There remains the question, with which it will not be necessary to detain the Tribunal for long, whether these wars launched by Germany and her leaders in violation of treaties, agreements or assurances, were also wars of aggression. A war of aggression is one which is resorted to in violation of the international obligation not to have recourse to war or, in cases in which war is not totally renounced, when it is resorted to in disregard of the duty to utilize the procedure of pacific settlement which a State has bound itself to observe. There was indeed, in the period between the two World Wars, a divergence of view among jurists and statesmen whether it was preferable to attempt in advance a legal definition of aggression or to leave to the States concerned and to the collective organs of the international community freedom of appreciation of the facts in any particular situation that might arise. Those holding the latter view urged that a rigid definition might be abused by an unscrupulous State to fit in with its aggressive design; they feared, and the British Government was for a time among those who thought so, that an automatic definition of aggression might become “a trap for the innocent and sign-post for the guilty”. Others held that in the interest of certainty and security a definition of aggression, like a definition of any crime in municipal law, was proper and useful; they urged that the competent international organs, political and judicial, could be trusted to avoid any particular case a definition of aggression which might lead to obstruction or to an absurdity. In May 1933 the Committee on Security Questions of the Disarmament Conference proposed a definition of aggression on the following lines:
“The aggressor in an international conflict shall, subject to the agreements in force between the parties to the dispute, be considered to be that State which is the first to commit any of the following actions:
“(1) declaration of war upon another state;
“(2) invasion by its armed forces, with or without a declaration of war, of the territory of another State;
“(3) attack by its land, naval, or air forces, with or without a declaration of war, on the territory, vessels, or aircraft of another State;
“(4) naval blockade of the coasts or ports of another State;
“(5) provision of support to armed bands formed in its territory which have invaded the territory of another State, or refusal, notwithstanding the request of the invaded State, to take in its own territory all the measures in its power to deprive those bands of all assistance or protection.”
The various treaties concluded in 1933 by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and other States followed closely that definition. So did the Draft Convention submitted in 1933 by His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom to the Disarmament Conference.
However, it is unprofitable to elaborate here the details of the problem or of the definition of aggression. This Tribunal will not allow itself to be deflected from its purpose by attempts to ventilate in this Court what is an academic and, in the circumstances, an utterly unreal controversy as to what is a war of aggression. There is no definition of aggression, general or particular, which does not cover abundantly and irresistibly and in every material detail the premeditated onslaught by Germany upon the territorial integrity and the political independence of so many States.
This then being the law—that the peoples of the world by the Pact of Paris had finally outlawed war and made it criminal—let us turn to the facts and see how these Defendants under their Leader and with their associates destroyed the high hopes of mankind and sought to revert to international anarchy. And first in general terms let this be said, for it will be established beyond doubt by the documents. From the moment Hitler became Chancellor in 1933, with the Defendant Von Papen as Vice-Chancellor, and with the Defendant Von Neurath as his Foreign Minister, the whole atmosphere of the world darkened. The hopes of the people began to recede. Treaties seemed no longer matters of solemn obligation, but were entered into with complete cynicism as a means for deceiving other States of Germany’s warlike intentions. International Conferences were no longer to be used as a means for securing pacific settlements but as occasions for obtaining by blackmail demands which were eventually to be enlarged by war. The World came to know the War of Nerves, the diplomacy of the fait accompli, of blackmail and bullying.