dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
DR. SERVATIUS: Mr. President, I named two Gauleiter; one from the industrial area-that is, the witness Kaufmann-and the witness Wahl from a rural area in the vicinity of Augsburg. I believe it would be important to get an impression of these two types of Gauleiter; one of these men was active in the Party for 20 years, and the other for 17 years, and both were political leaders. Before being able to judge the activities of the political leaders over such a wide area, and throughout such a long period of time, it is necessary to hear two people from the top level. I should, therefore, like to ask that, if possible, both witnesses be allowed. I should like the witness...
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Servatius, two things I should like to ask you about these Gauleiter. Did not these two, Kaufmann and Wahl, deal with exactly the same topics before the Commission?
DR. SERVATIUS: Yes, but I want to divide the topics, and ask Kaufmann about relations with the top authorities, with the Reich Government, and Wahl about relations with the 1o\ver echelons, with the Kreis and Ortsgruppen. Of course, I could limit myself to one witness, but then the topics would not lie separated and would be bigger.
THE PRESIDENT: You mean you have not asked them about it before the Commission?
DR. SERVATIUS: Yes, but in the same way, separately.
THE PRESIDENT: There is one other thing. How many Gauleiter have we heard already before the Tribunal?
DR. SERVATIUS: I should think three or four, I do not know the exact figure; but they were not questioned about this topic, because it would have disturbed the taking of evidence at the time if we had gone into such detail.
THE PRESIDENT: Go ahead and deal with the other matters.
DR. SERVATIUS: The next witnesses are for Kreis, Ortsgruppe, and Block, and I think that from each level there should be one witness who can speak of the conditions in his field. Their testimony' will, of course, overlap, but it can be shortened so that the actual examination will perhaps be quite brief and not too far afield; but it is, I think, important to have one witness from each level.
THE PRESIDENT: Could you give the Tribunal any estimate of the time you think it would take to deal with these seven witnesses?
DR. SERVATIUS: I am sure I can do it in one day; it depends upon how the evidence is to be taken. I assume we shall have a brief summary and clarify only a few questions on principle. Then there are two more witnesses, Hupfauer and Mohr. One is from the German Labor Front, from an industrial region, and the other is from the Reich Food Estate and can speak about rural conditions. Both witnesses can speak about the position of the specialist offices which were not political directing offices, and can thus differentiate between the nonpolitical and the political leaders. That is all I have to say.
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will adjourn. [a recess was taken.]
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal makes the following order: With reference to the case of the SS, the five witnesses, Brill, Von Eberstein, Hinderfeld, Reinicke, and Hausser are allowed. Rode may be called to be cross-examined before the Commissioners. Interrogatories may be administered to Rauschning, but they must be administered immediately, and they will only be considered if they are received before the case is closed. Further extracts from Rauschning's book, which has been referred to, may be submitted to the Tribunal. With reference to the case of the SD, the two witnesses applied for, Hoppner and Rossner, are allowed. The two witnesses applied for by the Gestapo, Best and Hoffmann, are allowed. With reference to the application on behalf of the Reich Cabinet, the witness named must be called before the Commission. With reference to the General Staff and High Command, General Von Manstein and two others will be allowed. If it is desired that General Von Brauchitsch should be one of the two, he must be called before the Commission, and it is necessary that these matters should be decided by counsel for the defendant organization at once. With reference to the political leaders, the defendants counsel must select five out of the witnesses applied for and those five will be allowed. That is all. I call on Dr. Von Ludinghausen.
DR. VON LUDINGHAUSEN: May it please the Tribunal: Yesterday I attempted to show the weighty and compelling reasons why the leaders of the German State had to decide to reinstate Germany's armed sovereignty. But also before making this decision Germany had waited for the outcome of the negotiations for a general agreement on disarmament, which the British Government had opened again with the so-called London Communiqué of 3 February 1935, and in which Germany, faithful as always in its foreign policy to the principle of peace, had at once agreed to participate. Germany was prepared to wait even longer, until one could see whether or not these new negotiations would succeed; but before the negotiations had really begun, the French Government, on 1 March 1935, suddenly brought out a new defense bill prolonging military service, and almost simultaneously the British Government published its White Paper, which has already been mentioned. In view of these two measures, the German Government had no alternative: It had to take the steps which I have described, otherwise it would have betrayed its own people. The effect of these German measures on the Western Powers was a varied one. England and Italy, it is true, at once protested against them as an alleged unilateral cancellation of international treaties; but they did not by any means exclude the possibility of further negotiations, and the British note of protest explicitly inquired whether the German Government was ready to conduct further negotiations of the nature and extent provided in the London communiqué. This inquiry was immediately answered in the affirmative by the Defendant Von Neurath. The reply was contained in the German Communiqué of 18 March 1935, Neurath Document Book 3, Document Number 98, and the then British Foreign Secretary Eden went to Berlin at the end of March 1935 for conversations about the possibilities of an agreement in the naval question. In this connection, I particularly want to draw attention to the testimony of the witness Ambassador Dr. Dieckhoff, who. was heard here.
DR. VON LUDINGHAUSEN: Only France, in consequence of her attitude that only the League of Nations was entitled to solve collectively the problems of disarmament and, therefore, of peace-only France considered it necessary to submit the measures taken by Germany to the League of Nations, on 20 March 1935, and to induce the League to establish that Germany had committed a violation of a duty incumbent on all nations, the duty of carrying out contracted obligations. It goes without saying that the German Government, in its note of 20 April 1935, refused to accept the renewed discrimination contained in this resolution of the League of Nations. However, neither this resolution, nor the signing, on 2 May 1935, of the afore-mentioned Franco-Russian Treaty of Mutual Assistance, nor the Russian-Czechoslovak Treaty of Mutual Assistance which supplemented it, prevented Germany from continuing her very active efforts for an agreement with the Western Powers. On 21 May 1935 Hitler, in the German Reichstag, proclaimed a new peace program, in which he again stressed and underlined in the most emphatic manner possible his own and the German people's irrevocable will for peace, and his full readiness to participate in any system, or in a collective collaboration, which would guarantee European peace, to re-enter the League of Nations, provided that Germany's equality of rights was acknowledged, and to apply to the rearmament of the German Wehrmacht any restriction which the other powers might also adopt. This speech of Hitler and the diplomatic discussions with other powers, initiated at the same time, had the promising result that the well-known Naval Agreement of 18 June 1935, establishing a fixed ratio of the respective naval forces, was concluded between England and Germany. This German-English agreement is of the greatest importance in two respects.
DR. VON LUDINGHAUSEN: On the one hand, from a diplomatic point of view, it constitutes no more and no less than the de facto acknowledgment, on the part of England, of German armed sovereignty, the negation of the League of Nations' resolution and, therefore, of the French point of view, and England's acknowledgment and approval of the German act which had been stigmatized by the League of Nations as a treaty violation. For the first time, therefore, Germany's equality of rights was recognized not only de jure but also de facto by one of the Western Powers, and by one of the most important ones. On the other hand, this agreement proves irrefutably, from the point of view of this Trial, that the Prosecution's contention that Germany's rearmament was an act of preparation for Hitler's future wars of aggression is incorrect. On the contrary, this naval agreement shows quite clearly that German foreign policy, at that time, while it was still conducted by my client, had no warlike intentions of any sort, not to speak of plans, and that the reinstatement of German armed sovereignty was not under any circumstances an indication of warlike intentions, but an obviously defensive measure and nothing else. Would a statesman who harbors warlike intentions or plans, moreover, voluntarily consent to a restriction of his armaments to the extent provided by the naval agreement, and thus endanger the successful execution of his intentions and plans? Even the most malevolent person cannot earnestly maintain that the naval power granted Germany by this agreement was even remotely sufficient for a war of aggression; that has been · clearly established by the evidence in this Trial. Through this agreement Hitler actually deprived himself of the possibility of creating a navy sufficiently powerful to wage a war of aggression.
DR. VON LUDINGHAUSEN: It is clear that any considerable transgression of the agreed ratio of the two navies which, as things were, could under no circumstances and by no means have been kept secret, would beyond doubt have induced England immediately either to increase her own navy accordingly or to obstruct this German intention by force, as she had the power to do at any time. From whatever point of view one may look at this naval agreement, nothing can remove the fact that it was, and is, an unshakable proof of the absolute honesty and sincerity of the repeated declarations of Germany's will for peace, an irrefutable proof against the existence of any, even the most secret warlike designs or plans of German foreign policy and, therefore, of its leader, the Defendant Von Neurath. In France this Anglo-German naval agreement met with general opposition. It was regarded as an arbitrary act on the part of England, a departure from the common line which still found expression in the resolution of the League of Nations, a departure, moreover, which was bound to interfere with French plans. So France was very reluctant and negative in her attitude toward the negotiations which England had begun with the aim of concluding a general air pact, and which ran parallel with the negotiations for the naval agreement. Hitler's speech of 21 May 1935 had also been the cause for these negotiations, because in it, Hitler, referring to the London communiqué, had also offered to take part in an agreement for the limitation of air armament, and the German Government, taking up the English suggestion, actually presented a draft for such an air pact on 29 May 1935. But talks of nearly 3 months' duration between the English and French Governments were necessary before England succeeded in inducing France to consent even to participate in these negotiations.
DR. VON LUDINGHAUSEN: This consent, however, was in reality not a consent at all because, among other things, it was made dependent on the condition that the realization of this air pact must keep pace with the negotiations for the Eastern treaty, and since this treaty had, at that time, to be rejected by Germany for reasons of her own security, as has already been mentioned, it was clear that the French condition would block the way to successful negotiations from the very beginning. When the Soviet sponsored Comintern Congress met in Moscow on 25 July 1935, and it became quite clear that the Comintern's aim was world revolution, Germany's opposition-as will be understood-only stiffened. It could not be surprising that on 16 September 1935 the Defendant Von Neurath informed the English Ambassador that the German Foreign Office did not consider that an answer to the memorandum of the British Government of 5 August 1935 would be opportune; that was the memorandum which had demanded answers to a number of French questions hardly connected with the air pact. Besides, the conflict between Italy and Abyssinia had already cast its shadows, which alone were sufficient to suspend further negotiations for the air pact. For how could a political agreement between the five powers of the Locarno Treaty be possible-and the German Foreign Of lice very rightly pointed this out-if co-operation between these powers was in a state of dissolution, and if some of these powers were even facing each other in armed readiness. On 7 September 1935, as is known, the British Home Fleet set out for the Mediterranean, and negotiations between England and France for the application of sanctions against Italy were in full swing. On 3 October 1935 war broke out between Italy and Abyssinia. German foreign policy succeeded in keeping out of the events which now followed in Africa and the efforts of the powers to apply sanctions against Italy.
DR. VON LUDINGHAUSEN: But nevertheless these events proved of importance for German foreign policy, too; because they prepared, and especially the question of sanctions, a new constellation of powers, which on one hand led to a closer union between England and France and the adoption by England of France's point of view, and on the other hand brought Germany, again defamed by the resolution of the League of Nations of 17 April 1935, naturally closer together with Italy, who was also defamed by the sanctions applied against her. These sanctions, at the same time, logically enough resulted in the dissolution of the Locarno Treaty, for it was quite impossible to consider a treaty as still justified in its existence if its participants were opposed to one another in such a hostile way that the danger of warlike actions was always present. The efforts of the French Government, already having begun in its note of 10 September: 1935 to draw England also into the net of its pacts and obligations, clearly showed the tendency of French policy, and were only to confirm the German statesmen's conviction that France was consistently following her policy of encirclement, which was regarded as a menace to Germany. But Germany's leaders and the Defendant Von Neurath were still reluctant to draw the consequences from this state of affairs and take the absolutely essential step for the most primitive needs of Germany's security. German foreign policy, in its unshakable desire for peace and its readiness to negotiate, was still hoping that an agreement could be reached, that France would abandon her course, and that a really honest and sincere understanding with France could be reached. This hope, however, was soon a delusion. On 16 January 1936 the French Foreign Minister Laval announced that after his return from Geneva at the beginning of February he would ask the French Parliament to ratify the Pact of Mutual Assistance concluded with Russia.
DR. VON LUDINGHAUSEN: And at about the same time the Defendant Von Neurath heard from reliable sources that the French General Staff had worked out military plans for an attack on Germany, providing for the advance of French troops from the Rhineland, along the course of the river Main, for a link with the Russian armies through Czechoslovakia. This proved even to the most naive the offensive character of the Franco-Russian pact, and there was even less room for doubt if one took into consideration the negotiations which took place inside and outside the French Chamber before the ratification of the pact. For even in France, opposition to this pact, specifically on account of its offensive character, was not small. The French veterans of the first World War headed the opposition: The Union Nationale des Combattants declared, in a resolution of 8 February 1936, that this pact contained more certainties of war than possibilities of peace. And the speech of Deputy Montigny in the French Chamber on 13 February 1936 was a single flaming protest-this is contained in my Document Book 4, Document Neurath-107. The pact, Montigny said, only widened the breach between France and Germany, and Germany must more than ever gain the impression that she was being encircled if a party dependent on Moscow, like the Communist Party, followed the policy of Delcasse, the policy of revenge and the policy of the former Russo-French pact. The greatest danger of war would arise if France were to convey the impression that she enjoyed the secret protection of Moscow. Even the German Government made a last attempt to dissuade France from ratifying the pact. In the interview which he gave to Bertrand de Jouvenel, the correspondent of the French newspaper Paris Midi, on 21 February 1936-Document Book 4, Document Neurath-108-Hitler once again held out his hand to the French people for an understanding, for lasting peace and for friendship.
DR. VON LUDINGHAUSEN: "I want to prove to my people," Hitler said, "that the idea of hereditary enmity between France and Germany is an absurdity." And in that interview Hitler once and for all disposed of the continual references to his book Mein Kampf, which were being made at that time just as much as today in this courtroom, when he said: "When I wrote this book, I was in prison. At that time, French troops occupied the Ruhr-it was at the moment of greatest tension between our two countries. Yes, we were enemies, and I stood by my country as I was bound to do, just as I stood by my country against yours when I spent 4 years and 6 months in the trenches. I should despise myself if, in the event of a conflict, I had not considered myself a German first and foremost. But today there is no longer any reason for a conflict. "You would like me to correct my book, as a writer would do.... But I am not a writer; I am a politician. I make my corrections in my foreign policy, which is directed toward an understanding with France. If I achieve this German-French understanding, it will be a worthwhile correction." In the same interview, however, Hitler drew attention quite clearly to the inevitable consequences of the Franco-Russian pact: "My personal efforts for such an understanding will never cease. But this more than regrettable pact would, in fact, 	create a new situation. Are you in France not conscious of what you are doing? "You are allowing yourself to be drawn into a diplomatic game of a power which is interested only in causing confusion among the great European nations, a state of affairs from which this power alone will derive an advantage. One must not lose sight of the fact that Soviet Russia is a political factor with an explosive revolutionary idea and gigantic armaments." He concluded the interview by emphasizing again that France could, if she wanted, end this alleged German danger permanently, because the German people had complete confidence in him, their leader, and he desired friendship with France.
DR. VON LUDINGHAUSEN: That Hitler was honest and sincere in these declarations has been proved by the evidence of the Trial. But it was all in vain. The French Government could no longer be moved to abandon its rigid attitude, and on 27 February 1936, the French Chamber, in spite of all warnings, voted to ratify the pact. The die was cast. On 7 March 1936 German troops again marched into their old garrisons in the Rhineland zone, demilitarized until then. The German Reich had restored its full sovereignty over the entire territory of the Reich. The last of the barriers of the Versailles Treaty, restricting this full sovereignty, had fallen. This reinstatement of the full sovereignty of the Reich over the Rhineland, however, was of importance for a reason which, from the standpoint of existence of the German State and nation, far surpassed the politics and prestige of this step, and which was also the sole cause for the grave decision of the German Government. This reason was the security of the Reich. As long as the Rhineland was demilitarized, not only was one of the most valuable and most important provinces of the Reich, but the Reich itself, and especially its life source, the Ruhr territory, defenseless against any military attack from the West. The only protection for Germany against this terrible latent danger was the Locarno Treaty of 1925, which was guaranteed by Great Britain and Italy, and in which France and Belgium, on the one hand, and Germany on the other hand, undertook not to wage war against each other. Therefore, for the German Reich, if it was in the future to accept the vulnerability of its western frontier in the form of a demilitarized Rhineland, it was a matter of life and death that the protection which this treaty afforded should not be falsified. But the meaning of this treaty and its essence, the protection of Germany, were, in fact, falsified at the moment when the political conditions and constellations which had existed at the time of the conclusion of the treaty changed fundamentally.
DR. VON LUDINGHAUSEN: When the Locarno Treaty was concluded, political conditions in Europe, and also in Germany, were governed and determined solely by the four powers -England, France, Italy, and Germany-acting in unison. And, therefore, the men who made the Locarno Treaty for Germany could legitimately rely on the faithfulness to this treaty of France and Belgium as sufficient protection. These circumstances, however, ceased to exist-and, therefore, the meaning and essence of this treaty, and with it the conditions for the protection for Germany, were bound to change or to be falsified-when France altered this political relationship in Europe fundamentally by concluding her pact of mutual assistance with Russia, and thereby creating a situation which frustrated the aim and purpose of the Locarno Treaty-namely, to give Germany protection against the permanent danger arising from the demilitarization of the Rhineland. The political constellation of Europe had been completely changed, indeed reversed, by this pact, because the world's greatest military power, which was, moreover, at that time openly revolutionary-minded, had now entered the political arena. In the face of the obscure situation in the East, amply strewn with the seeds of a conflict, the pact could easily result in the possibility of France, in view of her obligations toward Russia, being drawn into a war against Germany, and attacking Germany who might be involved in a conflict in the East. One has to admit that it was in no way certain, or in any case highly problematical, whether the guaranteeing powers, England and Italy, would under those circumstances consider the case in point as one in which the guarantee applied, and would actively assist Germany against a French attack, or whether they would not rather prefer to stay neutral.