A few weeks after the Munich Agreement, on the 14th of October 1938, at another conference held in Göring’s office, he made the statement that Hitler had instructed him to organize a gigantic armament program which would make insignificant all previous achievements. He indicated that he had been ordered to build as rapidly as possible an air force five times as large, to increase the speed of army and navy rearmament, and to concentrate on offensive weapons, principally heavy artillery and heavy tanks; and at that meeting he proposed a specific program designed to accomplish those ends. That is a short summary of facts which appear from Exhibit Number USA-123 already in evidence, our Document 1301-PS.
In his dual role as Reich Air Minister and Commander-in-Chief of the German Air Force it was Göring’s function to develop the Luftwaffe to practical war strength. As early as the 10th of March 1935, in an interview with the correspondent of the London Daily Mail, the mask of hypocrisy was removed and Göring frankly announced to the world that he was in the process of building a true military air force.
Two months later, in a speech to 1,000 Air Force officers, Göring spoke in a still bolder vein. I offer in evidence from Exhibit Number USA-437, our Document 3441-PS—which is Göring’s Reden und Aufsätze—another excerpt that has not yet been read in evidence, from Page 242. Göring said:
“I repeat: I intend to create a Luftwaffe which, if the hour should strike, shall burst upon the foe like a chorus of revenge. The enemy must have the feeling of being lost already before having fought.”
In the same year, on the 16th of March 1935, he signed his name to the conscription law which provided for compulsory military service and constituted an act of defiance on the part of Nazi Germany in violation of the Versailles Treaty. The Tribunal will take judicial notice of that decree, which is our Document 1654-PS, from which I shall not read, with the permission of the Tribunal—the Law for the Organization of the Armed Forces; it is cited in 1935 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, Page 369.
As is demonstrated by the affidavit of Ambassador Messersmith already in evidence, Göring’s statements during this period left no doubt in the minds of Allied diplomats that Germany was engaged in full mobilization of air power for an impending war.
Göring was in fact the central figure in German preparation for military aggression. In German economic development, too, he held the key positions throughout the pre-war period. Although he held no official position in the field of foreign affairs, as the Number Two Nazi, history records that he was prominent in all major phases of Nazi aggression between 1937 and 1941.
In the Austrian affair Göring was the prompter and director of the diplomatic “tragicomedy” enacted before a shocked but silent world.
The Tribunal is familiar with Göring’s complicity in the aggression against Austria. However, some additional documents have just come to our notice which show that Göring not only participated actively, but may even have been in direct charge of the German plan to bring about the Austrian Anschluss. I will offer the first of these documents, our Document 3473-PS, as Exhibit Number USA-581. I shall not read from that exhibit, if Your Honors please, but I would like to call the attention of the Tribunal to the letter from Keppler, who was one of Göring’s agents, addressed to the Defendant Göring. It is dated the 6th of January 1938. From its context it would seem that a valid inference can be drawn that Göring was already active in the Austrian matter in 1937. Our prior evidence brought him into the picture much later. The Prosecution believes this document to be of great significance, as it shows that the Defendant Seyss-Inquart actually had Göring’s mandate to carry out the orders of the Nazi conspirators in Vienna. The document itself will be read and discussed in the presentation of the case showing the individual responsibility of the Defendant Seyss-Inquart; and I shall not take the time of the Tribunal at this time.
The second document I wish to introduce is Exhibit Number USA-582, our Document 3472-PS. This exhibit would seem to show that the conspirators attempted to create the impression that the Anschluss, when it took place, was achieved by “legal” means. The command apparently was given the members of the NSDAP in Austria to keep “hands off” in order to permit the deviltry to be worked out by the official Reich agencies, that is, through the Defendant Göring and, presumably, the Defendant Von Papen, by direct contact with the Austrian officials.