THE PRESIDENT: You don’t seem to understand what I am putting to you, which is this: That if you can afford to give 250 copies of the documents in English to the press, you can afford to give more than five copies to the defendants’ counsel—one each. Well, we do not need to discuss it further. In the future that will be done.
DR. DIX: May I say, then, that of every document in evidence each defense counsel will receive one copy; it will not be just one for several members of the Defense.
THE PRESIDENT: Go on, Mr. Alderman.
MR. ALDERMAN: The aggressive war having been initiated in September 1939, and Poland having been totally defeated shortly after the initial assaults, the Nazi aggressors converted the war into a general war of aggression extending into Scandinavia, into the Low Countries, and into the Balkans. Under the division of the case between the Four Chief Prosecutors, this aspect of the matter is left to presentation by the British Chief Prosecutor.
Another change that we have made in our plan, which I perhaps should mention, is that following the opening statement by the British Chief Prosecutor on Count Two, we expect to resume the detailed handling of the later phases of the aggressive war phase of the case. The British, instead of the Americans, will deal with the details of aggression against Poland. Then with this expansion of the war in Europe and then, as a joint part of the American case under Count One and the British case under Count Two, I shall take up the aggression against Russia and the Japanese aggression in detail. So that the remaining two subjects, with which I shall ultimately deal in more detail, and now by presentation of specifically significant documents, are the case of the attack on the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on the 22nd of June 1941 and the case on collaboration between Italy and Japan and Germany and the resulting attack on the United States on the 7th of December 1941.
As to the case on aggression against the Soviet Union, I shall at this point present two documents. The first of these two documents establishes the premeditation and deliberation which preceded the attack. Just as, in the case of aggression against Czechoslovakia, the Nazis had a code name for the secret operation “Case Green”, so in the case of aggression against the Soviet Union, they had a code name “Case Barbarossa.”
THE PRESIDENT: How do you spell that?
MR. ALDERMAN: B-a-r-b-a-r-o-s-s-a, after Barbarossa of Kaiser Friederich. From the files of the OKW at Flensburg we have a secret directive, Number 21, issued from the Führer’s headquarters on 18 December 1940, relating to Case Barbarossa. This directive is more than six months in advance of the attack. Other evidence will show that the planning occurred even earlier. The document is signed by Hitler and is initialled by the Defendant Jodl and the Defendant Keitel. This secret order was issued in nine copies. The captured document is the fourth of these nine copies. It is Document Number 446-PS in our numbered series.
I offer it in evidence as Exhibit USA-31.
If the Tribunal please, I think it will be sufficient for me to read the first page of that directive, the first page of the English translation. The paging may differ in the German original.