dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
DR. RUDOLF DIX (Counsel for Defendant Schacht ): In my opinion it is of decisive relevancy whether this defendant with this point of view, which explains his action, is alone in all the world, or whether the opinion which guides his action is held by men who are to be taken seriously, and who belonged to other nations, even to those who in the years 1914-18 stood on the other side and were his enemies. Rearmament according to the Prosecution, as I understand, is not a crime, as such, but is merely used by the Prosecution as a charge for the proving of the crime of having carried on an aggressive war. If, now, a defendant can prove that he acted from clean and decent views, views which, as stated, were held by such men of other nations as I have described, and acted conscientiously and with a clear conscience both as regards international law and international morals and also as regards the needs of his country, then this material, which contains opinions, literary statements, speeches, that coincide with the views of the defendant in question, is not only of relevant, but of entirely decisive significance. This viewpoint I ask the Tribunal to bear in mind, if it desires to decide now the question of principle which Sir David has just now raised for debate, and which he had to raise, as I fully recognize. Moreover I am also now in the agreeable position of being able to agree with Sir David in the practical handling of this matter. I too -- and I am speaking now for myself only -- would prefer to have the decision on this question postponed until the time suggested by Sir David. As far as I am concerned I will accept the disadvantages, which Dr. Seidl is right in seeing, because an advantage will result if the Tribunal decides this question at that time, since it will then have a much larger view on all questions and shades which are important for the decision. And at this point I am not at all in a position to speak comprehensively about them, for I do not want to make any summarizing speech, but just to treat one aspect of this question of evidence.
DR. MARTIN HORN (Counsel for Defendant Von Ribbentrop ): I should like to add a few remarks to those made by my colleague Dr. Dix. I request the Tribunal...
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal would like to know how many of the Defense Counsel think that they are entitled to address them. If Dr. Horn wishes to add a short argument, the Tribunal are prepared to hear it, but they are not prepared to hear all the defendants' counsel upon points such as this, at this stage, and if any of the other defendants' counsel desires to address them, they will decide now whether they will hear any more or not. It is understood, then, that Dr. Horn alone will address a short argument to the Tribunal. If it is not, then the Tribunal will decide whether they will hear any more argument upon the subject.
DR. HORN: I cannot encroach on the rights of my colleagues in this question, naturally, Mr. President. I should like personally to make only a very brief statement on the legal points.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, you must consult your colleagues then.
DR. HORN: If you wish a decision on this question now, Mr. President, I must ask my colleagues beforehand, of course.
THE PRESIDENT: Certainly. [There was a pause in the proceedings while the Defense conferred.]
DR. HORN: May I make first a preliminary remark, Mr. President, to what has just been said to me by my colleagues. Firstly, this decision has for the Counsel for the organizations a very particular interest. For myself personally I would like to make the following remarks: The Prosecution ...
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Horn, I asked you to consult the other defendants' counsel and ascertain whether they were willing that you should be heard, and you alone. That is the only terms upon which I am prepared to hear you. [There was a pause in the proceedings while the Defense conferred.]
DR. HORN: Yes, Mr. President, my colleagues are agreed that I shall make the last statements on this point.
THE PRESIDENT: One moment -- very well. Go on.
DR. HORN: There is no doubt that the Prosecution, as far as vital questions are concerned, base their case on infractions of the Versailles Treaty. To these treaty infractions, it is absolutely necessary, in my opinion, to submit the facts which allow the legality of this treaty to be judged. There is no doubt that this treaty was signed under duress. It is recognized in international law that such treaties from the legal point of view have grave deficiencies and are infamous. In my opinion we must be allowed to submit the facts that serve to show the soundness of this assertion and legal viewpoint. A further question -- and if I have understood correctly, this is Sir David's point -- is that of the polemic analysis of the legal, political, and economic consequences of this treaty. I do not wish to make any further statements on this point, but I would like to ask that my first request be granted, that the legal documentary facts be allowed which would permit a judgment on the legal value of the Versailles Treaty.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: May it please the Tribunal, if I might deal first with the argument which Dr. Dix has put forward. As I understood his first main proposition, it was this: That if a defendant has committed an act which is an infraction of the treaty and can show that in the opinion of reasonable and just and educated men in the states who were the other parties to the treaty, the treaty was so bad that an infraction was justifiable, that is a permissible argument. I submit that it is, with great respect to Dr. Dix, an unsound argument and baseless, from any principle either of law or of materiality. Once it is admitted that there is a treaty and that an infraction is made, and it follows from the example that Dr. Dix was dealing with that, these are the conceded facts. It is no answer to say that a number of admirable people in the countries which were parties to the treaty believed that its terms were wrong. The treaty is there and the person who knowingly makes an infraction is breaking the treaty, however strong is his support. In his second point Dr. Dix moved to quite different grounds. He said that this evidence might be relevant in the special reference to the question of rearmament because it might show that the treaty was considered obsolete. Now, it is a rare but nonetheless existing doctrine of international law that treaties, usually minor treaties, can be abrogated by the conduct of the contracting parties. I would not contest that you cannot get examples of that, although they are very rare and generally deal with minor matters. But this evidence which is before the Tribunal at the moment is not directed to that point at all. This is, in the main, contemporary polemic evidence saying that certain aspects of the treaty were bad, either as regards political standards or economic standards. That is a totally different argument from the one which Dr. Dix admirably adumbrated which is one which if it came up would have to be faced -- that a treaty has become obsolete or that the breaches have been condoned and that, therefore, the terms have really ceased to exist.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: My answer to that is that this evidence is not directed to that point at all. Now, if Dr. Dix will forgive me, and I am sure the fault was mine, I did not quite appreciate what he termed his subjective argument. But insofar as I did appreciate it, there seems to be a very good answer: that if he seeks to suggest that a defendant's guilt may be less because he, that defendant, believed that the treaty was bad, that is essentially a matter which can be judged by the Tribunal who will hear that defendant and appreciate and evaluate his point of view. It really does not help in deciding whether the Defendant Hess acted because he thought that the Treaty of Versailles was a bad treaty, to know what the editor of the Observer , which is a Sunday paper in England, expressed as his views some twenty years ago, or the Manchester Guardian or indeed, with all respect to them, what distinguished statesmen have said in writing their reminiscences years after a matter occurred. The subjective point is -- this is my submission -- an important point in deciding on evidence. The subjective point can be answered by the defendant himself, and the view of the defendant which the Tribunal will receive. Now, Dr. Horn has opened up a much wider question, and one which I submit is entirely irrelevant and beyond the scope of these proceedings. He wishes the Tribunal to try whether the Treaty of Versailles was signed under duress. Well, that, of course, would involve the whole consideration of the Government of the German Republic, the position of the plenipotentiaries, and the legal position of the persons who negotiated the treaty.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: The answer to that is that this Tribunal is concerned with certain quite clearly stated offenses, fully particularized, which occurred at the time that is stated in the Indictment; and all the evidence that is given as to the actions of the pre-Nazi German Government, and indeed of the Nazi Government, shows that for years Versailles was accepted as the legal and actual basis on which they must work, and various different methods were adopted in order to try to secure changes of the treaty, and I need not go into, with the Tribunal, the whole frame work of the Locarno Treaties, recognizing Versailles, which were signed in 1925, and which were treated as existing and in operation by the Nazi Government itself. With that, these actual facts, it would, in my submission, be completely remote, irrelevant, and contrary to the terms of the Charter, for this Tribunal to go into an inquiry as to whether the Treaty of Versailles was signed under duress. As I gathered, Dr. Horn was not so much interested in the economic clauses and their rightness or wrongness; but I should respectfully remind the Tribunal that that is a matter which is before them at the moment -- that here we have, as I have pointed out beforeand I do not want to repeat myself -- a number of opinions expressed by people of varying eminence and with varying degrees of responsibility at the time that they expressed them. And while strongly maintaining the position which I have endeavored to express with regard to the treaty, I do equally impress my second point: That to accept as matters of evidence statements which in the main are made from a polemical standpoint, either in answer to an attack or in an attack with background of the politics of the state in which they were made, is simply a misuse of the term "evidence".
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: That is not evidence of any kind, and I equally -- not equally because the first point is one of primary importance which I respectfully urge to the Tribunal -- but I also suggest that to tender in evidence matters of that kind is a misuse of the term "evidence," that they are matters of argument which an advocate may adopt if the argument is a relevant one, but they should not be received in evidence by the Tribunal for that reason.
THE TRIBUNAL (Mr. Francis Biddle, Member for the United States): Sir David, is there anything in the Versailles Treaty that either calls for disarmament by the signatories other than Germany or which looks to such disarmament; and, if there is, could you give us the reference to it?
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Yes, it is the Preamble to the Military Clauses. That is the point which is usually relied on. It is about four lines at the beginning of the Military Clauses, and, in quite general terms, it looks to a general disarmament after Germany has disarmed. Of course, the position was that -- I think I have got the dates right -- disarmament was accepted. Whether, in view of the evidence in this case, it should have been accepted does not matter; it was accepted in 1927. After that, you may remember, there were a number of disarmament conferences which examined that question, and eventually in 1933 Germany left the then existing disarmament conference. Now, I am trying to be entirely objective. I do not want to put the Prosecution view or the Defense view, but that is the position.
THE TRIBUNAL (Mr. Biddle): I am not quite clear. When you say "accepted," you mean that the extent of the disarmament called for had been accepted by Germany?
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Yes, the other way around: that Germany's response to the demand of Versailles was accepted by the Allies in 1927, and the Disarmament Commission which had been in Germany then left Germany under, I think, a French General Denoue.
THE TRIBUNAL (Mr. Biddle): Then, what I understand you to argue is that nothing contained in this folder has anything to do with that possible issue.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: No, no.
THE TRIBUNAL (Mr. Biddle): That is the point.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: It is not on that issue. I mean we will deal with that issue when we come to it. I rather thought from some words that Dr. Stahmer dropped that that would be one of the points which we should meet in the general argument on law which will be presented, which the Defense Counsel...
DR. SEIDL: I believe that Sir David is under a slight misconception. In Book 3 of the document book for the Defendant Hess there are also a number of citations of foreign statesmen that refer to this military clause in the Versailles Treaty and in which it is stated that Germany fulfilled her obligations in the Versailles Treaty, but that the reciprocal obligations in it for the opposite side were not fulfilled.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Well, I am sorry. I did not remember any. I have read it through, and there may be some collateral matters dealing with that, but -- and I do not think that I am doing Dr. Seidl's great industry in collecting these matters an injustice in saying that if they do exist they are collateral and the main point of this is an attack on the political and economic clauses of the treaty. I hope that I have done him justice. I certainly intended to do so. That is the impression made on me.
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will adjourn. [The Tribunal recessed until 1400 hours.]
MARSHAL: If it please the Tribunal, may I report that the Defendant Streicher will be absent from this session of Court.
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal rules that evidence as to the injustice of the Versailles Treaty or whether it was made under duress is inadmissible, and it therefore rejects Volume 3 of the documents on behalf of the Defendant Hess.
DR. SEIDL: Mr. President, Your Honors. Since Volume 3 of the document book for the Defendant Rudolf Hess is not admissible as documentary evidence, I am, so far as the submission of documents is concerned, at the end of my submission of evidence. Now, we are further concerned only with the affidavit of Ambassador Gaus, which I have already submitted, and I ask you not to decide on the admissibility of this document until I have had opportunity to present arguments on the relevance of it and of the secret treaty. But I should like to point out that with this affidavit only the facts and the contents of this secret treaty are to be proved; and therefore I shall read only excerpts from it, so that other events and the history prior to the treaty are not to be demonstrated by me.
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Seidl, we understand that this affidavit of the witness Gaus is now being translated and is going to be submitted to the various prosecutors. They will then inform us of their position, and we shall be able to see whether it is admissible or not, and the Prosecution will likewise be able to tell us whether they want to have the Ambassador here for the purpose of cross-examining him.
DR. SEIDL: Yes.
THE PRESIDENT: So we must postpone that until we get the translations.
DR. SEIDL: I had then the further intention of calling the defendant himself as a witness. In view of his attitude as to the question of the competency of this Court, he has asked me, however, to dispense with this procedure. I therefore forego the testimony of the defendant as a witness and have no further evidence to put in at this point.
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. Then the Tribunal will now deal with the case against the Defendant Ribbentrop.
DR. HORN: Your Lordship, Your Honors, my client, Joachim von Ribbentrop, had instructed me to make the following statement for him at the beginning of the evidence:
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Horn, I thought defendants' counsel knew that the rule which we have laid down is that at this stage no speeches shall be made, but that the evidence should be called, the oral evidence should be called, and the documents should be briefly referred to and offered in evidence. Did you not understand that?
DR. HORN: I did not know, Mr. President, that one might not submit a statement on behalf of his client.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, the Tribunal has laid down on several occasions, I think, verbally and certainly once in writing, that no speeches can be made now, but that speeches can be made at the time laid down in the Charter. The present opportunity is for all evidence to be given and for documents to be offered in evidence, with such explanatory observations upon the documents as may be necessary.
DR. HORN: The former Foreign Minister for the Reich, Joachim von Ribbentrop, is, according to the general Indictment and according to the trial brief of the British Delegation and the verbally presented special charges, held responsible for all crimes cited in Article 6 of the Charter of the International Military Tribunal. Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe, in the session of the International Military Tribunal of 8 January 1946, described the facts of the case against my client as follows: Firstly, the using of his offices and of his personal influence and intimate connection with Hitler to facilitate the seizure of power through the NSDAP and the preparation of wars. Secondly, the participation in the political planning, and preparation of the National Socialist Conspiracy for Wars of Aggression...
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Horn, are you again making a speech or what are you doing?
DR. HORN: No, Mr. President, I am just enumerating on one page how I plan to arrange my evidence, and I ask to be allowed to divide it in this way.
THE PRESIDENT: Very well.
DR. HORN: Secondly, Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe adduced the participation in the political planning and preparation of the National Socialist conspirators for aggressive war and the wars in violation of international treaties. He accordingly bears the responsibility for the execution of the foreign policy planned by the political conspirators. Thirdly, participation in and approval of Crimes against Peace, War Crimes, and Crimes against Humanity, especially crimes against persons and property in the occupied territories. The Defendant Von Ribbentrop has declared himself not guilty of all crimes charged against him. To refute the charges made against him, I will begin now my presentation of evidence. The honorable prosecutor at the beginning of his statements quoted from Exhibit Number USA-5, Document Number 2829-PS, and brought out that the Defendant Von Ribbentrop was an SS ObergruppenFuehrer. The honorable prosecutor asserted that this rank was not an honorary one. In opposition to this, the defendant asserts that the rank of an SS GruppenFuehrer and later of ObergruppenFuehrer, bestowed by Hitler, was bestowed upon him only on an honorary basis, because Hitler wished that the members of the Government should appear on official occasions in uniform, and the rank of an SS GruppenFuehrer appeared in keeping with the official position of the defendant. The defendant neither served in the SS nor led an SS unit. Neither did he have any adequate military training and preparation for this high military position. To demonstrate this I will submit evidence from the defendant himself as a witness. The Prosecution has asserted that Von Ribbentrop, after the taking over of power, for a short period of time was adviser of the Party on foreign political matters. This assertion is refuted by Document 2829-PS which is contained in the document book in the hands of the Tribunal. I will read Paragraph 3, where it says: This is the first document of the Ribbentrop document book. According to it, in the years 1933 to 1938 Von Ribbentrop was only Hitler's adviser on foreign political questions.
DR. HORN: With reference to Document D-472, Exhibit Number GB-130, the second document in the Document Book Ribbentrop, which concerns an excerpt from the International Biographical Archives, the honorable prosecutor claimed that the defendant even before 1932 worked for the NSDAP, after he had entered the Party service in 1930. The Prosecution cites Paragraph II, Lines 6-9, of this document, which says: The statement is not correct. The defendant was until 1932 not a member of any political party in Germany, particularly not o the NSDAP. As far as his political views were concerned, he leaned toward the Deutsche Volkspartei -- that is the party of Stresemann. In the year 1932 the defendant came to know Hitler personally. His views on domestic and foreign political matters brought him...
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Horn, I do not want to interrupt you unnecessarily, but I do not understand what you are doing now. You seem to me to be stating a part of the evidence which presumably the Defendant Von Ribbentrop will give, and, if so, when he gives it it will be cumulative to your statement. Also, you seem to be referring to documents which have been produced by the Prosecution and answering them yourself. Well, that is not what the Tribunal desires at this stage. It quite understands that at the appropriate time you will make whatever argument you think right with reference to the evidence which has been brought forward, on behalf of the Defendant Von Ribbentrop. But, as I have already said -- I thought quite clearly -- what the Tribunal wants done now is to hear all the evidence on behalf of Von Ribbentrop and to have offered in evidence the documents upon which you will rely, with any short explanatory statement as to the meaning of the documents. And if there is any part of a document which has been produced by the Prosecution but not cited by them which you think it necessary to refer to, as explanatory of the part of the document which has been used by them, then you are at liberty to put in, to offer in evidence that part of the document with any short explanatory words that you wish. But I do not understand what you are doing now except making a speech.
DR. HORN: Mr. President, I was using the opposing fact which I wish to present against the claims of the Prosecution, because according to my information and according to my documents, they do not correspond to the facts. As far as the establishment of Point 1 of what Mr. President has just said, I would like to state the following: The health of the Defendant Von Ribbentrop is quite poor at present. This morning the doctor told me that Ribbentrop is suffering from so-called vasomotor disturbances in his speech. I wanted to take a part of his evidence statement from my client by making a statement of it here and thus showing the position of the defendant to the Tribunal. I do not know whether the Defendant Von Ribbentrop, in view of his present state of health, that is, his impediment of speech, could make these explanations as briefly as I myself can. Then, when the defendant is in the box, he needs only to confirm these statements under oath.
THE PRESIDENT: If the Defendant Von Ribbentrop is too ill to give evidence today, then he must give evidence on some future occasion. If you have any oral witnesses to call other than the Defendant Von Ribbentrop, then they can give evidence today; and with reference to the documentary evidence, it is perfectly simple for you to offer those documents in evidence in the way that it was done by Dr. Stahmer, in the way that it was done by Dr. Seidl, and the way in which the Tribunal have explained over and over again.