4
Dec. 45
Afternoon
Session
THE
PRESIDENT: Before the Attorney General continues
his opening statement, the Tribunal wishes me to
state what they propose to do as to time of
sitting for the immediate future. We think it
will be more convenient that the Tribunal shall
sit from 10:00 o'clock in the morning until 1:00
o'clock, with a break for 10 minutes in the
middle of the morning; and that the Tribunal
shall sit in the afternoon from 2:00 o'clock
until 5:00 o'clock with a break for 10 minutes
in the middle of the afternoon; and that there
shall be no open sitting of the Tribunal on
Saturday morning, as the Tribunal has a very
large number of applications by the defendants'
counsel for witnesses and documents and other
matters of that sort which it has to consider.
SIR HARTLEY SHAWCROSS: May it please
the Tribunal, when we broke off I had been
saying that the Nazi Government was intent upon
aggression, and all that had been taking place
in regard to Danzig — the negotiations, the
demands that were being made — were really
no more than a cover, a pretext and excuse for
further domination.
As far back as
September 1938 plans for aggressive war against
Poland, England, and France were well in hand.
While Hitler, at Munich, was telling the world
that the German people wanted peace, and that
having solved the Czechoslovakian problem,
Germany had no more territorial problems in
Europe, the staffs of his Armed Forces were
already preparing their plans. On the 26th of
September 1938 he had stated:
"We
have given guarantees to the states in
the West. We have assured all our
immediate neighbors of the integrity of
their territory as far as Germany is
concerned. That is no mere phrase. It is
our sacred will. We have no interest
whatever in a breach of the peace. We
want nothing from these peoples."
And the world was entitled to rely on those
assurances. International co-operation is
utterly impossible unless one can assume good
faith in the leaders of the various states and
honesty in the public utterances that they make.
But, in fact, within 2 months of that solemn and
apparently considered undertaking, Hitler and
his confederates were preparing for the seizure
of Danzig. To recognize those assurances, those
pledges, those diplomatic moves as the empty
frauds that they were, one must go back to
inquire what was happening within the inner
councils of the Reich from the time of the
Munich Agreement.
Written some time in
September 1938 is an extract from a file on the
reconstruction of the German Navy. Under the
heading