COL. STOREY: In other words, that they called in these subordinate people, as in the meeting of the ministers.
THE TRIBUNAL (Mr. Biddle): What would that show?
COL. STOREY: Well, it just shows the permeation of the Party and the subordinate agencies, showing they could use the Reich Cabinet for whatever purpose they wanted and to devise laws any way they wanted. They called in these subordinate people, in these subordinate positions, to sit with them when they were passing Cabinet measures. I can also call Your Honors’ attention to the Ministerial Council for Defense. It was supposed to be a ministerial-rank Cabinet meeting; and as I just started to show, they called in SS Gruppenführer Heydrich to this meeting.
THE PRESIDENT: There can be no doubt, can there, that there was a Reich Cabinet?
COL. STOREY: No, Sir.
THE PRESIDENT: And that the Reich Cabinet made decrees by this circulatory method? There is no doubt about that.
COL. STOREY: That is right, Sir.
THE PRESIDENT: What does this document add to that?
COL. STOREY: It shows who participated, and how they went out into the Party ranks to bring others, but I will omit the rest of the references to these other individuals.
THE PRESIDENT: But we have had ample evidence before, haven’t we, as to who formed the Reich Cabinet?
COL. STOREY: Yes, Sir. Well, I will skip the rest of the references to other people who participated, and pass over to Page 23 of the record. Before leaving these minutes and as indicative of the activities of the Reichsregierung, I would like to direct the attention of the Tribunal to some of the decrees passed and the minutes discussed at these meetings. At the first meeting of 1 September 1939, 14 decrees were ratified by the Council. Of this group I call the attention of the Tribunal to Decree Number 6, appearing on Page 2 of the translation, and I quote:
THE PRESIDENT: I don’t think you gave us the number, did you?
COL. STOREY: I beg your pardon, Sir. It is the Reichsgesetzblatt, I, Page 1681, of which we ask the Tribunal to take judicial notice. That decree was about the organization of the administration and about the German Security Police in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. That appears in the translation of 2852-PS. Another one that was passed is dated 19 September 1938, on Page 6 of the translation; and I quote from the bottom of the page:
“The Chairman of the Council, General Field Marshal Göring, made comments regarding the structure of civil administration in the occupied Polish territory. He expressed his intentions regarding the economic evacuation measures in this territory. Then the questions of decreasing wages and the questions of working hours and the support of members of families of drafted workers were discussed.”
There are a number of miscellaneous points of discussion appearing, and in Paragraph 2 of the minutes I quote the following as it appears on Page Number 7:
“The chairman directed that all members of the Council regularly receive the situation reports of the Reichsführer SS. Then the question of the population of the future Polish Protectorate was discussed and the housing of Jews living in Germany.”
Finally, I call the attention of the Tribunal to the minutes of the meeting of 15 November 1939, Page 10 of the translation, where, among other things, the treatment of Polish prisoners of war was also discussed.
We submit that this document not only establishes the close working union between agencies of the State and Party, especially with the notorious SS, but also tends to establish, as charged in the Indictment, that the Reichsregierung was responsible for the policies adopted and put into effect by the Government, including those which comprehended and involved the commission of crimes referred to in the Indictment. But a mere working alliance would be meaningless unless there was power. And the Reichsregierung had the power. Short of Hitler himself, it had practically all the power a government can exercise. The Prosecution has already offered evidence on how Hitler’s Cabinet and the other Nazi conspirators secured the passage by the Reichstag of the “Law for the Protection of the People and the Reich” of 24 March 1933, which has been previously referred to in Document 2001-PS, which law vested the Cabinet with legislative powers even to the extent of deviating from previously existing constitutional law; how such powers were retained even after the members of the Cabinet were changed; and how the several states, provinces, and municipalities, which had formerly exercised semi-autonomous powers, were transformed into the administrative organs of the central government. The ordinary Cabinet emerged all-powerful from this rapid succession of events. The words of the Defendant Frick are eloquent upon that achievement. Here is an article in Document 2380-PS, which I offer in evidence as Exhibit USA-396; and it is from the 1935 National Socialist Yearbook. I quote from Page 213 of the original, and it is on Page 1 of the English translation, the second paragraph:
“The relationship between the Reich and the States has been put on an entirely new basis never known in the history of the German people. It gives to the Reich Cabinet”—Reichsregierung—“unlimited power; it even makes it its duty to build a completely unified leadership and administration of the Reich. From now on there is only one national authority: that of the Reich. Thus, the German Reich has become a unified state; and the entire administration in the states is carried out only by order of, or in the name of, the Reich. The state borders are now only administrative-technical boundaries, but no longer boundaries of sovereignty. In calm determination, the Reich Cabinet realizes step by step, supported by the confidence of the entire German people, the great longing of the nation: the creation of the unified National Socialist German State.”
THE PRESIDENT: Colonel Storey, that document seems to me to be merely cumulative. You have established, and other counsel on behalf of the United States have established, that the Reich Ministers had power to make laws, and the question is whether you have given any evidence as to the criminal nature of the Reich Cabinet.
COL. STOREY: If Your Honor pleases, again it was included for the purpose of connecting one of the defendants here . . .
THE PRESIDENT: What I was pointing out was that it was merely cumulative.
COL. STOREY: Yes, all right, Sir. It may be strictly cumulative. I will omit the next reference, which will probably also be cumulative and turn over to . . .
THE PRESIDENT: The same document, you mean?
COL. STOREY: No, Sir. There is another document that I was going to offer, Number 2849-PS. There is a quotation from another book; it probably bears on the same point. I will omit it also. The next is a reference to the Ministerial Council’s being given legislative power. I don’t believe that that has been introduced before—that the Council itself was given legislative powers. That is in Article 2 of the decree of 30 August 1939, Document 2018-PS. The ordinary Cabinet continued to legislate throughout the war.
Obviously, because of the fusion of personnel between the Ministerial Council and the ordinary Cabinet, questions were bound to arise as to what form should lend its name to a particular law. Thus Dr. Lammers, the Chief of the Reich Chancellery and a member of both agencies, wrote a letter on 14 June 1942 to the Plenipotentiary for Reich Administration about this question.
This next document, if the Court please, it may not be necessary to read. It just shows that both agencies continued to legislate side by side, and it would really be cumulative evidence. There were others that possessed legislative powers, besides the ones I have mentioned. Hitler, of course, had legislative power. Göring, as Deputy of the Four Year Plan, could and did issue decrees that had the effect of law. And the Cabinet delegated power to issue laws which could deviate from the existing law to the Plenipotentiaries of Economy and Administration and the Chief of the OKW, the so-called “Three-Man College”—the Three-Man College having authority to legislate. This was done in the war-planning law, the Secret Defense Law of 1938, Document 2194-PS, Exhibit Number USA-36. These three officials, Frick, Funk, and Keitel, however, were, as we have proved, also members of the Council of Ministers, as well as being part of the ordinary Cabinet. It can therefore be readily