23 Nov. 45
the essential elements of the crime which I have already pointed
out can be made out by a mere handful of captured documents. My order
of presentation of these will be first to present one by one this
handful of documents, documents which prove the essential elements of
the case on aggressive war up to the hilt. These documents will leave
no reasonable doubt concerning the aggressive character of the Nazi
war or concerning the conspiratorial premeditation of that war. Some
of this group of documents are the specific basis for particular
allegations in the Indictment. As I reach those documents, I shall
invite the attention of the Tribunal to the allegations of the
Indictment which are specifically supported by them. Having proved
the corpus of the crime in this way, I will follow the presentation
of this evidence with a more or less chronological presentation of
the details of the case on aggressive war producing more detailed
evidence of the relevant activities of the conspirators from 1933 to
1941.
The documents which we have selected for single presentation at
this point, before developing the case in detail, are 10 in number.
The documents have been selected to establish the basic facts
concerning each phase of the development of the Nazi conspiracy for
aggression. Each document is conspiratorial in nature. Each document
is one, I believe, heretofore unknown to history and each document is
self-contained and tells its own story. Those are the three standards
of selection which we have sought to apply.
I turn to the period of 1933 to 1936, a period characterized by
an orderly, planned sequence of preparations for war. This is the
period covered by Paragraphs 1 and 2 of Section IV (F) of the
Indictment, to be found at Page 7 of the printed English text. The
essential character of this period was the formulation and execution
of the plan to re-arm and to re-occupy and fortify the Rhineland, in
violation of the Treaty of Versailles and other treaties, in order to
acquire military strength and political bargaining power to be used
against other nations.
If the Tribunal please, we have what have been referred to as
document books. They are English translations of German documents, in
some cases German versions. I shall ask that they be handed up and we
will hand one copy at the moment to counsel for the defendants. It
has been physically impossible to prepare 21 sets of them. If
possible we shall try to furnish further copies to the defendants,
the original German documents . . .
DR. DIX: I would be very much obliged. In order that there should
be no misunderstanding we have arranged that tomorrow we will discuss
with the Prosecution in what way the whole of the evidence may be
made available to all the Defense Counsel.