Finally, I call the attention of the Tribunal to the minutes of the meeting of 15 November 1939, Page 10 of the translation, where, among other things, the treatment of Polish prisoners of war was also discussed.

We submit that this document not only establishes the close working union between agencies of the State and Party, especially with the notorious SS, but also tends to establish, as charged in the Indictment, that the Reichsregierung was responsible for the policies adopted and put into effect by the Government, including those which comprehended and involved the commission of crimes referred to in the Indictment. But a mere working alliance would be meaningless unless there was power. And the Reichsregierung had the power. Short of Hitler himself, it had practically all the power a government can exercise. The Prosecution has already offered evidence on how Hitler’s Cabinet and the other Nazi conspirators secured the passage by the Reichstag of the “Law for the Protection of the People and the Reich” of 24 March 1933, which has been previously referred to in Document 2001-PS, which law vested the Cabinet with legislative powers even to the extent of deviating from previously existing constitutional law; how such powers were retained even after the members of the Cabinet were changed; and how the several states, provinces, and municipalities, which had formerly exercised semi-autonomous powers, were transformed into the administrative organs of the central government. The ordinary Cabinet emerged all-powerful from this rapid succession of events. The words of the Defendant Frick are eloquent upon that achievement. Here is an article in Document 2380-PS, which I offer in evidence as Exhibit USA-396; and it is from the 1935 National Socialist Yearbook. I quote from Page 213 of the original, and it is on Page 1 of the English translation, the second paragraph:

“The relationship between the Reich and the States has been put on an entirely new basis never known in the history of the German people. It gives to the Reich Cabinet”—Reichsregierung—“unlimited power; it even makes it its duty to build a completely unified leadership and administration of the Reich. From now on there is only one national authority: that of the Reich. Thus, the German Reich has become a unified state; and the entire administration in the states is carried out only by order of, or in the name of, the Reich. The state borders are now only administrative-technical boundaries, but no longer boundaries of sovereignty. In calm determination, the Reich Cabinet realizes step by step, supported by the confidence of the entire German people, the great longing of the nation: the creation of the unified National Socialist German State.”

THE PRESIDENT: Colonel Storey, that document seems to me to be merely cumulative. You have established, and other counsel on behalf of the United States have established, that the Reich Ministers had power to make laws, and the question is whether you have given any evidence as to the criminal nature of the Reich Cabinet.

COL. STOREY: If Your Honor pleases, again it was included for the purpose of connecting one of the defendants here . . .

THE PRESIDENT: What I was pointing out was that it was merely cumulative.

COL. STOREY: Yes, all right, Sir. It may be strictly cumulative. I will omit the next reference, which will probably also be cumulative and turn over to . . .

THE PRESIDENT: The same document, you mean?

COL. STOREY: No, Sir. There is another document that I was going to offer, Number 2849-PS. There is a quotation from another book; it probably bears on the same point. I will omit it also. The next is a reference to the Ministerial Council’s being given legislative power. I don’t believe that that has been introduced before—that the Council itself was given legislative powers. That is in Article 2 of the decree of 30 August 1939, Document 2018-PS. The ordinary Cabinet continued to legislate throughout the war.

Obviously, because of the fusion of personnel between the Ministerial Council and the ordinary Cabinet, questions were bound to arise as to what form should lend its name to a particular law. Thus Dr. Lammers, the Chief of the Reich Chancellery and a member of both agencies, wrote a letter on 14 June 1942 to the Plenipotentiary for Reich Administration about this question.