We wished to avoid troubling the Tribunal with a detailed discussion of all these contested points. Accordingly, we collected in Document 3563-PS relevant excerpts from certain German publications. This document has also been made available in the four working languages. Moreover, we submit that the Tribunal can properly take judicial notice of the publications referred to in the document. However, in order to facilitate reference, we request that it be received in evidence as Exhibit Number USA-652.
In connection with Item “b” on the top of Page 1 of Document Number 3533-PS—Your Honors will find that on Page 1 of the document—Your Honors will observe that Defendant Funk has in effect denied that he was Hitler’s personal economic adviser in the 1930’s. However, the excerpts from the four German publications set forth on Pages 1 and 2 of Document Number 3563-PS directly contradict this denial.
We submit that it will be clear from the documents just referred to that Defendant Funk, soon after he joined the Party, began to operate as one of the Nazi inner circle. Moreover, as a Party economic theorist during its critical days in 1932, he made a significant contribution to its drive for mass support by drafting its economic slogans. In this connection I would refer to Document 3505-PS, which is a biography entitled, in the English translation, Walter Funk—A Life for Economy. This biography was written by one Oestreich in German and published by the Central Publishing House of the Nazi Party. I offer this document in evidence as Exhibit Number USA-653. I wish to quote now from Page 1 of the translation of this document, the center of the page. The corresponding page of the German document is Page 81:
“In 1931 he”—that is, Funk—“became a member of the Reichstag. A document of his activity at the time is the ‘Economic Construction Program of the NSDAP’ which was formulated by him in the second half of the year 1932. It received the approval of Adolf Hitler and was declared binding for all Gau leaders, speakers on the subject, and Gau advisers on the subject and others of the Party.”
Thus Defendant Funk’s slogans became the economic gospel for the Party organizers and spellbinders.
Defendant Funk, however, was much more than one of the Nazi Party’s economic theorists; he was also involved in the highly practical work of soliciting campaign contributions for the Party. As liaison man between the Party and the large German industrialists he helped place the industrialists’ financial and political support behind Hitler. Defendant Funk, in an interrogation conducted on 4 June 1945, admitted that he helped finance the highly critical campaign of 1932. I offer in evidence Document Number 2828-PS as Exhibit Number USA-654, and I quote from the bottom of Page 43. . .
THE PRESIDENT: Lieutenant Meltzer, isn’t this really all cumulative and detailed evidence to support what the Defendant Funk has already agreed with reference to his office? On Page 1 you have there the admission that he was a member of the Nazi Party, chief of the division of the Central Nazi Party, chairman of the committee of the Nazi Party on economic policy, and then it goes on from A to U with views of the various offices which he held and which he admits, he held. But surely to go into the details of those positions is unnecessary.
LT. MELTZER: If Your Honor pleases, the admission of the various positions listed do not, in our judgment, indicate in any way Defendant Funk’s participation in the fund-raising for the Nazi Party.
THE PRESIDENT: The fund-raising?
LT. MELTZER: The fund-raising. Now, it is a possible inference from those positions that he did engage in the solicitation of campaign contributions. However, it did seem to us relevant to mention most briefly direct evidence of that aspect of his activity.