THE PRESIDENT: In accordance with Article 24 of the Charter, you must now plead either guilty or not guilty.
ERNST KALTENBRUNNER: I plead not guilty. I do not believe that I have made myself guilty.
MR. ALDERMAN: May it please the Tribunal, I had just put in evidence our Document 1456-PS as Exhibit USA-148. I now read from that document on Page 17:
“The following is a new conception of the Führer, which Minister Todt has explained to me and which has been confirmed later on by Field Marshal Keitel:
“I. The course of the war shows that we went too far in our autarkical endeavors. It is impossible to try to manufacture everything we lack by synthetic procedures or other measures. For instance, it is impossible to develop our motor fuel economy to a point where we can entirely depend on it. All these autarkical endeavors demand a tremendous amount of manpower, and it is simply impossible to provide it. One has to choose another way. What one does not have but needs, one must conquer. The commitment of men which is necessary for one single action will not be as great as the one that is currently needed for the running of the synthetic factories in question. The aim must therefore be to secure all territories which are of special interest to us for the war economy by conquering them.
“At the time the Four Year Plan was established I issued a statement in which I made it clear that a completely autarkical economy is impossible for us because the need of men will be too great. My solution, however, has always been directed to securing the necessary reserves for missing stocks by concluding economic agreements which would guarantee delivery even in wartime.”
On this macabre note I come to the end of the story of this aggression. We have seen these conspirators as they planned, prepared, and finally initiated their wanton attack upon the Soviet Union. Others will carry on the tale and describe the horrible manner in which they waged this war of aggression and the countless crimes they committed in its wake. When I consider the solemn pledge of non-aggression, the base and sinister motives involved, the months of secret planning and preparation, and the unbelievable suffering intentionally and deliberately wrought—when I consider all of this, I feel fully justified in saying that never before—and, God help us, never again—in the history of relations between sovereign nations has a blacker chapter been written than the one which tells of this unprovoked invasion of the territory of the Soviet Union. For those responsible—and they are here before you, the defendants in this case—it might be just to let the punishment fit the crime.
I now turn to the final phase of the detailed presentation of the aggressive-war part of the case: German collaboration with Italy and Japan, and aggressive war against the United States. The relevant portions of the Indictment are set forth in Subsection 7 under Section IV (F) of Count One, appearing at Pages 9 and 10 of the printed English text of the Indictment. The materials relating to this unholy alliance of the three fascist powers and to the aggressive war against the United States have been gathered together in a document book, marked with the letter “Q,” which I now submit to the Tribunal.