[A recess was taken.]
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: If the Tribunal please, I never actually put that last document that I was referring to in as an exhibit. It is Document TC-77, which becomes GB-48.
Having referred the Tribunal to those documents showing that the military preparations were throughout the whole period in hand and nearing their completion, I would refer to one letter from the Defendant Funk, showing that at the same time the economists had not been idle. It is a letter dated the 26th of August 1939, in which Funk is writing to his Führer. He says:
“My Führer! I thank you sincerely and heartily for your most friendly and kind wishes on the occasion of my birthday. How happy and how grateful to you we ought to be for being granted the favor of experiencing these overwhelmingly great and world-changing times and taking part in the mighty events of these days.
“The information given to me by Field Marshal Göring, that you, my Führer, yesterday evening approved in principle the measures prepared by me for financing the war and for shaping the relationship between wages and prices and for carrying through emergency sacrifices, made me deeply happy. I hereby report to you, with all respect, that I have succeeded by means of precautions taken during the last few months in making the Reich Bank internally so strong and externally so unassailable that even the most serious shocks in the international money and credit market cannot affect us in the least. In the meantime, I have quite inconspicuously changed into gold all the assets of the Reich Bank and of the whole of the German economy abroad on which it was possible to lay hands. Under the proposals I have prepared for a ruthless elimination of all consumption which is not of vital importance and of all public expenditure and public works which are not of importance for the war effort, we will be in a position to cope with all demands on finance and economy without any serious shocks. I have considered it my duty as the general plenipotentiary for economy, appointed by you, to make this report and solemn promise to you, my Führer. Heil my Führer”—signed—“Walter Funk.”
That document is PS-699, and it goes in as GB-49.
It is difficult in view of that letter to see how the Defendant Funk can say that he did not know of the preparations and of the intentions of the German Government to wage war.
I come now to the speech which Hitler made on the 22d of August at Obersalzberg to his commanders-in-chief. By the end of the third week of August, preparations were complete. That speech has already been read to the Tribunal. I would, perhaps, ask the Tribunal’s patience if I quoted literally half a dozen lines so as to carry the story on in sequence.
On the first page of PS-1014, which is already USA-30, the fourth line: