THE PRESIDENT: Are these documents set out in the document book?
LT. LAMBERT: Yes, Sir.
THE PRESIDENT: You haven’t given us the reference.
LT. LAMBERT: That is true, Sir. I recall from memory, although I do not have it in my manuscript, that document, that important decree of 24 January 1942, is our Document, I believe, 2100-PS.
I now request the Tribunal to take judicial notice of the important decree of the Ministerial Council for Defense of the Reich, dated 16 November 1942, 1942 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, Page 649 (Document JN-5). Under this decree all Gauleiter, who were under Bormann by virtue of his position as Chief of the Party Chancellery, were appointed Reich defense commissars and charged with the co-ordination, supervision, and management of the aggressive Nazi war effort.
From then on the Party, under Bormann, became the decisive force in planning and conducting the aggressive Nazi war economy.
On 12 April 1943, as is shown in the publication The Greater German Reichstag, 1943 edition, Page 167, our Document 2981-PS, Bormann was appointed Secretary of the Führer, and we submit that this fact testifies to the intimacy and influence of the Defendant Bormann with the Führer and enlarges his role in, and responsibility for, the conspiracy.
We now come to the important point of Bormann’s executive responsibility for the acts of the Volkssturm. I request the Tribunal to notice judicially a Führer order of 18 October 1944, which was published in the official Völkischer Beobachter, 20 October 1944 edition, in which Hitler appointed Bormann political and organizational leader of the Volkssturm. This is set forth in our Document 3018-PS. In this decree Himmler is made the military leader of the Volkssturm, but the organizational and political leadership is entrusted to Bormann. The Tribunal will know that the Volkssturm was an organization consisting of all German males between 16 and 60. By virtue of his leadership of the Volkssturm Bormann was instrumental in needlessly prolonging the war, with a consequential destruction of the German and the European economy and a loss of life and destruction of property.
We come now to deal with the responsibility of the Defendant Bormann with respect to persecution of the Church. The Defendant Bormann authorized, directed, and participated in measures involving the persecution of the Christian Church. The Tribunal, of course, has heard much in this proceeding concerning the acts of the conspiracy involving the persecution of the Church. We have no desire now to rehash that evidence. We are interested in one thing alone, and that is nailing on the Defendant Bormann his responsibility, his personal, individual responsibility, for the persecution of the Church.
I shall now present the proofs showing the responsibility of Bormann with respect to such persecution of the Christian churches.