Where can I download the Nuremberg Document 446‑PS (Case Barbarossa) full translation?
Executive summary
The full English translation of Nuremberg Document 446‑PS (Directive No. 21, “Case Barbarossa”) is available in multiple open‑access archival repositories: Cornell University’s Donovan Nuremberg Trials Collection hosts a downloadable translated item record (Cornell/DONOVAN), and Harvard Law School’s Nuremberg Trials Project provides digitized images and full‑text views of the directive as entered into the trial record (Harvard) [1] [2] [3]. Contemporary reproductions also appear in online transcriptions of the Nuremberg proceedings such as the Avalon Project and in OCR/scan collections maintained by the National Security Archive that mirror the official 1946 U.S. Government publication that served as the source text [4] [5] [6].
1. Where the translation is hosted and how to get it
The Donovan Nuremberg Trials Collection at Cornell University Law Library includes a catalog entry for “Translation of Document 446‑PS / Office of U. S. Chief of Counsel: Donovan Nuremberg Trials Collection,” and the collection is explicitly open to the public; the Cornell record indicates permission is not required and suggests a courtesy credit line when reusing the material, which implies the translation is downloadable from their digital catalog [1] [7]. The Harvard Law School Library’s Nuremberg Trials Project makes PS‑446 available in its document viewer with digitized images and a full‑text rendering derived from the official trial publication “Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression,” and notes that PS‑446 was entered at trial (US Exhibit 31 / C‑66) — Harvard’s interface lets researchers view and download images and text for public use [2] [6] [3].
2. Official printed source and mirrored online transcriptions
Both Harvard and other archival projects cite the English source text as the wartime U.S. Government publication “Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression” (Office of United States Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946), and the Harvard viewer notes that PS‑446’s text in the project is taken from that official compilation, meaning downloadable reproductions online are faithful to the official trial translation [2] [6]. The Avalon Project (Yale) republishes the Nuremberg trial proceedings and explicitly references Directive No. 446‑PS in its transcripts of opening statements and trial days, so researchers can cross‑check the directive text against the surrounding courtroom record there [4] [8] [9].
3. Additional archival mirrors and searchable scans
The National Security Archive hosts OCR versions and scanned volumes of the International Military Tribunal proceedings (Volume XXII and related volumes) that contain the official trial record and exhibits tied to PS‑446; those OCR files and scanned documents are another route to obtain the translation or to download the pages in which it appears [5]. Harvard’s Nuremberg project also organizes the evidence files and provides contextual documents (briefings, extracts, related directives) that help confirm the provenance and trial use of PS‑446 if the user wants the complete evidentiary context rather than only the single directive [10] [11].
4. Practical download steps and provenance notes
To download the full translation, use Cornell’s digital catalog entry for item “Translation of Document 446‑PS” in the Donovan Collection (Cornell’s catalog page includes access instructions and reuse notes) or open the Harvard Nuremberg Trials Project document viewer for “Directive 21 / Case Barbarossa” and use the site’s image/text download options; both repositories point to the same official English source used at Nuremberg and are public‑facing [1] [2] [3]. Researchers seeking the print original can consult the G.P.O. volume “Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression,” which the digital projects cite as their source text [2] [6].
5. Caveats and corroboration
The available digital translations are reproductions of the translation used by the U.S. Chief of Counsel at Nuremberg (the trial exhibit translation), not a newly retranslated German original; archival interfaces note this provenance and some platforms provide scanned images of the original trial exhibit to verify fidelity [2] [6] [10]. If the user requires a different editorial version or a new scholarly retranslation from German, that is not documented in the cited digital collections and would require checking other German‑language archives or academic publications beyond the sources listed here [2] [7].