dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
MR. ALDERMAN: In that period the Nazi conspirators, having acquired governmental control of Germany by the middle of 1933, turned their attention toward utilization of that control for foreign aggression. Their plan at this stage was to acquire military strength and political bargaining power to be used against other nations. In this they succeeded. The second phase of their aggression was shorter. It is rather interesting to see that as the conspiracy gained strength it gained speed. During each phase the conspirators succeeded in accomplishing more and more in less and less time until, toward the end of the period, the rate of acceleration of their conspiratorial movement was enormous. The second phase of their utilization of control for foreign aggression involved the actual seizure and absorption of Austria and Czechoslovakia in that order. By March, the third month of 1939, they had succeeded in that phase. The third phase may be measured in months rather than years: from March 1939 to September 1939. The previous aggression being successful, having been consummated without the necessity of resorting to actual war, the conspirators had obtained much desired resources and bases and were ready to undertake further aggressions, by means of war if necessary. By September 1939 war was upon the world. The fourth phase of the aggression consisted of expanding the war into a general European war of aggression. By April 1941 the war which had theretofore involved Poland, the United Kingdom, and France, had been expanded by invasions into Scandinavia and into the Low Countries and into the Balkans. In the next phase the Nazi conspirators carried the war eastward by invasion of the territory of the Union of Soviet; Socialist Republics, and finally, through their Pacific ally, Japan; precipitated the attack on the United States at Pearl Harbor. The final result of these aggressions is fresh in the minds of all of us. I turn now to certain outstanding evidence at hand.
MR. ALDERMAN: While on this phase of the case we shall not rest exclusively on them alone; the essential elements of the crime which I have already pointed out can be made out by a mere handful of captured documents. My order of presentation of these will be first to present one by one this handful of documents, documents which prove the essential elements of the case on aggressive war up to the hilt. These documents will leave no reasonable doubt concerning the aggressive character of the Nazi war or concerning the conspiratorial premeditation of that war. Some of this group of documents are the specific basis for particular allegations in the Indictment. As I reach those documents, I shall invite the attention of the Tribunal to the allegations of the Indictment which are specifically supported by them. Having proved the corpus of the crime in this way, I will follow the presentation of this evidence with a more or less chronological presentation of the details of the case on aggressive war producing more detailed evidence of the relevant activities of the conspirators from 1933 to 1941. The documents which we have selected for single presentation at this point, before developing the case in detail, are 10 in number. The documents have been selected to establish the basic facts concerning each phase of the development of the Nazi conspiracy for aggression. Each document is conspiratorial in nature. Each document is one, I believe, heretofore unknown to history and each document is self-contained and tells its own story. Those are the three standards of selection which we have sought to apply. I turn to the period of 1933 to 1936, a period characterized by an orderly, planned sequence of preparations for war. This is the period covered by Paragraphs 1 and 2 of Section IV (F) of the Indictment, to be found at Page 7 of the printed English text.
MR. ALDERMAN: The essential character of this period was the formulation and execution of the plan to re-arm and to re-occupy and fortify the Rhineland, in violation of the Treaty of Versailles and other treaties, in order to acquire military strength and political bargaining power to be used against other nations. If the Tribunal please, we have what have been referred to as document books. They are English translations of German documents, in some cases German versions. I shall ask that they be handed up and we will hand one copy at the moment to counsel for the defendants. It has been physically impossible to prepare 21 sets of them. If possible we shall try to furnish further copies to the defendants, the original German documents . . .
DR. DIX: I would be very much obliged. In order that there should be no misunderstanding we have arranged that tomorrow we will discuss with the Prosecution in what way the whole of the evidence may be made available to all the Defense Counsel. It is, of course, necessary that no one should have the advantage over the other. For this reason, while I appreciate the good will of the Prosecution to overcome the difficulties, I must refuse their kind offer of a copy of the book, because I feel that in so doing I would have an unfair advantage over the others. I am not in a position during the proceedings to hand the evidentiary document to my colleagues. I ask you therefore to appreciate the reasons why I have refused this document. I am convinced that tomorrow we shall be able to agree about the way in which we can receive evidence, and I suggest that today we try to continue as we have done up to now.
THE PRESIDENT: Mr. Alderman, can you inform the Tribunal how many copies of these documents you will be able to furnish to the Tribunal by Monday?
MR. ALDERMAN: I cannot at the moment. If Your Honor pleases: may I make this suggestion in connection with it, which I think may be of help to all concerned? I think many of us have underestimated the contribution of this interpreting system to this Trial. We all see how it has speeded the proceeding, but in so far as my presentation of German documents is concerned, I shall let the documents speak. I expect to read the pertinent parts of the documents into the system so that they will go into the transcript of record. Counsel for the German defendants will get their transcripts in German; our French and Russian Allies will get their transcripts in their language, and it seems to me that that is the most helpful way to overcome this language barrier. I can recognize that for Dr. Dix to receive a volume of documents which are English translations of German documents might not seem very helpful to him. Further, as an aid, we will have original German documents in court-one copy; and if the Court will allow, I would ask that the original German document, from which I shall read, would be passed to the German interpreter under Colonel Dostert, so that instead of undertaking to translate an English translation back into perhaps a bad German, he will have the original German document before him and in that way, the exact German text will be delivered in the daily transcript to all of the counsel for the defendants. I hope that may be a helpful suggestion.
THE PRESIDENT: That to some extent depends, does it not, upon how much of the document you omit?
MR. ALDERMAN: That is quite true, Sir. As to these 10 documents with which I propose to deal immediately, I expect to read into the transcript practically the whole of the documents, because the whole of them is significant, much more significant than any thing I could say. Also all of these 10 documents were listed in the list of documents which we furnished counsel for the defendants, I believe, the 1st of November.
THE PRESIDENT: You say that they were...
MR. ALDERMAN: In the list. But of course I recognize that a list of documents is very different from the documents themselves.
THE PRESIDENT: Are the documents very long?
MR. ALDERMAN: Some of them are very long and some of them are very short; you can't generalize. Whenever it is a speech of Adolf Hitler you can count it is fairly long.
THE PRESIDENT: Can you not by Monday have in the hands of every member of the Defense Counsel copies of these 10 documents? It is suggested to me that photostating could be done quite easily.
MR. ALDERMAN: I understand that both our photostatic facilities and our mimeographing facilities are right up to the hilt with work. It is a very difficult mechanical problem.
COL. STOREY: If the Tribunal please: In further explanation, the documents which Mr. Alderman intends to offer were on the defendants' list filed in the Document Center on the 1st day of November 1945. Lieutenant Barrett had 23 copies of each one photostated as far as he could on that list. Six copies went into the defendants' Information Center. Now, we can't say at this time whether six copies-that is photostatic copies of each one- have been furnished to the defendants, but whenever they wanted copies of any particular one, either the original was exhibited to them or photostatic copies were made. Again, Sir, I call attention to the physical problems that are almost insurmountable: to make 23 photostatic copies which are required of every document. Now then, Sir . . .
THE PRESIDENT: If I may interrupt you, I imagine that the list which was deposited on the 1st of November didn't contain only these 10 documents but contained a great number of other documents.
COL. STOREY: That is correct, Sir.
THE PRESIDENT: So that the defendants' counsel wouldn't know which out of that list of documents were going to be relied upon.
COL. STOREY: Except, Sir, they were notified that the Prosecution would use all or some of those documents if necessary, and if the copies were not furnished upon request, they have been made and delivered to them. May I say, Sir, that working 24 hours a day, we are trying to furnish 10 sets of all of these to defendants' counsel, and they will be... One complete set was delivered to defendants' counsel here now as a convenience to follow. The other sets, I feel certain, will be in their hands sometime Sunday, but one complete list we now turn over to than-not a list, complete copies.
DR. WALTER SEIMERS (Counsel for Defendant Raeder): I should like to point out one fact. The Prosecution declared this morning that the documents that will be put before us today are contained in the list which was submitted on the 1st of November, that is in the list which was submitted this morning. This morning a list was made available to us in room 54. I have it in my hand. This morning nine documents were named. Of these nine documents, only one, contrary to what the Prosecution said, was found in the old list; the other eight documents were neither in the old list nor in the new list. The eight other documents are, as I ascertained at lunch time today, not in the document room. Neither are they available in photostatic copies, so they could not be made available to me. I think, gentlemen, that it will not be possible for us to work on this basis. I therefore request that we should be allowed to wait until we know the result of the discussion which we are told will take place tomorrow with the Prosecution, so that we may then...
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal proposes to adjourn now and to give Defense Counsel the opportunity of meeting Counsel for the Prosecution tomorrow morning. Both Counsel for the Prosecution and Defense Counsel appear to be perfectly ready to make every possible effort to deal with the case in the most reasonable way, and at that meeting you will be able to discuss these documents which you say have been omitted and the Counsel for the Prosecution will try to satisfy you with reference to the other documents.
DR. SIEMERS: Yes, I have one more request. The Prosecution has just said that it will hardly be possible to make 23 photostatic copies. I believe, gentlemen, that if these documents are as important as the Prosecution said today, it is a conditio sine qua non that every defense counsel and every defendant should have a photostatic copy of these documents. As we all know it is easy to produce a photostat in a few hours. With the excellent apparatus here available to the Pros- ecution it should, in my opinion, be easy to produce 20 or 40 photostats of these 10 documents in 48 hours.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, you will meet the Counsel for the Prosecution tomorrow and attempt to come to some satisfactory arrangement with them then; and now the Tribunal will adjourn. [The Tribunal adjourned until 26 November 1945 at 1000 hours.]
DR. FRITZ SAUTER (Counsel for Defendant Von Ribbentrop): May it please the Court, I should like to make an application. I am Dr. Sauter, counsel for the Defendant Von Ribbentrop. On 30 October the Defendant Von Ribbentrop requested that his former secretary, Margareta Blank, at that time in the Remand Prison in Nuremberg, be placed at his disposal in order that he might dictate his reply to the Indictment, as well as a description of the manner in which he performed his official duties in the last 7 or 8 years. On 11 November 1945 the Tribunal allowed this request. The Defendant Von Ribbentrop was therefore able to dictate for a few hours, but this was stopped for reasons unknown to him. Neither has the Defendant Von Ribbentrop had returned to him the shorthand notes or the typed transcript. He has not been able to dictate any more to Fräulein Blank. On 15 November Ribbentrop repeated his request regarding the witness Blank, but up to the present she has not been placed again at his disposal. The Defendant Ribbentrop therefore requests the President to give instructions that his former secretary, Margareta Blank, again be placed at his disposal in order to take down the necessary notes from dictation. Such permission appears to be absolutely essential to enable the Defendant Ribbentrop properly to prepare his own testimony and the testimony of the defense witnesses. Particularly in the case of Von Ribbentrop, the material to be treated is so voluminous, that no other way of treating it appears feasible to us. The Defendant Von Ribbentrop has a further request to make. He has repeatedly asked that some of his former colleagues, in particular Ambassador Gauss, Ambassador Von Rintelen, Minister Von Sonnleitner, Professor Fritz Berber, and Under State Secretary Henke, be brought to Nuremberg as witnesses, and that he be permitted to speak to these witnesses in the presence of his counsel. This request had in part been refused by the Court on 10 November. The remaining part has not yet been decided.
DR. FRITZ SAUTER (Counsel for Defendant Von Ribbentrop): It is quite impossible for the Defendant Von Ribbentrop to give a clear and exhaustive account of the entire foreign policy for the last 7 or 8 years if nothing is placed at his disposal except a pencil and a block of writing paper. Even the White Books of the Foreign Office, for which he has asked, could not be placed at his disposal. In view of the fact that the data concerning Germany's foreign policy during the last 7 or 8 years is so extensive, the Defendant Von Ribbentrop cannot possibly recall every single date, every event, every document, et cetera, unless his memory is refreshed by his being able to speak with his former colleagues. Apart from this the Defendant Von Ribbentrop has been in the habit of taking a great many soporifics during the last 4 years, especially bromides, and his memory has suffered in consequence. It would not be very helpful to the investigation of historical truth in a field which interests not only this Court, but also, to an even greater extent, the outside world, if Von Ribbentrop during his examination, might have to state at every turn that he could no longer recollect these details. Defendant Von Ribbentrop therefore applies to the Court and begs that his above-mentioned colleagues be brought here and that he receive permission to discuss with them matters pertaining to the Trial, in order that he may prepare for further proceedings.
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal has already intimated to defendant's counsel that all applications should, as far as practicable, be made in writing, and they consider that the applications which have now been made orally should have been made in writing. They will consider the facts with reference to the applications in respect of the Defendant Von Ribbentrop's secretary. The other applications as to witnesses and documents, which have been made in writing, have been considered, or will be considered by the Tribunal.
DR. SAUTER: Mr. President, may I say in this connection that the applications which I have today submitted have been repeatedly lodged with the Court in writing, but my client is anxious lest he experience difficulties in preparing for his own hearing and the hearing of the defense witnesses.
THE PRESIDENT: As was announced at the sitting on Friday, Counsel for the Prosecution were to try to arrange with defendants' counsel some satisfactory arrangement with reference to the production of documents in the German language. In accordance with that announcement, Counsel for the Prosecution saw Counsel for the Defense, And representatives of the Prosecution and the Defense appeared before the Tribunal and the Tribunal has provisionally made the following arrangement: 1. That in the future, only such parts of documents as are read in court by the Prosecution shall in the first instance be part of the record. In that way those parts of the documents will be conveyed to defendants' counsel through the earphones in German. 2. In order that defendants and their counsel may have an opportunity of inspecting such documents in their entirety in German, a photostatic copy of the original and one copy thereof shall be deposited in the defendants' counsel room at the same time that they are produced in court. 3. The defendants' counsel may at any time refer to any other part of such documents. 4. Prosecuting counsel will furnish defendants' counsel with 10 copies of their trial briefs in English and five copies of their books of documents in English, at the time such briefs and books are furnished to the Tribunal. 5. Defendants' counsel will be furnished with one copy of each of the transcripts of the proceedings. That is all. I call upon the prosecuting counsel for the United States.
MR. ALDERMAN: If it pleases the Tribunal, may I make, Mr. President, one inquiry with regard to your reference to trial briefs? On my section of the case I shall not expect to hand up trial briefs to the Court. Whatever I have in the nature of trial briefs will be put over the microphone. I wonder if that is satisfactory?
THE PRESIDENT: I think what I said meets that case.
MR. ALDERMAN: I thought so, yes.
THE PRESIDENT: Because what I said was that the defendants' counsel would be furnished with 10 copies of the trial briefs in English at the same time that they are furnished to the Tribunal. Therefore, if you don't furnish the trial briefs to the Tribunal, none will be furnished to the defendants' counsel.
MR. ALDERMAN: Yes. When the Tribunal rose on Friday last, I had just completed an introductory statement preliminary to the presentation of evidence on the aggressive war aspect of the case. In that introductory statement I had invited attention to the parts of the Charter and to the parts of the Indictment which are pertinent to this aspect of the case. I had also discussed the relationship between recorded history and the evidence to be presented, indicating what sort of additions to recorded history would be made by the evidence contained in the captured documents. I then indicated to the Court that I would first proceed by presenting singly a handful of captured documents, which, in our opinion, prove the corpus of the crime of aggressive war, leaving no reasonable doubt concerning the aggressive character of the Nazi war, or concerning the conspiratorial premeditation of that war. I indicated to the Tribunal that after proving the corpus of the crime in this way I would follow the presentation of this evidence with a more or less chronological presentation of the case on aggressive war, producing evidence in greater detail of the relevant activities of the conspirators from 1933 to 1941. As the members of the Tribunal may understand, it is easier to make plans about presentation than to keep them. There have been, by necessity, some changes in our plans. I indicated on Friday that to a certain extent the American case under Count One and the British case under Count Two would interlock. The British Chief Prosecutor, Sir Hartley Shawcross, is by force of circumstances, required to be in London this week. He expects to be back next week. The intention now is that when he returns Monday he will make his opening statement covering Count Two of the Indictment and such interrelated parts of Count One of the Indictment as have not by then been presented.
MR. ALDERMAN: So that what is at the moment planned, if it meets with the Court's views, is that I shall continue, as far as I may within 2 days of this week, on the detailed story as to aggressive war; that thereupon we shall alter the presentation and present some other matters coming under Count One. Then, following the British Chief Prosecutor's opening statement on Monday of next week, we shall continue jointly with the chapters on Poland, Russia, and Japan, as parts of both Count One and Two. While that may not be strictly logical, it seems to us the best method with which to proceed under the circumstances. I turn now to the period of 1933 to 1936, a period characterized by an orderly, planned sequence of preparations for war. This is the period covered by Paragraphs 1 and 2 of IV (F) of the lndictment. This may be found at Page 7 of the printed English text of the Indictment. The essential character of this period was the formulation and execution of the plan to rearm and to reoccupy and fortify the Rhineland in violation of the Treaty of Versailles and other treaties, in order to acquire military strength and political bargaining power to be used against other nations. Hitler's own eloquence in a secret speech delivered to all Supreme Commanders on 23 November 1939, at 1200 hours, is sufficient to characterize this phase of the Nazi conspiracy. This document comes to hand as a captured document found in the OKW files-OKW is Ober Kommando der Wehrmacht (the High Command of the Army, Chief of the High Command of the Armed Forces)-and was captured at Flensburg. The document is numbered 789-PS in our numbered series of documents. I have in my hand, if the Court please, the German original of this document in the condition in which it was captured, and I wish to offer the document in evidence and have it given the proper serial number as the United States prosecutor's exhibit. The serial number, I understand, is United States Exhibit 23. I would ask that the German text of the original be handed to the German interpreters.