dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
DR. HORN: In view of the fact that ever since 4 March 1941 strong British forces were pushing to the north from Southern Greece, a further localization of the Italian-Greek conflict was no longer possible. Although this war had begun in the autumn of 1940 against German wishes, Hitler, with a view to the general situation, certainly could not tolerate the imminent defeat of his Italian ally. When Herr Von Ribbentrop on 23-August 1939 signed at Moscow the treaties between Germany and the Soviet Union, including the secret agreement concerning the partition of Poland and the surrender to Russia of the Baltic States, the sometimes very vehement ideological discussions between National Socialism and Bolshevism were for the time being eliminated from the international sphere as an element of danger. This system of treaties, which was supplemented in the course of the next month, had a favorable influence on the opinion concerning Hitler's foreign policy held by large circles of the German people who were alarmed by the ideological contrasts. Ever since Bismarck signed the treaty of benevolent neutrality with Russia there was a general conviction in Germany that the maintenance of friendly relations with Russia must always be the goal of our foreign policy. For the traditional reasons just mentioned, Herr Von Ribbentrop at that time considered these pacts a strong pillar of German foreign policy. Because of this opinion, in the winter of 1940 he invited the Foreign Commissar of the Soviet Union, Molotov, to visit Berlin to clear up problems which had arisen in the meantime. Unfortunately this second conference did not bring about the desired results. Hitler became very much alarmed at the results of this conference and through secret information as to the future attitude of the Soviet Union toward Germany.
DR. HORN: Especially the attitude of Russia in the Baltic countries, as well as the Soviet march into Bessarabia and into Bukovina, were considered by Hitler as actions which were apt to endanger the German interests in the Baltic border states and in the Romanian oil district. He saw, furthermore, in the attitude of the Soviet Union the possibility of exercising influence on Bulgaria. He found his suspicions confirmed by the conclusion of the Friendship Pact with Yugoslavia on 5 April 1941, at a time when Yugoslavia, after a change of government, threatened to join the Western Powers. In spite of these misgivings of Hitler's, of which he frequently informed Herr Von Ribbentrop, the defendant tried to avoid tensions. The Tribunal has permitted me to submit an affidavit which confirms that Herr Von Ribbentrop, in December 1940 in detailed discussion, still tried to induce Hitler once more to give him authority to include Russia in the Tripartite Pact. This documentary evidence confirms that Herr Von Ribbentrop, after his conference, was justified in the opinion that he would succeed in this step with the approval of Hitler. Subsequently, however, Hitler returned again and again to his misgivings, which were strengthened by the information of his own secret service about military operations on the other side of the Eastern border. In the spring of 1941 Herr Von Ribbentrop tried to bring to Hitler, at Berchtesgaden, the German Ambassador in Moscow and one of his subordinates. Neither of the diplomats was admitted. This ended the attempts possible for Herr Von Ribbentrop within the scope of his position under the regime. Afterwards he also believed that he could no longer shut his eyes to the information which was brought to his knowledge. As Generaloberst Jodl has testified, he and all the commanders who took part in the beginning of the Russian campaign were convinced that they had pushed right into the midst of an offensive concentration of troops.
DR. HORN: This is proved, among other things, by maps which were found covering the territory beyond the German-Russian line of interests. Is it really to be assumed that such conduct by the Soviet Union is in agreement with the Non-Aggression Pact? Around that time the danger of a spreading of the European war into a world war began to loom more and more threateningly. The United States entered the arena of war under a neutrality law, by which they subjected themselves in advance to clearly defined rules in case of a future war. The mechanism of the neutrality law was set in motion by a proclamation of the President. It designated at the same time the danger zone within which American ships could not count upon the protection of their government. This attitude at the beginning of the war confirms that the United States, the author of the Kellogg Pact, was not of the opinion that the traditional law of neutrality had in any way been modified by it. The United States, however, during the course of the spreading and the aggravation of the European war, deviated more and more from the original line, without the German Reich furnishing any cause for conflict with them. After the experiences of the first World War, German general opinion, and consequently that of Herr Von Ribbentrop, was that an intervention on the part of the United States should be prevented by all means. Since the "quarantine" speech of President Roosevelt in 1937 strong contrasts could, however, be noticed more and more in the ideological-political train of thought of the world's public opinion. The situation was aggravated by the incidents of November 1938 in Germany, -which were the reason for the recall of the Berlin Ambassador to Washington to report, from whence he did not return to his post.
DR. HORN: If, in spite of that, the neutrality policy was further prepared by legislative acts and became effective at the beginning of the war, the German Foreign Office, and thus Herr Von Ribbentrop, could conclude that the existing differences of opinion as to the internal political development of the State would not change the neutral attitude of the United States. Considering this expectation, not only everything that could produce an unfavorable effect in the United States was avoided from the outbreak of the war; but we also quietly put up with quite a number of actions by the United States which were weakening Germany and which were incompatible with strict neutrality. The world public was informed of the agreement on the political aims of neutral America and belligerent Great Britain when the leading men of the two states proclaimed in August 1941 the Atlantic Charter as the program for the new order of relations between the nations. It had a character obviously hostile to the Axis Powers and left them in no doubt that the United States espoused the cause of the other side. There followed the incidents on the high seas which, as the evidence has shown, can be credited to the account of the material support of Great Britain by the United States. By occupying Iceland and Greenland in the summer and autumn of 1941 the U.S.A. took over the protection of the most important line of communications of the then sorely struggling British Empire. This amounted to military intervention even before the outbreak of the officially declared war. The so-called "shooting order" of the President brought about a dangerous situation which might have resulted any day in the outbreak of armed conflict. Even several months before 11 December 1941, the United States took measures which were usually taken only during a war. The outbreak of the war was only a link in the chain of successive incidents, perhaps not even the most important.
DR. HORN: It was started by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, which, as the evidence has shown, was neither instigated nor foreseen by Germany. According to the formal definition of aggression, the declaration of war is one of the criteria for the determination of the aggressor. As I have already pointed out in connection with the spreading of the war in Europe, this criterion alone without the factual background is no positive proof for an act of aggression. As a reaction to the numerous violations of neutrality by the United States, which really represented actions of war, the German Reich would have been justified long before in replying on her part with military actions. Whether this right was exercised after the preceding announcement-that is, a declaration of war-or not is immaterial. So far, I have thrown some light upon aggressive acts as enumerated by the Prosecution from the beginning of the Polish campaign to the entry into the war of the United States. It remains for me to take up a juridical position regarding the treaties concluded by Germany, which provided for a pacific settlement of political conflicts. Herr Von Ribbentrop is charged not only with having been a party to aggressive acts, but also with failing in his duty to put into play the mechanism of the aforesaid treaties previous to an armed conflict. From the fact that the means for pacific settlement as provided by the treaties had not been used, the Prosecution draws the conclusion that these omissions can be attributed in a criminal sense to Herr Von Ribbentrop. This interpretation however would be erroneous from a legal aspect. If we begin by sharing the Prosecution's point of view, we shall see that even so the conclusions drawn by the Prosecution cannot be upheld. Assuming that an individual minister were criminally responsible for the nonfunctioning of a series of treaties, even the Prosecution would have to put the question whether the minister was actually in a position to obtain through his actions a result of any legal consequence.
DR. HORN: According to a principle embodied by nature into every system of criminal law on earth, a defendant is punishable for an omission only if he was actually in a position, and legally liable, to act. I shall demonstrate at length, within the compass of my arguments concerning the conspiracy, how small in fact Herr Von Ribbentrop's possibilities of influence were. The decisive point at issue is the fact that he was not legally in a position to make any declarations to foreign powers binding the German Reich other than those he was empowered to by the head of the State. As head of the State, Hitler was the representative of the German Reich from the point of view of international law. He alone was in a position to make binding declarations to foreign powers. Any other persons could legally bind the German State only if authorized by the head of the State, unless the treaty in question explicitly provided otherwise. It is a characteristic not only of the German Fuehrer State that the Foreign Minister cannot independently enter into binding commitments toward foreign powers. Rather it is a general principle of international relations that only the organ empowered to represent the state is able to act for it. The difference between German conditions and those of democratic constitutions merely lies in the fact that in the former the Foreign Minister usually has a larger influence on the intentions of the head of the State. The defendant, therefore, could not have obtained any legitimate results if he had tried, against the Fuehrer's wish, to have recourse to the possibilities of a settlement of conflict as provided by the numerous treaties of arbitration and conciliation. No one but Hitler could have put in motion such a procedure. The defendant could have been in a position to do so by Hitler's order only. He had not even the right to have his advice listened to if Hitler chose to ignore it.
DR. HORN: These points of view apply for example to the following treaties enumerated by the Prosecution: The Convention for Peaceful Settlement of International Disputes of 1899 and 1907 and the Treaty of Arbitration of 1929 between Germany and Luxembourg. It should be mentioned, moreover, that these agreements by no means provided an obligatory settlement of political disputes. As to treaties of arbitration and conciliation with Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Belgium, concluded in connection with the Locarno Treaty, the further point applies, quite apart from the legal argument just mentioned, that they and the Western pact form a political unit. Even externally, this is expressed in the fact that these agreements and the Locarno Pact are all of them annexed to the general final protocol of the powers participating in the Locarno Conference. The question could, therefore, be asked whether the conciliation treaties share the fate of the principal treaty, that is, the Western Pact. I should particularly like to point out that the procedure laid down in these treaties ended in case of nonsettlement with the League of Nations Council, in which, at the time of the Western pact, the four participating great powers had, or-this applies to Germany-were to have, permanent seats. The withdrawal of Italy and Germany from this political body deeply affected the political basis upon which the settlement treaties were based. Moreover, the grouping of the powers had shifted so much that a part of the Locarno great powers, namely Great Britain and France, had in the year 1939, through agreements with Poland, already taken sides in advance in case of a possible conflict.
DR. HORN: Concerning the treaties of arbitration and conciliation with Denmark and the Netherlands of 1926, may I be allowed to point out that the proceedings provided therein could not be applied at all, as there were no conflicts between Germany and aforesaid countries; quite to the contrary, Germany took steps which were aimed at the enemy belligerents she wished to anticipate in the occupation of these countries. The Prosecution mentions, moreover, a number of assurances given by Hitler to countries with which Germany subsequently waged war. Since Herr Von Ribbentrop did not give such assurances in person, but rather the Fuehrer, his participation could form a point of argument only if he had given advice to Hitler in this respect. No evidence has been produced to sustain such a suggestion. A large part of these so-called assurances is contained in speeches made by Hitler before the German public, either in mass meetings or at the Reichstag. It is doubtful indeed whether such declarations, addressed in the first place to the German public, could have any binding results in the field of international law. Whereas up to now I have spoken about the actions that led to the outbreak of the war and its spread, I shall now proceed to the second large complex of the Indictment, which deals with crimes committed during the war. The Charter, in Article 6(b), declares violations of the laws or customs of war to be punishable. This conception is illustrated by a number of examples such as deportation, shooting of hostages, et cetera. But these examples fail to complete this conception in full. We are therefore obliged, in the same way as with Article 6(a), to propose to the Court a qualification which it can use as a basis for its decisions. My conception agrees with the procedure proposed by the French Prosecution. They have declared that they should be free to qualify definitions of punishable offenses not fully defined by the Charter. What is good for the Prosecution is good for the Defense.
DR. HORN: The use of the expression "laws and usages of war," as well as the enumeration of examples, forces one to believe that the Charter aims at violations of the classical jus in hello. I therefore qualify war crimes as offenses against binding law established between belligerents by agreement, or against binding and generally recognized prescriptive law. The individual facts which range under the collective conception of War Crimes, therefore, must each be examined as to whether they are to be regarded as such according to the traditional rules applying to armed conflicts between states. Whereas, in general, classical international law holds responsible the state as a unit only, there always existed in the usage of war the exception that also acting individuals were liable to be held responsible. How far this responsibility of the individual can be followed by criminal proceedings after the war has been the subject of many discussions. It can be ascertained that the prevailing practice of states is that-the belligerent who has been injured by a war crime may also, after the war, call the offender to account. If several states, which have fought shoulder to shoulder in the war, form a common court against the war criminals of the conquered adversary, this court has the collective competency of all the states that form the court or have joined its charter. When speaking of the liability of individuals to be punished for crimes committed during the war against the adversary, who thereafter sits in judgment upon him, one thinks in the first place of former members of the armed forces. Already at Versailles there were difficulties in answering the question as to what extent military chiefs were to be made responsible. The idea of having a minister of a department held responsible under criminal law has so far never emerged. In Versailles, too, the War Criminals Committee was occupied with the question of making nonmilitary personalities responsible from a purely political point of view.
DR. HORN: This committee discriminated clearly between war criminals, which were to be judged by the Allied court, and guilt with regard to the outbreak of war, for the examination and judging of which a special international political court was to be created. The customary conception is therefore that a minister cannot be held responsible for violations of the jus In hello. The Prosecution can achieve this only by going the roundabout way via a conspiracy. If we follow the interpretation given to this conception, the Foreign Minister of the Reich would, for example, be responsible for the destruction of the village of Oradour. He would have to take responsibility for actions which have nothing in the least to do with the Reich's foreign policy and are merely isolated actions by some office or other. As the hearing of evidence has shown, the Reich Foreign Minister was not only not competent for the conduct of war, but had in fact not the slightest possibility of influencing military measures as far as either curbing or furthering them was concerned. If one wished to regard the various cabinet ministers as a clique of conspirators also with regard to War Crimes, it would have to be proved that the military offices competent to conduct the war acted in agreement with the ministers or at least after having given them the necessary information. The concentration of military authorities and ministers into a unity of purpose, directed toward the perpetration of such criminal acts abominated by all decent people, is an artificial subsequent construction of the Prosecution. The unity, which did not exist at the time when it is supposed to have been effective, has only now been drawn up as a conception. The facts are now subsequently to fit the conception. It is obvious that criminal proceedings cannot be built up on such a method. Herr Von Ribbentrop cannot therefore be punished without discrimination for all war crimes committed during the war by the German side. Such a responsibility for the results would be absolutely grotesque.
DR. HORN: He could only be held responsible for individual acts if he himself participated in certain concrete individual actions. Herr Von Ribbentrop is accused by the Prosecution, according to the testimony of General Lahousen, of having issued "directives" to Admiral Canaris to have Ukrainian villages set afire and to massacre the Jews living there. First I wish to establish the fact that even a Foreign Minister cannot issue directives of any sort to a military agency. Furthermore, it would have been wholly nonsensical to issue such directives for the setting afire of Ukrainian villages. Ukrainians supported the German fight against the Poles. Thus hardly anyone will believe that Herr Von Ribbentrop at that time advised the destruction of his own allies. My client further insists categorically that not one word was mentioned about the massacre of Jews in that particular conference, the less so, since there was no reason for it at all. I beg the Tribunal to base their decision regarding charges of War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity raised against Herr Von Ribbentrop, on the general attitude of the accused with respect a July 46 to questions of humanity. As was proved beyond doubt by the evidence, Herr Von Ribbentrop saved the lives of 10,000 Allied prisoners of war through vigorous personal intervention. As I will further show, within the framework of the conspiracy he was instrumental in the unfettering of British prisoners of war and he used his influence for the observance of the rules of the Geneva Convention. He was opposed to the branding of Russian prisoners of war. These are instances upon which the Tribunal may base their decision with respect to questions of humanity. This may also be an appropriate gauge for the general behavior of the accused as concerns questions of humanity in problems where he was not actively involved. , Furthermore, his attitude in the question of the treatment of terrorist airmen is charged as a war crime to Herr Von Ribbentrop.
DR. HORN: My client, as well as the Defendant Goering, deny that the conference at Schloss Klessheim mentioned in Document 735-PS ever took place. I should like to emphasize that General Warlimont, who made these notes, did not personally participate in the conference. Furthermore, the opinion allegedly voiced by Herr Von Ribbentrop, according to the document, stands in contradiction to his usual demeanor in this question. State Secretary Steengracht deposed here that Herr Von Ribbentrop, after the publication of the notorious article about lynch law in Das Reich, at once vigorously protested against it. Further evidence concerning the problem of terrorist airmen, through examination of the witnesses Generaloberst Jodl and Field Marshal Keitel, proves that not only the Foreign Office but Herr Von Ribbentrop personally made every effort in principle to uphold the Geneva Convention and that Herr Von Ribbentrop together with other leading personalities took pains to assure the retention of at least the basic human principles, even approaching Hitler at times when he lost all control of himself. In spite of all that happened, the fact that in consequence of these steps the Geneva Convention was not renounced must be called a success. Especially with regard to terrorist airmen it must not be overlooked that terror attacks in the form of air bombardments undeniably constitute a war crime if they are undertaken indiscriminately on cities and not on military and armament objectives only. It must be taken into account in the reaction throughout Germany toward the conduct of the air warfare of the Western Powers that, according to established and traditional conceptions in armed conflict between nations, attacks on the civilian population are prohibited. This thought is not only expressed in the Hague Convention concerning land warfare but constitutes a binding stipulation of general international law, binding for all and not applicable to the theater of operations on land only.