I will deal now very briefly with some further documents bearing on the activity of the Defendant Frick as Plenipotentiary for Reich Administration. Frick, in his speech of 7 March 1940, referred to this position—Document Number 2608-PS, Exhibit Number USA-714—and stated that the planned preparation of the administration for the possible event of war had been already effected during peacetime by the appointment of a Plenipotentiary for Reich Administration. This speech therefore merely confirms that which is already revealed by the text of the law. The same applies to Document 2986-PS, Exhibit Number USA-409, an affidavit by the defendant to the same effect. Therefore, according to this law, the position of the Plenipotentiary for Reich Administration, combined with the appointment of a Plenipotentiary for Economy and the post of Chief of the OKW, cannot be described as a “triumvirate” holding governmental authority in Germany. Nothing has ever become known either inside or outside Germany of a government by such a triumvirate, and the witness Lammers has also referred to the strictly subordinate tasks performed by these persons by means of ordinances—tasks which had nothing to do with the preparation of a war of aggression.
Another field of the defendant’s activity is likewise appraised by the Prosecution as participation in preparation for a war of aggression, namely, Frick’s work for the Association for Maintaining Germanism Abroad. I refer to Exhibit Number Frick-14 and Document Number 3258-PS, the latter submitted as Exhibit Number GB-262. Both documents reveal that Frick supported the said association as a union for the fostering of German cultural relations abroad and promoted its cultural efforts. It cannot, however, be gathered from the documents that Frick engaged in any capacity whatsoever for the furtherance of the aims of a so-called “Fifth Column” abroad. Another document from which the Prosecution deduced the approval of the policy of aggressive war by Frick is the affidavit of Messersmith, Document Number 2385-PS, Exhibit Number USA-68. This affidavit has been characterized by several defendants as inaccurate, and the Defendant Schacht in particular showed at his examination that in essential points it cannot be correct at all. The Prosecution was not able to produce the witness for cross-examination. I object on behalf of Frick against any use of the affidavit, all the more so since an additional clarifying interrogation of the witness through a written questionnaire only led to the result that the witness, by using general phrases, avoided giving concrete answers to the questions put to him. The answers to the questionnaire show plainly enough that Messersmith cannot make concrete statements at all and that in his affidavit he obviously was considerably deceived himself as to the extent of his memory.
I do not believe that his affidavit, which has been refuted in essential points, can be made use of for passing legal judgment. As to the question whether the Defendant Frick participated in conscious preparation for a war of aggression, the Prosecution further submitted Document D-44, Exhibit Number USA-428. From this document it is seen that the Reich Ministry of the Interior is supposed in the year 1933 to have issued a directive that official publications were not to be drawn up in a form which might enable people abroad to infer an infraction of the Versailles Treaty from such publications. This document does not reveal whether by these directives actual treaty violations were to be masked or whether it was only a question of avoiding the appearance of treaty violations.
The same problem applies to Document 1850-PS, Exhibit Number USA-742. This contains the minutes of a conference between the Leadership of the SA and the Reich Defense Minister, who proposed to the SA in 1933 that budgetary funds of the Reich should be set aside by the Reich Ministry of the Interior for the military training of the SA. The document does not throw any light upon the attitude of the Reich Ministry of the Interior toward this proposal, and even if it had accepted it, this again would have proved only that the Reich Ministry of the Interior furthered the restoration of the Armed Forces, a fact which anyhow is already proved.
Thus, none of these documents furnishes proof that the Defendant Frick recognized as preparation for a war of aggression the measures ordered by Hitler as necessary for the defense of the Reich.
It is true that during the war, in 1941, a few days before the outbreak of the war with the Soviet Union, a conference took place between the Defendant Rosenberg and representatives of various ministries concerning measures in case of a possible occupation of parts of the Soviet Union. This is shown in Document 1039-PS, Exhibit Number USA-146, Rosenberg’s report concerning these discussions, in which it is stated that negotiations took place with “Reich Minister Frick (State Secretary Stuckart).” This parenthesis means that the Reich Ministry of the Interior was represented in these negotiations by State Secretary Stuckart, therefore that Frick did not personally participate in the negotiations. As the negotiations took place only a few days before the beginning of the war in the East, it is not proved by the document that Frick himself was informed about the negotiation before the beginning of the war which, as it is generally known, was afterward proclaimed by Hitler as a necessary measure of defense against an imminent attack by the Soviet Union. It has been made clear by abundant evidence in this Trial how far Hitler kept his true aggressive intentions secret, and how well he knew how to cover up the true aim of all his political measures for years with thousands of convincing reasons to justify the individual measures of his policy of aggression.
There was a very small circle of collaborators whom Hitler informed about his war plans, but this circle was not selected according to the position of the person concerned in the Cabinet, or according to his position in the Party hierarchy, but exclusively from the point of view of whether it was necessary for the person concerned, with respect to his own tasks in the field of preparations for the war, to know the aggressive character of Hitler’s general policy or even his detailed plans of aggression. Document 386-PS, Exhibit Number USA-25, shows how systematically the principle of secrecy was kept, even as regards the older members of the Party and the administrators of important departments in the Reich Cabinet. Whoever, such as the Minister of the Interior, had merely to carry out measures within the framework of preparations for war which could well be similar to tasks of a purely defensive character was, in accordance with Hitler’s principle, not informed of the latter’s aggressive intentions. For this reason, the presence of the Defendant Frick is not shown in even a single one of these secret conferences in which Hitler informed a circle of selected men about his plans for foreign policy and his war aims. In the Document 386-PS just mentioned, Hitler especially emphasized and gave reasons for the exclusion of the Reich Cabinet as a body to which such plans should be made known.
In another record concerning a similar conference—Document L-79, Exhibit Number USA-27—the additional principle is laid down that no one should be told anything concerning the war plans who does not need to know these plans for his actual work.
Frick’s name is not only missing from the list of those present at Hitler’s conferences on his policy of aggression which took place before the war, but the same applies also to the numerous conferences concerning Hitler’s further war aims and aggressive intentions which were held during the war. The Defendant Frick was no more informed of the later attacks or included in their preparation, as is shown by the list of those present at Hitler’s lectures concerning his plans, which have in part been submitted here.
Frick, purely an expert in domestic administration who was not considered competent for military questions and questions of foreign policy, was deemed good enough to organize the civilian administration for the eventuality of any possible war, but in Hitler’s opinion, his foreign policy and military plans were none of Frick’s business. However, the Prosecution asserts further that after the conquest of foreign territories and their occupation, the Defendant Frick regulated the administrative policy in those territories and that he is responsible for it. The Prosecution considers this activity, of the defendant, according to Article 6, Letter (a) of the Charter, as “participation in the execution of wars of aggression.” According to the submission of the Prosecution, Frick exercised an over-all control of the occupied territories, especially in his capacity as chief of the Central Office for the occupied territories. On the basis of the same function, he is deemed to be responsible for all War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity which were committed in the occupied and incorporated territories before and during the war, up to his dismissal as Reich Minister of the Interior on 20 August 1943.