I believe that the documents which I have introduced and quoted from are more than sufficient to establish conclusively the premeditation and cold-blooded calculation which marked the military preparations for the invasion of the Soviet Union. Starting almost a full year before the commission of the crime, the Nazi conspirators planned and prepared every military detail of their aggression against the Soviet Union with all of that thoroughness and meticulousness which has come to be associated with the German character. Although several of these defendants played specific parts in this military phase of the planning and preparation for the attack, it is natural enough that the leading roles were performed, as we have seen, by the military figures: the Defendants Göring, Keitel, Jodl, and Raeder.
Next, preparation for plunder—plans for the economic exploitation and spoliation of the Soviet Union.
Not only was there detailed preparation for the invasion from a purely military standpoint, but equally elaborate and detailed planning and preparation was undertaken by the Nazi conspirators to ensure that their aggression would prove economically profitable.
A little later in my presentation I shall discuss with the Tribunal the motives which led these conspirators to attack, without provocation, a neighboring power. I shall at that time show that the crime was motivated by both political and economic considerations. The economic basis, however, may be simply summarized at this point as the greed of the Nazi conspirators for the raw material, food, and other supplies which their neighbor possessed and which they conceived of themselves as needing for the maintenance of their war machine. To these defendants such a need was translated indubitably as a right, and they early began planning and preparing with typical care and detail to ensure that every bit of the plunder which it would be possible to reap in the course of their aggression would be exploited to their utmost benefit.
I have already put into the record evidence showing that as early as August of 1940 General Thomas, the chief of the B Group Army, received a hint from the Defendant Göring about a possible attack on the U.S.S.R. which prompted him to begin considering the Soviet war economy. I also said at that time that I would later introduce evidence that in November 1940—8 months before the attack—Thomas was categorically informed by Göring of the planned operation in the East and preliminary preparations were commenced for the economic plundering of the territories to be occupied in the course of such operation. Göring, of course, played the overall leading role in this activity by virtue of his position at the head of the Four Year Plan.
Thomas describes his receipt of the knowledge and this early planning at Page 369 of his draft, which is our Document 2353-PS introduced earlier as Exhibit USA-35; the part I shall read is at Pages 10 and 11 of the English translation:
“In November 1940 the Chief of Wi Rü together with Secretaries of State Körner, Neumann, Backe, and General Von Hanneken were informed by the Reich Marshal of the action planned in the East.
“By reason of these directives the preliminary preparations for the action in the East were commenced by the office of Wi Rü at the end of 1940.