“A Secret Cabinet Council to advise the Führer in the basic problems of foreign policy has been created by the decree of 4 February 1938”—and a reference is given.
“This Secret Cabinet Council is under the direction of Reich Minister Von Neurath, and includes the Foreign Minister, the Air Minister, the Deputy of the Führer, the Propaganda Minister, the Chief of the Reich Chancellery, the Commanders-in-Chief of the Army and Navy and the Chief of the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces. The Secret Cabinet council constitutes a closer staff of collaborators of the Führer which consists exclusively of members of the Government of the Reich; strictly speaking it represents a select committee of the Reich Government for the deliberation on foreign affairs.”
In order to have the formal composition of the body, that is shown in Document 2031-PS, which is Exhibit GB-217. I believe that has been put in. I need not read it again.
The next point that the defendant makes as to his offices is that he was not a member of the Reich Defense Council.
If I may very shortly take that point by stages, I remind the Tribunal that the Reich Defense Council was set up soon after Hitler’s accession to power on 4 April 1933; and the Tribunal will find a note of that point in Document 2261-PS, Exhibit USA-24; and they will find that on the top of Page 12 of the document book there is a reference to the date of the establishment of the Reich Defense Council.
The Reich Defense Council is also dealt with in Document 2986-PS, Exhibit USA-409, which is the affidavit of the Defendant Frick, which the Tribunal will find on Page 14. In the middle of that short affidavit, Defendant Frick says:
“We were also members of the Reich Defense Council which was supposed to plan preparations in case of war which later on were published by the Ministerial Council for the Defense of the Reich.”
Now, that the membership of this Council included the Minister for Foreign Affairs, who was then the Defendant Von Neurath, is shown by Document EC-177, Exhibit USA-390. If the Tribunal will turn to Page 16 of the document book, they will find that document and, at the foot of the page, the composition of the Reich Defense Council, the permanent members including the Minister for Foreign Affairs. That document is dated “Berlin, 22 May 1933” which was during this defendant’s tenure of that office. That is the first stage.
The functioning of this council, with a representative of this defendant’s department, Von Bülow, present, is shown by the minutes of the 12th meeting on 14 May 1936. That is Document EC-407, which I put in as Exhibit GB-247. The Tribunal will find at Page 21 that the minutes are for the 14th of May 1936, and the actual reference to an intervention of Von Bülow is in the middle of Page 22.