MR. DODD: Very well, Your Honor. I have not had an opportunity to examine it carefully. We did not get these documents, by the way, until pretty late last night. We have not had, the usual period of time to examine it, but in any event, I have suggested it might go in, and if Dr. Horn would verify it, as suggested by the President, and later furnish the original copy, it might be all right.
THE PRESIDENT: That would be all right, certainly.
Dr. Horn, you understand what I mean. If you will produce to us at some future date the actual document which you signed yourself, to show that it was a true copy, that will be quite satisfactory.
DR. HORN: Mr. President, in the entire document book there is no document which I have not signed and given in five copies to be translated. Of course, I cannot also sign all the translations.
This document which is contained in the document book submitted to the President has my signature in the German text.
THE PRESIDENT: You mean that you have handed your documents in to be translated, in German, with your signature at the bottom, saying it is a true extract, and you do not know where those documents are because they have gone into the Translation Division? That is right, is it not?
DR. HORN: Only partially, Mr. President. I know that I handed in these documents, to the proper office, in German, and with my signature. Then that office kept them and had them translated.
From the moment I handed them in I naturally have had no further control of what happened.
I may also point out that the document books which we used were available only in a single copy and must be used by all attorneys, even now, for their future work. Because of that, I cannot produce the original for the Tribunal since it is not my property. That can be done in agreement only with the person in charge of the document section, Lieutenant Commander Schrader.
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Horn, if, in the future, you and the other defendants' counsel could get your document books ready in sufficient time, you could perhaps then make the arrangement that you hand in the document book, when you are offering it in evidence, and then it would be capable of being handed to the officer of the Court.
DR. HORN: Mr. President, I do not believe that that possibility exists at all, for these Dokumente der Deutschen Politik-just to use this example are available only in one copy for the use of all, Defense Counsel attorneys; I cannot take these books away, if they wish to continue work with them, in order to submit them to the Tribunal as evidence. I would not receive them. I receive these books only to use them, and make excerpts from them, and then I have to return them.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, but you are putting in evidence now a certain extract from the book, and all the Tribunal wants is that that extract be certified, either by you or by some other person who can be trusted, as a correct extract from the book, and that that document, so signed, can be produced. It may be difficult to produce it at the moment because you have handed it in to some official or to somebody in the Translation Division and therefore you cannot produce it, but it could be arranged that it should be produced in the future. I do not mean this particular one, but in the future other defendants' counsel can produce their documents certified by themselves or by some other person of authority.
DR. HORN: That has already been done, Mr. President. Five document books of the same type, signed by me, were handed to the Tribunal.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes. Well, the rule of the Tribunal happens to be that they should be handed in, in this Court, at the time that they are being used, as well as their being handed h to somebody for the purpose of translation. That is the rule.
But now perhaps we had better get on as we are taking up too much time over this.
DR. HORN: I have just heard that the German documents which I signed are being procured from the Secretariat General, so I will be able to submit them to the Tribunal with signature, in the German.
THE PRESIDENT: Very well.
DR. HORN: I should like to continue and explain the afore-mentioned opinion of the legal consequences of the Pact made between France and Russia in 1936, and I refer to Page 3, that is, Page 8 of the document book. I quote: "Consequently, the only question is whether France, in accepting these treaty obligations, has kept within those limits which, in her relation to Germany have been laid on her by the Rhine Pact.
"This, however, the German Government must deny.
"The Rhine Pact was supposed to achieve the goal of securing peace in Western Europe by having Germany on the one hand, and France and Belgium on the other, renounce for all time employing military force in their relations to each other.
If, by the conclusion of the pact, certain reservations to this renunciation of war, going beyond the right of self-defense, were permitted, the political reason for this was, as is generally known, solely the fact that France had already taken on certain alliance obligations towards Poland and Czechoslovakia which she did not want to sacrifice to the idea of absolute peace security in the West. Germany at that time accepted in good faith these reservations to the renunciation of war. She did not object to the treaties with Poland and Czechoslovakia, placed on the table at Locarno by the representative of France, only because of the self-understood supposition that these treaties adapted themselves to the structure of the Rhine Pact and did not contain any provisions on the application of Article 16 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, such as are provided for in the new French-Soviet agreements. This was true also of the contents of these special .
agreements, which came to the knowledge of the German Government at that time. The exceptions permitted in the Rhine Pact did, it is true, not expressly refer to Poland and Czechoslovakia, but were formulated generally. But it was the sense of all negotiations about this matter to find a compromise between the German-French renunciation of war and the desire of France to maintain her already existent pact obligations. If, therefore, France now takes advantage of the abstract formulation of war possibilities allowed for in the Rhine Treaty in order to conclude a new pact against Germany with a highly armed state, if thus in such a decisive manner she limits the scope of the renunciation of war mutually agreed upon with Germany, and if, as set forth above, she does not even observe the stipulated formal juridical Limits, then she has created thereby a completely new situation and has destroyed the political system of the Rhine Pact both in theory and literally." I will omit the next paragraph and will quote from Page 9 of the document book as follows:
"The German Government have always emphasized during the negotiations of the last years that they would maintain and carry out all obligations of the Rhine Pact as long as the other partners to the Pact also were willing on their part to adhere to this Pact. This natural supposition cannot any longer be regarded as fulfilled by France. In violation of the Rhine Pact, France has replied to the friendly offers and peaceful assurances, made again and again by Germany, with a military alliance with the Soviet Union, directed exclusively against Germany. Therefore the Rhine Pact of Locarno has lost its inner meaning and has ceased to exist in any practical sense. For that reason Germany also on her side does not consider herself bound any longer by this pact which has become void." In consideration of the Franco-Russian pact and the intentions of the French General Staff, Hitler had the Defendant Von Ribbentr9p come to him in order to question him about the presumable attitude of England to a possible German reoccupation...
THE PRESIDENT: You are reading from the document, are you not, Dr. Horn? You begin to tell us something about Hitler.
DR. HORN: Yes, I interrupted at the phrase "as bound by this pact which has become void," in order to bring in the role of Ribbentrop briefly. On the basis, of this pact and of the intentions of the French General Staff, Hitler then had the Defendant Von Ribbentrop ...
THE PRESIDENT: We shall hear that from Von Ribbentrop, shall we not?
DR. HORN: Mr. President, we are permitted to add a few connecting words to the documents. I can now...
THE