FOURTEENTH
DAY
Thursday,
6 December 1945
Morning
Session
THE
PRESIDENT: The Tribunal has received an urgent
request from the defendants' counsel that the
Trial should be adjourned at Christmas for a
period of 3 weeks. The Tribunal is aware of the
many interests which must be considered in a
trial of this complexity and magnitude, and, as
the Trial must inevitably last for a
considerable time, the Tribunal considers that
it is not only in the interest of the defendants
and their counsel but of every one concerned in
the Trial that there should be a recess. On the
whole it seems best to take that recess at
Christmas rather than at a later date when the
Prosecution's case has been completed. The
Tribunal will therefore rise for the Christmas
week and over the 1st of January, and will not
sit after the session on Thursday, the 20th of
December, and will sit again on Wednesday, the
2d of January.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: I
should like, in justice to my staff, to note the
American objection to the adjournment for the
benefit of the defendants.
LT. COL.
GRIFFITH-JONES: May it please the Tribunal, the
Tribunal will return to Part III of that
document book in which I included the documents
relating to the earlier discussions between the
German and Polish Governments on the question of
Danzig. Those discussions, the Tribunal will
remember, started almost immediately after the
Munich crisis in September 1938, and started, in
the first place, as cautious and friendly
discussions until the remainder of
Czechoslovakia had finally been seized in March
of the following year.
I would refer
the Tribunal to the first document in that part,
TC-73, Number 44. That is a document taken from
the official Polish White Book, which I
put in as Exhibit GB-27 (a). It gives an account
of a luncheon which took place at the Grand
Hotel, Berchtesgaden, on the 24th of October,
where Ribbentrop saw Mr. Lipski, the Polish
Ambassador to Germany:
"In
a conversation of the 24th of October,
over a luncheon at the Grand Hotel,
Berchtesgaden, at which M. Hewel was
present, Von Ribbentrop put forward a
proposal for a general settlement of
issues between Poland and Germany. This
included the reunion of Danzig with the
Reich, while Poland