dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
MR. ALDERMAN: It must be achieved that equal conditions will be granted by the RWM, also the NSDAP organization." The program of rearmament and the objectives of circumventing and breaching the Versailles Treaty are forcefully shown by a number of Navy documents, showing the participation and cooperation of the German Navy in this rearmament program, secret at first. When they deemed it safe to say so, they openly acknowledged that it had always been their objective to break Versailles. In 1937 the Navy High Command published a secret book entitled The Fight of the Navy Against Versailles, 1919 to 1935. The preface refers to the fight of the Navy against the unbearable regulations of the Peace Treaty of Versailles. The table of contents includes a variety of Navy activities, such as saving of coastal guns from destruction as required by Versailles; independent armament measures behind the back of the Government and behind the back of the legislative bodies; resurrection of the U-boat arm; economic rearmament and camouflage rearmament from 1933 to the freedom from the restrictions in 1935. This document points out the significant effect of the seizure of power by the Nazis in 1933 on increasing the size and determining the nature of the rearmament program. It also refers to the far-reaching independence in the building and development of the Navy, which was only hampered in so far as concealment of rearmament had to be considered in compliance with the Versailles Treaty. With the restoration of what was called the military sovereignty of the Reich in 1935 and the reoccupation of the demilitarized zone of the Rhineland, the external camouflage of rearmament was eliminated. We have, if the Court please, a photostat of the German printed book to which I have referred, entitled Der Kampf der Marine gegen Versailles (The Fight of the Navy against Versailles) 1919 to 1935, written by Sea Captain Schussler. It has the symbol of the Nazi Party with the swastika in the spread eagle on the cover sheet, and it is headed "Secret" , underscored.
MR. ALDERMAN: It is our Document C-156. It is a book of 76 pages of text, followed by index lists and charts. I offer it in evidence as Exhibit USA-41. I may say that the Defendant Raeder identified this book in a recent interrogation and explained that the Navy tried to fulfill the letter of the Versailles Treaty and at the same time to make progress in naval development. I should like to read from this book, if the Court please, the preface and one or two other portions of the book: "The object and aim of this memorandum, under the heading 'Preface', is to draw a technically reliable picture based on documentary records and the evidence of those who took part in the fight of the Navy against the unbearable regulations of the Peace Treaty of Versailles. It shows that the Reich Navy, after the liberating activities of the Free Corps and of Scapa Flow, did not rest but found ways and means to lay with unquenchable enthusiasm, in addition to the building up of the 15,000-man Navy, the basis for a greater development in the future, and so create, by the work of soldiers and technicians, the primary condition for a later rearmament. It must also distinguish more clearly the services of these men, who, without being known in wide circles, applied themselves with extraordinary zeal and responsibility in the service of the fight against the Peace Treaty. Thereby stimulated by the highest feeling of duty, they risked, particularly in the early days of their fight, themselves and their positions unrestrainedly in the partially self-ordained tasks. This compilation makes it clearer, however, that even such ideal and ambitious plans can be realized only to a small degree if the concentrated and united strength of the whole people is not behind the courageous activity of the soldier. Only when the Fuehrer had created the second and even more important condition for an effective rearmament in the coordination of the whole nation and in the fusion of the political, financial, and spiritual power, could the work of the soldier find its fulfillment.
MR. ALDERMAN: The framework of this Peace Treaty, the most shameful known in world history, collapsed under the driving power of this united will. "Signed, the Compiler." Now I wish to invite the Court's attention merely to the summary of contents because the chapter titles are sufficiently significant for my present purpose. "I. Defensive actions against the execution of the Treaty of Versailles (from the end of the war to the occupation of the Ruhr, 1923). "1. Saving of coastal guns from destruction. "2. Removal of artillery equipment and ammunition, hand and machine weapons. "3. Limitation of destruction in Helgoland. "II. Independent armament measures behind the back of the Reich Government and of the legislative body (from 1923 to the Lohmann case in 1927). "1. Attempt to increase the personnel strength of the Reich Navy. "2. Contribution to the strengthening of patriotism among the people. "3. Activities of Captain Lohmann. I am ashamed to say, if the Court please, that I am not familiar with the story about Captain Lohmann. "4. Preparation for the resurrection of the German U-boat arm. "5. Building up of the Air Force. "6. Attempt to strengthen our mine arm. "7. Economic rearmament. "8. Miscellaneous measures: a. The N. V. Aerogeodetic; b. Secret reconnaissance. "III. Planned armament works countenanced by the Reich Government but behind the back of the legislative body from 1928 to the seizure of power in 1933. "IV. Rearmament under the leadership of the Reich Government in camouflaged form (from 1933 to the freedom from restrictions, 1935)." Now if the interpreter who has the original German volume will turn to Chapter IV, Page 75-"Aufruestung"-Concealed rearmament under the leadership of the Government of the Reich (from 1933 until military freedom in 1935): "The unification of the whole nation which was combined with the taking over of power on 30 January 1933 was of decisive influence on the size and shape of further rearmament.
MR. ALDERMAN: "While the Reichsrat approached its dissolution and withdrew as a legislative body, the Reichstag assumed a composition which could only take a decisive attitude toward the rearmament of the Armed Forces. The Government took over the management of the rearmament program upon this foundation ...." Then a heading-"Development of the Armed Forces": "This taking over of the management by the Reich Government developed for the Armed Forces in such a manner that the War Minister, General Von Blomberg, and through him the three branches of the Armed Forces, received far-reaching powers from the Reich Cabinet for the development of the Armed Forces. The whole organization of the Reich was included in this work. In view of these powers, the collaboration of the former inspecting body in the management of the secret expenditure was from then on dispensed with. There remained only the inspecting duties of the accounting office of the German Reich." Another heading-"Independence of the Commander-in-Chief of the Navy": "The Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, Admiral Raeder, honorary doctor, had received thereby a far-reaching independence in the building and development of the Navy. This was only hampered in so far as the previous concealment of rearmament had to be continued in consideration of the Versailles Treaty. Besides the ordinary budget there remained the previous special budget, which was greatly increased in view of the considerable credit for the provision of labor, which was made available by the Reich. Wide powers in the handling of these credits were given to the Director of the Budget Department of the Navy, up to 1934 Commodore Schuessler, afterwards Commodore Foerste.
MR. ALDERMAN: These took into consideration the increased responsibility of the Chief of the Budget." Another heading-"Declaration of Military Freedom": "When the Fuehrer, relying upon the strengthening of the Armed Forces executed in the meanwhile, announced the restoration of the military sovereignty of the German Reich, the last-mentioned limitation on rearmament works, namely, the external camouflage, was eliminated. Freed from all the shackles which have hampered our ability to move freely on and under water, on land, and in the air, for one and a half decades, and carried by the newly-awakened fighting spirit of the whole nation, the Armed Forces, and as a part of it, the Navy, can lead with full strength towards its completion, the rearmament already under way with the goal of securing for the Reich its rightful position in the world." If the Tribunal please, at this moment I have a new problem about proof which I believe we have not discussed. I have in my hand an English translation of an interrogation of the Defendant Erich Raeder. Of course he knows he was interrogated; he knows what he said. I don't believe we have furnished copies of this interrogation to defendants' counsel. I don't know whether under the circumstances I am at liberty to read from it or not. If I do read from it I suggest that the defendants' counsel will all get the complete text of it-I mean of what I read into the transcript.
THE PRESIDENT: Has the counsel for the Defendant Raeder any objection to this interrogation being read?
DR. SIEMERS: As far as I have understood the proceedings to date, I believe that it is a question of a procedure in which either proof by way of documents or proof by way of witnesses will be furnished. I am surprised that the Prosecution wishes to furnish proof by way of records of interrogations, taken at a time when the Defense was not present. I should be obliged to the Court if I could be told whether, in principle, I, as a defense counsel, may resort to producing evidence in this form, i. e. present documents of the interrogation of witnesses; that is to say, documents in which I myself interrogated witnesses the same as the Prosecution without putting witnesses on the stand.
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal thinks that if interrogations of defendants are to be used, copies of such interrogations should be furnished to defendant's counsel beforehand. The question which the Tribunal wished to ask you was whether on this occasion you objected to this interrogation being used without such a copy having been furnished to you. With regard to your observation as to your own rights with reference to interrogating your defendants, the Tribunal considers that you must call them as witnesses upon the witness stand and cannot interrogate them and put in the interrogations. The question for you now is whether you object to this interrogation being laid before the Tribunal at this stage.
DR. SIEMERS: I should like first of all to have an opportunity of seeing every record before it is submitted in Court. Only then shall I be able to decide whether interrogations can be read, the contents of which I as a defense counsel am not familiar with.
THE PRESIDENT: Very well, the Tribunal will adjourn now and it anticipates that the interrogation can be handed to you during the adjournment and then can be used afterwards. [The Tribunal recessed until 1400 hours.] Afternoon Session
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: May it please the Tribunal. I should like to ask the Tribunal to note the presence and appearance, on behalf of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, of Mr. A.I. Vishinsky of the Foreign Office, and General K.P. Gorshenin, Chief Prosecutor of the Soviet Republic who has been able to join us in the Prosecution only now.
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal notes what Mr. Justice Jackson has said, and observes that Mr. Vishinsky has taken his seat with the Soviet Delegation of Chief Prosecutors.
DR. SIEMERS: In the meanwhile during the lunch hour I have seen the minutes. I should like to observe that I don't think it is very agreeable that the Prosecution should not depart from their point that the Defense should only receive the documents during the proceedings, or just before the proceedings, or at times, even after the proceedings. I should be grateful if the Prosecution could see to it in the future that we are informed in good time. Yesterday a list of the documents which were to be presented today was made in our room, number 54. I find that the documents presented today are not included in yesterday's list. You will understand that the task of the Defense is thereby rendered comparatively difficult. On principle, I cannot in my statement of today, give my agreement to the reading of minutes of interrogations. In order to facilitate matters, I should like to follow the Court's suggestion, and declare that I am agreeable to the minutes presented here being read. I request, however-and I believe I have already been assured by the Prosecution to that effect-that only the part be read which refers to Document C-156, as I had no time to discuss the remaining points with the defendants. As to the remaining points, five other documents are cited. Moreover I request that the part which refers to the book by Kapitän zur See Schuessler, should be read in full, and I believe that the prosecutor agrees with this.
THE PRESIDENT: I understood from the counsel for Raeder that you were substantially in agreement as to what parts of this interrogation you should read. Is that right, Mr. Alderman?
MR. ALDERMAN: If I understood the counsel correctly, he asked that I read the entire part of the interrogation which deals with Document C-156, but I understood that he did not agree for me to read other parts that referred to other documents. I handed counsel the original of my copy of the interrogation before the lunch hour, and when he returned it to me after the lunch hour, I substituted in his hands a carbon copy. I didn't quite understand his statement about documents being introduced which hadn't been furnished to the defendant. We did file the document book.
THE PRESIDENT: Is this document in the document book?
MR. ALDERMAN: My understanding is that the document book contains all the documents except these interrogations. They did not contain the interrogation.
THE PRESIDENT: Then he is right in saying that.
MR. ALDERMAN: He is right as to the interrogation, yes.
THE PRESIDENT: Are you in agreement with him then, that you can read what you want to read now, and that it is not necessary for you to read the parts to which he objects.
MR. ALDERMAN: I think so. I understand he objects to my reading anything other than the part concerned with C-156. I would anticipate that he might be willing for me to read the other parts tomorrow. This deals with the book which I offered in evidence this morning, Document C-156, Exhibit USA-41. The Defendant Raeder identified that book, and explained that the Navy tried to Elfin the letter of the Versailles Treaty and at the same time make progress in naval development. I refer to the interrogation of the Defendant Raeder at the part we had under discussion: "Q. I have here a Document C-156, which is a photostatic copy of a work prepared by the High Command of the Navy and covers the struggle of the Navy against the Versailles Treaty from 1919 to 1935. I ask you initially whether you are familiar with the work. "A. I know this book. I read it once when it was edited. "Q. Was that an official publication of the German Navy? "A. This Captain Schuessler (indicating the author) was a commander in the Admiralty. Published by the OHM, it was an idea of this officer to put all these things together. "Q. Do you recall the circumstances under which the authorization to prepare such a work was given to him? "A. I think he told me that he would write such a book as he tells here in the foreword. "Q. And in the preparation of this work he had access to the official Navy files and based his work on the items contained therein? "A. Yes, I think so. He would have spoken with other persons, and he would have had the files which were necessary. "Q. Do you know whether, before the work was published, a draft of it was circulated among the officers in the Admiralty for comment? "A. No, I don't think so. Not before it was published. I saw it only when it was published. "Q. Was it circulated freely after its publication? "A. It was a secret object. I think all upper commands in the Navy had knowledge of it. "Q. It was not circulated outside of Navy circles? "A. No. "Q. What then is your opinion concerning the comments contained in the work, regarding the circumventing of the provisions of Versailles? "A.
MR. ALDERMAN: I don't remember very exactly what is in here. I can only remember that the Navy had always the object to fulfill the word of the Versailles Treaty, but in order to have some advantages. But the flying men were exercised 1 year before they went into the Navy. Quite young men. So that the word of the Treaty of Versailles was filled. They did not belong to the Navy, as long as they were exercised in flying, and the submarines were developed, but not in Germany and not in the Navy, but in Holland. There was a civil bureau, and in Spain there was an industrialist; in Finland, too, and they were built only much later, when we began to act with the English Government about the Treaty of 35 to 100, because we could see that then the Treaty of Versailles would be destroyed by such a treaty with England, and so, in order to keep the word of Versailles, we tried to fulfill the word of Versailles, but we tried to have advantages. "Q. Would a fair statement be that the Navy High Command was interested in avoiding the limiting provisions of the Treaty of Versailles regarding personnel and the limits of armaments, but would attempt to fulfill the letter of the Treaty, although actually avoiding it? "A. That was our endeavor."
MR. ALDERMAN: Now the rest of this is the portion that counsel for the defendant asked me to read: "Q. Why was such a policy adopted? "A. We were much menaced in the first years after the first war by the danger that the Poles would attack East Prussia, and so we tried to strengthen a little our very, very weak forces in this way; and so all our efforts were directed to the aim of having a little more strength against the Poles should they attack us. It was nonsense to think of attacking Poland in this stage by the Navy. A second aim was to have some defense against the entering of French forces into the Ostsee (East Sea), because we knew that the French had the intention to sustain the Poles. Their ships came into the Ostsee, Gdynia, and so the Navy was a defense against an attack of Poland and against the entrance of French ships into the East Sea; quite defensive aims. "Q. When did this fear of an attack from Poland first show itself in official circles in Germany, would you say? "A. In all the first years. They took Vilna; in the same minute we thought they would come to East Prussia. I don't know exactly the year, because those judgments were the judgments of the German Government Ministers, the Army and Navy Ministers-Gröner and Noske. "Q. Then those views, in your opinion, were generally held and existed perhaps as early as 1919-1920, after the end of the first World War? "A. Oh, but the whole situation was very, very uncertain, and about those years in the beginning I cannot give you a very exact picture, because I was then 2 years in the Navy Archives to write a book about the War and the fighting capacity of cruisers. For 2 years I was not with those things."
MR. ALDERMAN: Likewise the same kind of planning and purposes are reflected in the table of contents of a history of the German Navy, 1919 to 1939, found in captured official files of the German Navy. Although a copy of the book has not been found by us, the project was to have been written by Oberst Scherff, Hitler's personal military historian. We have found the table of contents; it refers by numbers to groups of documents and notes of documents, which evidently were intended as the working materials for the basis of chapters, to be written in accordance with the table of contents. The titles in this table of contents clearly establish the Navy planning and preparation to get the Versailles Treaty out of the way and to rebuild the naval strength necessary for aggressive war. We have here the original captured document which is, as I say, the German typewritten table of contents of this projected work, with a German cover, typewritten, entitled Geschichtie der Deutschen Marine,1919-1939 (History of the German Navy, 1919-1939) . We identify it as our series C-17 and I offer it in evidence as Ex- hibit USA-42. This table of contents includes such general headings-perhaps I had better read some of the actual headings: "Part A, 1919-The Year of Transition. Chapter VII: First efforts to circumvent the Versailles Treaty and to limit its effects. "(a) Demilitarization of the Administration, incorporation of naval offices in Civil Ministries et cetera . (For example: Incorporation of greater sections of the German maritime observation station and the sea-mark system in Helgoland and Kiel, of the Ems-Jade Canal et cetera into the Reich Transport Ministry up to 1934: Noske's proposal of 11. 8. 1919 to incorporate the Naval Construction Department in the Technical High School, Berlin; formation of the Naval Arsenal Kiel.)" -With a reference to a group of documents numbered 75.- "(b) The saving from destruction of coastal fortifications and guns.
MR. ALDERMAN: "(1) North Sea (strengthening of fortifications with new batteries and modern guns between the signing and the taking effect of the Versailles Treaty; dealings with the Control Commission-information, drawings, visits of inspection, result of efforts."-referring to the group of documents numbered 85.- "(2) Baltic (taking over by the Navy of fortresses Pillau and Swinemuende; salvage for the Army of 185 movable guns and mortars there.)"-I may interpolate that when the British offer in evidence the Treaty of Versailles, you will see the detailed limitations which this document indicates an effort to avoid. "(3) The beginnings of coastal air defense. "Part B, 1920-1924-The Organizational New Order. Chapter V: The Navy. Fulfillment and avoidance of the Versailles Treaty. Foreign countries. "(a) The Interallied Control Commissions. "(b) Defense measures against the fulfillment of the Versailles Treaty and independent arming behind the bay of the Reich Government and the legislative bodies. "(1) Dispersal of artillery gear and munitions, of hand and automatic weapons. "(2) Limitation of demolition work in Helgoland. "(3) Attempt to strengthen personnel of the Navy, from 1923. "(I) The activities of Captain Lohmann (founding of numerous associations at home and abroad, participations, for- mation of 'sports' unions and clubs, interesting the film industry in naval recruitment). "(5) Preparation for re-establishing the German U-boat arm since 1920 (projects and deliveries for Japan, Holland, Turkey, Argentina, and Finland; torpedo testing). "(6) Participation in the preparation for building of the Luftwaffe (preservation of airdromes, aircraft construction, teaching of courses, instruction of midshipmen in anti-air raid defense, training of pilots). "(7) Attempt to strengthen the mining branch. "Part C (1925-1932-Replacement of tonnage). Chapter IV: The Navy, the Versailles Treaty, foreign countries. "(a) The activities of the Interallied Control Commission (up to 31. 1. 27; discontinuance of the activity of the Naval Peace Commission).