May we at this time call the attention of the Tribunal to two members of the Defense Council who will also appear in the Ministerial Council under the same title: the Plenipotentiary for Administration and the Plenipotentiary for Economy. The former post was held by the Defendant Frick, while the latter was first held by the Defendant Schacht and then by the Defendant Funk, who signed the decree in that capacity. These facts are verified by the Defendant Frick in Exhibit Number USA-3, which is the Nazi governmental organization chart previously referred to.
As we will later show, these two posts had many of the other ministries subordinated to them for war-planning aims and purposes. They, together with the Chief of the OKW, formed a powerful triumvirate, known as the “Three-Man College”—that is shown in the three boxes down from 1935 to 1938—which figured prominently, as the proof will disclose, in the plans and preparations to wage aggressive war. And the incumbents of these positions were Cabinet members: the Defendants Frick, Funk, and Keitel.
This utilization of the ordinary Cabinet as a supply center for other governmental agencies and the cohesion between all of the groups is perhaps quickly seen on the chart which is shown.
The points I have been making are illustrated on the chart. We are not offering this chart in evidence, although all facts thereon already have been or will be proved. The chart is also designed to depict—to the left of the line running down the right center—the chronological development of the offshoots of the ordinary Cabinet. Thus in the main box entitled “Reich Cabinet”—which appears directly under Hitler—certain dates appear.
I believe I will skip the part that describes those lines because it is self-evident.
The Ministerial Defense Council was created in 1944; the Delegate for Total War Effort was Goebbels. These agencies were, next to Hitler, the important Nazi functionaries. In every case, as the chart shows, they were occupied by persons taken from the ordinary Cabinet. The arrow running from the Reich Defense Council to the Ministerial Defense Council is intended to reflect the fact, shown previously, that the latter was formed out of the former. We will, for other points of this presentation, refer again to the chart, especially to that portion to the right, which relates to ministries.
The unity, cohesion, and inter-relationship of the subdivisions of the Reichsregierung were not the result of a co-mixture of personnel alone. It was also realized by the method in which it operated. The ordinary Cabinet consulted together both by meetings and through the so-called circulation procedure. Under this procedure, which was predominantly used when meetings were not held, drafts of laws prepared in the individual ministries were distributed to the other Cabinet members for approval or disapproval.
The man primarily responsible for the circulation of drafts of laws under this procedure was Dr. Lammers, the Leader and Chief of the Reich Chancellery. I have here an affidavit executed by him concerning that technical device, which we offer in evidence as Exhibit USA-391, Document 2999-PS. It is short and I should like to quote all of it:
“I, Hans Heinrich Lammers, being first duly sworn, depose and say: