“Matter for Chief; 2 copies; first copy to files 1a. Second copy to General Schubert, May 2, 1941.”
“Memorandum about the result of today’s discussion with the state secretaries about Barbarossa.
“1. The War can only be continued if all Armed Forces are fed by Russia in the third year of war.
“2. There is no doubt that as a result many millions of people will be starved to death if we take out of the country the things necessary for us.”
That document has already been commented on and quoted from in Mr. Justice Jackson’s opening statement. The staggering implications of that document are hard to realize. In the words of the document, the motive for the attack was that the war which the Nazi conspirators had launched in September 1939 “can only be continued if all Armed Forces are fed by Russia in the third year of the war.” Perhaps, there never was a more sinister sentence written than the sentence in this document which reads:
“There is no doubt that as a result many millions of people will be starved to death if we take out of the country the things necessary for us.”
The result is known to all of us.
I turn now to the Nazi collaboration with Italy and Japan and the resulting attack on the United States on 7 December 1941. With the unleashing of the German aggressive war against the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Nazi conspirators, and in particular, the Defendant Ribbentrop, called upon the eastern co-architect of the New Order, Japan, to attack in the rear. Our evidence will show that they incited and kept in motion a force reasonably calculated to result in an attack on the United States. For a time, they maintained their preference that the United States not be involved in the conflict, realizing the military implication of an entry of the United States into the war. However, their incitement did result in the attack on Pearl Harbor, and long prior to that attack, they had assured the Japanese that they would declare war on the United States should a United States-Japanese conflict break out. It was in reliance on those assurances that the Japanese struck at Pearl Harbor.
On the present discussion of this phase of the case, I shall offer only one document to prove this point. The document was captured from the files of the German Foreign Office. It consists of notes dated 4 April 1941, signed by “Schmidt,” regarding discussions between the Führer and the Japanese Foreign Minister Matsuoka, in the presence of the Defendant Ribbentrop. The document is numbered 1881-PS in our numbered series, and I offer it in evidence as Exhibit USA-33. In the original, it is in very large, typewritten form in German. I shall read what I deem to be the pertinent parts of this document, beginning with the four paragraphs; first reading the heading, the heading being:
“Notes regarding the discussion between the Führer and the Japanese Foreign Minister Matsuoka, in the presence of the Reich Foreign Minister and the Reich Minister of State Meissner, in Berlin, on 4 April 1941.