COL. STOREY: The last document, if Your Honor pleases, is in further evidence of the approval of laws and of the passing of laws by a circulatory process.
THE PRESIDENT: We already have that in Dr. Lammers’ affidavit.
COL. STOREY: It might be considered strictly cumulative, if that is what Your Honor has in mind.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, if it is cumulative, we don’t really want to hear it.
COL. STOREY: Yes, Sir; I will ask then that it be stricken from the record. I had really overlooked the fact that it was cumulative. Miss Boyd and Commander Kaplan tell me that the Document Number 2231-PS is probably also corroborative of the same process; and I will, therefore, not offer it.
I have already stated that for a time the Cabinet consulted together through actual meetings. The Council of Ministers did likewise, but those members of the Cabinet who were not already members of the Council also attended the meetings of the Ministerial Council. And when they did not attend in person they were usually represented by State Secretaries of the Ministries. We have here the minutes of six meetings of the Council of Ministers of the 1, 4, 8, and 19 September 1939, also of the 16 October and 15 of November 1939. These original documents were found in the files of the Reich Chancellery. I offer them in evidence as Document 2852-PS, Exhibit USA-395. It will only be necessary to point, for our purposes, to a few of the minutes. I call the attention of the Tribunal to the meeting held on the 1st of September 1939, which is probably the first meeting since the Council was created on the 30th August 1939; and I read from that document—showing who was present—beginning at the top of the English translation:
“Present were the permanent members of the Ministerial Council for Defense of the Reich:
“The Chairman, General Field Marshal Göring; the Führer’s Deputy, Hess;”—for some unknown reason a line appears through the name Hess—“the Plenipotentiary General for Reich Administration, Dr. Frick; the Plenipotentiary General for Economy, Funk; the Reich Minister and Chief of the Reich Chancellery, Dr. Lammers; and the Chief of the High Command of the Armed Forces, Keitel, represented by Major General Thomas.”
These were the regular members of the Council. Also present were the Reich Minister for Food and Agriculture, Darré, and seven State Secretaries—naming the secretaries. These State Secretaries were from the several ministries or other supreme Reich authorities, as, for example, to name a few: Körner was the Deputy of the Defendant Göring in the Four Year Plan; Stuckart was in the Ministry of the Interior; Landfried was in the Ministry of Economics; Syrup was in the Ministry of Labor. These later positions appear on the government chart which is already in evidence. Another meeting of the Council—I will skip that one.