7 Dec.
45
are the facts supporting the charges of the violation
of treaties and assurances against these three countries and supporting
the allegation of the making of an aggressive war against them. My Lord,
in the respectful submission of the Prosecution here the story is a very
plain, a very simple one, a story of perfidy, dishonor, and shame.
COLONEL H. J. PHILLIMORE (Junior Counsel for the United Kingdom): May
it please the Tribunal, it is my task to present the evidence on the
wars of aggression and wars in breach of treaties against Greece and
Yugoslavia. The evidence which I shall put in to the Tribunal has been
prepared in collaboration with my American colleague, Lieutenant Colonel
Krucker.
The invasion of Greece and Yugoslavia by the Germans, which took place
in the early hours of the morning of the 6th of April 1941, constituted
direct breaches of the Hague Convention of 1899 on the Pacific
Settlement of International Disputes and of the Kellogg-Briand Pact of
1928. Those breaches are charged, respectively, at Paragraphs I and XIII
of Appendix C of the Indictment. Both have already been put in by my
learned friend, Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe, who also explained the
obligation of the German Government to the Governments of Yugoslavia and
Greece under those pacts.
In the case of Yugoslavia the invasion further constituted a breach of
an express assurance by the Nazis, which is charged at Paragraph XXVI of
Appendix C. This assurance was originally given in a German Foreign
Office release made in Berlin on the 28th of April 1938 but was
subsequently repeated by Hitler himself on the 6th of October 1939 in a
speech he made in the Reichstag, and it is in respect of this last
occasion that the assurance is specifically pleaded in the Indictment.
May I ask the Tribunal to turn now to the first document in the
document book, which is Book Number 5. The first document is 2719-PS,
which is part of the document which has already been put in as Exhibit
GB-58. This is the text of the German Foreign Office release on the 28th
of April 1938, and I would read the beginning and then the last
paragraph but one on the page:
"Berlin, the 28th of April 1938. The
State Secretary of the German Foreign Office to the German Diplomatic
Representatives.
"As a consequence of the reunion of Austria with the Reich we
have now new frontiers with Italy, Yugoslavia, Switzerland,
Liechtenstein and Hungary. These frontiers are regarded by us as final
and inviolable. On this point the following special declarations have
been made. . . "