Archive/File: imt/tgmwc/tgmwc-14/tgmwc-14-131.08
Last-Modified: 2000/03/13

                                                  [Page 120]

DR. SIEMERS: May it please the Tribunal, in this connection
I would like, because of their chronological correspondence,
to submit the two documents,, Exhibits Raeder 28 and 29, and
I only ask that the Tribunal take judicial notice, without
my making further reference to them.

BY DR. SIEMERS:

Q. The prosecution has cited Document C-I-55 and has accused
you, through this document

SIR DAVID MAXWELL FYFE: My Lord, the documents to which Dr.
Siemers has just referred - Exhibits Raeder 28 and 29 - the
first is a memorandum of General Gamelin and the second is a
letter from General Weygand to General Gamelin of 9th
September, 1939.

Your Lordship will remember that the prosecution objected to
these documents as being irrelevant, and, my Lord, the
prosecution maintains that objection.

I do not wish to interrupt Dr. Siemers' examination any more
than is necessary. If at the moment he is merely asking the
Tribunal to take judicial notice of the documents and does
not intend to use them, it would probably be convenient, in
order not to interrupt the examination-in-chief, that I
should merely indicate formally that we are maintaining our
objection to the documents.

Of course, I am at the disposal of the Tribunal.

THE PRESIDENT: Is the position that they were allowed to be
translated and put in the document book, but no further
order of the Tribunal has been given?

SIR DAVID MAXWELL FYFE: No further order has been given and
therefore, My Lord, it is still open to us to object, as I
understand the position.

THE PRESIDENT: Then, perhaps we had better deal with it now.

SIR DAVID MAXWELL FYFE: If your Lordship pleases.

DR. SIEMERS: May I make a few remarks on this point?

THE PRESIDENT: But we had better hear the objection first,
had we not? And then we will hear you afterwards.

DR. SIEMERS: Yes, Mr. President, as you wish. This is a
purely formal point. I believe that Sir David erred slightly
in referring to number 28. There was no objection to this
document by the prosecution, but only against 29.

SIR DAVID MAXWELL FYFE: My friend is quite right; we did not
object to the translation of 28. However, my Lord, it falls
into the same category as 29, and I would still raise an
objection.

I apologise to your Lordship if I conveyed the impression
that we had made an objection before.

My Lord, 28 is a letter from General Gamelin to M. Daladier,
on the 1st September, 1939, in which General Gamelin gives
his view as to the problem of the neutrality of Belgium and
Luxembourg, and contrasts that view with the view of the
French Government.

Now, my Lord, I submit that that expression of opinion on
the part of General

Gamelin is in itself intrinsically too remote from the
issues of this trial to be of any relevance or probative
value.

Then, apart from its intrinsic nature, the position is that
this was a document which, as I understand from Dr. Siemers'
verification on Page 158, is taken from the White Book of
the German Foreign Office, from the secret files of the
French General Staff, which could not have been captured
until sometime after June, 1940. Therefore, as a secondary
reason, it can have no relevance to any opinion formed by
the defendant Raeder in September of 1939.

My Lord, the second document is, as I said to the Tribunal,
a letter from General Weygand, who was then the Commander-in-
Chief of the French Army in the Levant, to General Gamelin.
It describes a plan which General Weygand


                                                  [Page 121]


had in mind with regard to possible operations in Greece.
Nothing came of these operations before June, 1940, when an
armistice was made by Marshal Petain on behalf of part of
the French people, although not, of course, of the whole;
and it can have no relevance to October, 1940, when Greece
was invaded by Italy, or to the position at the end of 1940
and the beginning of 1941, when the invasion of Greece
begins to be considered in the German directives and
operational ,orders which have been put in before the
Tribunal.

That is the first point, and the same secondary point
applies to this document, that it was also a document which
could not have been captured before June, 1940; therefore it
can have no relevance to this defendant's state of mind in
August or September of 1939.

My Lord, as a matter of convenience, I have just made a list
of the documents to which objections will be made, and my
Lord, there are one or two additions which my French and
Soviet colleagues have asked me to make, and I will deal
with them when they arise.

My Lord, I would just like the Tribunal to have in mind that
there are four groups of documents arranged geographically
as opposed to the arrangement here, which the Tribunal will
have to consider. One is formed by documents relating to the
Low Countries. The second, which is Group G on the list
which I have just put before the. Tribunal, deals with
Norway. A third deals with Greece, of which No. 29 is an
example, and a fourth is Group E in the list which I have
just put in, dealing with tentative proposals and
suggestions made by various military figures with regard to
the oilfield in the Caucasus or operations on the Danube.

My Lord, the same objections which I have made particularly
with regard to Documents 28 and 29 will apply generally to
these groups, and I thought that I ought to draw the
Tribunal's attention to that fact. In addition, my friend
Colonel Pokrovsky has intimated to me some special
objections which he will have to certain documents on which
he can assist the Tribunal himself when they arise.

But, my Lord, I do take these specific Cases, 28 and 29, as
objectionable in themselves, and I draw the Tribunal's
attention to the fact that they are also typically
objectionable as belonging to certain groups.

The decision of the Tribunal, your Lordship, has been given.
Your Lordship said, "The question of their admissibility
will be decided after they have been translated."

M. DUBOST: May it please the Tribunal, I would ask the
Tribunal for an opportunity to associate myself publicly
with the declaration just made by Sir David, and to give a
few examples which will show the degree of importance which
should be attached to the documents in question.

The defence is asking that the Tribunal take into account a
document published in the German White Book No. 5, under No.
8. This document reports a statement by a French prisoner of
war, who is supposed to have said that he had been in
Belgium since 15th April. However, the German White Book
gives neither the name of this prisoner nor any indication
of his unit. We have none of the information which we need
in order to judge whether the statement is relevant.

We are therefore faced with a document which is not
authentic and which has no value as evidence.

The defence is asking that No. 102 of the same document book
be admitted by the Tribunal.

I ask the Tribunal to let me make a few observations to show
the one-sided manner in which these documents have been
assembled by the German authorities in the White Book.

I would say, first of all, that No. 102 has not been quoted
at length. The French Delegation has referred to the text of
the German White Book. We have read it carefully. This
document is only a preparatory order in view of

                                                  [Page 122]

defensive preparations organized by the Belgians on the
Franco-Belgian frontier. We have consulted the Belgian
military authorities. This order was a manifestation of the
Belgian Government's determination to defend Belgium's
neutrality on all its frontiers.

It is therefore contrary to the truth to try to prove by
means of this document the existence of Staff contacts
between Brussels, London and Paris, which, if they had
existed, would have been contrary to the policy of
neutrality.

The commentary made by the German Minister of Foreign
Affairs in the introduction to the German White Book, Page
11 of the French text, took defence counsel by surprise and
certainly did not mislead Admiral Raeder, who is a Service
man. In fact the official commentator affirms, on the one
hand, that the expression "les forces amies" (friendly
forces) used in this document means French and British
troops, whereas in reality it is a regular expression used
in the Belgian Army to describe Belgian units in the
immediate vicinity of those actually fighting.

On the other hand, the German commentator states, and I
quote:-

  "The general line Tournai-Antoing of the canal from Mons
  to Conde, Saint Chislain and Binche is partly in Belgium
  and partly in French territory."

It is sufficient to look at a map to see that all those
localities are in Belgian territory and they are all at
least some tens of kilometrics distant from the Franco-
Belgian frontier, and in places, sixty kilometres.

I ask the Tribunal to excuse this interruption. I thought it
was advisable to give a convincing example of the value of
the evidence furnished by the German White Book.

THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Siemers, the Tribunal thinks the most
convenient course would be to hear your argument now upon
these documents, not only upon 28 and 29, but upon the other
documents specified in Sir David Maxwell Fyfe's list, and
then the Tribunal would consider these documents after the
adjournment and would give its decision tomorrow morning.

DR. SIEMERS: May it please the Tribunal, I should be very
grateful if it would be possible to proceed in a somewhat
different manner. I should like to call attention to the
fact that a rather lengthy debate regarding documents has
already taken place, and the decision of the Tribunal
followed. I believe that if I comment upon all the documents
at this point a great deal of time will be lost, since the
coherence of the documents will emerge of itself later
during my presentation of evidence. If I now deal with the
list submitted by Sir David I would, in order to show my
reasons, have to set forth all that which will appear again
in the regular course of testimony later on.

I thought that the decision of the Tribunal first to present
the documents in the document book was specifically to save
time, and then objections could be made one by one as
individual documents are presented.

THE PRESIDENT: I know; but there are a very great number of
documents. The Tribunal will have to hear an argument upon
each document, if we do what you suggest, reading the list
of Sir David. There are thirty or forty documents, suppose.

DR. SIEMERS: Sir David has already stated that he will be
guided according to different geographical groups.
Therefore, there will not be objections with regard to each
document, but rather with regard to each group of documents
and each group of questions; for instance, an objection in
the Norway case against all Norwegian documents, or in the
Greek case against all Greek documents. It would be easier
to deal with matters that way, since in my testimony I shall
be dealing with Greece and Norway in any case, whereas if I
do so now, I shall have to say everything twice.

But I shall be guided by the decision of the Tribunal. I
only fear that an unnecessary amount of time will be lost
that way.

                                                  [Page 123]

SIR DAVID MAXWELL FYFE: My Lord, I only want to say one word
on procedure. I did hope that Dr. Siemers and I had already
occupied sufficient of the Tribunal's time in arguing this
point, because, of course, the arguments as to relevancy
must be the same. Whether they are so obviously irrelevant
as not to be translatable, or whether they are inadmissible,
at any rate, my arguments were the same. And I did not
intend to repeat the argument which I made before the
Tribunal.

Dr. Siemers already has assisted the Tribunal for an hour
and a half on this point which we discussed before, and I
hoped that, if I stated, as I did state, that I have
maintained the points which I put before the Tribunal in my
previous argument, Dr. Siemers might be able on this
occasion to shorten matters and to say that he relied on the
- if I may say so - very full argument which the Tribunal
had on the other occasion. That is why I thought it might be
convenient if we dealt with them now and put this problem
beyond the need of further consideration.

THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Siemers, the Tribunal thinks that you
must argue these questions now, and it hopes that you will
argue them shortly, as your arguments in their favour have
already been heard. But we think that you must argue them
now and not argue each individual document as it comes up ;
and the Tribunal will consider the matter. It has these
documents already, but will consider the matter again and
decide it tonight.

COLONEL POKROVSKY: My Lord, in as much as the Tribunal
decided that Dr. Siemers should argue on the point that was
expressed by Sir David Maxwell Fyfe and other prosecutors, I
think it is my duty to name three documents to which the
Soviet prosecution objects.

The Soviet prosecution would like to object altogether to
five documents. But two of them - I have in mind Nos. 78 and
88 - have been already included by my friend Sir David
Maxwell Fyfe in the list which has been given to the
Tribunal. So all I have to do now is to name three others,
so that Dr. Siemers would have the easier task of answering
all together. I name Nos. 13, 27 and 83.

No. 13 is a record of a report of Captain Lohmann. There is
an idea expressed in this report which I cannot call other
than the crazy and propagandistic idea of a typical Nazi.
The idea is that the aim of the Red Army is world
revolution, and that the Red Army is really trying to incite
world revolution. I consider that it would not be proper if
such nightmares and politically harmful ideas were reflected
in the documents which are to be admitted by the Tribunal.

My second objection is in connection with the Document No.
27. This is a record which was made by a voluntary reporter,
Bohm, of an address of Hitler in Obersalzberg. The Tribunal
has already rejected Dr. Siemers' application to include two
documents pertaining to the same questions; and the Tribunal
emphasized that it does not wish to compare the authenticity
of different documents pertaining to or dealing with the
same question.

I consider that, in as much as the Tribunal already has at
its disposal, among documents that were admitted, two
records dealing with Hitler's address in Obersalzberg, there
is no necessity to admit the third record of his speech, in
as much as in this third version there are altogether
shameless, slanderous and calumnious remarks addressed to
the Armed Forces of the Soviet Union and the leaders of the
Soviet Union.

Neither the Armed Forces of the Soviet Union nor we as
representatives of the Soviet State would ever agree to such
remarks being included in the record.

The third document is No. 83. This is an excerpt from the
White Book. As the authenticity of this White Book has
already been questioned by Dr. Dubost, I consider it to be
material that cannot be relied upon, and in particular in
regard to the Document R-83. There are several remarks,
harmful to the Soviet Union, which have absolutely no
political basis; for instance, the passage pertaining to the
relations between the Soviet Union and Finland.

                                                  [Page 124]

So on the grounds of such general political motives, I would
ask the High Tribunal to exclude this document as evidence,
from the list of documents that were presented to the
Tribunal by defence counsel Siemers.

Furthermore, strictly speaking, it is absolutely clear this
document is irrelevant. That is all I want to say.

DR. SIEMERS: May it please the Tribunal, I note to my regret
that we are back at the beginning again in our debate about
documents, for we are disputing about documents now which
were not mentioned at all in the original debate concerning
documents which took place in May. I had believed, however,
that I could rely on this one principle, that at least those
documents which at that time were not objected to would be
considered granted. Now, however, I find that documents
which were not discussed at that time at all are under
dispute. It is extremely difficult -

THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Siemers, the Tribunal thinks you are
entirely in error because it is obvious that a document
which has not been translated cannot be finally decided on
by the prosecution or by the Tribunal, and the fact that the
prosecution does not object to it at that stage in no way
prevents it from objecting at a later stage, after
translation.

DR. SIEMERS: There were some documents about which I was
told that the prosecution did not object, and with regard to
them I believed, at any rate, that that was final; just as
with reference to some documents -

THE PRESIDENT: I thought I had made myself clear. What I
said was this: The prosecution, in objecting or not
objecting to a document before it is translated, does not in
any way bind itself not to object to it after it is
translated. Is that clear?

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