I shall begin with evidence as to the premeditated nature of the crimes committed on U.S.S.R. territory. I shall prove that the wholesale indiscriminate pillage of private, public, and state property committed by the German fascist usurpers was not an isolated occurrence, not a local phenomenon. It was not the result of the disintegration or the thefts of individual army units but was, on the contrary, an essential and indissoluble part of the general plan of attack on the U.S.S.R. and represented, moreover, the fundamental purpose, the chief motive underlying this criminal aggression.
May I beg the indulgence of the Tribunal if, in stating the facts connected with the preparations for this type of crimes, I am obliged to refer very briefly also to several of the documents already submitted to the Tribunal by my American colleagues. I shall endeavor, however, to avoid repetitions and shall mainly quote such extracts from these documents as have not been previously read into the record.
It is known that simultaneously with the elaboration of “Plan Barbarossa,” which provided for all strategic questions connected with the attack on the U.S.S.R., purely economic problems arising from the plan were elaborated.
In the document known under the title, “Conference of 29 April 1941 with Branches of the Armed Forces,” and presented to the Tribunal by the American prosecution on 10 December as Document Number 1157-PS, we read:
“Purpose of the conference: Explanation of the administrative organization of the economic section of undertaking ‘Barbarossa-Oldenburg’. . . .”
Further on in this document it is indicated that the Führer, contrary to previous practice in the preparation measures envisaged, ordered that all economic questions were to be worked out by one center and that this center is to be “the special-purpose economic staff Oldenburg under the direction of Lieutenant General Schubert” and that it is to be under the Reich Marshal, that is, Göring. Thus, as early as April 1941, the Defendant Göring was in charge of all preparations for plundering the U.S.S.R.
To finish with this document, I should like to recall that provision is made in it, even at that early date, for the organization of special economic inspectorates and commands at Leningrad, Murmansk, Riga, Minsk, Moscow, Tula, Gorki, Kiev, Baku, Yaroslavl, and many other Soviet industrial towns. The document points out that the tasks of these inspectorates and commands included “the economic utilization of suitable territory” that is, as is explained below, “all questions of food supply and rural economy, industrial economy, including raw materials and manufactured articles; forestry, finance and banking, museums, commerce, trade, and manpower.” As you see, Your Honors, the tasks were extremely wide and extraordinarily concrete.
The Plan Barbarossa-Oldenburg was further developed in the so-called “directives for economic management of the newly occupied eastern territories” which were also elaborated and issued secretly before the attack on the U.S.S.R.
Before passing on to the “Green File” I should like to present to the Tribunal and read but in part another document—the so-called “File of the District Agricultural Leader,” which was submitted to the Tribunal by my colleague Colonel Smirnov as Document Number USSR-89. These very detailed instructions for future district agricultural leaders which were also worked out and published in advance, bore the title of “District Agricultural Leaders File,” and were dated 1 June 1941. Naturally this document, too, is also marked “top secret.”
This instruction begins, “12 Commandments for the Behavior of Germans in the East and Their Attitude towards Russians.” My colleague, Colonel Smirnov, read into the record only one of those commandments: and I, with the Tribunal’s permission, shall read into the record the other commandments. The first commandment states—the members of the Tribunal will find it on Page 69 of the document book. I read: