation:
“The program is the political foundation of the NSDAP and accordingly the primary political law of the State. . . .
“All legal precepts are to be applied in the spirit of the Party program.
“Since the taking over of power, the Führer has succeeded in the realization of the essential portions of the Party program from the fundamentals to the details.
“The Party program of the NSDAP was proclaimed on 24 February 1920 by Adolf Hitler at the first large Party gathering in Munich and since that day has remained unaltered. The National Socialist philosophy is summarized in 25 points.”
As