International Military Tribunal - The Nuremberg Trials - Complete Tribunal Proceedings (V. 3)

The justification for that concern on the part of the democratic powers is not difficult to find. With the evidence which we now have of what was happening within the councils of the German Reich and its Armed Forces during these months, it is manifest that the German Government were intent on seizing Poland as a whole, that Danzig—as Hitler himself was to say in time, a month later—“was not the subject of the dispute at all.” The Nazi Government was intent upon aggression and the demands and negotiations in respect to Danzig were merely a cover and excuse for further domination.

Would that be a convenient point to stop?

THE PRESIDENT: We will adjourn now until 2 o’clock.

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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

“Opinion on the Draft Study of Naval Warfare against England,” this is stated:

“1. If, according to the Führer’s decision, Germany is to acquire a position as a world power, she needs not only sufficient colonial possessions but also secure naval communications and secure access to the ocean.

“2. Both requirements can be fulfilled only in opposition to Anglo-French interests and would limit their position as world powers. It is unlikely that they can be achieved by peaceful means. The decision to make Germany a world power, therefore, forces upon us the necessity of making the corresponding preparations for war.

“3. War against England means at the same time war against the Empire, against France, probably against Russia as well, and a large number of countries overseas, in fact, against one-third to one-half of the world.

“It can only be justified and have a chance of success”—and it was not moral justification which was being looked for in this document—“It can only be justified and have a chance of success if it is prepared economically as well as politically and militarily, and waged with the aim of conquering for Germany an outlet to the ocean.”

THE PRESIDENT: I think the Tribunal would like to know at what stage you propose to put the documents, which you are citing, in evidence.

SIR HARTLEY SHAWCROSS: Well, Sir, my colleagues, my American and my British colleagues, were proposing to follow up my own address by putting these documents in. The first series of documents, which will be put in by my noted colleague, Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe, will be the treaties.

THE PRESIDENT: I suppose that what you quote will have to be read again.

SIR HARTLEY SHAWCROSS: Well, I am limiting my quotations as far as I possibly can. I apprehend that technically you may wish it to be quoted again, so as to get it on the record when the document is actually put into evidence. But I think it will appear, when the documents themselves are produced, that there will be a good deal more in most of them than I am actually citing now.

THE PRESIDENT: Yes. Very well.

SIR HARTLEY SHAWCROSS: This document on naval warfare against England is something which is both significant and new. Until this date the documents in our possession disclose preparations for war against Poland, England, and France, purporting on the face of them at least to be defensive measures to ward off attacks which might result from the intervention of those states in the preparatory German aggressions in Central Europe. Hitherto aggressive war against Poland, England, and France has been contemplated only as a distant objective. Now, in this document for the first time, we find a war of conquest by Germany against France and England openly recognized as the future aim, at least of the German Navy.

On 24 November 1938 an appendix was issued by Keitel to a previous order of the Führer. In that appendix were set out the future tasks for the Armed Forces and the preparation for the conduct of the war which would result from those tasks.

“The Führer has ordered”—I quote—“that besides the three eventualities mentioned in the previous directive . . . preparations are also to be made for the surprise occupation by German troops of the Free State of Danzig.

“For the preparation the following principles are to be borne in mind.”—This is the common pattern of aggression—“The primary assumption is the lightning seizure of Danzig by exploiting a favorable political situation, and not war with Poland. Troops which are going to be used for this purpose must not be held at the same time for the seizure of Memel, so that both operations can take place simultaneously, should such necessity arise.”

Thereafter, as the evidence which is already before the Tribunal has shown, final preparations were taking place for the invasion of Poland. On the 3rd of April 1939, 3 days before the issue of the Anglo-Polish communiqué, the Defendant Keitel issued to the High Command of the Armed Forces a directive in which it was stated that the directive for the uniform preparation of war by the Armed Forces in 1939-40, was being re-issued and that part relating to Danzig would be out in April. The basic principles were to remain the same as in the previous directive. Attached to this document were the orders Fall Weiss, the code name for the proposed invasion of Poland. Preparation for that invasion was to be made, it was stated, so that the operation could be carried out at any time from the 1st of September 1939 onwards.