8 Jan. 46
is evasive every time I ask him for
particulars of the forthcoming German action. He has a guilty
conscience. He has lied too many times about German intentions towards
Poland not to feel embarrassment now over what he must tell me and
what he is preparing to do.
"The will to fight is unalterable. He rejects any solution which
might satisfy Germany and prevent the struggle. I am certain that even
if the Germans were given everything they demanded they would attack
just the same, because they are possessed by the demon of destruction.
"Our conversation sometimes takes a dramatic turn. I do not
hesitate to speak my mind in the most brutal manner. But this doesn't
shake him in the least. I realize how little weight this view carries
in German opinion.
"The atmosphere is icy. And the cold feeling between us is
reflected in our followers. During dinner we do not exchange a word.
We distrust each other. But I at least have a clear conscience. He has
not."
Whatever other defects
there may have been about Count Ciano, there cannot be an appreciation
of the situation which is more heavily corroborated by supporting
documents than his diagnosis of the situation in the summer of 1939.
Then we come to the next stage in the German plan, which was sharp
pressure on the claim for Danzig shown immediately after Czechoslovakia
had been finally dealt with on the 15th of March. It is shown how
closely it followed the completion of the rape of Prague. The first
sharp raising of the claim was on the 21st of March, as shown in Exhibit
GB-38, Document TC-73, Number 61. And that developed, as the Tribunal
has heard from Colonel Griffith Jones.
Then we come to the last days before the war, and one interesting side
light is that Herr Von Dirksen, the German Ambassador at the Court of
St. James, returned from London on the 18th of August 1939; and I put in
the extract from the interrogation of the Defendant Ribbentrop, which is
Document D-490. I put that in as GB-138.
I do not intend to read it to the Tribunal because it can be summarized
in this way: That the Defendant Ribbentrop has certainly no recollection
of ever having seen the German Ambassador to the Court of St. James
after his return. He thinks he would have remembered him if he had seen
him and he accepts the probability that he did not see him. And there is
the point, when it was well-known that war with Poland would involve.
England and France, that either he was not sufficiently interested in
opinion in London to take the trouble to see his ambassador or else, as
he rather suggests, that he had appointed so weak and ordinary a career