6 Dec. 45

At midnight on the 30th of August at the time by which the Polish Plenipotentiary was expected to arrive, Sir Nevile Henderson saw Ribbentrop; and I shall read to you the account of that interview, in which Sir Nevile Henderson handed a further message to Ribbentrop in reply to the message that had been handed to him the previous evening, and at which Ribbentrop read out in German a two- or three-page document which purported to be the German proposal to be discussed at the discussions between them and the Polish Government. He read it out quickly in German. He refused to hand a copy of it to the British Ambassador. He passed no copy of it at all to the Polish Ambassador. So that there was no kind of possible chance of the Poles ever having before them the proposals which Germany was so graciously and magnanimously offering to discuss.

On the following day, the 31st of August, Mr. Lipski saw Ribbentrop and could get no further than to be asked whether he came with full powers. When he did not — when he said he did not come with full powers, Ribbentrop said that he would put the position before the Führer But, in actual fact, it was much too late to put any position to the Führer by that time, because on the 31st of August — I am afraid I am unable to give you the exact time — but on the 31st of August, Hitler had already issued his Directive Number 1 for the conduct of the war, in which he laid down H-Hour as being a quarter to five the following morning, the lst of September. And on the evening of the 31st of August at 9 o'clock the German radio broadcast the proposals which Ribbentrop had read out to Sir Nevile Henderson the night before, saying that these were the proposals which had been made for discussion but that, as no Polish Plenipotentiary had arrived to discuss them, the German Government assumed that they were turned down. That broadcast at 9 o'clock on the evening of the 31st of August was the first that the Poles had ever heard of the proposals, and the first, in fact, that the British Government or their representatives in Berlin knew about them, other than what had been heard when Ribbentrop had read them out and refused to give a written copy, on the evening of the 30th.

After that broadcast at 9:15, perhaps when the broadcast was in its course, a copy of those proposals was handed to Sir Nevile Henderson, for the first time.

Having thus summarized for the convenience, I hope, of the Tribunal, the tin-ling of events during that last week, I would ask the Tribunal to refer briefly to the remaining documents in that document book. I first put in evidence an extract from the interrogation of the Defendant Göring, which was taken on the 29th of August 1945.