I come now, then, to his activity in the general persecution of the Jews. Again it will be remembered that the chart of his organization showed an office of his which described itself as the Office for Racial Policy. His own views about this matter are found in a speech which he made on the 16th of January 1937 and which is reported in a volume of his speeches which is Document Number 3124-PS. It is already in as Exhibit Number GB-253. The extract I desire to quote is set out in the trial brief. The document can be found on Page 98 of the document book.
“The organizations of the NSDAP will be used for the enlightenment of the people on questions concerning race and health with the aim of improving the latter and increasing the population. . . .”
“As at home, so in foreign countries, the Germans will be influenced in the National Socialist sense by the Landesgruppen or local groups of the Party. They will be educated to become again proudly conscious of their German origin, to stand together in mutual esteem and will be taught to place the German higher than any foreigner, irrespective of state or descent.”
It was Hess who signed the Law for Protection of Blood and Honor, one of the Nuremberg decrees of the 15th of September 1935. It is Document Number 3179-PS. It is already in evidence as Exhibit USA-200. It will be remembered that under that decree and under the other Reich Citizenship Law of the same date, it was the Deputy of the Führer who was to issue the necessary decrees and regulations for the carrying out and supplementing of those laws, the Nuremberg Decrees.
On the 14th of November 1935, it was Hess who issued an ordinance under the Reich Citizenship Law which deprived the Jews of the right to vote or to hold public office. That is Document Number 1417-PS and becomes Exhibit Number GB-258.
By a further decree of the 20th of May 1938, those Nuremberg laws were extended to Austria, that law of extension again being signed by this defendant—Document Number 2124-PS, Exhibit Number GB-259.
As I said, those are only a few examples of the decrees and activities of this man in the acquisition of power and consolidation of power in the Nazi Party. There is a document which I will hand up to the Tribunal that perhaps it might add to its document books, and there is a copy in French for the learned French Judge. There are examples in this and other exhibits which I have not mentioned now but which are already before the Tribunal, put in when the case of Bormann was put before the Tribunal, for which, as I have already said, this defendant must take responsibility.
You will see that under various headings—there are one or two German copies and the rest are in English—there are various documents set out under the headings, “Association with the SD and Gestapo”; “Subversion of the Churches”; and again, “The Persecution of the Jews.”
I turn then to the part which he played in the actual planning and preparation for aggressive war. We find that as early as in 1932 he was concerned with the rearmament and reorganization of the Air Force. The Tribunal will remember a Document Number 1143-PS, Exhibit USA-40, dated the 20th of October 1932, which showed that a report on the preparation of material and the training of air personnel to provide for the armament of the Air Force was sent to Hess by Rosenberg’s chief of staff. That document, for reference, appears on Page 43 of the Tribunal’s document book.
That was in 1932. Throughout the years we find him connected with the rearmament of the German Armed Forces. On the 16th of March 1935 it was Hess who signed the decree for the introduction of compulsory military service. On the 11th of October 1936 in a speech that he made, he took up Göring’s cry of “Guns before Butter,” when he said: