Nazi Conspiracy & Aggression II.
It is important that it be clearly understood what this
collection of documents is not. In the first place, it is
neither an official record nor an unofficial transcript of
the trial proceedings. It is not designed to reproduce what
has taken place in court. It is merely the documentary
evidence prepared by the American and British prosecuting
staffs, and is in no wise under the sponsorship of the
Tribunal. It is presented in the belief that this
collection containing the full text of the documents,
classified under appropriate subjects, may be more useful to
students of the Nurnberg trial than the official record,
when prepared, may be.
The reason for this goes back to the first few days of the
trial, when the Tribunal ruled that it would treat no
written matter as in evidence unless it was read in full,
word by word, in court. The purpose of the ruling was to
enable the documentary material which the American and
British staffs had translated from German into English to be
further translated into Russian and French through the
simultaneous interpreting system in the courtroom. The
consequence, however, was to enforce upon the American and
British prosecution the task of trimming their evidence
drastically unless the trial was to be protracted to an
unconscionable length.
Counsel therefore had to content
themselves in most instances with introducing, by reading
verbatim, only the most vital parts of the documents relied
upon. Only these evidentiary minima appear in the daily
transcript, and presumably, since no more is officially in
evidence under the Tribunal's ruling, no more can properly
be included in the official record. It has frequently been
the case, furthermore, that different parts of certain
documents were read in proof of different allegations, and
hence are scattered throughout the transcript. American
counsel, in several instances read only sketchy portions of
some documents, leaving other portions, at the request of
the French and Soviet dele-
[Page viii]
gations, to be read later as a part of their case. Still other
portions of the same document will undoubtedly be read later
on by the defense. It is an unavoidable consequence that the
transcript itself will be a thing of shreds and patches, and
that any comprehensive and orderly notion of the documentary
evidence must e obtained elsewhere. The documentary
excerpts, when accompanied by the explanation of the trial
counsel, are of course sufficient for the trial and for the
judgement of the Tribunal. But the purposes of historians
and scholars will very likely lead them to wish to examine
the documents in there entirety. It is to those long-range
interests that these volumes are in the main addressed.
Secondly, this collection of documents is not the American
case. It is at once more and less than that. It is less,
because it o course cannot include the captured motion
picture and still photographic evidence relied upon, and
because it contains only a few of the organizational
charts and visual presentation exhibits utilized at the
trial. It is more, because although it does contain alI the
evidence introduced either in part or in whole by the
American staff in proof of Count I, it also includes many
documents not introduced into evidence at all. There were
various reasons for not offering this material to the
Tribunal: the documents were cumulative in nature, better
documents were available on the same point, or the contents
did not justify the time required for reading. (The document
index at the end of Volume VIII is marked to indicate which
documents were introduced, either in whole or in part, in
evidence.)
Of more than 800 American documents so far
introduced in evidence, a small number were received through
judicial notice or oral summarization, while some 500 were
read, in part or in whole, in court. Approximately 200
evidence in the first few days of the trial, under an
earlier ruling of the Tribunal which admitted documents without
reading, an merely on filing with the court after proof of
authenticity. Of the documents not now in evidence and thus not
before the Tribunal for consideration in reaching its decision, many
have been turned over to the French and Soviet prosecuting staffs an,
by the time these volumes are published, will have been
introduced in the course of their cases. Others will have
been put before the Tribunal by the American case in
rebuttal or utilized in crossexamining witnesses called by the defense.
This publication includes a series of affidavits prepared
under the direction of Col. John Harlen Amen, chief of the
OCC Interrogation Division. Those which were introduced into
evidence are listed among the documents in the PS series. A
number of affidavits which were not offered to the Tribunal
are printed in a
[Page ix]
separate section at the end of the document series.
Affidavits of the latter type were prepared in an attempt to
eliminate surprise by delineating clearly the testimony
which the affiant might be expected to give in court, should
it be decided to call him as a witness. In the case of the
affiants who testified in court, their affidavitS represent
a substantially accurate outline of their testimony on
direct examination. Others of the affiants may, by the time
of publication, have been called as rebuttal witnesses for
the prosecution. In addition, there are included selected
statements of certain defendants and prisoners written to
the prosecutors from prison.
It should be mentioned in this
connection that as a result of many months of exhaustive
questioning of the defendants, prisoners of war, and other
potential witnesses, the Interrogation Division has harvested
approximately 15,000 typewritten pages of valuable and previously unavailable
information on a variety of subjects. These extensive
transcripts represent approximately 950 individual
interrogations and are presently being edited and catalogued
in Nurnberg so that the significant materials may be
published in a useful form and within a manageable scope, as
a supplement to these present volumes.
This collection also includes approximately 200 documents
obtained and processed by the British prosecuting staff,
known as the British War Crimes Executive, and presented in
substantiation of Count II of the Indictment, which the
British delegation assumed the responsibility of proving. It
seems altogether fitting that these documents should be
included in these volumes since, in proving illegal acts of
aggression, they naturally supplement the American documents
proving the illegal conspiracy to commit aggression. The
American prosecuting staff is grateful to Sir Dand Maxwell-
Fyfe, the British Deputy Chief Prosecutor
from whom and from the goodly company of whose associates
there has ever been the most generous cooperation, for
consent to the publication of the British documents by the
United States Government.
Under the division of the case agreed on by the Chief
Prosecutors of the four Allied nations, the French and
Soviet delegates are responsible for the presentation of
evidence bearing on the proof of Count III (War Crimes) and
Count IV (Crimes against humanity) of the Indictment. The
French case will concern itself with these crimes when
committed in the West, while the Russian evidence will
concern the commission of these crimes in the East. None of
the documents obtained by these two prosecuting nations are
included in these volumes. The reason is that, this writing,
the French case has just commenced and the e case will not
be reached for several weeks. Since one of
[Page x]
the objects of this undertaking is to acquaint the American
public at the earliest opportunity with the character of the
evidence produced by its representatives, there seems no
justification in delaying publication until the close of the
French and Russian cases, when all the prosecution documents
will be available. As is indicated by the title of these
present volumes, Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, this
collection relates only to Counts I and II of the
Indictment, or one-half of the prosecution case. It is to be hoped,
however, that supplementary volumes containing the French
and Soviet documents may be published at a later time.
Finally, this collection, by its nature limited to a part of
the prosecution case, does not of course purport to present
the whole story of the evidence adduced at Nurnberg. The
evidence and arguments of defense counsel will not be
presented for some time, and the text of these matters will,
if possible, be included in any additional volumes, which it
may become possible to publish.
The
original plaintext version
of this file is available via
ftp.
[
Previous ]
Index |
Next ]
Home ·
Site Map ·
What's New? ·
Search
Nizkor
© The Nizkor Project, 1991-2012
This site is intended for educational purposes to teach about the Holocaust and
to combat hatred.
Any statements or excerpts found on this site are for educational purposes only.
As part of these educational purposes, Nizkor may
include on this website materials, such as excerpts from the writings of racists and antisemites. Far from approving these writings, Nizkor condemns them and
provides them so that its readers can learn the nature and extent of hate and antisemitic discourse. Nizkor urges the readers of these pages to condemn racist
and hate speech in all of its forms and manifestations.
Volume I, Preface
(Part 2 of 4)