The opening of Preface
I
On the 2d day of May 1945, President Truman signed Executive Order 9547 appointing Justice Robert H. Jackson as Representative of the United States and as its Chief of Counsel in the preparation and prosecution of the case against the major Axis war criminals. Since that date and up to the present, the staff of the Office of Chief of Counsel, or OCC, has been engaged continuously in the discovery, collection, examination, translation, and marshalling of documentary evidence demonstrating the criminality of the former leaders of the German Reich. Since the 20th day of November 1945, a considerable part of this documentary arsenal has been directed against the 22 major Nazi war criminals who are on trial before the International Military Tribunal in Nurnberg. As of this writing the American and British cases-in-chief, on Counts I and II of the Indictment charging, respectively, conspiracy and the waging of wars of aggression, have been completed.