That quotation, may it please the Tribunal, comes from our Exhibit Number USA-233, already in evidence, our Document 2324-PS.
Soon after he became Prime Minister of Prussia, in pursuance of the conspiracy, Göring began to develop the Gestapo or Secret State Police, the details of which organization of terror were presented to the Court by my learned colleague, Colonel Storey. As early as the 26th of April 1933, he signed the first law officially establishing the Gestapo in Prussia; and, pursuant to a decree which he signed, he named himself Prime Minister, Chief of the Prussian Secret State Police.
Göring was undoubtedly an efficient conspirator. He was impatient to consolidate the power of the Party at home. Already in spring 1933 the concentration camps were established in Prussia. Men and women, so-called “Marxists” and other political opponents, taken into custody by the Gestapo were thrown into concentration camps without trial. Göring said, “Against the enemies of the state we must proceed ruthlessly.” That statement appears in our Document 2324-PS, which is already in evidence as Exhibit Number USA-233.
The range of political terrorism under his leadership was almost limitless. A glance at a few of his police directives in those early days will indicate the extent and thoroughness with which every dissident voice was silenced. I ask the Tribunal to take judicial notice of some of these decrees in the same collection I mentioned a short while ago, entitled the Ministerialblatt für die Preussische Innere Verwaltung, and we have cited these decrees on Pages 9 and 10 of our brief. These include:
A directive of the 22d of June 1933, which required all officials to watch the statements of civil servants and to denounce to the Defendant Göring those who made critical remarks. The failure to make such reports was to be regarded as proof of hostile attitude. Then there was the directive of the 23rd of June 1933, which suppressed all activities of the Social Democratic Party, including meetings and the party press, and ordered the confiscation of its property. There was the directive of the 30th of June 1933, which directed the Gestapo authorities to report to the Labor Trustees on the political attitude of the workers. There was the directive of the 15th of January 1934, which ordered the Gestapo and the frontier police to keep track of émigrés, particularly political émigrés and Jews residing in neighboring countries, and to arrest them and to put them in concentration camps if they returned to Germany.
The essential ruthlessness of Göring is further illustrated by a well-known bloody episode. After the elimination of the forces of the opposition, the Nazis felt it necessary to dispose of non-conformists within their own ranks. This they accomplished in what has become known as the Röhm Purge of the 30th of June 1934. The Defendant Frick, a chief conspirator in his own right, stated in that connection, in an affidavit, that many people were murdered who had nothing to do with the internal SA revolt, but who were “just not liked very well.”
Göring’s role in this sordid affair was related less than 2 weeks after the event by Hitler in a speech to the Reichstag, and I would like to offer in evidence as Exhibit Number USA-576 our Document 3442-PS, in which is contained the speech of Hitler made on the 13th of July 1934 in the Reichstag. It is published in Das Archiv, Volume 4, at Page 505. I quote:
“Meanwhile Minister President Göring, had already received my instructions that in case of a purge he was to take analogous measures at once in Berlin and in Prussia. With an iron fist he beat down the attack on the National Socialist State before it could develop.”
With the accession of the Nazis to power Göring at once assumed a number of the highest and most influential positions also in the Reich. The proof already presented on the composition and functions of the Reich Cabinet and of the offices held by Göring shows him to have been, in fact, the most important executive of the Nazi State.
A member of the Reichstag since 1928 and its President since 1932, he was a member of the Cabinet from the beginning as Reich Minister without Portfolio. Shortly thereafter he received the portfolio as Reich Minister for Air. When, in an early meeting, the Cabinet discussed the pending Enabling Act, which gave the Cabinet plenary powers of legislation, he offered the suggestion that the required two-thirds majority might be obtained simply by refusing admittance to Social Democratic delegates. I offer in evidence, as Exhibit Number USA-578, our Document 2962-PS, which contains the minutes of that meeting. If Your Honors will note, that meeting was held on the 15th of March 1933, and there were present, besides the Defendant Göring, the Defendants Von Papen, Von Neurath, Frick, and Funk. I read from Page 6 of that document: