Archive/File: imt/tgmwc/tgmwc-10/tgmwc-10-97.10
Last-Modified: 1999/12/22

THE PRESIDENT: Why do you object to those two Ribbentrop
communications to the Press?

MR. BARRINGTON: It is self-creating evidence, my Lord. He
has presumably given that evidence already. He had not given
it at the same time.

THE PRESIDENT: What he said six years ago might be relevant?

MR. BARRINGTON: Well, if my Lordship thinks so; but the
point I was quoting is simply that it is self-created
evidence and created at the time with a view to creating an
impression. It is propaganda.

THE PRESIDENT: YOU may say that, yes.

MR. BARRINGTON: Then, my Lord, the next group is the Low
Countries. That group really began at 218, of course, and it
goes on to 245.

THE PRESIDENT: Is this another group? The fifth group?

MR. BARRINGTON: This is the fifth group, my Lord, yes. That
goes on from 218 to 245, and I will not deal in detail with
that because the French Chief Prosecutor is going to speak
about that. And the same with the next group, number six,
which is the Balkans. The French Chief Prosecutor will deal
with that, documents 246 to 278.

The next group, number seven, is Russia, and that is
documents 280 to 295, with the exception, I think, of 285a,
which seems to have got there by mistake - it appears to
refer to the United States.

Two hundred and seventy-nine, I cannot identify from the
English translation what it is at all. Perhaps your Lordship
will be good enough to make an amendment against numbers 282
and 283; they should be put into the middle column, there
being no objection to them. But there is an objection to all
the other Russian documents. My Lordship will see, beginning
at the bottom of the group, 291 to 295, they all concern the
Anti-Comintern Pact.

Working up the page again from the bottom, 290/1/5 are
extracts from the book which the Tribunal has already
refused.

Of the documents above that, 280 is Hitler's speech about
Russia in October 1939.

281 is a repetition of a document we have already had, No.
274, which is the Three-Power Pact. That will be dealt with.

THE PRESIDENT: You mean that that is a textual reproduction?

MR. BARRINGTON: I think I am right saying that it is
actually a textual reproduction.

THE TRIBUNAL (Mr. Biddle): But why is there an objection if
it is simply a textual reproduction? The Prosecution has
been given a textual reproduction.

                                                  [Page 298]

MR. BARRINGTON: There is no objection at all.

MR. BIDDLE: You mean it is not in the right column?

MR. BARRINGTON: I was putting in the Allied column only the
ones which would make up a complete set, according to the
prosecution's views.

MR. BIDDLE: Is that true of 284 also, the Soviet-German
Pact?

MR. BARRINGTON: I do not know whether that has come before

MR. BIDDLE: Why do you object to that then?

THE PRESIDENT: By "Pact," is it the German Pact of the 28th
September, 1939?

MR. BARRINGTON: This is the 28th of September, 1939 ...

I am told that there is no objection to that.

285 is again simply a German report which draws conclusions
of facts, and the prosecution says that has no proper
evidential value. It is a very long report by the German
Foreign Office concerning the agitation in Europe against
the German Reich by the Soviet Union, and it is full of
conclusions of fact and opinions.

THE PRESIDENT: It is after the date of the beginning of war
against Russia.

MR. BARRINGTON: It is after the beginning of that war, my
Lord, yes. No. 286 and 287, those are objected to as being
without value as evidence. They come from the "Volkische
Beobachter."

No. 288 is said to be a captured Soviet document, but it has
deteriorated generally in the English version, has no date
and no signature, and it seems of very doubtful value.

No. 289 is a report from the Yugoslav military attach6 in
Moscow, which is also thought to be irrelevant by the
prosecution.

Then group No. 8, my Lord is the group concerning the United
States of America, documents 299 to 310, and including 285-
A. The first ten documents, your Lordship will see, are
reports from, we would say they come from, a very indirect
source, the process report by the Polish Ambassador on the
political situation in the U.S.A. in 1939. The next one
seems to come from Portugal, the next from the Polish
Ambassador again, the next two also from the Polish
Ambassador. Then the next one, No. 300, is President
Roosevelt's quarantine speech in 1937, which seems too far
back to be of any proper relevance. No. 301 is a German
summary of events in the United States, which we say is
irrelevant for the reasons I have stated, that they are
German summaries - rather more unreliable than irrelevant.
No. 302, again, is the Polish Ambassador's report. No. 303
is a statement by President Roosevelt in 1936, and No. 304
is President Roosevelt's message to Congress on the 4th of
January, 1939. I do not think there is anything very
objectionable about that. No. 305 to 308, there is no
objection. 309 - in my copy there are two different versions
of 309. The first one is a German summary of the facts
without any dates and with no sources indicated. It seems to
be of no proper value as evidence, and the second one, 309
and 309-A, are declarations of the Pan-American conference
and the German Note in reply to it. I do not think the
prosecution can take a very strong objection to that, but it
does not seem to be very closely in point.

TC-72, No. 127, and TC-72, No. 124, are both appeals of
President Roosevelt to Hitler and are not objected to.

310 is another German summary of facts without any sources
indicated.

The ninth group is simply a miscellaneous group and, if my
Lordship will turn back to the first page of my note, it is
the first eight documents on that page, down to No. 45. They
are all allowed. There is no objection to them, except No.
12, which is the announcement of the Reichstag election
results. It does not seem to matter one way or the other
whether that is in.

No. 45 is Lord Rothermere's book, "Warnings and Prophecies,"
of predictions and prophecies, which I think the prosecution
contends is not relevant evidence in this case.

The next lot of miscellaneous ones is on page 2, Nos. 70 to
73. No. 71 is the

                                                  [Page 299]

German-Lithuanian treaty about Memel, and there is no
objection. No. 70 is thought to be rather irrelevant. No. 72
and 73 are objected to because they deal with the Fourteen
Points of President Wilson.

The next lot of miscellaneous ones is on the last page but
one of my notes right down at the bottom, No. 296, and that
is a speech by Hitler on the Rhineland. You have all the
evidence that has been given. It appears to be rather
cumulative, if it is not in already. I have not actually
checked whether it is in.

298, on the top of the next page; that is, in fact,
superfluous. It is the same as No. 274. And down at the
bottom of the last page, my Lord, 311, is a paper written by
the defendant Ribbentrop on the
Fuehrer's personality.

THE PRESIDENT: That has already been ruled out.

MR. BARRINGTON: That, I think, has been ruled out this
morning, by your Lordship. No. 312 is an affidavit of Frau
von Ribbentrop. No. 313 is an affidavit of Dr. Gottfriedsen.
I understand from Dr. Horn that, although he had been
allowed Dr. Gottfriedsen as a witness, he thinks it will
save time if he read the affidavit or a part of it. Perhaps,
if your Lordship will allow the prosecution to make what
comments it thinks fit when he comes to do that, it would be
the best way of treating it.

That is all ... all my points, my Lord. There are just the
Low Countries and the Balkans.

MR. DODD: May it please the Tribunal, it is true that Mr.
Barrington has spoken for all of us, and I do not intend to
go over any of these documents, except this, because I fear
there is some question in the minds of the members of the
Tribunal about our objection to documents running from 76 to
116, 118 to 122, and 114 to 148, the Polish documents; we
also say, of course, with Mr. Barrington that they are
cumulative, but it seems to me there is a much more basic
objection. Perhaps they all have to do with the alleged
incidents inside Poland and they were published in these
White Papers. These incidents involved the mistreatment of
Polish citizens inside Poland, who were perhaps of German
extraction. Well, it is our view that such documents are
irrelevant here because that is no defence at all to the
charges, and we cannot permit, we say, a nation to defend
itself or these defendants to defend themselves on charges
such as have been preferred here, by proving that citizens
of another State, although they may have been of German
extraction or of any other extraction, were mistreated
inside that State. Beginning with 76, running through to
116; 118 through 122; 114 through 148; and 151 through 152.
It is 124 through 148, rather than 114 through 148; 124
through 148. The last one is 151 and 152.

M. CAMPETIER DE RIBES: I will ask the Tribunal's permission
to make two short reports on documents which are part of the
fifth and sixth group, and which concern entirely French
documents taken from the German White Book. The French
prosecution has only taken cognisance of them, contrary to
what the Tribunal believes. The French prosecution has not
yet received a translation of the documents submitted by Dr.
Horn. The first group, documents Nos. 221 to 245, are
military documents; and it appears that from them Dr. Horn
wishes to draw the conclusion that England and France
violated the neutrality of Belgium. If we ask the Tribunal
to reject the twenty-five documents, it is only because we
see a grave risk of the Tribunal losing time in useless
discussions. Far from having any reason to fear discussion,
we feel that on the contrary France and Britain would both
be found to have respected scrupulously the two pacts which
they had signed: the first being to respect the neutrality
of Belgium; and the second being to respect the pact by
which they had guaranteed the neutrality of Belgium.

What is the precise issue here, Gentlemen? Only to find out
whether Germany, France or England violated the neutrality
of Belgium. The defendant Ribbentrop has been asked this by
his counsel; and has answered it in the clearest possible
manner, during Saturday's session, in a statement which the
Tribunal is certain

                                                  [Page 300]

to remember. Ribbentrop said: "Of course it is always very
hard in a war like this to violate the neutrality of a
country; and you must not think that we enjoyed doing things
like that."

That, Gentlemen, is a formal admission that Germany violated
the neutrality of Belgium. Why should we waste time in
discussing the relevance of these twenty-five documents now?

I go on to the second group, Group No. 6. These are General
Staff Documents, which Germany claims to have seized; and
they concern events in the Balkans in 1939 and 1940. The
French prosecution asks you to reject the twenty-two
documents submitted by Dr. Horn for the following two
reasons. They have absolutely no claim to be considered
authentic; and they are not relevant. They have absolutely
no claim to be considered authentic - they are all extracts
from the White Book; and the Tribunal knows the
prosecution's views on this point. Moreover, the great
majority of these documents are extracts from documents
originating with the Allied General Staffs. No originals
have been produced; and the supposed copies are not even
submitted in their entirety. They are not relevant, for they
all concern plans studied by the General Staffs in 1939 and
the early part of 1940. These plans for French or British
intervention in Yugoslavia or Greece naturally presupposed
the consent of the Governments concerned, as an
indispensable condition. The plans were never carried
through. They were finally abandoned after the Armistice of
June 1940. The documents date from 1939 and 1940, and the
Tribunal will remember that the aggression against
Yugoslavia and Greece occurred on 6th April, 1941, at a time
when the Hitler government no longer had any reason to fear
plans made in 1939.

These documents, which have no claim to be considered
authentic, are also in no way relevant to the present
discussion, and for that reason the French prosecution asks
the Tribunal to reject them.

THE PRESIDENT: Now, Dr. Horn?

(Dr. Horn approached the lectern.)

Dr. Horn, the Tribunal thinks that you may possibly, in view
of the evidence which the defendant Ribbentrop has given,
find it possible to withdraw some of these documents, in
view of the time that has been taken up. I mean the
defendant Ribbentrop has dealt with the subject very fully
and it may be, therefore, that you will be able to withdraw
some of these documents in order to save time.

DR. HORN: Yes, Mr. President, I will withdraw all the
documents which are cumulative. I should like first ...

THE PRESIDENT: If you let us know now what it is you wish to
withdraw ...

DR.  HORN: Yes, Mr. President.

May I begin with stating my position on a few basic
questions? That is the probative value of White Books and
Embassy reports. I would like to point out that these
documents had a decisive influence on political opinion.
That applies to the defendant von Ribbentrop as well as
Hitler. And, in addition, I would like to point out that the
prosecution has based itself largely on reports of this
kind. I should like, therefore, to ask for equal rights for
the defence.

Then I would like to say a few words about the French
General Staff documents which were found in the town of La
Charite during the French campaign. If the High Tribunal
shares the doubts and misgivings expressed by the
representative of the French prosecution, I ask permission
to question the Commander of the 10th Army Group,
Fieldmarshal Loeb, to the fact that these documents were
found in the town of La Charite.

The Polish documents on which I have based myself were found
in the Polish Foreign Ministry at Warsaw. The Commander-in-
Chief at that time, Fieldmarshal or General Blaskowitz, can
testify to that effect. And in this connection I will summon
Blaskowitz; as a witness, if the Tribunal has any
misgivings.

Moreover, I can crystallise the opinion of the defence by
saying that I believe that objections can only be raised
against a document if its inaccuracy is obvious

                                                  [Page 301]

from the contents, or if it can be shown to be a forgery. I
ask the Tribunal to admit all the other documents contained
in the White Books or the Ambassadors' reports.

As to the documents on Polish minority questions I would
like to point out that Prime Minister Chamberlain himself
described the minority question as being the decisive
question between Germany and Poland. Since these
negotiations, of which the main subject, besides Danzig and
the Corridor, was the minority question, led to war, the
minority question is therefore one of the causes of the war.

Therefore I ask that the documents on this point, which
prove violation of the minority pacts on the part of Poland,
be admitted in evidence.

If the High Tribunal agrees, I will now begin to submit the
documents to the Tribunal for judicial notice; that is, to
read certain essential passages, and I would like to tell
the Tribunal now which documents I will dispense with.

DR. DIX: I should be grateful to the Tribunal if I might
just state my position - not as regards the case of
Ribbentrop, with whom I am not concerned; my colleague Dr.
Horn, is dealing with him - but simply on principle, not
exclusively from the defence point of view, but quite
objectively and basically in regard to the various problems
which the Tribunal must consider before making its decision
as to the admissibility of any piece of evidence - either in
the form of a question put to a witness or a document to be
submitted.

I am not asking for permission to talk for the sake of
talking, but because I believe that by doing so I can
shorten the later stages of the proceedings; because I hope
that the Tribunal will be in agreement with the main points
of my statements and that therefore it will be unnecessary
for the defence to make these statements at a later stage.

I should like to ask your Lordship whether the Tribunal will
allow me now to make clear, as shortly as possible, the
position which I take up in principle on the questions which
I consider of vital importance for the decision. May I do
this?

THE PRESIDENT: Yes.

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