“By order of the Führer, the Chief of the OKW has decreed in the attached order of 29 August 1942 that the Armed Forces must, as far as possible, contribute towards the task of ensuring food supplies for the German people and that they must themselves make every effort, not only to obtain sufficient food supplies locally to cover the needs of the armies, but also to ensure that the quantities required by the Reich are secured in addition.
“As the result of this order co-operation between the Army and the economic authorities has fortunately grown closer.”
Now with Your Honor’s permission, I shall read into the record one more document, namely, a telegram sent by Keitel on 8 September 1944. This document was kindly put at our disposal by the American Prosecution and registered as Document Number 743-PS. It was not presented to the Tribunal before; I therefore submit it now as Exhibit Number USSR-286, and I quote:
“1. To General Staff of the Army: Attention General Quartermaster, Office of Chief of Staff, (Anna).
“2. To General Staff of the Army: Attention General Quartermaster, Army Administration Office, (Anna-Bu).
“3. To Commanding General, Army Group North.
“4. To Commanding General, Army Group Center.
“1. The Führer has entrusted Gauleiter Koch with the utilization of local resources in the parts of Reichskommissariat Ostland occupied by troops of Army Group Center. Furthermore, the Führer has ordered that all German and local administrative authorities be subordinated to Gauleiter Koch. In securing economic resources, Gauleiter Koch is to maintain contact with competent Supreme Reich agencies.
“2. All authorities of the Armed Forces will give Gauleiter Koch every assistance in their power in executing this order.”
Thus, Your Honors, even at the end of 1944, when under the blows of the Red Army and its allies Hitlerite Germany was precipitated towards its final defeat and only a few months before its final military and political collapse, Hitler, Keitel, Koch, and many others were still stretching out their already stiffening fingers to grab the property and wealth of others.
This is the evidence I have to show regarding the looting and marauding perpetrated by the Hitlerite hordes in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union. But they plundered not only the living, they also plundered the dead. My colleague, Colonel Smirnov, has already presented comprehensive evidence on this question. I do not wish to quote it again, but I refer to it only to show how closely interlocked and all-embracing was the circle of their crimes. As Rauschning testifies in his book, which has already been presented by the Soviet Prosecution to the Tribunal, Hitler once said: