dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Then I shall read it: "Proclamation of the Fuehrer to the German people, 15 March 1939. "To the German People: "Only a few months ago Germany was compelled to protect her fellow countrymen, living in well-defined settlements, against the unbearable Czechoslovakian terror regime; and during the last weeks the same thing has happened on an ever-increasing scale. This is bound to create an intolerable state of affairs within an area inhabited by citizens of so many nationalities. "These national groups, to counteract the renewed attacks against their freedom and life, have now broken away from the Prague Government. Czechoslovakia has ceased to exist. "Since Sunday at many places wild excesses have broken out, amongst the victims of which are again many Germans. Hourly the number of oppressed and persecuted people crying for help is increasing. From areas thickly populated by German-speaking inhabitants, which last autumn Czechoslovakia was allowed by German generosity to retain, refugees robbed of their personal belongings are streaming into the Reich. "Continuation of such a state of affairs would lead to the destruction of every vestige of order in an area in which Germany is vitally interested particularly as for over 1,000 years it formed a part of the German Reich. "In order definitely to remove this menace to peace and to create the conditions for a necessary new order in this living space, I have today resolved to allow German troops to march into Bohemia and Moravia. They will disarm the terror gangs and the Czechoslovakian forces supporting them, and protect the lives of all who are menaced.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Thus they will lay the foundations for introducing a fundamental re-ordering of affairs which will be in accordance with the 1,000-year-old history and will satisfy the practical needs of the German and Czech peoples."-Signed-"Adolf Hitler, Berlin, 15 March 1939." Then there is a footnote, an order of the Fuehrer to the German Armed Forces of the same date, in which the substance is that they are told to march in, to safeguard lives and property of all inhabitants, and not to conduct themselves as enemies, but as an instrument for carrying out the German Reich Government's decision. I put in, as GB-8, the decrees establishing the Protectorate, which is TC-51. I think again, as these are public decrees, the Tribunal can take judicial knowledge of them. Their substance has been fully explained by Mr. Alderman. With the permission of the Tribunal, I won't read them in full now. Then again, as Mr. Alderman requested, I put in, as GB-9, British Document TC-52, the British protest. If I might just read that to the Tribunal-it is from Lord Halifax to Sir Nevile Henderson, our Ambassador in Berlin: "Foreign Office, March 17, 1939. "Please inform the German Government that His Majesty's Government desire to make it plain to them that they cannot but regard the events of the past few days as a complete repudiation of the Munich Agreement and a denial of the spirit in which the negotiators of that Agreement bound themselves to co-operate for a peaceful settlement. "His Majesty's Government must also take this occasion to protest against the changes effected in Czechoslovakia by German military action, which are in their view, devoid of any basis of legality." And again at Mr. Alderman's request, I put in as GB-10 the Document TC-53, which is the French protest of the same date, an' if I might read the third paragraph: . "The French Ambassador has the honor to inform the Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Reich, of the formal protest made by the Government of the French Republic against the measures which the communication of Count de Welczeck records.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: "The Government of the Republic consider, in fact, that in face of the action directed by the German Government against Czechoslovakia, they are confronted with a flagrant violation of the letter and the spirit of the agreement signed at Munich on September 29, 1938. "The circumstances in which the agreement of March 15 has been imposed on the leaders of the Czechoslovak Republic do not, in the eyes of the Government of the Republic, legalize the situation registered in that agreement. "The French Ambassador has the honor to inform His Excellency, the Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Reich, that the Government of the Republic cannot recognize under these conditions the legality of the new situation created in Czechoslovakia by the action of the German Reich." I now come to Part 5 of the Versailles Treaty , and the relevant matters are contained in the British Document TC-10. As considerable discussion is centered around them, I read the introductory words: "Part V, Military, Naval, and Air Clauses: In order to render possible the initiation of a general limitation of the armaments of all nations, Germany undertakes strictly to observe the military, naval, and air clauses which follow. "Section 1. Military Clauses. Chapter I. Effectives and Cadres of the German Army. "Article 159. The German military forces shall be demobilized and reduced as prescribed hereinafter. "Article 160. (1) By a date which must not be later than March 31, 1920, the German Army must not comprise more than seven divisions of infantry and three divisions of cavalry. After that date, the total number of effectives in the Army of the states constituting Germany must not exceed 100,000 men, including officers and establishments of depots. The Army shall be devoted exclusively to the maintenance of order within the territory and to the control of the frontiers. "The total effective strength of officers, including the personnel of staffs, whatever their composition, must not exceed 4,000.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: "(2,) Divisions and Army Corps headquarters staffs, shall be organized in accordance with Table Number 1 annexed to this Section. The number and strength of the units of infantry, artillery, engineers, technical services and troops laid down in the aforesaid table constitute maxima which must not be exceeded." Then there is a description of units that can have their own depots and the grouping of divisions under corps headquarters, and then the next two provisions are of some importance: "The maintenance or formation of forces differently grouped or of other organizations for the command of troops or for preparation for war is forbidden. "The great German General Staff and all similar organizations shall be dissolved and may not be reconstituted in any form.'' I don't think I need trouble the Tribunal with Article 161, which deals with administrative services. Article 163 provides the steps by which the reduction will take place, and then we come to Chapter 2, dealing with armament, and that provides that up till the time at which Germany is admitted as a member of the League of Nations, armaments shall not be greater than the amounts fixed in Table Number 11. If the Tribunal will note the second part, Germany agrees that after she has become a member of the League of Nations, the armaments fixed in the said table shall remain in force until they are modified by the Council of the League. Furthermore, she hereby agrees strictly to observe the decisions of the Council of the League on this subject. Then, 165 deals with guns and machine guns, and so forth, and 167 deals with notification of guns, and 168 , the first part, says: "The manufacture of arms, munitions, or any war material shall only be carried out in factories or works, the location of which shall be communicated to and approved by the governments of the Principal Allied and Associated Powers, and the number of which they retain the right to restrict." Article 169 deals with the surrender of material.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Number 170 prohibits importation; 171 prohibits gas, and 172 provides for disclosure. Then 173 , under the heading, "Recruiting and Military Training" deals with one matter; the breach of which is of great importance: "Universal compulsory military service shall be abolished in Germany. The German Army may only be constituted and recruited by means of voluntary enlistment." Then the succeeding articles deal with the method of enlistment in order to prevent a quick rush through the army of men enlisted for a short time. I think that all I need do is to draw the attention of the Tribunal to the completeness and detail with which all these points are covered in Articles 174 to 179 . Then, passing to TC-10, Article 180 . That contains the prohibition of fortress works beyond a certain limit and in the Rhineland. The first sentence is: "All fortified works, fortresses, and field works situated in German territory to the west of a line drawn 50 kilometers to the east of the Rhine shall be disarmed and dismantled." I shall not trouble the Tribunal with the tables which show the amounts. Then we come to the naval clauses. If the Tribunal will be good enough to go on four pages, they will come to Article 181 , and I will just read that to show the way in which the naval limitations are imposed and refer briefly to the others. Article 181 says: "After the expiration of a period of 2 months from the coming into force of the present treaty the German naval forces in commission must not exceed: "Six battleships of the Deutschland or Lothringen type, six light cruisers, 12 destroyers, 12 torpedo boats, or an equal number of ships constructed to replace them as provided in Article 190 . "No submarines are to be included.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: "All other warships, except where there is provision to the contrary in the present treaty, must be placed in reserve or devoted to commercial purposes." Then 182 simply deals with the mine sweeping necessary to clear up the mines, and 183 limits the personnel to 15,000, including officers and men of all grades and corps, and 184 deals with surface ships not in German ports, and the succeeding clauses deal with various details, and I pass at once to Article 191 , which says: "The construction or acquisition of any submarines, even for commercial purposes, shall be forbidden in Germany." Article 194 makes corresponding obligations of voluntary engagements for longer service, and 196 and 197 deal with naval fortifications and wireless stations. Then, if the Tribunal please, would they pass to Article 198 , the first of the air clauses. The essential and important sentence is the first: "The Armed Forces of Germany must not include any military or naval air forces." I don't think that I need trouble the Tribunal with the detailed provisions which occur in the next four clauses, which are all consequential. Then, the next document, which for convenience is put next to that, is the British Document TC-44. For convenience I put in a copy as GB-11, but this again is merely ancillary to Mr. Alderman's argument. It is the report of the formal statement made at the German Air Ministry about the restarting of the Air Corps, and I respectfully submit that the Tribunal can take judicial notice of that. Similarly, without proving formally the long Document, TC-45, the Tribunal can again take judicial notice of the public proclamation, which is a well-known public document in Germany, the proclamation of compulsory military service. Mr. Alderman has again dealt with this fully in his address. I now come to the sixth treaty, which is the treaty between the United States and Germany restoring friendly relations, and I put in a copy as Exhibit GB-12. It is Document TC-11, and the Tribunal will find it as the second last document in the document book.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: The purpose of this treaty was to complete official cessation of hostilities between the United States of America and Germany, and I have already explained to the Tribunal that it incorporated certain parts of the Treaty of Versailles . The relevant portion for the consideration of the Tribunal is Part V , and I have just concluded going through the clauses of the Treaty of Versailles which are repeated verbatim in this treaty. I therefore, with the approval of the Tribunal, will not read them again, but at Page 11 of my copy, they will see the clauses are repeated in exactly the same way. Then I pass to the seventh treaty, which is the Treaty of Mutual Guarantee between Germany, Belgium, France, Great Britain, and Italy, negotiated at Locarno, October 16, 1925. I ask the Tribunal to take judicial notice of that, and I put in as Exhibit GB-13, the British Document TC-12. I was dealing with the Treaty of Locarno, and it might be convenient if I just reminded the Tribunal of the treaties that were negotiated at Locarno, because they do all go together and are to a certain extent mutually dependent. At Locarno, Germany negotiated five treaties: (A) The Treaty of Mutual Guarantee between Germany, Belgium, France, Great Britain, and Italy; (B) the Arbitration Convention between Germany and France; (C) the Arbitration Convention between Germany and Belgium; (D) the Arbitration Treaty between Germany and Poland; and (E) an Arbitration Treaty between Germany and Czechoslovakia. Article 10 of the Treaty of Mutual Guarantee provided that it should come into force as soon as ratifications were deposited at Geneva, in the archives of the League of Nations, and as soon as Germany became a member of the League of Nations. The ratifications were deposited on the 14th September 1926 and Germany became a member of the League of Nations on the 10th of September 1926. The two arbitration conventions and the two arbitration treaties which I mentioned provide that they shall enter into force under the same conditions as the Treaty of Mutual Guarantee.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: That is Article 21 of the Arbitration Conventions and Article 22 of the Arbitration Treaties. The most important of the five agreements is the Treaty of Mutual Guarantee. One of its purposes was to establish in perpetuity the borders between Germany and Belgium, and Germany and France It contains no provision for denunciation or withdrawal therefrom and provides that it shall remain in force until the Council of the League of Nations decides that the League of Nations ensures sufficient protection to the parties to the treaty-an event which never happened-in which case the Treaty of Mutual Guarantee shall expire 1 year later. The general scheme of the Treaty of Mutual Guarantee is that Article 1 provides that the parties guarantee three things: The border between Germany and France, the border between Germany and Belgium, and the demilitarization of the Rhineland. Article 2 provides that Germany and France, and Germany and Belgium, agree that they will not attack or invade each other with certain inapplicable exceptions, and Article 3 provides that Germany and France, and Germany and Belgium, agree to settle all disputes between them by peaceful means: The Tribunal will remember, because this point was made by my friend, Mr. Alderman, that the first important violation of the Treaty of Mutual Guarantee appears to have been the entry of German troops into the Rhineland on 7 March 1936. The day after, France and Belgium asked the League of Nations Council to consider the question of the German re-occupation of the Rhineland and the purported repudiation of the treaty, and on the 12th of March, after a protest from the British Secretary for Foreign Affairs. Belgium, France, Great Britain, and Italy recognized unanimously that the re-occupation was a violation of this treaty, and on the 14th of March, the League Council duly and properly decided that it was not permissible and that the Rhineland clauses of the pact were not avoidable by Germany because of the alleged violation by France in the Franco-Soviet Mutual Assistance Pact.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: That is the background to the treaty with the international organizations that were then in force, and if I might suggest them to the Tribunal without adding to the summary which I have given, the relevant articles are 1, 2, and 3, which I have mentioned, and 4, which provides for the bringing of violations before the Council of the League, as was done, and 5 I ask the Tribunal to note, because it deals with the clauses of the Versailles Treaty which I have already mentioned. It says: "The provisions of Article 3 of the present treaty are placed under the guarantee of the High Contracting Parties as provided by the following stipulations: "If one of the powers referred to in Article 3 refuses to submit a dispute to peaceful settlement or to comply with an arbitral or judicial decision and commits a violation of Article 2 of the present treaty or a breach of Articles 42 or 43 of the Treaty of Versailles, the provisions of Article 4 of the present treaty shall apply." That is the procedure of going to the League or in the case of a flagrant breach, of taking more stringent action. I remind the Tribunal of this provision because of the quotations from Hitler which I mentioned earlier, when he said that the German Government will scrupulously maintain every treaty voluntarily signed, even though they were concluded before their accession to power and office. Whatever may be said of the Treaty of Versailles, whatever may be argued and has been argued, no one has ever argued for a moment, to the best of my knowledge, that Herr Stresemann was in any way acting involuntarily when he signed, along with the other representatives, the Locarno pact on behalf of Germany. It was signed not only by Herr Stresemann, but by Herr Hans Luther, so that there you have a treaty freely entered into, which repeats the Rhineland provisions of Versailles and binds Germany in that regard. I simply call the attention of the Tribunal to Article 8, which deals with the remaining in force of the treaty.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: I might perhaps read it because as I told the Tribunal all the other treaties have the same lasting qualities, the same provisions as to the time they will last, as the Treaty of Mutual Guarantee. It says: "Article 8. The present treaty shall be registered at the League of Nations in accordance with the Covenant of the League . It shall remain in force until the Council, acting on a request by one or other of the High Contracting Parties notified to the other signatory powers 3 months in advance, and voting at least by a two-thirds majority, decides that the League of Nations ensures sufficient protection to the High Contracting Parties; the treaty shall cease to have effect on the expiration of a period of 1 year from such decision." That is, that in signing this treaty, the German representatives clearly placed the question of repudiation or avoidance of the treaty in hands other than their own. They were at the time, of course, a member of the League, and a member of the Council of the League, but they left the repudiation and avoidance to the decision of the League. Then the next treaty on my list is the Arbitration Treaty between Germany and Czechoslovakia, which was one of the Locarno, group and to which I have already referred, but for convenience I have put in Exhibit GB-14, which is British Document TC-14. As a breach of this treaty, as charged in Charge 8, of Appendix C, I mentioned the background of the treaty, and I shall not go into it again but I think the only clauses that the Tribunal need look at, are Article 1, which is the governing clause, and says as follows (Document TC-14): "All disputes of every kind between Germany and Czechoslovakia with regard to which the parties are in conflict as to their respective rights, and which it may not be possible to settle amicably by the normal methods of diplomacy, shall be submitted for decision either to an arbitral tribunal, or to the Permanent Court of International Justice as laid down hereafter.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: It is agreed that the disputes referred to above include, in particular, those mentioned in Article 13 of the Covenant of the League of Nations. "This provision does not apply to disputes arising out of events prior to the present treaty and belonging to the past. "Disputes for the settlement of which a special procedure is laid down in other conventions in force between the High Contracting Parties, shall be settled in conformity with the provisions of these conventions." Articles 2 to 21 of the machinery. In Article 22 the second sentence says it-that's the present treaty-shall enter into and remain in force under the same conditions as the said treaty, which is the Treaty of Mutual Guarantee. Now that, I think, is all I need mention about that treaty. I think I am right that my friend, Mr. Alderman, referred to it. It is certainly the treaty to which President Benes unsuccessfully appealed during the crisis in the autumn of 1938. Now the ninth treaty which I should deal with is not in this document book, and I merely am putting it in formally, because my friend, Mr. Roberts, will deal with it and read the appropriate parts-if the Tribunal will be good enough to note it because it is mentioned in Charge 9 of Appendix C . It is the Arbitration Convention between Germany and Belgium also done at Locarno, of which I hand in a copy for convenience as GB-15. In fact, I can tell the Tribunal all these arbitration conventions are in the same form, and I am not going to deal with it because it is essentially part of the case concerned with Belgium, the Low Countries, and Luxembourg, which my friend, Mr. Roberts, will present. Therefore, I only ask the Tribunal to accept the formal document for the moment. And the same applies to the tenth treaty which is mentioned in Charge 10 of Appendix C . That is the Arbitration Treaty between Germany and Poland, of which I ask the Tribunal to take notice, and I hand in as GB-16. That again will be dealt with by my friend, Colonel Griffith-Jones, when he is dealing with the Polish case.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: I therefore can take the Tribunal straight to a matter which is not a treaty, but is a solemn declaration, and that is TC-18, which I now put in as Exhibit GB-17, and ask the Tribunal to take judicial notice of, as a Declaration of the Assembly of the League of Nations. The importance is the date which was the 24th of September 1927. The Tribunal may remember that I asked them to take judicial notice of the fact that Germany had become a member of the League of Nations on 10 September 1926, a year before. The importance of this Declaration is not only its effect in international law, to which my learned friend, the Attorney General, referred, but the fact that it was unanimously adopted by the Assembly of the League, of which Germany was a free, and let me say at once, an active member at the time. I think that all I need read of TC-18 is, if the Tribunal would be good enough to look at it, the speech which begins "M. Sokal of Poland (Rapporteur)," and then the translation after the Rapporteur had dealt with the formalities, that this had gone to the third committee and been unanimously adopted, and he had been asked to act as Rapporteur, he says-the second paragraph: "The committee was of opinion that, at the present juncture, a solemn resolution passed by the Assembly, declaring that wars of aggression must never be employed as a means of settling disputes between states, and that such wars constitute an international crime, would have a salutary effect on public opinion, and would help to create an atmosphere favorable to the League's future work in the matter of security and disarmament.