dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
DR. SIEMERS: Now I shall deal with the groupings designated by Sir David. Sir David made certain fundamental statements. Regarding Document Numbers Raeder-28 and 29, he pointed out specifically that in one case they were the thoughts of General Gamelin and in the other case those of General Weygand, and that these ideas were not known to the Germans at that time since these documents were not yet in our hands. The latter point is correct. The concept and the plan of occupying Greece, of destroying Romanian oil wells, those thoughts were known to the Germans-namely, through their intelligence service. The Prosecution did not present the data of the German High Command which show these reports. Since I do not have these documents, I believe it would be just if I am given the possibility of presenting the actual facts which were known to Germany and in this way prove them. I have no other proofs. That it is agreeable to the Prosecution to deprive me of the documents which I need for the defense, I can understand; but the Prosecution must also understand the fact that I consider it important that those documents which are definite proof of certain plans remain at my disposal. The charge has been made against Admiral Raeder that it was an aggressive war-a criminal war of aggression-to formulate plans for the occupation of Greece. Document Raeder-29 shows that General Weygand and General Gamelin on 9 September 1939 concern themselves with planning the occupation of neutral Salonika. So if this is the case, I cannot understand how one can point an accusing finger at Admiral Raeder, on the German side, for having concerned himself with such plans a year and half later. I believe, therefore, that these and similar documents must be granted me, for only from them can the military planning and the value of the military planning, or the objectionable side-that is the criminal side of the planning, be understood. The strategic thinking of the defendant can be understood only if one knows approximately what strategic thinking prevailed at the same time with the enemy.
DR. SIEMERS: The strategic reasoning of Admiral Raeder was shut up in an airtight compartment but depended on the reports received about the strategic planning of the opposition. It is a reciprocal activity. This reciprocal activity is necessary for an understanding. Therefore, in view of this very essential point, I ask to be granted this kind of document since, as I have recently stated, I do not know how I can carry on my defense at all in the face of these grave accusations regarding Greece and Norway if all of my documents are stricken. I believe that I am understood correctly when I do not assert that we were cognizant of these documents. -But Germany knew the contents of these documents, and I believe that is sufficient. May it please the Tribunal, we are once again at Document Raeder-66 in Group A. This Document Raeder-66 is the opinion of Dr. Mosler, an expert in international law, about the Norwegian operation as judged from the standpoint of international law. Since we are always talking about saving time in this courtroom, I would have my doubts about rejecting this article, for a refusal would force me to set forth the trend of thought point by point in detail, and I believe that it is much easier for the Tribunal, for the Prosecution and for me, if I submit general legal arguments in this connection.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: My Lord, this is a document which is a matter of legal argument. If the Tribunal thinks it would be of any assistance to have the argument in documentary form, I willingly withdraw my objection to that. That is on quite a different project than the other one, and I want to help in any way I can. While I am before the microphone: I did mention that there were two other documents that fall into the same group. Document Raeder-34 falls into Group B. and Document Raeder-48 into the Group E. My Lord, I did mention 28 when I was addressing the Tribunal.
DR. SIEMERS: May it please the Tribunal, I do not wish to dispute Document Raeder-66, I have really done this just to ease the situation for everyone. The additional documents in this group are Raeder-101 to 107. I cannot say that this is a homogeneous group. One document deals with Norway, another deals with Belgium, a third deals with the Danube. The unity of this group escapes me. Basically these documents have this point in common: that, as I have already stated, a plan existed in the Allied General Staff, as well as in the German, and all were based on the tenet of international law regarding the right of self-preservation and vital interests. In order to be brief at this point I should like to refer to Document Raeder-66 particularly, and to save time I ask that the quotations from this document be considered the basis for my remarks today on the right of self-preservation. I am referring to the quotations on Page 3 and Page 4 of this expert opinion. The legal situation is made very clear therein, and it is set forth very clearly in this expert opinion that, with regard to the question of the occupation of Norway, we are not concerned with whether the Allies had actually landed in Norway but only whether such a plan existed, that we are not concerned with the fact whether Norway agreed or did not agree. The danger of a change of neutrality according to international law gives one the right to use some compensating measure or to attack on one's own accord; and this basic tenet has been maintained in the entire literature which is quoted in this document, and to which I shall refer later in my defense speech. Out of group 101 to 107, I have to mention Document Raeder-107 especially. Document Raeder-107 is not concerned at all with the White Book s as the other documents are. 107 is an affidavit by Schreiber. Schreiber was naval attache at Oslo from October 1939 onward. From the beginning I have said that I needed Schreiber as a witness. In the meantime, I dispensed with Schreiber because even though we tried for weeks, we could not find him.
DR. SIEMERS: I discussed this matter with Sir David and with Colonel Phillimore. I was advised that there would be no objection on this formal point since Schreiber suddenly and of his own accord reappeared again. If, as the Prosecution wish, this piece of evidence is taken from me-namely, the affidavit of Schreiber about the reports which Admiral Raeder received from Oslo and, in addition to that, the documents from which the authenticity of these reports may be shown-then I have no evidence for this entire question at all. Besides, Schreiber was in Oslo during the occupation and he has commented in his affidavit with regard to the behavior of the Navy and the efforts of Admiral Raeder in connection with the regrettable civil administration of Terboven. Therefore, I am asking the High Tribunal to grant this affidavit to me or to grant Schreiber as a witness so that he can testify personally. This latter course, however, would take up more time. I have limited my evidence through witnesses to such a degree that I believe that, in view of the entire span of 15 years with which we are dealing, in the case of the Defendant Raeder at least, such an affidavit should be granted me. With regard to Group B. I should like to refer to the remarks which I have already made. As far as I can see, the group seems to be thoroughly heterogeneous, but I believe they are all documents taken from the White Book . The same ideas should be applied which I have recently expressed to the Tribunal.
THE PRESIDENT: I think Sir David recognized that there was a certain degree of lack of identity in these groups, but he suggested that they all fall into geographical groups: one group, the Low Countries; one group, Norway; one group, Greece; and one group, the Caucasus and the Danube-which agrees with "E." That is what he said. Could you not deal with them in those geographical groups?
DR. SIEMERS: Very well. I have already talked about Norway and in that connection I therefore refer to the remarks I have already made. I have already briefly mentioned Greece. I would like to say that there was a double accusation made: One, that neutral ships were sunk- namely, neutral Greek ships, and secondly, the accusation of an aggressive war against Greece-that is, the occupation of all Greece. With regard to the last point, I have already made a few statements. Dealing with the Greek merchantmen I would like to say only that in this case the action and attitude of the defendant appears justified in that he received reports which coincided with the documents which were found a month later in France. The same reports were received by Raeder when he expressed his views to Hitler. I would like to prove that these reports which came to him through the intelligence service were not invented by the intelligence service but were actual facts. The same applies to the oil regions. Plans existed to destroy the Romanian oil wells and furthermore there was a plan to destroy the Caucasian oil wells; both had the object of hurting the enemy; in the one case Germany alone-as far as Romania was concerned-and in the second case Germany and Russia, because at that time Russia was on friendly terms with Germany. These plans are-and this is shown by the documents-in the same form as all other documents presented by the Prosecution. These documents as well, in their entirety, are "top secret," "personal," "confidential." Just as the Prosecution have always said, "Why did you do everything secretly? That is suspicious." These documents contain ideas based on strategic planning just as do the documents presented by the Prosecution. That is something which arises from the nature of war and which is not meant to be an accusation on my part, nor should it be construed as an accusation against Admiral Raeder by the Prosecution. Then the group of Ribbentrop documents follows. I can say only what I said recently.
DR. SIEMERS: And as I glance at it cursorily now, the documents in the Ribbentrop document book are not as complete as they are here. Therefore, I believe it is important to take the documents and to investigate their complete content from the point of view of Raeder rather than the point of view of Ribbentrop. That perhaps may have taken place, as the High Tribunal suggested the other day. Then I believe, however, it is not an objection which can be used by the Prosecution to say that in the case of Ribbentrop they were partially admitted and partially rejected. For some documents which were granted Ribbentrop were refused me. Then we turn to Group "E" and that is tu quoque . I believe I have already spoken sufficiently on that point just recently. I dispute it again and I cannot understand why the Prosecution will not agree with me on that. I do not wish to object. I am not saying tu quoque ; I am only saying that there is strategic planning which is carried on in every army and there are tenets in international law which applied to the Allies exactly in the same way as to us, and I beg to be granted these possibilities of comparison in foreign politics. I believe herewith that I have dealt with all points so far as it is possible for me to define my position in such a brief period of time with regard to about 50 documents, and I am asking the High Tribunal not to make my work more difficult by refusing these documents to me.
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will carefully consider these documents and your arguments. The Tribunal will now adjourn. [The Tribunal adjourned until 17 May 1946, at 1000 hours.]
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal have given careful and prolonged attention to the consideration of the documents offered by Dr. Siemers on behalf of the Defendant Raeder; and they, therefore, do not wish the documents which they propose to admit to be read because they have already read them all. I will now deal with the documents individually. Document 66 is admitted for the purposes of argument, and not as evidence; Document 101 is denied; Documents 102 to 105 are admitted; Document 106 is denied; Document 107 is admitted; Document 39 is denied; Document 63 is admitted; Document 64 is denied; Document 99 is denied; Document 100 is admitted; Documents 102 to 107 are admitted; Document 38 is denied; Document 50 is denied; Document 55 is denied; Document 58 is denied; Documents 29, 56, 57, 60, and 62 are denied. I should have included in that group Document 28, which is also denied. Documents 31, 32, 36, 37, and 39 are denied; Document 41 is admitted; Document 99 has already been denied, and Document 101 has already been denied; Document 59 is admitted; Document 68 is denied; Document 70 is denied; Document 72 is denied; Document 74 is denied; Document 75 is admitted; Document 77 is admitted; Document 79 is admitted; Document 80 is admitted; Document 84 is admitted; Document 85, which is on Page 82 of Volume V, is admitted; Document 87 is denied; Document 88 is admitted; Document 91 is admitted; Document 13 is admitted; Document 27 is admitted. The Prosecution may, if they wish it, apply to cross-examine the witness who made that document.
THE TRIBUNAL (Mr. Francis Biddle, Member for the United States): That is Admiral Boehm.
THE PRESIDENT: Admiral Boehm, yes. Document 83 is admitted; Document 34 is admitted; Document 48 is denied. Have I gone too quickly for you, Dr. Siemers? You have the last few?
DR. SIEMERS: Yes, I heard everything.
MR. DODD: Mr. President, yesterday afternoon the Tribunal asked that we ascertain the origins, if possible, of Document 1014-PS. Some question was raised about it by Dr. Siemers. It is Exhibit USA-30. I have had a search made, and I have some information that we are prepared to submit concerning this document. I should like to point out that 1014-PS and 798-PS and L-3 are documents all concerning this same speech made at Obersalzberg on 22 August 1939. They were offered in evidence by Mr. Alderman of the American staff on the 26th day of November 1945. I should like to point out that L-3, to which Dr. Siemers made reference yesterday, was offered only for identification, as the record shows for the proceedings of that day on the 26th of November, and has received the mark Exhibit Number USA-28 for identification only. Mr. Alderman pointed out, as appears in the record, that he was not offering it in evidence, that it was a paper which came into our hands originally through the services of a newspaperman, and that later on the Documents 798-PS and 1014-PS were found among captured documents. They referred to the same speech in Obersalzberg. Mr. Alderman offered these two at that time. Now Document 798-PS, Exhibit Number USA-29, and Document 1014-PS, Exhibit Number USA-30, were both found by the forces of the United States in this fashion: They had been taken from the OKW headquarters in Berlin, and in the course of various journeys in those days they finally arrived at one place and were stored, it now appears, at various places by the OKW under the control of a General Winter of the German forces; and they were transported in three railway trains to Saalfelden in the Austrian Tyrol. Subsequently, General Winter ordered that all documents in his possession be turned over to the Allied forces and they were.
MR. DODD: These particular documents, together with some other papers, were turned over by General Winter and members of his staff at that time; and on the 21st day of May 1945, they were removed from Saalfelden where they were under the control of General Winter and taken to the Third U.S. Army Document Center at Munich. While at Munich they were sorted and catalogued by Department G-2 Supreme Headquarters of the American Expeditionary Force with the assistance of clerks from the OKW and OKH. On the 16th of June 1945 these documents, together with others, were removed on six trucks from the headquarters of the Third Army at Munich and were taken to the U.S. Group Control Council Number 32 at Seckenheim, Germany, which was located in the former offices of the I.G. Farben Company, and were placed on shelves on the third floor of the building and kept under guard. Between the 16th of June 1945 and the 30th of August 1945, the task of collecting, sorting, assembling and cataloging these documents was carried out under the supervision of the British Colonel Austin, with personnel of the Supreme Headquarters and the G-2 Document Center of the G-2 Operational Intelligence Section, 6889 Berlin Document Section, and the British Enemy Document Unit, and the British Military Intelligence Research Section. Beginning on the 5th day of July 1945, and continuing until the 30th of August 1945, these documents were screened at that place by members of the staff of the United States Chief Counsel. Lieutenant Margolies, who is here in the courtroom and a member of our staff, personally picked these documents out of your file 798-PS and 1014-PS from the OKW captured files, brought them to Nuremberg, and lodged them in the document room where they have been kept under strict security ever since. Now, that is the history of these two documents about which Dr. Siemers raised some question yesterday-a considerable question I might say-and inferred there was something strange about their contents.
MR. DODD: I think the story which I have given in the form of a statement over the signature of Lieutenant Commander Hopper clearly establishes the source and where they have been ever since; and I think it is only fair to say that, since Dr. Siemers saw fit to point out that this language sounded extremely harsh and was attributed to Hitler, these documents were offered to show these people were actually talking about aggressive war. The reading of the three documents by the Tribunal will clearly show they are all in agreement in substance; of course, there are differences in phraseology, but the important thing and purpose for which they were offered was to show that these people were talking aggressive war. I might say I am not surprised to find my friend is sensitive about the remark, but I think the unanswered proof in the case thus far shows that not only were these things said but they were done.
M. DUBOST: May it please the Court. No doubt it is a mistake in translation. We understood 106 had been rejected the first time and admitted the second time in the Group 102 to 107.
THE PRESIDENT: I am afraid it was my mistake. I did say that the Group 102 to 107 were admitted; but I have also said 106 was rejected, and it is rejected. It is entirely my mistake. 106 is rejected.
M. DUBOST: 106 is thrown out and 102 to 107 are also rejected, are they?
THE PRESIDENT: No, I will state the exact numbers: 102, 103, 104, 105, and 107 are admitted.
M. DUBOST: Very good. Mr. President, we want to offer further explanations on 102 to 107 during the course of the proceedings.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes.
DR. SIEMERS: Mr. President, may I say a few words concerning the statement made by Mr. Dodd? I had no doubts, and I certainly have no doubt now, that since these documents were found they have been handled very correctly and Mr. Dodd spoke only about that. I believe it is important to establish: Whether one can determine the connection these documents had with other documents, because in that way one can see whether these were documents belonging to a certain adjutant. For instance, were they together with the Hossbach papers or together with the Schmundt file? If, for instance, the documents were with the Schmundt documents it is probable that they belonged to the adjutant.
THE PRESIDENT: That all goes to the weight of the document, does it not? No doubt, a document which is signed has more weight than a document which is not signed. All those matters the Tribunal will take into account when considering the documents, but the admissibility of the document depends upon its being a German document found and captured.
DR. SIEMERS: Mr. President, I wanted to say this only because it is unpleasant to have the American Delegation misunderstand my motion concerning the document. I make no charges concerning the manner in which the document was found, I merely say that it is undecided among which papers it was found. It came to my attention that Mr. Dodd treated the three documents concerned in quite the same way, whereas Mr. Alderman on Page 188 of the record (Volume II, Page 286), states that one of these three documents, L-3, was evidently not in order because of its doubtful origin. And therefore he withdrew the document. May I then, if it please the Court, continue with the examination of the Defendant Raeder? [Turning to the defendant.] Admiral, we have a few final questions concerning the conspiracy. I believe it will not take much time. I ask you to look at the Document C-155. That is Exhibit GB-214, in Document Book 10, Page 24-Document Book 10 of the British Delegation, Page 24. It is your letter of 11 June 1940, which was sent to 74 Navy offices and which the Prosecution has called a letter of justification. The Prosecution wants to deduce from this that you knew that a war was to be expected as early as the summer of 1939. I should like you to answer this charge very briefly.
RAEDER: There is manifold proof to show that I was not expecting a war in the fall at all, and in view of the small extent of rearmament of the German Navy this was quite natural. I have stated quite clearly in my speech before the U-boat officers in Swinemuende that we could not count on it.
DR. SIEMERS: And what was the reason for that letter, C-155?
RAEDER: The reason was that a number of torpedo boats had misfired and this could be traced to the fact that torpedoes had not yet been as perfectly developed as they should have been at the beginning of a war. An additional reason was that, now that the war had so suddenly broken out, many officers believed that it would have been better to have developed the submarine weapon as much as possible first, so that at least this weapon would be ready in large numbers in the event of a war. I objected to that opinion precisely because such a war was not to be expected. And on Page 6, 8th paragraph, I emphasize again-in the second line- that the Fuehrer hoped until the end to postpone the imminent dispute with England until 1944 or 1945. I am speaking here of an imminent dispute. An imminent dispute is not exactly something to strive for, it is rather to be feared.
DR. SIEMERS: There is another key document, that is, Document 789-PS, Exhibit USA-23, the very long speech made by Hitler on 23 November 1939 before the commanders-in-chief. The document, Mr. President, is in Document Book 10a on Page 261. This is again a Hitler speech where there is no indication of who recorded it. Signature and date are missing. [Turning to the defendant.] Since this is similar to the other documents I do not have to question you on that point. I would merely like to know, Admiral, did that speech also betray a definite background, a certain mental reservation on the part of Hitler?